atop the spires of the Palace of Holy Festivals. Temple doors up and down the avenue were closed, their priests and priestesses arrested or fled, their windows dark, pews and worship benches empty. Only the gray stone of Shar’s temple had open doors and lit glowballs, and the Shadovar priestess Variance Mattick presided over the prayers to the Lady. Tamlin fancied he could hear the sound of the Thirteen Truths in the air. He touched his holy symbol and whispered them to the wind.
He looked past the tangle of Selgaunt’s winding streets and broad thoroughfares, past the packed bunches of wood-shingled and tiled roofs, past the turrets of the mansions of the Old Chauncel, and past the Khyber Gate, to where Sakkors hovered three bowshots up in the air on its craggy, inverted mountaintop. Shadows enshrouded it. It looked like a storm cloud, like he imagined the Shadowstorm must look. Not even the afternoon sun could defeat its fog of darkness. From time to time the breeze parted the swirl of shadows and hinted at a tiled rooftop, an elegant turret, a soaring spire, but the entirety of its appearance was a mystery, a secret. The patrol of shade-mounted veserabs had withdrawn into the city. It was soon to travel north and west in answer to Rivalen’s will.
When it did, it would take with it the priests and priestesses of the other Selgauntan faiths, currently held captive in the Shadovar enclave. Tamlin suspected their quarters to be less than luxurious and the suspicion pleased him. He regarded them all as traitors, but could not yet bring himself to give the order to execute them. Some of them had headed their temples since Tamlin was a boy at his father’s knee.
He began instead to let them drift into the background of his mind, let concern for their fate slip into the recesses of public consciousness. When they had adequately faded from the collective memory, he would do what needed done. Rivalen had told him it was necessary. Perhaps Tamlin would assure Rivalen that he was worthy of shadedom when he gave the order for their execution. He would have the order drawn up.
Meanwhile, only Shar’s worship would be sanctioned in Selgaunt. And soon, Shar’s worship would predominate across all of Sembia. Perhaps Tamlin would tolerate other faiths for a time, but only for a time. The Lady of Loss consumed rival faiths the way the Shadowstorm consumed Sembia, drowning them in her darkness.
A distant rumble of thunder sounded from the north, from the Shadowstorm. Tamlin’s dreams of rule depended upon Prince Rivalen stopping it. He looked toward Ordulin and imagined he could see the advancing edge of the Shadowstorm.
“Goodbye, Mirabeta.”
He hoped she had died in pain. She merited such a death.
His thoughts surprised him for a moment, but only a moment. He realized that his religious conversion had freed him to think openly about matters he once would not have considered, or at least would not have acknowledged. The self-realization pleased him. Shar and Rivalen had freed him from the shackles of his past, the shackles of an outdated morality. The old Tamlin had died the moment he plunged the sacrificial dagger into Vees Talendar. And Tamlin had buried the body of his past self in the depths of his worship.
An urge struck him, a desire to symbolize his death and rebirth. He knew how he would do it.
The diminutive of his father’s name died with the old Tamlin. He was, after all, not smaller than his father. He was larger than his father could ever have hoped. He was not Tamlin, not Deuce, but Thamalon II, and would be from then on. Perhaps he would order a coin minted to that effect. He thought Rivalen would appreciate the gesture.
As the sun sank lower, roofed the sky in the crimson of blood, Sakkors began to move. Watching the monumental edifice, the whole of it as large as Selgaunt, fly through the air brought Shar’s praises to Tamlin’s lips. Rivalen would take it north, toward Saerb, and trap the Saerbian refugees between a Shadovar army and the onrushing Shadowstorm. He hoped thereby to force Mister Cale to assist him in destroying Kesson Rel.
Rivalen had seemed unsure that Mister Cale would accede, but Thamalon knew Cale would. Mister Cale still thought about morality the way Thamalon once did, the way Thamalon’s father once had. Thamalon knew better now. The refugees were a tool to be used to achieve a greater end. Their individual