7. The Book of the Full Shadow

After climbing out of the crevasse, the narrator and Galva choose a middle course: abandon their failing push through the Thralls and return to the Wostran brigands’ lair to rest and re-provision. Galva’s condition deteriorates in the cold; she develops a worsening cough and fever, forcing the narrator to tend her, feed her, and guard their refuge alone.

Recognizing his limits, the narrator—despite earlier resolve—prays to the Galtish healing deity Solf Hiray to take Galva’s sickness or share it with him. He then studies the Book of the Full Shadow, skimming disturbing images and mundane ledgers that reveal the Guild once hid in Hrava as lepers. Wondering how giants crossed the peaks, he engages the Book, which demands a “parley.”

The Book draws him into a dream-house by the sea, where an alluring woman—its avatar, who gives the name Filaine—offers warmth, food, drink, and sex. Sensing a trap, the narrator resists the feast and seduction. When he wavers, Filaine’s glamour flickers: the food reveals itself as vermin and her face as the book-crab. She tries to force him to ingest the “food,” escalating the attempt to bind him.

Norrigal intervenes, first as a seagull and then in partial human form, attacking the book-creature and warning the narrator not to partake or climax in the room. She shows him a case of pinned miniature souls—victims trapped by the Book—including Worrig. As Filaine returns, Norrigal urges the narrator to jump.

The narrator dives from the window and, instead of dying, lands in a vision of the Downward Tower in Norholt, where Norrigal stirs a pot and appears to be pregnant. The vision underscores the Book’s lethal cunning and the precarious state of their journey, even as Galva remains gravely ill in the lair.