Enken edged his horse toward Kelgar’s. “Close your hole before I fill it with steel, priest. Revenge for your dead fellow and Forrin’s snatching is not reason to be rash.”
The Talassans glared at Enken and snarled. Enken answered with his own glare, his hand on one of his knives. The other commanders took position near Enken, facing off the priests.
“Calmer heads, men,” Reht said. “All of you. There’s work ahead.” To Enken, he said, “You think it rash?”
“Yes,” Enken said, and tilted his head. “But I don’t see many options. If we retreat before it, it will chase us into the Saerbian forces, which may be the intent. Even if it stops advancing it cuts us off from Ordulin and leaves us unsupplied. Moving south toward Selgaunt is not an option. I’d rather enter it and take our chances than sit on my hands.” He smiled. “But that doesn’t make it any less rash.”
Reht chuckled. “Agreed. Sometimes rashness is a soldier’s ally. That’s why we keep Norsim and his luck at our side.”
Norsim smiled.
Reht continued, “Let’s keep the men sharp and see what we see.”
“Aye,” Enken said. He spat at the feet of Kelgar’s mount. “Maybe these battle-happy fools can lead the advance, eh?”
“We’ve been leading since we arrived,” Kelgar answered.
The men all laughed as the group dispersed back to their units.
“Remain,” Reht said to Mennick, and when they stood alone atop the rise, he said, “What have you learned?”
The mage shook his head. “Nothing. Whoever took the general is well warded against scrying.” He nodded at the storm as distant thunder rumbled. “And divinations reveal nothing about the storm. It’s a void, Commander.”
“Ordulin and the Overmistress?”
“I cannot make contact with anyone there. The storm may be blocking the magic.”
Behind them, horns blew and men shouted, the army forming up.
Reht eyed the black wall before him, and the twisted look of the world under its shroud. He and his army were isolated in the field, with scant knowledge of their enemy, supply lines cut by the storm, and no instructions from their ostensible leaders in Ordulin. He did not like the courses open to him but had to choose one.
“Get yourself ready,” he said to Mennick. “We go in. If the Shadovar are within the storm, we engage. If this is just a ruse or magic gone awry, we push through it, return to Ordulin, and regroup.”
When the mage was gone, Reht whispered a prayer to Tempus, asking the Lord of Battle to strengthen his men.
Cale looked up into the dark sky. Above the tree line he saw thousands of tiny points of red light streaking toward the meadow. From a distance they looked like a swarm of fireflies, a swirling constellation of red stars. But Cale recognized them for what they were—eyes.
“Shadows,” he said.
Riven nodded, and absently spun his sabers. “She’s not here? Varra?”
Cale shook his head.
The air grew cooler as the undead approached. The wind pasted Cale’s cloak to his skin. “This storm, the shadows. It’s like the Calyx.”
Riven nodded. “Kesson Rel is in Faerûn, His shadow giants cannot be far off.”
Cale tried to count the shadows as they swarmed toward them but gave up. There were thousands. Cale remembered the pit under the spire in the Adumbral Calyx, the black hole that vomited newly formed shadows into the world.
“He has opened a gate,” Cale said. “Or a rift.”
Cale had seen something similar, long ago, when a portion of the Abyss had bled into the guildhouse of the Night Knives.
“Too many,” Riven said, as the undead creatures closed. Hundreds of them descended into the forest, still flying for the meadow, and the soft glow of their eyes cast the boles and boughs of the trees in crimson. Riven bounced on the balls of his feet, slowly twirling his sabers.
“Too many, Cale.”
Cale tried to imagine the scope of the deaths that thousands of shadows could cause, but it was too large. He thought of the Saerbians, Selgaunt. He sagged under the weight of his role in it.
“We did this,” he said.
Riven stopped spinning his sabers. “No. Kesson Rel did this.”
Cale tried to agree, but failed. “We freed him to do it when we killed Furlinastis. Kesson Rel played us, and now he is come to Faerûn.”
“We didn’t know.”
“We didn’t think. We just acted.”
The shadows drew closer, the keening louder.
Riven looked over at Cale. “We aren’t going to undo it here. There are too many.”
Cale barely heard him. He thought of Varra, of his spell’s verdict: She