She knew she was mad to show spine to a sharn. But Twilight was simply too tired and heartbroken—too worn—to care. She struggled onto one knee, looked it in the eye—an eye, anyway— and said, in a tone that would brook no argument, "What have you done with my friends?"
Silence reigned in the chamber.
One warm afternoon, Lilten had told her a legend of a sharn who turned a cabal of mighty sorcerers to toadstools and fed them to a gibbering mound—which it had summoned with a gesture much like what mortals use to stifle a sneeze. This was simply for pausing, confused, when the sharn asked for goblin pelt tea. Then it annihilated an unseen servant that delivered the noxious brew, on the grounds that it tasted bad.
In short, questioning a sharn was madness.
The sharn laughed. Rather, its central head laughed. The head on the right muttered homicidal promises in a long forgotten language Twilight only understood with the talisman. The third serenaded her with an ode to a desert posy in some ancient dialect of Elvish that predated the Crown Wars.
"Very well," it said. "Prisonerssss."
"Release them," she said, then quickly amended it to, "such I desire. Name—"
The sharn just laughed. "You dessssire, detesssst, dessserve nothing!"
The declaration rippled through the air, and the golden ooze caked on the ceiling hissed with a thousand spells and memories flooding through it.
Twilight found herself prostrate on the ground. Betrayal lay beneath paralyzed fingers. "Test me, then," she said.
The sharn did not pause, as though it expected this, and immediately shouted at her again, this time in a sort of half-mad, half-ordered poem. "Child of liessss, liar in love, lover of children," the sham's three heads said, each beginning at the last's final word, eerily like a roundsong. "Do you know your mother, father, daughter?"
"My lord Sharn, this is not what I ask," Twilight said, rising to her feet.
For the first time, Ruukthalmuramaxamin turned all of its eyes upon the shadowdancer, and Twilight sank to her knees with a cry. Her head burst into flame within and she screamed, pressing her palms to her temples. This wasn't the mind-scream. It was reading her thoughts, tearing deep down into her memories. It took all her willpower not to tear out her own eyes to get at the agony or crush her own skull, much less resist. Tears poured down her face and she whimpered. She could do nothing else.
"He emptiessss you firsssst and fillssss you after," Ruuk continued unabated. "Chokessss with blood and ssssoakssss with laughter, but give him up you will, leading him to the kill."
"My lord, I do not under—" Her head felt as though it would rip itself free if her hands didn't tear it off first.
"Are the applessss in sssseasssson? Issss your essssence broken, assss is mine? Hassss the inquissssitor come? Where issss the ssssword that wassss sssstolen, the life it took, the life it killed, the life it definessss?"
"My lor—"
"For whom would you fall, child? Who would feel the blade meant for your breasssst? Who puts a ssssword in your heart?
Whosssse kissss would you sssswallow and whosssse betrayal you lament?"
In her agony, Twilight opened her mouth to cry that she did not understand, but then she went pale. She knew the answer, though she'd never heard the question.
"For whom would you fall?"
Ruuk's gazes crushed her even further. It took all her furious determination—her rage at her bettayals, her hatred of those who had loved and wronged her—to resist the crushing hands that sought to annihilate her mind, the claws that shredded her soul, and the ever-tightening chain that grasped her heart.
How could it know? Did its eyeless gaze penetrate so deep? How could it know what she didn't even know?
"For whom would you fall, daughter of foxessss?"
Twilight's lip trembled and her body screamed, but she said it anyway. "All of them!" she moaned.
The sharn paused, considering. Twilight knew that upon its whim lay her life, that of Gargan, and those of her allies. She had been a fool, trusting in chaos...
Then the agony vanished and she fell breathless to the ground. If Gargan had not darted forward to catch her, Twilight might well have split her face on the burning stones.
As the goliath cradled the limp elf, Ruuk loomed over them, its three heads gleaming hungrily. Its hands traced patterns in the air—whether meaningless or slaying spells, she knew not. Then it spoke, and Twilight could hardly believe her ears.
"Two livessss for a dearh, two deathssss for a life," the sharn said. "Sssslay him, and your companions I-I-I..." It coughed, hissing ochre magic that flowed to the ground like blood. Veins like metal ribbons stood out on its black carapace. "I free will."
"Who?" Twilight croaked. "Who must I slay, my lord?"
The sharn coiled in upon itself, hissing madly, both in pain and in hatred.
"Gessstal!" Three throats screamed in unison.
Lord Divergence gazed down into the blood, scanning the overgrown city. Their scrying swept into the great hive, as far as the sham's defenses would allow. As before, they could see only the borders of Amaunator's temple. That was far enough.
Yes, mayhap the heavy magic Ruukthalmuramaxamin kept in place would shield against farseeing. It would probably burn their eyes from their sockets or fry Gestal's mind to a blackened husk. But the way the sharn boomed—well, heavy magic did not keep sound from traveling.
Gestal heard their plan. Not that he expected anything different. For Ruukthalmuramaxamin was mad, and what lovelier madness could there be to a Sharn but predictability?
The eyes turned to a lifeless husk propped in the corner. "Time to go," they said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Gestal?" Twilight dared speak back. "Who is...?" Ruukthalmuramaxamin screamed in her mind and the world went fuzzy.
"Ssssilence!" the sharn shouted with enough force to drive even Gargan to his knees. The thing lunged, mouths slavering, and the elf's heart skipped.
But death did not fall upon her. Instead, a new sound assailed her ears and a heavy mist struck her skin. Ruuk drew back, issuing an involuntary assortment of sounds ranging from growls to crows to outright coughs. Fluid trickled between the jaws of one head, which slumped down for just an instant, then shot up and leaned over its back, as though to hide itself.
"Then," Ruuk said. "We Wave a foe, you and 1. He dwellssss above, in cavernssss dark, there deceivessss, demon sssservessss."
Twilight opened her mouth but wisely did not speak. Instead, she reached up at the black fluid coating her face, and realized it felt like blood—blood mixed with bile and tears, but blood nonetheless.
The sharn spoke more softly then, though its voice was no less powerful.
"Long ago," the sharn said. "Before the elf ssssang, before the human dreamed, my and mine came, out of the formlessss dark-nessss from which had arissssen moon and her dark ssssisssster.
Chaossss had ever been our sssstrength..."
Ruuk hissed with one mouth, screeched with another, and whined with the third.
"Now dying," he said. "Killed by antihessssissss, buried by logic. Ssssoul-sssstuff becomessss bane, madnessss issss death to him-her-it. Trapped!" The last was a shout, with all three voices. "Now demon-fiend-prince'ssss power waxessss and wanessss that of my people."
Twilight was uncertain whether he was talking about the race or himself. That Ruuk might be dying, Twilight had not realized, but once that thought occurred, she accepted it as a possibility—an unsettling one. What could kill a sharn?
A buzzing warned her. She cleared her mind as best she could.
The sharn gave a gesture with its three heads that might have been a nod. "Ssssink to rise, do the deed. Kill Gesssstal, your friendssss be freed."
Though Twilight's blood raced at the suggestion, she had negotiated too often to be fooled. "What if we refuse?" she asked, having no intention of doing so.
Gargan blinked at her in shock. As she could separate truth from falsehood as easily as an angel might, so could she lie with the best devils.
"Ruukthalmuramxamin issss not cruel," the sharn said. "You and he remain here, my guesssstssss until you go."
So those are the stakes, Twilight thought. She did not know how long a sharn could live, but fancied it would prove much longer than her own span.
"What if Gestal kills us? Will you release them, or keep them as prisoners?"
The sharn answered instantly, having already considered that. "No use for them," it said. "They go free."
"Your word?" she asked. Gargan looked at Twilight as though she had lost her mind, but she did not react.
The sharn growled, hissed, and spat at her, all at once with three heads. A spasm shook its body, and rune-shaped veins stood out on its black torso. It wrenched its heads toward her and
bowed. "My word bindssss," it said. "My word given." "All of them go free?" she asked, her heart speeding up. "Both them."
A weight pressed upon Twilight's chest, then, and she would have fallen had not Gargan reached out strong arms to steady her. In one three-pronged syllable, the sharn had told her that Liet might live, yet his chance was only two in three.
"Which?"
"Those whom order definessss," said the sharn. It spat the word "order" with another gob of the blackish blood.
Twilight's mind raced. Surely that included Davoren—he was vile, yes, but predictably vile, to a fault. And devils had created the most rigid hierarchy in the multiverse outside the planes of law and clockwork. So that was one. One other...
Was it Slip or Liet?
Twilight closed her eyes and swore inwardly. What did it matter? She owed it to both of them, and if she might save one... she preferred Liet.
It was not that she felt remorse. Twilight had never had much use for morality. Foolish concepts like right and wrong fell before necessity, in every instance. Two things she understood, though, were weakness and shame, and her cheeks colored in both.
What kind of monster could have wished the sweet halfling dead in that moment? One with black hair, pale skin, and eyes that seemed gold-red in the light of heavy magic.
Oh, Liet.
"Release one of them now," Twilight said.
The sharn glared at her with something much like surprise, mingled with a goodly amount of outrage. "Who, why, what?"
"The one called Liet Sagrin. If you release him, we will—"
Ruukthalmuramaxamin's mouths curled downward, and she would have fancied it confused. "No and no."
"Why not?" She cursed the desperation in her voice.
"No and no," the sharn warned.
Heedless of the pain she knew was coming, Twilight opened her mouth to argue, but Gargan caught her arm in a hard grip.
She hissed at him, but the goliath ignored her.
"What is Gestal?" he rumbled.
"Powerful priesssst," said Ruuk. "Demon-priesssst."
A demon thrall. Twilight's eyes narrowed. A servant of chaos in darkness, then, even as Davoren had been a servant of order, of a fiendish sort. But was not the sharn born of chaos? Did he not possess the very powers this Gestal worshipped? Why...?
"Why do you not face him yourself?" asked Twilight. "He must be mighty indeed, for surely you—"
Then the sharn eyed her with a look that stole more of her breath than when he had nearly killed her at a glance. Not only did her head explode in agony, but her throat closed of its own accord and she staggered. Gargan reached out and caught her, and she didn't have the strength to fight him off.
"Do not quesssstion!" Ruuk roared. "Agree! Agree or die!"
Barely able to breathe, Twilight coughed. "Well," she said. "Then we... agree."
The sharn hissed, spat, and clucked in what must have been approval. Twilight assumed it must, for she was still alive a breath later.
"Here." Its mood changed utterly. "Take," the sharn said most amiably, as though offering them tea.
One of its arms stabbed into the air, through reality, to extend through a silvery portal before them. In the palm was a pair of crimson boots, which appeared to be sized for a human.
Completely inexplicable, Twilight thought as she put them on. It didn't occur to her to refuse. The boots adjusted themselves to fit her feet.
"And thissss." A silvery window opened in reality and a black hand extended through it. It dropped a sack that smelled glorious to her.
Twilight yanked open the pouch. It was filled with dried strips of meat and bread that smelled of corn. Also inside was an oiled paper packet with some sort of honey—Twilight wondered if it came from the abeil. She took a hunk of bread and two pieces of meat for herself, then offered the food to Gargan, who accepted it silently.
Another of Ruuk's hands offered a wineskin filled with a drink that tasted sweet, like some manner of fruit, with a distinctive, odd taste Twilight recognized as a sort of mushroom. Rarely had she tasted the wine of the Underdark, and unlike most elves, she enjoyed it. Gargan refused it, but the sharn offered him a waterskin instead.
Emboldened by the sham's hospitality, she spoke up. "One question," she said. "If it please you, great lord."
There was a long pause. She reasoned she could take their continued existence for a yes.
"Why don't you... destroy him?" she asked. "You are so much... more powerful than us. Why us?"
"Hissss issss magic chaossss," Ruuk said. "Centuriessss millennia agessss ago, Ruukthalmuramaxamin wassss curssssed. Musssst sssstay. Power mine."
For the first time, it didn't occur to Twilight to respond. She sat, rapt.
"Negarath wassss a city of the mad," Ruuk said. "Inverted, floating upsssside down, buildingssss of curvessss, archessss, twisssstssss, with disssstorted creaturessss on dissssplay. Flayed mind flayerssss, ghosssstssss of elementalssss, demonssss of celesssstia, angelssss of outer darknessss."
"And a mad prisoner," Twilight stammered. "A sharn cursed to order."
"And dying!" Ruuk said. The sound was so loud that the temple shook. "Body failing, order rotting. Godssss of chaossss have turned away, abhorrent."
"Then help us," Twilight said. "Break free—" Her head burst and she sank again.
Even as her senses fled in pain, her half-mad mind perceived a certain kind of logic in the sham's gift. It had threatened them, made them used to being threatened, then thrown them off balance. Its "random" actions apparently followed a set order.
The three heads spoke at once, but said three things. "Not free. No cure. No help." Then they joined together. "Ssssink to risssse. Kill Gesssstal or die!"
Hands lifted her and her feet scrabbled across the stone.
She looked up, and it was Gargan lifting her. "We go," the goliath said.
The sham's hands blazed with golden magic, and arms reached from portals around them. Then the world shuddered to a halt, burned away as though scribed on parchment. They felt a sensation of falling, and then they were elsewhere.
Gods-only-knew how long later, Twilight stirred. Darkness had become her world, but that was easily remedied. She opened her eyes and perceived flickering torchlight. She saw the prison where they had left Tlork.
"We've arrived, it seems," Twilight said.
She was glad when Gargan, completely unexpectedly, broke the silence. He was kneeling at her side. Twilight felt weary and inexplicably old. She took his hand.
"How mighty is this creature?" Gargan asked. "This... sharn?"
Twilight shrugged in a fatalistic way. "What little I know, I shall put by analogy," she said. "You have heard of the Seven Sisters, or the Sage of Shadowdale?"
Gargan shook his head.
"Thay, perhaps," she said. "All the red wizards?" Again.
"The empire of Shade?" That got a nod. Curious.
"Well, then," said Twilight. "All the princes of Shade would jump to do a sham's bidding, for if they didn't, it would likely destroy a city out of whim before resuming its morning meal of the stillborn children of gods."
"Ah."Gargan nodded hesitantly.
There was a pause. They both sat silent, listening for any sign of an occupant other than themselves. The dungeon was still.
"There must be another way down," she said. "If we must sink to rise, that is."
The goliath nodded, and they stole about the prison together, hands on hilts. They plied their senses at their keenest, followed
every instinct, and explored every tiny crack and crevice in the floor and walls with their fingers. Dust, bits of bone, scraps of metal, and flecks of refuse Twilight didn't want to identify obscured the cold, damp stone.
They made their way into Tlork's chambers. The troll was not at home. All they found was a destroyed onyx griffin. Twilight resolved not to forget their hunter's strength.
"Why did you argue?" Gargan asked suddenly, making Twilight jump.
She slowed her heart with the exercises Neveren had taught her. "What?"
"You argued for his 'word,' " Gargan said. "What means this?"
"A promise. Not that I suppose it matters much to a sharn, but I would not break my word, once given." She managed to smile. "That's why I never give it."
Gargan did not find that amusing. "You argued for something you knew to be false? "he asked. "Why?"
"I was hoping to get him to release Liet." She hated herself for her feelings, but she was past such considerations now. "Then we could flee this place, the three of us."
"Davoren and Slip? Would the sharn think Gestal had killed us and free them? "
Twilight shrugged. It truly did not matter. "Wouldn't miss him," Twilight said. Then she sighed. "And she'd be regrettable. But for all we know, they're..."
She did not finish the thought. For all they knew, Liet was dead.
"You would shirk our duty to them?" Gargan said. "Our companions."
Twilight waved. "Duty is overrated," she said. "I am a creature of chaos, as is the sharn. We both know this—there would be no surprise." That wasn't strictly true, but it might as well have been. She had never dealt with a sharn before, but the fact that this one was cursed made the situation even less predictable.
At that moment, Twilight brushed away dust and some old
bones and found a crease in the floor. She traced the outline of a door cut into the stone. Through the bones, fur, and filth that littered the floor, she found an old brass ring attached to the stone. Twilight twisted the ring. The stone gave a lurch and sank downward, then to the side, revealing darkness below.
There came a sound of scuffling on stone, and Twilight looked down the hall, toward the levitating disk they had used to ascend to the crypt above. She thought she saw a flicker of movement.
"Who?"Gargan asked, drawing his sword.
Twilight shrugged. "We've no shortage of enemies," she said. "The sharn, or its golems. Gestal. The fiendish lizards."
"Tlork,"Gargan added grimly.
"Darkness, don't forget the grimlocks," said Twilight. "We didn't part on the most amiable of terms."
Nothing moved for many long breaths. Twilight left Gargan watching the darkness and looked down into the new passage. It smelled foul and radiated humidity like a tropical swamp. Where the tunnels above had been dry and dead, this new level seemed the opposite.
A world built on opposites, Twilight thought.
Twilight wondered why they were going down. Had not the sharn spoken of Gestal dwelling "above?" Sink to rise, she reflected.
She put her leg down into the darkness and froze.
With a mighty heave that broke more than a few bones, Tlork finally wrenched himself out of the sewers. As he stood in the forested street, letting limbs pop back into place and torn flesh flow back together, he cast his stitched face about, searching, just in time for the swarm of abeil to descend with spears, halberds, and stingers.
Snarling, the troll whipped hammer and claw through the air in fury to drive off the swarm. Bee-creatures fell crushed, killed at the very touch of Tlork's weapons, but thete were hundreds, and three replaced every one that fell.
Soon, the battle was like stirring mud, trying to swat them away while they rained pain and torment all over Tlork. Abeil speared his skin, stinging and stinging like mad, and soon he could hardly focus on anything but the stabbing and cutting. His body throbbed as though a thousand hearts beat just under his skin.
Slave, came a voice in the back of his head. Like all thoughts, his own or another's, it caused Tlork pain. Come, slave.
As he batted another abeil out of the air to smash like a ripe plum against a distorted building, Tlork whined like a dog. "But I come so far!" he argued. "I close!"
Come, the thought came again, to the chapel.
Unfair. Tlork didn't like the up-down room. It always made his stomach knot. The fiend-troll gave a great, strangling cry, turned, and ran. He dived through the hole into the sewer, ignoring the pain that came when his arm splintered against the edge.
That elf—she would pay for this. Not the pain, which Tlork had long since stopped minding, but the indecency of making him trek all the way back, even past the up-down room.
CHAPTER Twenty-Three
Twilight stared into the dark hole. Much of this world was inverted, she mused. It was a sham's idea of order, curves where buildings should have corners, towers that sloped downward, even upside-down stairs on the underside of ledges. She had thought herself prepared for any shift of paradigm imaginable.
This, though, far exceeded any reasonable anticipation.
Gargan, seeing her hesitation, crawled over the edge, holding the lip, and let go. He didn't fall. Instead, he stood on the underside of the floor, looking down at her past his feet. It was as though Twilight stood on a mirror that reflected a world not her own.
"Come,"Gargan said. "Sink to rise."
The implications struck Twilight like a thunder blow. Damned Netherese.
Now she knew why she had felt unsettled going into the dungeon, almost like falling. The gravity was in flux here, so close to the limits of the mythallar's field.
That was why the ceiling of the sewer had been as stained as the floor.
That was why half the architecture was upside down, why all the symbols of Mystra—or whatever the goddess of magic in ancient Netheril had been called—had been inverted.
Now she knew why the sand had not fallen in from the "ceiling" of the cavern, settling instead as though along the bottom of a bowl. Gravity was reversed in Negarath, all pulling down toward the dungeon, and below it...
All that time they thought they had been rising, they had been descending.
Gargan watched her uncertainly, but at last Twilight swung a leg down and pushed off, climbing to her feet on the ceiling of the chamber below. She passed through an invisible barrier that made her stomach go limp before she emerged in another world, one where gravity was opposite.
They stood in a crude tunnel sloping up from where they stood, down from the dungeon. Gone was the fine, if eccentric, carving and stonework of Negarath. The air was musty, and a faint, foul odor wafted through the tunnel. Rough steps led up.
"Gestal should be somewhere up there—or down..." Twilight could not help feeling a touch disoriented, but she did her best to dismiss it. "Up. Definitely up, if Negarath is upside down, below us." Twilight's head ached.
She noticed Gargan kneeling by the trapdoor, hand out, and narrowed her eyes. "What are you about?"
He drew his hand back and she saw that he had placed a stone in the air. It dipped back toward the dungeon, then up toward them, then merely floated, caught in that space where gravity pulled both ways. At the innocent fascination the goliath showed in the phenomenon, Twilight smiled despite herself. "Come."
Gargan—ever a man of few words—nodded and went with her.
They had not gone ten paces up the tunnel when they heard a scuttling from behind, as of a rock falling to the floor. Something had disturbed Gargan's floating stone.
The goliath was already charging back by the time Twilight had her weapon out and was pursuing him. Though her reflexes might have been the faster, he had keener ears. With the boots from the sharn, she ran as fast as he did. They fell upon their pursuer at almost the same instant.
There it was, five steps from the trapdoor. The shadow yelped and danced back, startled. Gargan's black sword swept aside a hastily raised mace, even as his other hand shot out and shoved its wielder over. Even as the intruder fell, Twilight lunged the intervening four paces—she loved these boots already—and rode it to earth, Betrayal at its throat.
The shadowy figure froze and put its hands up. "Stop! Stop!" she screamed. " 'Tis me! 'Tis me!" Twilight almost drove her blade in anyway, but Gargan caught her arm and saved Billfora Brightbrows's life.
"Slip?" Twilight asked, brow furrowing. "What are you doing here? Didn't they capture you? How did you escape?"
The halfling stared with terror-stricken eyes. "I-I-I..." she tried, but couldn't speak with the elf pressing her lungs, and a blade lying a thumb's breadth from her jugular.
Twilight straddled the little woman and bent low, keeping the blade still and putting her free hand on the halfling's shoulder. It would take hardly any force to push it through Slip's unarmored neck—in case it wasn't really the halfling, but a trick.
"Speak," she commanded, and Slip did.
"I-I got away," she said. "When those bee-things came, one o' them knocked me cold. When I woke up, I was under a toadstool. It must have broke my fall, and I was..."
"You weren't a prisoner?" Twilight asked, her heart suddenly racing. That would mean only Davoren and Liet were Ruuk's prisoners, and that meant...
"Uh," said Slip. Twilight heard her only distantly. "No. No, I wasn't."
"Did you see anyone else?" Twilight asked. "Where's Liet?" Slip shook het head. "I didn't..."
"Why so quick?"Gargan asked, his voice dark. There was no pain in his words, only suspicion about the one who had been his friend.
It struck her that the earring was not translating his words to Elvish, as it must have for Taslin. Somehow, Twilight had become less than an elf—but she accepted that.
Slip blinked at the goliath and she smiled widely. "Eh?"
"Why are you here?" Twilight asked, clarifying. "How could you get here so fast? The sharn teleported us. What of you?"
The joy went out of Slip's face. "Well, I... I..." Gargan was staring at her, and her lip shook. "I've been coming this way for a day. I didn't... know where you were, so I came this way, because..." She blinked. "I'm afraid of bees."
No matter how heavy the moment or how deathly serious the look that had passed between Slip and Gargan, Twilight could not help but grin at that.
"Very well," she said, and got off the halfling. "My apologies. We reacted as we had to." She sheathed Betrayal and started up the stairs.
The halfling got to her knees, rubbing her temples. "Ah, r-right," Slip said, smiling blankly as though she had tried her best and largely failed. "Uh..."
"Come along," Twilight said. "We've a demon priest to slay."
"Aye, that," Slip said. She hurried to catch up with the shadowdancer—no mean feat with her short legs, and hugged Twilight about the waist, stopping her.
By reflex, Twilight put an arm up to drape it around the halfling's shoulders, as one might show affection to a child, but she stopped herself.
"Just..." Slip said, shifting awkwardly.
"Yes?"
The halfling's voice wavered and her eyes were very round as they fell upon the pouch of food that hung from Twilight's belt. Her stomach growled as though she hadn't eaten for days—which, of course, was the case. "Can... can I have something to eat?"
Smiling, Twilight extended the sack to Slip, who fell to it like a ravenous beast.
Gargan watched, doubtless thinking himself hidden in the darkness, but if Twilight had learned one thing in half a century in service to a god of deception, it was to watch the shadows carefully. She had never seen Gargan's face so dark and grim.
The air became even heavier and warmer as the tunnel led the three upward, and the smell from above grew in intensity. It was salty and sickly sweet, a combination of rotting vegetation and the acrid scent of blood. In this new, unknown place, Twilight forbade torches. She could lead the others with her darksight. From where she crept along, Slip made a face that was barely visible, reflecting her own feelings on the matter. Gargan hardly seemed to notice.
The tunnel was largely natural, but for a few spots along walls and floor that had been crudely carved as though by stone axes and picks. Their path rose to the edge of a rough, circular chamber from which led yet more passages. In the chamber, they found light—luminescence from green and blue fungi that grew from the walls, ceiling, and floor. Stalagmites jabbed out of the ground to loom above even the seven-foot Gargan's head. They twisted and curled in a way that reminded Twilight of Negarath.
They saw none of the lizards, but they could smell them. Husky and gangrenous, their odor lurked over hollows in which foulness lay pooled.
"Two sewers." Twilight wrinkled her nose. " 'Tis Westgate all over again."
"Westgate?" Slip asked, and Twilight smiled ruefully.
"A long story," she said. "One day, perhaps."
"You have lots of stories," Slip said excitedly. "I enjoy collecting stories—'tis like collecting lives, aye?"
A trifle unsettled by that comment, Twilight looked at Gargan, whose disapproving expression gave her all the excuse she needed. "We should be silent," she said. "One never knows what may be awaiting."
Slip, suitably chastened but undiminished, grinned innocently.
The next chamber they entered, following Twilight's direction, was not as vacant as the first. Nearly a dozen of the man-lizards occupied the cavern, milling about as if waiting for something. Eight devoured something rather bloody, while the
other four stood apart, spears clenched in distorted claws, and scanned the shadows with bloodshot eyes.
"Oh, very well," Slip whispered. "I told you we should've taken the other path."
Twilight frowned. "We follow my lead," she said. Until she figured out who to trust, she would trust no one but herself—and that only so far. Even with the goliath s superior tracking abilities, and Slip's magic. Neither objected verbally to her words, so Twilight left it at that.
That still left the problem of the lizards blocking their way.
"You have spells that will assist us? Invisibility?"
The halfling shook her head. "I can hide us only to the walking dead," she said. "The best I can do is darkness." She grinned. "I fight better without my eyes, a'times!"
Twilight hardly wondered why Slip might know such a spell—likely, it had something to do with her larcenous tendencies. Slow tendays at the house of Yondalla, she imagined with a smile, when the tithes were not meeting expectations.
"Do we circle back, or sneak 'round?" Slip asked. "Either would take time."
The goliath slowly shook his head. "Attack," he said. Then he added something in the goliath tongue that Twilight understood with the earring. "Ambush is not dishonorable."
The shadowdancer was starting to like the gray-skinned warrior, with the intricate red designs that ran across his muscular chest. If only she could be sure he wasn't a traitor...
Her mind raced. They did not want to spoil their surprise, but neither could they delay. Slip's return brought limited healing magic, but without more food, they would weaken. Also, the longer they delayed, the longer Gestal had to learn of their coming. Their strength would wane, while his would remain high. They had to kill him as soon as they could.
"We'll go around," Twilight said. "That's the only..."
Then there came—whether real or imagined—an anguished wail that froze her heart in her chest. A woman's cry. She made out the color of the flesh the lizards were eating.
"No," she said. "No..."
Gargan was shaking her shoulder, Slip tugging at her blouse. Twilight looked at them, sharp as a knife.
"We kill them," Twilight said. "Surprise and speed. Now." "You can't be—"
"Now!" And Twilight ran toward the lizards.
"What? What are you doing?" Slip asked Gargan behind her back. "Put me d—" Then her voice fell to chanting.
Twilight didn't notice. She just ran toward the lizards, Betrayal leading.
S'zgul perceived the darkness before it fell upon them, and that only startled her more.
The black swooped in as though hurled, rather than suddenly bathing them. She watched as the darkness swallowed her fellows, shrouding torches and stealing even her fiendish sight. Her allies recoiled instinctively from the wave of black, but it did not harm them.
The darkness did not, but what came within the darkness did.
A warrior screeched as a projectile struck his back and a blade jabbed into his stomach, ripping a hole for entrails to leak out. He would have clawed at his attacker, but the blade slashed across his throat, ending his roar in a gurgle.
S'zgul bellowed in consternation, demanding calm and reason, but to no avail. The others roared and scrambled, either groping for the edge of the darkness or slashing at random with claw and rusty blade. Two fell to their own companions, and thrice as many still hacked at one another and squealed.
The survivors tried to escape, but the darkness seemed endless. Finally, one broke free of the datk, only to find death at the end of two swords—one black and one gray. As he belched and flopped to the ground, his killers plunged into the globe of darkness.
With an oath to her father, the great Demogorgon, S'zgul snarled out a few syllables. With the power of the demon prince, the darkness vanished—
—just in time for her to duck the acid-smeared sword streaking for her neck.
Her bodyguard's scaly head flew into the air, and another warrior jerked and spat as a rapier slit his heart in two. The giant and elf spun into the midst of the creatures. The gigantic black sword slashed in a great arc, beheading one lizard and disarming another—the hard way. If the cavern had been disorderly before, it exploded in lethal madness when the darkness vanished.
The priestess watched her servants fall, one after another, fast as flowing water. The speed with which the three moved amazed her, especially the white elf: the female lunged and sprang like a tiger, wounding and dispatching with unflinching brutality. What was more, the shadows swirled around her and danced about her crackling, burning blade as though to lap at the blood she spilled. A pair of warriors jabbed at her from either side with obsidian spears, but she twisted around one thrust, letting it stab into the foe at her back, and rolled between the other's legs. She stabbed up and her blade went in along a weak spot beneath the spine and burst out beside the warrior's throat.
S'zgul, who had fought countless hulking males and fierce females for leadership in the tribe, and mated with as many demons as she had slaughtered, was intimidated.
So she turned from the furious shadowdancer toward the weakest foe she could see—a half-sized creature, tiny and delicate. S'zgul could break the half-female in two with her talons. She hardly needed the three-headed, barbed flail spinning in her hand.
The halfling didn't see her coming—so intent was she on slitting a warrior's throat. S'zgul hissed like a desert cobra, lashed the tiny creature about the legs, and yanked her down.
"Gark katulu!" she growled at the halfling.
The little creature rolled over, gazing up at S'zgul in confusion, fear, and...
S'zgul hesitated, startled. "Daltyrex—naka!"
Then the halfling smiled—a hideous expression to the lizard priestess—and showed her empty hands. A knife slid out of her sleeve and she opened S'zgul's throat in a flash of pain.
The priestess reeled until a dusty gray rapier split open her back, carved her heart, and brought only painful blackness and the hiss of her father, master, and lover.
Twilight took a moment to wipe the blood off Betrayal with the aid of the fiendish lizard's half cape. It marked the creature as a spellcaster, likely, or a shaman. Probably the one who had dispelled Slip's conjured darkness, though it didn't really matter. All the lizards were dead, and they had killed them before an alarm could be raised. Good enough.
It was good to fight, as well. Having to evade band after band of these lizards had caused trepidation and nervousness, and nothing wiped away such feelings like a good, bloody slaughter. Twilight's muscles felt loose and her blood was pumping—hunger was a thing of the past.
Had she been thinking rationally, she might have been disturbed that dealing death made her feel alive.
"You're fast," she said to the halfling, still panting in glorious abandon.
"All in the wrist—where the blood is." Slip held out her hand. Her little dagger had disappeared.
"That snake said something to you," Twilight said as she helped the tiny woman up. "I didn't hear. What was it?"
The halfling blinked, gazing up at her with those blissful brown eyes, and shrugged. "I don't speak fiend."
Gargan's eye twitched.
Twilight was no longer listening. She looked to the center of the chamber, where the lizards had been feeding. There, lying on the floor, was their meal. She recognized the pale golden flesh, the ravaged hair. Even the face, with its bugging eyes, one still present, the other a bloody hole.
"Gods," Slip said. "Is that..."
"Not possible," Twilight said. "Not—"
Then the emerald eye opened and it lunged for her, gasping and moaning. Two bloody stumps where hands should have been scrabbled at her chest.
"Taslin?" Slip gasped.
Twilight hit the forehead with Betrayal's hilt. The body fell back to the ground, writhing, and she hit again. And again. And again, beating that head into paste. Dark blood splattered the floor, and she could feel her teeth go through her tongue, but she didn't care. She pounded until those limbs stopped battering her.
When the animate priestess was finally stilled once more, Twilight could stand. She'd watched Taslin die, and she'd killed her again. She tried not to think about the implications of her wrists, severed as though by a knife and not by any lizard's claw.
"We keep moving," said Twilight.
The others were too busy staring to argue.
CHAPTER Twenty-Four
From the chamber of the slaughtered lizards, they went north where the tunnel arched up. It was widely traveled, as evidenced by the smoother floor and walls where feet and hands had worn the stone. The tempo of Twilight's heart and the frequency of events were increasing', and she felt driven, hurried. She had to stop herself from running.
"Stay alert," she said. "An ambush could be around any curve. Swift and silent."
Gargan and Slip nodded—they both understood exactly what she meant.
They ascended into a series of caverns that spread like a disordered honeycomb around them, walls painted with dried lizard filth and old blood. Bones littered every passage, all picked clean, as though gnawed bare and tossed heedlessly. The fiendish lizards were plentiful here—scores, even hundreds of the creatures swarmed the warrenlike catacombs.
Twilight's blood was hot and Betrayal tingled when she touched the hilt, but discretion overcame bloodlust or courage. Erevan's servant had many flaws, it was true, but no friend or foe had ever labeled her excessively valiant.
Erevan. Damn you. This is all your doing. At that moment, Twilight remembered the powers granted by her erstwhile patron. She had been so distracted that she
hadn't given them much thought.
Thanks to Erevan's blessing, she had a keen sense for items of value, and could meditate to find the location of a chosen object—or person. She considered using this talent to find Liet. It would not be a judicious use of her power—revealing him in the captivity of the sharn would not aid her. And it might fail entirely if he were dead. Either way, Twilight couldn't bear to know.
Davoren, though... if Slip had escaped, why not the warlock?
Twilight decided, on a whim, to search for Davoren. Focusing her mind in the way Neveren had taught her, she reached out with her senses to find—
Davoren was not a prisoner of the sharn. In fact, he was only a little way ahead of them, ascending the caverns as they were. As her thoughts lingered upon the warlock, she sensed him moving, shadowing them from ahead.
Twilight's eyes widened as she realized the only possible explanation. Davoren. Gestal.
"What is it?" Slip asked, turning worried eyes toward Twilight.
"Silence," Twilight said.
They passed through the warrens, subtle as shadows. Had any of the others been with them, their progress would have been hindered, but these three were the stealthiest of the seven. The halfling was a thief, the goliath a hunter, and she herself, after all, was the Fox-at-Twilight. The fiendish lizards on guard were not oblivious, but the three could pass them. They stole through the lizards' den, their eyes always moving.
The individual cells of the warrens epitomized wretchedness. Tattered straw mats rotted next to broken urns that must have been beautiful a thousand years ago, and now contained only mud and bones. Misshapen shamans shouted vile praises to a demon while hideous fiendish lizards crouched about cook fires, telling bawdy and violent jests in their clicking and hissing
tongue. Twilight understood, by virtue of the earring, but did not wish to listen. She didn't want to think about what might be in those cook pots.
It was not difficult to find a tunnel that rose from the warrens, but it was increasingly difficult to pass by the scores of fiendish lizards that milled around the place. Dozens of times, the three ducked into the shadows or behind boulders to avoid detection as bands of the creatures appeared around a corner or lunged from a natural archway. For all their clumsiness and ugliness, the creatures were damnably silent when they moved.
Still, Twilight was determined. She kept the others hidden and, more importantly, moving. Her hand was never far from Betrayal's hilt, but she knew they could not risk a fight—not when a hundred or more of the creatures could swarm them from all sides and still summon others.
Twilight had watched Tlork fight, and though she had not seen Gestal, she knew he must be a powerful priest indeed for a sharn to fear his power. The only way they would win such a battle was if they could fight it on their terms, on ground of their choosing. They bided their time seeking a way past the fiendish lizards, making slow progress, shadow to shadow, dodging small clusters along the tunnels.
Until a commotion disturbed the barbaric tranquility.
The buzzing hiss that went through the hallway was their only warning. Twilight managed to duck and pull Slip behind cover just in time to avoid Tlork, who came rumbling around a corner. The troll's elephantine leg pounded down not a hand's breadth from her taut ankle, but Twilight knew better than to flinch.
Bellowing incoherently, the thing that had been a troll smashed a lizard out of the way and stomped down the passage. They scattered before him like ants after syrup, fleeing into passages and holes even she hadn't seen.
The only one who did not flee was the goliath, who slipped out of the shadows behind Tlork and padded behind him, sword sheathed. They had crossed twenty paces of tunnel before Twilight even registered it. Surely he was not thinking of taking
on the troll alone, particularly without a ready blade. What could he...
Twilight's heart pounded in her throat. "Gargan!"
Tlork skidded to a halt, but the goliath was already gone, having faded into the shadows. Amazing, Twilight thought, the great camouflage his stony flesh gave him against the tunnel wall.
The fiend-stitched troll glared about the chamber, its mismatched eyes—one red, one violet—searching for the source of the sound. Then it snuffled, but that didn't seem to help. Finally, it rumbled on.
A sea of fiendish lizards poured out of bolt holes, cutting the three in two groups. The creatures had not seen them, but they made just as sure a barrier for their ignorance.
"What do we do?" Slip asked in a whisper.
Twilight wanted to conserve her power, but she had no choice. She wrapped Slip in an embrace and danced into the shadows.
They passed briefly through the dull, lifeless world of Shadow, where the fiendish lizards became blurs of inky blackness and their eyes became nightmare spots of blood. With a little gasp, the halfling stiffened in her arms, but Twilight cradled her closer. It wouldn't do to lose her companion in Shadow—after all, she needed Slip when they fought Gestal. And Twilight wouldn't deny having become fond of the halfling—though that was where it ended. No ties, no love.
She pushed thoughts of Liet aside.
Twilight and her terrified burden rematerialized next to Gargan, and one stony hand shot for her throat. The elf flinched and the goliath caught her shoulder instead. There was no malice in his movement. He merely guided them into hiding.
"What by the Lady's love life are you about, goliath?" she whispered.
The stony head shook. "I apologize," he said. "Instinct. Forgive."
Twilight pursed her lips. She did not disparage instinct—it had kept her alive over the decades whenever wits failed. Still...
"Forget it," she said. "But you move on my order, and mine alone."
The goliath nodded. "Yes, Foxdaughter,"he said. Twilight blinked. "Good," she managed. "One thing," Gargan said. "I kill troll." "Well then." Twilight turned to Slip, whose mind was far away. "We go."
They followed the troll up the tunnel, which opened into a wide chamber, roughly circular, where the stalagmites and other cover had been broken away, leaving only jagged stalactites like fangs. They kept to the shadows and watched.
If the fiendish lizards' warrens had stunk of death and decay, the stained hall absolutely reeked of corruption. Crude murals of human-shaped and snakelike figures engaging in acts of violence, cruelty, and depravity adorned the walls, painted in blood, excrement, and fouler substances. Gooseflesh rose all over Twilight at the mere sight.
"Let's go!" Slip said brightly. The shadowdancer and the goliath hissed. "What?"
Tlork paced about the chamber, hefting the huge warhammer in his bony hand. Perhaps he was guarding something, but Twilight could not see any other occupant or another door. The chamber was wide and open, and Twilight had spent her shadow-dance for the time being. There was no way around him.
"This could be a trap," Twilight said.
"You mean luring us into attacking the vulnerable troll?" Slip nodded. "Brilliant!"
Startled at the uncharacteristic sarcasm, Twilight looked but found only earnestness in her face.
"Right," she said. "If Gestal's not here, then he's likely trying to scry for us." She fingered her amulet. "We go quick and quiet, and put the troll down without alarm, to save the surprise. Gargan first, me second, Slip as reserve. Agreed?"
The others nodded silently.
"If this goes wrong and we face Gestal, get in close," Twilight said. "He'll be weak hand-to-hand, all his skill bound up in attacks from a distance."
Gargan furrowed his brow and Slip blinked. "You know this?" she asked.
Twilight's eyes narrowed. That damned warlock. She'd been a fool to trust him and it had cost her two friends, perhaps a lover as well. No more.
Her jaw clenched, like her heart. " 'Tis a death I should have dealt long ago, but I was blind." She grasped Betrayal. "No longer."
The goliath nodded gravely and drew his great black sword. The halfling stared at Twilight, then giggled through a hand. This disturbed her, but Twilight let it pass. After Gestal was dead, she would interrogate the little one. But for now...
She felt the hilt of her rapier, sheathed at her waist, took out her crossbow, and remembered the stiletto in her glove. They were as prepared as they could be.
Unable to shake a twinge of trepidation, Twilight gestured Gargan forward and rose from the shadows herself. The goliath darted into the chamber, sword out, and bore down upon the troll. Twilight came behind, ready to fire.
The gnarled troll gave a roar as Gargan's acid-sheathed sword hacked into his slim hip. The greenish liquid burned the flesh like parchment.
Twilight fired and the quarrel stabbed into Tlotk's red eye, wrenching another cry of pain. This was going well. She darted toward them, dropping a hand to her rapier. If she could get behind the troll, she and Gargan could make short work—
"Well met," came a cold rasp, echoing around the chamber. "You've arrived just in time for the evening banquet—mine."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Twilight's hand went to the quarrels at her belt, but Gestal's magic was faster. Dark power blazed from his fingers and struck her full in the stomach. She flinched and her body erupted in pain. The magic forced a spasm that consumed her with agony. Within the span of a heartbeat, her muscles strained and locked, cutting off a squeal of shock. The crossbow clattered to the ground.
Gestal stepped from the shadows, cloaked in tattered gray robes. Rot and corruption spread up the folds of fabric, as though it had never been cleaned. A pair of human hands emerged from the sleeves, wrists scarred and covered in swaths of black flesh that spread like a cancer up the forearms. Madness bled from the gaps in the robe like leaking ink.
"Fox-at-Twilight," he said, his voice disturbingly hungry. "I've been waiting."
Twilight remained calm. She suppressed a twinge of confusion. Davoren had never shown the power to freeze foes by pain, but he could have hidden it. She had been under spells like this before, and knew it was only a matter of time. All she could do for a few breaths was watch.
Tlork kicked, and Gargan, staggering over the uneven ground, took the troll's bony foot full in the chest. The goliath hit the broken stone hard but instantly reversed his momentum,
rolling back the way he had come. He lunged to avoid Tlork's elephant leg. Rising behind the troll, Gargan slashed acid across Tlork's inner thigh, wrenching a fiendish screech from the troll. The goliath had no time for a lethal blow, however, having to duck a whirring warhammer that splintered a long stalactite.
Twilight told herself the pain was only in her head, and the demon power clenched her mind more tightly. This confirmed it, and her mind worked to slip out of the spell. It would take time, though, and it might be time they did not have.
Then she watched Slip materialize and scurry at the cloaked demonist with the grace of a black cat. She paused and gazed at Twilight, perhaps uncertain whether to help her friend or attack her foe.
"Kill... him..." Twilight tried to say. She was freeing herself, she hoped.
As though she had heard, Slip whispered toward Gestal, who was just finishing a chant. Dark, edifying power swirled around the troll. Unhindered, Slip drew her mace and dagger.
Then, in those cowl-shadows Twilight's eyes could barely pierce, Gestal smiled. His lips were moving. He could cast two spells at once?
"No," Twilight tried to scream, but she couldn't hear if she succeeded. "No!"
Then the halfling was upon Gestal, and the demonist turned.
He hissed the last word of his spell, a syllable in Abyssal that wrenched Twilight's heart and made her ears want to bleed. Vile darkness gathered and flared.
Slip screamed as her eyes exploded in a red spray. The fluid hissed onto Twilight's leg, where it burned like acid. The eyeless halfling collapsed, sobbing and weeping black. The demonist doubled over and quivered as though the spell's depravity had sapped his body's stability.
Then, reeling, Gestal burst into laughter. He could have been doubled over in mirth. "Daltyrex," he said. He clucked his tongue as though chiding a child.
The earring did not translate, but he could have spoken
the a spell for all she knew. Would the earring translate such a thing?
Spurred on by outrage, Twilight's wriggling mind finally slipped the spell's shackles. She leaped to shaking feet. She took a running step, only to be thrown to the floor when the world shuddered at Gestal's cry. A great tremor ripped through the cavern, tearing it asunder. Stalactites rained and moonlight from the desert above streamed down from a broken ceiling fifty feet up. The stars hid behind a cloud of dust. Gestal's mad laughter boomed across the screaming stone.
Twilight grit her teeth. How could he cast so quickly? Spells seemed to flow through him at random, all without pause, all deadly.
The quake dug a wide furrow between the combatants and the demonist. Twilight realized she could not jump it, even with the boots. As Slip collapsed into a moaning heap, the demonist smirked in the depths of his cowl and began another spell.
Twilight bit her lip. She couldn't give in to fear. She had to end this, and end it quickly. She shook off the last of her pain, extended Betrayal, and ran.
"Gargan!" she screamed as she barreled toward his back.
Gargan glanced and nodded. He hacked at the troll, driving it back, and whirled even as she jumped, tossing his axe in the air. His trailing hand caught Twilight's arm and heaved her over the crevasse. Her leap became a flying lunge. Then he spun back to the troll and caught his axe as it fell, just in time to block the troll's hammer with both weapons, the force driving him back toward the pit.
As she flew toward the shivering, chanting demonist, Twilight screamed with as much wrath and hatred as she could muster. All the tears that she'd shed for fallen comrades, her heartache at not knowing if Liet lived, and her crushing fear rose out of her in a roar.
Gestal turned and threw back his hood.
At the scream, Gargan rolled between the troll's mismatched legs and glanced after the elf. Gestal had drawn a blade—a cleaverlike dagger—and he used it to parry her lunge aside. She landed, staggered, and dropped her rapier.
"No," she said. She looked as though she were choking. "It can't be!"
Gargan knew the time had come to run. Using instincts and reflexes honed against giants, the goliath eluded Tlork's claws and dodged the crushing hammer by a hand's breadth. With a mighty roar, the goliath dropped his axe and swung his huge sword down in two hands. The acid-laden edge slashed Tlork's thin arm in two, and the great hammer did not rise.
The troll staggered, but the goliath turned. His chance had come for a deathblow, but he ran for the chasm instead, hoping he would make it to Foxdaughter in time.
Twilight struck the waiting cleaver, but it would not budge. The blades screamed and she tumbled over the demonist's head, landing flat on her back. She tried to rise, but her legs failed her. Betrayal clattered to the stone and slid against the wall.
"What's the matter?" he asked, his voice husky. "Do you not recognize me?"
Gestal dropped his blade and threw off his cloak, revealing his bare arms and chest. Grotesque scars crisscrossed the black, scaly flesh over his biceps and forearms, stopping at his shoulders and hands. As she watched, rapt, blackness rippled across his body, painting the bronzed flesh with inky corruption. In a heartbeat, it spread to all parts of him, half shrouding his face in putrid sores. Clean on one side, oozing on the other, it was as though he had two faces.
As the scaly, festering skin covered his left cheek, a scorching brand depicting a two-headed snake wrapped around a serrated blade lit upon his right face—a face that remained hideously recognizable.
"No..." said Twilight. "It—it can't be."
"I'm afraid it can," said Liet in a perverse rasp, "my love." Then his distorted arms extended like putty and clawed at her, one hand glowing with blood, the other with ink. Twilight could not bring herself to dodge.
Gargan ran for the crevasse lip, pushing his legs as he had in races with his clan brothers and sisters. Tlork swung his claws wildly and Gargan's shoulder opened in its wake. He realized his axe was gone, but it was irrelevant. He hit the edge and jumped, his mighty legs pulsing. A weightless heartbeat later, he slammed down on the other side.
His weight and the strength of his jump were too much for the brittle edge, however. The stone broke under his feet, and he began a groaning, inevitable slide into the jagged abyss.
Gargan leaped again and again, dancing across falling stones toward Gestal. The priest wore the face of Liet, but the goliath ignored the implications. He saw only the Foxdaughter, frozen in terror, and the demon priest's impossibly long arms reaching for her. He also saw Slip, seeping pits of black and red where her eyes had once been, crawling feebly away.
The distance between them was slowly increasing, so he couldn't reach them both. But he could save one of them, perhaps. Slip, his friend, or... He might have cried out, but it would do no good, he sensed. He just had to get there in time.
In time, horribly, to watch Gestal jab a red-glowing hand into the elPs breast while his black hand went for her face. She arched and screamed, blood and vomit gushing from her mouth. Horrid as her reaction was, it probably saved her from a worse fate. The black hand only brushed her shoulder instead of her cheek.
The world froze for an instant and reality shifted. Gargan thought he heard a faint mirthful sound, as of a mocking wind. It unnerved him. He had heard tales of travelers wandering leagues in the desert, following just such whispers.
Then the world flowed as normal, and Twilight went white as a corpse. She collapsed to the ground, limp as an empty cloak.
Gargan made no sound, but Gestal sensed him anyway and spun, bringing up his burning claws. The hunter plied his training against giants, with their exceptional reach, and rolled under the deadly claws, still arrowing straight for the limp elf.
Unlike the arms of any real creature, however, Gestal's hands twisted back, still bearing down on the goliath. Gargan thought himself lost.
The priest had miscalculated, though, and the elongated arms jerked to a halt, a finger's breadth from Gargan's foot. Both priest and goliath looked in the same instant, only to find Gestal's distorted arms hooked at the elbows. The priest cursed foully and snapped a word of pure chaos. Gargan felt power flare, but his soul went unscathed. Was this why the sharn had chosen them? Gestal's magic seemed to have little effect on the-goliath.
Gargan dived for his prize: the still form beside the sputtering demonist. He stooped over her and his hands went to her feet. At his touch, the elf made a gurgling, gasping noise. Gestal was in the midst of another spell and the goliath knew his time was short. He had one boot off, then the other, and yanked them on.
Sure enough, they fit him perfectly, as their magic allowed. Another goliath might have thought this witchcraft, but Gargan had seen enough of the world to know good from evil.
He stood over Twilight then, clad in her boots, and hefted her limp form under one arm. In the other hand, he raised the giant sword and turned to face his attacker.
"No escape!" screamed Gestal, and fanned out his hand, from which sprang five darts of blackness—darts that had been his fingers. Somehow, the goliath ducked all but two, which wriggled and tore, locking his muscles and freezing his flesh.
Then the demonist charged him, his remaining fingers glowing green.
The eyeless Slip whimpered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SlX
Her eyes flicked open. The tent was silent. The air tasted rough and dry, like bone worn hollow by the wind. And flowers—she smelt something sweet. An herbal tang.
Twilight looked around. Vertical black hides bounded her dry world, and leather tapestries adorned with reds, greens, and blues. Skulls and various bones hung around the tent, on chains that would have clattered had there been a breeze.
She lay on a heap of soft animal skins, most of which still had fur on one side. Twilight ran her fingers slowly through the coarse hair and wondered, dimly, what could make her. think rothe' hide soft. She also wondered if she had always existed, in this place of supreme comfort. She had the sense that something terrible had happened, but her memory seemed more a series of dreams, not events.
Just about the time she became thirsty, Twilight noticed a clay bowl on the sandy floor beside her, containing what she soon found to be the most delicious water she had ever tasted. She drank it all without pause. Her stomach felt hollow and tight.
She stood from the bed and a chill breeze raised gooseflesh over her back. Only then did she notice her nakedness. For warmth more than modesty, she found a blanket of sackcloth
and drew it over her shoulders before she pushed her way out of the tent flap.
Twilight emerged in a land that was mercilessly bright, but discomfort was far away. She stopped, and her eyes fell to the cliff edge just under her bare toes. Flecks of sand hissed down through empty air, falling what seemed a league. She vaguely noticed a circle of runes drawn in salt below the sole of her foot, smudged by her movement.
Her tent stood on the edge of a plateau that rose out of a gray-white desert like a graveyard. She looked out ovet the vastness of dusty death before her. Then, drawn by sounds from behind, she looked the other way, across the plateau.
Atop the crags, life bloomed like a garden. Tents of many colors stood before her, and muscular forms moved amongst them, fleshed in tones of grays and browns, oranges and purples. These were shades of stone, both exotic and mundane. The figures wore almost no clothing—the better to reveal the zigzagging patterns of color that crisscrossed their stony skin. Goliaths, she realized.
Parents and children worked in the shade of tents and boulders, while brawny youths carved arrows and spears for hunting. The tiny community bustled with daily business, yet a certain serenity enveloped all. Incomprehensible jests and bawdy laughs echoed from below, where males and females alike engaged in work and sport. She saw feats of strength, comparisons of skill at archery or rock flinging, and even a singing contest that was foreign to her elPs ears—deep and rhythmic and powerful. Other elves might have disdained it, but she found the music beautiful.
Below her, on mounds and spires of stone that rose up from a shallow, mist-filled depression in the plateau, a score or so young goliaths leaped and danced, hooted and jeered. They played some game, hurling what looked like a stuffed camel's hump back and forth. Occasionally, one of the goliaths would knock over an opposing player who was trying to make a catch, or the ball itself would lay one out. The downed goliath would sometimes sprawl onto the stone and sometimes fall off the mound, into the mists. This frightened Twilight the first time
it occurred, but soon after, the goliath stood up and growled in their thick tongue. She didn't understand—she wore no earring to translate.
The simple peace of the goliath village set her at ease, and the sight of the game gave her an overwhelming sense of vibrancy. When had she forgotten the simple pleasure of breathing? Watching the young, muscular goliaths at their play reminded her of the sanctity and power of life. In that moment, the world seemed complete.
Complete except...
Twilight looked around for her companions. She didn't remember their names, but she knew there had been others.
Then she recognized one of them—seated alone not far from her own tent. He was markedly different: where the others wore simple tunics or loincloths, he wore a black cloak that hid his gray skin and red markings. And where they laughed and jeered one another, brimming over with vitality, he merely sat, a cold statue.
Gargan—that was his name.
Twilight wondered why he was' not with the others—why they seemed not to notice him. Were they cruel, these goliaths? She opened her mouth to call out.
Then she felt something tingling in the back of her mind, as though a gentle lover were kissing the back of her neck, though no one was there. She stood, eyes half-shut, relaxing in the peace, and allowed the phantom fingers to trace down her neck, along her bare back, down, down... to the starburst mark at the base of her spine.
It was only a thought in her head, but it sounded like words. Lover.
"Liet?" she asked, her heart fluttering.
Perhaps, came the mental reply. But not just now.
Then she saw demons emerging out of the corners of her world, and she pressed her palms against her temples. Maniacal laughter filled her, consumed her, and she screamed her way down into darkness.
Gargan stood amid pots bubbling over fires. He watched the elf writhe, claw, and moan in the sick tent.
Her neck and face stood taut beyond reason, veins bulging all along her body. Blood seeped from her mouth and nose, and her eyes rolled in their sockets. She wore nothing but sweat, her tangled hair, and staining poultices where her ivory skin had broken open under the pressure of muscles spasms.
It took three goliaths to hold Foxdaughter still enough for Mehvenne Starseeker Kalgatan, the clan druid, to administer healing magic and balms, all to no avail. Blood stained her fingers from wrists, throat, and face, and from those who restrained her now.
"There is a demon" the withered crone said. She reached to one of the simmering pots and drew out the long wooden spoon with a substantial helping of the ruddy orange mixture. "A demon inside. She has brought evil into our camp."
Gargan nodded. By necessity, he knew, that was the closest she would come to addressing him. He wanted to assuage the fears of the goliaths, and tell them of Foxdaughter's strength, but they would hear and not listen. It was forbidden.
The elf screamed and babbled incoherently. He could tell the depth of her agony, from her tone. Delirious, she delivered stunning kicks and cruel gouges to those who held her, fighting them off as though they were attackers rather than healers.
The frail druid—the oldest goliath Gargan had ever known—knelt beside her, without fear as ever, and seized the Foxdaughter's jaw. The elf clawed, but Mehvenne pushed her fingers away firmly but gently, as one might discipline a wayward wolf pup.
The elf gagged on the liquid the druid forced down her throat. It worked quickly, and her struggles slackened. Finally, the tent was silent and she slept peacefully.
Gargan had learned his herbcraft at Mehvenne's feet, and even the rudiments of healing from her, but he was still impressed at the power of her potions and poultices.
"Demons of the flesh," Mehvenne said, still not looking at Gargan, "and demons of the blood or heart. We can fight these. But
demons of the mind and soul, we cannot."
Gargan did not pretend to understand the minds and spirits of elves, but he knew what she had endured in those depths. She had been right about a traitor in their midst. Gargan had never trusted any of the companions, but he'd given Liet the most faith.
Liet and Slip.
Gargan felt a twinge of regret for the little one, but the demands of fate outweighed those of friendship. He reminded himself of that looking at the shuddering, moaning elf who lay in agony on the furs and hides.
He stepped forward and the attending goliaths turned away. He did not blame them. If they acknowledged his silent existence, they would soon share it. As he took the elFs hand, only Mehvenne's eyes traced his square features—a tribute to her station in the tribe—but even she said nothing.
"Come back, little fox," he said in Common. "Wake."
Then the tent filled with a new sound, one that prompted hands to dart to crude hilts of stone weapons. Laughter.
The elfs lips curled back. "We have found her, monster," her voice said, with words that were not hers. "She will be ours soon."
An unholy chill flared from beneath her pale skin, shaking Gargan like a jolt of lightning. He fell, stunned, listening as maniacal laughter filled the tent for a long, painful breath. Then Twilight arched, her muscles snapping, and collapsed limply.
Finally shaking the shock out of his head, Gargan looked at the star sapphire in Mehvenne's ochre hands. "The Shroud," he said, realizing. "Gestal."
Then he thought he heard a soft little laugh, but it was not that of Foxdaughter, nor was it that of Gestal. Gargan looked around, but no one was there.
" 'Light!" Liet screamed. "Help me! 'Light!"
Demons pulled him down into an abyss from which flames
arose. Putrid corruption spread over his body, slowly at first, but faster as the fiends bore him away.
She cried out, but could not hear herself over the cacophony.
Snarling lizardlike demons surged around Liet's receding body, clawing and pawing at their new foe, barbed tongues licking and rending the putrid air.
Betrayal drawn, the elf-without-a-name slashed and stabbed, cut and lunged, all to no avail. The eldritch steel, its gray burned to white, bit into demon after demon, felling them as a scythe cuts wheat, but they kept coming—hordes of the fiends. She sensed them all around her and danced and dodged, trying to fight them all off.
She could not. "No!" she tried to scream, but she had no voice.
Then a single serpentine form rose from the darkness, towering over the other fiends. Its two baboon heads loomed over her, snickering and yowling at one another. The nameless elf cowered, her body locked in place by the awesome power that dripped from the demon lord. "Demogorgon!" shouted the fiends. "Demogorgon!"
Then the two heads had faces, and they were the same scarred, twisted, beautiful visage: Gestal.
"I see you," he rasped. "You cannot hide."
The nameless elf tore her gaze away, but everywhere she looked, there he was. Every demon wore Gestal's laughing face, Gestal's burning eyes, Gestal's broken grin.
"Shadows cannot hide you," the faces said. "We know your lies."
Gestal surrounded her, his madness beating at every corner of her will.
"No," she growled. "No!" The demons surged around her, and she slashed, tore, and cut, but there were so many—too many. She slashed at them and ran them through again and again, but they kept coming. Claws tore and rent her clothes.
"You fear," they all said, out of bleeding mouths and broken jaws. "You fear being stripped of your shadows—fear being nothing—fear knowing your lies for lies."
"They're not lies!" she lied. The claws and fire tore at her clothes—her flesh froze, even though the flames rose and rose around her.
Claws wrenched the gray rapier from her hand and they caught fire. Their blackness burned away before her eyes, stripped and peeled like thick paint on a flawed canvas. White gleamed underneath—white like bone—and she screamed and shut her eyes. The darkness was not an escape—the demons followed her.
"You're alone," they said. "A lonely child—a fool child. A child."
"I'm not a child!" she lied. She staggered and finally knelt, exhausted, naked, and surrounded. "I'm telling the truth!"
"No, you're not," a familiar voice said. "You are nothing alone—without your steel, without your lies. Nothing."
Then a loving, gentle hand—Liet's hand, she thought— reached out of the chaos.
Against all her instincts, against the demand of her will, gods help her, she wanted to take it—needed desperately to take it. She needed to let her mind go, let her heart take her fully, let the dream become her world.
"Come with me," Liet's voice whispered. He was there, welcoming, inviting. "Run—leave your pain and your lies. Accept what you are."
They were all gone. Every man or woman she had loved. Her father, Nymlin, Neveren—all of the hundred or so creatures she had loved were dead. Lilten had abandoned her. Liet was gone. She had no one to call upon.
"Where are you wandering?" Liet smiled so sweetly. "Come. Walk with me."
She reached out to take Liet's hand.
Then there was a sound, from somewhere in the depths of madness roiling around them, somewhere beyond the gray emptiness that stretched forever.
A child's laugh.
Reality shifted, the nameless elf hesitated, and an olive-skinned hand reached out and slapped his hands away.
And Ilira, for she remembered that Ilira was her name, screamed.
The elf woke, lying on her stomach, into silence.
There was nothing in the world but stillness and herself. It was a pregnant silence, so tangible a sharp knife could shave off a bit to keep locked in a box, and so inexplicably sad that it could only live in a lady's heart. One arm pillowed her chin, the other hung at her side. A whisper of breath tickled the small hairs across her exposed back. She did not know if the dream had ended, or if it endured.
Twilight felt a presence and she froze. Slowly, as though any tiny shift would lead to horror or pain, she looked at the plain-faced elf she somehow knew knelt there.
Any Tel'Quessir who looked upon him would see a face like a reflection, but an elflord's face all the same. A moon elf would see pale skin and midnight hair, a sun elf bronze flesh and a golden mane. The skin would seem copper to a wood elf, aquamarine to a sea elf, deep brown to a wild elf. He would be so unremarkable as to be extraordinary—neither handsome nor ugly, old nor young.
But Twilight saw something different. She saw herself, stripped of her lies and fabrications—naked, alone, and helpless—and she saw him.
Fingers traced the sunburst tattoo at the base of her spine in a way that sent chills through her body. Whether it was a sensitive spot or something else, she did not know. In the other hand, he dangled her amulet—the Shroud.
He smiled, and she felt something like courage.
"I..." Twilight pursed her lips. "Are you... are you who I think you are?"
No reply.
"You are."
The smile widened a little, as though its owner laughed at a jest she had made.
"I see." Twilight shifted. She realized that the touch on her
back was much more soothing than she imagined it could be. "I... I'm sorry for all the... all the lies I've told... about you." She bit her lip. "About me."
Then his eyes danced with laughter and turned away. His face slipped so subtly the elf barely noticed. His fingers tapped a rhythm on her spine and he rose to leave.
"One... one question?"
He paused and the eyes went to hers. The irises shifted, like a rainbow—red and blue and green and gold.
"When I wake... will those lies be true?" she asked. "Are you you-, or just me?"
He grinned and held up two fingers, which he used to close her eyes. In that darkness, he kissed her on the throat, and the world turned only for her.
Breathless, Twilight opened her eyes, but he was gone. The star sapphire gleamed against the pale skin of her breastbone.
She let blessed darkness come, and wondered if she would find Reverie.
It occurred to Twilight that she might have asked if he loved her.
Foxdaughter lay unmoving on her back, eyes wide but empty. The black blanket contrasted sharply with skin paler than the whitest Gargan had ever seen on a living being. The amulet sparkling on her chest did not seem to rise and fall.
"/ wonder why it sits by her," Mehvenne said to the tent walls. "She is not dead, but neither does she live. She is lost."
"She dreams," Gargan said. He could not speak the tongue of the goliaths in that place, for a watcher might think he broke the laws.
Mehvenne inspected the back of her hand. "It fools itself," she said. "All my herbs and potions are for naught. The elf-child will die."
Gargan shook his head. There was nothing that would dissuade him.
"I did not agree with the tribe's decision,"'Mehvenne said to her
pots as she stirred two at once. Her emerald stripes sparkled in the half light of the rothe- candles.
"Not their decision," Gargan whispered, inaudible outside the tent. "Mine."
That caught Mehvenne's attention, and she turned ruby eyes on him. Gargan felt something in the air strain, as though it would break.
Then she looked away and it returned. The distance between them that would always remain—would remain between Gargan and any goliath—until the day he died.
"The Stoneslayer lost his way, and thus he became the Dispossessed," Mehvenne said. "He is blind. This is not his destiny, no matter what he believes. Not this doe."
"Fox," Gargan corrected. "She is the fox."
Then the elf squeezed his hand.
Gargan looked at the soft skin stretched over delicate features. Her eyes blinked—red-rimmed, shot with blood, oozing tears, but alive. Mehvenne took a step back, startled and ready with a spell should she need to fight a demon.
But the next sound Foxdaughter emitted was a simple sigh.
"Gys sa salen," she murmured, bringing one dainty hand to her forehead.
Gargan hardly spoke the Common tongue, much less Elvish. He wondered if his heavy mouth could even form such dainty syllables. But he, like all goliaths, was a student of body language and expression. Even though he did not catch the exact meaning of her words, he understood het basic desire.
As did Mehvenne, who knelt and offered the water bowl to Foxdaughtet.
"No, my good lady," she sighed. "Not that kind of drink."
The druid furrowed her brow, almost looking at Gargan before she caught herself. Gargan could only blink and look down at Foxdaughter blankly.
"What was"—the elf paused—"that game... I saw?"
Gargan felt a smile tugging at his mouth. He squeezed her hand. "Kukanath kuth," he said. Then he remembered that she
wore no earring, so he exercised the few words he knew in the trade tongue. "Goat ball."
The elf smiled, and it was the most reassuring thing Gargan had ever seen.
CHAPTER Twenty-Seven
As their escorts led the pair into the desert, the sheer size of the goliaths struck Twilight once more. Even standing at about seven feet tall, Gargan seemed stunted and short beside his clan brothers. There was a certain feral strength and speed about him, though—rage tempered by the wisdom that shone in his emerald eyes, and it was this that convinced Twilight he was the most dangerous of all.
And it was part of what had led her to doubt the goliath, Twilight remembered with a pang of guilt. Well, no more of that.
They had stayed at the goliath camp for six days—three that Twilight had slept, three more that she had taken to recover. The poultices and chants had done wonders for her damaged bones and bruised hide, though she could not shake the soreness, regardless of how much walking and stretching she had done. She had spent those days as an observer in the goliath camp, watching the simple joys they took in boasts and tales, the artisans at their trade, and racers leaping the crags. She'd sat with storytellers, weaved necklaces and baskets, and learned some of the songs. She wore several goliath earrings, now, and they'd bound her hair with bone combs.
The goliaths knew peace, and Twilight wished she could be part of it, perhaps forever. But she had left many tasks undone
in her life, and it was her lot—her purpose in this world—to see them done. There were many wrongs to be righted, many friends to be avenged. Asson, Taslin, Slip, Liet... Gestal.
During her time in the encampment—after the dreams— Gargan had scarcely left Twilights bedside, nor had the Shroud left her neck. The farthest he had gone from her had been to the tent flap, to sit cross-legged without, keeping watch. After that, he had been as her shadow, staying beside her at all times.
Twilight did not know if he had remained so near because of some sense of companionship, or if he was simply trying to remain within the protection of her amulet. She figured it was the latter. After all, the goliath had showed no real warmth toward her—they were as survivors of a shipwreck, joined by fate rather than blood or desire.
Why was he following her back into the depths? She had to go, but why him?
On the other hand, what proof did she have that he wasn't a traitor, like Liet had been—unknowingly, even? Perhaps her old suspicions of the goliath was true.
Ultimately, it did not matter.
Twilight hardly cared whether her suspicion was true, ot whether her mistrust hurt Gargan. It was cruel, but all she could think of were Liet and Gestal—two very different people in her mind, though they were the same man. She would give them peace, though she wondered if her current path was madness as deep as theirs.
Not that it matters, she thought, though she wondered if she lied.
As though he sensed her uncertainty, Gargan laid a stony hand on Twilight's shoulder. Some of the tension flowed from her.
"We go," one of the four escorts said to Twilight.
Taslin's earring, dangling from her left lobe alongside three new silver rings with colored stones, translated the words, though she fancied that the few days she had spent among the goliaths had taught her enough to understand. That this was
cursed ground went unsaid, but she caught hints of it in their bodies. There was regret in their voices, but only a touch.
The goliaths purposefully ignored Gargan, bowed to Twilight, and turned, never to look back. Twilight knew the goliath would not talk to his clan brothers—ever. The escorts walked one way, toward the desert mountains, and the elf and her companion went the other, into a wide expanse edged with rock pillars and broken crags.
"Why do they treat you so?" she asked as the escorts vanished over a dune.
"Exile,"Gargan said. His syntax was simple: declarative and efficient. "I am dead."
That made Twilight smile in helpless sympathy. Perhaps she and the goliath had more in common than she had thought.
She gestured to the red markings that patterned his flesh. "What do they mean?"
"My destiny," Gargan said. "My flesh is the parchment."
That made Twilight blink. "You have tried to read it?"
Gargan shrugged. "That is why—part of the why, not the whole why."
"But you know what they say."
The goliath nodded. "Follow the fox with the white claw," he said. "My destiny."
Twilight had nothing to say to that.
She spent some time within herself. Her hip felt light without a sword. Betrayal lay somewhere in those caves—lost in the confrontation. She had to get in, elude discovery long enough to recover the weapon, find Liet, then somehow defeat Gestal.
She wondered, abstractly, how she would do all these things. She wondered about Gargan. She wondered what had become of Slip. She wondered about her dreams.
The one thing she knew for certain was what she had to do.
"We arrive," Gargan said at last.
They had come to the center of a grove of stone trees two spearcasts in width—the Plain of Standing Stones, Twilight recalled, if her geography was correct. Gargan knelt in the sand
and put his ear to the ground as though listening for approaching pursuit. Twilight knew better than to disturb him.
"His magic covered the hole, "Gargan said. "/ willfind the cave I entered first."
The elf agreed, though she knew it could not fail to be a trap. "There," Gargan said. "This sand is shallow. Whispers." Twilight shivered. Whispers beneath the ground. He pointed.
They walked to the nearest of the stone pillars and searched its base. Sure enough, between two boulders they found an opening just large enough for a goliath to squeeze through—or a fiend-stitched troll, perhaps.
"You are the stronger in a fair fight, but we will not fight fairly," she said.
He growled in his throat. "We fight without honor? "
"Best to eschew honor, when our foe can defeat both of us at once."
Gargan finally nodded. He put a hand to his sword hilt. "Wait," said Twilight, motioning' Gargan to stop. "I have a plan."
The goliath eyed her with uncertainty but obeyed.
Closing her eyes and falling into the shadow, Twilight reflected on the stakes. She hated using this power, as it meant letting part of herself go. She hesitated to let any part of herself out, but somehow, after her dreams, she felt calm. She wasn't so alone.
"This will only take a breath."
She began the ritual.
The elf padded through the tunnel to the catacombs, her hand on the rapier hilt. She cast her eyes one way, then the other, then proceeded, as though certain she was safe. She moved on, stealthy and hidden to all sight.
All sight except the sight that comes with a demon prince's power.
A massive form fell out of the darkness above, crashing down
like a falling wall. There was no way she could dodge, no way she could evade impending death.
Tlork was stunned when his hulking maul passed right through her, to smash into the stone, and he landed with a roar on nothing. The elf danced in front of the troll, whipping her blade out of its sheath.
Meanwhile, a hand reached out of the shadows and plucked up a certain rapier, which had been lying against the stone.
He'd missed? How? He'd clung to the stalactites, waiting, then fallen when there had been no chance.
Only then—when the blade darted in—did Tlork realize he'd been tricked.
Twilight thrust the Hizagkuur rapier deep into the troll's side without a hiss or cry—only a grim frown that bespoke firm purpose. The keen gray-white steel laid aside hard sinew and muscle like warm pudding and speared one lung, then a heart, then the other lung. Electricity and fire burned along its length, searing the tissue before it could regenerate—at least, so the elf hoped.
Twilight's knuckles slammed painfully into the basket hilt as the blade abruptly halted against Tlork's far ribs, and she pushed harder, with all her strength. The hilt buried itself against the troll's nearer ribs. She felt that if she were any stronger, she might end up with her elbows inside him.
"Try fighting with that wound," Twilight dared Tlork.
To her disappointment, that was exactly what the troll did. With a mighty roar, he whirled and writhed, shaking her furiously.
If Betrayal had been strapped to her wrist, likely Tlork would have wrenched her arm from her body. As it was, the tension snapped her arm back and she shrieked. She thought she heard bones snap before Tlork finally flung her away like so much refuse. And if even she hadn't, then she certainly did when her ribs crunched against the stone.
Twilight sank, broken, to the ground with a breathless sob.
Still burning, Betrayal stayed inside the troll, but the flesh kept regenerating. Why hadn't she considered that the demonflesh might resist flame, as did that of true demons?
The troll barreled toward her, his hammer held high.
Without a sound, the second Twilight danced in and stabbed its own Betrayal into Tlork's back. The sword wasn't real, but neither was it illusion. Its chilling darkness sapped the troll's strength at a touch. Tlork faltered and the hammer dipped in a pace-wide circle whose edge was a thumb's length from the real Twilight's head. The troll spun and growled in confusion at its attacker, and Twilight dared to breathe.
After that breath, though, pain overwhelmed the elf, and the illusion wrapping her shadow faltered. The false Twilight's skin shivered and vanished into ephemeral black—features bled away, leaving only darkness. The elf-shadow did not fade, though, and slashed at Tlork with unnaturally stretching fingers. The troll tried to smash it with his hammer, but the weapon passed through harmlessly, giving Twilight hope.
Then a gem embedded in Tlork's 'chest flared golden, and the shadow recoiled soundlessly. It cowered, as though rapt, then fled. Twilight knew only one thing that could scare a member of the living dead: the power of a god or, in this case, a demon.
Tlork spun back, slavering.
Then Gargan was there, catching Tlork's hammer haft in two mighty hands. He locked his muscles, holding the deadly weapon perhaps a pace from Twilight.
As Twilight had planned, Gargan attacked from hiding, but why did he not deal a deathblow with his sword? Was he a fool, thinking to save her and sacrifice his chance?
No, Twilight realized with a shudder. He must have seen Betrayal's failure, and surmised that Blackwyrm would fail as well. Neither could slay Tlork. And instead of running, as he should have, he had killed himself in a vain play to save her.
Twilight wanted to scream, but a hand came out of the darkness and covered her mouth. Another arm encircled her torso, under the shoulders, and she could do nothing but watch Tlork and Gargan struggle, heavy muscles one against the other, as
her limp form was dragged back through the shadows. She saw the troll and goliath approaching the edge of the chasm Gestal's spell had torn, pushing and pulling...
Then Gargan's foot slipped, his leg crunched into the stone, and he went over, pulling Tlork with him. Twilight could do nothing but gasp, tasting leather pressed against her lips, as she watched her last ally plummet to his death.
"Foxdaughter!" he shouted as he fell. Twilight saw Betrayal, its gray edge burning, spinning, end over end, up from the chasm. It clattered, sparking, to the floor. With his last act, Gargan had thrown her the sword.
Then something struck her head sharply, she felt wetness, and darkness fell.
Gestal watched Tlork fall in to the depths of his blood pool. The troll and the goliath still fought, wrestling and punching, all the way into the darkness.
He didn't bother to watch their inevitable demise. Gestal was much more interested in Twilight. The pool couldn't find her—she had her Shroud—-but Gestal knew she had returned. Somewhere.
Well enough, he decided. She shall be along presently.
With a hand that had only three and a half fingers—the others were still growing—he swirled the bowl of blood. The image died.
Her senses returned soon after the hands released her to rest and recover against the stone wall. Twilight coughed, pointedly aware of the trickle of salty blood that ran over her split chin. Broken ribs. She hoped nothing bled inside... much. Her right arm was useless, splintered by the troll's fury. She needed to catch her breath.
"Thank you, Davoren," she murmured. "I never expected you to save me."
The warlock, scanning the darkness they had just left with
his fiendish eyes, grunted. The sounds of Tlork's roars and squeals had vanished, presumably down the pit, but he would return. They both knew it.
Slowly, as she panted and groaned, Twilight climbed to her feet with Davoren's help. She leaned against the wall, her head still aching and the respective agonies in her stomach and breast biting at one another. Her fingers itched for Betrayal; it lay just visible a dagger's cast distant, at the end of the tiny crawl tunnel through which the warlock had dragged her. She started that way. She had to save Gargan—she had to...
"It's appropriate how you word your thanksgiving," Davoren said behind her, the chill of his words freezing her in mid limp. "I did save you—for myself."
As Twilight turned, Davoren's shoulder slammed beneath her breast, crunching the broken ribs and crushing her against the wall, and the warlock rammed the poisoned stiletto into her side.
Twilight had time only to gasp before she felt the freezing venom course through her blood. Her eyes widened—and stayed that way.
"A taste of your own trickery, then," Davoren said. "I couldn't let some brute kill you—not when I have blessed you with my oh-so exquisite hatred for so long."
Twilight's mouth hung open as though to scream. His wound had not been a fatal stroke, but a stab in the gut. It would take painful hours to expire. Especially...
Especially with that milky potion Davoren dangled teasingly before her eyes—exactly the same way she had dangled her poison vial what seemed so long ago.
"Death is yet a ways off," he said redundantly. "We shall enjoy its process, no?"
He must have misinterpreted the undying rage in her eyes as terror—Davoren had never been good at reading others—for he continued. "Do not fear, filliken—it isn't for your flesh I have reserved you, but for a higher purpose." His eyes roved her body. "Though, if my will overcame your decrepitude, I might reconsider..."
Silently, Twilight wondered if she truly looked so old and decayed, or Davoren meant something different. Somehow, it didn't seem like something she should point out.
"You always thought yourself better than me, but no more," the warlock said. "Perhaps I will leave you, as you would have left me—food or prey, or worse. Perhaps you'll be lucky—perhaps the troll won't be the first to find you."
Twilight's throat contorted with fury.
"How does it feel now, Shrew-at-Twilight? To be helpless before me? To know that there is nothing—absolutely nothing you can do to stay my hand?"
The edge of Twilight's lip twitched. Then she brought her good knee up between his legs. Hard.
"Except that," she said.
With a soprano moan, Davoren crumpled into a quivering heap. Twilight fell on him, unable to stand on her broken leg. She slapped away his feeble hands and took the healing potion he had taunted her with. She jabbed an elbow into his face, stunning him once more.
Twilight crawled away and uncorked the flask. She drained the sweet liquor, letting it spread to her broken limbs and ribs. It did not heal her entirely, but the pain receded. With a little exertion, she could stand again.
And as soon as she did, she kicked the warlock in the gut, just to stifle any spells, curses, or whatever else he might have mustered.
"H-how?" Davoren managed as he pawed at her without strength.
"Typical Davoren," Twilight said brokenly. "You may be strong... you may be crafty, and you may be powerful... but you don't know the first rule of poison. Never carry one that can harm you."
The warlock's face twisted in a mixture of agony and fury. Dark, perverse words started to form on his lips.
Twilight put a stop to that with her boot. "You'd be surprised the tolerance a wench can build with a century on her hands."
In reply, Davoren spat a pair of incisors.
"What biting wit," Twilight noted. Then she coughed and almost fell. The healing helped, but there was little enough a single potion could do for ribs as broken as hers.
Without the fear of the warlock striking her down from behind, she limped toward Betrayal. Where it lay, shadows flickered along its edge, and she remembered its former wielder. Her eyes grew bleary for a heartbeat, but only for a heartbeat.
"Thtop!" Davoren commanded, with Asmodeus's authority.
But Twilight was unmoved. Of her own will, she stopped and turned halfway to look.
"You neeth me," he said through blood and spittle, his voice slurred without some of his teeth. "My power—to ethcape thith plathe. You'll never make it witho'w help!"
"A good point." She pulled the amulet over her head—so it could find her. "Ruukthalmuramaxamin!" she called. "Hear me! I have a new bargain for you."
As gold energy began to circle around her, Davoren's face sank. "Whore!" he spat. "You had beth watch over your thoulder—my mathter never forgeth a foe! I'll take pleathure in watching you die, like I did with that gold weathel and her corpth of a mate."
Twilight paused. "Hold, Ruuk," she said, dropping the chain back to her neck. The magic faded, and Davoren chuckled—with a cough.
As the elf limped to where Davoren's stiletto lay, gripping her bleeding side, she listened to Davoren laying out his plans for her humiliating demise. She was amused.
As she crossed into the hall, her shadow broke from its spell and hissed back around her, its touch like a chilling caress. Twilight almost took comfort in it.
"Filliken! Trollop! Thuccubuth!" he roared. "I'll thow you! I'll burn a hole in your thull—an keep you alive, begging! Athmodeuth will have hith due tribute by my hand! Your trickery ith nothing to my art!"
Twilight slipped the bloody stiletto up the sleeve of her good arm. Then she tipped up Betrayal with her toe. Tilted,
it sparkled hotly in the torchlight. She thought about running him through, but every way she looked at it, it just seemed too honorable.
She settled for stabbing him in the gut.
Davoren's jabbering turned frantic. "Juth like them. Juth like them all! I'm better than you!" Twilight heard the madness in his voice. Blood poured from his lips and his arm reached for her. "I'll kill you—I'll kill you—/W/you!"
Then she bent, not without effort, and selected a nice, heavy rock. She smiled. "Not if I crush all your fingers first."
Surrounded by candles of human fat, kneeling on blankets of skin, Lord Divergence prayed to the demon prince. He demanded power rather than begged. Demogorgon would give nothing to the weak.
And the fiend was pleased with its servant, granting greater powers than it had before. A new skill, a new talent came into Gestal's mind, and his jaw dropped. It was a complex ritual, calling upon his patron in a lengthy invocation, but when it was done...
If Twilight did not respond as he wished by her own will, certain powers could be brought into play from which not even her trivial trickster god could save her.
Some time later, sharn magic deposited Twilight just outside the temple of Amauntor, Netherese god of the sun. Once Twilight had found it odd that a sharn would make its home in such a place—in order and in the dark—but now she found it fitting.
Golden light sparked and hissed around her, matrices and lattices of Art that served their purpose, then were gone. She felt the touch of order, so foreign to her free spirit, sliding away from her. The light flickered off the sapphire pendant hanging from her fist, then left her in darkness—not a barrier to her darksight.
She slipped her amulet back on, settling into its false security.
Twilight shivered, but would not allow something tiny like discomfort to stay her. Too many had died—too many friends had left her, stolen by Gestal.
And yet within that murderer, that horrible monster, she had glimpsed a spirit like hers. Abused, hated, and confused, surviving by lies. Like her, and like Davoren, too.
Seemingly of one mind, the doors to the temple ground open, scraping against the cavern floor as over bones. They thundered against the walls like the tolling of doom. As hesitant as if she were signing a death warrant, Twilight walked through that mighty portal.
As she did, she casually wiped Davoren's blood from Betrayal. A gleam of white shone through the gray, as though the troll's burning blood had eaten away a casing of rust, revealing a pure heart.
Twilight found that amusing. It certainly would not describe her.
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 lizatds 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 het 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 heattbeat 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. 1 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 rothe1 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 sham'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.
Thenhe 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 sham'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 impo-tently 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.
CHAPTER Twenty-Nine
She sat there for a long time. Then, after what seemed days, or years, a shadow loomed at the door, making panting and wheezing sounds.
If the elf heard the shadow, she made no sign. She merely sat there, cradling her friend in silence. The blood had ceased to flow, and the places where it had drenched the elf s garments had hardened into a firm hold. They might have been bound together, she and the corpse, their blood and flesh and hearts linked.
Not that it would matter to the creature stalking her.
It was ravaged: battered, bruised, broken in arm, leg, and rib. A withered left arm, formerly muscular and sleek, flopped uselessly at its side. The cracked and poorly mended legs propelled it at a ponderous gait, half-limping, half-sliding. The once smooth body had been ruined beyond repair.
The thing loomed over Twilight where she sat, neat the pit full of dying flames and beneath menacing, stained spikes. It reached for her shoulder with one arm.
"Gargan..." she murmured.
It growled low. She turned her head and looked up without comprehension.
"Kill you! Kill you, pretty elf!" the troll spat, showering the elf s face with ribbons of bile and spittle. His mad eyes streamed
tears and blood in equal measure. The troll raised the splintered warhammer high in his spindly arm. "You no kill Tlork! Tlork kill you! Tlork kill you!"
A black blade burst from his chest and Tlork froze. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then blood and acid leaked from the wound, hissing down to the ground, where they spattered only a thumb's breadth from the elf s bare feet. She seemed not to notice.
Then, without a word, Tlork stumbled back, wrenched away.
The troll gave a shriek as he went, his slowly reknitting limbs flailing on all sides, but to no avail. The blade ripped free and scythed about, cutting Tlork's torso in two. Over the edge the halved troll went, shrugged from the blade, into the twin pits of Demogorgon's throats. The troll screamed and roared and babbled all the way down, until the beast thudded to a rest, shaking the chamber. There he lay coughing and retching, impaled on a dozen man-high spikes.
Foxdaughter blinked up at her savior.
"Shouldnot,"said Gargan, fighting for breath, "gloat."
At the lip of the tunnel that led out of Demogorgon's depths, Twilight shut her eyes against the fearsome desert wind. Gargan, bruised and bleeding from dozens of wounds, limped at her side, his arm wrapped protectively around her slim shoulders. His face, despite a single eye that had swollen shut, shone with serenity, as always.
How Twilight envied that, and always would.
"Youpause,"the goliath said, looking away. "Come."
"Where?" Twilight asked softly, tonelessly.
"I do not know,"said Gargan. "But we must go."
Twilight's eyes closed. "Ever onward," she whispered. "Ever away."
Even when they had climbed the stones and stood at the edge of the desert, with nothing around them for as far as they could see, the elf could still feel him—still taste his lips, sense
his fingers tracing her spine, hear his loving whisper. Twilight wanted to struggle, to break away from Gargan's grasp and run back down that tunnel.
"You set him free, Foxdaughter," said Gargan, as he embraced her tightly.
Twilight bit her lip, uncertain.
"Why did you come for me?" She looked at him. "Your pattern? Your fate?"
Gargan shrugged. "You are the Fox."
Then he began to hum—a song of goliaths, she realized— and sing. His voice carried her away, far from darkness and blood, toward the distant, white horizon.
He put out his hand.
She smiled.
EPILOGUE
At the bottom of the deepest shaft, broken into thousands of pieces, impaled on dozens of gnarled spikes, the fiend-stitched troll slowly, painfully regenerated.
Yes, it would take days before the bits of torn, greenish flesh could find their way back to each other and grow together once more, but as Tlork lay neither in acid nor in flame, he would eventually be reborn. Only a few universes of pain awaited him in the meantime, but Tlork was used to it. With stoic, brute will, the troll would endure.
For when it was done, Tlork would find that gray-faced thing and his little elf pet and smash them both. Yes, that's what he would do.
If only he could remember what they looked like.
Standing at the top of that shaft, the new master watched the agonizing process, his thoughts dwelling upon this labyrinth built over the fallen Negarath—the halls Demogorgon blessed, the darkness in which vileness dwelt, the depths of madness.
"The Depths of Madness," he said, his voice no longer slurred from missing teeth—teeth that had regrown, thanks to his fiendish powers. "A fitting name, perhaps."
His crimson and black robes were torn, but his wounds
had largely healed. His fingers had grown back, too. Even his hair, formerly wild and tangled beyond the hope of redress, lay slicked back about his temples, except for a few stubborn spikes that hung over his eyebrows. His hands ached, but they would function fully with time, thanks to the potions he had found in Gestal's chambers.
More important was the red-purple flame that brewed around his fist—a reminder of enduring power. The gift of a devil, bought at the price of a soul.
Davoren Hellsheart allowed a tiny smile to play across his gray face. He could still hear the brute Gargan and the cruel Twilight shuffling, leaving the Depths of Madness behind them for the desert. Well, he was rid of them; they had served their purpose by destroying not one, but both of the Depths' former masters.
"I don't need them," he said to himself. "I don't need anyone."
Despite his faith in his lord Asmodeus—his confidence in success—Davoren was a bit relieved at the demise of both Gestal and Ruukthalmuramaxamin. He had thought for certain that he would have to challenge one ot the other—preferably Gestal, he had thought until he had seen the powers of chaos triumph over the sharn. But the murderess and her thrall had secured for him a victory beyond his expectations. Somehow, he convinced himself that it had been his victory—that he'd manipulated them. He had won the spoils, had he not? This dungeon—the Depths.
As for Twilight and Gargan, he hoped the desert would kill them—he did not relish facing either again. Not because they could beat him—oh no—but because he hated them both so much.
"They are weak," he assured himself. He did not need them. "Let them die if they will. They shall not return." He had other concerns.
Asmodeus demanded power, influence, and worship, and he intended to give the devil lord all that and more. His first sacrifices would be the servitors of Demogorgon that had survived
Lord Gestal's fall—the lizardmen. Then he would enslave the golems that had survived the sharn. They would make excellent servants. The grimlocks, as well, even if they did not understand order. As for the abeil—sacrifices.
And by the time he used up all the eligible sacrifices, Davoren intended to have reasoned out the magical operation of the portals that led into this place. Why waste good slaves when innocent, naive, goodly treasure hunters could so easily be had?
They deserved this. They all did, for what they and their kind had done to him.
"M-M-Master?" an echoing voice came from the shaft.
The troll had pulled himself together sufficiently to speak, though Davoren found that unpleasant. Soon enough, Tlork would be whining for food.
Davoren thought. Food was not a small matter. He was not about to stoop to the sludge the lizardfolk ate. The abeil, he doubted, would do any better. But Gestal had survived in this place, so there had to be some source of food and water. Davoren hoped he would not be forced into cannibalism. That turned his stomach. Perhaps the strange mushrooms he had glimpsed deeper in the city, with Twilight...
Davoren winced. Twilight. His groin still ached where she had kneed him.
How cruel she had been. She'd always thought herself better than him, never recognizing his talents, never even admitting his usefulness. Instead, she'd used him, like the spiteful bitch she was. And there had been nothing he could do about it. Nothing.
They would have laughed at him. All of them. His mother, his sisters, the other children, but Davoren didn't fear that. He'd made sure they would never laugh again. AH of them. The stilettos he carried in his gauntlets still smelled of that blood—the one he had left, anyway. The other...
"Come to think of it," the warlock mused, "what happened to that knife? Shouldn't leave something like that lying around where..."
Then it occurred to him. Davoren had always possessed a quick and powerful mind, and it was a credit to the depth of this mystery that he hadn't reasoned it out.
It all made sense to him then, following a single key: Twilight's Shroud.
If Liet had been Gestal, it would have been a simple matter to arrange ambushes as they walked, but Gestal had vanished when the sham's forces attacked—surely escaped to await Ruukthalmuramaxamin's next move. But if he had been gone, how had Gestal known when and where Twilight approached from the Depths to challenge him?
He could not have scried Twilight through her amulet. How had he still followed their every move after "Liet" had disappeared?
For that matter, how had he defeated Slip's truth scrying? It did not seem that Gestal had been able to cast his spells through the miserable Liet.
There was only one answer, only one possible solution: the only one who remained unaccounted for.
He knew who had left the bloody Asson doll for Taslin. He knew who had attacked Twilight—the only one who could have opened that locked door.
He thought Gestal had spared her in their confrontation, but he had been wrong. He knew now why, when they had first met, she had seemed to recognize "Liet," if only for an instant, before pretending they had never met.
And he knew then his greatest, final mistake.
He heard a little squishing sound, as of a frog hopping on stone. Davoren looked down and saw a pair of severed hands rocking next to his feet. Their slender fingers and golden skin left no question as to their origin. His eyes widened and his fingers blazed.
Then he felt something cold in his side and a growing wetness soaking his tunic. Irritated that perhaps he had brushed something damp, he moved reflexively to touch the spot but found that his hands would not obey. They shuddered, deprived of strength. Then they froze, as the locklimb venom seized his muscles.
"Master?" the demon-troll asked again. "Master, me hungry."
Davoren Hellsheart could reply only with the blood that leaked down his chin. Then his balance was gone and he pitched forward, only to tumble down the shaft into darkness and the gullet of a regenerating troll.
Through the darkness, he heard words. "Thank Master," Tlork murmured.
"Welcome," said a soft, high-pitched voice.
Tlork started to eat.
Paralyzed, Davoren could not even scream.
"Thank Master." "Welcome," she said.
It wasn't true, after all. She wasn't the creature's master, or rather, she was, now that her master—the lord of Divergence, first servant of the Prince of Demons—was dead.
She had betrayed him, of course, but well did it serve, for he had taken her eyes—eyes he had used so many times, just as he had used her body. And now, with the mad sharn out of the way, she ruled the Depths alone, and she'd make some changes.
Soon, she would root out all the allies of the sharn—enslave the golems that had served him, and poison and burn the abeil colony that protected his temple.
She would not limit the purification to Negarath: the grim-locks, deprived of their god, neared the end of their usefulness. If they would not convert to the worship of the Fanged Lord, she would have them destroyed, to make way for greater, stronger servants.
It was she who had been meant to rule all, she who had led countless adventurers to their deaths. Now she alone survived— always survived. She could make it alone.
Alone, alone, alone.
She might have kept the warlock at least. He'd have been fun, but ultimately unfulfilling. Too self-absorbed, always thinking about his parents, and the children laughing, and the blood.
She'd read him easily, just like the fox before she'd recovered the shrouding pendant.
That time had been brief, but she'd been able to unlock the elf s mind and all her secrets had opened to the mistress, even some Gestal had never known.
Ah, Ilira. Barking like a dog, begging for attention, terrified unto death of her own insignificance. What lovely things she could have...
Well, can't have all the dolls you want, she supposed.
She'd get lonely, but she'd get over it. Plenty of playmates remained to lure here, more lives to collect, and now that she had the blood pool and the portals...
It was she who had fled the wrath of her people, she who had shifted the blame for her actions onto that innocent gnome's shoulders, she who had fled Crimel as the guards' arrows had pierced his body and their skiprocks shattered his bones.
She had never felt whole. There had always been something missing, something that one of the naive priests of the Halfling Bitch-Mother might have called justice, if such a vain and outdated concept could be formulated. Perhaps now, though, listening to those crunching,- slurping sounds from below, she understood justice, or better—Tightness.
Then she turned the bloody holes in her face toward the lip of the shaft, down to where the troll—loyal and strong, if dim and slow-witted—feasted upon the torn, shuddering carcass of the hateful disciple of the Devil King. She could not see, but by the blessings of the master, she could read minds without eyes. She felt Davoren, and Tlork, and loved it.
A smile curled onto her acid-burned features—a slight satisfaction, really.
For the first time in her life, Daltyrex Blacksoul—Mistress of the Depths of Madness and favored thrall of the Demon Prince, sometimes called Slip—had done something right.