masked his face. Tamlin wished that he were a shade, that his eyes could see in darkness as well as daylight. He felt betrayed by his mere humanity.
“Very well, Lord,” Irwyl said, his tone stiff. “A good eve to you.”
“And to you,” Tamlin said.
Irwyl left him alone with the night, with his goddess. He found the solitude and the darkness comforting but could not shake the chill.
Rivalen sat alone in the darkness of his quarters, his mood as black as the moonless sky. The broken pieces of his holy symbol lay on the table before him.
The requirements of his faith had declared war on the needs of his people. The priest was at war with the prince. He needed to resolve the situation, satisfy both.
Shadows boiled from his flesh.
For millennia Rivalen had kept his faith and civic duty in an uneasy truce, the needs of the one separated from the demands of the other by the gulf of time. Rivalen knew the world eventually would bend to Shar and return to darkness and cold, but he had believed he had many more millennia still, that he could accomplish his goals, and those of his people, before Shar reclaimed the multiverse. Oblivion seemed always in the future.
But synchronicity had disabused him of his delusion. The Shadowstorm was happening now, devouring the realm needed by Shade Enclave to secure its future and resurrect the glory of Netheril.
He must choose his faith or his people.
“Mustn’t I?” he said. He held a Sembian raven in his hand. Tarnish blackened the silver.
“Obverse or reverse,” he said, turning it in his fingers, seeing the late overmaster’s profile on one side, the Sembian arms on the other.
Hope had been his transgression, he realized. He had hoped to resurrect the Empire of Netheril and return his people, and Faerûn, to glory. He had hoped—later, much later—to summon the Shadowstorm that would herald the beginning of the world’s end. Events had proven him a fool. The Lady of Loss spurned hope and expected her Nightseer to do the same. Rivalen had learned the lesson but wisdom had come too late, and its tardy arrival did nothing to assuage his bitterness, his rage.
Shar had chosen others for her instruments. A priestess he had thought to use and discard had betrayed him, stolen The Leaves of One Night. And a mad heretic, once a priest of Mask but now a servant of Shar, had brought forth the Shadowstorm and lurked in its dark center as it devoured the realm Rivalen had thought to annex for his people.
Rivalen had murdered his own mother for his goddess, but his goddess had kept from him a profound secret—he was not to be the cause of the Shadowstorm; he, and his hopes, were to be its victims.
And he sensed deeper secrets still, corpses buried in the fetid earth of Shar’s darkness. They would rise when she saw fit, but not before.
He tried to accept matters, but failed. The shadows around him whirled, filled the room, poured forth through the shutter slats and into the night.
“I will not have it,” he said, turning the coin more rapidly.
A soft buzzing sounded in his ears, grew in volume, clarified. A sending. He almost countered it but decided against it.
In his mind he heard the voice of his father, the Most High.
Faerûn’s powerful will not stand idle for long while this Shadowstorm darkens Sembia. End it, Rivalen.
The Most High’s imperious tone pulled at the scab of Rivalen’s already wounded pride but he kept his irritation from his tone.
I will do what I can, Father.
Hadrhune’s divinations have revealed the possibility of a Sharran at the root of the storm. Perhaps you are not equipped for this task?
The mention of the Most High’s chief counselor, a rival to Rivalen, rankled.
Hadrhune’s understanding, as always, is limited. The Sharran behind the storm is a heretic. I will see to him and it. Meanwhile, please remind Hadrhune, and yourself, that I have raised Sakkors, shattered Saerloon’s forces, and given you Selgaunt. Soon I will add to it all of Sembia.
There will be nothing to give if the Shadowstorm is not stopped. End it, Rivalen. Soon. Other matters in the heartland proceed apace. This is a distraction.
Other matters?
The connection ceased. Apparently his father, too, had secrets.
Rivalen swallowed his irritation and decided to interpret his father’s sending as a sign. Kesson Rel was a heretic. And Rivalen would not allow centuries of planning to unravel so that a heretic could serve the Mistress and destroy the