He sweated despite the cold. They saw nothing of interest for a league and the flat, featureless landscape made distance hard to estimate. The sound of still more collapsing stone and the ever present cloud of dust ahead kept them roughly oriented.
Time weighed on Cale. He pressed the pace until all three men were soaked in sweat and gasping.
Ahead, mounds dotted the landscape like burial cairns. Eventually the mounds took shape and Cale recognized them for what they were-crumbling structures poking from the dried earth, ghostly hillocks lit by lightning flashes and covered in the dust of a destroyed world. Little remained, but he discerned partially collapsed domes, crumbling arches, hollow columns.
"Your goddess is a bitch," Riven said to Rivalen.
Rivalen said nothing, merely eyed the wreckage of a ruined world. A minor divination fell from his lips and, presumably led by its pull, he stopped from time to time to pick at this or that in the black sand. He finally lifted what he had sought-a coin of black metal, the markings upon it nearly worn away entirely.
"You collecting trophies, Shadovar?" Riven asked.
"Reminders," Rivalen said, and the coin vanished into his shadows.
The dying sun made its way across the dark sky as the three men made their way across the dark world. The ruins grew more frequent as they progressed and Cale thought they might have been moving through the remains of a city. The skeletons of some buildings remained standing here and there, lonely, hollowed out testaments to the remorselessness of time and Shar.
Holding his holy symbol in hand, Rivalen whispered imprecations and Cale could not tell if the prince was awed or appalled.
Bones appeared in the dust. First just a few-a thighbone jutting from the earth, a skull leering from the ruins-but then more and more. Soon they couldn't take a step without walking over remains.
"This place is a graveyard," Riven said.
It was as if an entire city had been murdered at a stroke and the bodies left to rot in the open. Cale could not help but think of Ordulin.
"Keep moving," he said.
The wind kicked up, moaned.
"That's not the wind," Riven said, his eye narrowed.
The three men stopped and closed the distance between them. Shadows swirled around both Cale and Rivalen.
The moans, prolonged and agonized, sounded distant, muted, as if heard through thick stone walls. Cale looked around, up, and down. He stared at the black ground beneath his feet.
"Dark," he said.
"Ready yourselves," Rivalen said, his holy symbol dangling on its chain from his left hand. "Not all life is gone from this place. Not yet."
As if summoned by his words, the spirits of the dead rose from the corpse of Ephyras. Hundreds, thousands of gray, translucent forms floated out of the barren earth all around them and filled the sky. Their forms were humanlike, though slighter, with elongated heads and tiny ears. Their overlarge eyes were as dead and hollow as their world. Despairing moans issued from the holes of their mouths.
They were everywhere.
"Spectres," Rivalen said, and started to cast a spell.
Haunted, despair-filled faces fixed on the three men. The specters' miens twisted with hate and the moans turned from agonized to rage-filled.
Cale reached through Rivalen's shadows and grabbed him by the cloak, interrupting the casting.
"We cannot fight this many. We hold them at bay and keep moving. The temple is why we're here."
Rivalen's eyes flashed with anger for a moment before he nodded.
Cale held his mask in a sweaty hand, and the shadows around Rivalen's flesh curled around it. Riven empowered his blades until they bled shadows. The specters swarmed forward from all sides, a fog of dead souls so thick it obscured their vision.
Cale held Weaveshear forth in both hands, called upon Mask, and channeled divine power through the blade. Shadows poured from it, expanded, and formed a hemisphere of translucent darkness around the three men, under their feet.
Cale braced himself as the specters crashed into it by the tens, by the hundreds. He staggered under the onslaught and the sphere began to collapse inward. The moans and wails grew louder.
One of the specters stuck his hand through the sphere, tore open a gash about as long as a short sword, and started to squirm through. Hundreds of others lined up behind him, screaming, clawing at one another to get through.
Riven bounded forward, blades whirling. He caught the specter halfway through, and slashed it across the arms and shoulders. He dived under its incorporeal touch, drove both sabres up through its chest, and it dissipated with a dying moan. The other specters tried pushing through the hole.
"Rivalen!" Cale shouted, and held out his left hand, his shadow hand.
Rivalen took it in his own, called upon Shar and joined his power to Cale's, to Mask's. The sphere darkened and the gash resealed, severing in twain a specter caught halfway through the opening.
"Keep moving!" Cale said. He tried to ignore the unexpected kinship he felt with Rivalen. The divine power they each channeled meshed comfortably, much more so than Cale had ever felt when joining his power with Jak's. Cale chose not to ponder what it might mean.
The specters thronged around the hemisphere. Their moans drowned out the wind and their forms nearly blotted out visibility. Twisted faces, malformed mouths, and dead eyes pressed against the barrier. Cale had to peer through and past their translucent forms to keep his bearings. The intermittent flashes of lightning helped.
They moved as rapidly as they could, attracting more and more specters as they went. Sweat beaded Cale's brow and dripped into his eyes. Rivalen said nothing, merely gritted his teeth, held his holy symbol aloft, and joined his power to Cale's. Shadows poured from both of them to replenish the hemisphere as it weakened here or there.
The press of the undead caused Cale's head to ache. His body weakened with each step. His breath came hard. He felt like he was yoked to a wagon.
"I am failing," Cale said.
Riven pulled threads of darkness from the air, spiraled them around his fingers, and touched them to Cale. Healing energy poured into him, refreshed his mind, renewed his strength.
"Holding?" Riven asked.
"For now."
Cale looked at Rivalen, who also looked strained.
"Do what you can for him, too," Cale said.
"The Hells with him," Riven said softly.
"If he dies, we die. I cannot do this alone."
Riven frowned, went to Rivalen's side, and touched the prince with healing energy. He didn't wait for thanks or acknowledgement, and Rivalen offered neither.
The hemisphere shrank incrementally as they moved across a desert of bones and ruins. The moans of the specters wormed through Cale's ears to his skull, causing his temples to pound. The ground vibrated with the distant rumble of collapsing earth.
"What the Hells is that?" Riven asked, bracing himself against another tremor.
Cale could hardly see through the strain, the sweat, could hardly hear through the wind and moans. "How close are we, Riven? We cannot hold this much longer."
As if to prove his point, one side of the hemisphere collapsed, pressed in like a squeezed waterskin. He and Rivalen both groaned, sagged, channeled what power they had left.
The specters swarmed, but the border of divine power held-misshapen, failing, but intact for the moment. The moans of despair turned to wails of frustration.
Riven moved to the edge of the barrier and peered through the darkness, through the specters. Only the veil of Cale and Rivalen's power separated the assassin from hundreds of undead. The specters, driven mad by the proximity of their prey, scrabbled against the hemisphere, moaning desperately.
"I see it." Riven gave a start, went pale. "Dark, Cale. The world is disappearing behind it."