He intended to use Brennus. He’d lied when he said he hadn’t killed his brother because they were already dead. He hadn’t killed Brennus because he needed him, and because Brennus was not yet ripe for picking. The bitterness in his brother grew with each passing year, a tumor in Brennus’s soul. Rivalen had heightened it by showing Brennus the murder of their mother.
Rivalen would read the book’s words through the lens of his brother’s bitterness and despair.
The thought made Rivalen smile. Shadows whirled around him.
The Leaves of One Night were said to articulate Shar’s moment of greatest triumph-a ritual that would destroy a world-but also to suggest her moment of greatest weakness.
Of that Rivalen was doubtful.
He longed to read the book. He desired an end. He was tired; he existed only to complete the Cycle of Night, only to end Toril. And when that was done, either his goddess would reward him after death or he would pass into nothingness. Both appealed to him more than the state in which he currently existed.
Both Shar and Rivalen were aware that the powerful were moving in Toril. They knew that the gods and their Chosen were plotting, that something was happening with the overlapping worlds of Abeir and Toril. Wars were being fought all across Faerun, the Silver Marches, the Dalelands. Rivalen understood those events no better than anyone, but he didn’t need to, because he knew that all of it was for nothing. When he succeeded, the gods, their Chosen, and everyone else would precede him into the void, and then he would follow them to his own end.
Distantly, numbly, he admired Shar’s ability to turn what had been his zeal to preserve himself into a zeal to end himself. When he’d first turned to her worship, when he’d murdered his mother to seal his oath to Shar, he’d done so, strangely, with a sense of hope. He’d recognized even then that everything must one day end, that Shar would have her eventual victory, but he’d thought that worshiping her would allow him to extend that day far into the future and that in the meanwhile he’d have power to make the world as he wished it.
How she must have laughed at his naivete. How she must have laughed hundreds of times, thousands of times on other worlds, with other nightseers, whose worship started in hope and ended in nihilism and annihilation.
“My bitterness is sweet to the Lady,” he whispered.
Lightning split the sky. Darkness reigned. Shar’s eye looked out on the world in hunger.
Chapter Five
Vasen stood toward the rear of the abbey’s northern courtyard, near a columned gate, arms crossed over his chest. A mail shirt and breastplate sheathed him under his traveling cloak. Sword and dagger hung from his weapon belt. His pack, stuffed full with the supplies he’d need for the journey, as well as some extra for needy pilgrims, lay on the ground near his feet. His most important possession, the rose holy symbol given him by the Oracle, the symbol that had belonged to Saint Abelar, hung from a lanyard around his throat.
The air smelled damp, rife with the promise of autumn’s coming decay. Distant thunder rumbled in the black, starless sky, vibrating the earth under his feet, threatening to drop rain on the open-air courtyard. The gathered pilgrims did not seem to mind. At the moment, they did not see the darkness. They were, instead, awaiting the light. They had their backs to Vasen-young and old, thin and fat, tall and short-facing the high balcony that jutted from the side of the abbey’s sanctum, where the Oracle would soon appear.
Cracked, age-pitted flagstones paved the courtyard, trod underfoot for decades by groups of pilgrims just like those who stood upon them now. The stones in the center of the courtyard had been inlaid with colored quartz to form a sunburst pattern, a symbol of Amaunator’s light, defiant in the face of the perpetual darkness. None of the pilgrims stood upon the sunburst. Instead they surrounded it, orbiting it in faith.
Roses of gray stone, petrified by the passage of the Spellplague’s blue fire a hundred years earlier, bordered the courtyard on three sides. They had been red and yellow once-or so Vasen had heard-but now they, like the sky, were forever gray, their forms eternally fixed, unchanging, bound forever to the valley.
Like Vasen.
Vasen felt eyes on him and turned. Orsin stood beside him, a larger pack than even Vasen’s slung over his shoulders. Vasen had not heard him approach. The man’s quiet was disconcerting, as was his gaze, with his eyes like opals, as if he were not man or even deva but some kind of construct.
“You move with less sound than a field mouse,” Vasen whispered to him.
The corners of Orsin’s mouth rose slightly in a smile. “Old habits.” He cleared his throat. “Is it acceptable if I remain?”
“What do you mean?”
“Since I’m not of the faith,” Orsin explained. “I’d understand if you wanted me to wait outside the courtyard and-”
Vasen shook his head. “No, no, stay. The Oracle’s light won’t diminish in the presence of your Mask-shadowed soul.”
Orsin grinned and lowered his pack to the ground. “Nor your shadowed flesh.”
“Indeed,” Vasen said, and smiled. “Is this also ground you stood upon in another life?”
He meant the words as jest, but Orsin seemed to take them seriously, and glanced around.
“Not this particular ground, no. But I’ve stood on the ground to your right hand before.”
Shadows leaked from Vasen’s hands. “A joke, yes?”
Orsin smiled and nodded. “A joke, yes.”
“You’re more than a little strange.”
Orsin clasped his hands behind his back. “Well, then, quite a pair are we.”
Vasen chuckled. “Quite a pair.”
For a time they stood beside one another in silence. Vasen admitted that Orsin at his side felt right, and the feeling struck him oddly. He had no one in his life he’d call friend, never had. Comrade, yes. Trusted ally, brother in faith, these he had in abundance. But a friend? He had none. His blood, the shadows that clung to him, set him apart from everyone else.
Except Orsin. And while they weren’t exactly friends, he certainly felt. . comfortable with the deva.
A distant chime rang from somewhere within the abbey and its sound cut through the murmur of the pilgrims. They fell silent as the chime sounded ten times, a ring for each hour of daylight at that time of year.
“Dawn follows night and chases the darkness,” Vasen whispered.
The chiming ended and the pilgrims shifted as one, their collective movement an expectant assurance over the cobblestones. They inhaled audibly as the Oracle emerged from an archway, his hand on his dog, Browny, and stood on the second-floor balcony overlooking the courtyard. “The Oracle,” one of the pilgrims whispered.
“Look at his eyes,” said another.
Kindled by Amaunator’s touch, the Oracle’s eyes glowed orange in the dim light. His colorful robes seemed illuminated from within, a stark contrast with the dull gray of the day. He seemed more real than the world, too bright for Sembia’s drab air, a portion of the sun come to earth. Age lines seamed his clean-shaven face, crevasses in his flesh. His platinum holy symbol hung from a thong around his neck-a rose in a sunburst.
Vasen’s hand went to the symbol he wore, a rose, the symbol of Amaunator in his morning guise of Lathander. It felt warm to the touch, sun-kissed.
The Oracle patted Browny, and the magical dog lay on the balcony beside his master. Putting his hands on the balustrade, the Oracle stared down at the assembled pilgrims. Vasen imagined him seeing not the world but the possibilities of the world. A smile pulled the Oracle’s lips from his rotted teeth and he raised his hands. Heads bowed, including Vasen’s, including Orsin’s, and a reverent hush fell.
“His light keep you,” the Oracle said, his voice forceful, portentous.