spilled a portion of blood into a pan. After sealing the cut with a Word, she cracked open three stone jars and sifted their gritty contents through her fingers, one by one.
“ Adulai nocet e’sulphruka,” she whispered. “By heart and lungs and soul, appear before mine eyes. Het Xenai, I conjure thee!”
Shadows flickered as a combination of odors met her nose, of dust and sand and endless night. The blood in the pan disappeared as if sucked into an invisible mouth, and a draining sensation came over Sybelle. A sigh, as coarse and dry as mummified bones, filled the chamber.
“Speak, Witch.”
“Great warrior, I seek to reach into the land of the dead and contact a departed soul.”
“Ask.”
“Bring me the shade of my servant Levictus.”
Though there were no windows in the sacred chamber, a wisp of a breeze tickled the back of her neck. A pallid light glimmered in the air. It flickered several times before coalescing into a shape roughly the size and manner of a man. Sybelle recognized the scarred face.
“Levictus.”
After a pair of slow heartbeats, he answered in a hollow tone. “Sybelle.”
“Tell me how you came to die. When was the hour? Where the place?”
“Dead?”
“Yes.” She resisted the urge to curse him. It would do no good in the land of shades. “Tell me how you died.”
“I was killed… not long ago.”
She frowned. Before his disappearance, Levictus had contacted her to ask for additional strength, which she had provided at great cost to herself. Levictus had been her most important tool in the southern lands. Not the most reliable-the sorcerer was as unstable as any Brightlander-but his role was crucial to her plans. For him to be killed at the apex of his power was no small matter.
“Who was it?”
“The night was so dark. No moon. So beautiful… We fight.”
She dug her fingernails into her palms, marshalling her self-control.
“Who? Who did you fight, Levictus?”
The shade paused for a few heartbeats. Then his rasping voice warbled across the void.
“The scion.”
Her bosom heaved as the words echoed across the ethers between life and death. Upon granting his boon, she had required one task of her servant. That he kill one man. A very dangerous man.
“Did you slay him as well?” she asked.
Mumbled words whispered from the portal.
“Levictus! Did you slay the scion?”
“He was defeated.”
Sybelle released the breath she had been holding. Thanks be to the Mother Dark -
“But something… interfered. I die. Shinae…”
Sybelle hissed between parted lips. Shinae was a dark metal native to the Shadowlands. She had gifted the sorcerer with a pair of shinae knives during his visit to Eregoth, years ago, but what was he talking about? She needed more answers. Yet he was fading before her eyes. She reached out to take hold of the spirit directly and wring the truth from its spectral voice, but it slipped through her psychic grasp. She lunged after him, but the withered shade of Het Xenai reappeared, gazing at her with vacant holes.
“Bring him back!” she demanded. “I was not finished.”
The ancient warrior’s sigh was a gust of wind over a cold desert plain. “The shade has passed beyond my sight.”
Invectives flew from her lips. The warrior’s spirit wavered and departed, back to its eternal sleep. She brushed the charnel dust from her hands and arose.
This was unforeseen. For almost two decades she had been assembling her power. Levictus was supposed to blaze the trail. Now her plans were unraveled, and her Master was unforgiving. She threw the sheet back over the sarcophagus, its paleness reminding her of the snowfields on the day she emerged from the gateway to step onto these cursed lands. Her father-her liege-had stood before her under the alien blue sky that burned her eyes, and lifted up his hand.
“From this land,” he said, “we shall forge a new empire.”
Despair had welled up inside Sybelle as she gazed out upon the blankness of the bare ice and stone and the foul light rising in the east. They were exiles, outcasts in a world that was but a hollow reflection of the one they had left behind.
She reached out to catch her father’s arm. “We should go back. We could make peace-”
He struck her, and she fell upon the icy ground. She lay there, feeling the sting of his hand, which she knew and hated.
“No,” he said. “We must make our destiny in this world now, or be crushed by it.”
His fist closed, and there was a terrible crash. Sybelle looked back to see the path behind them swallowed into an icy crevasse. The gateway was gone. They were marooned here.
Sybelle pulled her gaze away from the covered sarcophagus. That had been a long time ago, but the pain was still fresh. She had left behind a life of luxury and privilege, and in return been given only hardship and an endless litany of demands. Nothing in this world had been able to assuage the betrayal, not even the birth of her son, Soloroth, who had never seen the onyx skies of Shadow, nor walked upon the pallid shores of its midnight seas.
Steadying herself against a stone pillar, Sybelle went to an alcove in the wall. She took down an elaborate orichalcum box and opened the lid. A bed of fine golden powder lay inside. She took a pinch between her fingers and held it up to her nose. Inhaling the sweet powder, she was instantly rejuvenated. She took another pinch before putting the container back.
Sweeping a curtain aside, she traveled down a narrow passage of dressed stone to a doorway. The beat of pounding drums echoed from beyond the portal. Splinters of ruddy light throbbed in time with the rhythm.
She emerged into a vast hall filled with a throng of sweating, writhing, groaning bodies. The sweet heat of their passion seeped into her flesh and warmed her chilled bones. The smells of blood and sex swept the dusty attar from her lungs. Sybelle closed her eyes and let the energy of the ritual fill her. Since coming to these lands, she had tried to civilize its savage inhabitants. For four years she had worked to eradicate all traces of the True Church. She was shocked to find so many men-and even women, who should have known better-willing to die for their idols. Yet once she and Erric took the city and exterminated the Light-worshipping cult, Sybelle had had a change of heart. Why deny the people an outlet for their baser natures? So she’d devised a new sect to venerate the Dark, with herself as the earthly incarnation of Mother Night. Those who came to worship here gave of their blood and their bodies, infusing the temple with a power that lapped at her soul like an ocean of ambrosia.
Glowing braziers sat along the walls. A company of men and women in various stages of undress cavorted under the lurid light. A haze of blue smoke from a forest of water-pipes clouded the air. Golden bowls filled with ruby wine were placed about the chamber, from which the people dipped their cups and drank or poured the contents over their lovers. Grunts and sighs echoed from the vaulted ceiling while blind musicians played. Near to her entrance, a black basalt throne sat upon a raised platform. Two smaller thrones were placed before the platform. In one of them, the Duke of Liovard slouched, puffing on the end of a water-pipe while a lithe slip of a girl hunched over his lap. Her golden locks rose and fell in time with the music.
Sybelle took her place beside the duke and shooed away the vixen servicing him. The pipe slipped from Erric’s lips. Then he relaxed as she took his manhood in hand. While coaxing him onward, Sybelle observed a knot of glistening bodies on the floor. Amid the tangle of graceful limbs, two rugged men lay upon their backs, drinking from silver cups as they enjoyed the comforts provided by a flock of young beauties.
“How fare our guests from Warmond?” she asked.
The duke made a final groan and slumped in his chair. Sybelle pressed herself against him as she wiped her hands on his pant leg.
He took a deep breath and let it out, deflated. “They seem satisfied. Although they mentioned a need for
