Rivalen's brow furrowed, as if the question pained him. "Mister Cale is dead."
Thamalon could not contain a grin. He knew he must look like a gloating buffoon but he didn't care.
"Splendid news, Prince Rivalen! Splendid!"
Rivalen continued, "I allowed the surviving Saerbians safe passage through Sembia. They may settle where they will."
Thamalon lost his grin and his good humor. "You allowed?"
Thamalon regretted the emphasis the moment the words bid farewell to his teeth.
Rivalen stared at him, the shadows around him whirling. "Yes. I allowed."
"Of course," said Thamalon, forcing a smile. "You have the authority to act in my name."
Rivalen stared down at Thamalon, his mouth a hard line. "You will find that our relationship will change somewhat as Sembia is consolidated under Shadovar rule."
A small pit opened in Thamalon's stomach, a place for the truth to settle.
"I fear 'somewhat' does much work in that sentence, Prince."
Rivalen waved a hand in the air, batting aside Thamalon's point. "You will remain titular head of Sembia but you will answer ultimately to me and to the Most High."
Thamalon tried to keep the shock from his face and voice. "But I assumed we would rule as equals. I thought-"
"Your assumption was incorrect. We are not equals. You are an instrument of my will, and the Lady's."
Thamalon's mind spun. He struggled to keep his mental balance. "After all we have accomplished?"
"We accomplished nothing. I accomplished all. You are but the face of it to the outside."
Thamalon flushed. "But-but I worship the Mistress. I minted coins, Prince. I thought to become a shade, like you. I thought we were… friends."
Only after he had uttered the words did he realize how ridiculous they sounded, like the whines of a child. Embarrassment heated his cheeks.
"You will become a shade, Hulorn," Rivalen said. "I will keep my word. Promises are kept in these days."
"Thank you, Prince," Thamalon said, pleased at least by that, though he could not meet Rivalen's eyes.
"The transformation is prolonged and painful. Your body and soul are torn asunder and remade."
Thamalon backed up a step, eyes wide.
Rivalen followed. "The agony will plague your dreams for years."
Thamalon felt nauseated, and backed up another step.
"Your family and friends will die and turn to dust. You will linger, alone."
Thamalon bumped up against a wall. Rivalen loomed over him.
"But in the end, you will be hardened, made a better servant to the Lady, made a better servant to me."
"That is not what I wanted, Prince."
"It is exactly what you wanted. Power. You simply wanted to pay no price for it. But you are a Sembian, Hulorn. You should have known there is always a price. And the price will be pain and eternal loneliness."
Rivalen said it in the tone of one who knew that of which he spoke.
Thamalon gulped, imagined the pain of his transformation. He looked into his future and saw a friendless, solitary existence, feared and hated by those he ostensibly ruled. He did not want it, not anymore.
"Please, Prince. No. I abdicate. Here, now. To you."
"It is too late for that."
Tears leaked from Thamalon's eyes.
"What have I done?" he said, his voice soft.
Rivalen smiled, his fangs making him look diabolical. "Your bitterness is sweet to the Lady."
Mask manifested in a place that was no place, amidst the nothingness of cold and featureless gray. He manifested fully, not in one of the trivial, semi-divine forms he sometimes showed to worshipers.
He floated alone and small in an infinite void, the womb of creation. He marveled that the bustling, colorful, life-filled multiverse had been born from such yawning emptiness. He marveled, too, that the creation would one day return to the void. He was pleased he would not see it, though he knew he would have played his small role in causing it.
As would those who came after him and took his station.
Or perhaps not, if things went as he wished. He had planted his own seeds in creation's womb. Time would tell what fruit they bore.
"I am here," he said, and his voice echoed through infinity.
Fatigue settled on him all at once. He had been running a long while, delaying the inevitable. Surrender was not in him. He supposed that was why she had chosen him, why he had chosen his own servants.
His voice died as the feeling of nothingness, of endless solitude, intensified. He felt hollow, as empty as the space around him.
She was coming.
He held his ground and his nerve. The moment was foreordained. Within him, he carried all of the power he had stolen many millennia before, plus some-but not all-of the added power that he'd amassed since his ascension. And power was the coin she demanded in payment of his debts. The Cycle had turned.
"Show yourself. You owe me that, at least."
It had taken him a long while to accept that he would not be the herald who broke the Cycle of Shadows. He had stolen the power thinking he would. His hubris amused him. He found hope in the possibility that those he had chosen might break it, sever the circle.
"I see hope in your expression," she said, her voice as beautiful and cold as he remembered. "Hope is ill-suited to this place."
He swallowed and held his ground as the nothingness took on presence and he felt the regard of a vast intelligence that existed at once in multiple places, multiple times. She had seen the birth of creation. She would see it end.
"The Cycle turns," she said.
He felt her cold hands on him, felt the spark of divinity within him answer to its original owner's touch. She had taken her favorite form among many-a pale-skinned maiden with black hair that fell to her waist. The emptiness of the void yawned in her eyes. He looked at a point on her face below her eyes-he dared not look into those eyes lest he see his fate. The slash of her red lips against the paleness of her face struck him as obscene.
"I am come to pay my debt," he said, and bowed his head. He found his form quaking. In her presence he experienced the frailties he had not felt since his ascension. The experience pleased him.
She ran a hand through his hair, put her forehead to his.
"Your debt is long overdue. Mere repayment is inadequate recompense. Surely you know this, Lessinor."
He had not heard his birth name spoken in so long its pronouncement caused him to look up into his mother's eyes… and regret it.
He saw there the oblivion of non-existence, the emptiness that awaited him. He had not wished to see it. He had wished it only to happen, one moment existence, one moment nonexistence. He did not wish to know.
The frailties endemic to his one-time humanity resurfaced. His body shook. He did not wish to end. He did not wish to know what "end" meant. All that he had done, all that he had been, for nothing.
Or perhaps not. This time, he kept the hope from his face.
"Ah," his mother said, and sighed with satisfaction. "You see it now, here, at the end of things."
He nodded.
"Interest is due on your debt, my son."
He nodded once more. He had expected as much and prepared. In the millennia in which he had been worshiped the faith of his followers had made him something greater than that which he had initially stolen from her. That she knew. But she did not know its scope, and that he had hidden some.
"I am come to pay that, as well… Lady."
He could not bring himself to name her his mother. She had possessed a vessel to birth a herald, nothing more.
"I know," she said, and drew him to her in an embrace. Her arms enfolded him, cooled him, She stroked his hair, cooed. He put his head on her shoulder and wept.
Only then did he realize that he was cooling, that his power was leeching away, that the void he had seen in her eyes was coming for him. He gripped her tighter, closed his eyes, but could not dismiss the image of the end that awaited him.