"Again."
Nothing.
Variance remained silent, but Keph repeated the invocation without her prompting. He closed his eyes, concentrating on combining words, gesture, and faith.
Shar grant me this, he begged his newly-embraced deity silently. My heart is true. I've proven myself, haven't I?
Dimly, he heard Variance chanting under her breath. Different words, maybe a new prayer. He tried to put it out of his mind and pour everything he had into the orison. His knees started to ache, cold seeping up into them from the stone. He did his best to ignore the pain. He dredged up every memory of indignity suffered at the hands of his parents, his sister and brother, laying them before the living darkness.
Take all this, he thought, take it and give me your power!
His words became mechanical, his memories a raw sore on his soul, but still the darkness was impassive. Everything he sent into it simply vanished, swallowed.
Until the darkness stirred.
Within him, outside of himsomething shifted. Keph's eyes snapped open.
"Mistress of the Night, guide me!" he called.
A force swept through him, cold, deep, and terrible. It was like the blessing that Bolan had invoked over him, but different because it welled up from within his very soul and sucked his breath away. Keph choked and fell forward, skinning the palms of his hands. Deep, ragged gasps filled his lungs once more. Just breathing caused him pain, but he didn't care.
Clarity filled his mind, a perfect void from which he saw everything around him. Shar was with him. The Lady of Loss was ready to guide his hands, to inspire him with certainty like night itself.
The clarity only lasted a moment, but Keph knew it would linger on in his heart. He looked up at Variance.
"I did it," he gasped. "I called on Shar." He sucked in another breath and elation burst inside of him. "I cast a spell!" Variance reached down a hand to help him up, but he just grabbed it and kissed her fingers. "Thank you!"
"Don't thank me," said Variance. "Thank the Dark Goddess."
The priestess was smiling, however. She twisted her hand, reversing the grip, and pulled Keph to his feet with surprising strength.
The shadows she had summoned dispersed. The cultists surrounded them. They were staring in aweat him, Keph realized. Shar's newest devotee had suddenly surpassed them all.
Bolan was staring as well, though not in awe. His eyes were dark, cold pits in his flawless face. Keph flinched back from his anger, but Variance met the priest's gaze boldly.
"Have respect, Bolan," she said. "You may be looking at your successor."
Bolan's face didn't move, but he managed to turn his response into a sneer. "A tiny magic, Keph. Do you think it will be enough to save you when a Selunite werewolf goes for your throat?"
There was more than disdain in his voice, though. Maybe it was some lingering touch of clarity, but Keph was certain that he heard a trace of fear as well.
He laughed.
A shadow flickered over Bolan's face and he whirled away. Variance's hand tightened on Keph's.
"Don't mock him," she said. "He's right. An orison is nothing."
"No," said Keph, "it's everything." He bowed deeply to her. "Ask me anything, Variance, and I would do it. That's the debt I owe you."
His heart and soul were alive, burning with a fierce, dark joy. Maybe it had been only an orison, but it meant that Strasus was wrong. He had magic. ft
CHAPTER 6
Your lies have given the boy confidence," Bolan observed.
Variance turned from watching the tunnel down which Keph and the other cultists had departed. Keph was laughing and joking with the cultists he knew, the ones Jarull had introduced him to. The energy within the young man was raw. He would do something dark that night and call it an honor to Shar. She felt a certain pride.
"Which bothers you more, Bolan?" she asked. "His confidence or my lies?
"His confidence," the alchemist said promptly. "It's unseemly. Shar teaches hopelessness and desperation. 'Never follow hope or turn to success, for such things are doomed. Do not strive to better yourself or plan for the future, for the future shall be bleak.'"
Variance looked down at the squat man and said, "That self-defeating dogma is suitable for devotees, but not for priests. If we didn't seek to better ourselves, of what service would we be to Shar? If we can't hope for success, why bother trying?"
Bolan's face betrayed nothing.
"Your lies, then," he said after a moment.
"If lies truly bother you, you have no business being a priest."
Variance walked back toward the altar Bolan had constructed. For a makeshift temple, his creation was actually respectable. The darkness of Shar was true in him.
"It's not the lies as such that bother me," Bolan said as he stomped after her. "His faith is hollow." "His faith is real, Bolan."
"He spoke no oath. You should at least have allowed me that!" He caught her arm, turned her around, looked her in the eye, and said, "And he cast no spell. That was your doing. I could sense it. He can no more work divine magic than he can arcane."
Variance shrugged. "I wasn't lying when I said his will was strong. With time, maybe he could enter Shar's priesthood. But for now" she gave the stunted man the faintest of smiles" he is unmarked. Keph is with Shar, but not o/Shar. He can do things we can't, yet we have a hold over him."
Bolan bent and scooped up the velvet altar cloth.
"It seems to me," he replied as he folded the cloth, "that you're the one with a hold over him. Keph and Jarull both. Every time I meet with that orc-blood Jarull, all I can see in his eyes is you."
Variance raised an eyebrow. Bolan's mouth twitched, the most expression she had ever seen break through his flawless face. He looked away.
"It is your prerogative, Mother Night," he mumbled.
He laid the cloth on the altar and murmured a prayer to Sharnot magical, simply devotional. When he bowed to the altar, Variance bowed as well.
Bolan straightened and began covering the braziers that had illuminated the ceremony. The smell of dying coals and hot metal filled the air. The darkness in the temple deepened.
"I still think we should have had someone who was truly bound to Shar," he said. "Someone to take Cyrume's place." His stained fingers clenched on the lid of a brazier. "I'd like some time alone in my laboratory with that Selunite monster who killed him."
"His remains were scarcely identifiable when I found him," lied Variance. She folded her hands and added sadly, "Shar will bless himhe died in her service. A shame he wasn't able to complete his mission before the Selunite caught him."
She kept her face as expressionless as Bolan's.
The alchemist nodded and said, "The cultists are saying it was an entire pack that took Cyrume down. His martyrdom grows in the telling."
"The better to inspire others," Variance said.
He returned her nod and turned it into an obeisance. "I thank the day that the Temple of Old Night sent you to me, Variance. Together we'll bring Moonshadow Hall low."
Variance smiled and said, "Thank you, Brother Night."
Bolan lit a candle from the embers of the last brazier before he covered it, then turned toward one of the many patches of deep shadow that cloaked his temple. To human eyes, perhaps, the shadow was impenetrable. Variance, however, saw through it easily enough. Beyond lay the narrow passage that Bolanand Variance as well-used to enter and leave the tunnels. The priest probably thought he had a few more secret exits hidden from her. Variance was willing to allow him that delusion.
She followed him through the shadow and into the passage beyond, walking with surefooted ease where Bolan stumbled by flickering candlelight. If he'd guessed over the tendays since she had arrived in Yhaunn and presented herself to him that her confidence in the darkness was anything more than the blessing of Shar, he said nothing.