Tier’s voice stuck there, as the magic of the generations-old words caught him in brutal understanding of the numberless dead whose death had fed the evil that was in the king.

“He ate their lives,” said a voice abruptly from the ceiling above Tier.

A shiver ran down Tier’s spine, though the words were the exact ones he’d intended to use himself. Somehow the oddity of his listener knowing the words to a Rederni story was part of the strange shape the story was taking.

The soft, sexless voice continued relentlessly, “He ate them all to preserve himself—and so he lost himself in truth.”

Tier waited, but when his visitor said nothing more, Tier continued the story himself.

“As the years passed and the king lived far beyond his life span, what few of his old advisors who escaped the original plague died, old men that they were, one by one. As they did the king replaced them with dark-robed, nameless men—it was these who gave him away at last.”

“The king’s youngest daughter, Loriel, discovered them feasting upon a child in her father’s antechamber,” Tier said, drawing the horror of that into his dark cell. He could hear the sound of fangs crunching the fragile bone in his soul.

He could see it.

A woman, older than he’d pictured her, stood in an open doorway. Her hair, like Seraph’s, was pale, though washed in sunlight rather than moonlight. Two figures crouched before her, anonymous in heavy brocade robes. They were too occupied with what was before them to notice that they had been seen. Between them lay a boy of ten or twelve years whose freckles stood out against his too-white skin. His shoulders jerked rhythmically back and forth in a mockery of life as the king’s councillors buried their heads in his abdomen and fed.

Tier’s shock kept him from holding the image, though the wet sound of their feeding accompanied his voice. “And she fled to the last of her father’s advisors, a mage.”

He stopped speaking and tightened his control until the only sounds remaining in the cell were the ones that belonged there.

“And so they gathered,” said his listener.

“And so they gathered,” repeated Tier, and the repetition felt right, felt like the rhythm of the story. He relaxed; it was only a story, one that he knew very well. “The remnants of people who had survived the plague. But the sickness had taken the experienced warriors, the lords, and commanders, leaving only a broken people. Loriel led the first attack, herself.”

“She died,” whispered the listener and the magic coaxed Tier as well, raising needs he’d never realized he’d felt.

“She died,” Tier said, “but left behind a handful of men who had learned what leadership meant, left them with the ancient mage who taught them and fought by their side. They battled the minions of the Shadowed. As his followers died, the king called upon a host of evil; ancient creatures woke from their slumbers to fight at his behest.”

Tier let his magic free, finding the places where he had bound it too tightly over the years. The bindings, he saw, had been the reason he’d had such difficulty. As the magic swept through him, exhilarating and frightening by turns, the words came to him, as well-worn and soft as an old cotton coverlet, but full of unexpected burrs that pricked and stung.

“He lost himself and his name. There remained only a title, given by the men who died fighting him. They called him the Shadowed.”

“Numberless were the heroes…” The other’s voice became part of the story, too. Tier felt his magic rush up to envelope his listener.

“Numberless were the heroes who fell,” continued Tier. “Their songs unsung because there was no one left to sing.” He paused, letting the other do his part.

“Then came Red Ernave who fought with axe and bow…”

“A giant of a man,” said Tier. “He gathered them all, all the men, women, and children who could pick up a stick or throw a stone. He called them the Glorious Army of Man, and he taught them to fight.”

As if there were no walls in his cell, the people of the Glorious Army gathered before Tier. Gaunt-eyed and battered, they stood in silent, unmoving defiance of the evil they fought. There were a few men, but most of them were hollow-cheeked women, old men, and a small, precious gathering of children worn by hunger and fear.

Tier knew, by the Owl-borne bond that formed by magic between storyteller and audience, that his listener saw them, too.

“And in the first days of autumn the king’s old mage took council with Red Ernave. They talked alone all night, and when the morning sun came, the mage’s days had found their number. He was burned in great ceremony, and as the last coals died, Red Ernave assembled his army. He brought them to a flat plain, just beyond the Ragged Mountains.”

Tier had been there, once. He’d been following the track of a deer and found himself, unexpectedly, on the plain of Shadow’s Fall. There was no marker to warn the unwary, but he’d known where he was. Even so many centuries later, under a blanket of pure white snow, there was death in that place. He could almost feel the soil of the wounded land under his feet.

The meadow stretched out before him now; he recognized the shapes of the peaks that surrounded it. There was no snow on the ground to hide the shape of the bodies littering the ground.

“There, there they faced the hosts of the Shadowed and fought. The sky grew black and blood drenched the ground.” Tier smelled the bitter scent of old blood and almost gagged at the familiar odor of war.

“Bodies piled and the battle raged around them for days. And nights.”

His cell rang with the sounds of battle, and he realized he’d forgotten how overwhelming it was: the clash of metal on metal and the screams of the dying.

“The Shadowed’s creatures needed no sleep and they fed upon the dead. The Army of Man fought on because there was nothing else to do; they fought and died. But not so many died on the third day as had fallen on the second day. By the fourth day it seemed that the evil host was thinning, and hope rose among the ragged band—and for the first time they drove the host back.”

Tier found that he had to stop to catch his breath, and slow his heartbeat. In his pitch-black cell he saw a red-maned, scarred warrior with his axe held wearily against his shoulder, waiting for Tier to continue telling his story.

But it was too real now, and the words were gone, lost in the desolation of the long-ago battle.

“And hope flooded the Army of Man for the first time,” said the other, in a voice as ragged as Tier’s.

“But even as they cheered, the skies darkened, though it was yet midday, and another assault began.” The words were Tier’s again, though they seemed oddly unreal compared to the scenes that unfolded before him.

It was hard to breathe, the air was so foul. Red Ernave’s hands were weary from the endless fighting. His axe laid into a creature that looked as if it had once been a wolf before the Shadowed’s magics had gotten to it. It died hard and Ernave had to hit it a second time before it lay still.

He found himself on a small rise without an immediate opponent. He took the chance to rest briefly and ran his gaze over the fighting—and saw the Shadowed for the first time since the battle had begun.

The Shadowed was less than he’d expected. A full head shorter than Ernave and half his weight, he looked no more than a lad. He bore more than a passing resemblance to Loriel—though her eyes had never been so empty. The Shadowed smiled, and Ernave, who had thought he was tired beyond fear, found that he was wrong.

A voice beside him said, “I’m here.”

It was Kerine, the scrawny Traveler who was now their only wizard. He’d staggered into Ernave’s encampment several winters ago and been a thorn in Ernave’s side ever since.