“Commander,” said the velvet-voiced shade, “I see from your face that you still
have it in your heart to love me. That’s good. This was not an easy journey to
arrange.”
The two embraced, and Abarsis’s upswept eyes and high curved cheeks, his young
bull’s neck and his glossy black hair, felt all too real-as substantial as the
splinters that had somehow gotten under Tempus’s fingernails.
And the boy was yet strong-that is, the shade was. Tem-pus, stepping back,
started to speak but found his voice choked with melancholy. What did one say to
the dead? Not “How’s life?” surely. Certainly not the Sacred Band greeting….
But Abarsis spoke it to Tempus, as he had said it so long ago in Sanctuary,
where he’d gone to die. “Life to you, Riddler, and everlasting glory. And to
your friend … to our friend… Theron of Ranke, salutations.”
Hearing his name shook Theron from his funk. But the old fighter was nearly
speechless, quaking visibly.
Seeing this, Tempus recovered himself: “You scared us half to death. Is this
your darkness, then?” Tempus stepped back and waved a hand toward the sky beyond
the corbeled ceiling overhead. “If so, we could do without it. Scares the
locals. We’re trying to settle in a military rule here, not start a civil war.”
A shadow passed quickly over the beautiful face of the Slaughter Priest and
Tempus, seeing it, wanted to ask, “Are you real? Are you reborn? Have you come
to stay?”
The shade looked him hard in the eye and that glance struck his soul and shocked
it. “No. None of that, Riddler. I am here to bring a message and ask a favor-for