"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-kill 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 lizards and other perils of the depths, Twilight did not hesitate to call upon the powers Erevan granted. With his power to silence her moves and keep herself shrouded, she descended to Tlork's dungeon, then ascended past the limits of the mythallar.
"I see, Chameleon," she said. "You know what I want, and you are with me-whether I ask for your aid or not. Guide me through this, and I won't curse you again. I might even speak well of you-only in private, of course."
No response came, and though Twilight had never expected one in the past, now she wondered.
Her shadow could not speak, but its eyeless gaze could convey emotions and thoughts just as well as words. It sent Twilight a wry, bemused glance, then flitted off into the darkness ahead. Twilight could only see it thanks to the darksight Neveren had taught her.
Darkness ahead and darkness behind, Twilight thought. No light to cast a shadow. She wondered if the absence of light meant the absence of hope-not that it mattered.
Life for Twilight had never been a matter of hope.
Twilight reached the hall with the perverse murals, at the peak of Gestal's domain. The tunnel she and Gargan had come through from the surface beckoned just a few paces to her right, cunningly hidden behind stalagmites just so, where one could find it only if one knew where to look.
She saw no one in the chamber so she went in, her shadow flickering at her feet. The crevasse into which Gargan and Tlork had fallen tore the chamber in two, leaving a small ledge on the far end. A little trickle of red light, from flames, bled from a crease in the wall-a door.
Twilight assumed this was the entrance to Gestal's chapel. Now she just had to get there. She kept to the walls of the chamber and edged close to the crevasse. Moonlight filtered in through the crack overhead, and sand trickled down.
Gestal's magic had split the hall from wall to wall, and the gap was near to two long dagger casts in width. Perhaps Gargan could have jumped the distance, but Twilight could do nothing of the sort, even with the leaping boots.
A twinge. Gargan…
A simple matter, Twilight reasoned. The other side wasn't far-she could simply shadowjump across. Except, of course, that the chamber was black as pitch. She could see only with the darksight. Other than the opening where she and Gargan had come down, there were no shadows-not here, not on the other side.
Twilight sighed. "Radiant."
She sent her animate shadow across to keep watch, then searched along the wall. Indeed, there were handholds and footholds, and a small section of rock still connected the two parts of the chamber. The crevasse had torn its way into the wall as well, and most of the rock Twilight could have climbed across had disintegrated and fallen off into darkness. To her right, the gap extended thirty hands up before coming together for about the length of Twilight's forearm and ending at the ceiling.
"Quite radiant," Twilight mused as she unbuckled her sword belt. No use complaining about fate. Unless she wanted to turn back now, that span of rock was her only chance.
Twilight tossed Betrayal across the crevasse. It clattered and rolled to a rest against the wall. Then she took off her leather glove and boots, which she sent over as well. The crossbow was too fragile to toss, so she looped its sling around her neck. She thought to throw Davoren's stiletto across as well, but a better use occurred to her. She wiped it on her bloody blouse and put it between her teeth. Then she retrieved some dust from the floor and ground it between her hands.
Ready.
With skills that predated her service to Erevan, predated her apprenticeship-and affair-with Neveren, and even predated her name, Twilight made her way up the wall as deftly as a spider. Her barely healed arm hurt, but she could stand it. Climbing up was easy. Getting across would be more complicated.