"Dawn follows night," he said to himself. "Always."
Animals fled before the storm as though it were a forest fire-birds, rabbits, deer, foxes. The creatures broke around the company, howling, chittering, squeaking.
Regg said nothing to his company. He didn't need to. None wavered. They served the Morninglord and feared no darkness.
The wall of the Shadowstorm loomed before them, tangible, a black veil that hung across the world, separating the before from the after. It pulsed and expanded as they watched, lurched forward like a serpent, gulping the land. The grass and trees writhed at its touch, twisted into bleak caricatures of themselves.
"Light!" Regg shouted, and Roen and his priests withdrew wooden wands capped with ivory and held them aloft. Light blazed from the wands' tips. Magical daylight defied the darkness.
Thunder boomed.
Regg spared a look up and down his line. Men and women faced the darkness with blades and shields bare, light above them, light in their eyes.
"Onward," he called.
So illuminated, two hundred and fifty servants of the Morninglord breached the Shadowstorm, and Lathander's light did battle with Shar's darkness.
The wards on the members of the company shed motes of rosy light as the life-draining darkness of the storm eroded their efficacy. Darkness crowded close around the wands wielded by Roen and his fellows, dimming but not eliminating their luminescence.
Regg had no strategy other than to fight and survive as long as they could. He hoped to draw out the intelligence guiding the storm, give it pause, slow the storm's advance, and win the Saerbians some extra hours to wait for Cale and Riven to succeed.
The company walked through a rain soaked nightmare land of twisted, wind-stripped trees, and shriveled grass and shrubs. Nothing moved. It was only them and the storm. No one in the company spoke, except to give occasional orders. All had their eyes on the darkness around them.
"There," said Trewe, and pointed ahead.
Two dozen pairs of red eyes materialized in the darkness before them, rose up out of a copse of twisted trees. They started dim and distant, but grew bright as they closed.
"Shadows," Regg said.
Trewe's trumpet did battle with the thunder as two dozen living shadows streaked out of the darkness, red eyes bright with hate. They uttered a high-pitched keening as they closed, the sound enough to raise the hairs on Regg's neck.
"Roen!" Regg shouted. "Your junior priests with me!"
Four of Roen's junior priests rushed forward to Regg's side, their armor clattering.
The shadows shrieked, closed.
Regg held forth his shield, enameled with Lathander's rose, and the priests brandished their holy symbols. Regg waited until the shadows were within twenty paces.
"Now," he said.
He and the priests channeled divine power and their symbols luminesced. Power went out from them in a wave of pale light and hit the advancing shadows.
The shadows' keening died with them. The Morninglord's power turned all two dozen into stinking ribbons of black vapor dispersed by the wind.
"Perhaps they know we're here now," Regg said to the priests.
Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. When the spots cleared from Regg's vision, he saw that his words had been prophetic. Ahead, so many pairs of eyes blinked into existence in the darkness that they looked like a clear night sky filled with red stars. There were thousands upon thousands.
"Gods," Trewe said, and faltered in his steps.
Regg did not know how much time the company's stand would earn the refugees, but he intended to acquaint the darkness with Lathander's light.
"Ready yourselves, men and women of Lathander!" he shouted.
CHAPTER TWELVE
6 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms
Cale, Riven, and Rivalen left behind the statue of Shar and Mask and strode across the crumbling earth for the double doors of the temple. Octagonal gongs flanked the doorway.
Cale eyed Rivalen sidelong and reminded himself not to trust the Shadovar, shared interest or no. Cale's god might serve Shar, but Cale did not serve a Sharran.
"The doors are enspelled," Rivalen said. He held forth his holy symbol and incanted a counterspell without breaking stride. The doors, carved from a rich black wood and inscribed with writings in the same script as that on the statue, clicked and swung open. A lingering spell caused the gongs to sound a deep, funereal chime. Dry air carried the fading, distant smell of incense. Cale swore he heard whispers in the wind but they faded before he could make out any words.
Riven bounded inside, blades bare and leaking shadows.
"Nothing," the assassin called back.
Cale let Rivalen follow then fell in behind him.
Behind them, the moans of the specters grew louder. Cale looked back, saw the gray cloud of spirits rise into the sky and hurtle toward the temple.
"Quickly," he said.
Following the pull of his divination, Cale led them through a black-tiled foyer, vaulted halls, and darkened corridors. Shadows swam in languid spirals within the crystalline walls, or coalesced from nothingness in the air before them. For a reason he could not articulate, Cale thought of the Fane of Shadows.
They found all of the halls and chambers empty even of debris. The structure remained intact but it had been gutted, a mummified version of a temple with only a hint of a dark past to haunt its halls.
The floors groaned, buckled, and shook as more and more of Ephyras fell into the void outside. Dust fell from the ceilings. Cracks opened in the walls.
Paintings here and there repeated the iconography of the Mistress of Night and the Shadowlord, her herald. Cale could not long look at them. The images had a dreamy, surreal quality, as if produced in a fit of madness or a drug haze.
Eventually they entered the large central chamber under the faceted dome. The ceiling soared above them. A horseshoe shaped altar of black stone sat centermost. Inlaid stone formed images on the floor-a black circle bordered in purple and within it, offset from its center, another black circle, bordered in red-the Shadowlord's circle within Shar's circle, the one orbiting within the other.
Magic-sculpted shadows formed an image on the interior of the dome above. A female figure, her face hidden in the shadow of her black cloak's hood, descended from a storm of roiling black clouds. Lightning presaged her approach. Already on the ground before her was a man, clad in black and steel, and cloaked in shadows.
The herald, preparing the way for the mistress.
Riven put a hand on Cale's shoulder, pulling him back to himself.
"Look there," the assassin said, and pointed with his chin at a small item sitting atop the altar-a tarnished chalice of silvery metal. Thin streams of shadows leaked from its contents, circled its rim.
The shadows leaking from Cale and Rivalen mirrored those emerging from the chalice.
"Is that it?" Riven asked. "It's just sitting here waiting for us?"
"There is no one else on this world to bother it," Rivalen said, his voice soft. "And Shar's temple will not fall until the world ends."
"Mask's temple," Riven corrected, and Rivalen smiled.
"Come," the shade prince said, and started forward.
Enshrouded on Sakkors in shadows and dark thoughts, Brennus felt the ring on his finger open the magical connection between himself and Rivalen.
Brennus, his brother said. We have gained the temple but this world will soon end. Is there anything I must do to prepare for the freeing of the divinity in Kesson?
Brennus stared at the amethyst and silver ring, his anger and the shadows around him seething. He wanted to tear the ring from his finger, never hear his brother's voice again.