. I promise you that your share of the treasure will not be forfeit, should we succeed. Flaran and I are going on, right, Flaran?"
The mage rolled his eyes, but nodded. Then he began checking that his spells of contingency in the case of his death were still active.
She glared at one and then the other, then set off down the passage without a word, confident she could remember a way to bypass the zombies and see the stars again.
"Damn it," she muttered to herself. "Rule number one: don't get seen! Rule number two: don't get caught! By Boh'anya, the treasure will wait!"
"In that, my dear, you are correct," a ghostly voiced rasped at her from the shadows. A skeletal hand with a grasp like iron wrapped around her arm, and before she could find the wits to scream, she found that she could not.
Her blood began to freeze in her veins.
"She's right, you know," the wizard's voice said, floating over Kipling's shoulder. "If he knows we're here, he can pick the time and place to deal with us. The home turf advantage is not one we should cede to one as crafty as our opponent."
"Damn it, Flaran, I know that! But what am I supposed to do? You said yourself that the people will be dead in a day. We can't just leave and come back later to try something else. It's now or never!" Kipling's arm brushed aside huge cobwebs, with strands like yarn. Luckily they weren't sticky, indicating the long absence of their spinner.
"Kipling, listen to me. Open your mind to the possibility of leaving them. We stand next to no chance of prevailing. If doing noble deeds is what matters to you, think of all the good you can do in the years to come -- good that will be left undone if you die here, today."
"Good isn't something you can weigh in scales, Flaran. It is wrong for those people to die, and that's that." Kipling paused, considering. "But it's also wrong of me to insist that you accompany me -- coming this far, and providing us with the protective spells, is fair repayment of your debt to me. Consider it fulfilled. You can leave whenever you wish."
"Thanks, Kip. I usually don't run until things get a lot worse than this. But don't worry, I will run, when the time comes. And I advise you strongly to be within arm's reach of me when I do. After all, tele..."
Flaran's comment was cut short by a gasp. He collapsed to his knees, holding his hands to his temples in agony. He tried to reach in his pouches for spell components, but his shaking hands could not hold on to them, and his lips could not force syllables of the Art past the pain.
The distinctive metallic sound of a sword clearing its scabbard echoed up and down the corridor. Kipling's sword blazed to light, banishing the shadows for many paces around and allowing his vision to shift back into the normal spectrum. "Show yourself, fiend!" he bellowed.
At the edge of the light, a figure appeared, as if an invisible curtain had been drawn aside. "As you wish," it whispered. Though it was wearing elaborate embroidered robes and bedecked with many amulets, the underlying body was all but skeletal. Each bone of its hand stood out clearly under skin like parchment as it gripped a banded quarterstaff. Its face was like a skull wrapped in a single sheet of oilcloth. But where shriveled raisins of eyes would normally be, twin beacons of red fury blazed forth.
Kipling faced the lich, as if his entire existence had led him to just this confrontation.
With a bellow of rage, he lifted his sword and charged the lich, willing every bit of holy might at his disposal into the strike. The sword arced across, headed in an unstoppable trajectory for the lich's neck.
And passed completely through the lich, burying itself an inch deep in the stone wall. The illusion winked out a second later, and wheezing laughter echoed down the corridor from behind him.
The laughter quickly changed to murmured chanting, and Kipling was barely able to wrestle the preternaturally keen edge of his sword out of the stone in time to meet the quintet of streaking white energy pulses that darted at him from the lich's fingertips.
He held his sword in a guard position, as if blocking a physical attack, and the spell faded into nothingness a pace from him, dispelled by the power of his holy sword.
Kipling had barely recovered from that attack when a crackling bolt of lightning exploded from the lich's hands, passing bare inches over Flaran's still form to come streaking at Kipling.
It, too, was absorbed by the sword, which now hummed in Kipling's hands, a virtual conduit of Mygonnil's power.
"Your spells are worthless against one of true faith, monster," he yelled, advancing towards the lich with his sword still at guard.
"Faith, or luck?" the lich rasped. "Try your hand at stronger magics!" And with that the thing reached into a pouch at its side and threw a half-dozen faintly glowing pebbles at the paladin.
Kipling readied himself, drawing on all his holy might to dispel whatever foul enchantments those stones contained. The pebbles flew toward him; his sword flashed once in an emanation of power.
And the pebbles suddenly blossomed into miniature boulders, rocks nearly three feet across!
He was slammed to the ground under a ton of rubble.
He felt a sharp stabbing pain in his left leg. His ribs felt as if they were moments away from being crushed, only barely protected by the steel shell he wore. He couldn't feel his right arm at all, and was fairly certain his sword was no longer in his grasp.
The corridor was once again pitch black, except to Kipling's vision it was deep purple, with curious points of dancing light, and then gathering darkness.
Kipling lost consciousness, and his battered body relaxed.
Soon afterward, the rocks were lifted, tossed down the hall with preternatural strength by skeletal arms. The lich placed the paralyzed body of Flaran next to the unconscious paladin.
"He knew that I was aware of his precious sword's powers. Why didn't he think I could find a way to turn it against him? Paladins! Will they never learn?"
And then the three of them winked out of existence, the absence of the lich's fiery eyes plunging the corridor into deepest blackness.
From out of the darkness, dwarven zombies shambled in, mindlessly and silently clearing away the scattered boulders, which had returned to normal rock again after the miniaturization magic had been dispelled.
Kipling awoke to the sound of his heart throbbing in his temples. He ached all over, but felt no stabbing pains, the sign of recently broken bones. His wrists were shackled to the cool stone wall behind him. He opened his eyes, but saw no difference; it was still pitch dark.
"Flaran?" he whispered, sure that he was locked up in the lich's dungeons, possibly with the mage.
"He is here," a familiar voice rasped. Suddenly the room was flooded with white light. When his eyes cleared, Kipling took note of the other two prisoners to his right: Flaran and Charlotte. Damn, he thought. There goes the rescue party.

"Your name is Kipling Saudaluk, son of Getrell Saudaluk, son of Herae Jussinius Saudaluk, daughter of Leradrill Malchanor Jussinius. Do not deceive me in anything, my little paladin -- there is no telling what I already know, and the reason you are still alive is tenuous at best."
Kipling nodded. Now was the time to gather as much information as he could, just in case. "And you are?"
"I'm quite surprised you don't know. Rule number two of fighting a lich, I'm told, is to know its living identity."
"And rule number one?"
"Don't ever try to fight it in its lair."
Kipling sighed. "Am I to be tortured for information, sacrificed in your solstice festivities, or just killed outright?"
The lich chuckled, a disconcerting sound when performed with shrivelled vocal cords. "First, as you know, there is no need for me to torture you to plumb the depths of your knowledge. Second, I already have enough souls for my ritual, and yours would not suit me in any case. And third, if I had wanted you dead, we would not be having this pleasant conversation."
"So why?" Kipling asked, shifting his weight in the shackles to test their strength: solid.
"Let me tell you a story," the lich said, abandoning its place in front of Kipling to begin pacing the room, in a quite human way.
"Once there were two young people, a lad and a lass, who both entered the priesthood of the goddess of funerals -- you'll forgive me if I don't pronounce her name; I've had a bit of a falling out with her. In any event, the lad chose the