The altar stood ready for Azrael's ceremony. A black cloth covered the stained and profaned block, while a chalice carved of ebony stood at its center. Around the cup were arranged bits of plants and animals. Ganelon opened the small bag of poppy seeds Malocchio Aderre had given him. Carefully he emptied a few into the cup, then secreted others among the bits of greenery and grue. He had returned the bag to his duffel and was considering what to do with the large vat that stood before the altar when a familiar voice made him stop short.
"What are you doing here?" asked Ambrose.
Ganelon turned to find the pudgy shopkeep standing in the mouth of a rough-hewn tunnel, which led from the chapel deeper into the earth. His face was pale, his eyes devoid of any of the good humor that had once shone in them. "What are you doing here?" Ambrose repeated.
As Ganelon started forward, arms outstretched to embrace his old friend, he noticed the shadows teeming at the shopkeep's feet. The darkness slithered up Ambrose's legs and reached out with tendrils to caress him. "You've been touched by Death," Ambrose said in a voice only vaguely like the one Ganelon remembered so fondly. "I can smell it on you."
"What happened?" the young man asked. A fist of grief closed around his heart at the sight of his friend so changed, so defiled. "How-?"
"I claimed this body a long time ago," the thing within Ambrose said. "It just took me some time to drown the last bits of that fat slob's personality. He lusted after Helain, you know." "No. I don't believe it."
A vapid smile quirked Ambrose's mouth. "It doesn't matter what you believe. He lusted after her all the same. I tried to goad him on-Helain would have been quite a conquest-but he was too cowardly to let me guide him."
"You can't even tell love from lust," Ganelon said coldly. "No wonder Ambrose kept you at bay for so long."
The youth reached into his duffel for the crystal orb. Before he could close his fingers around it, Ambrose was at his side. The shopkeep's quickness startled the young man, as did the savagery of his attack. The bag slipped from Ganelon's grasp as the blows began to fall. Soon he was on the chapel floor beside it, curled tight against the relentless hail of punches and kicks.
"What's going on here?" Azrael snarled as he emerged from the tunnel. In his wake came Kern and Ogier. The two men carried a massive bucket filled to the brim with water from the Lake of Sounds.
"A spy," Ambrose said. "I don't know who sent him."
Azrael took one look at the leg brace and snarled, "He's Malocchio Aderre's man, but he's supposed to be dead." With his iron-shod boot, the dwarf rolled Ganelon over. "Wait," he said when he saw Ganelon's face. "This fellow used to work at the store, didn't he? He's no spy."
"Yes, he's from the mine, but the shadows won't touch him," Ambrose noted. "There's something strange going on."
"It doesn't matter what he is or why he's here," Azrael said. "It's too late for him to stop the ceremony, and that's all that matters." He motioned to Kern and Ogier, who had just finished emptying the huge bucket into the vat before the altar. "Keep him out of the way."
To Ganelon, supported by Kern and Ogier, much of the ceremony was a blur of dark shapes and flashes of light seen through a haze of pain. Azrael chanted for what seemed like hours. The words burned in the air as he spoke them, then floated down to the vat' of black water. They extinguished one by one with a hiss that was echoed by the salt shadows.
As the last of the words drowned, the water began to churn. The salt shadows eagerly circled the vat. The stinking liquid followed their lead, spinning until a whirlpool formed in its center. At last, Azrael raised the ebon chalice. Ganelon gritted his teeth in anticipation; he said a silent prayer that he'd put enough poppy seeds there to kill the werebeast outright.
Azrael overturned the cup. The poppy seeds scattered onto the chapel floor, unnoticed by the dwarf or his minions. The sight struck Ganelon like a blow to the gut. He bowed his head. His ragged sigh carried with it the last of his flagging hope.
"I demand the power to remake this kingdom in my own image," Azrael intoned. "I demand dominion over the people and the beasts and the land itself. They will be as my shadow, so they have no need of their own. Come to me, then. Fill my cup so that I may drink down all the darkness in the world."
The black water in the vat rose in a spout toward the overturned chalice. As it whirled, the salt shadows that had been circling so close darted in and out of the column. Ganelon, too, felt the pull of the vortex. It did not snatch at his hair or his clothes, though, but at his shadow. He could feel it being drawn away from him toward the altar.
Azrael took the bits of flesh and flower from the stone block. As he tossed each scrap into the vat, he called upon the powers of darkness to grant him supremacy over the thing it represented: bird, tree, beast, and man. With the naming of each new sort of minion to the catalogue, the spout turned faster and faster, until it was little more than a black blur before the altar.
Ganelon felt his shadow ripped from him. It tumbled across the cavern floor like a sheet of parchment in a hurricane, only to be drawn into the vortex. A sense of loss filled Ganelon's heart, and a strange weakness washed over him. He slumped forward. Kern and Ogier, fighting the weakness wrought by the loss of their own shadows, let him drop to the cavern floor.
From the Fumewood to the gray-walled elven city of Mal-Erek, from the Iron Hills to the farthest reaches of the Merchants' Slash, all the shadows in Sithicus felt the summons. They struggled against it, but none were strong enough to ignore the call. One by one they fled their source. Like ebon-hued arrows they darted over the land. Some poured into the pit at Veidrava. Most were swallowed up by the Great Chasm, where, by a circuitous path of caves and tunnels, they eventually descended upon the Lake of Sounds.
Just to the north of Nedragaard Keep, along the cliffs of the chasm, Nabon the giant felt his great mainsail of a shadow billow, then slip away into the abyss. It was swiftly joined by those of the hundreds upon hundreds of corpses scattered in Nedragaard's garden-graveyard. The poor fools had been caught by the skeletal warriors and the banshees before Inza opened the keep to the besieging army. Most of the casualties were turncoat Invidians, along with Onkar and his slow-witted ogre cohorts. Their shadows seemed almost grateful to abandon them.
The keep provided no shelter from the dark rite. Ulrisch and his elves, Gerhard and his ragtag army of miners and farmers, all watched helplessly as their shadows fled. Alexi, Piotr, and Nikolas retreated to the keep's lightless gatehouse, but the Vistani weren't quick enough. Their shadows joined the rest as they slithered from the castle into the Great Chasm's murk.
On the isthmus connecting the keep to the cliffs, Lord Soth and his minions had just begun to batter at the wards barring them from their home. The skeletal warriors turned sightless sockets to the ground and gaped as their shadows deserted them. One even fell to its knees in a vain attempt to catch the dark shape before it escaped.
The shadow of Lord Soth, blacker than all the rest and burning with the cold of the grave, held out the longest. It clung to him like a frightened, frantic child. But the death knight would not be distracted. Vengeance was all that concerned him now. Even as his shadow slipped away and a profound lethargy settled into his limbs, he struggled to raise his age-tarnished sword to strike the wards again.
The shadow of only one creature in all of Sithicus defied the awful summons, that cast by Inza Magdova Kulchevich as she stood upon the dais in Nedragaard's main hall. The dark shape clung to the charm around her neck. Anchored by that bit of enchanted silver, which Inza had created with just this moment in mind, her shadow flapped around her like a cape in a maelstrom.