to his quarters and Tamlin did not sleep, could not sleep. He continually found himself rubbing his right hand on his trousers, as if to remove something offensive.
The morning brought a griffon-mounted messenger from Saerloon. Rivalen had been a prophet. The messenger bore a missive from Lady Merelith, requesting terms for the peaceful turnover of her city. Tamlin’s hands shook has he read it.
Let the hardships of the Sembian people end, she wrote. Let Saerloon and Selgaunt advance into the future in brotherhood.
Tamlin had heralds read the surrender on street corners and declared a holiday. The bells and gongs of Shar’s new temple rang all morning.
Tamlin composed a response with the advice of Prince Rivalen. He agreed to an end to hostilities, required that Lady Merelith and her court publically abdicate, that Saerloon accept a regent appointed by Tamlin, and that the city allow a garrison of three hundred Selgauntan and Shadovar troops barracks within Saerloon’s walls to ensure the peace.
“She will not accept these terms,” Tamlin said to Rivalen.
“She will,” Rivalen answered. “She has no choice. Choose as regent a trusted member of the Old Chauncel, perhaps one with mercantile ties to Saerloon. I will arrange the Shadovar contingent of the garrison.”
Cale wandered the island as the setting sun ducked under the horizon and painted the shimmering surface of the Inner Sea in red and gold. The cries of gulls gave way to the steady heartbeat of the surf on the shore. Night crept out of its holes and hollows and slowly stretched its dark hand over the island, a sea-beset, solitary dot of rock.
He eventually found himself atop the low hill where they had buried Jak. A few of the stones marking the grave had fallen from the cairn. He replaced them, missing his friend, missing … many things. To one side of him the night-shrouded sea stretched out to the limits of his vision, black and impenetrable; the other side, the shadow-wrapped spire of Mask.
He crouched with his forearms on his knees and stared at Jak’s grave. Patches of grass dotted the soil and poked up through the loose rock. Shadows curled around Cale, languid and dark. The wind blew and he fooled himself into thinking he smelled tobacco from Jak’s pipe rather than sea salt. He felt eyes on him and looked to the temple. The Shadowwalkers congregated there on the drawbridge, in the shadow of the spire, watching him. He did not welcome their regard.
They thought he was one thing; he was striving to be something else. He feared their reverence would root him in place, make him what they wanted.
Desiring privacy, he enshrouded himself in shadows and sank into their dark coils. He thought of his friend and sought words, found them, and confessed.
“I am trying to keep my promise, little man, but it is hard.”
The rush of breakers sounded in the distance. He had murdered the Sojourner to the same sound. Murder came easy to him, easier than it should for a hero. He felt saturated by darkness, permeated by it. There was no separation between him and it. He looked at his shadowhand, a tangible reminder that he would always exist fully only in shadow, complete only in the night. He reached into his pocket, felt there the small river stone the halfling boy had given him.
“You told me once that what we do is only what we do, not what we are. I think you were right, little man, but I wish you had been wrong.”
He shook his head, looked through the shadows with his shadesight, out across the dark, inscrutable sea.
“You would smile at the things I’ve done, Jak. But I feel … nothing. Something in me has changed, is changing, and what I am would not make you smile.”
Shadows boiled from his skin, swirled. He imagined it to be whatever was left of his soul, squirming from his flesh to flee the corrupted vessel in which it was forced to reside.
Looking back over recent months, he saw that he felt only anger with any acuteness. Other feelings were faint, blunt, sensed as if through a haze. He had loved Varra, but only from afar—love without passion. He had saved the halfling boy from trolls, saved Abelar’s son, tried to save Varra, was still trying to save Magadon, but all of it felt false, deeds done more out of duty than a genuine sense of compassion or love.
He was becoming more and more shadowstuff with each day, more inhuman. His