In time, he woke to cold rain spattering his face and hard, wet floor beneath his supine body. He pried open his gummy eyelids. Gray clouds floated directly overhead, but walls rose at the corners of his vision, as if he was in a pit. He tried to lift himself for a better look around but failed. He was horribly weak, and cold deep inside in a way that even his soaked attire couldn't explain.
"Young man!" someone whispered. "Don't move!"
He rolled his head to the side and saw the goodwife with the curly gray hair, who was also lying on the floor.
"Why not?" he whispered back.
"You'll provoke it!"
Somehow Kevin knew without asking what "if was. King Shadow. The lesser phantoms had borne him and his fellow human into the titan's lair. The fancy he'd scrawled inside the Cormyr Gate had more or less come true.
"Did the shadows recapture all of you?" he asked.
"No," the woman said. "Most of us made it out the door."
Kevin surprised himself by smiling. "Helm gave me good value for my penny then. Better than I had any right to expect."
The matron frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"It doesn't matter. Tell me where we are and what's going on."
"We're in a large chamber at the top of the keep. The roof is gone, and this huge… thing apparently makes its lair here."
"Go on."
The lesser shadows dumped us here for the monster to eat when it's ready, the same way you'd put down food for a dog. It already gobbled up Quinn and Evaine while you were unconscious."
"It's not gobbling us at the moment, and if it's not paying attention, perhaps we can slip away."
"It is paying attention. Evaine tried to sneak out, and that's when it snatched her up."
"Oh. All right, I understand. Now try to rest while I figure a way out of this."
"That's mad. If you were facing the way I am, if you could see the creature-".
"Ajandor, the knight I serve, taught me that if a man his head, he can think his way out of almost any peril, and I might as well try. Why not? What do we have to lose?"
The matron smiled. "When you put it that way, lad, not a thing. Think away."
Kevin lay and pondered, wondering what Ajandor would have done in his place, and if the knight had actually come looking for him. Probably not, for by the cold light of this joyless morning, he recognized that the trick he had attempted to play was a puerile one, born out of desperation rather than sense. No doubt the shrewd old man had seen through it at once and simply bade good riddance to the impudent ass who had hoped to gull him.
No, Kevin could only pray that Ajandor would come to his senses by himself, before his one-man campaign against the shadows destroyed him. His squire had another problem to address.
He waited until a little strength seeped back into his muscles, enough, he hoped, to stand, run around, and yell.
"I'm going to distract King Shadow," he said. "You get out of here. I'm hoping the other prisoners will follow your lead."
Her blue eyes widened. "But the shadow will kill you!"
"It's going to do that anyway."
She hesitated. "We'll still have all the smaller shadows, the ones shaped like men and cats and wolves, barring the way out of the fortress."
"Run. Hide. Throw rocks at them. Whatever it takes to get away."
She swallowed. "All right, and may Helm take you into his keeping. The knight you serve must be very proud of you."
Kevin smiled at a pang that had nothing to do with the mauling the shadows had given him. "Well, he used to be. Get ready."
He gave her a moment to gather her strength, then, wishing the shadows had left him his sword, he scrambled to his feet, and spun around.
As the matron had advised him, the room was big and essentially circular, with a ragged hole where the ceiling once had been. Scraps of it were lying about the floor, and painted pentacles adorned the plaster walls. In the middle of the space, taking up a goodly part of it, hulked King Shadow.
Kevin was prepared for the hugeness of the shadow and for the strangeness of its tangled limbs, like fat, flexible feathers writhing in all directions. However, he had had no inkling of the true nature of King Shadow's flesh. He hadn't been able to make it out when the titan drifted past high above his head.
Within the shadow's murky substance flowed human faces distorted and jammed together. Despite the stretching, twisting, and squashing, it was somehow possible to discern their grimaces of agony, madness, and rage. Ilmater's tears, was this what became of the people King Shadow destroyed? Did their souls wind up trapped inside the shadow's body?
Kevin stood frozen with horror as King Shadow reached for him, one amorphous arm dipping down above his head and another curving in on each side. At the last possible moment, the youth snapped out of his paralysis and flung himself backward. The three tentacles closed on empty air, and all the faces inside the titan's body began to rave and howl in a silent cacophony.
Bearing the psychic din as best he could, Kevin made his own noise, shouting and shifting back and forth. King Shadow stretched out more of its members to seize him, and the gray-haired woman jumped up and ran for a doorway. Several other prisoners did the same, and the rippling hillock of a shadow ignored them all.
Kevin grinned. It was satisfying to have played a trick that worked, even if it was going to cost him his life.
King Shadow clubbed at him with blows that flattened its boneless arms and shook the floor. The squire dodged and dodged again, knowing it was only a matter of time before one of the tentacles connected. Once his evasions carried him near a doorway, and he dashed for it. The shadow extruded a great slab of itself between its prey and the exit, cutting him off as effectively as a wall.
Something shattered, flashed, and roared on top of King Shadow, and all the faces inside the devil shrieked in agony, for the immense phantom wore a crown of crackling blue and yellow flame. Kevin looked up at the hole in the ceiling, where Ajandor was preparing to throw another keg of oil. Unlike the first, this one didn't need a fuse. When it broke, the contents would feed the fire that was already burning.
Ajandor heaved the barrel, and the conflagration boomed and flared higher. A man drenched in burning oil would likely thrash about and expire, but the titan floated up toward its tormentor. The falling raindrops shone yellow in the firelight.
Kevin picked up chunks of debris and hurled them at the shadow. Several of the smaller phantoms appeared along the edge of the hole. Apparently trusting them to dispose of Ajandor, King Shadow dropped back onto the floor to confront the squire, who wished he hadn't just wasted his only chance to bolt.
Its ragged tendrils squirming, King Shadow spread itself to either side of Kevin, pinning him against the wall. The titan looked like a pair of hands poised to catch a ball, albeit with fire dancing on the upper surfaces and spatters of burning oil dripping off the sides.
Kevin saw no possibility of escape, so he spat at King Shadow. It was a feeble gesture, but better than nothing.
The twin masses of shadow-stuff began to close on him like the covers of a book, then Gray Dancer fell at his feet, hitting the floor with a clank.
Kevin stooped and grabbed the mithral sword by its leather-wrapped hilt. He was sure that Ajandor had dropped Gray Dancer intentionally, to give his fosterling some semblance of a fighting chance, even though the knight needed the weapon himself to battle his own opponents.
The squire came on guard, and a wave of vitality washed the soreness and weakness out of his muscles. Gray Dancer was bolstering his strength. Ajandor had occasionally permitted him to handle the blade, but it had never done anything like this. Apparently it took a foe to wake its magic.
The adversary in question had faltered momentarily when the sword fell between them, but now the twin arms of its V-shape began to converge once more. The squire ran to the member on the right and swung Gray Dancer in a vertical cut.