The men with crossbows took up their positions as the lift continued down, and the machinery hummed with power, seeming to grow louder with each passing moment.
Valdus thought: What spell has he laid upon you, Shekalane, that you would betray me—betray us all—in such a way? Do you cleave to him just to hurt me? Was my absence this time so long, me devotion to the cause so complete, that you felt yourself scorned? If thus, than you have lied from the start when you said your passion against the Lucitor was universal, not personal. You lied all those nights we lay together after exhausting our passions and discussed until morning the beautiful ideal to which we strove—the destruction of Asmodeus and the Lucitor, the ending of the Lottery, the reorganization of all Styx Flumen into a free an
