In the stillness of the Black Chapel, as the bitter ebon ooze worked its way down Azrael's throat, a voice spoke to the dwarf. "Terror will be all," it promised.
Azrael recognized the words instantly as those the dark had used time and again to describe Sithicus under his reign. The voice, too, was familiar. Free from any sorcerous masking, it was easy to identify Inza's mocking tone. A frisson of dread crept up Azrael's spine.
"Yes, terror will be all," she continued, "but you will be dead."
The awareness that he had been betrayed raged through Azrael's mind. Inza had used the dark against him. She was the comforting voice at the Lake of Sounds. She'd told him of this rite and goaded him into revolt against Soth. Now she would claim his reward and snatch control of the realm from the death knight's weakened grasp.
A stabbing pain in his gut drew Azrael's thoughts from Inza. He dropped the empty ebon chalice, which cracked and rolled away. All the captured shadows writhed inside him. Another lance of pain pierced the dwarf's side, drawing black tears of misery from his eyes. The darkness trickled down his cheeks and slithered back into his mouth, eager to rejoin the corrupt mass roiling inside him.
Ambrose and the others moved forward on unstable legs to aid their master. Like them, Ganelon hadn't heard Inza's threat, but he saw that there was a problem with the rite. He took advantage of the confusion to crawl to his discarded duffel, still heaped next to the vat.
As he was rifling through the bag in search of the Cobbler's blade, he felt a strong hand on his leg. He looked over his shoulder to find Ogier looming over him.
"Don't make me hurt you," Ganelon pleaded. His fingers closed around the orb Malocchio had given him.
Ogier's lips curled in a snarl more fitting for a wolf than the gentle animal to which he'd been compared so often. "I think you got it backward," he said, tightening his grip around Ganelon's leg until the bones creaked. "You should be begging me not to hurt you."
"Helain," Ganelon whispered.
The wards Inza had raised around Nedragaard Keep were a dozen times more powerful than those Azrael had set at Veidrava. They were structured to withstand the might of the banshees, the skeletal warriors, and Soth. Once their shadows had been taken and their strength sapped, the death knight and his minions should have been powerless against them-but Inza had not reckoned on the might of Soth's fury.
When his sword proved ineffective, the death knight drove his armored fingers into the magical barrier. The enchantment fought against him, heating Soth's gauntlets until the metal glowed white. As he widened the rift, sparks showered down upon him and lances of lightning flashed around his head. None burned as brightly as Soth's eyes. "Vengeance!" he cried, and threw his entire being into the assault.
Blue-white light played upon the invisible barrier, revealing its form as a gigantic dome. Soth drove the rift even wider, and a tear stole up from the ground to the dome's peak. With a sound like every tree in the Fumewood splitting from root to crown at the same moment, the barrier tore open. A faint radiance lingered for a moment, a ghost of the sorcerous wall. Then that, too, faded.
Soth pushed himself forward, moving as much by instinct as any conscious thought. He strode through the breach in the keep's outer shell, stalked through the bailey to the double doors leading to the main hall. Elves and men cowered at his passing, but he paid them no heed. His only interest was the woman who had betrayed him, the faithless Vistana.
Not so with his minions. The skeletal warriors and the banshees set about slaughtering every trespasser that crossed their paths. The massacre continued until the bailey was choked with the dead and dying, and the besiegers who thought Nedragaard Keep impossible to invade learned that it was even more difficult to escape.
The Knight of the Black Rose found Inza in the main hall. She was crouched before the throne like a cornered animal. Her green eyes narrowed to slits when she saw the death knight and heard the clamor of battle in the courtyard. She drew Novgor, the ever-sharp dagger of Kulchek the Wanderer, and brandished it. "This will shear your thorns as readily as any rose's, giorgio? she warned.
Soth paused. With an edge of mocking laughter in his voice, he said, "An ill considered admission, witch. If the blade is enchanted, the Measure allows me to use my own magic to even the fight."
With one finger, Soth traced a symbol in the air. The glyph hung there, glittering with a fire the same hue as the death knight's burning gaze. Before it could speed toward Inza arixi deliver Soth's gift of agony, though, a single white rose slashed down from the gallery and dispersed it.
"I don't think Vinas Solamnus had creatures such as you in mind when he wrote the Measure, Loren," the White Rose said. She stood in the musicians' gallery overlooking the main hall, the Bloody Cobbler on her left, the Whispering Beast to her right. "Your mocking references cannot stain that most treasured code of knightly virtue. In making them, you only demean yourself further-if that's possible."
Soth did not reply. He stood and waited as the Rose descended the curving stairs. As she did, the Beast slipped over the gallery's rail and dropped down onto the rotting throne behind Inza. The Vistana turned, ready to lash out with Novgor. The sudden pressure of a silver shoemaker's knife at her own throat made her freeze.
"Nice blade," the Cobbler said cheerfully. His wounds and bruises had healed, it seemed, at least those that were visible. His face was hidden behind his pale mask, but Inza could hear his voice clearly enough when he added, "Put it away before I lop your head off."
At the center of the hall, by the wreckage of the triple-ringed chandelier, Lord Soth bowed stiffly to the White Rose. She returned the courtesy with an equally artificial curtsy.
"I never thought to see you again, Isolde," said the death knight.
The White Rose nodded slightly, only a hint of a sad smile visible in the darkness of her hood. "Nor I you, my husband."
The orb in Ganelon's hand flared to life, radiating light that cut through the Black Chapel like a thousand shining scythes. The bodiless salt shadows curled under the blaze of sunlight. Their perpetual hiss became a gasp of pain, a statement of agony rivaled only by Azrael's intermittent howls.
A look of surprise flashed onto Ogier's face. It was much the same as the expression of good-natured bewilderment his friends had seen there all his life-so close, in fact, that it made Ganelon's heart ache to see it. That baffled look was the first thing the light melted. The big man's white curls were next, just before the rest of his shadow-tainted flesh burned away.
Kern, too, burned under the orb's intense light. Ganelon caught a glimpse of him as he scrambled from behind the altar. He might have been using Ogier to shield his escape from the chapel, but Ganelon knew somehow that the soft-hearted cynic was trying at the last to push the big man from harm's way. The ashes of the two friends mingled on the dirty chapel floor.
Only Ambrose withstood the light long enough to speak. The bitter, hate-filled face of the thing possessing him softened. For just an instant, the kindly man Ganelon had loved so dearly returned. "Clever boy," he said in his wheezing voice. Then Ambrose was gone, consumed by the sunlight.
The orb's light faded, then faltered. Ganelon dropped the blackened crystal into the ashes. With trembling hands he tore into the duffel once more, searching for the silver knife. There might still be time to kill Azrael, to save Helain and everyone else from eternal slavery.