“Stay where you are!” Riven barked.
Mephistopheles saw Cale, too, and turned to face him. “Cale! How did you escape my realm?”
Rivalen emerged from the darkness near Vasen, near Shar’s eye, his hands at his sides, leaking power. “And now we’re all here and the end is come.”
“So you say,” Riven said. “But-”
Appendages shot like striking asps from Shar’s eye, long ropes of darkness that squirmed forth and grabbed Riven and Mephistopheles, coiling around them, cutting off Riven’s words.
“No!” Mephistopheles roared, before one of the appendages shot into his open mouth and down his throat, gagging him.
More and more appendages squirmed forth from the now-shrieking eye, wrapping around the two gods, cocooning them in Shar’s darkness. Mephistopheles writhed and fought, dark energy flaring from his exposed flesh. Riven did not struggle, and soon both were entirely covered.
Immediately the thick twist of appendages that led back to Shar’s eye began to pulse, like a gulping throat. And with each gulp Shar’s eye grew incrementally larger. With each gulp, the power of the empty being that lived behind the eye grew.
“And so dies the herald,” said Rivalen.
Cale understood immediately what was happening. Shar was coming. She was consuming their divinity, and when she ate it all, she would emerge and devour the world. And it had started with Vasen reading The Leaves of One Night. He had to stop it and he saw only one way. He had to kill the man on whom the Leaves were written. He prepared to step through the shadows, but before he did, he felt a familiar itch behind his eyes. Magadon’s mental voice, strained, sounded in his head.
Erevis?
Cale could hardly believe what he was hearing. He put his back against the statue’s pedestal, sank down and into the shadows. Mags? Mags?
Erevis, it’s so good to hear-
Later, Mags. Where are you?
Almost to Ordulin. I’m with the Source on Sakkors.
The Source!
Erevis, I have to mind link Riven to you, to us. I want you to prepare yourself.
For what?
This.
Cale felt the connection open between him and a god. Agonizing pain coursed through Cale. His body felt as though it were on fire. He was feeling what Riven was feeling, tiny bits of himself getting chewed off by Shar’s maw.
Cale might have screamed. Or he might have just been experiencing Riven’s screams.
Behind the pain, he sensed the sweep of Riven’s mind stretching across time and worlds, the understanding so vast and deep that Cale recoiled. And behind that, he felt the hopeful voices of the faithful pleading with Riven for a sign, the burden all gods carried.
The. . book, Riven projected. Her weakness. . in. . the book.
There is no weakness in the damned book!
Has. . to. . be. Find it. . or we all. . die.
The mind link with Riven closed.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Cale said.
Rivalen’s deep voice rang out. “This is over now, Cale. Are you bitter? Do you see now the fool Shar has made of you and your ridiculous god?”
“Shut up,” Cale whispered. To Magadon, he projected, Mags, I need you to link me with my son.
Let me see through your eyes.
Cale looked at Vasen and felt Magadon’s consciousness settle into his vision. A deeper itch behind the eye, a short, sharp pain in his left temple. The connection between them opened.
Vasen? Cale said.
No response. Cale felt waves of resistance, self-loathing, rage, but still Vasen read the words and still Shar fed.
Listen to me, Vasen. You have to find the moment of weakness in the book. It’s there.
Still no response.
Think of everything you’ve seen, everything you’ve heard and done. It’s there, Vasen. Mask had a plan. He set all this up. He’s a better schemer than Shar could ever hope to be. It’s there somewhere. You just have to see it.
Still nothing.
It’s there, Vasen. You’ll find it. I have faith in you.
Rivalen emerged from the shadows before Cale, powerful, dark.
Cale lurched to his feet, stabbed with Weaveshear, but Riven sidestepped the blow, grabbed Cale by the cloak, and slammed him against the pedestal. Ribs snapped and Cale gasped with pain.
“You can’t hide from me, Cale. The darkness here belongs to me.”
He slammed Cale again into the pedestal, causing ribs to grind against ribs, opening his skull. Cale saw sparks; his vision blurred. The shadowstuff in his veins worked to heal the damage, but he was still barely holding onto consciousness.
Cale? Magadon projected. Cale, I’m almost there. But the Source is dying. .
Cale did not respond to Magadon. Instead, he spoke to his son.
Faith, Vasen. I have faith. Write the story. Write it.
Rivalen slammed him once more into the stone pedestal. Agony, and all went dark.
Write the story. Faith.
Vasen’s mouth formed the words he read on the poor, trapped man who hunched before him. Hateful words. Dire words. Words of death. Words that should never be uttered. Words that promised an end to everything. And yet he could not stop his lips from forming them, his voice from speaking them.
Faith.
There was no moment of weakness written in the book. There were only words that described Shar’s imminent victory, her incarnation, her feast on the world and everyone in it.
He looked between the words, sought to discern a code, a hidden text. He saw nothing and despaired. And he knew his despair was a betrayal, that Shar fed on his despair as she fed on everything.
He grabbed onto his father’s words, pulled them close.
Think of everything you’ve seen, everything you’ve heard and done. It’s there, Vasen. Mask had a plan. He set all this up. It’s there somewhere. You just have to see it.
His voice, compelled by the nightseer’s spell, continued to utter blasphemies of its own accord, but his mind was his own. He pored over his past, things Derreg had said, things the dead of the pass had said, things the Oracle had said.
The Oracle. Faith. Write the story.
For men like us, Vasen, faith is a quill. With it, we write the story of our lives.
The story of our lives.
He thought of Orsin, prone beside him, maybe dead, thought of the spirals and whorls and lines that decorated the deva’s skin.
The story of Orsin’s life, scribed on his flesh.
A man writes his story in the book of the world.
And in that moment Vasen understood. Shar’s moment of weakness wasn’t written in The Leaves of One Night, because Vasen wasn’t supposed to read it. He was supposed to write it, and his faith, a faith of light and hope and courage, was the quill.
The light is in you, Vasen. Brighter than in the rest of us because it fights the darkness in you.
He smiled and stumbled over one of the words written on the flesh of the man before him. Rivalen’s spell dragged another word out of him, another, and then no more.
With painful slowness, Vasen dragged a finger across the ground before him, scoring the dirt and dust with a line. A new beginning.
He reached down within himself, the core of his being, the light of his soul, to the faith that had sustained him for his entire life, the faith that allowed him to live under a sky that never saw the sun.
“A. . light. . in. . darkness,” he said.