Only Ambrose withstood the light long enough to speak. The bitter, hate-filled face of the thing possessing him softened. For just an instant, the kindly man Ganelon had loved so dearly returned. "Clever boy," he said in his wheezing voice. Then Ambrose was gone, consumed by the sunlight.
The orb's light faded, then faltered. Ganelon dropped the blackened crystal into the ashes. With trembling hands he tore into the duffel once more, searching for the silver knife. There might still be time to kill Azrael, to save Helain and everyone else from eternal slavery.
But Ganelon had already ensured their freedom. The poppy seeds he had secreted in the items Azrael used for the rite, the flesh and the greenery he had tossed into the vat, were not enough to kill the werebadger. They were, however, sufficient to taint the drink, to force his body to reject it.
Even as the roiling mass of darkness threatened to burst the dwarf like an overfull wineskin, he vomited it up.
The captured shadows poured from Azrael, bleeding from his nose and mouth, seeping from his eyes and ears. They filled the Black Chapel, each one echoing the dwarfs tortured scream. Ganelon felt himself lifted by that sea of darkness. It bore him along the tunnel and up the mine's main shaft.
Dazed, still clutching the shabby duffel that contained everything he owned in the world, Ganelon found himself lying in the ruins of Veidrava's Engine House. How much time had passed he wasn't certain. A geyser of shadow still rose up from the pit. The darkness was amassing in the sky high overhead, merging with the shad ows spewed up from the Great Chasm a hundred miles to the west.
The last of the darkness rose into the heavens. For a time, the gathered shadows hung motionless, their bulk blotting out the triple moons that shone in the twilight sky. Finally, the ebon mass shuddered and began to fall.
To Ganelon, it resembled nothing so much as a mountain hurled from the stars.
Nedragaard Keep was burning.
Screams sounded from the tower's upper floors. The clash of steel in the bailey had been replaced by the shriek and thud of blazing bodies plummeting from the battlements. It was little consolation, but the corpses met their shadows as they struck the ground.
The mountain of darkness had burst apart upon impact, hurtling the individual shadows back to their originators. It was the unstable nature of the massed darkness that prevented it from doing even more damage to the Sithican countryside. Still, the spectral mountain had laid low the Land of Spectres, and it would be years before it recovered fully.
Through it all, Soth and Isolde stood silent at the center of Nedragaard's main hall. They regarded each other with eyes that saw through the centuries, to a time when they had been the still point at the center of another cataclysm. Like Azrael's foiled scheme, that disaster, too, had been within Soth's power to prevent, but his rage had mastered his mind and his heart, just as it had on the outskirts of Veidrava.
"I think it's time for you to run along, little girl," the Whispering Beast said to Inza. He slid down into the throne, caressed the Vistana's thigh with one stinking, outstretched foot. "Too bad, too. We could have had fun." He playfully nibbled one of the severed ears hanging at his chest.
"She has other playmates waiting for her," the Bloody Cobbler said. He thrust Inza off the dais. She landed in a fighting crouch, dagger already plucked from her boot. "You'll want to save that for outside," noted the Cobbler. "They're waiting."
"They know what you've done," the Beast added, "to the giant, the Wanderers, your mother, all of it."
"Everyone will know," chimed the Cobbler. "For ever and ever. Sithicus is going to be like that soon."
A tremor shook the tower, and a rain of stone and dust showered the main hall. The Cobbler held his hand out as if testing for rain. The Beast leaped from the throne. He crouched in a fighting stance mimicking Inza's. "Off with you," he growled, slapping his misshapen hands on the stone.
Inza turned and ran. Soth started after her, but Isolde laid a restraining hand on his arm. "No, Loren," she said softly. "Other powers control her fate."
The Vistana emerged into the chaos of the courtyard. The dead and wounded covered the ground. Soth's thirteen skeletal warriors marched among the bodies, methodically hacking anything that moved or wept or bled too much. Overhead, the thirteen banshees wove frenzied patterns around the keep in their wyvern-drawn chariots of bone. The light of the blaze and of the new red moon, shining full and bright over Nedragaard, made the usually pallid spirits appear drenched in gore.
Inza passed through the carnage untouched, as if surrounded by an invisible shield. She reached the courtyard's edge. There, the gaping rift in the outer curtain opened onto the isthmus and freedom. Only, the isthmus was gone. The section of the earthen bridge closest to the keep had collapsed into the Great Chasm. On the opposite side of the gap stood the hapless giant Inza had crippled, with the three remaining Wanderers crowded at his strangely booted feet.
Nabon started to back up, as if he intended to leap the gap. Inza could see Alexi, ever-practical Alexi, trying to make the giant reconsider. Piotr and Nikolas, on the other hand, cheered him on. It was obvious that the giant would make it. His anger and his hatred would vault him over the entire chasm itself if necessary. Inza knew Nabon would tear her limb from limb for what she'd done to him.
Nabon started forward. His footfalls shook the fragile banks of the remaining isthmus, sending chunks of rock into the eternal murk of the Great Chasm. Inza met the giant's charge with a smile of defiance on her face and her storied ancestor's dagger in her hand. But before Nabon could leap, Inza Magdova Kulchevich threw herself from the cliff.
They watched her fall, the giant she had tortured and the adoptive kin she had betrayed. That insolent smile remained on her lips-until she felt the darkness cradling her, slowing her descent. As vile hands lowered her into the chasm's lightless depths and the gloom closed over her like a shroud, Inza finally screamed.
Within Nedragaard's main hall, the White Rose nodded again to Soth. "There," she said. "The sound of justice."
The Beast lowered his necklace of ears, which he had raised in a mocking posture, as if they might amplify the Vistana's shriek of horror. "Come now, what does he know of justice?" he rumbled. With one grimy hand he indicated Soth. "I swear he could not define the word."
"You must know something to pervert it," the Cobbler offered. He walked slowly around the death knight, regarding him carefully. "Just as you must recognize the path of the righteous to choose not to tread upon it."
"Respect," Isolde chided. "Regardless of what he is, you must show your father respect."
Though his face was hidden by his helm, Soth's voice made his horror clear. "These monsters are not mine, woman."
"We are," the Cobbler said, "and we are not alone. This entire land was built around you, Father. Why should you wonder that you are the sire of its nightmares, too?"
"We are monsters only to the likes of you," the Beast snarled, "to men who swear oaths and break them."
"To those who recognize, but squander the gifts the gods have given them," the Cobbler added. "They afforded you the capacity for valor, for honor, and the strength of arm to protect the innocent. But you wasted their munificence."
"Honor is an illusion," Soth replied. "You can be no progeny of mine if you do not know that."
Isolde stepped forward, gently lowering her cowl as she came. Her flesh was charred from the fire that had claimed her life, a blaze much like the one burning above them in Nedragaard's upper floors. "This place has made you forget. That is its nature."
"I forget nothing," Soth said as he, too, unmasked.