You are what you eat, and Vesper had mostly been eating monsters. He had drained a werewolf, south of Wuruyaaria—a little hard to digest, but full of silver-edged shadows, very sustaining. The Kembley’s serpent he had consumed in the Ketchpur valley was also very tasty, bristling with venomous shadows. Best of all, among recent meals, was the mandrake he had devoured in the Blackthorn Mountains.

Ah, the mandrake! The mandrake! Never had Vesper known, or even suspected, such joy.

He had been slithering along the ground in the shadowy semblance of the Kembley’s serpent. (He had no shape of his own, so it was easiest to assume the form of the entity he had most recently devoured.) Suddenly he stumbled across the tail of a dead dragon. The vast corpse was going to pieces like a fallen tree in a forest, no shred of life left there, nothing for him. But nonetheless his shadow-pulses quickened with excitement.

As Vesper knew, dragons don’t reproduce as most animals do; it was rare, at any rate, for a dragon to possess genitalia unwithered by venom and fire. But, once a dragon was dead, its teeth would hatch like eggs and little mandrakes would emerge, to plant themselves in a nearby stretch of favorable soil. Eventually, when they matured, they would uproot themselves and begin walking about, as manlike chrysalides from which dragons would eventually emerge.

How this final transformation occurred, Vesper neither knew nor cared. But, if he was lucky, some of the mandrakes who had been born from this dead dragon might still be somewhere nearby. Vesper scuttled around to the front of the rotting dragon, pausing briefly in the shadow of the ruined, pockmarked jawbones, bereft of teeth.

As it turned out, he was almost too late. Of all the rows of mandrakes who had been there (with his shadowy eyes, Vesper followed a long triple-trail of empty holes), only one was left. And even as Vesper approached, the last mandrake was struggling to uproot itself from the ground. It was fully grown, with toothlike protrusions already prominent on its upper arms, its head and its lashing lizard-like tail.

Vesper moved quickly. Luckily for him, it was evening, and there were many long useful shadows in the mountain valley. (As a shadow-being, he could not safely bear complete darkness or direct sunlight.) When he was near enough, he extended shadow-tendrils toward the mandrake and made contact.

At first the mandrake had no idea what was happening. (They never do, Vesper thought.) When it realized it was being attacked, it started lashing about with its powerful scaly arms, but it was already too late. Vesper had implanted his shadowy tendrils and began to feed. He drained its ability to move its own limbs, and it stood, quiescent, while he continued to feed.

Beings which live and move and take action have two natures: bright essence and dark matter. The light of their unfettered essence would destroy Vesper, and the dark heaviness of their matter was too crude to be useful for Vesper’s light airy body. But the essence and matter of material beings mingled in a shadowy substance on which Vesper could feed. It contained memories, and hopes, and fears, and many other things; and once it was gone, the animal was dead—that is, its bright essence was permanently severed from its dark matter. But Vesper was sustained, and that was what counted.

This is how it was with the mandrake. Vesper planted his tendrils and drained it dry of shadows, leaving the monstrous fang-armored body dead, half-buried in the ground.

But the shadows themselves . . . The essence of dragons, it seemed, was dark as well as bright. And the gross matter was luminous with fire, as well as dark with flesh. The torrent of red-hearted shadows was scalding, illuminating, terrifying, satisfying. Vesper was sad when there was no more.

But that was the nature of things. Nothing lasted forever . . . except Vesper himself, of course.

Vesper now assumed the form of the mandrake, and moved swiftly through the shadows of evening. He would go north, he thought: to the Skarsl Woods north of the Blackthorn Range. Complete darkness would slay him even more surely than direct sunlight, but, night and day, there were always shadows in the Skarsl Woods and no lack of interesting prey.

At sunset, Ambrosia Viviana sealed her focus with the rune of the Open Fist. She was planning a long walk through the Skarsl Woods, north of the Blackthorn Range. Only a fool would walk there during the day, because of the daymares and solstroms and other sunlit dangers of that evil wood. Ambrosia was brave enough to get by in a dangerous world, but she wasn’t a fool: she would travel by night.

But the night had its own dangers, and Ambrosia thought a focus full of sunlight might come in handy during her journey. She had set the focus on a pinnacle of unshadowed rock to absorb sunlight throughout the day. Now, with the sun red on the horizon behind her, she wrapped the spherelike focus in vekka-cloth and stashed it in her wallet by her mirror and writing tablet.

Ambrosia Viviana: with the crooked shoulders and aquiline nose she inherited from her father, Merlin Ambrosius. Her dark red hair and gray eyes were more like her mother. Her build was that of a girl on the verge of womanhood, but her expression was harsh with a wisdom many grew old and died without ever achieving. She had many skills, sorcerous and mundane, that made her dangerous. With these was one weakness; she spoke of it to no one, but she was always aware of it, as it could overcome her at any time, despite all her abilities.

Ambrosia waited until the sun had wholly left the sky, and then imbued her bright gray eyes with the Bitter Glance. This spell would cause her eyes to emit beams of light for the next half-day. The light was dim enough, even in the gray evening air. But it would be handy in the dark places of the wood.

All three moons were up, and if someone else had been there to see, they might have said that the moonlight was playing strange tricks: as if the one woman had two shadows. There was no one there but Ambrosia, though, and she ignored the double shadow from long habit. Plunging into the woods, she began her long walk eastward.

She had not been walking long before she began to feel sleepy. This was very bad. It was the worst of all possible events, as far as Ambrosia was concerned. She had slept all day, preparing for tonight, so she knew it was not the weariness of her body speaking. It was the onset of her weakness, the flaw she could not defend.

She swore briefly and sat down to scribble a note on the writing tablet from her wallet. She had hardly finished when unconsciousness swept over her in a dark tide and her awareness drowned in it.

Vesper crept north into the Skarsl Woods, flitting (in the veil of the mandrake’s form) from shadow to moonlit shadow. There was much animal life around him, but nothing he thought fit to take as his prey. Vesper was becoming rather choosy about what sort of life he would consume. He thought of himself as a dim garland of monsters, and not everything that walked the night was fit to join that shadowy company. Even now he regretted some of the choices he had made earlier in his career, lives he had eaten merely to stay alive.

As he lingered thoughtfully at the margin of a moonlit clearing, he saw something rather strange. It was a pair of dim lights, just bluer than moonlight, passing to the north of him, going from west to east. Intrigued, he pursued it.

At first, as he closed with the moving lights, he was disappointed. It was just a woman, her eyes enchanted to help her see as she travelled the dark woods. She had red hair and a hawklike nose, and the general air of one of those-who-know, the confraternity of sorcerous knowledge. This made her dangerous: one of those few who were likely to understand what Vesper was and how to stop him. There was something else odd about her, though, so Vesper (for lack of anything better to do) followed her for a while, keeping what he hoped was a safe distance.

She began to stumble and waver as she loped along. Perhaps she was drunk, Vesper thought. (He’d never been drunk himself, but he had often eaten the unprotected lives of drunken men and women.) Or she might be sick. Once he had eaten the delirium-laden life of a fevered child; it had been an interesting experience.

Eventually she sat right down in the yttern-track she had been following. She unhitched the wallet swinging from her belt and scrabbled for something in it. As Vesper watched warily, she brought forth a wax tablet and a stylus. She tapped the stylus on the wooden frame of the tablet, and its tip began to glow. She hastily scribbled some words onto the waxy surface; they glowed slightly in the darkness.

Eventually the stylus and the tablet fell from her slack fingers. The light in her eyes died, and she fell over as if she’d been struck with a hammer.

What was happening now? At first it looked as if the woman were melting, like snow in sunlight. Then he saw that a new form was being imposed on the woman. Now she was much taller, her body thicker in some places, thinner in others, her hair paler. And there was another change, something he could just catch with his fugitive shadow senses: a different flavor, a different scent.

The truth hit him then. This woman was a pair of twins, sharing a single body. He knew, better than anyone, that what most call substance is merely the unstable form given by the shadow that is true life. When one sister dominated, her shadow gave form to the body’s substance.

He had heard a rumor of a creature like this, in the mind of someone he had eaten. The tale said that the Two Powers who ruled in Tychar would give a great bounty for something so trivial as a vial of this one’s blood.

Vesper was charmed. How lucky he had been to find her (or them)! What an addition they would make to the pandemonium of monstrous shadows he was collecting! What a complex and interesting shadow-life there would be, with two spiritual essences competing for the control of one body! He could hardly wait to taste it. And if he could please entities as powerful as the Two Powers with the remains, so much the better.

He would not wait: now, when she was still disoriented from the change, was the best time to strike.

He approached her tentatively through the shadows. These were deep and dark enough to be dangerous to him, so he picked his way carefully among them. His shadow-tendrils were fully extended to grip and feed.

Hope Nimuelle awoke from infinite darkness to a darkness that was slightly less intense. Blinking, she took in the night-deep shadows, edged with moonlight, the dark shapes of the trees.

Ambrosia! she groaned within. Where have you dragged me to now?

There was, of course, no answer. Ambrosia was as thoroughly eclipsed now as Hope had been until a few moments ago.

Hope glanced around. Ambrosia wasn’t the best of all possible sisters, but she did try to leave Hope a clue or two as to where she found herself on awakening. (Hope naturally did the same for her, when she could.)

Almost immediately she found the note on the wax tablet, its letters still glowing in the shadows. The note said:

Hope,

I’m sorry to say that you find yourself about an hour’s run into the western edge of the Skarsl Woods. I’ve been travelling to the Vale of Vraid in the center of the woods, if you know where that is. You should be able to reach it by morning, if you hurry. If you are in any doubt, head back to the western edge of the forest. In any case, get out of the forest by dawn.

I have filled a focus with sunlight and stashed it in the wallet. Make use of it as you see fit. The focus is sealed with the rune of the Open Fist.

Your sister,

Ambrosia Viviana

P.S. Situations like this might be avoided if you would show up at regular intervals!

A.V.

Hope was genuinely dismayed. The Skarsl Woods were a bad place to be, by night or day, and she was nothing like the warrior and witch that her sister was. She was tempted to run back westward, as her sister had hinted that she should do, as fast as possible. Still, Ambrosia must have had some reason for wanting to get to the Vale of Vraid, and Hope had been there before. Perhaps she should risk going forward. If worst came to worst, she could probably find a cave to hide in during the day: there were a good many of them in the rolling hills over which the forest had grown up.

She was also genuinely annoyed. She had often appealed to her sister (via notes) to set up some regular schedule, by which they could both share their single life on an equitable basis. Ambrosia had always refused. She repressed Hope until her strength to do so failed, and that was why Hope displaced her at irregular intervals. Hope was inclined to write her a stinging note to this effect on the wax tablet, then decided it could wait.

The decision saved her life. She angrily shoved the tablet and the stylus into the wallet. This pushed aside the vekka-cloth covering the focus, which winked at her with a dark gleam. She lifted it out and held it in her hand speculatively. Perhaps she should test the focus, to make sure she could release light from the thing.

Standing, she held the spherelike focus of power in front of her and spoke the rune of the Open Fist. The rune glowed briefly in the center of the sphere; she found herself in rapport with the power of the focus and, yes, it was hot with unshed light. She experimented with it, releasing a faint reddish sunset glow from the focus.

She was shocked to see a gray shadowy form like a mandrake standing before her. Like a mandrake . . . but from its chest extended half a dozen shadowy tendrils ending in toothless maws. Their function seemed tolerably obvious. And they were pointed at her.

She had only a moment to choose. She meditated drawing the short stabbing sword that Ambrosia favored . . . but she doubted a material weapon would do any good. This creature seemed no more substantial than a shadow as it stood there, agonized in the light.

No. Not in the light. From the light.

Hope raised the focus over her head with both hands and cried aloud, renewing the rune of the Open Fist. She felt it burn in both her eyes as a day’s worth of sunlight was released in a single moment from the focus. She directed the searing wave of light at the creature’s chest, blasting its tendrils and throwing it back screaming soundlessly in agony.

A dead tree behind it burst into flame, and it fled into the red shadows, its mandrake form ragged with damage.

Hope scooped up the wallet from the ground and hitched it to her belt. She ran along the yttern-track, often stumbling in the dark, heedless of other dangers, thinking only of escape from the shadow beast.

Had she killed it? Certainly not outright; it had been moving under its own power as it disappeared into the fiery shadows. Perhaps it was mortally wounded; she had no idea what that would mean for this sort of creature . . . or even if it was mortal. Ambrosia would know, but she didn’t. Ambrosia might know how to fight the thing if it returned, but she didn’t.

Hope stopped short. She had only one weapon to wield against the shadow-thing: her sister Ambrosia. She hated to relinquish awareness: even this deadly danger was preferable to oblivion, and she knew that if Ambrosia ever found a way, she would suppress her forever. But Hope couldn’t let that stop her from doing what was right for both of them.

She sat with her back to a tree and pulled out the glowing stylus and wax tablet. Wiping off Ambrosia’s message, she wrote:

Dear Ambrosia—

It is the same night as it was. As I tested the light in the focus, I found I was being stalked by some sort of shadow-demon in the form of a mandrake. I released all the light and damaged it greatly, but I fear it is not dead. This task is clearly yours to do, but I am sorry to thrust it on you.

Love,

Hope Nimuelle

P.S. I think I made a mistake in throwing all the light at it. It seemed to be immobilized by the first faint light I sent out. Only after the great wave of light passed did it seem able to move again. If you can summon up more light, perhaps you can trap it again.

H.N.

Hope gripped the message in her hand and threw herself into oblivion, summoning up her sister.

Sun-colored chaos! Destruction! Death! They swept over Vesper, immobilized by the red sunset light of the woman’s focus. Much of what he had been was blown into nothingness by that deadly light, and he feared it was the end. For the first time in his long hungry existence, he feared.

Then the terrible light had passed and he could move of his own will again. He staggered back and dissolved into the fluttering red shadows about the burning tree. Safe! Safe!

He greedily ate the shadows of all the animal life around him: the rats, startled from sleep by the wave of light, owls and bats, stunned by the noon-bright blast, crooked dryad-beasts, dwelling within their tree-shells, serpents cowering in their lairs.

As his strength returned, his fear faded. In its place came another new emotion, the converse of fear: anger. That woman had hurt him, scattering his monstrous dreams and blowing him in pieces. But he was still alive, and he would make her pay. Yes: she would pay!

Now he turned again to attack: with the shambling gate of a dryad beast, the needle-toothed maws of a thousand rats and snakes, the dark wings of owls and bats, the myriad staring eyes of nocturnal beasts. He was a legion of the night. He would find the woman. He would eat her shadows. He would kill her. He would kill both of her. This woman who could not understand that she was Vesper’s prey would know it at last.

He found her running through the thickest part of the woods, the yttern-track long abandoned. She had changed, again, to the red-haired sister with glowing eyes. That was good: it made her easier to track through the dark woods.

But some of those woods were very dark! Vesper paused, concerned. He could move easily through shadow, but direct light or full darkness were both dangerous to him.

Still, both of the major moons were high overhead; there was some tracery of shadow on nearly every part of the forest floor tonight. And the woman seemed to be headed south, toward the foothills where the forest petered out. He would risk following her. He would risk anything rather than let this prey go unpunished. And she had already passed out of sight.

Vesper oozed his chimera form along a silver track of shadows. He could not take the straight reckless path into the dark the woman had taken, but he could move more quickly than she could, and he expected her to come back into sight soon.

She didn’t, though. He saw no sign of her anywhere.

Vesper went toward the darkest part of the wood, guessing she was hiding from him there. It was a good guess, but he could still find no trace of her. He exerted all the sharp shadowy senses of his verminous selves, circling slowly among the deeper shadows.

Suddenly, he caught a flash of dim blue light: the woman’s eyes. There!

The gleam of blue shone out clearly from the depths of a cave whose entrance was shadowed by a stand of trees.

Several of his shadowy ratlike heads nodded in rueful appreciation. In the whole forest, perhaps, there was no place to him as dangerous as this, at least while night lasted. Inside the cave was darkness as complete as could be found outside a buried coffin.

Except for her eyes. Their light was too dim to do him harm, but they did give enough light to create a faint path of shadow he could safely travel. He could leap down it and plant his tendrils in her before she was aware of it.

Of course, if he killed her there, her eyes would close and he would die in the cave’s darkness. But he thought he could drain her of volition without killing her, and then compel her body to walk out of the cave. Then he could finish feeding on her in safety.

It was risky. But he was willing to take any risk in order to capture and kill this elusive, infuriating prey.

His amorphous twisted body followed his thought and leapt into the cave mouth, charging down the dim path of bluish shadow.

He was well into the cave, several lengths of his body, when he slammed into a barrier. The eyes still seemed to be many feet away. Yet they weren’t . . . they peered glassily at him from the barrier. As he leaned toward them, his own shadowy form impinged painfully on their light.

Slowly, too slowly, Vesper understood. The barrier was the wet earthy wall of the cave itself. And the eyes . . . were just reflections of eyes in a mirror, set in the cave-wall.

Vesper turned and saw the woman standing, watching him, several yards before the cave-mouth. She was just a darkness in the darkness, except for her luminous eyes. He leapt toward her, but as soon as he began to move she shut her eyes. The darkness of the lightless cave fell down on him like a ton of black stones.

The last thing he heard was the woman’s laughter, darker than the darkness that was killing him.

Ambrosia Viviana kept her eyes clenched shut, waiting for the monster to die. If her guess was right, total darkness would be as deadly to its shadowy frame as direct light. Eventually she heard a slight sigh as the subtle body of the shadow beast dissolved into the surrounding darkness. She kept her eyes shut for a long time afterward: in case it was a trick; in case it was a trap. There were so many traps in the world, and she had to face them all alone. She was almost used to it, now.

Presently she turned away and resumed walking eastward, with the one person she could trust trapped by the oblivion within her.