At first she relied on memory to tell her which twists and turns would take her closer to the surface. Yet as she went, recall began to fail her. Finally she reached a fork in the tunnel and came to a dead halt. Which way led up to the vale? Desperately she fought off panic and concentrated, searching for any sign—a wisp of cool air, a gentle upward slope—that might indicate which passage would take her back to the surface. She detected nothing. Numbers continued to tumble from her cracked lips.
“… eight hundred sixteen … eight hundred seventeen …”
She could hesitate no longer. Guessing blindly, she moved toward the left-hand passage. After a moment she faltered. No—this felt wrong. She turned, retraced her steps, and plunged into the right-hand passage. There was no more time to consider her decision. She careened down the tunnel at a dead run.
She was brought up short as the passage ended in a stone wall. Something sinuous brushed against her cheek, and she batted the thing away. With a start, she realized it was a rope. She craned her neck. Above, hovering in the blackness, were three dim circles of gray light. The shaft that led to the surface!
“… one thousand.”
Time was up. Mari cast a nervous glance at the dim tunnel behind her. Hand over hand, she heaved herself up the rope.
She was halfway up when a sound like rumbling thunder echoed from the labyrinth below. Mari froze. Then, biting her lip, she climbed faster. Her arms ached with effort. A few moments later, she heard the first onrush of sound.
“Damn it, Al’maren!” she snarled to herself. “Climb!”
Clenching her jaw, she kept moving. Her shoulders were on fire now, and the rope bit painfully into her blistered hands. Her palms bled, making the rope slippery. She screamed as she slipped down several feet, barely managing to catch herself. The rushing had grown to a low rumbling. A puff of warm, moist air ruffled her hair.
The openings were close now. The rumbling became a stentorian roar, like the sound of an angry river crashing over jagged rapids. Mari reached up and clutched the edge of one of the openings. The roaring filled her mind, drowning out her terror. Forcing her trembling arms to function, she pulled herself upward. Sharp rock sliced her hands. With a cry of pain and desperation, she heaved herself up and out of the hole, then rolled away from the stone outcrop.
A heartbeat later, three geysers of boiling hot steam and molten rock burst from the fissures like glowing pillars reaching skyward. At the same moment, three vast, throbbing notes of music rang out. Roiling jets of steam poached the skin of Mari’s cheek as she scrambled away from the fissures. Painfully, she pulled herself to her knees, staring at the geysers in awe. Like air through the holes of a flute, each of the columns of steam and melted rock piped a single deep tone.
When the three tones blended with the dissonant sounds made by the vale’s other steaming fissures, a thrumming music filled the air: wild, chaotic, and incomprehensibly enormous. It was like nothing Mari had ever heard before—a music as old as time, imprisoned for a thousand years, free once more.
The Valesong.
So, Morhion thought darkly, this is how it ends.
He braced his shoulders, watching grimly as the last shadevar flew toward him across the vale. Then three fiery columns of steam and lava burst out of the ground, shooting toward the iron gray sky. This time, the shadowsteed was not swift enough to correct its course. With shrill screams, beast and shadevar flew directly into the surging pillars. Roiling steam ripped the shadowsteed’s midnight wings to shreds while molten slag engulfed the shadevar. In a fiery blaze, the two monsters plummeted through the air, crashing to the ground with violent force. When the swirling steam cleared, all that remained of the two creatures was a smoking heap of sludge. The last of the shadevari was dead.
That was when Morhion heard the Valesong.
An inhuman scream sounded. The mage whirled around and stared in horror. Before the basalt throne, the shadowking writhed in agony. The creature flapped dark wings spasmodically, clenching clawed fingers as if struggling with an invisible foe. Against the shadowking’s chest, the Shadowstar pulsated wildly in time to the throbbing music of the Valesong. In moments the star-shaped lump of metal glowed white-hot, sizzling as it burned into the shadowking’s flesh. Then, all at once, the medallion turned to liquid; glowing droplets of metal fell to pool before the throne.
As the Shadowstar melted, the shadowking spread its impossibly long arms in an anguished gesture. It tilted its head back as if to let out a bellowing howl of outrage, yet all that issued from its gaping maw was silence. The shadowking straightened. For a second, Morhion thought it gazed at him with faded green eyes, eyes filled with a look of unspeakable sorrow. Then, like a felled tree, the onyx creature toppled to the hard stone platform in front of the throne.
The shadowking was dead.
Mari reached the base of the pinnacle just as Ferret and Kellen, pale and wide eyed, crawled from their hiding place. The thief eyed Mari critically. Her clothing had been reduced to filthy rags that clung wetly to her body. Soot and blood smudged her face; her hair was a tangled rat’s-nest.
“By Shar above,” Ferret swore with a low whistle, “you look like a she-ore after a bad night of drinking, Mari.”
“Thanks, Ferret,” she replied with a weak smile. “You sure know how to compliment a girl.” Abruptly she slumped toward the ground. Ferret and Kellen rushed forward to support her.
“I think something has happened up there,” Kellen said quietly, gazing toward the summit.
“Maybe we should go see,” Ferret suggested, his beady eyes shifting nervously.
Mari agreed. Together, the three ascended the spiral staircase. They reached the pinnacle’s summit to see Morhion kneeling before the basalt throne. Prostrate beside him was a huge, dark creature.
“It’s dead,” Morhion said without looking up, his voice haggard. “He’s dead.”
Mari choked back tears. They had saved the world from the darkness of a second shadowking. Yet it was no victory to her. Caledan was gone, and she felt utterly hollow. Reluctantly, her eyes moved to the fallen shadowking. The dark body, once gleaming with sinuous life, now seemed merely a shell, the horned countenance a mask.
“I’m sorry, Mari,” Ferret said softly, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder.
She gave the thief a grateful look, then limped toward Morhion. Reaching down, she gripped the mage’s hand, pulling him to his feet. “Come,” she said, leading him away from the throne. “Let’s be gone from this place. There is nothing left for us here.”
“Wait.”
Mari looked up in surprise. It was Kellen. In his small hands he clutched the obsidian pipes, the instrument forged by Caledan’s shadow magic.
“I would like to play a song for my father.”
A sharp pang pierced Mari’s chest. For the second time now, she realized, Kellen had witnessed a parent destroyed by the dark magic of a shadowking. Yet his round face was calm, like a cherub carved of alabaster. Somehow, Mari knew, this child was stronger than any of them.
“Of course,” she murmured.
Kellen approached the fallen figure before the throne and lifted the glossy black pipes to his lips. For a moment he hesitated. A hush fell over the crater. Even the Valesong seemed to recede into the distance. It was as if the blasted land itself held its breath, waiting for him to play. Then play he did.
A melody rose from the pipes, gentle, mournful, and achingly beautiful in its simplicity. The voice of the pipes was so sweet and expressive that it seemed almost human, and Mari half-believed that, if she listened carefully, she could hear words in the music: