The enormous creature could've flattened them by simply landing atop them, but it did not touch down for some reason. Perhaps its physiology prevented it from touching the ground. Vasen hoped so.

They rode their momentum back to their feet and sprinted onward.

The devils were closer. Vasen could almost feel their breath on his back.

"Keep going!" he said. "Keep going!"

As they closed on the cairn, Vasen could see a dome-shaped distortion in the air around it.

The wards.

Weaveshear would have to cut through them or the three of them would die on Cania's plains, torn apart by devils.

He did not slow as he approached the wall of the wards. Instead he raised Weaveshear high, shouted at the sky, and slashed at the translucent wall with the blade of his father.

The wards of an archdevil audibly and visibly split. Glowing veins of power flared all over the dome. Weaveshear opened a gash in the dome about the size of a door, leaving the rest of the ward structure intact. The three piled through.

Immediately Orsin turned and dragged his staff across the ice, scribing a line across the opening.

"Gerak and I will hold them here!" he said to Vasen. "Go get your father!"

Vasen nodded, sprinted for the mound, the shadows from his sword and flesh mingling with those of the mound.

Behind him, Gerak's bow sang. Devils roared and cursed. He looked back to see Orsin standing in the open gash in the wards, his staff humming and leaking shadows as it spun. The devils could try the opening only one at a time, and Orsin's staff, elbows, fists, and knees cracked against devilish hide and armor. Behind him, Gerak fired an arrow every time Orsin afforded him an opening.

Vasen turned to the mound. Shadows swirled around him, a tangible thing, kith to him. The mound was cracked in many places. He slammed his shield into the ice but it did not even mar its surface.

He cursed, glanced back at his comrades to see a claw tear into Orsin and drive him back a step, bleeding. Before the devil could follow up, Gerak loosed an arrow that struck the devil in the throat and sent it staggering back into its fellow fiends. Orsin lunged forward and slammed the butt of his staff into the devil's face, shattering fangs and sending the fiend careening backward.

"Hurry, Vasen!" Gerak called, without looking back. "There's too many!"

The huge flying creature hovered over them, and another of the big creatures, perhaps having heard the bellow of the first, was coming toward them from their left, its bulk filling the sky. Two score more of the bearded devils rode its back.

Shadows poured from Vasen's flesh. He stared down at the cairn, under which his father lay. He'd free him with his father's weapon.

He raised Weaveshear, the blade shedding shadows the way a pitch torch shed smoke. He hoped its power could cut through the ice that entombed his father as well as it had cut through the wards of an archdevil. He whispered a prayer to Amaunator and stabbed downward, driving the blade into the ice all the way to the hilt.

A crack spread from where he'd struck. Beneath him the mound rumbled. The crack expanded into another, and then another, each crack spawning yet another until an entire network of lines crisscrossed the cairn. Shadows poured from them, like black steam escaping a heated kettle. The mound continued to vibrate, the shaking becoming more violent. Shadows churned around the mound, spinning and whirling. A hum filled the air as power gathered.

"Watch out!" Vasen shouted.

He grabbed Weaveshear and slid off the side just as the mound exploded in a cloud of shadows and ice and snow. The force of it knocked him backward, and for a moment, the shadows and snow and ice swirled so thickly that he couldn't see.

He glanced back to see that the explosion had knocked Orsin and Gerak and all of the devils to the ice. Already they were climbing back to their feet, their expressions dazed.

"Hold them off!" he shouted, his voice dull and distant to his still ringing ears.

The mound was gone. A crater marred the plain where it had stood. Shadows poured out of it. Vasen staggered up to the side of the crater and at the bottom of it, saw his father.

Erevis Cale lay stretched out in the ice, eyes closed, hands crossed over his chest, as if he were a corpse someone had arranged for burial. He was bald, clean-shaven, taller than Vasen, with a prominent nose and strong jaw. He wore fitted leathers and a dark cloak. Shadows spun around his dusky flesh. He looked much as Vasen might have guessed.

"Erevis! Father!"

His father didn't move.

Vasen cursed, slid over the edge of the crater, heaved his father's body over his shoulder, and clambered out.

"I have him!" he called to Gerak and Orsin.

Orsin unleashed a furious onslaught of blows with his staff, driving back a pair of devils who tried to get through the hole in the wards. He bounded back, dragged his shadow-tipped staff across the ground, and snapped it over his knee. Instantly a curtain of darkness rose up from the line Orsin had scribed, crackling with energy, filling the gap.

Orsin ran toward Vasen. Gerak backed toward him, firing arrow after arrow as he moved.

Vasen laid Erevis on the ground, the shadows around father and son intermingling in a blended darkness.

Vasen slapped him on the cheeks. "Erevis! Father!"

No response.

Gerak and Orsin reached him. Gerak continued to fire. Orsin was dripping blood from deep scratches in his face and arms.

"Hurry, Vasen," the deva said, his eyes on the curtain of force he'd raised.

Vasen nodded, put a hand on his father's brow, whispered a prayer, and channeled healing energy into Erevis. Vasen's hand glowed with a warm, rosy light, the energy of the god of the sun healing the First of Mask's Chosen in Faern.

They all exhaled with relief when Cale's eyes opened, glowing yellow in the shadowed gloom. His gaze narrowed and he grabbed Vasen by the wrist, his strength shocking.

"I dreamed of you," Cale said. "You're my . . . son."

Shadows swirled around father and son. Vasen swallowed.

"I am, and I dreamed of you," Vasen managed, for a moment nearly overcome. For years he'd heard his father's voice only in dreams.

Behind them, the devils cursed and growled, poked at the curtain of power Orsin had raised.

"That wall won't last," Orsin said.

"We have to go," Cale said, sitting up.

"Riven said we need to go to Ordulin," Orsin said.

Cale's gaze grew distant for a moment, perhaps as he consulted the content of the dreams he'd had while entombed. When his focus returned, he nodded. "The Leaves of One Night are in Ordulin. That's where the Shadowstorm started, so that's where Shar's little book is. Good. We go, then."

"And when we get there?" Orsin asked.

Cale took in the holy symbol Orsin bore, his absence of weapons. "You're a shadowalker? One of Nayan's?"

"Nayan . . . has been dead a long time. But I am one of his, yes. I can't walk the shadows as they did, but they answer me in other ways. My name is Orsin."

"Gerak," said Gerak to Cale. The woodsman drew and fired, and a devil squealed.

"When we get there," Cale said. "We read the Leaves. They're said to contain Shar's moment of greatest triumph but also her moment of greatest weakness. Her moment of weakness has to be the return of Mask, her herald. Has to be. If that happens, the Cycle of Night gets frozen forever."

Vasen shook his head. "But Riven said I have to unlock the divinity in him, Rivalen, and Mephistopheles. I don't know how to do that."

"Yes, you do," Cale said. "Mask had this planned long ago, and you dreamed it, the same as me."

Cale and Vasen stared at one another a long moment, then both spoke at once.

"Write the story."

With that, Vasen took the small gem from his pocket, shattered it. A clot of shadows formed before his face. He spoke into them.

"We have him, Riven. We're with Erevis and he's alive."

The shadows he'd spoke into dissipated, presumably carrying their message to Riven in the Shadowfell.

Cale stood and drew the shadows around them.

"We go," he said.

Vasen's voice sounded from the shadows shrouding Riven.

We have him.

That was all Riven needed to hear. He charged across the battlefield, stepping through the shadows as he went, cutting down lesser devils each time he appeared. Mephistopheles pursued him from above, shouting. Bolts of energy shot from the archfiend's palms, narrowly missing Riven and putting huge smoking divots in the earth. Riven dived, rolled, spun, and sprinted, dodging the archfiend's attacks, playing for time. He ran through everything he knew. He hadn't missed anything but he didn't know enough. He'd schemed for decades to arrange for everyone needed to arrive in Ordulin. But after that . . .

He wasn't sure what would come next. Just as Mask had split his divinity up among a few Chosen, so had he split his plan up among many of his servants. Riven might have been the most powerful of them, but he could see only pieces. He'd gambled everything in the hope of some sudden revelation.

His wandering thoughts distracted him. Mephistopheles materialized before him, haloed in dark power, having teleported into Riven's path. The archfiend stuck Riven with a fist, discharged the power in his hand, and sent Riven tumbling head over heels, momentarily stunned. Dozens of devils swarmed him, glaives and swords and claws and teeth trying to cut through his protective shadows and tear at his flesh.

I'm not leaving, Magadon projected to the Source. I just need to see. The Source's response was muddled, but grateful. It was fading. Rich with power drawn from his bond with the Source, Magadon reached out for Brennus, who maintained his station at the westernmost point of Sakkors.

I need to see through your eyes for a moment, he projected.

When Brennus did not object, Magadon created a sensory link between them, allowing him to see through the Shadovar's eyes.

Sakkors flew through Sembia's shadowed sky at tremendous speed. Far ahead loomed the black wall of the Ordulin Maelstrom. Lines of lightning lit the thick clouds, endless flashes. The dark clouds roiled and churned, as if agitated, as if something within them were angry and waiting.

Rivalen stood over Sayeed, the man's despair palpable, his skin covered in Shar's holy words, his mouth stuffed with the pages of The Leaves of One Night. Riven was coming with the son of Erevis Cale to read those words, but they did not say what they hoped. He placed a hand on Sayeed's back and the man trembled under his touch.

"The death I promised you will come. First the world, then you, then me."

And then release.

More trembling from Sayeed.

Rivalen took his holy symbol in hand, stared into Shar's eye, felt the wash of her power over him. She'd taught him what he needed to know. His life had been an incremental crawl toward revelation and truth.

"Nothing endures," he said, intoning Shar's Secret Truth. "Nothing."

Long, many-forked lines of green lightning lit the black clouds. Thunder growled. Shar's eye pulsed with power, with anticipation. She wished to incarnate, to feed. She would have her wish soon.

He stepped through the darkness to stand atop a large chunk of the ruined tower once occupied by Kesson Rel. There, he waited. His enemies were coming. When they arrived, he would destroy them, free his goddess, and then watch the Lady of Loss devour the world.

Cale, Vasen, Orsin, and Gerak materialized at the edge of the plaza in Ordulin. It looked much as it had when Cale had set foot there long ago to face Kesson Rel. Cracked stone and crumbled buildings littered the area like the tombstones of titans. Green lightning lit the shadowed haze in a ghostly light. The wind gusted. A fog of shadows swirled in the air.

In the center of the plaza hung a slowly turning void, a cold emptiness that stretched back through time and space forever. Shar resided in the eye; Cale could feel her in it, the weight of her malice, the pressure of her regard. Her existence did not fill the emptiness; it defined it. He felt nauseous.

"Dark and empty," he said.

Prone before the eye, hunched and shirtless, was a man. Words covered the skin of his back, the sight of them unnerving, somehow. His eyes were open but appeared to see nothing. His mouth, too, hung open, but parchment had been stuffed into it. His cheeks bulged with so much of it they looked distended.

"Gods," Orsin whispered. "That's Sayeed."

"It's grown," Cale said, nodding at the eye. He'd seen the void long ago, when Kesson Rel had first created it.

A presence manifested, weighty, power radiating from it in waves.

"It's soon to grow more," said a deep voice, Rivalen Tanthul's voice, from right behind them.

They whirled as one to see the nightseer standing right behind them, his golden eyes glowing out of the darkness of his hood. They shouted, brandished their weapons, but too late. Rivalen spoke a single word, and the power contained in it knocked them all to their knees, all but Cale.

Weaveshear absorbed and deflected the power in Rivalen's spell, but the force of it turned the blade warm and drove Cale backward. He kept his feet and skidded backward across the plaza, toward Shar's eye. He could feel the Lady of Loss glaring into his back.

Vasen, Gerak, and Orsin lay on the ground, groaning.

Rivalen stared at Cale, his golden eyes narrowed, head cocked in a question.

"Cale?" Rivalen asked.

Cale had faced Rivalen before, when Cale's god had been alive and Rivalen had been only a man. Now Cale, a man without a god, faced a onetime man who was now a god.

He charged, and Rivalen did not even move. Cale crosscut with Weaveshear, but the blade rang against the shadows swirling around Rivalen as if they were made of steel. Rivalen grabbed Cale by the face with one hand, spoke a word of power, and discharged unholy energy from his palm. Ordinarily the shadowstuff in Cale allowed him to resist the effects of magic, but not when the magic came from the hand of a god.

Pain pulled a muffled scream from Cale. His skin blistered and popped. Bones cracked. Casually Rivalen cast him aside. Cale hit the stone of plaza in a heap, rolling over, groaning while the shadowstuff in his body undid the damage Rivalen's spell had caused.

"I wasn't sure I'd see you again, Cale," Rivalen said. "I didn't know if your son would succeed. It's good that he did, though. You've arrived here alive only to die."

Rivalen grabbed Orsin and Gerak by their cloaks and lifted them in one hand, then grabbed Vasen in the other. He carried them all toward Shar's eye, and Cale feared he would throw them into the eye.

Cale rolled over, gritting his teeth at the pain, and rose to all fours. The shadowstuff in him reknit his bones, closed the blisters on his skin. He watched Rivalen toss the three men on the cobblestones, near the prone man.

Cale rose, stepped through the shadows, and materialized behind Rivalen with Weaveshear raised for a decapitating strike. Rivalen turned, a contemptuous expression on his face, and intercepted the strike with his bare hand. It didn't even cut his flesh. He tore the weapon from Cale's grasp and tossed it aside.

Cale growled, lunged forward, drove the top of his head into the bridge of Rivalen's nose.

He might as well have struck a stone wall. Rivalen sneered, grabbed Cale by the throat, and lifted him from his feet.