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.
Deep within the pit at Veidrava, Azrael did not notice that one missing shard of darkness. Neither did he sense the powerful magic resisting his incantation. He was too caught up in the spectacle before him. The stolen shadows swirled around the Black Chapel and merged with the vortex. Each new captive bit of dusk darkened the inky waters until, at last, they were a deep, profound black. Finally, the vortex rose into Azrael's overturned chalice, distilling itself into a single cupful.
Azrael righted the chalice. A silence fell upon the Black Chapel as thunderous as the cacophony it had succeeded. From where he lay on the floor, Ganelon looked up just in time to see the dwarf raise the cup to his lips and drink.
In the stillness of the Black Chapel, as the bitter ebon ooze worked its way down Azrael's throat, a voice spoke to the dwarf. "Terror will be all," it promised.
Azrael recognized the words instantly as those the dark had used time and again to describe Sithicus under his reign. The voice, too, was familiar. Free from any sorcerous masking, it was easy to identify Inza's mocking tone. A frisson of dread crept up Azrael's spine.
"Yes, terror will be all," she continued, "but you will be dead."
The awareness that he had been betrayed raged through Azrael's mind. Inza had used the dark against him. She was the comforting voice at the Lake of Sounds. She'd told him of this rite and goaded him into revolt against Soth. Now she would claim his reward and snatch control of the realm from the death knight's weakened grasp.
A stabbing pain in his gut drew Azrael's thoughts from Inza. He dropped the empty ebon chalice, which cracked and rolled away. All the captured shadows writhed inside him. Another lance of pain pierced the dwarf's side, drawing black tears of misery from his eyes. The darkness trickled down his cheeks and slithered back into his mouth, eager to rejoin the corrupt mass roiling inside him.
Ambrose and the others moved forward on unstable legs to aid their master. Like them, Ganelon hadn't heard Inza's threat, but he saw that there was a problem with the rite. He took advantage of the confusion to crawl to his discarded duffel, still heaped next to the vat.
As he was rifling through the bag in search of the Cobbler's blade, he felt a strong hand on his leg. He looked over his shoulder to find Ogier looming over him.
"Don't make me hurt you," Ganelon pleaded. His fingers closed around the orb Malocchio had given him.
Ogier's lips curled in a snarl more fitting for a wolf than the gentle animal to which he'd been compared so often. "I think you got it backward," he said, tightening his grip around Ganelon's leg until the bones creaked. "You should be begging me not to hurt you."
"Helain," Ganelon whispered.
The wards Inza had raised around Nedragaard Keep were a dozen times more powerful than those Azrael had set at Veidrava. They were structured to withstand the might of the banshees, the skeletal warriors, and Soth. Once their shadows had been taken and their strength sapped, the death knight and his minions should have been powerless against them-but Inza had not reckoned on the might of Soth's fury.
When his sword proved ineffective, the death knight drove his armored fingers into the magical barrier. The enchantment fought against him, heating Soth's gauntlets until the metal glowed white. As he widened the rift, sparks showered down upon him and lances of lightning flashed around his head. None burned as brightly as Soth's eyes. "Vengeance!" he cried, and threw his entire being into the assault.
Blue-white light played upon the invisible barrier, revealing its form as a gigantic dome. Soth drove the rift even wider, and a tear stole up from the ground to the dome's peak. With a sound like every tree in the Fumewood splitting from root to crown at the same moment, the barrier tore open. A faint radiance lingered for a moment, a ghost of the sorcerous wall. Then that, too, faded.
Soth pushed himself forward, moving as much by instinct as any conscious thought. He strode through the breach in the keep's outer shell, stalked through the bailey to the double doors leading to the main hall. Elves and men cowered at his passing, but he paid them no heed. His only interest was the woman who had betrayed him, the faithless Vistana.