"Do you have time to talk?" Sai asked.

  Gugalan looked down at him, arms crossed as always. "I have all the time in Serinor," he said. "What did you want to talk about?"

  Sai opened his mouth and froze. He could think of several things to ask the Nightmare's Enforcer. Was there a way out of the Shadowed Vale? Did Syn command Gugalan to let Sai pass? Why was the minotaur being nice to an orc? But Sai could feel the Shadowed Altar at the end of the chamber, could feel Syn's eyes upon them. He had a lot of questions for the minotaur, but none he cared to share with Syn. "Do you do much reading?" he asked at last, gesturing at the bookshelves on the far side of the room.

  Gugalan snorted. Sai wondered if the minotaur knew why he'd delayed so long. "No," Gugalan said.

  Sai meandered over to the bookshelf, Cuatete following close behind. He perused the spines and raised an eyebrow at a volume titled By the Horns. "This one sounds racy," he said, pulling it from the shelf. Gugalan snorted again but said nothing. Sai was disappointed to find the book was a dry treatise about the history and legends of minotaurs in Serinor. He flipped through idly, but a familiar name caught his attention.

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  The greatest among all the minotaurs is Gugalan. He appears in the Kinohis' songs as the Nightmare's Enforcer. Gugalan is always depicted as terrifyingly powerful and intensely loyal to his master. Though some legends portray him as an unwilling servant, they are at best apocryphal.

  "Hey!" Sai called. "This one's about you!"

  "I have been the Nightmare's Enforcer since before the elves awoke," said Gugalan, watching Sai read the book. The anger around the minotaur's dark eyes seemed to soften into something else. Sadness? "I'm in a lot of stories."

  Sai flipped through a few more pages. "Do you really not like your job?" he asked.

  Gugalan looked away, glaring at the Shadowed Altar. The anger returned to his face in force. "I am my Master's creature, and I will always be thus."

  Sai glanced over at the minotaur. "That…" he said, "…doesn't really answer my question." But Gugalan refused to say more.