the priests, get them out! The rest form up! Form up!”
The company scrambled to get back into line as the giants closed. The ground went still for a moment, then the chasms started to close.
The Lathanderians trapped within screamed—panicked sounds that dug a pit in Regg’s stomach.
Furlinastis beat his wings, his rage growing with each stroke. Darkness boiled around him, its agitated swirl a reflection of his rage. A cloud of Kesson Rel’s shadows harried his flight, keened in his ears, and tried to take his vigor with their life draining touch.
Too slow to match his speed in flight, they swarmed the air before, below, and around him, trying to intercept him as he passed.
He snapped them up in his jaws by the half-dozen, shredded others with his claws. The beat of his wings dispersed the vapor of their remains into the wind. But some flew through his body as he passed, reached through his scales. The cold of their touch slowed his heart, coarsened his breathing.
Kesson Rel hovered in the air before him, facing away, his hands gesturing as he began to cast yet more spells.
Rivalen watched the energy of Kesson’s spell evoke a localized earthquake. The Lathanderians screamed and fell as the ground shook but the tremors did not reach the ground under Rivalen’s feet. He held onto Shar’s symbol and shouted the words to another spell, a powerful evocation that caused the target to implode. He charged the spell with additional power, stretching its range, made a hammerfist with his two hands, and shot a pulse of the black energy at Kesson.
Kesson saw it coming, and deflected it with a casual wave of his right hand. Rivalen knew then that Riven was correct, that his spells would be useless against Kesson. He would have to engage the heretic face to face.
Irritated, he directed another blast of the implosive energy across the battle at one of the giants charging toward the Lathanderians. The wave of force hit the huge creature and it screamed as bones shattered and blood sprayed, the magic causing its body to fold in on itself again, again, again, again. …
Cale started to run toward Regg and the company, but Riven grabbed him by the arm.
“Let the shadowwalkers help them,” the assassin said. “Kesson is our goal. Get us up there.”
Cale nodded, looked through the storm of wraiths and shadows wheeling through the sky to Kesson, who had already begun another spell, and drew the shadows around him.
As he did, a huge form loomed out of the dark sky behind Kesson, a black cloud of teeth, claws, wings, and black scales. Hundreds of shadows flitted about Furlinastis’s form but the dragon seemed not to care. The empty harness on Furlinastis caused Cale to think of Abelar. Cale hoped he had died at peace.
Furlinastis opened his mouth in a roar and Kesson whirled to face him.
Cale saw his opportunity. Gathering Riven within his shroud of shadows, he stepped through the darkness and into the sky behind Kesson.
Nayan would have preferred to have stood beside the Right and Left Hands but they had instructed him to do otherwise and he and his initiates would obey.
As one, they sprinted toward the line of the Lathanderians, their strides preternaturally fast. They kept their feet as the ground shook, and shadowstepped away from the chasms that opened in the earth to swallow the Lathanderians by the dozen. He was not even certain the Lathanderians had noticed him and his men.
“Free them,” he shouted to his men in their language.
A roar went up from the line of charging shadow giants and the shouted orders from the Lathanderian’s leader had most of them rushing to meet the onslaught.
The chasms started to close, the ground groaning, screeching, rumbling. The men and women trapped underground screamed in panicked terror.
“Quickly,” he said, and stepped through the shadows to the bottom of a closing chasm. He materialized in the darkness of the hole, behind a Lathanderian shouting and trying to scramble up closing walls that offered scant purchase. Nayan’s eyes, blessed by the Shadowlord, saw in darkness as though it were noon.
“Be still,” he said to the woman.
The woman turned to face him and her brown eyes went wide. Sweat and rain smoothed her black hair to her scalp.
“Are you … Erevis Cale?”
Nayan shook his head and started to draw the darkness around them as the walls continued to groan closed. “His servant.”
He shadowstepped back to the surface with the woman in tow. His fellows appeared