"Don the cloak and throw up the hood. The Lady does not want to see your face. She wants to know your soul."
Tamlin exchanged the cloak with his own and threw up the hood. Rivalen did the same. To his surprise, Tamlin's legs felt sturdy under him.
"What occurs within Shar's temples is a secret known only to the worshipers who participate. To breach that confidence is to incur the Lady's wrath. Do you understand?"
Tamlin nodded. His heart beat faster. "I do."
"After you have served as the Lady's instrument this night, you will return to your quarters and pray to the Lady of Loss. You will offer to her a secret known only to you. This will be your Own Secret, thenceforth known only to you and the Lady and never shared with others. This will bind you to her. Do you understand?"
Tamlin nodded. He sweated under the robe. "I do."
Rivalen reached into a pocket and withdrew a thin dagger. Amethysts adorned its crosspiece and pommel. "Take this."
Tamlin stared at the blade. Rivalen held it forth and did not move. The shadows about the Prince roiled. A single strand of darkness emerged from Rivalen's flesh and coiled around the blade.
Tamlin took it. The shadows felt warm against his flesh; the blade felt cool.
Rivalen turned and opened a door. A candlelit worship hall loomed beyond. "If you walk through this door, there is no turning back. If you enter and do not do what you are here to do, I will kill you rather than let you leave."
Tamlin looked up sharply, took a step back.
"It would give me no pleasure to do so, but I would have no choice. I am not forgiving in matters of faith. Look into yourself and determine if you are willing to shed blood to have what you wish. Are you?"
Tamlin looked at the doorway, the worship hall, Rivalen. He thought of his family, his friends. They all seemed very far away. But his desires were close. He knew what he wanted. He knew there was only one way to get it. "I am."
A voice from inside sent Tamlin's heart to racing.
"Tamlin?" Vees called, his voice muffled. "Is that you? Thank the gods. Tamlin! Get me out of here. The Prince is mad."
Rivalen raised his hand and Vees fell silent.
Tamlin felt Rivalen's gaze on him, his burning golden eyes. He was studying him, measuring his reaction to Vees's voice.
Tamlin nodded and stepped through the doorway. Rivalen put a hand on his shoulder and followed. "In the darkness of night, we hear the whisper of the void," Rivalen said.
Whispers sounded in Tamlin's ears. He could not make out words, but he knew they represented a promise of power. "I hear whispers," Tamlin said, his voice hushed.
"Heed its voice," Rivalen said.
Six men and women knelt, facing the black altar. Vees was among them. Ropes of shadow bound their hands behind their backs and bound their ankles together. All were nude. All looked upon Tamlin and Rivalen with terror in their wide eyes. They shook their heads, and their mouths opened to plead, but they made no sound. Rivalen must have had them magically silenced. He had allowed Vees to be heard only to test Tamlin.
Tamlin had never felt such power. "Let me hear them."
Rivalen looked at him and nodded. He raised a hand and the silencing magic ended. Tears, wails, and shouts for mercy blended together into a chorus of despair. Tamlin heard Vees's voice among the rest. "Deuce, don't do it! It's me, Vees. Deuce, please!"
"Their despair and regret we offer to you, Lady of Loss," Rivalen intoned.
He moved behind the heretics. Tamlin followed, his breath coming fast, his body tingling, weak.
All six of the heretics struggled against their bonds but to no avail. They pleaded for mercy.
"Do not, Deuce. I am your friend," Vees said.
Tamlin felt outside himself, felt embraced and nurtured by the darkness of the hall. He moved behind Vees but did not see his onetime friend. Memories flashed through his mind: his mother, Tazi, Talbot, all with love in their eyes, but love colored by disappointment, even pity. Other faces flashed, too: his father, with the ever-present stare of disapproval and the frequent, disappointed shake of his head; Mister Cale, shrouded in shadows, with the faint look of contempt and distaste in his eyes; a lifetime of faces that regarded him as a buffoon, a ne'er do well, an unaccomplished fop.
Tamlin had spent his adult life trying to efface those looks. He could do it now, at a stroke.
"Choose your path, Hulorn," Rivalen said.
Tamlin looked to the Prince and saw in his eyes no judgment, no disappointment, no quiet dislike. He saw in Rivalen a friend and mentor.
The Prince nodded and the shadows about him reached out to touch Tamlin.
Tamlin nodded.
Vees screamed. "Please, Tamlin! No! Whatever he told you is a lie! Don't, Deuce!"
Tamlin raised the blade high and drove it downward into Vees's back, into his father, into Cale, into the man he had been his entire life.
Cradling the book, hearing the voice of her goddess, Elyril flew high above Selgaunt. She decided that she would summon the Shadowstorm in the city in which she had murdered her parents and first sworn herself to the Lady of Loss. She intoned the words to a spell and the magic transported her high above Ordulin.
Lights and glowballs lit the capital's streets. A sea of tents dotted the plains around the city. Even at the late hour, soldiers milled through the camp.
Elyril thought the entire city looked like a lesion. She would excise it, and as eternal darkness fell, she would stand beside Volumvax the Divine One, Shar's Shadow, the Lord Sciagraph.
She was giddy, lightheaded with expectation, more elated than she had ever been from minddust.
The voice of the book fell silent but it began to pulse in her hands like a living thing, like a heart. Shadows coiled around it, around her.
Elyril opened its cover and looked not to the words, but to the words between the words. She gave voice to the empty spaces.
She did not understand the full meaning of the words but she spoke them with vigor. As she read, understanding dawned. Elyril was part of a plan that reached across time and worlds. Even the coming cataclysm of the Shadowstorm was but a single step in Shar's plan that had millennia still to unfold. Shar had been plotting since the cosmic war with her sister, Selune, had wrought creation from the pristine emptiness of oblivion. Shar would return to the peace of nothingness and all of existence would return with her.
Power gathered as Elyril moved through the book, pronounced the words, summoned the shadows. As she incanted, the pages from which she read dissipated into nothingness. The book was consuming itself, turning to nothingness, as she moved through the ritual.
Below her, the lights in Ordulin dimmed more and more as she progressed. The sky above her darkened. Clouds as thick and black as any thunderhead she had ever seen gathered. Wind picked up, roared in her ears. Her voice gained volume until she was shouting Shar's words into the night sky.
On the darkened streets and in the darkened camp far below her, groups of people started to gather. They pointed at the gathering clouds, the whipping wind. They looked tiny, insignificant.
And they were.
Her voice boomed across the heavens. Darkness blotted out the moon, the stars. Elyril exalted in the ritual, laughed as she cast the spell. She voiced the last words and her voice was a scream.
The wind died. Silence fell. Darkness reigned. Eldritch currents of green fire flared in the air.
Elyril could not breathe in her excitement. She awaited the coming of Volumvax the Divine One, the advent of the Shadowstorm.
A crack that sounded like the breaking of the world shook the heavens. A green line formed an arc in the sky over Ordulin and split the darkness in two. The line expanded, wider, wider, until it formed a door as large as the city.