spread from Abelar to the company and its touched chased off fatigue and fear, closed wounds, reknit bones, returned strength, and planted a seed of hope in all their breasts.
The men and women of the company laughed, cried, and praised their god. The sky closed, the beam of light vanished, and Regg came back to himself, once more noticing the rain and the thunder.
As one the company rushed forward around Abelar, led by Regg and Jiriis.
Abelar’s body looked unharmed, as if sleeping, despite the fall, but no breath stirred his breast. Jiriis stepped foward, crouched, stroked Abelar’s hair, his cheek. Soft sobs shook hear. Tears smeared the grime of battle on her face. She sank to the ground, took Abelar’s head in her lap.
“He smells of roses,” she said, and wept.
“He is sanctified,” Roen said. “His spirit will not rise in darkness.”
Regg found his own eyes welling but he would have to postpone his grief. Many enemies remained. He still had a battle to fight. Lathander, through Abelar, had given them hope. Now they must use it.
“See her from the field,” he said to Brend, indicating Jiriis. “Abelar as well. Roen, one of your priests lights their way.”
With the help of two others, Brend and Jiriis carried Abelar through the company and away from the battle.
Regg, as well as every other man and women in the company, touched him as they passed. Regg felt a surge upon contact, and the hope planted in his breast blossomed. The light in him, the light he felt usually as a distant, comforting warmth, flared.
It was a sign.
“You are my friend,” Regg said to Abelar, as Brend and Jiriis carried him away. A junior priest fell in with them, lighting his wand.
Then Abelar was gone. And darkness yet remained.
The silence over the battlefield ended with a roll of thunder. Lightning lit the sky. Rain fell anew. The keening of the remaining shadows—still a multitude—started once more. They swarmed in an enormous, whirling column.
“Form up,” Regg said to his company. “We have been given a sign and the light is in you all.”
“And in you,” they answered, readying weapons, readying spirits.
A boom of thunder like the breaking of the sky rolled, shook the ground, knocked the men and women of the company to the ground. Lightning ripped the sky, again and again, until the coal-black clouds birthed a coal-black form that descended from the clouds, trailing darkness.
In size and shape it looked much like a man. Membranous wings sprouted from its back but did not flap as it gently descended to the ground. A robe of scaled leather draped its ebon-skinned form. Curving white horns jutted from its brow. Power seeped from the creature in palpable waves.
As surely as Regg knew his god had been present on the battlefield to bless them through Abelar, he knew at that moment that another god had taken the field. He was looking upon the creature that was the provenance of the storm, the origin of the darkness.
The sky again fell silent, the thunder and lightning but a temporary herald for Kesson Rel’s arrival.
The column of shadows rendezvoused with their master in the sky, swirled around him as he descended. The moment he set foot on the ground, thunder rumbled and the earth shook anew.
Giant forms stepped out of the shadows to stand beside him, towering humanoids with pale skin and gangly limbs, encased in gray iron. They bore huge swords in their hands. Shadows clung to their flesh and their weapons. There were hundreds of them.
Regg knew the company could not defeat the shadow army and their master. But the hope Lathander had put in his breast would allow him no other course than to hold his ground. They had entered the storm to face the darkness. They would do so and they would die. Abelar was an example to them all.
Behind him he heard gasps from the men and women of the company, murmured astonishment. He turned to face them, to reassure them, and found that their surprise was not directed at Kesson Rel.
A clot of shadows had formed in their midst, a darkness the light of the priests did not illuminate, and Erevis Cale, Riven, and a Shadovar had stepped from it.
To Regg, Cale and Riven seemed weightier, somehow more defined than everyone else around them, save perhaps Kesson Rel himself. The men and women of the company seemed to sense the difference as well, for they parted around them.
All three looked past and through Regg,