Crumbling, weed-overgrown buildings rose out of the darkness. Even in ruin, the structures managed to imply a sense of architectural majesty. Soaring arches, thick marble columns, and elaborately carved stonework were the rule. The city must have been beautiful to behold once.
Shards of bone stuck from the earth, most human-sized, but some gigantic. Cale simply stared at them and said nothing.
A broad, flagstone-paved avenue stretched before them, extending into darkness toward the crypts in the center of town. Weeds, tall grass, drab wildflowers, and even the occasional tree sprouted from between the cracked stones of the road. The ruins were old.
All but the cemetery, at least.
Jak felt uneasy, the way he did when unfriendly eyes were upon him, but he could not pinpoint a reason. He had an ominous sense of something lurking nearby, something malevolent.
Despite the continuing rain, the air felt clingy and thick, as though they were walking through a mass of invisible cobwebs. Jak could not help but hold his dagger before his face and try to part the air with it.
In silence, they trekked through the dead streets of a dead city. Riven and Magadon took the flanks, spreading out ten paces to the left and right, clearing buildings as they moved. Jak and Cale spaced themselves a few paces apart and walked down the broad road. Having descended into the valley, the ruins blocked their view of the necropolis so they could no longer see the occasionally flashing gold light. It didn't matter. They knew where to go. The road led directly to it.
Within a quarter hour, the rain lessened to something more moderate than a downpour, but lightning still flashed through the sky. Jak kept alert to Riven's side of the street-Jak's responsibility-but now and again stole a look at Cale. His friend's faraway gaze followed Magadon, but sometimes moved dully from here to there. Jak would never get used to those yellow eyes.
The halfling moved near Cale and asked in a sharp whisper, "What is it?"
Cale, who looked startled, said, "I don't know, Jak. I feel like I know this place somehow, like my mind is a palimpsest and the faded writing is now becoming visible."
Jak did not even know what a palimpsest was, but his skin went gooseflesh again.
"How would you know this place?" he asked. "The book from the Fane?"
Jak watched as Riven entered the crumbling entrance of what once might have been a shop. He exited a moment later, signaling that it was clear.
Cale shook his head again and replied, "I'm not cer-"
Riven froze and gave a sharp whistle that cut through the drumbeat of the rain. With rapidity and skill, the assassin climbed atop the building he had just exited. There, he crouched low on the flat roof and looked a block over, to a cluster of tall buildings, the domed tops of which Jak could just make out.
Cale and Jak signaled to Magadon. The guide left off his search of a building and hurried to Cale's and Jak's side.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Look," Jak said, and pointed in Riven's direction.
Beyond Riven's rooftop perch, a faint, icy blue glow rose just above the rooftops. Jak put its source perhaps a street or two away. Not the golden light they had seen in the center of town, but something else.
Riven kept his gaze on the source of the light and waved them over.
Jak, Cale, and Magadon ran to the base of the building-it was littered with decayed tables and broken ceramics-and they began to climb. Cale reached the top first and pulled Jak up the last bit. Magadon followed, struggling more with the climb but managing. All three reached the roof and crouched beside Riven. From there, they could see the cause of the glow.
"Burn me," Jak whispered.
Magadon knocked an arrow and drew it to his ear.
Two hundred paces away, hundreds of spirits, all women and young girls, streamed out of one of the tall, ruined buildings-formerly a temple, to judge from the partially collapsed metallic dome that capped its center.
In loose columns, the spirits advanced in their direction. They appeared to be walking, but their feet remained a fingerbreadth above the ground, and their robes of silvery samite rustled to a much gentler wind than the gusts that pulled at Jak's sodden cloak. Each bore a ghostly candle, and shielded it with her hands as though to protect it from the rain that was, in reality, passing through both candle and bearer. The candle flames were the source of the blue glow. Though they made no sound, their mouths moved in unison and Jak felt as though the ghosts were chanting or singing.
From beside Jak, Cale spoke in a distant voice: "The Summoners of the Sun. The last hope of Elgrin Fau."
Jak heard Cale's words but their import barely registered. He could not take his eyes from the processional of ghosts. Their silent, somber beauty hypnotized him. Though the spirits were walking the road below them, Jak felt no fear; he did not bother to reach for his holy symbol. Instead, he felt a deep sadness that went before the spirits like a wave. They wore the resigned expressions of the condemned, but held fast to their candles as though those flames were the only possibility of salvation.
Magadon's bowstring creaked and he prepared to let fly.
Cale put a hand on the guide's shoulder and whispered, "They can cause no harm, Magadon. Let them pass."
The woodsman hesitated for a moment before relaxing his bow.
The tide of ghosts continued toward the party then turned right exactly below them and headed up the street. They seemed oblivious to the companions. The women were all tall and slender, with light hair and fair skin. Their eyes were wide and slightly upturned at the corners, their earlobes unusually large and bedecked with several earrings. Jak thought them beautiful, surreal, and alien. He watched them as they passed by.
"Where are they going?" he asked, of no one in particular.
"East," Cale said. "To stand in the plains and pray for the sun to rise again. They think they're still in their own world, but they are not. The sun never rises here." Cale's yellow eyes fixed on the women as they moved away. "They are the lingering memories of Elgrin Fau, Jak, once called the City of Silver."
The halfling stared at Cale with his mouth hanging open.
Magadon too looked at Cale with surprise in his white eyes.
Beside Cale, Riven nodded knowingly and said, "When Kesson Rel stole the sky, the inhabitants of Elgrin Fau began to perish. The darkness of this plane consumed thousands before it was sated. The survivors were long ago scattered to the planes."
The assassin's gaze swept the length and breadth of the ruins.
Jak tried to imagine the city, living, filled with people and light, but he could not. The Plane of Shadow had left it a dark husk. He thought of the tragedy represented there and a chill ran up his spine. He shared a look with Magadon, whose knucklebone eyes had grown thoughtful. Jak looked from Cale to Riven, Riven to Cale.
"How do you two know any of that?" he softly asked, and was not sure he wanted to know the answer.
"I saw it," Cale said, then he frowned and cocked his head. "Or perhaps I read it."
Riven looked at Cale curiously before answering, "I dreamed it."
Jak nodded as though he understood, but he did not. He simply could think of nothing to say. Things were too large for comment. When he looked at Cale he still saw his friend, but he saw something else too, something grander, something darker. A hero? For some reason, he thought of Sephris.
The First of Five, he thought, and wondered what that actually meant.
In respectful silence, they all watched the ghosts continue their hopeless trek east through the rain, to pray for a sun they would never again see. Cale gazed upon them wistfully.
When the spirits had vanished from sight, Magadon asked in a quiet voice, "Erevis, do you know if the flashing light we saw earlier is a way home?"