"Why? Tell me why." Corban hadn't told Gethel the full measure of his fearsa"hadn't told him much of anything, in trutha"but, standing face-to-face with the man, he was suddenly sure he didn't need to. In the scholar's cloudy eyes he saw his own desperation mirrored.

"The harvesting of the stone was not simple," Gethel said. "We had to break seals, brave old evils a Duradh Mal was not abandoned, no. Not in the deeps where the blackfire stone lay. There we found horrors. Things without name. I was able to baffle and blind them with my spells, and we wrestled the blackfire stone from their lairs a but they pursued us, in their way. An old evil lives in the heart of that mountain. An old death. It is hungry, and it is not easily escaped."

"You told me you'd purified the blackfire stone," Corban said. "You said it was safe."

"And it is. It was." Gethel massaged the wrinkled skin under his eyes. "There have been a complications."

"What complications?"

"You saw my poor, late apprentice Belbas. He was the first, but there have been others. Many others. Duradh Mal is a sick place. A cursed one. Its sickness a clings to the things taken from it. I cleansed much of it a but some lingers. It seeps into the minds and souls of the weak, exploiting them, turning them against me."

"What of it?" Corban said impatiently. He'd had his fill of Gethel's delusions about spell-driven conspiracies in the man's letters, which made vague allusions to their schemes almost as often as they asked for money. Gethel had never bothered to specify what, exactly, he thought these faceless enemies were doing, much less how he intended to counter thema"or what any of it had to do with Corban's problems.

"I had to learn to control them. To find and stop them. Some of the tainted souls were obvious. They fell into violent rages. Lashed out. Those I destroyed with the help of stronger and more loyal friends. But there were others who stayed hidden, trying to trap me in subtler snares. Thieves and spies a thieves and spies wearing masks of loyalty. The fire tells them true, but a I did not discover that at once. Some escaped me long enough to finish their schemes. One of those schemes may have replenished the sickness in the blackfire stone I purified. If that is so a their malice creates a many-pronged attack. Unreal voices, delirium a other things."

"What other things?"

Gethel's mouth opened, then closed. He shook his head, smiling the faint, wry smile of a man who knows he cannot be believed. "Monsters. They tempted men, and turned them into monsters. They corrupted whatever they could a even myself, briefly."

"But you can stop them?"

"I can," Gethel said. "I have." He fiddled with a little sun medallion stitched to the inside of his belt. He'd never worn any god's sign beforea"had prided himself on his freedom from their supposed superstitionsa"but Corban wasn't inclined to mock him about this one. If it worked, he'd wear a medallion of his own. A dozen of them. A hundred.

"How?"

"It is not easy," the scholar warned. "It will test your resolve. The schemes of the dark gods are ever thus: they test you cruelly, hoping that you will weaken and fail."

"I won't."

"There are two parts to it. First you must draw the poison into other vessels. It is a delicate balance. Transfer too much, and they succumb to the taint. Too little, and you put yourself at risk. It is one of the reasons I needed the shapersa"they drew away the poison for me."

"You used children," Corban said. He felt slightly ill. He had sent some of those children to Carden Vale himself, promising that they'd find work on farms. At the time he'd reasoned that his claims were essentially true, since Gethel was staying in some farmer's house and they would be working for him a but he hadn't cared to look too deeply into what, precisely, Gethel was doing with them.

"They hold it better," Gethel said, "and recover faster." He rubbed a knuckle over the sunburst's pointed rays, pushing the soft gold down. He'd done it many times; the tips were flattened into bulbs, and his knuckles were callused. "It is for the greater good."

"I can't use children." There were still some lines Corban wouldn't cross. Couldn't. Or else he'd be as monstrous as any of the creatures in Duradh Mal.

"You must use some unsullied vessel. Or succumb yourself."

"I'll find something."

He must not have sounded convincing, for Gethel gave him a long look. "Try. Your soul depends on it."

"You said there were two parts to it. What's the second?" Corban asked. He didn't really want to know, didn't want to believe any of this nonsense a but something worse than hunger had driven him to eat those rats.

"Once you are purified, you must remain so. There are many ways to do it a as many paths to the sanctuary as there are gods beyond. But the easiest, I find a the most powerful a is to use the symbols of Celestia."

"I thought the Fourfold House didn't believe in gods."

Gethel scowled. His lower lip sagged wide, showing the stumps of his teeth. His teeth had been ordinary enough the last time Corban had seen him, but now they looked like lumps of sugar eaten away by dirty water. "Only fools would deny the gods' power. No a our grievance is that they demand the fealty of men, and dole out magic sparingly, giving just enough to enslave the people without curing all their ills. The gods use magic as an unworthy king uses gold: to pay their soldiers and keep the commonfolk cowed. The king does not create his gold, and the gods do not create their magic. We should not have to bow our heads to claim a power that is not truly theirs. But in times of war a even a free man may seek refuge behind the walls of a king's city a and even a wizard may choose to avail himself of the spells of faith."

"Fine. What do I do?"

"You must ward yourself in the symbols of faith. But not those the Dome of the Sun would give you. No. Those are a soft. Weak. They do not have the power to control the curse of Duradh Mal. You must go back to the old faith, the way it was when the Celestians first sealed that place and bound its darkness back. The signs were different then. Had greater strength. I will show you the correct signs, and how they can keep you safe."

"What if it doesn't work?" If he made some mistake, or forgot the instructions a "It takes weeks to send letters up the river."

"Longer. This has been a hard winter, and it grows harder by the day." Gethel untied the lumpy sack at his waist and held its mouth open. "But you need not depend on the river trade to reach me. Blackfire stone is not the only magic I have reclaimed from Duradh Mal."

Corban peered into the bag, then recoiled in revulsion. It was full of bones. All arm bones, all so small and light that they had to be children's. They were white as snow, almost translucent, save for a network of black veins that ran through the bone like the red flush of blood jade.

"Make a gate of them," Gethel said. Corban's horror didn't seem to touch his weary, implacable calm. "On your wall. I will show you. Then you will be able to pass through their hands to reach me, and I will be able to come to you as easily. Mountain snow or river ice will pose no obstacle."

I can't use children, Corban thought. Hadn't he just said that? Sworn it? But the words felt like a line he'd heard an actor recite in a half-forgotten play. These children were already dead. It wasn't his choice that killed them. If they were children. He was no expert in bones, and might be confusing bones taken from a lambs' ribs, or chickens, or some beast. It was possible. It could be.

Anyway, whatever they were, they were dead by no doing of his. Wasn't it a greater waste to discard their sacrifice?

Corban took the sack. "Thank you," he said.

TWO NIGHTS LATER, HE LEFT THE apothecary's cellar to hunt dogs.

Gethel said he needed innocents to draw off the contamination in the blackfire stone. To Corban, that meant either children or animals. The only adults he knew to be free from sin were Celestia's Blessed, and he had no intention of drawing their ire.

Children were out of the question. He hadn't the stomach for that. He hadn't the nerve either. Corban wasn't dealing with orphans in some mountain backwater. He was in the heart of Cailan, surrounded by guards and Sun Knights. Any child he stole might have parents who would wail for justice if their sons or daughters went missing. One misstep and the wrath of court and temple would come down upon him.

Animals were easier. No one watched the city's feral dogs. Their lives were hard, desperate, short; they died in droves when the weather turned against them or sickness ran through their ranks. Packs fought one another for the best scavenging grounds. Street children tormented them for sport. No one would notice if a few more went missing. No one would care if they died. And the dogs themselves would never tell a soul.

Not only were they voiceless and unwanted, but he had no doubt that dogs had emotions. Minds. Souls. They would draw the curse from Corban, and by their innocence save him.

He caught his first dog near midnight.

She was a scrawny yellow brindle, not much bigger than a fox, with pricked-up ears and the gangly gait of an adolescent. One of her forelegs was bent stiff after a bad break; she hopped along on the other three, making her slower and easier to catch. At some point she had learned to trust humans, for after an initial wary sniff, she accepted the meat Corban tossed her way. With every piece he lured her closer, until the little dog was eating out of his hand.

Then he slipped a leather noose over her head, fed her one last piece of sausage, and led the unresisting dog down to the secret cellar.

AFTERWARD HE REMEMBERED ALMOST NOTHING OF THE ritual. The dog yipped once, at the beginning, but only once. There was blood, although not as much as he had expected. A knife. Drawings in charcoal and chalk: scrawled loops of runes and sigils, vital in the moment but meaningless when he looked at them again. Incantations that came into his mind word by word, and fled his memory as soon as each sound was spoken.

Corban didn't know where the chants came from, nor from where he drew inspiration for the scribbled runes. He'd never pretended to be Blessed. But there they were, burning bright and ephemeral in his mind, and vanishing like snuffed flames once used.

What he did remembera"the only thing that lingered after the blood was cold and the chalk dust swept awaya"was the peacefulness that came over him when it was done.

It was as if a fever broke in his soul. The headaches, the delirium, the fog of weariness and pain that had clouded his thoughts and made every movement a triala"all of it vanished at the ritual's end.

Corban sucked in great gasps of air, unable to believe how light he felt. He leaped in the air, just for the joy of it, and laughed, unbelieving, when he landed. Nothing hurt. He was weaker, yes, and a little dizzy from long fasting, but the black miasma was gone and his head felt impossibly clear. He had forgotten how liberating it was to be whole.

Gethel was right. The curse of Duradh Mal could be controlled. Dazed by his discovery, Corban led the yellow dog off the pier. The animal followed unsteadily, breathing hard, her head down. Blood and black grit dripped from her flanks. He couldn't recall why the grit was there.

Opposite the ladder in his cellar, the apothecary had excavated a small cavern and lined it with brick, using it to store contraband. Corban had rigged a rope-and-board gate across its mouth. He pushed the animal in and closed the gate as she licked at the spiral wounds in her sides. As an afterthought he tossed in a dead fish he'd found floating on the water. Gethel had hinted that something dire would happen if he let his sacrifices die after drawing the poison from him, and Corban didn't care to find out whether he was right.

Gethel.

He needed the scholar's gate. Oh, it looked a horror a but Gethel had been right about the ritual, right about the blackfire stone, right about everything. And he was too far away, much too far. The gate would bring him closer, and all his wisdom with him.

Corban had left the bag of bones among the blackfire crates on the pier. He went back and hoisted it over his shoulder. It weighed almost nothing. The dog whined and scratched behind its makeshift gate as he passed, but the boards held it back.

Behind the ladder was a narrow space backed by a wall of crooked bricks. Corban could just fit inside if he bent and squeezed himself under the rusting rungs. The wall was patched and ugly, carelessly maintained by a dozen hands sealing rat holes and replacing lost bricks over the years. There wasn't an inch of it that didn't either bow or bulge a but it was straight enough to hold the gate of bones.

Fumbling in the cramped confines, Corban pulled an arm from the sack. He could scarcely see what he was doing; the angle was bad, and he hadn't room to turn his head. It was easy for his imagination to play tricks on him. The black veins laced through the small bones seemed to be shifting and spreading, responding to something in the wet dark. Inside the sack, the other bones clicked against one another, making a dry tick-rattle. It sounded almost purposeful, almost alive a and that unnerved Corban more than it should have.

He held the bony arm up to the wall, pushing it blindly against the scraggled bricks. Gods willing, it would catch in a cranny and stick.

It didn't. Instead the bony fingers spread wide and dug into the rotting mortar, anchoring themselves in the crevices they made. While Corban gaped at the skeletal hand hanging from the wall like some pale nightmarish spider, the next one scuttled out of the bag. It sprang onto the wall, climbing across the bricks until it was aligned with the first, fingers to shoulder ball.

Another arm followed, and then another. Faster than he could fathom, the bones tumbled out of the bag, and Corban stood slack mouthed at the outline of an archway drawn in animated bones before him. The sack dangled, deflated, in his hand. The space under the stairs was so tight that the knuckles of one skeletal hand brushed his nose.

He had done nothing. Almost nothing. Yet the gate stood whole before him.

Whole, but inert.

Gethel had told him this would happen. Seeing the gate, however, was entirely different from listening to the scholar describe it. Seeing the handsa"the arms, the white clawlike fingers, all mere inches from his eyes, all possessed of something that wasn't life but moved like ita"frightened him so badly that he would have fallen backward if the ladder hadn't held him up.

The dead hands waited on the crooked bricks, arms laced in a black-vined gate that reached higher than his head. Not a finger twitched, yet Corban stared at the bones with frozen, fascinated dread. Run now, try to run, and they'll grab you. They'll pull you apart.

Corban didn't run. Clumsily he drew the horn-handled knife from his belt and slashed it across his palm, quickly, twice and twice again, before he could cringe from the expectation of pain.

The pain never came. The blade bit in clean and deep, drawing four lines of blood that crossed in the center and starred his palm with eight red rays, but it might have cut someone else's flesh for all Corban felt. His hand felt dull and dead, not his at all.

But it bled. He forced his numb fingers flat and pressed his wounded palm against the bricks at the center of the gate, following the scholar's instructions. Blood trickled along the channels in the rough mortar, spidering out to the sides as it fell.

One by one, like leaves turning toward the light, the skeletal hands at the periphery of the arch stretched their palms toward Corban's blood. As it passed through their fingers, the crimson stain flushed blacka"infinitely black, dizzyingly so, the light-swallowing emptiness of a void that knew nothing of warmth or sound or life.

The edges of the bricks adjoining the inky lines crumbled and trickled into the void. Then the bricks themselves did, faster and faster, breaking away in chunks that fell to grit and then to powder as they spun into the abyss and vanished. Soon there was nothing but gaping black inside the ring of bones. Corban, staring at it, felt the emptiness pulling him in. He had to avert his eyes and turn away before it swallowed him as well.

Gethel's magic had worked. He had a gate.

He thought of that infinite dark, and wondered: what else had a gate?

19.

There were no mice in Shadefell's kitchens.

Sacks of flour and barley spilled across the floor, rounds of bread gone hard as granite piled the shelves, and ropes of onion and garlic dangled from the ceiling, their bulbs withered to gummy balls inside crackling paper husks. The kitchen's windows were broken and the garden door was cracked, inviting all the wild world to share in its bounty a yet not a roach skittered across the flagstones. The only animals in sight were the ones cut open on the counters.

Dogs and cats lay there, bound to the stone counters by dusty threads of dried blood. They had not been butchered, not properly; dirty fur clung to the bodies, crusted into wild tufts around the cuts. No one had cleaned them, and the meat was still there, dried to corrugated knobs of black leather. Only the bones were missing.

The animals were all small. Pets, Asharre guessed; none had the size to be a hunting hound or guard dog. Several had gray muzzles.

"Bones again," Evenna muttered as she came into the kitchen, arms clasped tightly over her chest. "Bones when I sleep, bones when I wake a"

"They were trying to fuel the fires." Asharre stroked a finger along one of the little bodies, tracing the gouges in its leg. It was strangely soothing. His people lit the way to enlightenment. Falcien had not lied: the solaros had followed this path before her. She pulled her hand back reluctantly. "These pets must have come from Carden Vale, so we know the townspeople reached the house. They cannot be much farther."

"Yes. Yes, that's true. Just a give me a moment, please." Evenna slumped against a counter, pressing the heel of her free hand into her eyes. "Maol's presence is so strong here. The temple in Carden Vale was nothing like this." She managed a wan smile, though she did not move her hand from her eyes. "I feel like a like I've eaten a bellyful of wormy plums, and I'm dressed head to toe in lead plate, and I've got to walk uphill in a hailstorm with the deadwinter wind trying to blow me straight across the Last Bridge."

Asharre swallowed the lump in her throat. She knew what Evenna meant. For days on the walk up to Shadefell her thoughts had been murky and obscure. Concentrating on anything was like trying to piece together a shattered vase without glue: she could fit together two pieces, sometimes three, but after that it fell apart into a meaningless jumble. Inside the house she felt a little clearer, but the Illuminer seemed worse. She tried to put a good face on it, though, forcing herself to sound as lightly casual as she could. "Is that all? Then it is almost nothing."

"Almost." Evenna's smile faltered. Her hand fell back to her side. In the broken light of Shadefell's kitchen, the marks of exhaustion were stark on her face. Weariness ringed her eyes in bruise purple and black; new lines etched the papery white of her skin. She looked a short step from death. "I'll manage. Let's go."

The sigrir hesitated. "We do not have to go now. In the morning you might be strongera""

"How? Nothing will change." Evenna glanced around, shivering. "Nothing can change until we break the Mad God's hold on this place. Delaying only makes me weaker, and him stronger. We have to go on."

"As you say," Asharre agreed, quelling her unease. She pushed open the creaking door and led the way, her hand never far from her sword.

Shattered glass glittered in a wavy band along the threshold, following the door's sweep. Asharre stepped over it and into a high-ceilinged dining hall. A great oaken table ran from one end to the other, each of its legs carved with rearing serpents and the rose-braided wheels of the Rosewayns. Glimmers of gilt chased the serpents' scales and the roses' petals, though most of it had been chipped away so that it looked like an army of mice had been at the wood.

The last feast held in that hall had ended in carnage. Heavy blows had smashed the chandeliers into rib-caved skeletons of glass and metal; blood and dust dulled the fragments of crystal that clung to their rickety hoops. Not a chair stood upright at the table. Most were thrown back, as if their occupants had been suddenly roused; others had toppled over on splintered legs. The table looked like it had been washed in blood, and the walls were no cleaner.

More crusts of dried brown rimed the glasses and bowls on the tablea"but those, Asharre thought uneasily, did not look like accidental spatters. She lifted one and sniffed it, but the only smell was dust and mold.

Bones lay on a tarnished platter. Small ones. Child size. The other dishes were gone, but the looters hadn't dared disturb that roast to take its silver plate. She saw the delicate, dust-webbed fans of fingers locked behind the curve of a fire-browned spine, and swiftly averted her gaze.

"The last feast of the Rosewayns," Evenna whispered. "I thought that was just a story."

"No," Asharre said. She plucked a hair from a streak of dried blood on a chair back. It curled between her fingers, long and blond. "But it ended long before we came. All of this is ancient. It is none of our concern."

"Isn't it? It's all connected." Evenna dug her fingers into her tangled hair. Much of it had fallen out of her once-neat healer's halo, and it hung in a wild black shag around her shoulders. "What happened before, what's happening now a if only I could think."

Asharre studied a rose-marked cup with feigned intensity, trying to mask the wrench of pain she felt at her helplessness. They needed to find Aurandane. Once they had the sword, Evenna would be able to hold off the Maolite curse. She dropped the cup back to the table and searched the hall. The people here had come close. The dreams had told her so. She had only to follow their tracks.

The legless chairs and broken glass had been pushed aside in a trail that led from the kitchen to the two doors on the left. "This way. Someone came here."

"How can you tell? I can't see a thing."

How can you not? Asharre wanted to ask. It wasn't that dark. The hall's windows were buried inside and out in cobwebs and leaf litter, but enough light seeped in from the kitchens to pick out every detail. It had been harder to see under the glaring daylight outside.

Perhaps some enchantment was to blame. Maol's hold on this place clearly crippled Evenna; it was no stretch to think it could blind her as well.

Asharre bit back her worry. They had to find something soon. She couldn't lead a blind woman through this hellhole. Leaving the hall's ghosts to their ruined feast, she turned to the nearest door.

It opened to a small room littered with broken furniture. The walls were gouged by sword swings, the marquetry floor scuffed and bloodied. Curling blossoms of char climbed toward the ceiling. A decapitated skeleton in a gold-trimmed doublet slumped by the far door, its long-haired skull cradled in its lap and an arrow in its ribs. The skull's teeth were filed to points, and Asharre felt its gaze following her as she walked past.