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 her 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 heartbeat 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.