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… Kalan had heard that there were weather workers in the Sea Keep who paced its walls in savage weather, their physical forms fraying into the elements. Behavior like that drew attention, but it might be possible for those with lesser powers to survive undetected, even amongst other Derai.
    Kalan sighed again and shifted, trying to find a comfortable position in his hiding place. It was probably time to start back anyway. There was no way that he or any other priest would see anything of the Feast of Returning, and a longer sojourn with the mops and brooms would not change that. Easing himself to his feet, he peered into the hallway.
    The sound was fainter than a whisper, but Kalan tensed instantly. Then he heard it again, the suggestion of a nearly silent footfall or the slither of a cloak against wall. Its stealth made him freeze, his heart beating a sudden, sharp tattoo. Kalan eased backward, retreating into the broom cupboard.
    The whisper sounded again, resolving into a definite footfall—and then more than one. It came from the maze of unused corridors and storerooms, rather than the stairway to the upper levels, and this made Kalan doubly cautious. He crouched low, trying to blend with the deeper shadows and the angles cast by the stacked mops and brooms. He had discovered, over years of playing truant, that if he kept very quiet and still, emptying his mind of everything except the image and texture of his surroundings, people tended to overlook his presence. Kalan had never discussed this aptitude with anyone, not even Brother Belan, but he found it very useful, especially when he wanted to avoid unwelcome attention.
    The footsteps drew closer and Kalan saw the first shadowyfigures file past the cupboard entrance. They were clad in black, but he could make out sword hilts at their sides and the keen, flame-shaped heads of spears in their hands. They carried no lights, but could apparently see clearly in the unlit hall.
    And that, Kalan knew, ruled out any possibility that they were a patrol of keep guards who had gotten into the Temple quarter by mistake.
    Besides, there were too many of them, far more than in any guard patrol—upward of a hundred at least, he estimated, swallowing hard. Their silence exuded menace and their helms were crowned with horn and talons like were-beasts, quite unlike anything used by the Derai. Kalan could almost remember seeing something similar in one of Brother Selmor’s books, but the exact detail eluded him. He pressed further back, holding his breath as the lead warrior halted.
    The warrior’s grotesque helm peered this way and that, like a hound questing for scent, and Kalan thought desperately of stone, cold and still and rough-hewn all around him. He
became
stone, forgotten in the darkness. The voice that spoke was cold, too; sibilant and metallic, rasping against the silence. “I thought I sensed something, another presence.” The words sank slowly into Kalan’s consciousness, filtering through the weight of stone. They were strangely accented, but he found he could understand them. “Just for a moment… But now there is nothing.”
    “This is a temple,” another voice replied, dispassionate as iron. “Even at this level it will echo power. If you cannot sense anything more, an echo is all it will have been.”
    The first speaker did not move. “Still nothing,” he said, after a long moment.
    “We must go on,” the iron voice said. “The others will be in place soon. We must not fail in our part.” He paused. “What of our … ally? Do you have it safe?”
    “For now,” the other replied, a thread of tension in the sibilant voice. “But I do not know how long I can contain it.”
    The darkness thickened as he spoke, and Kalan felt a rapacious,insatiable will striving to push through. It hungered, that will, famished and thirsting; the sweep of its power was like a dark wing brushing across Kalan’s mind. Desperate, he clung to the roughness of the