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recognized and understood what had happened to Lorgan and his men.
    And what would happen to Reht and his.
    "Find peace, old friend," Reht said, and charged Lorgan.
    Lorgan shrieked and his features dissolved again into indistinguishable darkness. Other shadows darted in close, reached through Reht's shield and armor, cooled his flesh, diminished his soul. He screamed, and slashed at Lorgan. His enchanted blade bit Lorgan's shadowy form and sent streamers of deeper darkness boiling away into the air, but Lorgan reached into Reht's chest and nearly stopped his heart. Reht staggered backward, gasping, his vision blurred.
    In the distance, he heard the sound of chanting, the Talassans calling upon the power of their god to fight the undead. Reht glanced around, saw men and horses dead and dying all around him. He heard their shouts, screams, and whinnies, but he felt isolated, alone in a cyst of darkness warring against his own personal shadows.
    The surrounding sounds diminished then went silent. He heard only his own labored breathing, his grunts as he swung his blade, and the sound of his own heartbeat keeping time in his ears. He slashed, backed away, stabbed, twisted, stabbed again. Shadows emerged from the ground and passed into and through him. Others flew, heedlessly, at and through his blade, reached into his chest to his lungs and heart, stole his breath, his strength. He staggered, still breathing, still fighting. He looked around for a mount, any mount, saw none. He tripped over a corpse and fell on his back.
    Shadows swarmed him. He felt so cold he could not breathe, felt his heart slow. He saw Lorgan's face in one of the shadows
    over him, Enken's on another, both of them caricatures of the living men they once were.
    They reached for him. He felt himself drifting, floating. He reached for the maps at his side, thinking of his father, and the cartographer to whom he should have been apprenticed, the life he should have led. Cold filled him and he gasped. He could not see anything but red eyes and darkness.
    He died thinking of maps and regrets.
    He rose thinking of hate.
    CHAPTER THREE
    2 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms
    Cale and Riven materialized on the Wayrock, outside the Temple of Mask. Sunlight, alien after the darkness of the storm, cast the temple's shadow out before it. Cale and Riven stood within the column of darkness. Rain dripped from their cloaks.
    Both men turned and looked back toward Sembia but the Shadowstorm was too far away to see. Cale saw only the rocky ledges of the Wayrock and the boundless blue-gray of the sea. White clouds dotted the sky. There was no indication of the black lesion spreading across Sembia, across Faerűn.
    Still staring into the distance, Cale said to Riven, "Never do that again."
    Riven, too, stared over the sea. "I do what needs done, Cale. Get clear on that. I'll do it again next time,
    and the time after that. You don't get to give up."
    The truth in Riven's words stung. Cale faced him. "I wasn't giving up."
    Riven said nothing. He didn't need to.
    Cale sighed, looked away. He was tired and did not understand how Riven was not.
    "How do you keep fighting, Riven? Why? Not for Sembia."
    Riven made a dismissive gesture. "No. Not for Sembia."
    "Then?"
    Riven tapped the holy symbol he wore around his neck, the black disc. "This is why. Mask wants Kesson Rel dead and his divinity returned to him. That is enough of a why. Should be enough for you, too."
    Cale stared at the disc, at Riven's face. "It's not."
    "Then find something that is. This is a long way from over."
    Cale shook his head. "You don't understand. You can't."
    Riven stared at him for a moment. "You're tired. I see that."
    Cale looked Riven in the eye, grateful for even that little bit of shared understanding.
    "Yes. I'm tired."
    Riven's face did not change expression. "It's a lot of weight." "It is."
    "Bear it. We can only see this through together. You see that, yes? Find a way to stay with it." When Cale