When Rivalen completed the spell, he landed in their midst, profane words lined up behind his teeth. Swords and axes chopped at him. Men shouted, tried to pin his arms. The shadows swarmed around him to deflect warriors and weapons. A few blade thrusts penetrated his defenses and cut his skin but he did not care. He was about Shar's work.
He unleashed the words, turning a circle as he shouted his blasphemous phrase.
Every Saerloonian around him to a distance of twenty paces-seven score soldiers, perhaps eight-withered, screamed, and died. Rivalen was surrounded by corpses.
Another two or three score Saerloonians stopped short and stared at gray, vaguely formed phantasms that materialized out of the air before them. Rivalen had seen the spell often enough. The men saw their darkest fears, and a touch from the illusion would kill them.
Brennus, Rivalen said, and looked up. His brother floated in the air above him, his gray eyes hard. His homunculi looked out of his robe to leer at the death below.
High above Brennus, Sakkors floated into position over Selgaunt's walls. The veserabs with their shade riders began to spiral down. Leevoth and the shade troops would follow.
Some sport remains yet, I see, Brennus answered.
The Saerloonians affected by Brennus's spell shrieked, cowered. The phantasms reached for them, touched them, and all but two fell dead.
The Saerloonian army on Rivalen's side of Selgaunt's walls broke and started to run.
A conjured wall trapped the Saerloonians within the city and divided their army in half, and they fought with increasing desperation. The battle spilled into the open area behind the Khyber Gate. The combat grew disorganized. Pockets often and twenty men fought here and there. Crossbow bolts winged over the combat. Shouts and screams sounded from every direction. Saerloonian and Selgauntan commanders shouted orders but most went unheeded as the soldiers on both sides swung blades and axes at any enemy within reach. The dead and dying littered the streets.
Tamlin fired bolts of magical energy at any Saerloonian commander or mage he could mark. Variance pulled him beside the frame of the unmanned trebuchet and cloaked them both in darkness.
"I will not cower while the city falls!" he said to her.
She nodded up at the sky. "It will not fall."
Tamlin looked up to see the Shadovar enclave float directly over the wall and cast its shadow over the battlefield. For a moment, combat ceased. A hush fell and all eyes looked up.
The batlike creatures flitting about the flying city spiraled downward. Pockets of darkness formed on the battlefield. Soldiers on both sides backed away warily.
"It is over," Variance said, and sheathed her short swords.
Shadovar troops materialized and stepped from the pitch. They bore blades crafted of glistening black metal, and wore armor forged of the same. Shadows curled around them. The Saerloonians did not even have time to shout in surprise before the Shadovar began to kill. Their black blades cut flesh and steel with equal facility. Two hundred Saerloonians died in three breaths.
Shouts erupted anew, the ring of metal, battle cries, the screams of the wounded and dying. Tamlin watched, awed, as the Shadovar troops disappeared into the shadows only to reappear ten paces away, often behind a Saerloonian soldier to run him through. The combat was no longer a battle. It was a slaughter.
"Thank Shar for this," he murmured. "She has saved the city." Variance looked at him and smiled. "Indeed."
Cale cursed and whirled around to the shadow priests, all of whom had turned to watch them. Cale stalked up to Avnon and pointed Weaveshear at his chest. "Where did he go?"
Back to himself, to make whole what was sundered. The Shadowlord's power is Kesson's until it is taken from him. All we could do was contain it.
Riven shook his head in disbelief.
Cale looked past Avnon to Magadon, who stood with his head bowed, shoulders hunched.
"How do I take it from him, priest?"
There is only one way. Kill him.
"We did kill him," Cale said.
"No. He lives. And now he is stronger than before."
Magadon cursed softly, but there was no heat in it, only despair.
"Dark, Cale," Riven said. "A duplicate. We were duped."
Cale could not believe it. The duplicate of Kesson Rel had almost killed them. If the real Kesson were stronger…
"But why?" Riven asked.
Cale remembered what Magadon had learned from the gnome. "He could not leave his spire. We did his work for him."
"And now he's free?" Riven asked.
Cale nodded. "So it would seem."
He did not relish the thought of battling Kesson Rel again. He slowed his racing mind. "Tell us everything, Avnon Des."
Our time is limited, Avnon said. We should have died millennia ago. Hear me, then. Kesson Rel was the first Chosen of the Shadowlord. In him the Dusklord invested some of his own power, his own divinity. Kesson became a god but the power drove him mad. We tried to stop him hut he forced our temple onto this plane and used the soulbound shadow dragon to murder us one by one. Through a vision the Shadowlord told me our fate. We could not stop Kesson but we could make our deaths meaningful by using our own souls to trap the divine spark he had been forced to use to bind the dragon to his will. This we did, though it cost the dragon dearly.
Avnon looked to the dragon's carcass and shook his head. I do not know what occurred with Kesson after that.
Cale did, at least part of it. "He abandoned Mask for Shar and avenged himself on Elgrin Fau. He brought the entire city to the Plane of Shadow. Everyone in it died in darkness."
Avnon looked up, shock and pain in his expression. His fellow priests shuffled on their feet, murmured in distress to one another.
"The City of Silver? Lost?"
Cale nodded. "I'm sorry."
"What was the point of it all?" Riven asked. "Mask had a plan millennia in the making and now things are right back where they started. Kesson Rel is not only alive, but whole."
Avnon looked Riven and Cale in the face. Things are not back where they started. You are here. That was the point. We were waiting for you. The Shadowlord was waiting for you.
Cale looked at Riven and both looked back to Avnon.
"We are going to kill Kesson Rel."
I know.
"Then what happens?" Cale asked.
I do not know, Avnon said. But I envy you.
"Don't," Cale said.
Avnon smiled. His form started to blur at the edges, then to fade.
Farewell, First and Second.
Avnon and his fellow priests dissipated into the surrounding shadowstuff.
Cale and Riven stood in silence for a moment, then turned away from the dragon's carcass and walked back to their friend.
Softly, Cale asked, "Mags, what did you do to the dragon?"
Magadon stared at him, his eyes troubled. "It's dead. That is what we wanted. What does it matter what I did?"
"It matters."
Magadon's expression went from troubled to that of a man about to confess a transgression. He looked away. "I… magnified the self-destructive urge in its mind."
"Magnified?" Cale asked. "What does that mean?"
Magadon spoke softly. "Everyone carries a seed of self-loathing, Cale. For some, it's quite powerful. So it was with Furlinastis. It is easy to twist that into a suicidal impulse. "
"Dark," Riven said.
Cale agreed. The power unnerved him. That Magadon would use it unnerved him more.
He looked at the dragon's carcass, the hole of its open neck a black tunnel. He felt a certain pity for the dragon, even kinship. Avnon Des had said the dragon had been unwillingly bound by Kesson Rel. Despite its immense power, the creature had been a tool of fate, caught up in one of Mask's schemes. It had despised itself in consequence. Cale understood the feeling well. He looked back to Magadon, held his mask in hand, and incanted the words to a spell that turned the rock back into mud. Cale helped pull the mindmage free.