He sat on the lush divan before the fireplace. The ambient light of the city's streets filtered in through the windows. Long shadows stretched across the chamber. The darkness embraced him.
On the floor near the divan sat the warded chest that held The Leaves of One Night. Rivalen had turned the chest invisible, but his magically enhanced vision saw invisible objects as clearly as visible ones. He pulled the chest before him, spoke the series of passwords that allowed him to bypass the wards, and opened the lid.
Tendrils of shadows snaked into the air. Sussurant, indecipherable whispers filled the chamber for a moment.
Within the chest lay the holy book. Rivalen intoned another series of passwords, reached within, and withdrew it. The moment he touched it, a cacophony of voices sounded in his mind, whispers, shouts, screams, mutterings. He knew they pronounced secrets from ages past, present, and future, but he could not make sense of the words.
The silver characters on the book's frigid cover shifted under his touch, squirmed like worms beneath his fingertips. He held the book on his lap for a time, running his fingers over the pages and losing himself in its utterings. Variance had once told him that listening to the voices too long made the listener mad. Rivalen knew better. Listening to the voices made the hearer wise.
His mind drifted, floated. He thought of the mother he had murdered, his coin collection, his father, his brothers, he thought of the centuries he had spent in darkness. He considered the role of the goddess in his life and saw that the thread of her plots sewed together every moment of his existence from birth to present. It was her voice that spoke to him through the book. He could not understand the divine tongue in which she spoke, but he knew it spoke of a plan to return existence to the perfect, unmarred nothingness of pre-creation.
He focused on the present, on the role he had played and would play in effecting his goddess's will. Events had transpired much as he had hoped. He had only a single frayed end to burn off.
He took his hand from the book-instantly missing the voices-and touched the holy symbol he wore around his neck. He should not take the next step without an augury.
Softly intoning the words to a spell that allowed him communion with Shar, he expanded his consciousness. He found himself floating in emptiness. Insignificant. Alone.
A presence manifested and the emptiness had purpose, consciousness.
The power of Shar's mind, the frigid cold of the void tugged at him. He slipped toward it. Oblivion beckoned. He resisted its call and sent Shar his question.
Vees Talendar, Lady?
The void spoke with a woman's voice and its power stripped him bare.
The Dark Brother has served his purpose, as all do. Even you.
The words made Rivalen uneasy. I would know more, Lady. Knowledge would allow me to serve you better.
You know what you need to know, and are ignorant of those things of which you should be ignorant. Proceed as you have planned, content in your knowledge and in your ignorance.
Rivalen dared not dispute the matter.
Thank you, Lady, he said, and cut off the spell. He returned to his body, shaking, gasping, cold. He swallowed and grounded himself back in the world by clutching the divan, feeling the floor under his feet. His flesh bled shadows, and they swirled around him torpidly. He felt at sea. He knew much, but not all. Whatever Shar had planned, Rivalen was but a part of it.
He took a moment to compose himself, then activated the magical ring on his finger and reached out for Vees Talendar.
Nightseer? Vees asked.
Summon the members of your congregation and meet me in the temple, Dark Brother. I have news from the Lady of Loss.
Yes, Nightseer.
Rivalen cut off the connection, returned the book to its chest, and reset his wards. A shadow stretched across the chest. Rivalen turned, expecting to see someone, but there was nothing. He attributed the sensation to an aftereffect of his communion.
He stood, drew the shadows about him, and transported himself to the secret temple of Shar. He had to prepare matters for Talendar and Tamlin.
Elyril watched Rivalen draw the darkness about him and disappear. Excitement made her giddy. She had seen The Leaves of One Night, the rest of the book to be made whole, had heard its whispers in her mind. She had seen the Nightseer commune with Shar and had felt the Lady's presence in the room.
Elyril willed her body corporeal and moved across the chamber to the invisible chest. Her burned and withered flesh felt constraining. She felt heavy in her skin, uncomfortable, but she endured it for a time. Her incorporeal form was her true form. The flesh she had worn for decades-the flesh that had been withered by the Nightseer's spell and transformed in fire-had been only the mask she wore until Shar had revealed to her the truth of the Shadowstorm.
She knelt before the invisible chest, holding her holy symbol between the unfeeling stubs of her fingers. Her shriveled lips pronounced the supplication without grace. "In the darkness of the night, we hear the whisper of the void."
The shadows in the room shrouded her like a lover. She took it as a sign. She imagined Volumvax's touch would feel much the same.
She pronounced the words that allowed her to see invisible items and the chest appeared to her. With careful precision she repeated the words she'd heard the Nightseer use to dispel the protective wards on the chest. She held her breath, unlatched it, and threw it open.
Whispers filled the air, indecipherable utterances that hinted at madness, despair, and darkness. Elyril looked into the chest and there saw the book. The otherwise ever-changing silver characters on the book's black cover stilled. She read aloud the words written there, words written centuries before for her, and only her, to see. "Night comes. A storm of shadows is its herald."
The cover dissolved into a stinking black mist and dissipated into the air. The pages of The Leaves of One Night lay exposed, naked.
She took out the rest of the book to be made whole, the book gifted her by Shar herself in the guise of the guardsman, Phraig, the book she had pulled from the fire of her own transformation. It trembled in her grasp like a living thing. Its cover flew open and the pages flipped until they reached the gap in the text, the void that wanted filling.
She echoed the words of the Nightseer and discharged the wards cast on The Leaves of One Night. She lifted it gently from the chest-whispers sounded in her mind-and placed it atop the other book.
The darkness in the room deepened. The books bound themselves one to the other.
The whispers in her mind intensified, rose in triumph. She clutched her head and gritted her teeth. The voices, thousands of them, spoke at once in a babble of tongues, tones, dialects. She could not bear it for long. She wanted to scream for silence, to demand that they speak so she could understand-
The voices fell silent.
Elyril, sweating, gasping, stared at the book.
A single voice sounded in her head, a woman's voice so heavy with power that it stole Elyril's breath.
Summon the Shadowstorm, Dark Sister.
The book slammed shut.
Elyril stared at it, awed. Its words were an elaborate lie. But in the spaces between its words lay the truth of the ritual.
She picked up the book and dropped her ring, the ring the Nightseer had given her, the ring that had triggered her transformation, into the Nightseer's chest.
"Know my secret now, Nightseer."
She turned herself and the book incorporeal. She rose through the ceiling of the Nightseer's quarters and up into the moonless sky, where she shouted her joy into the darkness.
She would do her goddess's bidding and complete the ritual. She would sit at the side of the Lord Sciagraph as he ruled a world covered in darkness.