Valdar helped Karas to his feet. "Not much of a 'truce between Houses,' is it?"

Karas shook his head in agreement. "The fanatics' vows don't seem to count for much, when it's time for a Gathering. Let's just hope it doesn't turn into full-scale war."

"Have you heard anything yet? Has she been in touch?"

" 'Soon,' was what she said, the last time we spoke." Karas wiped mud from his face with a sleeve. "I pray she's telling the truth. A tenday-plus-two is long enough. This is worse than Maerimydra."

A kobold burst out of a nearby hovel, skidded to a stop as he spotted the two drow, and tried to duck back through the door. Valdar whirled and threw; his knife buried itself in the slave's throat. A snap of his fingers brought the knife back to his hand, even as the kobold fell.

"May the Masked Lord grant that prayer," he said as he wiped the blood from his blade with a white silk handkerchief. He tucked the weapon back into its wrist-sheath. "I'm certainly ready for her call. My bunch is slurping out of the palm of my hand. Ripe for Gathering, you might say."

Karas shook his head. Valdar actually seemed to be enjoying this mission.

They paused to listen. The shouts and cries of battle continued. Over them came a distant gonging: the call for House Philiom's priests to return to their keep. The larders were once again full, and the Gathering was at an end.

"Time for me to go," Karas said.

"Me too." With a wink, Valdar vanished. One moment he stood next to Karas; the next, he had teleported away, as silently as he'd come.

Karas picked up his tentacle rod. He glanced around. His own lizard had curled against the wall of a hut to chew off what remained of its tail. But Molvayas's mount was whole. Karas ran over to it and sprang into the saddle. He drove his spurs into its flanks and hissed. The lizard scuttled away, climbing up and over the nearest hovel. As it descended the opposite wall, he heard shouts of triumph: the priests of House Abbylan had discovered Molvayas's corpse.

Karas rode away from the hovels, onto the field that separated the two keeps. The House Philiom priests were just ahead, forming up their mounts. This done, they rode hard for their keep, following the line of bubbling black pools left behind by the tentacles' return to the earth. Some of the priests were wounded and clung to their saddles. One sagged, then tumbled backward across his lizard's tail. His body dragged for a moment, but then his foot slipped from the stirrup, and he fell away. The other riders ignored him and continued to ride.

Karas rode with them. The priests of House Abbylan followed for a time, hurling spells at the retreating group, but soon gave up the chase. Eventually the priests of House Philiom reached their own, now empty fields. The slaves, rightfully fearing they might be gathered along with the slaves of House Abbylan, would have fled when the line of tentacles sprouted from the earth. Karas rode past the hovels, to the keep, and over its drawbridge. When the last of House Philiom's priests was inside, House boys sprang to the capstans and cranked the drawbridge shut.

Karas dismounted. The surviving priests glanced around, taking stock. They'd lost five of their number, including Molvayas.

"Where's Molvayas?" asked Shi'drin. He was their second-in-command, a stunted drow with a pustule-crusted face. "Did anyone see him fall?"

"I did," Karas answered. "One of House Abbylan's priests killed him." He flicked his rod, sending a shiver through its three black tentacles. "I dealt with him in turn." He didn't bother explaining why he was mounted on Molvayas's lizard. Those who followed Ghaunadaur's creed took what they needed, scorning those who were too weak to keep it.

Shi'drin nodded. He touched the eye on his tabard. "Ash to ash; mud to mud," he intoned. "May the Ancient One consume what remains."

The other priests-all but one, who had collapsed after dismounting and was being eaten by his lizard, bringing the total lost to six-touched their tabards. Karas did the same, doing his best to ignore the wet rip of flesh and the gulps of the lizard as it bolted down the dead priest. He wanted desperately to escape to the solitude of the room he'd been assigned after he arrived on House Philiom's doorstep, claiming to be from Skullport. He wanted to cleanse his body of mud, shroud himself in magical darkness and silence, block out the shrill screams that echoed constantly down the keep's foul-smelling corridors, and pray. Pray for the strength to continue this blasphemous charade and see his mission through.

In each of the keeps of Llurth Drier, other Nightshadows were, no doubt, thinking the same. Their counterparts were stationed in distant Eryndlyn, and in Shadowport, and in the surface cities of Waterdeep, Bezantur, Calimport, and Westgate-everywhere Ghaunadaur's foul cult festered.

Karas wondered if the Nightshadows he and Valdar had chosen for this mission still lived. It had been a knife's-edge thing, this day, for Karas himself. By the Masked Lady's grace, Valdar had been there to step in, but it would only be a matter of time before one of the Nightshadows was caught and revealed them all.

A boy took the reins of Karas's lizard. He climbed down from it and walked across the portico, edging his way through the crowd, to the exit. Before he reached it, a hand fell on his shoulder.

"You will be rewarded," Shi'drin said in a low voice, his eyes gleaming. Then, louder, to all the priests, "Come! We will feed the altar this very cycle in celebration of our Gathering." He pointed at the nearest House boy. "You! Spawn! Tell the boys to prepare the sacrifices."

Karas choked down his apprehension. He could tell by the look in Shi'drin's eye that the priest realized he was somehow responsible for Molvayas's death. Now one of two things would follow. Reward, for ensuring Shi'drin's promotion to Molvayas's former role as the keep's Eater of Filth. Or retribution.

Both might very well take the same form: sacrifice, on Ghaunadaur's altar.

Yet Karas could do nothing-not with a score of gleeful priests sweeping him along in their midst. Stinking of blood and sweat, babbling their joy at a successful Gathering, they hurried down the corridor to the shrine at the heart of the keep. Had Shi'drin not singled Karas out, he might have slipped away, perhaps even feigned collapse and been left behind. But the new Eater strode just behind Karas, prodding him forward.

They burst through a curtain of damp, rotted black silk into a room with walls, ceiling, and floor polished to the slickness of glass, A dozen columns of the same mottled purple stone, each carved with a rune, ringed an irregularly shaped dais that rose in two tiers. Atop the dais stood a lump of porous black stone: the altar itself. A gong hung above the dais, its bronze deeply pitted by the acid that condensed on it, trickled down its sides, and dripped onto the altar.

A purplish mist drifted through the chamber. As he passed through a patch of it, Karas touched his disguised holy symbol and silently prayed for strength. The mist left a stinging film on his skin and clung to him like lingering dread. Just setting foot in the shrine took all of Karas's courage. The air was so foul he felt as if he were wading through liquid sewage. The closer he got to the altar, the worse it got. He was an intruder here, a person from another faith. At any moment he'd be exposed, consumed.

Then they'd be on him, like carrion crawlers on a corpse.

He shook his head furiously. If he didn't get a hold of himself, he'd soon collapse in a gibbering heap on the floor. With a shaking hand, he gripped his disguised holy symbol. Masked Lady, he silently prayed, swallowing down his bile. See me through this. Help me to do your work. Shadow my doubts and cloak my fears.

The priests halted in a loose-knit group before the altar. Shi'drin stepped to the front, turned, and raised his hands. His fingernails were filthy, the sleeves of his robe soaked with slime and blood. He caught Karas's eye. For one terrible moment, Karas thought Shi'drin might ask him to perform the sacrifice. Then Shi'drin closed his eyes.