Authors: Paul S. Kemp
Rivalen’s eyes flashed and he regarded Tamlin for a moment. The shadows around him swirled. “I believe you, Hulorn.”
Onthul appeared before them. Scratches covered his face. Rips marred his tabard and dents marked his breastplate. A piece of torn fabric bound a wound on his forearm. Dust caked his beard. Tamlin almost embraced the old war dog.
“My lords,” he said to Tamlin and the Princes, and bowed. “We have more than three hundred Saerloonian prisoners, Hulorn.”
“They can be imprisoned on Sakkors until you decide their fate,” Rivalen said to Tamlin.
Tamlin nodded. “Very good. Gather them, Captain Onthul. The Shadovar will transport them.”
Onthul nodded. “Shall I send for the priests held in the palace so that they may assist with the wounded?”
Tamlin looked out on the battlefield, at Variance and her fellow priests and priestesses moving among Selgaunt’s wounded, healing them. “Are the Sharrans unable to do what needs to be done?”
Onthul looked at the battlefield, back at Tamlin. “The Sharrans appear to have matters in hand, Hulorn.”
“Good. Then leave the priests where they are. Their disposition remains … under consideration.”
Onthul saluted and started to walk away.
“Captain,” Tamlin called.
Onthul turned, eyebrows raised in a question.
“You served Selgaunt well today, Captain.”
Onthul smiled, nodded, and walked off, barking orders.
“Let us retire to discuss matters, Hulorn,” Rivalen said.
“Yes,” said Tamlin.
Nightal, the Year ofLightning Stormsp>
Tamlin paced the study in Stormweather Tower. He ran his fingertips over the spines of his father’s books. He had read almost none of them.
“Vees Talendar a traitor?” he said to Rivalen. “That cannot be, Prince. I’ve known him for years. He has been indispensable to me.”
Rivalen stood in the center of the study, near the chessboard, arms crossed. He advanced a black pawn. “You wished to know all, Hulorn. This is all. Will you hear the rest?”
Tamlin’s stomach fluttered but he nodded.
“Recall my mention of renegade, heretical elements within the Sharran church. Vees Talendar is not a priest of Siamorphe, as he purports, but a priest of Shar.”
Tamlin gave a start. “Shar? Like you?”
“Shar,” Rivalen nodded. “But not like me. I learned of
this months ago but kept it from you to earn Talendar’s confidence and learn more of his plans. Talendar leads a group of like-minded worshipers. All of them are heretics, Hulorn. All of them are guilty of dark deeds in which innocents suffered.”
Tamlin swallowed, looked out of the window onto Stormweather’s night-shrouded grounds. He could not believe what he was hearing.
Rivalen continued. “The temple of Siamorphe is a carefully constructed disguise, long in planning. The true temple is below it. It is a temple to Shar, dedicated by heretics. I have seen it.”
Tamlin could think of no words. He merely shook his head.
“There is more still,” Rivalen said.
“Isn’t that enough?” Tamlin said bitterly.
Shadows swirled about the Prince and his eyes glowed in the darkness. His expression showed sympathy. “I know this must be hard to hear. I regret having to tell you these things. But we are at war and cannot have a traitor in our midst.”
Tamlin held his goblet in the air between his lips and the tabletop. “Traitor. The word does not fit. Traitor?”
Rivalen nodded.
Tamlin set the goblet down untouched.
“And now I enter into the realm of speculation,” Rivalen said. “But here are my thoughts. I believe Vees Talendar told the overmistress and Lady Merelith of the alliance between Shade Enclave and Selgaunt. I believe Vees Talendar then encouraged the other priesthoods in the city to take a neutral stance in the conflict. Some of them may be in league with him.”
“If he is a Sharran, as you say …” Tamlin said.
“They would not know that. They believe him a worshiper of Siamorphe.”
Tamlin’s head swam. He tried to make sense of Vees’s treachery, replayed in his mind their many meetings and discussions over the past year. Vees had been secretive, prohibiting anyone from entering the temple of Siamorphe, disappearing for days at a time.
“Why would he do this?” Tamlin asked.
“We discussed the nature of men once before, Tamlin. Is that not reason enough? Perhaps he still harbors ill will due to the conflict between his family and yours. In the end, I believe he wished to see Selgaunt fall and for you and me to die. I suspect he had arranged with Merelith and the overmistress to become the new Hulorn. At the same time, by eliminating me, he would kill Shar’s high priest and move a step closer to his heresy becoming accepted in the church. Perhaps he thought to become a high priest himself. Why else would he not have fought beside us at the walls?”
Tamlin picked up the wine goblet and drank it empty in a single gulp. He refilled it, his mind racing. Everything Rivalen said made sense. Anger and shame warmed Tamlin’s cheeks. He had been played for a fool. He thought of how disappointed his father would have been with him, how smug Erevis Cale would have been, and his anger grew. He looked to Rivalen.
“These are accusations. I need proof before I authorize steps.”
Rivalen crossed the room and stared down at Tamlin. “I will give you proof. This moment. Stay near me and remain silent.”
The darkness deepened around them until Tamlin could not see. His stomach fluttered as the shadows moved them elsewhere. He heard a voice, Vees’s voice, chanting as the darkness parted.
“Love is a lie,” Vees said. “Only hate endures. Light is blinding. Only in darkness do we see clearly.”
Rivalen and Tamlin stood in the back of a vaulted, windowless chamber. Wooden pews arranged before them faced a black altar draped with a purple and black altar cloth. Vees Talendar, dressed in black robes, knelt before the altar, chanting. He held in his hands a black disc ringed in purpleShar’s symbol.
Coming face to face with Vees’s treachery lit Tamlin’s anger. He exhaled in a hiss.
Vees stopped chanting of a sudden and started to rise and turn.
Rivalen surrounded them in darkness and whisked them back
to the study in Stormweather Tower. When the shadows parted, Tamlin slammed a fist on the side table. The impact tipped his wine goblet and the red fluid pooled on the table and dripped to the floor.
Vees had lied to him, betrayed him, betrayed the city. “He must be held to account,” Tamlin said. “He must be punished,” Rivalen said, and the shadows about him swirled.
“I will have him arrested.”
Rivalen put a hand on his shoulder. The strength in the Prince’s hand surprised Tamlin. The shadows around Rivalen churned, touched Tamlin.
“He is a heretic. I would ask that you allow me to see him punished in accordance with church doctrine.”
“What does doctrine demand?” Tamlin asked, though he knew the answer.
Rivalen did not blanch. “Death.”
Tamlin stared into Rivalen’s golden eyes. His breath came short and shallow. He hesitated, then remembered Rivalen’s wordsSqueamishness is seldom rewarded in war. His heart raced but his anger burned.
“His family will not stand for it.”
The shadows around Rivalen roiled and he took on a sly look. “Vees Talendar died in combat with the Saerloonian army. I saw it. His body was crushed nearly beyond recognition in the rubble of the wall. He will be buried in a mass grave with the others who fell, assuming his body can be recovered at all.”
Tamlin looked into Rivalen’s eyes and considered. If Vees had been in seclusion since the battle began, as it appeared he had, the claim could hold up. And if it did not, the threat of revealing a Talendar son as a heretical Sharran would keep a scandal from erupting. He took a deep breath, nodded. “I saw the same thing.”
Rivalen did not smile, but his eyes showed approval. “You have grown in our time together.”
Tamlin nodded, pleased with Rivalen’s praise. He had grown.
“I wonder,” Rivalen said softly, “whether you are willing to take the final steps?”
Tamlin looked up, a question in his eyes.
“You have seen what Shar offers and have expressed a desire to know more. I have seen in your face that you wish, even, to become one of us?” Rivalen held up his hands and the shadows swirled around his flesh.
Tamlin did not bother to deny it. He had seen shades do what ordinary men could never hope to do.
“All of that is possible,” Rivalen said. “But you must demonstrate your commitment to Shar, to me, to yourself. May I be candid?”
Tamlin tried to speak but his mouth was dry. He nodded.
“Too long you have tried to do things halfway, to compromise, to equivocate, to hedge. This, perhaps, is a lesson you learned from your father. I understand well a father’s effect on his son.”
Tamlin did not respond, but knew that Rivalen was correct. Thamalon had always been a negotiator, a conciliator. Tamlin, too, had always sought a middle path. It had been easiest.
Rivalen continued. “Shar will not stand for such and neither will I. A new world was born today, Tamlin. Your decision here, now, will determine what role you have in it.”
Tamlin thought of his mother, his sister, his father, brother, Cale. They would never understand what he had seen, faced, been through. But he decided that he did not need them to. And that decision freed him, for the first time in his life.
“You know my mind, Prince. You know what I want.”
Rivalen smiled, showing his fangs. “Then it falls to you to administer punishment to Vees Talendar. In so doing, you will help me reclaim the temple he has desecrated with his heresy. In so doing, you will earn the favor of the Lady of Loss. Are you prepared to do this?”
Tamlin felt mildly lightheaded. He tried to swallow but could not. He was sweating. He felt as if he were standing at the edge
of a cliff. Rivalen’s eyes burned into him. He thought of all the times he had stood in the study, facing not a Prince of Shade but the disapproving eyes of his father. He thought of the times he had overheard his father confiding to Erevis Cale his disappointment with Tamlin.
He was done trying to satisfy others. He would satisfy himself. He looked from the top of the cliff, eyes open, and stepped off.
“No more compromises, Prince,” he said.
Rivalen nodded. “Have you ever taken a man’s life before?”
Tamlin cleared his throat. “Yes. But not like this.”
Rivalen nodded. “There is no shame in that. Ready yourself. I will prepare matters.”
<§> ŚŠŚ
Rivalen returned to his quarters, pleased. He saw potential in Tamlin and hoped the boy would not fail him. He would regard it as unfortunate if he needed to kill him.
He sat on the lush divan before the fireplace. The ambient light of the city’s streets filtered in through the windows. Long shadows stretched across the chamber. The darkness embraced him.
On the floor near the divan sat the warded chest that held The Leaves of One Night. Rivalen had turned the chest invisible, but his magically enhanced vision saw invisible objects as clearly as visible ones. He pulled the chest before him, spoke the series of passwords that allowed him to bypass the wards, and opened the lid.
Tendrils of shadows snaked into the air. Sussurant, indecipherable whispers filled the chamber for a moment.
Within the chest lay the holy book. Rivalen intoned another series of passwords, reached within, and withdrew it. The moment he touched it, a cacophony of voices sounded in his mind, whispers, shouts, screams, mutterings. He knew they pronounced secrets from ages past, present, and future, but he could not make sense of the words.
The silver characters on the book’s frigid cover shifted under his touch, squirmed like worms beneath his fingertips. He held the book on his lap for a time, running his fingers over the pages and losing himself in its utterings. Variance had once told him that listening to the voices too long made the listener mad. Rivalen knew better. Listening to the voices made the hearer wise.
His mind drifted, floated. He thought of the mother he had murdered, his coin collection, his father, his brothers, he thought of the centuries he had spent in darkness. He considered the role of the goddess in his life and saw that the thread of her plots sewed together every moment of his existence from birth to present. It was her voice that spoke to him through the book. He could not understand the divine tongue in which she spoke, but he knew it spoke of a plan to return existence to the perfect, unmarred nothingness of pre-creation.
He focused on the present, on the role he had played and would play in effecting his goddess’s will. Events had transpired much as he had hoped. He had only a single frayed end to burn off.
He took his hand from the bookinstantly missing the voicesand touched the holy symbol he wore around his neck. He should not take the next step without an augury.
Softly intoning the words to a spell that allowed him communion with Shar, he expanded his consciousness. He found himself floating in emptiness. Insignificant. Alone.
A presence manifested and the emptiness had purpose, consciousness.
The power of Shar’s mind, the frigid cold of the void tugged at him. He slipped toward it. Oblivion beckoned. He resisted its call and sent Shar his question.
Vees Talendar, Lady?
The void spoke with a woman’s voice and its power stripped him bare.
The Dark Brother has served his purpose, as all do. Even you.
The words made Rivalen uneasy.
would know more, Lady. Knowledge would allow me to serve you better.p>
You know what you need to know, and are ignorant of those things of which you should be ignorant. Proceed as you have planned, content in your knowledge and in your ignorance.
Rivalen dared not dispute the matter.
Thank you, Lady, he said, and cut off the spell. He returned to his body, shaking, gasping, cold. He swallowed and grounded himself back in the world by clutching the divan, feeling the floor under his feet. His flesh bled shadows, and they swirled around him torpidly. He felt at sea. He knew much, but not all. Whatever Shar had planned, Rivalen was but a part of it.