All at once my power pierces his resistance and he is mine.
Act as though you will leave for Cale's side with the others, but instead meet me in the dining hall.
On the way to the dining hall, I retrieve my bow, my blade, my leather armor. When I reach the large dining chamber, I see no one.
"Vyrhas?" I say to the darkness.
The shadowwalker steps from the darkness along the far wall. He is taller than Nayan, leaner. His long black hair is tied into a rope that falls halfway down his back. Shadows curl around his hands, his head.
"Mindmage. The Right and Left have called. I remained only out of respect for our friendship."
My power has so scrambled Vyrhas's mind that he regards us as longtime friends, though we have rarely spoken before this moment. Still, his will is slippery. I must trod softly over his mindscape so as not to dislodge the compulsion.
"Cale and Riven called me, too," I lie. "They need you to take me somewhere."
Vyrhas looks relieved at the revelation. "Where?"
"I will show you. Open your mind."
Vyrhas opens his mind to me without hesitation. I picture in my mind the vaulted, hemispherical chamber deep within the floating mountaintop on which Sakkors stands. I picture the faceted stone walls, designed to reflect and amplify the Source's power. And floating in the center of the vault, slowly turning about its lengthwise axis, I picture the giant, crystalline form of the Source.
I push the image into Vyrhas's mind.
"There," I say. "I am to go there."
Behind him, Cale heard the Lathanderians assembling. Armor chinked, shields rung, and orders carried through the still air. Cale held his mask and continued his spell.
The shadows swarming the air behind and around Kesson began to keen, the discordant whine of doomed souls. The shadow giants, darkness bleeding from their forms, beat their swords on their shields, the sound like the heartbeat of the world.
Cale continued the spell, felt the power gathering, the borders between worlds weakening.
Above, Furlinastis completed his turn, roared his rage at the theurge who had forced him into service thousands of years before.
"Whatever you're doing, Cale," Riven said. "Do it now."
Kesson Rel rose into the air, raised his hands.
The keen of the shadows reached a pitch that hurt Cale's ears. The beat of sword and shield by the giants grew more rapid.
Kesson lowered his hand and thunder boomed. Hundreds of lightning bolts formed a green net in the sky. The rain resumed, poured from the black clouds. And Kesson's servants swarmed forward
The shadows formed a black cloud that swirled, parted in two. One half sped toward Furlinastis, one half toward Cale, Riven, and Rivalen. The shadow giants rushed forward, blades bare.
A clear, piercing note on a clarion sounded from the line of Lathanderians.
"The light!" they shouted as one.
Cale completed his spell, used Weaveshear to slice a gash in the veil between planes. He widened it and darkness streamed from the wound in reality. Beyond, he saw the Plane of Shadow and the haunted ruins of Elgrin Fau, once the City of Silver on Ephyras, now a wraith-haunted ruin. He saw the necropolis in its center, the dead core of a dead city.
Kesson Rel had bound Elgrin Fau's dead to the city's locale, but Cale knew the shadows of Elgrin Fau were the same as those of the Adumbral Calyx, and that those of the Calyx were the same as those of the Shadowstorm.
"You are unbound!" Cale shouted. "Emerge to face Kesson Rel!"
His words summoned moans through the rift. Black forms rose up from ancient graves, hundreds, thousands, the denizens of an entire city. Cold poured through the gash torn between planes. The wraiths' red eyes, so like those of the shadows', focused on Cale. He saw numbers to match those of Kesson's army of shadows.
"Come forth!" he shouted, and they did.
Thousands upon thousands of wraiths flew like arrows for the planar rift, poured through it like a black river. Their moans answered the keening of the shadows as they took to the air.
"It is for us and only us to slay Kesson Rel!" Cale shouted. "You must kill his army. Hear me, Lords of Silver!"
One of the wraiths peeled off, larger than the rest, its form twice the height of a man. Cold and power went forth from it.
"You are heard, First of Five," it said, and inclined his head. "Do what you promised."
Before Cale could answer, the wraith darted away and joined his fellows. Two hordes of undead flew toward each other, two clouds of darkness, a city of Kesson Rel's servants and a city of Kesson Rel's victims. Moaning and keening filled the air as the two forces clashed, intermixed, wheeled and swirled like enormous flocks of birds, dueling cyclones of shadow. Cale could not see the sky through the black cloud of their battle.
The ground vibrated with the charge of the giants. Hundreds of the huge creatures tore across the plains, their footsteps the drumbeat of war. The Lathanderians rushed forward to face them, broke around Cale, Riven, and Rivalen.
"Fight well," Regg shouted as he passed.
Shadows coalesced in the Lathanderians' wake and Nayan and the shadowwalkers emerged from the darkness to stand before Cale. All of them fell into a crouch at the sound of battle. Their impassive faces surveyed the scene at a glance, took in the undead armies warring in the sky, the shadow dragon wheeling through a cloud of still more undead, and the line of Lathanderians forming up to receive the charge of the giants.
"We are come," Nayan said to Cale.
Cale surveyed the field, watched Kesson rise into the sky behind his army. Other than Kesson himself, the shadow giants were the most mobile of their enemies.
"Assist them," he said, nodding at the Lathanderians, who had formed a line of flesh and metal to meet the charge of the giants. "Keep the giants occupied. Kesson is ours."
Nayan's face tightened but he nodded, turned to his fellows, and spoke hurried orders in his language. The shadowwalkers bowed to Cale and Riven, turned, and shadowstepped into battle, joining the line of the Lathanderians.
Cale looked up into the sky, trying to formulate a plan. He saw Kesson complete a spell and gesture with his right hand.
"Cover!" he shouted.
He and Riven dived and rolled as a column of flame engulfed the plains where they had been standing. Flame and heat soaked Rivalen but the Shadovar emerged unscathed. Cale assumed he had a ring or cloak or some other magical device that protected him.
Rivalen scowled, the shadows around him whirling, and answered with a spell of his own. He pointed a hand at Kesson and a black beam shot from his palm, through the undead warring in the skies, and struck Kesson in the chest. It was deflected harmlessly away.
"Spells are shite, Shadovar!" Riven shouted. "It's blades or nothing!"
Cale agreed, and both he and Riven leaped to their feet. Cale intoned the words to a spell that would empower his weapon, strengthening Weaveshear's already puissant enchantments.
Meanwhile, Kesson surveyed the field and gestured with his left hand not at Cale, Riven, or Rivalen, but at the ground near the Lathanderians who scrambled to meet the charging giants.
A twisting spiral of energy left Kesson Rel's hand, struck the earth near Regg's company, and caused the ground to ripple, rumble, shake, and knock Regg off his feet. Shouts went up all around him as other members of his company fell to the ground.
Meanwhile, the giants were closing.
The tremors gained intensity, rattled the plains, and the ground beneath Regg groaned, shifted, cracked. Chasms opened in the plains, hungry maws of stone and soil.