Depths of Madness

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Twilight went quickly through the caverns, her only companion the shadow she had summoned. They moved as one, silent as death, fleeting as the darkness itself.

To avoid the fiendish lizards and other perils of the depths, Twilight did not hesitate to call upon the powers Erevan granted. With his power to silence her moves and keep herself shrouded, she descended to Tlork's dungeon, then ascended past the limits of the mythallar.

"I see, Chameleon," she said. "You know what I want, and you are with me-whether I ask for your aid or not. Guide me through this, and I won't curse you again. I might even speak well of you-only in private, of course."

No response came, and though Twilight had never expected one in the past, now she wondered.

Her shadow could not speak, but its eyeless gaze could convey emotions and thoughts just as well as words. It sent Twilight a wry, bemused glance, then flitted off into the darkness ahead. Twilight could only see it thanks to the darksight Neveren had taught her.

Darkness ahead and darkness behind, Twilight thought. No light to cast a shadow. She wondered if the absence of light meant the absence of hope-not that it mattered.

Life for Twilight had never been a matter of hope.

Twilight reached the hall with the perverse murals, at the peak of Gestal's domain. The tunnel she and Gargan had come through from the surface beckoned just a few paces to her right, cunningly hidden behind stalagmites just so, where one could find it only if one knew where to look.

She saw no one in the chamber so she went in, her shadow flickering at her feet. The crevasse into which Gargan and Tlork had fallen tore the chamber in two, leaving a small ledge on the far end. A little trickle of red light, from flames, bled from a crease in the wall-a door.

Twilight assumed this was the entrance to Gestal's chapel. Now she just had to get there. She kept to the walls of the chamber and edged close to the crevasse. Moonlight filtered in through the crack overhead, and sand trickled down.

Gestal's magic had split the hall from wall to wall, and the gap was near to two long dagger casts in width. Perhaps Gargan could have jumped the distance, but Twilight could do nothing of the sort, even with the leaping boots.

A twinge. Gargan…

A simple matter, Twilight reasoned. The other side wasn't far-she could simply shadowjump across. Except, of course, that the chamber was black as pitch. She could see only with the darksight. Other than the opening where she and Gargan had come down, there were no shadows-not here, not on the other side.

Twilight sighed. "Radiant."

She sent her animate shadow across to keep watch, then searched along the wall. Indeed, there were handholds and footholds, and a small section of rock still connected the two parts of the chamber. The crevasse had torn its way into the wall as well, and most of the rock Twilight could have climbed across had disintegrated and fallen off into darkness. To her right, the gap extended thirty hands up before coming together for about the length of Twilight's forearm and ending at the ceiling.

"Quite radiant," Twilight mused as she unbuckled her sword belt. No use complaining about fate. Unless she wanted to turn back now, that span of rock was her only chance.

Twilight tossed Betrayal across the crevasse. It clattered and rolled to a rest against the wall. Then she took off her leather glove and boots, which she sent over as well. The crossbow was too fragile to toss, so she looped its sling around her neck. She thought to throw Davoren's stiletto across as well, but a better use occurred to her. She wiped it on her bloody blouse and put it between her teeth. Then she retrieved some dust from the floor and ground it between her hands.

Ready.

With skills that predated her service to Erevan, predated her apprenticeship-and affair-with Neveren, and even predated her name, Twilight made her way up the wall as deftly as a spider. Her barely healed arm hurt, but she could stand it. Climbing up was easy. Getting across would be more complicated.

She reached the top of the wall and looked for a handhold on the narrow pass below the broken ceiling. She found one, wedged her fingers in, and looked for another handhold. There. She jammed her left hand in, ignoring the pain. That was nothing. She looked at the next handhold-a pace and a half distant. This was really going to hurt.

She took a deep breath, bit the stiletto, and let go with her right hand.

Screaming around the knife, Twilight swung, held aloft only by her ravaged arm, and grabbed for the handhold. If she missed…

But she didn't miss. She caught the crack and jammed her fingers in. They split, and blood ran, but she held.

Wiry muscles stood out on her arms as Twilight hung backward from the piece of wall, friezelike with its filthy scrawls, nearly at the broken ceiling. Her bent legs dangled over a chasm into which even her penetrating darksight found nothing.

If an attacker had come upon her dangling from the stone, she would have been unable to defend herself. Her shadow, still detached, kept watch, but it was unlikely Gestal, or those fiendish lizards with spears, would have had trouble knocking her to her death. But no such foe came upon her, and she swung along to her next handhold.

Hand over hand, Twilight made her way across the gap. Eleven or twelve handholds would get her to the end, she guessed.

Three, four, five.

She panted, trying not to think about the burning in her arms.

Six, seven, eight.

Gods, so tired. Almost there.

Nine, ten-

There was a crack, her hand slipped, and Twilight's heart stopped.

She caught herself, fingers of her left hand holding her aloft in the frieze. Her shadow flicked its gaze to her, but it could do nothing. It was just a shadow, after all, and had no body.

Twilight looked at the handhold she had fumbled. The rock had cracked and slid away, leaving nothing to grab. The other edge of the floor lay not more than a pace away, but she couldn't swing past it from where she hung.

Her arm was growing weary-at least it wasn't the half-broken one-and she couldn't quite touch the previous handhold. This was the smoothest part of the stone, and she couldn't see any other spots nearby to clutch. She wasn't sure her right arm could support her, even if she could have reached.

Could she have come so far, only to fail now?

Doubt closed around Twilight. What was she doing? She was here to attack a demon priest who couldn't help but know she was coming, and who would surely slay her with his superior powers. Where was necessity-her beloved pragmatism?

She had led so many to misery-companions like Taslin and Gargan, innocents like Slip and Asson, even villains like Davoren. By which of Beshaba's cruel whims was it that Twilight lived, when they did not?

It would be so simple to let go. What did she have left to hold onto? Everything she had ever loved had deserted or betrayed her. What seemed years of brutish darkness had hammered her already-jaded spirit into real despair.

Liet, Twilight thought, and resolve returned.

She started to swing back and forth, pumping her legs. As a child on a rope swing builds momentum, so did Twilight move, agonizingly slowly. Her arm screamed in protest, but she gritted her teeth and pushed the pain from her mind.

As she swung back and forth, visions came to her, reasons not to give up. She felt again the peace of the goliath village, saw the passionate Taslin leaping into the worm's jaws to avenge her beloved, and she basked again in Slip's ceaseless smile.

Images from deeper in her past returned. She saw the men and women she had loved and watched die-saw their living faces rather than their skulls. She saw Neveren sacrificing himself for her, and watched Nymlin's eyes as he plunged to his death for her. Memories from the near past. She saw Gestal's mocking grin and heard the way he laughed at her murdered companions. She felt Liet's loving gaze and remembered the way he leaped into danger to save her.

She saw her own face then, but the eyes were not hers. Those eyes she had glimpsed only in dreams-those of her lord, the being she had just met and had known all along. The face she saw was both the beings she served-herself and Erevan-though only one of those two served her in return.

Twilight realized, then, that she had something to hold. She had so much more.

She swung and swung, building up speed back and forth until…

The force became too much for her arm and she pushed off.

A weightless heartbeat later, she slammed into the stone, her legs jarred as though by a lightning strike. Twilight suppressed a gasp of pain and toppled-forward, not backward, she made certain-onto the ledge.

There she lay, stunned, blood seeping from her mouth. Her legs hadn't liked the landing, but her tender ribs had hated it, and she spent entirely too many breaths wheezing on the stone.

Get up, you mad wench, she told herself. Get. Up.

She did.

She knelt before a painted archway, and her senses picked up the passage of heat through the stone. Gestal's door. A door for her to…

Scout first.

With a gesture, Twilight sent her shadow slipping into the archway. It needed no words-only the flicker of the elf's will-to know it was to search and return in the span of five breaths. Meanwhile, she recovered Betrayal, her boots, and glove. No sense facing Gestal unprepared.

Twilight waited ten breaths for the shadow to return, but it did not. She sneaked forward, as quietly as she could move.

It turned out to be unnecessary. As if by command, the door ground open before her, and she looked in upon a chamber of cut stone lit by roiling flames. She let her eyes shift out of darksight and into her own keen vision. In the center of the chapel burned twin charnel pits-the throats of Demogorgan, she realized-from which rose flickering orange and red flames like dancing fiends. Beside them was a tilted copper basin with something like water trickling from its edge.

It was certainly a trap, but that didn't matter. Twilight had come this far; she couldn't stop now. She stalked in slowly, keeping to the dancing shadows that flickered against the walls.

The chapel was marred with perversity. Symbols and scenes of violence and depravity plastered the smooth walls, drawn with blood and offal. Bloody bones and discarded bits of flesh, as left from a meal, lay scattered about the place, and skins of varying shades of gray-Twilight did not want to think about their origin-hung from the ceiling. The place reeked of decay, corruption, and rot.

At her feet, Twilight found several hunks of flesh she guessed had come from fiendish lizards. There were also broken stingers as of abeil, black and gray scalps that could only be grimlock in origin, and heads, some of which Twilight could barely identify, and some she almost recognized before she looked away, sickened.

A shadow moved toward her, and Twilight almost drew Betrayal before she realized it was her own. "Where-?" she began. Then her shadow fled into her. She felt a deathly chill embrace her for just a heartbeat before it was part of her again, trailing from her feet instead of dancing freely.

A cloaked head rose from the rubbish and skins hanging about the room. "Well met, lover," Gestal said. His cowled eyes reflected the flames, and the snake tattoo smoldered on his demonfleshed cheek.

"Liet," Twilight whispered. Her hand eased, slowly, toward the hilt of her rapier.

"One of us," the demon priest said in a bemused tone.

Twilight did not respond, only extended her sword and took a step forward.

Demonic magic flared and the steel became white-hot. Twilight took three steps forward, gritting her teeth against the pain. The agony multiplied with every step, and the eldritch steel burst into flame until she could no longer hold it. With a cry, she let Betrayal clatter to the ground. Twilight pulled her hand back, wincing.

Her left hand brought up the crossbow and she grasped it in both hands to steady her aim. The quarrel streaked out and struck Gestal in the shoulder. He looked down at it, idly, and finished his second spell. Shadow blasted the crossbow from her fingers.

Now Twilight drew Davoren's stiletto, palming it under her arm as before, but Gestal finished his third spell. Every inch of her flesh ignited with abyssal pain. The thin knife clattered from her nerveless fingers, and Twilight staggered to a halt. It wasn't the binding magic, this time-Gestal wasn't so kind. Phantom pain wracked her. Her bones shivered, tearing at the inside of her flesh, and she gasped and sobbed despite herself.

With a cry, she fell to her knees, eyes staring down helplessly at her fallen sword. The flames had burned away the last of the gray film over its steel. It was a white sword now, for all the good it did her. She would not have the strength to lift it.

"To come against me alone, wounded, weak…" The demon priest grinned. Light and flame roiled in his eyes, which darted back and forth wildly. "I had thought more highly of you." He gestured upward. "Stand."

His voice carried the same compulsion Davoren had used to slay Asson, except with many times the power. Twilight's body jerked upright, grinding her broken bones, and she could not move. Tears trickled down her cheeks and she grit her teeth. Twilight found that her voice worked, with great effort.

"You'd have… killed me anyway," she managed. She marshaled her strength of will, and attempted to slide around his enchantment, as she had before.

"How fatalistic. How like you," he said. "And have no fear-your mind won't slip out of this enchantment."

Even as he said it, Twilight felt hope fading as the spell bound her mind with greater force-strength that was supple and flexible, with the adaptability of the mad. "Come… closer…" she said. "I… have something… to say…"

The priest took a step closer, and Twilight lashed out, clawing for his eyes.

And fell short.

Her cracked nails snapped within a thumb's breadth of his nose. Her hands twisted into claws, and Twilight strained, her teeth clenched, and veins stood out on her temples and forehead. If she could only break his will, she could free herself of his magic and gouge out his distorted features. She scratched desperately, praying, but she couldn't reach that wide stare.

Gestal hissed a single laugh. "You amuse me."

She let the hands fall. "I amuse you, you disgust me," she said, somehow finding the strength for a quip. "A fair trade, I suppose."

Gestal smiled-a sickening expression, because it lit flames in her heart even as it made her want to retch-which she could not do.

"I have an offer to make you."

"No," Twilight said.

"You have the choice, moonflower," he said. "The choice that is offered only to those strong enough to seize destiny in their teeth and wrestle it bleeding to the ground."

"Like you?"

Gestal's snarl was more like that of a hyena than of a man.

"Like my master," he corrected. "And those who serve him well." He stepped away from her and spread his arms wide, indicating the walls with their old bloodstains and perverse murals as though they were something grand.

"What choice?" Twilight asked. She could work through this enchantment, given time. Just keep him talking, just keep concentrating…

"I have controlled these depths for many years, seeking and searching for a companion-a powerful swordswoman, or a sorceress, perhaps, to serve my master. For the glory of Demogorgon. And now, I have found one."

Twilight blinked and her concentration went away. Her body jerked itself erect again and she stared. "What?"

"Join us," Gestal said.

Hope fled Twilight along with her will, fighting the spell. So that was his play-she had thought it merely part of her dream, to lure her to death and madness. But she saw now.

And she was tempted.

"My prince is the storm and the fury, Twilight of the Fox, the bloodstained hurricane," the demonist said in his emotionless, calm voice. "Demogorgon offers power beyond imagining, strength of sinew and will to control and ruin." He held out his scarred arms. "Stand at my side-serve him with me. With us."

A thought occurred to her, along with the will to pit her mind against the spell once more. Not for the first time, she thanked the gods for her wit.

"You run this bedlam…" Twilight managed. "Just to find… love?" She forced a smile. "That's pathetic, or just sick."

Gestal shrugged. "Some search taverns, some festhalls," he said. "Some wander for gold and prestige to impress lovers. Some go to war for love, some shatter decades of peace for love." He lowered her hands. "Do any of these make more sense?"

"Correction," Twilight said. "That's pathetic and sick."

He looked at her hard where she stood, back arched.

"We are beyond your lies," he said. "Erevan Ilesere, prankster of the decadent Seldarine, is your scapegoat-the name upon which you blame all of your pain. I shall not begrudge you this, but it is a false path you walk. And what does it bring you?" He shrugged. "Suffering. Blindness. Emptiness masked by brief illusions like joy and purpose in a world without them. Your way of avoiding the inevitable-the truth."

"Purpose," the elf repeated.

"A delusion," said Gestal. "Desire, will, and consequence- these are the only truths. You must choose. You hide from this, and that is weakness."

"Weakness is in my heart." Just a little more. She could feel the magic eroding.

"What is the heart?" Gestal asked. "A muscle-a muscle that tastes just like rothe meat." He appeared to take Twilight's nauseated silence as an avowal. "It feels nothing but the blade that parts it."

"You are wrong. I don't run-I have chosen."

"Perhaps," Gestal said, inclining his head to that irrelevance. "But he-Erevan-is the wrong choice. You seek a way to define yourself, and he is not it. He is an illusion. Whether he exists or not, he is nothing but illusion to you. A lie. A deceit. You, only."

Like Liet, she realized.

"Who is real?" Twilight snuffled blood back into her nose. "Liet… or you?"

Gestal looked taken aback. "Why both," he said, "but I was the first. Liet is but a lost, love-lorn boy-a pathetic child."

No, Twilight thought. He's more than that.

"Are there others?" she asked, though she wasn't sure why.

Gestal furrowed his brow, as if searching his mind. "No," he said. "None of consequence-merely me, and my tool, Liet. I am his strength, and he is my weakness."

"Yes," she murmured.

Gestal grinned-hideously. "And yours." His skin swam and ran like butter slopping over a pail, and Liet stood before Twilight once more-Liet with Gestal's bastard eyes. "You choose devotion to a lie over your lover?"

Twilight realized he was mistaken. Firstly, Gestal was wrong-or rather, he was right, but he had just slipped and given her the truth. Secondly, his power was failing. The spell was fading, slipping from her mind. Twilight might have smiled.

"What do you choose?"

Twilight did smile. "I choose myself," she said.

Then the demonflesh flowed back. Gestal looked at her for a long time, his breathing increasing in rapidity until he panted, then dissolved into mirth. "You choose death, then?" he asked lightly. "Very well. All is desire, will, and consequence, as I say. And there are consequences for denying our desires." His hand came up, glowing black.

"One plea," Twilight said tightly.

That putrid grin returned. He pointed at the yawning pits-two holes in the stone, from which flames arose. "You want to go into the pits, instead?" He sighed. The blackness died around his hand. "I shall enjoy watching the climax of your fall, as I have watched its course these last days."

"Liet," Twilight said. "I have something to tell him."

The name struck Gestal's ears like a heavy curse, and he recoiled as though stung. He contemplated the floor for several shuddering breaths. Then, gradually, his panting became chuckling, and his chuckling became laughter. When finally he looked up, Gestal's face gleamed and twisted with amusement.

"I shall tell him," he said. "Perhaps I'll let him wake up to see your heart lying on a platter before us. Perhaps I'll even let him taste it."

"He's not watching." Twilight felt doubt. "He knows nothing of you."

Gestal grinned. "Perhaps," he said. Then he reached toward her and intoned a series of harsh abyssal syllables to his foul patron.

"No!" the elf begged. She forced tears-painfully easy. "I must tell him myself. Let me speak to him-your magic binds me. You need not fear. One breath."

"Why?" Gestal asked. "You do not trust me. I cannot blame you. We all lie to ourselves, what's to stop me lying to you… or to him, for that matter?"

"I…" Twilight did not need to lie, but she didn't know if she should say it.

She did it without thinking. "I love him."

Then Gestal's eyes froze, shuddered, and softened. As she watched, the hideous black flesh receded like water across him, and the demon brand hissed and vanished beneath the skin.

Liet awoke, standing opposite a shuddering Twilight. He wore bulky robes that felt heavy and sodden, and his hands were covered in a sticky liquid. He wasted only that heartbeat examining himself, though-his eyes balked over Twilight.

His lover looked horrible. She stood as though stretched by an unseen rack, her blouse and breeches shredded and soaked with red. Blood-there was so much blood-ran from wounds, nose, and mouth. Her right arm hung limply at her side, burned red and black, and her legs looked none too steady. Her black hair had become a tangled jungle of smeared, caked curls.

Light rippled around him, and he could perceive, out of the corners of his eyes, beams and latticework, as though something was peeling back the walls of reality, unveiling true order. The world seemed to fall into perfect balance-symmetry. Liet couldn't explain the feeling any other way.

" 'Light?" he asked. "Are…"

As he looked upon the pale, streaked face, his heart roiled in a mixture of bewilderment, confusion, and tragic, hopeless love.

Anger was coming-why was he angry? Oh, gods-why…

He stared unwittingly into the face of his betrayer.

Twilight could not manage words before the air between them shimmered and the room exploded in edifying golden light. The spell binding Twilight's body abruptly failed, dropping her unceremoniously to the floor.

"No!" she shouted. "I've changed my mind! No!" Liet flew backward in a tangle of flailing limbs as the golden distortion shifted into a hulking black body with three heads and six massive arms, a gigantic sword clutched in each hand. Ruukthalmuramaxamin was already in the midst of a spell, one that would devour Gestal's body as he stood, and the swords darted out to rend the demon priest's flesh.

"Twi-!" Liet screamed. His voice, halfway through her name, was suddenly that of Gestal once more. "-light," it finished. The change swept through him almost instantly, the demonflesh hissing across his skin like blood. His eyes were bathed, once more, in chaos.

Ruuk's swords cut into Gestal and blood flew. The demon thrall cursed and sputtered and dodged back. A slaying spell came from the sharn, bearing down upon the demon thrall, and struck him solidly in the chest. In a heartbeat, he started to fall apart.

But even as the sharn's spell ruined him, Gestal screamed a single word of power. It was a word of absolute anarchy and madness, a word sprung from the depths of the primordial chaos that had existed before the Realms had ever known light. Even as the moisture evaporated from his body, his flesh withered, and the blood running from his lips hardened before it touched the ground, Gestal uttered the word of chaos.

To Twilight, it was merely a discordant cacophony of sound and fury in a set of twisting syllables. It signified nothing more than a crude limerick, a foul jest, or a random distortion of a tale told by an idiot.

To Ruukthalmuramaxamin, cursed as it was, it was doom.

Had any mortal spoken a parallel word of dictum in the presence of a sane sharn, it might have shrugged off the effects. But the curse that the High Arcanist Nega had left Ruuk, which chained its alien soul tightly within the bonds of law and order, had caused a single weakness: pure, unadulterated chaos.

The sharn screamed, bubbled, and shifted colors. It became a tree; a three-limbed dog; a tiny elf girl with angelic features; a shattered, crackling sword; an apple; and a hangman's scaffold. Then it exploded in a burst of burning power and brackish gore.

The room was silent for a heartbeat. Twilight gaped at the remnants of Ruuk drenching her body and at Gestal, staring with murder in his mad gaze.

"You," he said, voice like weathered rock, stealing Twilight's focus.

The spell had ravaged his body, sucking the blood and juices from it like a century in the desert condensed in a single heartbeat. The flesh on his bones lay withered and black, drier than white sand. He coughed and gagged, though nothing would come, and struggled to his knees.

"You," he cursed.

Though he looked weak, Twilight made no move toward him. The power she had just witnessed rendered her speechless and paralyzed with fear, more firmly than any compulsion Gestal could have cast. If he had struck down a sharn-mad as it might be-with a single word, Twilight could do nothing.

What a fool she was to face him. Gestal was far beyond her-far beyond anyone.

Then he raised his hands, intoning the words to a new, fouler ritual, demanding Demogorgon to strike down this hateful traitor who knelt before him.

Twilight tried to lever herself up, but she slipped on the sharn's blood and went down hard. Wincing with agony from her wounds, Twilight climbed to her feet and took up her sword, shakily. Betrayal hardly seemed hers any longer, not with its gray surface burned away to white. The handle was slick and scalding; she dropped it with a curse.

She tried to pick it up again, but when she bent down, her legs crumpled, her feet lost their grip, and she fell, face first, to the floor.

Gestal continued his long, complex invocation to Demogorgon, and Twilight knew beyond a doubt that its conclusion would mean her death. From the flames of his scrying bowl and the twin pits, his shadow loomed out, long and fierce.

"What do I do?" she sobbed, calling upon Erevan, demanding that he help her, cursing his name when he was silent. She could shadowjump away, but not far. She was in no position to flee-she could hardly walk. "How do I-?"

Then her right hand brushed something hard on the floor and her heart almost stopped. The answer had come to her. Not from Erevan, not from experience or instinct, but from her own mind. She rose slowly, her fingers white-knuckled.

"No," she cried. "No!"

She ran, limping, toward Gestal, trying to get to him as fast as she could.

The demon priest pronounced the final syllables of his spell just as Twilight ran, brokenly, toward him. Burning, fiendish power filled the room as the magic took hold, and black fire burned between Gestal's hands. It shot forth in a line of red toward her heart, and Twilight felt more than heard the very air vanishing, destroyed, and the surrounding humidity rushing into the blast's wake. Briefly, Gestal's shadow vanished, but reappeared when the flame came at her.

Running at approaching death, Twilight did not even attempt to dodge.

Instead, she danced into the disintegrating shadows barely a pace from the roaring, slaying spell and reappeared in Gestal's own shadow. She threw herself into his arms, hideous and desiccated as his demonfleshed body had become, caught his face in her left hand, and locked her lips to his. His spell tore into the cavern wall, boring a hole more than two paces wide and ten deep.

His hands, warped and withered into claws, flexed impotently for a heartbeat, then closed, tenderly, around her waist. Twilight clung to him and kissed with all her strength, spending herself entirely in that exchange, as though her existence would cease the instant she broke away.

The stillness stretched. They stood in the eye of a magical storm, the wrath of the Abyss raging about them, but neither looked away. Gestal's power faltered and faded, and they heard two dimly audible hisses echoing around them-hisses that became roars.

Liet pulled away from Twilight's lips then, and his blue eye shone like the rising sun in the sky after a storm at dawn, the green like the seas of the west. His flesh might have been blasted, his health stripped and torn away, but there was more love in those eyes than Twilight had ever known or dreamed. And when he reached up and caressed her face, his touch was soft despite his petrified skin.

Twilight knew she had saved him-that he was free of Gestal forever-that he understood, and more than that, accepted all. And for a heartbeat, all was perfect.

For a heartbeat.

His eyes shifted to confusion, then to pain. He looked at Twilight, his lips forming a question that would never come. He coughed, and blood splashed from his desiccated lips to strike Twilight's face. Then, with a sigh, he staggered and fell, his fingers whispering down her cheek and leaving a scarlet trail.

"Daltyrex," he murmured as he slumped to the floor. "Why?"

Twilight could not move her left hand, which had been touching his face, nor her right, until the man she had known alternately as Liet and Gestal lay crumpled at her feet.

Then, as though a bolt of lightning struck her, the elf raised her scarlet-drenched right hand. Holding Davoren's stiletto up to her face, she collapsed to her knees.

She smeared Liet's blood across her cheek and sobbed. Then she hurled the deadly blade aside, cradled his body in her arms, and wept into his chest.