“Why?” Thunder rumbled in the distance and clouds began to gather above the Vale of Gorgantum, obscuring the stars. Lifting his head, the Shaper watched as scudding wisps occluded the sundered disk of the silvery moon. In the dim light that remained his throat was an obsidian column, his breast a shield of night and the slow tide of seeping blood that glimmered on his thigh and trickled down one leg was oily and black. Something in his stance, in his presence, reminded her that he was one of the Seven Shapers; reminded her of the unbearable torment glimpsed when he had donned the Helm of Shadows. “Ask my Elder Brother, Lady. It is him you worship.”

“He is not here to ask,” Cerelinde said humbly, clasping her hands together.

“No.” Slowly, Lord Satoris lowered his head to regard her, and his eyes glowed as red as blood, or dying embers. “He is not, is he?”

The clamitus atroxis shivered in resonant grief as the Shaper turned away, head held low, the dark bulwark of his shoulders rising like the swell of a wave. Cerelinde struggled against a sense of loss. A loss, but of what? Of a moment lost, an opportunity passing. Something slipped away, slipped between her slender fingers and through the gaps in her keen Ellylon mind as He who had Sundered the world trudged across the garden, leaving droplets of dark blood on the dying grass in his wake.

“My Lord!” she cried aloud in despair. “Why?”

A gentle rain began to fall as Satoris walked away from her, his words floating back to reach her. “Whatever stories they tell of me, Cerelinde, they will not say I slew you out of hand. That, at least, I may ensure.”

Left standing alone in the garden, she flinched as the first drops struck her, but it was an ordinary rain. Water, no more and no less, leaving damp spots on her silk robes. It fell like a soft balm on the moon-garden, washing away the stench of sulfur, the dark traces of the Shaper’s blood. In a nearby bed, pale flowers opened like eyes to welcome the clean rain, and the poignant odor of vulnus-blossom wafted in the air.

Their scent evokes memory. Painful memory.

Tanaros’ words.

It was an aroma like nothing else, delicate and haunting. Cerelinde stumbled, backing away from the source, not wishing to see what it had evoked before: Lindanen Dale on her wedding day, Aracus struggling under the deadly onslaught of the Were, her kinsmen and his falling, slaughtered, and Tanaros looming before her on his black horse, reaching for her, blood staining the length of his black blade.

“No,” she whispered.

It didn’t come. Instead, she saw again the dark silhouette of the Shaper; Satoris Banewreaker, Satoris the Sunderer, with the shadow of his extended hand on the dying grass between them.