these buildings?” she whispered. “Does someone live here?”
“I think that no one built them. Each one’s here because someone put up a house or a workshop or a storehouse in Hulburg.”
“Do they just appear out of nothing here when someone builds them in our Hulburg? And why is each one wrong in some way?” Mirya pointed at a cooper’s workyard as they passed by. “That’s old Narath’s place, but his front door faces across the street, and there should be a fine old laspar tree in his yard.”
“That’s the nature of the Shadowfell. It’s a reflection in a broken mirror. What it shows isn’t the truth of things.”
“What of the people? I can feel them nearby. There isn’t a copy of me here, is there?”
“Souls wander here,” Sarth answered her. “Dreamers drift through briefly, and the dead linger here, sometimes for centuries, before they fade away to the godly dominions. Some know that they are bodiless phantasms, and have no true life in this place. Others do not perceive their incorporeity, and settle into the habits and places they have—or had—in the firmament we come from. And there are also those few who, like us, are here in body and soul at once. Most are travelers who don’t stay long, but a few make homes here for reasons of their own. I have never seen them, but I have heard of strange inns and gloomy towns where those who live in the shadows gather.”
Mirya shivered. “So the shades of the dead are what we feel around us?”
Geran drew close and took her hand in his. “We don’t perceive them because most are already fading from the world. Only the most determined—or most confused—would take a shape we might see.”
“What a terrible place,” she breathed. “The sooner we’re done with it, the better.”
They rounded the base of the causeway, and threaded their way into the woods that lay south of the great stone massif on which the castle stood. The small stretch of woodland in the heart of Hulburg was wild and dark even in the normal world, but here in the Shadowfell the gloom beneath the branches seemed physically impenetrable. It took a conscious act of will for Geran to force himself to take the narrow path leading into the trees.
The silence and the gloom settled in around them, even thicker than before. He felt Mirya pressing up close behind him, and even Sarth and Hamil hesitated before following after him. A walk of a hundred yards or so brought them around to the south side of the crag, a towering shadow that now loomed menacingly over them. To Geran’s left a wrought-iron fence leaned crookedly, marking off a small space where a flight of stone steps led up to a thick door of iron plate in the side of the crag. He let himself in through the rusting gate and approached the doorway.
“Allow me to examine the door,” Sarth said. He murmured his detection spell, peering closely at the postern gate. After a moment, he nodded to himself. “It is warded, but I believe I can suppress it.”
“Go ahead,” Geran told him. He drew the shadow sword again and waited as Sarth began to incant his spell, weaving his hands in the complicated gestures of his craft. The swordmage sensed his magic gathering, exerting invisible pressure against the magical wardings sealing the portal. With care, Sarth checked his power, keeping his effort as stealthy as possible. Geran waited for the sudden clatter of runehelms closing in from the forest, or the lash of some deadly spell trap … but the moment of tension passed, and the postern gate swung open under the sorcerer’s power. Impermeable darkness waited beyond.
“I cannot guarantee that Rhovann is ignorant of my work here,” Sarth said. “He may have sensed the breaching of his defenses.”
“In that case, we’d better not give him much time to react,” Geran replied. With the shadow sword in hand, he plunged into the darkness of the gate. Inside, a short passage led to a low, barren mustering hall where the castle’s defenders could gather for a sortie or mass to defend against any enemy effort to force the postern gate. Geran half expected to find Rhovann’s servants waiting for them just inside, but the hall was empty—evidently the wizard counted on his magic to protect the door. On the far side of the hall a stairway spiraled up through the living rock of the crag, climbing toward the halls and