Shadowstorm

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

1 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms

Cale carried the limp boy through the camp. Eyes followed him, then a crowd of men, women, and children. He had two score refugees in his wake by the time he put Elden into Endren's arms. The elder Corrinthal, too shocked to speak, cradled the boy as if he were a babe and cried. Elden stiffened at first.

"Granfah?" the boy said in a tiny voice.

"Yes," Endren said through his tears. "Yes. It's grandfather."

Elden wrapped his arms around his grandfather's neck, buried his face in his beard. Sobs shook his small frame. "He hurt Bowny," the boy said, and sobbed.

"Shh," Endren said, and caressed the boy's back. "Shh. It is all over and you are safe. You are safe." Endren looked past Elden to Cale and said, "I owe you whatever you ask, whenever you ask it."

"No need. It is rare that I get to do something like this."

Endren looked puzzled.

Cale shook his head, "Nevermind."

Endren's eyes showed sympathy, appreciation, concern. Cale could not bear it. He turned to go back to Abelar's tent and found himself facing a crowd. Gratitude filled their eyes. An approving murmur ran through them.

"There is light even in darkness," someone said.

Regg emerged from the crowd, stalked toward Cale with purpose, and wrapped him in an embrace. The shadows around Cale swirled but did not hold Regg at bay. "You stand in the light," Regg said, and released him.

"I hope not," Cale said, but smiled. "And now I have other work."

Regg nodded and backed away.

Cale pulled on the shadows and rode them back to Abelar's tent. For a moment, he wondered after Riven's well-being, but decided the assassin could take care of himself.

Willing the darkness in the tent to deepen, Cale stood in the center of the pitch and repeated the words to his scrying spell. He formed the lens from shadow and reached through it for Malkur Forrin. The power of his spell, of his will, grasped Forrin's name and reached across Faerun.

Unlike the boy, Forrin was warded. Cale could feel resistance. Dark shadows clouded the scrying lens. He focused his mind, his power, and tried to push through.

The lens went dark. Cale cursed, cast the spell anew, failed again. His frustration grew. He recalled the broken boy he had just returned to his grandfather, a boy taken and beaten on Forrin's orders. He thought of the graves at Fairhaven, of the broken look in Abelar's eyes.

Instead of using Forrin's name as the focus of his spell, he used Abelar's hate for Forrin. Again and again he cast the spell and finally he broke through.

The lens cleared and brightened. He saw Forrin, awake, standing alone in a field tent, strapping on his breastplate. Glowballs lit the tent brightly, more than necessary to illuminate the tent. He must have feared an attack by the Shadovar.

Cale gave a hard smile. Glowballs would not save Malkur Forrin.

Cale watched as the mercenary general donned his armor, strapped on his blade, adjusted his tabard. Cale waited, the shadows swirling around him. He needed only a single shadow.

Forrin walked across the tent and as he did, his body blocked the light from one of the glowballs, casting his shadow on the ground.

Cale pounced. He rode the shadows across Faerun to appear directly in Forrin's shadow. The general, perhaps sensing a rush of wind from the air displaced by Cale's arrival, shouted, started to whirl around and draw his blade. "I am attacked!" Forrin called.

Cale grabbed Forrin by the wrist, wrenched his arm behind him, and drove the general into the ground. The dirt muffled Forrin's shout of pain.

Shouts and clinks of armor sounded from outside the tent. Cale willed the glowballs to dim and they answered his command. Shadows cloaked the tent, cloaked Cale. He jerked a dagger from his belt and put it to Forrin's throat. The mercenary snarled but did not move.

"What do you want?" Forrin asked.

"You," Cale answered.

The tent flap flew open and three armored soldiers in green tabards rushed in, blades bare. They seemed surprised to find the tent dark.

"Stop where you stand," Cale said, and they did.

"Release him," one of the men ordered, and another bolted out of the tent and shouted an alarm.

"He is coming with me," Cale said, and gave Forrin's arm another twist. "And if any of you try to find him, I will come for you. Nowhere is safe from me. Do you understand? Nowhere."

The darkness around him churned and the soldiers charged. Cale imagined Fairhaven in his mind and used the darkness to move there.

The shouts of the soldiers faded. The pair materialized in the midst of the ruins. Cale jerked Forrin to his feet, still holding his arm behind him. Forrin struggled but he was no match for Cale, made strong by darkness.

"Will you kill me now, shade?" Forrin said over his shoulder. "Did you bring me all the way out here just to do what you could have done back in the camp?"

Cale shoved him away. Forrin staggered, fell, but jumped to his feet and drew his blade.

"It would be better for you if it were me."

Forrin hesitated, looked uncertain at that. "Who, then?"

From behind Cale, Abelar called, "Leave now, Erevis. This is for him and me. What of Elden?"

Forrin looked past Cale, seeking the source of the voice.

"With Endren," Cale said. He looked to Forrin. "Die poorly." He pulled the darkness about him and rode it away. He materialized on the rooftop of the stables to find Riven already there.

"The boy?" Riven asked.

"Safe with his grandfather. The man who beat him?"

"Not safe," Riven answered.

"How did you know where to find me?" Cale asked.

"I always know where to find you, Cale."

Cale looked at Riven but Riven only stared down at Forrin.

"What are we doing?" Riven asked.

Cale answered, "We're watching."

Riven turned his eye to him. "He told you to leave."

Cale nodded. "It's only justice if there's a witness."

"Justice isn't what he's after, Cale."

Cale had not considered that.

Abelar stood in the ruins of his estate. He recalled the pile of bodies he had found there. Forrin stood where Abelar's servants, family, and friends had been murdered. The smell of death still lingered, as did the smell of burnt wood. He stared across the compound and looked not at Forrin's flesh but into his soul. He saw guilt there, not merely for what the mercenary had done to Elden, but for a multitude of evils. Abelar did not stand in Lathander's grace, but he still could see that Forrin's soul radiated a foul purple light the color of an old bruise.

Forrin paced a circle. He stared across the empty yard, seeking his foe in the darkness. "Show yourself," he called. The mercenary eyed the ruins, the nearby graves.

Abelar stared at him in silence, letting his anger build. Ordinarily he would have prayed to Lathander and asked for the Morninglord to guide his hand and mind. But he would not pray, not now. Faith would not be his guide.

Forrin hefted his blade. "Your pet shade is gone," he taunted. "Are you afraid now?"

Abelar detected no nervousness in his tone. That was well.

Forrin continued. "It is just you and me, now. I have nowhere to run. Come, show yourself."

Abelar concentrated on his magical sword, held it above his head, and set the blade aglow. The area around the estate lit up.

Forrin blinked in the sudden illumination and backed up a step. He was an insect and Abelar had just flipped over his rock.

Through squinting eyes, Forrin focused his gaze on Abelar. His expression showed recognition. "Abelar Corrinthal. I should have guessed."

Abelar strode forth, blade and anger blazing. "Then perhaps you can guess what comes next," Abelar said, his voice as hard as stone. "Look about you. This is where your men murdered my people. This is where your men abducted my son. All on your orders. This is where you will be punished for it."

Forrin assumed a defensive stance and his eyes narrowed. "You are out of your depths here, boy. I killed twenty men ere you were born. I've killed scores since. Reconsider."

Abelar did not slow his step. He walked across the grass toward Forrin.

Forrin licked his lips. "You think your god makes you strong, boy?"

"There is no god here," Abelar answered. "This is between you and me."

Forrin stared, his eyes dark. "It always is."

Abelar had killed many men, all of them evil, but had never felt such hate for another man as he felt at that moment. Righteous hate. He picked up his pace.

Forrin swung his blade in a slow pattern, readying himself.

"You caused my son pain," Abelar said.

Forrin's blade went still and he raised an eyebrow, as if puzzled by the remark. "We're at war, boy. I did what I had to. I would do it again."

"Not after today," Abelar said. He took his blade in a two-handed grip and charged.

Forrin squared his feet and held his sword high.

Abelar closed the distance in ten strides and opened with a quick thrust to the abdomen. Forrin lurched to the side and answered with a reverse crosscut for Abelar's throat. Abelar ducked it and bulled forward, slamming his shoulder into Forrin's chest. The breath went out of the mercenary and he staggered backward.

Abelar did not fight with grace. He fought with efficiency. He followed up, unleashing an overhand slash that would have split Forrin's skull had he not gotten his blade up to parry. Abelar grabbed a fistful of Forrin's shirt; Forrin grabbed a fistful of Abelar's. They turned a circle, nose to nose.

"There are consequences for the life you've lived, Forrin," Abelar said. "There are always consequences."

Forrin snarled and spat into Abelar's face. Abelar shoved him away. Eyeing each other, appraising, they paced a circle around one another.

"Your boy cried from the moment we brought him into camp," Forrin said.

Abelar gritted his teeth but did not take the bait. "I am looking at a dead man."

"So you say," said Forrin, grinning through his scars. He feigned a relaxed posture then abruptly lunged forward, blade leveled at Abelar's chest.

Abelar knocked the mercenary's blade toward the ground with his gauntlet. Forrin's momentum carried him forward and Abelar lashed out at the mercenary's back. The blade bit through armor and Forrin roared. The mercenary answered with a wild, blind defensive swing that caught Abelar on the forearm. The blow did not penetrate Abelar's mail but left his arm numb for moments.

Abelar shook it out, then bounded forward, unleashing a flurry of slashes. Forrin retreated, desperately parrying, answering with his own stabs and slashes where he could. Abelar locked Forrin's blade low and right, got in close, and put an elbow into the side of the mercenary's head. Forrin's helmet flew off and he staggered, but managed to answer with a glancing punch to Abelar's cheek.

Still stunned, Forrin clumsily jerked his blade free of Abelar's blade lock and swung a crosscut at Abelar's torso. The slash hit Abelar in the ribs but his armor turned the steel. Abelar stabbed low and his blade cut through Forrin's armor and bit deep into his thigh.

The mercenary roared with pain, somehow kept his feet, and launched a desperate two-handed overhead slash at Abelar's head. Abelar lurched aside but could not dodge the blow entirely. It struck his left shoulder and split the links of his mail. Pain shot down his arm. Warm blood followed it. He did not allow the pain to slow him. He kicked his boot into the wound in Forrin's thigh. While Forrin screamed and tried to bring his blade to bear, Abelar slashed the mercenary's leg again. Steel grated against bone and Forrin collapsed.

Abelar ignored the pain in his arm and loosed a blinding series of hammering overhead slashes into Forrin's blade. He could have killed Forrin any time, but he wanted and needed to pound the mercenary. With each slash he whispered a word, an incantation, an imprecation.

"Consequences."

One after the other, the blows pounded down. Forrin parried desperately but each of Abelar's blows drove his blade down more. Abelar's arms were numb; Forrin's had to be filled with lead.

"I submit," the mercenary said. "Enough."

Abelar ignored the words and continued to rain down blows. "Consequences." His blade rang off Forrin's.

Fear crept into Forrin's eyes. "Damn you, Corrinthal!" he shouted.

"Consequences," Abelar said, and let loose another blow. Another.

Forrin parried them but his blade shook in his hands. He screamed in helpless rage.

"Consequences," Abelar said.

"Enough! Enough!"

Abelar didn't stop, couldn't stop, wouldn't stop.

"Consequences."

In desperation, Forrin lunged forward and stabbed at Abelar's abdomen. Abelar knocked the blade to the side and stomped on Forrin's arm. He heard the bone snap. Forrin screamed, collapsed on the ground again. Blood from his wounded leg soaked the earth under him.

Abelar stood over him, blade held high, his breath coming hard.

Cale saw what was about to happen and knew exactly what it would cost Abelar. He cursed, stood, and started to pull the shadows around him.

Riven's hand closed on his arm. "No, Cale."

Cale did not take his eyes from Abelar.

"He won't be able to live with himself if he does it."

Riven shook his head. "He won't be able to live with himself if he doesn't. You saw his son."

Cale hesitated. "A bad choice."

Riven nodded. "But that's how the world works."

Cale did know it. Being able to live with yourself and keeping your soul clean weren't always the same thing. And when it came to it, a man had to choose one or the other.

"He's different from us, Riven."

Cale did not need to look at Riven to know he wore his familiar sneer. Riven said, "No, he's not."

And Cale knew Riven was right.

Cale let the shadows dissipate. He would watch. Abelar had to make his own choice.

Abelar stood over Forrin. The mercenary rolled onto his back, bleeding, a knot the size of a pommel ball rising on his temple.

"I surrender to you, Corrinthal," he said with a pained grimace. "I surrender. The overmistress will pay for my safe return. Use me to negotiate a peace."

Abelar stared into Forrin's eyes. His thoughts turned to his son and blackened. He tightened his grip on his blade.

Forrin must have seen it. "Lathander will punish you if you do it, Corrinthal. You know that."

"I already told you," Abelar said, "there's just you and me here."

With that, Abelar reversed his grip and drove his blade through Forrin's heart, pinning him to the earth. The mercenary's eyes bulged, his legs thrashed.

Abelar twisted the blade. "That is for my son."

He twisted it again. "That is for my friends and my servants."

He twisted it once again and Forrin screamed, gasped, writhed. "And that is for Saerb."

Abelar leaned down, palms on his pommel, and stared into the mercenary's eyes. "There are always consequences, Forrin. Die with that knowledge."

Forrin said nothing, merely gagged on his own blood and took a tencount to die. When he expired, Abelar withdrew his blade and wiped it clean on Forrin's tabard.

As he sheathed it, he said softly, "Consequences for both of us."

Cale swept Riven up in the shadows and transported them to Abelar's side. Abelar did not look at them. He stared down at Forrin, his face unreadable. The mercenary's dead eyes stared up at the lightening sky.

"You saw?" Abelar asked.

Cale and Riven nodded.

"Your son is safe," Cale said.

Abelar nodded, looked to the west. Tears filled his eyes. "It's not out of me," he said.

"It never will be," Riven said. "Live with it."

Abelar eyed Riven and seemed about to speak. Cale cut him off. "We should go. I need darkness to do what I do."

Abelar smiled without mirth and looked to Riven. "Me, too, it appears."

"You did the right thing here," Riven said, and nudged Forrin's body with his toe.

"No," Abelar said. "Not the right thing, but the only thing."

"Fair enough," Riven said.

Abelar looked to Cale and said, "Please take me to my son."

Rivalen, garbed in a black cloak and blacker shadows, awaited Tamlin in the dark alley beside Siamorphe's temple. Tamlin had come alone. He wore a hooded cloak to disguise himself. His heart was racing. His breath came fast.

The shadows around Rivalen spiraled lazily from his flesh. "Are you prepared, Hulorn?"

Tamlin gulped to wet his mouth, nodded. "Where is Vees?"

"He is within. As are his fellow conspirators."

Tamlin froze. "Conspirators? We discussed only Vees."

Rivalen put a fatherly hand on Tamlin's shoulder. The shadows coiled around Tamlin's face. "I know, Tamlin. But all of them are guilty. All of them conspired against you and the city. All of them would have quietly taken positions of power as you hung on the overmistress's gallows."

Tamlin heard truth in Rivalen's tone. Still, he hesitated. Rivalen must have seen it. He said, "We have trusted each other, Hulorn. Continue in that. You wish to approach Shar? You wish to meld with the shadows, to transform your vulgar flesh into something lasting?"

Tamlin nodded. He did. He envied everything Cale was, everything Rivalen was. He wanted it.

"Then you must be Shar's instrument tonight. Now."

Tamlin stared into Rivalen's golden eyes and found his nerve. He nodded. "I'm ready."

Rivalen turned, spoke an arcane word before the alley wall, and a cunningly disguised secret door swung open. He led Tamlin inside. They descended a narrow flight of stairs until they reached a small room. A single candle provided light. Shadows danced on the gray walls. Black cloaks with purple piping hung from pegs on the wall.

"Don the cloak and throw up the hood. The Lady does not want to see your face. She wants to know your soul."

Tamlin exchanged the cloak with his own and threw up the hood. Rivalen did the same. To his surprise, Tamlin's legs felt sturdy under him.

"What occurs within Shar's temples is a secret known only to the worshipers who participate. To breach that confidence is to incur the Lady's wrath. Do you understand?"

Tamlin nodded. His heart beat faster. "I do."

"After you have served as the Lady's instrument this night, you will return to your quarters and pray to the Lady of Loss. You will offer to her a secret known only to you. This will be your Own Secret, thenceforth known only to you and the Lady and never shared with others. This will bind you to her. Do you understand?"

Tamlin nodded. He sweated under the robe. "I do."

Rivalen reached into a pocket and withdrew a thin dagger. Amethysts adorned its crosspiece and pommel. "Take this."

Tamlin stared at the blade. Rivalen held it forth and did not move. The shadows about the Prince roiled. A single strand of darkness emerged from Rivalen's flesh and coiled around the blade.

Tamlin took it. The shadows felt warm against his flesh; the blade felt cool.

Rivalen turned and opened a door. A candlelit worship hall loomed beyond. "If you walk through this door, there is no turning back. If you enter and do not do what you are here to do, I will kill you rather than let you leave."

Tamlin looked up sharply, took a step back.

"It would give me no pleasure to do so, but I would have no choice. I am not forgiving in matters of faith. Look into yourself and determine if you are willing to shed blood to have what you wish. Are you?"

Tamlin looked at the doorway, the worship hall, Rivalen. He thought of his family, his friends. They all seemed very far away. But his desires were close. He knew what he wanted. He knew there was only one way to get it. "I am."

A voice from inside sent Tamlin's heart to racing.

"Tamlin?" Vees called, his voice muffled. "Is that you? Thank the gods. Tamlin! Get me out of here. The Prince is mad."

Rivalen raised his hand and Vees fell silent.

Tamlin felt Rivalen's gaze on him, his burning golden eyes. He was studying him, measuring his reaction to Vees's voice.

Tamlin nodded and stepped through the doorway. Rivalen put a hand on his shoulder and followed. "In the darkness of night, we hear the whisper of the void," Rivalen said.

Whispers sounded in Tamlin's ears. He could not make out words, but he knew they represented a promise of power. "I hear whispers," Tamlin said, his voice hushed.

"Heed its voice," Rivalen said.

Six men and women knelt, facing the black altar. Vees was among them. Ropes of shadow bound their hands behind their backs and bound their ankles together. All were nude. All looked upon Tamlin and Rivalen with terror in their wide eyes. They shook their heads, and their mouths opened to plead, but they made no sound. Rivalen must have had them magically silenced. He had allowed Vees to be heard only to test Tamlin.

Tamlin had never felt such power. "Let me hear them."

Rivalen looked at him and nodded. He raised a hand and the silencing magic ended. Tears, wails, and shouts for mercy blended together into a chorus of despair. Tamlin heard Vees's voice among the rest. "Deuce, don't do it! It's me, Vees. Deuce, please!"

"Their despair and regret we offer to you, Lady of Loss," Rivalen intoned.

He moved behind the heretics. Tamlin followed, his breath coming fast, his body tingling, weak.

All six of the heretics struggled against their bonds but to no avail. They pleaded for mercy.

"Do not, Deuce. I am your friend," Vees said.

Tamlin felt outside himself, felt embraced and nurtured by the darkness of the hall. He moved behind Vees but did not see his onetime friend. Memories flashed through his mind: his mother, Tazi, Talbot, all with love in their eyes, but love colored by disappointment, even pity. Other faces flashed, too: his father, with the ever-present stare of disapproval and the frequent, disappointed shake of his head; Mister Cale, shrouded in shadows, with the faint look of contempt and distaste in his eyes; a lifetime of faces that regarded him as a buffoon, a ne'er do well, an unaccomplished fop.

Tamlin had spent his adult life trying to efface those looks. He could do it now, at a stroke.

"Choose your path, Hulorn," Rivalen said.

Tamlin looked to the Prince and saw in his eyes no judgment, no disappointment, no quiet dislike. He saw in Rivalen a friend and mentor.

The Prince nodded and the shadows about him reached out to touch Tamlin.

Tamlin nodded.

Vees screamed. "Please, Tamlin! No! Whatever he told you is a lie! Don't, Deuce!"

Tamlin raised the blade high and drove it downward into Vees's back, into his father, into Cale, into the man he had been his entire life.

Cradling the book, hearing the voice of her goddess, Elyril flew high above Selgaunt. She decided that she would summon the Shadowstorm in the city in which she had murdered her parents and first sworn herself to the Lady of Loss. She intoned the words to a spell and the magic transported her high above Ordulin.

Lights and glowballs lit the capital's streets. A sea of tents dotted the plains around the city. Even at the late hour, soldiers milled through the camp.

Elyril thought the entire city looked like a lesion. She would excise it, and as eternal darkness fell, she would stand beside Volumvax the Divine One, Shar's Shadow, the Lord Sciagraph.

She was giddy, lightheaded with expectation, more elated than she had ever been from minddust.

The voice of the book fell silent but it began to pulse in her hands like a living thing, like a heart. Shadows coiled around it, around her.

Elyril opened its cover and looked not to the words, but to the words between the words. She gave voice to the empty spaces.

She did not understand the full meaning of the words but she spoke them with vigor. As she read, understanding dawned. Elyril was part of a plan that reached across time and worlds. Even the coming cataclysm of the Shadowstorm was but a single step in Shar's plan that had millennia still to unfold. Shar had been plotting since the cosmic war with her sister, Selune, had wrought creation from the pristine emptiness of oblivion. Shar would return to the peace of nothingness and all of existence would return with her.

Power gathered as Elyril moved through the book, pronounced the words, summoned the shadows. As she incanted, the pages from which she read dissipated into nothingness. The book was consuming itself, turning to nothingness, as she moved through the ritual.

Below her, the lights in Ordulin dimmed more and more as she progressed. The sky above her darkened. Clouds as thick and black as any thunderhead she had ever seen gathered. Wind picked up, roared in her ears. Her voice gained volume until she was shouting Shar's words into the night sky.

On the darkened streets and in the darkened camp far below her, groups of people started to gather. They pointed at the gathering clouds, the whipping wind. They looked tiny, insignificant.

And they were.

Her voice boomed across the heavens. Darkness blotted out the moon, the stars. Elyril exalted in the ritual, laughed as she cast the spell. She voiced the last words and her voice was a scream.

The wind died. Silence fell. Darkness reigned. Eldritch currents of green fire flared in the air.

Elyril could not breathe in her excitement. She awaited the coming of Volumvax the Divine One, the advent of the Shadowstorm.

A crack that sounded like the breaking of the world shook the heavens. A green line formed an arc in the sky over Ordulin and split the darkness in two. The line expanded, wider, wider, until it formed a door as large as the city.

Voices from the city below carried up into the sky. Elyril heard fear in them.

Another crack sounded and shadows and power boiled out of the doorway in a rushing wave.

Elyril could not avoid the onrush of power. She grinned as the wave struck her, turned her to flesh, drew the breath from her body, and drove her like an arrowshot toward the ground. As she plummeted toward the earth, she heard Ordulin's citizens scream as one and knew their terror and despair were sweet to the Lady.

She hit the ground outside the city walls and the impact shattered bones. Pain lit her body on fire. Her flesh changed to shadow, to flesh, back to shadow. Her eyes stared upward, fixed on the ever-growing rift in the sky, a rift between Faerun and the Adumbral Calyx.

More and more of the Calyx poured through the glowing green tear and fell onto Ordulin like a black tide. Darkness swirled over the ground like fog, saturated the air, shrouded the city, assimilated Faerun with the Calyx. Panicked screams carried through the shadows, distant and delightful. Thunder rumbled and green lightning split the sky.

The grass and trees of the plains wilted around Elyril, twisted, transformed into horrid mockeries of their normal shapes. Animals emerged from their dens, metamorphing into caricatures of themselves as they breathed the transformative darkness.

The Shadowstorm had come.

Mirabeta raced toward a balcony of her tallhouse. The servants and men-at-arms thronged the halls, panic in their eyes. "What is happening? What is happening? Are we under attack?" she screamed at everyone and no one.

They answered only with screams of terror.

"Obey me! I am the overmistress!"

No one even slowed.

Wearing a nightdress, she pushed open a door and stepped out on the balcony. The wind whipped at her and what she saw drained her of breath.

Darkness cloaked the city, swirled through the air like a fog of pitch. Screams from every quarter cut through the night. She looked up to see a glowing green portal in the sky as large as Ordulin itself. Shadows thronged the air.

At first she thought perhaps the Shadovar had attacked, but this was bigger than that. She thought she heard a voice in the wind, giggling. "Elyril?"

She realized she was suddenly cold. She looked down to see the fog of darkness clinging to her skin, her clothes. Her heart leaped in her chest. She tried to brush it away but it clung to her hands, to her face. She screamed as its cold sank further into her flesh, her bones. "Get off! Get off! Get it off!"

The cold stole her energy and her speech slurred. Exhausted, she collapsed to the balcony while more and more of the fog embraced her. Her dreams of empire faded away and her life went with them.

Elyril laughed through her pain as she listened to Ordulin die. She looked to the city and saw guards falling from the walls, soldiers stepping out of their tents to collapse, die, and rise anew as shadows. Perhaps some of the citizens would escape, or perhaps none would. Tens of thousands died in darkness in a moment's time.

A shriek sounded from the sky and an army of undead shadows from the Calyx boiled through the rift in a black cloud, hundreds, thousands. The transformed dead of Ordulin rose into the sky to meet them. Shadow giants materialized in the darkness, their pale flesh and towering forms one with the dark.

Elyril's laughter turned to a cough and she spat blood.

A shadow formed in the rift, as black as pitch, backlit by the green light. She recognized it as her lord, Volumvax the Divine One. His presence filled her mind, awed her, put her at peace. He had come for her at last. He would make her whole and she would take her place at his side.

She called to him, lifted a shattered arm to beckon him to her.

He paid her no heed as he stepped through the rift and flew down to Ordulin, borne earthward on a cloud of shadows.

The screams in the city ceased. Volumvax perched on the wall and held his arms aloft. Swirling darkness and red-eyed shadows surrounded him. He laughed and the sound shook the heavens.

Elyril realized at once that he was not coming for her. He had betrayed her. She wept, railed, cursed. The darkness around her mirrored her mood. She had been used.

She lay on her back, her dying body somewhere between shadow and flesh. Spasms of pain wracked her. Green lightning split the lightless sky. She reached for her invisible holy symbol, brushed it with her fingertips.

"The Shadowstorm is come," she mouthed, and imagined her aunt's terror as the night came for her. That, at least, brought her pleasure. She giggled, but it gave way to a cough. She rolled onto her side and spat a gob of black phlegm and blood.

She found herself staring at a pair of sandaled feet, female feet with the palest, most flawless skin Elyril had ever beheld. She knew instantly who stood before her, and she buried her face in the earth.

"Lady," she mouthed.

She wanted to ask why she had been misled, why she would not rule at Volumvax's side, but she choked on the words.

"Your bitterness is sweet," the Lady said. "Look upon me, now."

The goddess's voice was emotionless, devoid of anything recognizably human other than the words. And it held such power that Elyril felt as if a mountain had fallen onto her back. She feared to obey, but she feared more to disobey. She rolled over and lay flat on her back.

A form stood over her, a black-haired woman with skin as pale as alabaster and eyes as dark and deep as the shadows that filled the sky and air.

No, it was the shadow of a woman as tall as the sky that loomed over her. Stars blinked in her form, ancient and dim, and the power she contained threatened to break the world.

Elyril fought to breathe. Her heart pounded and her body changed from shadow to ruined flesh with each beat. Her vision blurred as tears filled her eyes.

She struggled to speak. "It is too much, Lady. Too much."

"It has only just begun," Shar answered. "Your part is done. You have served, priestess, and I am come."

Elyril's body shook at her goddess's praise, slight though it was. Shar regarded her with frigid eyes, and Elyril's body shook under the goddess's regard.

"Am I mad, Lady?" she asked, fearing the answer. "Is this real?"

Shar raised a finger to her lips.

"Shh. It is a secret."

She smiled but Elyril had never before seen a colder expression. Shar reached down for Elyril and frigid, unforgiving fingers as old as creation closed Elyril's eyes.

She felt a flash of exquisite agony, followed by revelation, then emptiness, emptiness forever.

I sit at the table in the temple, awaiting Cale and Riven's return. The shadowwalkers observe me but say little. Darkness clings to them, crowds around them.

But darkness is in me. And it is growing.

Words come out of my mouth before I can consider their meaning. Vile words. Feelings that would make a demon blanch well up from some dark place in my soul. The urge to do violence, to kill, is powerful. I try to focus it on Rivalen, on Kesson Rel, but the impulse longs to be expressed indiscriminately.

To kill what is growing in me, we must kill a god.

I do not know if it can be done. I see doubt in Cale's eyes. He fears for me.

"We must go for a time," says Nayan, the leader of the shadow walkers.

I nod. I do not wish them to leave, but I cannot bring myself to ask them to stay.

Without a word, they disappear into the twilight. I think of the words my father spoke into my ear on Cania: One of you must die, the shade or you, ere this is done. How will you have it?

I take Riven's knife in my hand, and lay it across my wrist. It would be simple, a single cut. But I cannot. I do not know if it is man or fiend that urges suicide. I drive the blade into the table.

Tears wet my face. I am an observer watching myself sink into evil.

The fiend laughs at my weakness.

I push him down-for now-but know that I cannot do so much longer.