his own dagger snagged Valdar’s robe. They danced apart.
As they circled, Kâras saw movement in the tunnel behind Valdar: a patch of roiling darkness, momentarily backlit by a temporary ripple of Faerzress. It looked like an enormous blob of shadow, smooth and bulging. Kâras’s pulse quickened as it flowed into the room. Shadow and ooze, together? Was its presence a sign that he’d guessed wrong? Perhaps the Masked Lord had indeed aligned himself with Ghaunadaur. Killing Valdar might have been the wrong choice.
“Ooze!” Kâras shouted. “Behind you.”
Valdar laughed. His fingers flicked. A flicker of light danced at the edge of Kâras’s peripheral vision: a forceblade, forged from moonlight and shadow. It streaked toward Kârasonly to slam into his magical shield and explode in a halo of moonŹlight. Yet in the instant that Kâras’s attention was diverted, Valdar’s other hand whipped forward. Kâras felt a blow like a dull punch, then an ache. He looked down: Valdar’s black blade had buried itself hilt-deep in Kâras’s gut.
Valdar started to gloatonly to grunt in pain as the shadow-ooze engulfed his legs, knocking him prone. His face paled to gray, and his eyes widened. He struggled in vain to free himself as the shadow-ooze flowed slowly up his body. “It… You weren’t…”
“Bluffing?” Kâras edged back, one hand pressed to the blood-slippery shirt where Valdar’s dagger had punched home. He knew better than to draw the blade out. It would only do more damage. “No.”
He stepped back again, keeping out of range of the bulgŹing shadow-ooze. He sang a prayer to the Masked Lord that should have squeezed the dagger from his gut and stitched the puncture shut.
Nothing happened.
“No use,” Valdar gasped. “It’s a life stealer.”
Worried now, Kâras tried to yank the dagger free. It didn’t budge. A cold centered in his midriff, and he felt his life spiral down into the blade.
Valdar lay on the floor, the ooze covering all but his shoulŹders and head. The magic sustaining his disguise bled away, revealing his mask. He tried once more to crawlpainfully, slowlyas the ooze sucked him fully into itself.
“You were wrong,” Kâras told the vanished Valdar. His voice quaveredand not just from the drain of the magiŹcal blade. Yet he kept speaking, if only to convince himself. Blackness crowded the edges of his vision. It wouldn’t be long now before he’d go to the Masked Lord’s embrace. He gestured weakly at the ooze. “This wasn’t… what the Masked Lord … wanted.”
The last of Kâras’s life-force drained away, conveyed by the magical blade to the great Void. He collapsed. His mask flutŹtered as his last breath left his lungs. Then it settled against his face. Masked Lord, he prayed as he died. Draw me into your eternal Night.
His awareness shifted. He stood on a vast gray plain, neither in light nor in shadow. Beside him was another awareness: Valdar. Oddly, Kâras bore the other Nightshadow no ill will.
A voice called to them: a voice that was neither male nor female, but both. A moment later, it became a pool of utter silence. Then song, then silence. Opposites, twined together, yet somehow harmonious.
Side by side, the awarenesses that were Kâras and Valdar drifted to the place where the song-silence was coming from. It caught them like leaves and swirled them up toward itself. They drifted in front of an enormous face. Moonlight bathed the face’s upper half in shining radiance; the lower half was shadowed in utter blackness. A glint of blue danced across eyes the color of moonstones.
Masked Lord, Kâras asked. Is it you?
A feminine laugh rustled the mask.
Masked… Lady? he ventured.
The chuckle deepened, became male.
Hands moved to the blackness that was the deity’s mask. Fingers gripped its edges. Kâras tensed, and felt the eager anticipation of the awareness that was Valdar.
The mask lifted.
Kâras wept.
So did Valdarand as he did, Kâras saw into the other Nightshadow’s heart.
The emotions that had prompted their tears were as difŹferent as moonlight from shadow.
“Seal those corridors!” Erelda shouted.
She pointed with her sword. Priestesses scrambled to the tunnels leading north, east, and south from the Cavern of Song, raised their holy symbols, and sang. Shimmering barriers, bright as moonlight but steeled with black shadow, sprang into being and sealed the tunnels. These would offer a temporary reprieve. Eilistraee’s faithful could pass through, but the barriers would hold the fanatics and their minions at bay.
For a time.
Erelda ran a hand through her sweat-damp hair. The Stronghall had fallen. The Hall of the Priestesses would likely be next. The handful of priestesses