"Ooze!" Karas shouted. "Behind you."
Valdar laughed. His fingers flicked. A flicker of light danced at the edge of Karas's peripheral vision: a forceblade, forged from moonlight and shadow. It streaked toward Karas-only to slam into his magical shield and explode in a halo of moonlight. Yet in the instant that Karas's attention was diverted, Valdar's other hand whipped forward. Karas felt a blow like a dull punch, then an ache. He looked down: Valdar's black blade had buried itself hilt-deep in Karas's gut.
Valdar started to gloat-only to grunt in pain as the shadow-ooze engulfed his legs, knocking him prone. His face paled to gray, and his eyes widened. He struggled in vain to free himself as the shadow-ooze flowed slowly up his body. "It… You weren't…"
"Bluffing?" Karas edged back, one hand pressed to the blood-slippery shirt where Valdar's dagger had punched home. He knew better than to draw the blade out. It would only do more damage. "No."
He stepped back again, keeping out of range of the bulging shadow-ooze. He sang a prayer to the Masked Lord that should have squeezed the dagger from his gut and stitched the puncture shut.
Nothing happened.
"No use," Valdar gasped. "It's a life stealer."
Worried now, Karas tried to yank the dagger free. It didn't budge. A cold centered in his midriff, and he felt his life spiral down into the blade.
Valdar lay on the floor, the ooze covering all but his shoulders and head. The magic sustaining his disguise bled away, revealing his mask. He tried once more to crawl-painfully, slowly-as the ooze sucked him fully into itself.
"You were wrong," Karas told the vanished Valdar. His voice quavered-and not just from the drain of the magical blade. Yet he kept speaking, if only to convince himself. Blackness crowded the edges of his vision. It wouldn't be long now before he'd go to the Masked Lord's embrace. He gestured weakly at the ooze. "This wasn't… what the Masked Lord… wanted."
The last of Karas's life-force drained away, conveyed by the magical blade to the great Void. He collapsed. His mask fluttered as his last breath left his lungs. Then it settled against his face. Masked Lord, he prayed as he died. Draw me into your eternal Night.
His awareness shifted. He stood on a vast gray plain, neither in light nor in shadow. Beside him was another awareness: Valdar. Oddly, Karas bore the other Nightshadow no ill will.
A voice called to them: a voice that was neither male nor female, but both. A moment later, it became a pool of utter silence. Then song, then silence. Opposites, twined together, yet somehow harmonious.
Side by side, the awarenesses that were Karas and Valdar drifted to the place where the song-silence was coming from. It caught them like leaves and swirled them up toward itself. They drifted in front of an enormous face. Moonlight bathed the face's upper half in shining radiance; the lower half was shadowed in utter blackness. A glint of blue danced across eyes the color of moonstones.
Masked Lord, Karas asked. Is it you?
A feminine laugh rustled the mask.
Masked… Lady? he ventured.
The chuckle deepened, became male.
Hands moved to the blackness that was the deity's mask. Fingers gripped its edges. Karas tensed, and felt the eager anticipation of the awareness that was Valdar.
The mask lifted.
Karas wept.
So did Valdar-and as he did, Karas saw into the other Nightshadow's heart.
The emotions that had prompted their tears were as different as moonlight from shadow.
"Seal those corridors!" Erelda shouted.
She pointed with her sword. Priestesses scrambled to the tunnels leading north, east, and south from the Cavern of Song, raised their holy symbols, and sang. Shimmering barriers, bright as moonlight but steeled with black shadow, sprang into being and sealed the tunnels. These would offer a temporary reprieve. Eilistraee's faithful could pass through, but the barriers would hold the fanatics and their minions at bay.
For a time.
Erelda ran a hand through her sweat-damp hair. The Stronghall had fallen. The Hall of the Priestesses would likely be next. The handful of priestesses and lay worshipers staggering back from that cavern were badly wounded, and most had lost both swords and shields. According to the sending she'd just received, a few priestesses held out in the Hall of Healing, but it had been cut off by a flow of oozes from both the north and the south. The healers were on their own now.
The winding maze of tunnels to the south of the Cavern of Song was rapidly filling with oozes. What had that Nightshadow been thinking, when he ignored the Protector's warning and hurried into them? With oozes choking the Sargauth, she had to assume that the handful of Protectors who'd been patrolling the opposite side of the river were lost. The lay worshipers, meanwhile, crowded fearfully into the Hall of the Faithful. If oozes came bubbling up out of the breach Cavatina had reported and broke through the seals to reach the Cavern of Song, at least the lay worshipers would be out of harm's way.
For the moment, the Cavern of Song was secure. That was a starting point. But they needed to retake the rest of the Promenade, or they'd be trapped here. The Moonspring Portal was on the other side of the shimmering barriers Erelda had just ordered into place. That would be their first objective. They'd fight their way to it, and clear it of the oozes that fouled it. Then reinforcements from the shrines could get through.
"Lady Qilue," she called. "Where are you? The Promenade needs your sword and silver fire. Please answer!"
Nothing. Where was the high priestess? For that matter, where was Rylla? No one had seen either of them since the battle began. If things didn't turn around soon, they were going to lose the temple; she could feel it. The shrines would survive, but without the Promenade it would be a gutted faith. Anger flared. Eilistraee! You can't allow this to happen!
Outwardly, however, Erelda was steel. She directed the last of the wounded to the Hall of the Faithful, and ordered its two northernmost entrances magically sealed with a plug of stone. If the oozes did break through from the north, her Protectors, priestesses, and foot soldiers could fall back through the Cavern of Song without having to defend these entrances. This done, she redeployed her forces, assigning two novices to keep the holy song going at all times, to ensure that Eilistraee's shimmering moonfire still danced through the cavern. She strode from one defender to the next, offering encouragement to her depleted forces.
This was a test, she told herself. A test of her faith. She needed to believe they would triumph. Just as Qilue had let belief sustain her, centuries ago. The Promenade's defenders would rally and drive Ghaunadaur's minions back.
A scream came from the corridor leading to the Moonspring Portal. Erelda turned in time to see a novice and a soldier stagger through the magical barrier. Their arms were melting into slime, their fingers dripping away. A priestess rushed forward to aid them. But before she reached them, they collapsed, screaming, into a bubbling mass of ooze.
The magical barrier wavered as a multicolored sheen that glistened like a soap bubble spread across it. The stone on either side of the tunnel rippled, as if viewed through a heat shimmer. So did the floor and the ceiling. Just behind the barrier, something enormous bubbled forward. A portion of it bulged against the barrier and popped, breaking a hole.