Sayeed looked past his brother to the girl, Lahni, lying still in the grass among the corpses of her family. He hoped the Oracle would know. Sayeed just wanted to sleep. He'd never wanted anything more in his life. His brother had turned into a monster serving the Lord of Cania. Sayeed had turned into a monster serving his brother.

The cats padded out of the shadows, their paws and muzzles covered in the dog's blood. They stopped, sat, and licked their paws clean while they eyed Sayeed and Zeeahd.

Sayeed didn't want to see the remains of the dog, if there were any. He turned back to his brother to find him staring at the cats.

"Why do we keep doing this, Zeeahd? I'm so tired."

Zeeahd peeled his eyes from the bloody felines. "Because we must. Because my pact with him is the only hope we have. And because I'm getting worse."

Vasen's adoptive father, Derreg, had buried Varra in the common cemetery atop a rise in the eastern side of the valley. When Derreg died, Vasen laid him to rest beside Varra. They'd known each other only a short time, but Derreg had insisted that he be buried beside Varra in the cemetery for layfolk rather than in the catacombs under the abbey.

The stones that marked their graves were the same as those that marked all the other graves on the rise. A simple piece of limestone etched along the bottom with the spraying lines of the rising sun.

Vasen sat on his haunches before the graves. He'd plucked two of the pale orchids that grew at the base of the mountains and placed one on each of their graves.

"Rest well," he said. "I'll return when I can."

He stood, turned, and looked out and down on the vale. The Abbey of the Rose sat in a deep, wooded valley, a gash hidden in the heart of the Thunder Peaks. A hundred years earlier, the Oracle, then only a child, had led the first pilgrims to the valley, telling them that it was a protected place into which the Shadovar could not see.

"We will be a light to their darkness," he'd said, or so the story went.

And, as with all of the Oracle's pronouncements, the words had proven true. The vale had remained unmolested by enemies, its location a secret to all but a select number of the faithful.

Ringed on three sides by cracked limestone cliffs that merged with the sloped sides of pine-covered mountains, the vale felt like a world unto itself, a pocket of light in the heart of shadow, a singular thing, like the rarely seen sun. Vasen loved it.

Foaming cascades from melting glaciers poured out of notches in the eastern and northern cliff faces, falling with a roar to the valley floor. The rushing waters joined to form a fast-moving river that bisected the vale before carving its way farther down the mountains. Smaller brooks and streams branched from the river to feed the vale's lush vegetation. Dozens of tarns dotted the terrain, their still waters like dark mirrors.

Vasen took one last look back at his mother's grave, at Derreg's, then headed down the rise. When he reached the valley floor, he picked his way along the many walking paths that lined the pine forests. Pilgrims had trod the same paths for decades. Nesting cowbirds fluttered unseen in the branches; they'd head for warmer air to the south soon.

From time to time the canopy thinned enough overhead that he could glimpse the sky, the whole of it the gray of old metal, as if the Shadovar had encased the world in armor.

Despite the impenetrable sky, Vasen's faith allowed him to perceive the sun's location. He always knew where he could find the light. Yet he felt comfortable, even welcome in the shadows. He credited his blood for that, and it only rarely bothered him.

He had mostly reconciled himself to his dual existence. He told himself that his connection to both light and shadow gave him a better appreciation of each. He existed in the nexus of light and shadow, a creature of both, but a servant of only one.

His hand went to the rose symbol the Oracle had given him. Silver under the tarnish, light under the darkness.

"Where will you go when I die?" the Oracle had asked him.

He kicked a piece of deadwood and frowned. He could scarcely conceive of the Oracle's death. The Oracle was the fixed star of Vasen's existence. Vasen's sworn purpose was to protect him. Without the Oracle, without the oath, what would Vasen have? Who would he be?

He didn't know. He lacked family and friends. Without a purpose. . .

He inhaled deeply to clear his somber mood. The air was thick with the smell of pine and wildflowers, the scent of his home.

"Wisdom and light, Dawnfather," he said softly. "Wisdom and light."

Ahead, a beam of sunlight escaped the cloak of the shadowed sky and cut a line down through the pines, a golden path that extended from the hidden sun to the hidden vale.

Vasen whispered his thanks and hurried forward to the boon. He placed his hand in the beam's light and warmth. Shadows leaked from his dark flesh, the blade of Amaunator's sun and the darkness of his blood coexisting in the light.

The beam lasted only a few moments before the sky swallowed it again, but it was enough. The Dawnfather had heard, and answered.

His spirits lightened, Vasen turned the direction of his thoughts from his own concerns to those of the pilgrims he would soon lead out into the dark.

He asked Amaunator for wisdom and strength, prayed that his light and that of the Dawnswords would be enough to see them all to safety.

A voice broke the spell of solitude. "Well met, Dawnsword."

Surprise pulled a rush of shadows from Vasen's flesh. He turned to see one of the pilgrims standing on the path a few paces behind him. The man had come with the most recent group from the war-torn Dalelands.

"The light keep you," Vasen said, recovering himself enough to offer the standard greeting between believers. "Are you . . . lost? I can escort you to the abbey if-"

The man smiled and approached. He wore a gray cloak, dark breeches, and a loose tunic. The compact stride of his lithe frame wasted little motion.

"Oh, I've been lost for years. But maybe I'm finding my way now."

The man's eyes struck Vasen immediately-pupilless orbs the color of milk. Vasen might have thought him blind had he not moved with such confidence. Tattoos decorated his bald head, his clean-shaven face, and his exposed neck-lines and spirals and whorls that made a map of his skin. He held an oak staff in his hand and carved lines and spirals grooved its length, too.

"I didn't hear you approach. Orsin, isn't it?"

"So I tell myself these days. And you're Vasen."

"Aye. Well met," Vasen said, and extended a hand.

Orsin's grip felt as if it could have crushed stone.

"Do you mind if I join you?" Orsin asked. "I was just . . . walking the vale."

Ordinarily Vasen preferred to prepare his mind and spirit in solitude. But he remembered the Oracle's admonition-"Things change, Vasen."

"Please do. I was just walking, too. And the company of a brother in the faith would be welcome."

Orsin hesitated, an awkward smile hanging from his lips.

"Something wrong?" Vasen asked.

"Not wrong, but . . . I should tell you that I'm not a worshiper of Amaunator."

Given the context, the words struck Vasen as so unlikely that he thought he might have misheard.

"What? You're not?"

Orsin shook his bald head. "I'm not."

Now that he thought about it, Vasen did not recall seeing Orsin at dawn worship, or at any of the Oracle's sermons, or at anything else associated with the faith. Concern pulled shadows from Vasen's skin. He tensed.

"Then what. . ."

Orsin held his hands loose at his side. Perhaps he read the concern in Vasen's face. "I'm not an enemy."

"All right," Vasen said, still coiled, eyes narrowed. "But are you a friend?"

Orsin smiled. The expression seemed to come easy to him. "I was, once. I'd like to be again."

"What does that mean?" Vasen asked.

"I ask myself the same thing often," Orsin said.

Vasen's faith allowed him to see into a man's soul, and he saw no ill intent in Orsin. Besides, the man would have been magically interrogated in the Dalelands before being brought to the vale. And had he been hostile, the spirits of the pass would have barred his passage. Still, Vasen could not imagine anyone other than a follower of Amaunator risking the Sembian countryside to come to the abbey.

"I'm . . . at a loss," Vasen said. "I'll need to tell the Oracle."

"Oh, he knows."

"He knows?"

Orsin smiled, shrugged. "He does."

"I'm confused. Why are you here, then?"

Orsin's milky eyes were unreadable. "That, too, is something I often ask myself. The answer, usually, is happenstance. I just follow the wind."

Vasen could not quite make sense of either the reply or the man. He could tell Orsin was not giving him the entire truth, yet he sensed no lie in Orsin's words.

"You're a strange man, Orsin."

"Would it surprise you to know that I've heard that before?" Orsin chuckled. "Does this change your answer? May I still walk with you?"

"Oh, I insist you walk with me now."

"Very good, then," Orsin said, and used his staff to scribe a line in the dirt before their feet.

"I hesitate to ask," Vasen said. "What's that you just did?"

He wondered if perhaps the man were mentally unsound.

"Lines mark borders, a beginning. This is before," Orsin said, and used his staff to point to one side of the line. Then he pointed to the other side. "This is after. I hope there's a friendship on this side."

The words, so guileless, touched Vasen.

"Then I do, too," Vasen said, and together they stepped over the line. Orsin's steps were so light on the undergrowth that they made almost no sound.

"Where are you from?" Vasen asked him. He made a note to ask Byrne and Eldris about Orsin. In particular, he wanted to know how Orsin had slipped through the interrogation they performed on all would-be pilgrims. A non-worshiper getting through suggested a problem. The battles being fought in the Dales could not be an excuse for carelessness.

"I'm from the east, Telflammar," Orsin said. "Do you know it?"

Vasen shook his head. It was just an exotic name he'd heard from time to time, although perhaps coming from Telflammar explained Orsin's exotic appearance.

"It's very far from here," Orsin said, looking off in the distance. "It was . . . changed in the Spellplague."

"What wasn't?"

"True, true," Orsin said. "And you? Where are you from?"

Vasen made a gesture that took in the vale. "I'm from here."

"Sembia?"

"Not Sembia, no. Sembia belongs to the Shadovar. I was born in this vale, and it belongs to us."

"Us," Orsin said. "You're . . . not Shadovar?"

Vasen had heard the question often from pilgrims and it no longer offended him. "No. I'm . . . something else."

"Something else, but . . . akin to shadows, yes?"

Vasen held up a hand. "Listen. Do you hear that?"

Orsin looked puzzled. He cocked his head. "The water?"

Vasen nodded. "The cascades. They're the first thing I hear when I lead pilgrims to the vale or return from taking them home. Hearing them, I know I'm home."

"You walk much but never far."

Vasen liked that. "Yes. Never far. Are you interrogating me, Orsin of Telflammar?"

"So it seems," the man said with a grin. "You've spent your entire life here?"

"Since the day I was born. Only the Oracle has been here longer. All the others, even the abbot, rotate in and out. The gloom is not for everyone."

"No, but it calls those it calls," Orsin said. "And nothing lasts forever."

Orsin's words reminded Vasen of the Oracle's words earlier. His expression must have turned somber. Orsin picked up on it.

"I'm sorry. Did I speak out of turn? I meant that the darkness couldn't last forever."

Vasen waved off the apology. "No need for sorry. Your words just put me in mind of words someone else said to me recently."

"I see."

"And if anything can last forever, I fear it's this darkness."

"I think not," Orsin said.

Vasen smiled. "You're sure you're not a worshiper of the Dawnfather?"

"Very good," Orsin said with a chuckle. "Very good." The end of Orsin's staff put little divots in the earth as they walked. "Where are we walking?"