thinking of his son, his life of service, wondering what it was that he was called to do. He was unmoored.
Ephyras’s wind gusted, blew up a blizzard of black sand. The shadows around Cale and Rivalen deflected the particles. Riven, without any such protection, kept his hood up and his cloak drawn tight.
Cale tried to pry open the mental door Magadon had left ajar in his mind.
Mags?
He received no response and his worry manifested in a swirl of shadows.
“Which way to the temple?” Riven asked, as lightning bisected the sky.
Cale and Rivalen held their respective holy symbols, and both intoned the words to a minor divination.
“That way,” Rivalen said, pointing.
“Agreed,” Cale said, when the magic of his divination pulled at his body.
The prolonged rumble of falling stone sounded in the distance, the thunder of collapse. The ground vibrated under their feet and for a moment it felt as if the entire world were about to crumble.
“Over there,” Cale said, and pointed.
In the direction they were to travel, a cloud of dust rose into the dark sky, the only landmark of any significance for as far as he could see.
“Magical transport will be dangerous,” Rivalen said.
“We do not have time to walk,” Cale said, thinking of the Saerbians, thinking of Magadon, thinking of Ephyras’s death throes.
“You serve no one if your body materializes underground or in a stone. The currents of magic are wild here. You do not feel them?”
Cale did not, and had to rely on Rivalen’s word. “Let’s move, then.”
The three men melted into the darkness and started out on foot, moving fast. The earth felt brittle, hollow under Cale’s feet. The tremors that shook it from time to time nearly knocked him down. He imagined the entire world to be as hole-ridden as a sea sponge, ready to crumble into pieces were too much pressure applied to it.
He sweated despite the cold. They saw nothing of interest for a league and the flat, featureless landscape made distance hard to estimate. The sound of still more collapsing stone and the ever present cloud of dust ahead kept them roughly oriented.
Time weighed on Cale. He pressed the pace until all three men were soaked in sweat and gasping.
Ahead, mounds dotted the landscape like burial cairns. Eventually the mounds took shape and Cale recognized them for what they were—crumbling structures poking from the dried earth, ghostly hillocks lit by lightning flashes and covered in the dust of a destroyed world. Little remained, but he discerned partially collapsed domes, crumbling arches, hollow columns.
“Your goddess is a bitch,” Riven said to Rivalen.
Rivalen said nothing, merely eyed the wreckage of a ruined world. A minor divination fell from his lips and, presumably led by its pull, he stopped from time to time to pick at this or that in the black sand. He finally lifted what he had sought—a coin of black metal, the markings upon it nearly worn away entirely.
“You collecting trophies, Shadovar?” Riven asked.
“Reminders,” Rivalen said, and the coin vanished into his shadows.
The dying sun made its way across the dark sky as the three men made their way across the dark world. The ruins grew more frequent as they progressed and Cale thought they might have been moving through the remains of a city. The skeletons of some buildings remained standing here and there, lonely, hollowed out testaments to the remorselessness of time and Shar.
Holding his holy symbol in hand, Rivalen whispered imprecations and Cale could not tell if the prince was awed or appalled.
Bones appeared in the dust. First just a few—a thighbone jutting from the earth, a skull leering from the ruins—but then more and more. Soon they couldn’t take a step without walking over remains.
“This place is a graveyard,” Riven said.
It was as if an entire city had been murdered at a stroke and the bodies left to rot in the open. Cale could not help but think of Ordulin.
“Keep moving,” he said.
The wind kicked up, moaned.
“That’s not the wind,” Riven said, his eye narrowed.
The three men stopped and closed the distance between them. Shadows swirled around both Cale and Rivalen.
The moans, prolonged and agonized, sounded distant, muted, as if heard through thick stone walls. Cale looked around, up, and down. He stared at the black ground beneath his feet.
“Dark,” he said.
“Ready yourselves,” Rivalen said, his holy symbol dangling on its chain from his left hand. “Not all life is gone from this place. Not yet.”
As if summoned by his words, the spirits of the dead rose from