by Paul S. Kemp
Cale ignored it and said to Riven and Magadon, Now! And bring light, Mags. Everything you have.
He reversed his grip on his blade and drove Weaveshear through scales and deep into the dragon’s wing joint. Black blood spurted around the blade. Furlinastis would not fly again soon.
The dragon roared and bucked, whirled its neck around to snap at Cale, but Cale dived from its back and rode the shadows away before the jaws could reach him.
He materialized in knee-deep water a long dagger’s throw from the creature’s flank. Magadon and Riven appeared before the dragon. A blazing ball of white light burned above Magadon’s head and the mindmage’s arrow, already nocked and drawn, glowed a brilliant crimson. Riven stood beside him, as tall as an ogre.
The dragon did not hesitate. It roared and expelled a cloud of deadly breath. The life-draining shadows engulfed Riven and Magadon but Cale’s protective spells still warded his companions. They bounded out of the cloud, coughing but alive, Magadon’s light still burning.
The mindmage stopped to fire his bow, and his charged arrow pierced the dragon’s scales as if they were cloth. The missile hit the creature in the throat and sank to the fletching. Another followed, another. The dragon beat its wings, hissed in pain.
Riven sped forward, his magically enlarged sabers bleeding shadows. Furlinastis lashed out with a claw. Riven parried with one saber while he slashed at the dragon’s exposed leg with the other. The blade ripped through scales, sliced tendon, and sent up a spray of blood.
The dragon reared back and spat a short couplet of arcane words. Instantly the mud around Cale’s feet began to harden into rock. From their exclamation of surprise, he guessed the same thing was happening to Riven and Magadon. They would all be immobilized.
Cale responded instinctively and shadowstepped out of the mud and into the branches of a large tree. He saw Riven stick both his sabers in the hardening ground and do a handstand on their hilts to get his feet free of the mud until it hardened fully into rock. Magadon tried to pull himself free but was stuck fast.
Riven flipped to his feet and rushed forward on the hard earth, blades spinning. He leaped and parried a pair of claw attacks, got in close, and slashed twin gashes in the dragon’s face when it darted its head down and tried to snap him in half. Furlinastis hissed, spun his body ninety degrees, and cracked his tail, as thick as an old oak, at Riven. It hit the assassin squarely in the side. The impact blew Riven’s breath from his lungs and sent him careening into the water.
The dragon roared, lunged forward as if to finish Riven, and Cale struck. He chose a dark spot in the crook of the dragon’s back where his long neck met his chest. Shadowstepping, he put his hands on the creature’s scales and cast a spell that poured baleful energy into the dragon.
Scales cracked and blood seeped through the fissures. The dragon roared, spun around, and the abrupt motion sent Cale flying. Before he could interpose his blade, the dragon’s jaws snapped closed on his thigh and jerked him into the air.
Cale screamed as the dragon shook him. His regenerative flesh could not keep up with the injuries and he felt his leg tearing away.
Magadon’s calm but strained voice carried over the battlefield. “Give in to it,” he said, and Cale did not know to whom or what Magadon was speaking.
Cale, upside down in the dragon’s jaws, caught a glimpse of the mindmage. An ochre light haloed his entire body, and the veins in his brow, face, and bared arms stood out like latticework. The same ochre light formed around Furlinastis’s head. The dragon’s eyes—normally as black as onyx—turned as white as Magadon’s.
The dragon dropped Cale and he hit the swamp in a heap. Adrenaline and his shadow flesh allowed him to endure the pain, and he leaned on his sword to climb to his feet.
Seemingly dazed, the dragon slowly lowered its head to eye level between Cale and Riven. The huge reptile extended its neck, exposing the smaller, softer, violet scales of its throat. The shadows around the creature swirled.
“Strike,” Magadon said, his voice cracking. “The urge will not last for long.”
Cale and Riven looked at each other in surprise.
“Strike!” Magadon said.
Cale and Riven lunged forward and struck as one. Weaveshear opened a deep gash in the dragon’s throat, just below its jaw. Riven’s magically enlarged sabers slashed chasms so deep into the dragon’s throat that he nearly beheaded the creature. Black blood gushed from the wounds, soaking them, flooding the swamp.
Furlinastis recovered his senses only in time to die. The dragon reared back, his head flopping grotesquely. He tried to roar but instead gave only a deep, bubbling gurgle through the gashes in his throat. He flapped his wings, shook, and collapsed into the swamp.
Magadon gasped and sagged. Cale and Riven stared at the enormous carcass in stunned silence. As they looked on, the shadow shroud around the dragon churned and darkened. Faces formed from the shadows and swirled in the darkness.
“Mags?” Cale said over his shoulder. The mindmage was weakened and remained stuck in the rock the dragon’s spell had transformed.
“Finish it, Cale,” Magadon said.
Cale took off his mask and clutched it in a fist. He held Weaveshear loosely in his other hand. “Kesson Rel,” he called. His heart rattled his ribs; his breath came hard.
The faces vanished and several smaller shadows separated from the larger shroud. They formed a semi-circle before Cale and Riven and assumed humanoid forms, their outlines shifting like smoke. Hooded cloaks hid their hands and faces.
The one in the center threw back his hood to reveal the face of a man. Short black hair topped a high-browed, angular face adorned with a neat beard. The man looked into Cale’s and Riven’s faces.
I am Avnon Des the Seer. I was a servant and priest of the Shadowlord, as were all of those with me. You are the Chosen of the Shadowlord in this age.
Cale had no time for such nonsense. “We are taking back what Kesson Rel stole.”
Avnon smiled softly. What Kesson Rel took was given him, not stolen.
Cale brandished Weaveshear. “I don’t care. I want it. I want him.”
The man smiled gently. It is not ours to give.
Behind the assembled priests, the rest of the shroud roiled and formed a towering, amorphous form roughly like a man. Wild eyes looked out of a chiseled face. Horns jutted from his brow. He was Volumvax, or the rest of Volumvax, and he was Kesson Rel.
Kesson Rel raised his arms to the shadowy sky and unleashed a shout of such combined rage and glee that it dwarfed even the dragon’s roar.
In answer, flashes of green lightning crosscut the sky.
Cale and Riven shared a look and bounded past Avnon and his fellow priests, blades bare.
“Wait …”Avnon said.
“Low,” Riven said.
“High,” Cale answered, and shouted at Kesson. “Kesson Rel!”
Kesson took no notice of them.
Riven slashed low at Kesson’s legs and Cale stabbed Weaveshear through his chest. Their blades passed through his shadowy form without contact.
Kesson turned his gaze to them and his mouth twisted with contempt. He looked up to the sky and thunder boomed. He vanished.
“No!” Magadon screamed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
30 Uktar, the Year of Lightning Storms
As Rivalen flew back toward Selgaunt, he intoned ward after ward, shielding himself from lightning, cold, fire, and projectiles. He surrounded himself in a translucent sphere of energy that would entirely block lesser spells.
Below him, dozens of Saerloonian soldiers lay dead on the smoking plains, burned by the alchemical fire thrown by the trebuchets. But the rest of the army straddled Selgaunt’s toppled wall. Fully half the army fought within the city, while the rest waited for the way to clear for them so they could push through.
Saerloonian soldiers in the rear ranks spotted him as he approached, pointed. A hail of crossbow bolts and a storm of magical energy greeted
his arrival. His wards and the shadowstuff in his flesh repelled all of it.
He hovered, pointed an open palm at each side of the breach in the wall, and recited arcane words while crossbow bolts bounced off his flesh and spells lit the air. When he finished casting, a wall of gray stone materialized from nothingness and spanned the breach. Rivalen’s magic melded to the wall, sealing off Selgaunt and cutting the Saerloonian army in half.
He followed up immediately with one of his most powerful necromantic spells. Choosing one of the fat Saerloonian wizards he had seen summoning the earth elementals earlier, he recited the incantation. A wave of gray magical energy went forth from his hands, to the Saerloonian wizard, and outward from the wizard in a circle twenty paces in diameter. His spell pulled every drop of liquid from every Saerloonian in the sphere. Pink fluid burst from noses, eyes, ears, groin, and pooled on the ground to form a macabre pond. Men screamed, but only for a moment before their desiccated corpses splashed to the ground in their own fluids. Hundreds died in the span of three breaths. Rivalen offered their death shrieks to Shar. Shouts of fear and anger rose from the army.
Leevoth and his soldiers are to assist the Selgauntans within the city, he sent to Brennus. No krinth. Join me here for sport, if you wish. But hurry.
Hurry? Brennus said. There are thousands of Saerloonians.
Not for long, Rivalen answered.
A ball of flame exploded around him, soaking him in fire. His wards shielded him. He spotted the mage who had cast it and incanted his own spell. A green beam shot from his finger, struck the gray-robed mage in the chest, and reduced him to dust.
More crossbow bolts thumped off his flesh. Two bolts, presumably enchanted, sunk into his thigh and shoulder. He grunted with pain while his regenerative flesh pushed them out and healed the wounds.
He flew down just above the army. More bolts slammed into him. Three sank into his limbs. He endured the pain, let it fuel his burgeoning anger. Upturned faces stared at him with eyes full of fear, anger, awe. He looked down on them and intoned the words to a spell that would infuse him with unholy power. The shadows swirled around him as energy gathered. Some among the Saerloonians broke and ran.
When Rivalen completed the spell, he landed in their midst, profane words lined up behind his teeth. Swords and axes chopped at him. Men shouted, tried to pin his arms. The shadows swarmed around him to deflect warriors and weapons. A few blade thrusts penetrated his defenses and cut his skin but he did not care. He was about Shar’s work.
He unleashed the words, turning a circle as he shouted his blasphemous phrase.
Every Saerloonian around him to a distance of twenty paces—seven score soldiers, perhaps eight—withered, screamed, and died. Rivalen was surrounded by corpses.
Another two or three score Saerloonians stopped short and stared at gray, vaguely formed phantasms that materialized out of the air before them. Rivalen had seen the spell often enough. The men saw their darkest fears, and a touch from the illusion would kill them.
Brennus, Rivalen said, and looked up. His brother floated in the air above him, his gray eyes hard. His homunculi looked out of his robe to leer at the death below.
High above Brennus, Sakkors floated into position over Selgaunt’s walls. The veserabs with their shade riders began to spiral down. Leevoth and the shade troops would follow.
Some sport remains yet, I see, Brennus answered.
The Saerloonians affected by Brennus’s spell shrieked, cowered. The phantasms reached for them, touched them, and all but two fell dead.
The Saerloonian army on Rivalen’s side of Selgaunt’s walls broke and started to run.
A conjured wall trapped the Saerloonians within the city and divided their army in half, and they fought with increasing desperation. The battle spilled into the open area behind the Khyber Gate. The combat grew disorganized. Pockets of ten and twenty men fought here and there. Crossbow bolts winged over the combat. Shouts and screams sounded from every direction. Saerloonian and Selgauntan commanders shouted orders but most went unheeded as the soldiers on both sides swung blades and axes at any enemy within reach. The dead and dying littered the streets.
Tamlin fired bolts of magical energy at any Saerloonian commander or mage he could mark. Variance pulled him beside the frame of the unmanned trebuchet and cloaked them both in darkness.
“I will not cower while the city falls!” he said to her.
She nodded up at the sky. “It will not fall.”
Tamlin looked up to see the Shadovar enclave float directly over the wall and cast its shadow over the battlefield. For a moment, combat ceased. A hush fell and all eyes looked up.
The batlike creatures flitting about the flying city spiraled downward. Pockets of darkness formed on the battlefield. Soldiers on both sides backed away warily.
“It is over,” Variance said, and sheathed her short swords.
Shadovar troops materialized and stepped from the pitch. They bore blades crafted of glistening black metal, and wore armor forged of the same. Shadows curled around them. The Saerloonians did not even have time to shout in surprise before the Shadovar began to kill. Their black blades cut flesh and steel with equal facility. Two hundred Saerloonians died in three breaths.
Shouts erupted anew, the ring of metal, battle cries, the screams of the wounded and dying. Tamlin watched, awed, as the Shadovar troops disappeared into the shadows only to reappear ten paces away, often behind a Saerloonian soldier to run him through. The combat was no longer a battle. It was a slaughter.
“Thank Shar for this,” he murmured. “She has saved the city.” Variance looked at him and smiled. “Indeed.”
Cale cursed and whirled around to the shadow priests, all of whom had turned to watch them. Cale stalked up to Avnon and pointed Weaveshear at his chest. “Where did he go?”
Back to himself, to make whole what was sundered. The Shadowlord’s power is Kesson’s until it is taken from him. All we could do was contain it.
Riven shook his head in disbelief.
Cale looked past Avnon to Magadon, who stood with his head bowed, shoulders hunched.
“How do I take it from him, priest?”
There is only one way. Kill him.
“We did kill him,” Cale said.
“No. He lives. And now he is stronger than before.”
Magadon cursed softly, but there was no heat in it, only despair.
“Dark, Cale,” Riven said. “A duplicate. We were duped.”
Cale could not believe it. The duplicate of Kesson Rel had almost killed them. If the real Kesson were stronger …
“But why?” Riven asked.
Cale remembered what Magadon had learned from the gnome. “He could not leave his spire. We did his work for him.”
“And now he’s free?” Riven asked.
Cale nodded. “So it would seem.”
He did not relish the thought of battling Kesson Rel again. He slowed his racing mind. “Tell us everything, Avnon Des.”
Our time is limited, Avnon said. We should have died millennia ago. Hear me, then. Kesson Rel was the first Chosen of the Shadowlord. In him the Dusklord invested some of his own power, his own divinity. Kesson became a god but the power drove him mad. We tried to stop him but he forced our temple onto this plane and used the soulbound shadow dragon to murder us one by one. Through a vision the Shadowlord told me our fate. We could not stop Kesson but we could make our deaths meaningful by using our own souls to trap the divine spark he had been forced to use to bind the dragon to his will. This we did, though it cost the dragon dearly.
Avnon looked to the dragon’s carcass and shook his head. I do not know what occurred with Kesson after that.
Cale did, at least part of it. “He abandoned Mask for Shar and avenged himself on Elgrin Fau. He brought the entire city to the Plane of Shadow. Everyone in it died in darkness.”
Avnon looked up, shock and pain in his expression. His fellow priests shuffled on their feet, murmured in distress to one
another.
“The City of Silver? Lost?”
Cale nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“What was the point of it all?” Riven asked. “Mask had a plan millennia in the making and now things are right back where they started. Kesson Rel is not only alive, but whole.”
Avnon looked Riven and Cale in the face. Things are not back where they started. You are here. That was the point. We were waiting for you. The Shadowlord was waiting for you.
Cale looked at Riven and both looked back to Avnon.
“We are going to kill Kesson Rel.”
I know.
“Then what happens?” Cale asked.
I do not know, Avnon said. But I envy you.
“Don’t,” Cale said.
Avnon smiled. His form started to blur at the edges, then to fade.
Farewell, First and Second.
Avnon and his fellow priests dissipated into the surrounding shadowstuff.
Cale and Riven stood in silence for a moment, then turned away from the dragon’s carcass and walked back to their friend. Softly, Cale asked, “Mags, what did you do to the dragon?”
Magadon stared at him, his eyes troubled. “It’s dead. That is what we wanted. What does it matter what I did?”
“It matters.”
Magadon’s expression went from troubled to that of a man about to confess a transgression. He looked away. “I … magnified the self-destructive urge in its mind.”
“Magnified?” Cale asked. “What does that mean?”
Magadon spoke softly. “Everyone carries a seed of self-loathing, Cale. For some, it’s quite powerful. So it was with Furlinastis. It is easy to twist that into a suicidal impulse.”
“Dark,” Riven said.
Cale agreed. The power unnerved him. That Magadon would use it unnerved him more.
He looked at the dragon’s carcass, the hole of its open neck a black tunnel. He felt a certain pity for the dragon, even kinship. Avnon Des had said the dragon had been unwillingly bound by Kesson Rel. Despite its immense power, the creature had been a tool of fate, caught up in one of Mask’s schemes. It had despised itself in consequence. Cale understood the feeling well. He looked back to Magadon, held his mask in hand, and incanted the words to a spell that turned the rock back into mud. Cale helped pull the mindmage free.