hands-and wrapped his arms, still powered by the spells that augmented his size and strength, around the frail body of the Sojourner. The creature did not struggle against his hold, did not even seem surprised.
Cale clamped one huge hand over the Sojourner's mouth and his palm nearly covered the creature's entire face. He would not let the Sojourner utter a magical word, not a sound. He felt the Sojourner's wet respiration against his fingers. The Sojourner stank of medicines.
Cale spit a mouthful of blood and said though his pain, 'This is over.'
Cale felt a tingling behind his eyes, the Sojourner's mental fingers, and feared that his protective spell had not worked. The creature's voice sounded in his head: You have protected yourself against attack but not communication.
Cale held the Sojourner still and said in his ear, 'You killed my friend.'
Did I? I would do it again. I've killed many. I suspect you have too.
Cale wanted to kill him then, but he could not. He had to know.
'Why all this? Did you do it for nothing more than a stroll in the godsdamned sand?'
A shudder wracked the Sojourner's body. It took Cale a moment to realize it was laughter and not pain.
Men always ask why, as if there must be some overarching reason for events. Not this time, priest. There is no such reason. Thousands will die to satisfy my whim.
Cale thought of his words to Riven: This is more than personal. He had been wrong; Riven had been right. There was nothing bigger than the personal.
He gritted his teeth and started to squeeze. Calmly, the Sojourner projected: What moments do you remember most fondly from your youth, priest?
Cale did not answer but he hesitated. He remembered nothing from his youth with fondness.
When death comes for you, you will look back to those moments, long for them as you do for nothing else. All that I have done, I have done to satisfy that longing. To walk the surface in my own form, to feel the wind, to see the Crown of Flame, as I did in my youth. Yes. Is that enough of a why for you?
Cale was disgusted, but in a barely acknowledged corner of his mind, admiring. He hung onto the disgust. He looked up to the sky, to the moon, to the growing slice of the sun. He remembered telling Jak and Magadon that the Sojourner would not involve himself in something small. But he had. His methods had been large but his goal was no more ambitious than that of any man.
'You speak of killing as if it were a small thing.'
And you speak as though I should be concerned with the deaths of others. What are all those hundreds, even thousands, to me? I have killed entire worlds for less.
Cale struggled for words, found none.
The Sojourner said, I have seen and done what I willed. Nothing matters anymore. I will be dead by the end of the day.
'It's already night,' Cale said.
He lifted the Sojourner from his feet and squeezed.
The frail creature gasped as Cale brought his strength to bear on the thin body, the weak bones. A final protective ward on the Sojourner flared green and Cale felt a surge through his body.
The Sojourner's ribs snapped, folded in on themselves, his collarbone cracked. Cale echoed with his lips the mental screams of the creature that he heard in his brain, for the final ward on the Sojourner was some kind of reciprocity spell. Cale experienced the damage that he inflicted on the Sojourner-the shattered bones, the pain, the pierced organs. His shade flesh tried to repair the damage but the pain made him vomit down his shirt, down the back of the Sojourner's cloak.
Cale did not know whether pain prevented the Sojourner from casting a spell, or whether he was even interested in trying. Cale did not care; he squeezed and the Sojourner screamed. Cale took satisfaction in his own agony because he knew it mirrored what was felt by the Sojourner. He smiled at the creature's screams, smiled at his own, feeling soiled but unable to stop himself. He pulled the Sojourner so tight against him that they might as well have been melded. Cale's bones ground against bones; his lungs filled with blood. He forced his shattered chest to draw another breath, another.
He was killing the Sojourner, and he was killing himself. He did not care. He thought of Jak and squeezed. The Sojourner's frail body broke to pieces in his grasp; his own body shattered. Soon the pain became unbearable; he could not see, he could not breathe. His ruined arms could not hold the creature. The Sojourner slipped from his grasp to the beach. Cale too collapsed. He could not tell if he was screaming alone or if the Sojourner's mental screams continued.
The last thing he saw before he passed out from the agony was the sun emerging fully from behind Selune's tear.
Cale awoke. He lay on his back on the beach, broken, twisted, in agony. His chest felt heavy; blood was filling his lungs. His arms and shoulders were shattered, immovable. The pain nearly caused him to lose consciousness but he held on doggedly. The sun was directly overhead. No shadows lay anywhere near him. His shade flesh could not regenerate in the direct light of the sun. He would be dead soon, long before the sun set.
He listened to the surf, watched in amazed horror as the Sojourner's cracked moon grew larger in the sky. Without the spell to hold it in place, it was plummeting toward Toril. He could not imagine the destruction it would wreak. He thought of Tazi, of Varra. He hung on to the memory of their faces. He wondered if Tazi was watching the sky fall.
Beside him, the Sojourner's broken body smoked and burned until it was nothing more than ash. The surf washed the ashes into the sand, pulled at scraps of robes, trying to draw them out to sea.
The moon caught fire as it fell, grew a long tail of flame. Its size quickly doubled as it approached. Cale could hear it pelting through the sky, sizzling.
It would destroy kingdoms.
He thought of Jak, of Sephris, and closed his eyes.
He snapped them open when an explosion thundered across the sky.
Selune's tear had separated into five large chunks, each cutting a flaming path through the sky. Even as he watched, those chunks broke apart into smaller pieces, and those into smaller. Soon, thousands of tiny pieces of the tear blazed their way through the heavens.
He smiled, laughed, choked on his own blood.
It was beautiful.
Consciousness started to slip from him again. He sank into an oblivion of pain, watching a swarm of fireflies dart across the sky.
He awoke an indeterminate time later to the sound of boots crunching against the sand. Someone stood over him, a dark form-Riven.
'We split up to find you,' Riven said. The assassin stared down at him but did not move to help. Riven shaded his eyes and looked up at the sun. 'Light's bothering you, eh?'
The assassin looked down at Cale, his expression hard. Cale saw Riven's internal debate writ clear in the hard set of his jaw, the hole of his eye. Riven could kill Cale; the Second could kill the First.
The surf beat against the sand. Cale and Riven stared at each other, saying nothing. The silence stretched.
Cale tried to speak but his dry throat could not form words. He managed only a defiant snarl before pain assailed him and his vision went black. He fought his way back to consciousness. He would look Riven in the eye when he died.
When he regained focus, he saw that Riven had drawn his blade. The assassin gave a hard smile and jabbed downward.
Not at Cale, at the remains of the Sojourner's robes.
'He didn't like the sun much either, I see.'
Riven laughed harshly, kneeled, and retrieved a handful of items from the pile of ash and bones that had been the Sojourner. He pocketed them as he stood. Cale assumed they were the magical stones that had circled the Sojourner's head.
Riven stood over him again, blade bare. He cocked his head to the side, considering. Finally, he sighed and said, 'Look where we are, Cale. Look what we've become.' He stepped around Cale until his body shielded Cale
