a few decades of hunger, they are not meant to last.'
Rivalen's face turned so dark it almost vanished. 'Majesty, to understand any comment, you must know the context.'
'I suppose that is true.' Alusair stepped toward the prince, her attitude more that of a warrior challenging another than a potentate delivering a message. 'So the Shadovar are not melting the High Ice?'
Rivalen cast a disparaging look in Galaeron's direction, then said, 'The princess surely knows that every kingdom has its disaffected. A discontented elf saying a thing does not make it true.'
'That is not an answer,' Alusair pressed. 'Are the Shadovar responsible for changing the weather of Faerыn or not?' 'Us, Majesty?' Rivalen gasped. 'We are only one city.'
'A Netherese city-and Netherese cities have done worse,' Alusair said, no doubt referring to the hubris that had caused the fall of the goddess Mystryl and altered the Weave itself forever. She turned her head over her shoulder and called, 'Myrmeen, have you seen enough?' 'I have, Majesty.'
Myrmeen Lhal stepped through the illusionary wall, bringing with her half a dozen Arabellan nobles bearing the shadow blanket confiscated from Galaeron and his companions. She directed the nobles to drop the blanket at the prince's feet.
'There is Shade Enclave's stolen property,' she said. 'You and the rest of the Shadovar in Arabel may return it to your father with my compliments.'
'I don't understand,' Rivalen said, stalling for time to think. 'You are ordering us out of the city?'
'I am ordering you out of Arabel-and the entirety of Cormyr, you and ail Shadovar,' Alusair clarified. 'You won't be welcome here until you stop the melting of the High Ice.'
'You would begrudge us our birthright?' Rivalen gasped, changing tactics the instant it grew apparent his lies had been discovered. 'By what right do you dare?'
It was the wrong thing to say to Alusair Obarskyr. She stepped forward until she was standing nose to breastplate with the huge Shadovar.
'By the right of law-and of arms.' She shoved him back into Galaeron's cage, then turned to Dauneth Marliir and waved at the two Shadovar locked in the cell that had been Ruha's. 'Are those the ones who killed our guards?'
Dauneth shrugged. 'Perhaps, Majesty. These Shadovar are difficult to tell apart.'
'Well, it matters not,' she said. 'They were at least party to the deaths of two of our guards. Execute them.' 'Of course, Majesty.'
Rivalen opened his mouth to object, but Dauneth was already dropping his arm. Two dozen crossbows clacked, peppering the two Shadovar inside with iron bolts. Both warriors fell without a scream, their faces and throats studded with expertly placed quarrels.
Alusair turned to Rivalen. 'I believe that makes our position clear, does it not?'
Vala limped out of the Irithlium's shadowed entrance-way to find Prince Escanor standing with a full company of Shadovar in the tree-choked courtyard. Their armor was fastened and their glassy swords held at battle ready. They were divided into squads of a dozen, each commanded by a fang-mouthed shadow lord. As Vala approached, an astonished-or perhaps relieved- murmur ran through their ranks, and the tips of their swords began to drift toward the ground. Raising her brow at the unexpected reception, she checked the ring Corineus had given her to make certain it was in the undetectable position, then removed the phaerimm tails from her belt and presented herself to Escanor. 'Come to keep your promise, Escanor?' she asked. Escanor closed his gaping mouth. 'My promise?'
'For killing the phaerimm beneath the Irithlium.' Vala slapped the tails into his hand. 'There are six tails there. Count them.'
The prince glanced down at the tails and gave a wry smile. 'Most impressive, but no. When I made that promise, I actually didn't think you would be returning.'
'What you thought matters less than what you do about it,' Vala said. 'Are the Princes of Shade men who honor their words?'
'Unfortunately, that won't be possible,' Escanor said, smile vanishing. He returned the phaerimm tails, then caught Vala by the wrist. 'I was just on my way to fetch you for the Most High. It seems he has finally located Galaeron.'
The prince turned away and dragging her after him, started to walk. Within two steps, his body had grown diaphanous and ghostly. Another two steps, and they were completely immersed in shadow, the ground beneath their feet as soft as water. Vala tried to pull away but stopped struggling when she experienced a strange sensation of falling and her captor's arm stretched into a writhing rope of darkness. She turned her magic ring so that it would show affairs as they truly were.
The swirling darkness around her became a pearly, motionless void, more colorless than it was gray. Escanor was a black heart beating inside a cage of black ribs, with no limbs or skull, but two coppery flames where there would have been eyes and a sheaf of finger wisps wrapped around Vala's arm.
The prince's fiery eyes swung in her direction. She quickly thumbed her ring back to its concealed position, and he became the shadowy figure of a moment before. 'Walk,' he said.
The prince took a step and became solid again. Vala followed. The ground grew hard beneath her feet, and wisps of shadow started to coalesce in smoky ribbons. The voices of unseen whisperers rose and fell in the surrounding darkness. Gradually, a set of murmurs hardened into the fuller tones of normal speech, and Vala recognized the sibilant voice of Telamont Tanthul Most High. He was speaking harshly to someone-shouting, in fact-and there was an angry murmur in the air around him.
The figures of several shadow lords appeared in the murk surrounding Telamont's throne. Standing closest to the dais were the princes Rivalen and Lamorak, with Hadrhune a quarter of the way up the stairs. To Vala's astonishment, Malik was on a step between the seneschal and the princes, his cuckold's horns no longer hidden by his customary turban. Galaeron was nowhere in sight. Escanor brushed past the lords and stopped at the base of the dais.
'… allow her to dictate terms to me?' the Most High was raging. 'After all I have done to rebuild that wreck of a kingdom?'
'Most High, had the harlot dared utter a word against you, I would have stricken her down myself,' Rivalen said, cringing visibly in the heat of his father's anger. 'As her outrages were merely directed at me, I thought it best to endure them and return to consult.' 'Return without the elf?' 'It was impossible to bring him,' Rivalen said. The Most High waited in expectant silence.
'When it remained possible, I still had hopes of salvaging our relationship with Arabel,' the prince continued. 'I know the value you place on controlling the border cities.'
The Most High remained quiet, though the sense of expectation that had hung in the air was gone. Vala folded her hands in front of her, covering the gift from Corineus, and thumbed her ring around. The murk paled to the color of fog, thin enough for her to see that the throne room was really a vast courtyard surrounded in the distance by dark bands she took to be walls. Beyond the dais in front of her rose the shapes of many other platforms, their silhouettes growing progressively more indistinct with distance, but each surrounded by a crowd of shadow lords similar to those ringing Vala and the princes.
The shadow lords themselves were wrinkled, ghoul-like figures with sunken, red-rimmed eyes and leathery black skin often pocked by white sores. Rivalen and Lamorak appeared much the same as had Escanor when Vala looked at him during the journey from Myth Drannor, varying only in how much of their skeleton remained attached to the black ribs that enclosed their black hearts. Surprisingly, Hadrhune appeared the same as before Vala had turned the ring-as did Malik, save that he held himself more erectly and seemed far more wiry than Vala had grown accustomed to thinking of him.
Finally, Telamont sent Vala's heart jumping into her throat by crying, 'Betrayer!'
It was at first impossible to tell whom the Most High was addressing, for he was only two platinum eyes floating in a vaguely man-shaped pillar of darkness. The gray fog that filled the throne room seemed to be flowing through him, entering his 'body' in the general area of the feet and leaving at the hands. In the area behind one of the eyes, in what should have been the temple area, there was something black and wrinkled, about half the size of Vala's fist, pulsing in beat to the Most High's words. 'This is your doing, ungrateful Vaasan!'
Vala spun the ring to its concealed position and found the Most High's murk-filled cowl turned in her
