Erevan granted. With his power to silence her moves and keep herself shrouded, she descended to Tlork's dungeon, then ascended past the limits of the mythallar.
'I see, Chameleon,' she said. 'You know what I want, and you are with me-whether I ask for your aid or not. Guide me through this, and I won't curse you again. I might even speak well of you-only in private, of course.'
No response came, and though Twilight had never expected one in the past, now she wondered.
Her shadow could not speak, but its eyeless gaze could convey emotions and thoughts just as well as words. It sent Twilight a wry, bemused glance, then flitted off into the darkness ahead. Twilight could only see it thanks to the darksight Neveren had taught her.
Darkness ahead and darkness behind, Twilight thought. No light to cast a shadow. She wondered if the absence of light meant the absence of hope-not that it mattered.
Life for Twilight had never been a matter of hope.
Twilight reached the hall with the perverse murals, at the peak of Gestal's domain. The tunnel she and Gargan had come through from the surface beckoned just a few paces to her right, cunningly hidden behind stalagmites just so, where one could find it only if one knew where to look.
She saw no one in the chamber so she went in, her shadow flickering at her feet. The crevasse into which Gargan and Tlork had fallen tore the chamber in two, leaving a small ledge on the far end. A little trickle of red light, from flames, bled from a crease in the wall-a door.
Twilight assumed this was the entrance to Gestal's chapel. Now she just had to get there. She kept to the walls of the chamber and edged close to the crevasse. Moonlight filtered in through the crack overhead, and sand trickled down.
Gestal's magic had split the hall from wall to wall, and the gap was near to two long dagger casts in width. Perhaps Gargan could have jumped the distance, but Twilight could do nothing of the sort, even with the leaping boots.
A twinge. Gargan…
A simple matter, Twilight reasoned. The other side wasn't far-she could simply shadowjump across. Except, of course, that the chamber was black as pitch. She could see only with the darksight. Other than the opening where she and Gargan had come down, there were no shadows-not here, not on the other side.
Twilight sighed. 'Radiant.'
She sent her animate shadow across to keep watch, then searched along the wall. Indeed, there were handholds and footholds, and a small section of rock still connected the two parts of the chamber. The crevasse had torn its way into the wall as well, and most of the rock Twilight could have climbed across had disintegrated and fallen off into darkness. To her right, the gap extended thirty hands up before coming together for about the length of Twilight's forearm and ending at the ceiling.
'Quite radiant,' Twilight mused as she unbuckled her sword belt. No use complaining about fate. Unless she wanted to turn back now, that span of rock was her only chance.
Twilight tossed Betrayal across the crevasse. It clattered and rolled to a rest against the wall. Then she took off her leather glove and boots, which she sent over as well. The crossbow was too fragile to toss, so she looped its sling around her neck. She thought to throw Davoren's stiletto across as well, but a better use occurred to her. She wiped it on her bloody blouse and put it between her teeth. Then she retrieved some dust from the floor and ground it between her hands.
Ready.
With skills that predated her service to Erevan, predated her apprenticeship-and affair-with Neveren, and even predated her name, Twilight made her way up the wall as deftly as a spider. Her barely healed arm hurt, but she could stand it. Climbing up was easy. Getting across would be more complicated.
She reached the top of the wall and looked for a handhold on the narrow pass below the broken ceiling. She found one, wedged her fingers in, and looked for another handhold. There. She jammed her left hand in, ignoring the pain. That was nothing. She looked at the next handhold-a pace and a half distant. This was really going to hurt.
She took a deep breath, bit the stiletto, and let go with her right hand.
Screaming around the knife, Twilight swung, held aloft only by her ravaged arm, and grabbed for the handhold. If she missed…
But she didn't miss. She caught the crack and jammed her fingers in. They split, and blood ran, but she held.
Wiry muscles stood out on her arms as Twilight hung backward from the piece of wall, friezelike with its filthy scrawls, nearly at the broken ceiling. Her bent legs dangled over a chasm into which even her penetrating darksight found nothing.
If an attacker had come upon her dangling from the stone, she would have been unable to defend herself. Her shadow, still detached, kept watch, but it was unlikely Gestal, or those fiendish lizards with spears, would have had trouble knocking her to her death. But no such foe came upon her, and she swung along to her next handhold.
Hand over hand, Twilight made her way across the gap. Eleven or twelve handholds would get her to the end, she guessed.
Three, four, five.
She panted, trying not to think about the burning in her arms.
Six, seven, eight.
Gods, so tired. Almost there.
Nine, ten-
There was a crack, her hand slipped, and Twilight's heart stopped.
She caught herself, fingers of her left hand holding her aloft in the frieze. Her shadow flicked its gaze to her, but it could do nothing. It was just a shadow, after all, and had no body.
Twilight looked at the handhold she had fumbled. The rock had cracked and slid away, leaving nothing to grab. The other edge of the floor lay not more than a pace away, but she couldn't swing past it from where she hung.
Her arm was growing weary-at least it wasn't the half-broken one-and she couldn't quite touch the previous handhold. This was the smoothest part of the stone, and she couldn't see any other spots nearby to clutch. She wasn't sure her right arm could support her, even if she could have reached.
Could she have come so far, only to fail now?
Doubt closed around Twilight. What was she doing? She was here to attack a demon priest who couldn't help but know she was coming, and who would surely slay her with his superior powers. Where was necessity-her beloved pragmatism?
She had led so many to misery-companions like Taslin and Gargan, innocents like Slip and Asson, even villains like Davoren. By which of Beshaba's cruel whims was it that Twilight lived, when they did not?
It would be so simple to let go. What did she have left to hold onto? Everything she had ever loved had deserted or betrayed her. What seemed years of brutish darkness had hammered her already-jaded spirit into real despair.
Liet, Twilight thought, and resolve returned.
She started to swing back and forth, pumping her legs. As a child on a rope swing builds momentum, so did Twilight move, agonizingly slowly. Her arm screamed in protest, but she gritted her teeth and pushed the pain from her mind.
As she swung back and forth, visions came to her, reasons not to give up. She felt again the peace of the goliath village, saw the passionate Taslin leaping into the worm's jaws to avenge her beloved, and she basked again in Slip's ceaseless smile.
Images from deeper in her past returned. She saw the men and women she had loved and watched die-saw their living faces rather than their skulls. She saw Neveren sacrificing himself for her, and watched Nymlin's eyes as he plunged to his death for her. Memories from the near past. She saw Gestal's mocking grin and heard the way he laughed at her murdered companions. She felt Liet's loving gaze and remembered the way he leaped into danger to save her.
