The alley started to fade and disappear, but the body of the woman Quicksal had killed, the woman Cyric would have murdered if he'd been given the chance, still lay face down in the dirt. A pool of blood was still spreading out from beneath her. Cyric stared at the woman until she, too, faded from sight.
'What does he see?' Kelemvor whispered. 'There's nothing there.' Midnight shook her head.
'I'm sorry, Kel. I thought you were someone else,' Cyric said as he approached the fighter.
Kelemvor plucked the dagger from his shoulder, flinching at the incredible pain. He dropped the weapon at Cyric's feet as Midnight helped him bind up his wounded shoulder.
'We have to find Adon,' Kelemvor said. 'He's the only one left.'
'I can guess what his temptation is,' Midnight said as she finished binding Kelemvor's wound and the heroes raced for the stairs.
Adon had turned away from the bars that separated him from Midnight and walked a short way down the hall, just to see if there was some easy way for him to rejoin the mage on the other side of the barrier. Now he found himself staring up at an incredibly beautiful, star-filled sky.
And such a strange array of stars, too, Adon noted as he looked up at the night sky. They all appear to be moving.
Indeed the stars were in motion, rocketing across the sky at such speeds that many were only blurs of light. Adon closed his eyes, but the stars remained, playing their games even behind his closed lids.
Adon gazed at the stars for a long time. When next he looked around, he found himself laid out on a delicate bed of roses, and the fragrance that flooded his senses was sweet and gentle, although it caused his heart to beat faster and his head to grow numb. The petals brushed against his fingers so lightly that he could not help but smile at the delicacy. Then it occurred to Adon. The stars weren't moving at all; he was.
He opened his eyes and gazed over the edge of his bed of flowers only to find a dozen of the most beautiful beings he had ever seen. Their hair seemed to have been set aflame, and their bodies were specimens of utter physical perfection. Adon's magnificent bed rested upon their willing shoulders.
The presence of these beings reassured Adon so much that he didn't even flinch when a wall of flames sprang up around him. His vision blurred a bit, and all he surveyed seemed to take on an amber cast, but there was no heat as the flames leaped from the red to white roses, changing them to black orchids, and finally jumped to the cleric's flesh. There was no pain, not even mild discomfort, when the fires engulfed him. There was nothing but the bright glow of love and well-being that coursed through his soul as he came to the final understanding of his own death that must have happened long before this moment.
Strain as he might, he could remember none of what happened after he was separated from Midnight in the corridors below Castle Kilgrave. He woke upon his funeral pyre, being carried to what could only be his eternal reward.
But how did I die? Adon wondered, and the shifting, beautiful voices of his bearers filled the crackling air around him.
'One never remembers,' they said. 'The moment of pain is suffered by another, to spare you.'
Another?
'Others such as we have become. Our purpose is to alleviate suffering. We live your death that you might be reborn into the Kingdom of Sune.'
Shining crystal spires cut through the night, and Adon focused his attention on the temple before him. As it stretched across the horizon, the temple's walls were graced with stunningly beautiful crystalline designs, though no uniform pattern made the infinite palace boring or repetitious. It was as if each of Sune's followers who found rest in this place had contributed their own concepts of the boundaries and appearances that eternity should reveal. An amalgam of expectations resulted, yet some guiding hand had taken all the disparate images and incorporated them into an ordered whole, disappointing no one and creating a place of beauty that defied Adon's wildest dreams to surpass.
The entrance alone was larger than any temple Adon had seen before, and what lay beyond was a world unto itself. His bearers brought him through lands where a countless number of worshipers bathed and frolicked in pools that had been formed from their own tears of joy, and the rocks they lay upon as they luxuriated in the warmth of Sune's love for them had once been the stones of disbelief that weighted down their souls and made union with the goddess impossible. Relieved of the terrible burdens of life, they could now devote themselves totally to the preservation of order, beauty, and love by worshiping Sune.
Adon and his bearers passed through many such lands, each new vista overwhelming Adon more than the last, and Adon was surprised at his capacity to take in more and more of these spellbinding raptures until at last his bearers vanished and he found himself standing before a wrought iron gateway that shimmered and became a shower of sparkling water. He passed through it.
What lay beyond was a very small chamber in comparison to the wonders Adon had witnessed just moments before. There were no walls to this room, though, and all around it vast and intense flames leaped to the sky. Soft, billowing curtains protected the cleric's eyes from the roaring flames and set the boundaries of the room that lay in the heart of beauty's eternal fires.
'A drink?'
Adon turned and the Goddess of Beauty herself, Sune Firehair, stood before him. Glasses filled with a rich, crimson nectar waited in each of her glowing hands. As Adon took one of the glasses, he saw that his flesh started to blaze with the same amber light as Sune's flesh.
'Goddess,' Adon said, and fell to his knees before her, spilling not a drop of the drink in his hand.
Sune laughed and brought him to his feet with one of her powerful hands. Adon felt his breath freeze in his lungs as she touched him, a power undreamed of flooding through his limbs as he stood before her.
Breath. I'm still alive, Adon thought, rejoicing at the knowledge.
Sune seemed to read his thoughts. 'You have not died, foolish boy. Not yet. I have brought you here for the most basic of reasons: I am in love with you. You, above all my worshipers, are all that I desire.'
Adon was speechless, and so he brought the chalice to his lips and felt the sweet nectar run its course through his body. 'Goddess, surely I am not worthy — '
Sune smiled and disrobed before him, shedding a fiery silk robe and allowing it to fall to the floor and vanish. Adon looked down and saw rolling clouds beneath his feet.
'I am beauty,' Sune said. 'Touch me.'
Adon walked forward, as if in a dream.
'Truth is beauty, beauty truth. Embrace me and the answers to all your unspoken questions will be made clear.'
From somewhere Adon heard a voice cry out in warning, but he ignored it. Nothing could be more important than this moment. He took the goddess in his arms and brought his lips to hers.
The kiss seemed endless. But even before Adon opened his eyes, he felt Sune changing. Her gentle lips had become fierce, demanding. An endless series of sharpened pincers seemed to move from her elongating jaws, seeking to rend the flesh of the cleric's face. Her fingers had transformed into vicious snakes that latched onto his flesh as they threatened to tear him apart.
'Sune!' Adon cried.
The creature laughed as the snaking tendrils of its fingers wrapped themselves around Adon's throat. 'You are not worthy of the goddess,' it said. 'You have sinned against her and you must be punished!'
Across the open, central courtyard of Castle Kilgrave, Midnight, Kelemvor, and Cyric stared as the cleric fell to his knees in absolute terror, driven to this position by something that only he could see.
'Goddess forgive me!' Adon cried. 'I will do anything to win your forgiveness. Anything!'
'We have to get to him quickly,' Midnight said.
'You will do nothing!' a thunderous voice rang out, its echoes filling the courtyard. 'You will do nothing but die by the hand of Bane!'
Suddenly the trio was bombarded by illusions. In the span of a dozen heartbeats, Kelemvor was sent into the dream world of his childhood books: he lived an epic love story wherein he was a foreign prince sent to marry a lovely but heartless princess, and he forsook his very kingdom to run off with a peasant girl. Midnight saw herself as a powerful queen, saving her kingdom from poverty and want. At the same time, images of a free and unfettered life passed before Cyric's eyes, along with offers of gold and priceless artifacts. But the images of heroism and
