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She pointed to the center of the room, as the sound of the approaching knights echoed down the passage outside.

The portal between Karga Kul and the Abyss was a circular stone door, set into the floor and without visible hinge or spring. The seal itself was a rectangular stone the size of a coffin lid and perhaps two feet thick, laid over the narrow gap between portal and bedrock floor. Once it had been a mighty stone, carried in by six dragonborn Knights of Kul who held it down while the first of the Mage Trust carved the first characters in the first seal.

None of them had known that already the Road-builder had made Moidan’s Quill, with which Uliana stood ready to write, the seat and repository of his treacherous soul. At last, they would replenish the seal, destroy the quill, get permanently rid of the Road-builder, save Karga Kul, and restore the status of the Knights of Kul.

Or they would all die.

Six hand-picked knights held the replacement seal, which could not touch the portal until the old Seal was removed; doubling the seal would have the effect of canceling both. So there would be a moment when the portal, necessarily, was open. The gods alone knew—and perhaps not even they—what would come through during that time.

“Hold it so that it overlaps from the seal to the floor,” Uliana ordered. “Exactly as the other one.” She looked over at Biri-Daar, who stood at the head of the ceremonial guard carrying the new seal. “The last time this was done, it was the abbot of the Monastery of the Cliff who held the quill. Or so it is hinted in the oldest records we have yet found.”

“Those same monks are now corrupt,” Keverel said. “They are a canker on the city of Toradan. When this is done, they are our next task.”

“When,” Paelias said. “The certainty of the holy man.”

“Quiet, please. It is time to write.” Uliana held up the quill. Remy had noticed something odd about her voice and looking at her he realized what it was: she was quietly weeping as she spoke. Before he had more than the briefest moment to wonder why, she thrust the quill into her left eye.

A low, quivering noise escaped her but she remained perfectly still. Removing the quill from her eye, she bent over the new Seal and began to write.

Each sigil burned as she inscribed it, blood and fluid from Uliana’s sacrificed eye dripping from her chin but her hand never wavering from its task. The quill moved in broad sweeping curves across the seal. The Knights of Kul looked away from her as she approached each of them in turn, working letter by agonized letter through the inscription that would reseal the portal to Thanatos. And as she wrote, the quill began to burn. Remy’s pulse quickened. If it burned away before she finished, would the Seal hold back the hordes of Orcus?

And would …?

Shadows began to form and pool in one corner of the room, farthest from the door. Biri-Daar saw Remy looking. She turned her head and saw exactly what Remy saw. She took a step around the edge of the portal to position herself between Uliana and the gathering shadows. They ballooned, piled on each other and grew up along the wall. Remy thought he saw a humanoid shape emerging.

Uliana, the flaming quill in her hand, added the last characters. The shadows on the wall had acquired a human silhouette. “Quickly,” Keverel said as Remy drew his sword and faced the silhouette. “Remy. Not yet. We need both of your hands.”

He sheathed his sword and joined the rest of the group at the edges of the fading seal. Its sigils were burnt-out, blackened as if by the fires of the hellish plane they held back. The six of them got their hands under the edges of the seal. Remy looked at Biri-Daar, awaiting a cue. “Hands under the edge,” Biri-Daar said. “Ready. Three. Two. One.”

They lifted. The Seal came away from the portal and the chamber floor, surprisingly light in Remy’s hands. As it did, sulfurous smoke boiled around the edges of the portal and under his feet. Remy felt it begin to slide and rise. It tilted. He fought for his balance. He and Biri-Daar, still on the portal itself, slipped