Malik returned Kleef’s glare with a smug little smile, then shifted his gaze back to the keep, where the stones had finally stopped trembling. The mad anger soon drained from all four of Sadrach’s faces, and his hands stopped weaving their spells. The door to the keep swung open.
Kleef breathed a sigh of relief, then nodded to Malik. “It seems I owe you an apology.”
“Yes, and I will accept one later,” Malik said, heading for the drawbridge. “After we have delivered the Eye.”
The group was less than a quarter of the way across when the orcs spotted them and began to stream across the bailey toward the keep. Gingrid volunteered to stay behind and handle the problem-no doubt using the undead and the wallbound. She told them how to find the entrance to Grumbar’s Temple, and ten minutes later, Kleef was leading the way down a narrow, spiraling passage deep beneath the keep. An eerie gray glow lit the way, always seeming to come from just around the bend. Like the passage itself, the steps had been hewn from the surrounding stone, and they were so narrow that two men could not stand on them side by side. The air was dank and musty, but still fresh enough that the only obvious whiff of decay came from Malik.
Kleef kept expecting to see a warning glow rise from the agate on Watcher’s crossguard, or to feel a band of Shadovar lurking around the bend ahead, but the only enemies they encountered were the phantoms of his own imagination.
Finally, the passage opened into a small, seven-sided chamber with uncut gems glowing from the walls in seven different colors. In the center of the room stood a mountain-shaped dais with seven slopes, each veined with a different native metal. The summit of the dais rose into the shape of a huge seven-fingered hand, held open and flat. The palm was large enough for a man to sit upon, and Kleef could imagine Sadrach seated atop the strange throne, meditating on the changeless nature of the earthlord.
“At last!” Malik slipped past Kleef and started for the dais. “No one will be happier than me to see this done.”
He was no more than halfway there when a cold pool of darkness began to seep from the base of the stone walls around them. It was impossible to guess whether Shar was coming for them or the boundary between the physical realm and the Shadowfell had simply grown that tenuous, but the result was the same-Malik stopped and looked down in horror.
Kleef rushed to Malik’s side. “Don’t stop now!” He slipped a hand beneath the little man’s arm, then glanced back to find Arietta and Joelle close behind. “What next?”
Joelle pointed at the dais. “Deliver the Eye,” she said. “The rest is for fate to decide.”
By the time she finished speaking, the darkness had congealed into a blanket of gloom and spread across the entire floor. Kleef could feel the murky stuff drawing the warmth and sensation from his feet, turning them into numb bricks of ice. He lifted Malik off the floor and carried him the last few steps to the center of the room, then placed him on the edge of the dais.
Kleef felt the darkness swirl around his ankles.
“Hurry!”
Malik reached up, grabbing hold of the seven-fingered hand and using it to pull himself up a gold-veined slope to the top. He reached into his robe, and Kleef felt the Eye of Gruumsh hunting for him, a profane hunger searching for a bitterness that no longer existed.
The darkness climbed toward Kleef’s knees, and he could no longer think of it as anything but the Shadowfell, Shar’s cold oblivion rising up to take the world.
Malik placed the Eye in Grumbar’s stony hand.
“A token from your beloved,” he said. “Your rival’s only eye.”
A soft rumble arose inside the dais, so deep and sonorous that Kleef heard it more in his stomach than in his ears. The entire temple began to shudder in a slow, pulsing rhythm, and the muffled crump of grinding stones reverberated from the temple walls.
Then the veins on the Eye began to throb, and the savage fury of Gruumsh became a burning fear in the pit of Kleef’s stomach. He wanted nothing more than to flee and leave Toril’s fate to the gods, but he could not. He had sworn a vow.
The Shadowfell was seeping in from all sides now. Malik slid back down to the edge of the dais, his gaze fixed on Arietta.
“I hope you have said your farewells,” he said. “I fear we are at the end of our time.”
Arietta nodded. “I’m ready.” She stood a few paces from Kleef, holding Joelle’s hand, her eyes moist, her chin held high. She turned to Joelle and asked, “How do we do this?”
“We don’t-not you, my lady.” Kleef turned to Joelle. “I can’t allow it.”
Joelle’s eyes glimmered with approval, as though she had actually been expecting his declaration, but behind Kleef, Malik was aghast.
“What do you mean you can’t allow it?” he demanded. “Sune must have her love sacrifice.”
“And she will,” Kleef said, directing his answer to Joelle. “When Arietta offered her life, it was because she knew it was the only way to save Toril.”
Joelle nodded, her eyes patient and knowing. “I had the same thought.”
Arietta’s eyes widened in alarm.
Kleef gave her no time to object. “But you are not the only one who loves Arietta.” He flipped Watcher around, setting the hilt on the floor and bracing it in place by leaning his chest against the tip. “And when I offer my life, it will be to save hers.”
Arietta’s jaw fell, and she shook her head. “You can’t!”
“Of course he can,” Malik said. He looked to Joelle. “The question is, will sacrificing Kleef work instead?”
Joelle glanced past Kleef toward Malik, her eyes cold with dislike. “Probably better.”
“Good,” Kleef said.
The Shadowfell was swirling around his thighs now, and would soon reach the top of the dais and begin its advance toward the Eye. Kleef’s legs had gone cold and numb from the knees down, and he felt as though he were standing on pillars of ice. He looked up and met Arietta’s eyes, then steeled himself to begin the long fall forward.
“Kleef,” she said. “Please-”
Her sentence came to an abrupt end when Malik leaped into view, a little black dagger in his upraised hand, his eyes locked firmly on Arietta’s heart.
“For the One and All!” He swung the dagger toward Arietta. “For the Prince-”
His cry ended as Joelle hurled herself into Malik’s side, driving him back onto the dais. As the dagger came down, it opened a shallow gash across Joelle’s back, then they both dropped into the Shadowfell and vanished from sight.
Arietta screamed and lunged after them.
Kleef rolled himself off Watcher’s tip. Blood was seeping into his tunic, and his chest ached where the sword had already started to drive through his breastbone. He kicked the hilt into the air and grabbed it on the move, then stepped to Arietta’s side as she plunged her arms down into the swirling darkness.
She cried out in dismay, but when she rose into a kneeling position, her arms wrapped around her beloved’s torso. Too late. The color had already vanished from Joelle’s face, and her lips had gone blue with death.
A tremendous crunching sounded atop the dais. The dull rumbling that had filled the temple faded and the shuddering stopped, and the muffled grinding of stone became the hushed hissing of shifting soil. The temple smelled dank and earthy and pure again, and the profane hunger of Gruumsh’s searching Eye became just a passing moment of revulsion.
Too concerned about what Malik would do next to look away from Arietta, Kleef plunged Watcher into the swirling darkness-and felt the tip sink into something too soft to be flesh. He brought the sword around in a clearing arc and felt it drag through something thick and loose, then raised the blade-and found fresh dirt clinging to it.
When Kleef raised his feet, he felt the ground tugging at his boots-and Malik quickly became a secondary concern. He slipped a hand beneath Arietta’s arm and pulled her to her feet.
“It’s done,” he said. “Time to go-before we get buried.”