by Paul S. Kemp
“The dark city,” the homunculi said, their tones hushed.
“Ordulin,” Brennus said. “But it hasn’t been a city for a long time.”
Maps called it the Maelstrom, and not even the Lords of Shade set foot within it. None save one.
The scrying cube showed Ordulin from high above. The dark, miasmic air around the ruined city made everything look dull, diffuse, cloudy pigments on a surreal painting. Once-grand buildings lay in shattered heaps, the broken bones of a broken city. Streaks of green lightning split the sky from time to time, ghastly veins of light that cast the ruins in viridian light. Shadows formed and dissipated in the air, wisps of reified darkness.
Undead flitted among the bleak ruins: specters, living shadows, ghosts, wraiths, hundreds of them, thousands, the glow of their eyes like a sky of baleful stars. The hole in the center of the maelstrom—the hole his brother and his brother’s goddess, Shar, had created when they’d loosed the Shadowstorm on Sembia— drew undead the way a corpse drew flies. Ordulin was a graveyard, haunted by its past and ruled by Brennus’s brother, who had murdered their mother.
He held up a hand and intoned a refinement to the scrying ritual. The homunculi mimed his gesture, murmuring nonsense syllables.
The perspective in the face of the cube changed and the arcane eye of the divination streaked toward the blasted ground, wheeled through the shattered stone and wood, and stopped in the center of the ruins, at the edge of what once was a large, open plaza. Chunks of weathered statuary and jagged blocks of a fallen citadel lay scattered across the cracked flagstones, monuments to destruction.
A shield-sized hole hung in the air in the center of the plaza, a colorless distortion in reality that opened onto . . . nothing, an emptiness so profound that looking at it for more than a moment made Brennus nauseated. The homunculi squealed and pulled the loose folds of his robes before their eyes. It seemed slowly to swirl, but Brennus was never certain. What he was certain about was that the hole represented the end to everything. He’d noticed that it grew over time, a miniscule amount each year, the mouth of Shar that would eventually devour the world. He hated it, hated Shar, hated his brother, who was her nightseer, her Chosen, and a godling in his own right.
Rivalen sat at the edge of the hole on the cracked face of a once-enormous statue. He stared into the maelstrom, his hands in his lap, unmoving. As always, Brennus wondered what Rivalen thought of when he looked into the work he’d wrought, the apocalypse he’d sown. Did he welcome it? Regret it? Did he even think like a man anymore?
The wind stirred Rivalen’s cloak and his long, dark hair. Shadows leaked from him in long tendrils. He stared at the hole as if he could see something within it, as if he wanted something from it.
“The nightseer,” the homunculi said, and covered their faces with their clawed hands.
Brennus said nothing, merely watched his brother a long while. He had no purpose in it anymore, other than to fuel his hate and remind himself of his mother. He relaxed his grip on the necklace he held.
“I’m going to kill you,” he promised his brother. Shadows oozed from his skin, swirled around him, marked his anger with their churn. “For her. I’m going to kill you for her. I’ll find a way.”
The homunculi, sensing his frustration and sadness, patted his head with their tiny hands and made cooing noises.
A cascade of green lightning veined the sky above Ordulin. Brennus blinked in the sudden glare, and when the spots cleared from his eyes he saw that his brother was gone. He saw only the hole, the ruins.
“Nightseer gone,” the homunculi said.
Before Brennus could acknowledge them, a voice spoke from behind him.
“Gone from there,” said Rivalen’s deep voice, as the power of his presence filled the room and put pressure on Brennus’s ears. “Because I’ve come here.”
The homunculi squealed in terror and curled up in the cowl of Brennus’s cloak, trembling. Brennus swallowed and turned to face his brother.
Rivalen’s golden eyes glowed in the dusky crags of his angled face. The darkness in the room coalesced around him, as if drawn to his form. The weight of his regard threatened to buckle Brennus’s knees, but he thought of his mother and held his ground.
“Every day I feel your eyes on me, Brennus.”
Brennus felt his back bump up against the still-warm metal of the scrying cube. He relied on his hate to give him courage.
“Then perhaps you’ve felt my hate, too.”
His words caused the homunculi to squeal with alarm and try to burrow more deeply into his cowl, but Rivalen’s neutral expression did not change.
“Yes, I’ve felt it,” Rivalen said. He glided over the floor toward Brennus, his form lost at the edges, merged with the darkness. He seemed to displace space as he moved, causing the room to shrink, sucking up the air.
Brennus tried to steady his breathing, his heart, tried to slow his rapidly blinking eyes. He knew he looked a fool and it only made him angrier.
“What do you want?” Brennus asked, and was pleased to hear the steadiness in his voice. The shadows leaking from his body merged with those swirling around Rivalen and were overwhelmed by them.
“That’s my question to you,” Rivalen answered. His golden eyes drifted to Brennus’s hand, to the jacinth necklace he held there. “Ah. Still that.”
Brennus dared take a step closer to his taller brother. He knew Rivalen could kill him easily, but he did not care. “Always that.”
The darkness around Rivalen intensified. His eyes stayed on the necklace. “That damned trinket.”
Brennus clenched his fist around the necklace. “Our mother wore it the day you murdered her.”
Rivalen’s eyes came up, met Brennus’s, flared in the black hole of his face. “You never told me how you found it.”
“You’re not all-knowing? Ask the whore you worship or the hole you stare into everyday.”
Rivalen held out his hand. Shadows rose from his palm, wound around his fingers. “Give it to me.”
Shadows stormed around Brennus and words leaped out of his throat before he could stop it. “No! Never!”
“I can take it if I wish.”
Rage boiled in Brennus, the steam of his anger leaking around the lid of his control. He uttered a guttural cry of hate, extended a hand, shouted a word of power, and unleashed a blast of life-draining energy that would have shriveled a mortal to a husk.
But Rivalen was not mortal, not anymore, and the beam of energy slammed into his chest, split, and ricocheted off in several directions, all to no effect.
Rivalen’s eyes narrowed. Power coalesced in him as the darkness about him deepened. He stepped toward Brennus and his form seemed to grow, to fill the room. His hands closed on Brennus’s robes and lifted him into the air. The homunculi squealed with terror.
Imminent death steeled Brennus’s courage. He glared into his brother’s impassive golden eyes, squeezed his mother’s necklace so hard the metal pierced his skin. Blood ran warm and soaked his fist before his regenerative flesh closed the wound.
Rivalen pulled Brennus close until they were nose to nose. “Give it to me.”
Brennus spat in his brother’s face, the face of a god, the globule running down Rivalen’s cheek.
“You’ll have to kill me first.”
Rivalen’s eyes flared. He studied Brennus’s face, perhaps measuring his resolve, then threw him across the length of the scrying chamber.
Brennus hit the far stone wall hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs and crack ribs. His body began immediately to regenerate itself and he winced as shadowstuff reknit his broken ribs. He grimaced as he stood, shouting at his brother.
“A hole, Rivalen! You’ve had a hole in you since you murdered our mother for your bitch goddess! Now the hole is all you have! How does it feel? How does it feel?”
“Mother died thousands of years ago, Brennus.”
The impassivity in Rivalen’s voice drove Brennus to distractio
n. Shadows swirled and he pointed his finger at his brother.
“You don’t get to call her ‘mother.’ You call her Alashar or don’t speak of her at all. And she did not just die. You murdered her.”
Rivalen did not deny it, did not apologize for it, said nothing at all. He stepped forward to the scrying cube, his expression thoughtful, and put his palm to its face. The entire cube turned black as onyx. In a moment the darkness lightened and an image began to resolve in the cube’s face.
Brennus’s breath left him in a rush. “Is this? This cannot be.”
“It is.”
“Don’t do this.”
“It’s done.”
His mother’s face formed on the cube. She was lying on her back amid a meadow festooned with purple flowers. Her long dark hair haloed her head. The wind stirred her clothes, caused the flowers to sway.
Brennus recognized the meadow. It was the same meadow where he had found her necklace, the same meadow from which Erevis Cale’s love, Varra, pregnant with Cale’s child, had disappeared.
His mother’s pale face looked pained, but Brennus did not think the pain physical. Her breathing was rapid, too rapid.
Brennus found himself walking slowly toward the cube.
His mother reached out a hand, her arm visibly shaking.
Brennus felt as if he could almost reach out and touch her. His hand went up to take hers into his.
“Mother,” he said softly, but her eyes were not on him. He was seeing an image of events that had occurred thousands of years before.
“Hold my hand, Rivalen,” she said, her voice a whispered gasp. Brennus saw that her other hand held the necklace Brennus now held.
Rivalen’s voice answered her, his voice from the time when he had been a young man, before he’d become a shade, before he’d become a god.
“We all die alone, mother.”
She closed her eyes and wept. Tears fell down Brennus’s cheeks in answer. He stood next to Rivalen, his hate a wall between them.
“Your father will learn of this,” Mother said.
“No. This will be known only to us. And to Shar.”
“And to me,” Brennus said through clenched teeth, as he watched the scene.
She stared at where Rivalen must have been standing, then closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.
“What did you wish for, mother?” Rivalen asked.
When she opened her eyes, Brennus was pleased to see that the hurt in her eyes was gone, replaced by anger.
“To be the instrument of your downfall.”
“Goodnight, mother. I answer to another mistress, now.”
Rivalen removed his hand from the scrying cube and the image faded.
“No,” Brennus said. “No.” He put his hands on the cube, tried to reactivate it with his own power but it remained dark, a void, a hole. Tears streamed down his face but he did not care. “Show me the rest.”
“You know the rest.”
Brennus stared at the cube, his mother’s face floating at the forefront of his memory.
“Bastard. You thrice-damned bastard. Why did you show me that?”
Rivalen, taller than Brennus by a head, stared down at him. “I thought it was time you saw what I was capable of.”
“I always knew what you were capable of.”
“I also thought it was time to remind you that my patience is not infinite.”
“I’m going to kill you,” Brennus said, wiping stupidly at his tears. “I’ll find a way.”
Rivalen put a hand on Brennus’s shoulder. “Your bitterness is sweet to the Lady, Brennus.”
Brennus slapped his brother’s hand away. “Get out of here.”
Rivalen turned away. “You see nothing, Brennus. You understand so little. I’m unmatched in power here on the Prime, but what use is my power?”
Brennus did not understand. The Lords of Shade had traveled the planes freely, always had. “You’re bound here?”
Rivalen shook his head. His left fist clenched, a small gesture of frustration. “Not bound, no. Hunted. My power protects me here. But elsewhere . . . there are those who want what I possess.”
Brennus’s mind latched onto the import of the sentence. His brother feared someone, or something. Brennus could use that, perhaps. “The divinity you stole?”
Rivalen whirled on him, shadows swirling. “The divinity I took.”
“You, and Erevis Cale, and Drasek Riven.”
“Cale is gone. Mephistopheles holds his power now.”
Comprehension dawned. “Mephistopheles wants your power. He’s hunting you. He needs it for his war with Asmodeus.”
Rivalen shrugged. “No matter. I can’t safely leave this world, even as it marches to its inevitable end. I’ll be the last living thing on this planet, Brennus, screaming into the void as everything dies.”
“You’ll be dead before that,” Brennus said.
Rivalen smiled. “I could kill you easily.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. But I won’t. At least, not yet. Do you know why?”
Brennus refused to respond, but Rivalen spoke as if he did.
“Because we’re all already dead. And my bitterness, too, is sweet to the Lady.”
“Wallow in it, then,” Brennus spat. “Suffer with it.”
The shadows gathered around Rivalen. “I will. And because I do, so will everyone else.”
The darkness took him and Brennus stood alone in the scrying chamber. Sweat and shadows poured from his flesh. His heart thumped against his ribs. The homunculi emerged tentatively from the blanket of his cowl, exhaling audibly when they saw that Rivalen was gone.
“Lady was pretty,” one of them said.
“Yes,” Brennus said, turning back to the dark scrying cube where he had seen the image of his mother. He put his hand on the silver face of the cube, replaying the images in his mind, her words. They made him smile.
“You would have made her laugh,” he said to the homunculi.
His mother had encouraged Brennus’s skill with constructs and shaping magic. She’d always loved the little creatures and moving objects he’d create for her. His father, the Most High, had forced him to turn from the “frivolity” of shaping to the serious study of divination.
Something about the image Rivalen had shown him stuck in his mind, something odd.
“What did you wish for, mother?” Rivalen had asked her.
Realization struck. The meadow had been a magical place, perhaps powerful enough to grant wishes. Such places had existed in ancient Faerûn. Varra had vanished from the same meadow as undead shadows had closed in on her. Brennus had seen her curl up in the flowers, had seen a flash, had visited the meadow and found the flowers gone, as if consumed.
“Gods,” he breathed, and shadows swirled around him in an angry storm.
Varra had wished herself away from there.
And the meadow had granted her wish.
“Where would she go?” he mused aloud. And then it struck him. “When would she go?”
Hope swelled in him, the antipode of Shar’s despair. He hurried to his library to renew his search.
Rivalen rode the darkness back to Ordulin, back to his haunt among the cracked stones of the plaza. Upon arrival, his expanded consciousness took in every shadow in the maelstrom. The darkness was an extension of his mind and will. In the emptiness of the ruins he heard the voice of his goddess, who whispered dooms in his ears.
Wind gusted, tore at his cloak and hair. Forks of green lightning flashed again and again across the inky vault of the sky, dividing it into a shifting matrix of jagged angles, the bursts of light painting deeper shadows on the ruined landscape.
The hole of Shar’s eye hung in the air before him, slowly rotating, imperceptibly expanding year by year, a void that would in time consume the world. Even Rivalen could not stare at it for long without feeling dizzy, nauseated. The hole took up space, but seemed apart from space, not a thing that existed but a thing that was the absence of existence.
He felt her in there, Shar, or at least felt her essence. Her regard radiated out of the hole, like a poisonous annihilating cloud. The Shadowstorm had begun the Cycle of Night and heralded her arrival on Faerûn, and The Leaves of One Night, a singular tome sacred to Shar, held her here. Rivalen had recovered the tome from the ruins of the Shadowstorm. But she was trapped now, stuck in the middle of her incarnation.
Small pieces of The Leaves of One Night, bits of parchment, whipped in the wind around the hole like wounded birds, orbiting it the way the Tears orbited Selûne, darting in and out of the void, as if Shar were reading them page by page.
But she wasn’t reading them. She was writing them, writing them for Rivalen, so that he could read them and finish the Cycle of Night.
“Write the story,” he whispered to himself.
Once, long ago, he’d possessed The Leaves of One Night. When he tried to read it then, he’d found the pages empty. He’d thought the emptiness profound, meaningful somehow. How wrong he’d been. They’d merely been incomplete. They’d merely been waiting.
He watched them flutter around Shar’s eye, moths to the flame of her spite. He could see the black ink on the pages, characters, words, but the language was nothing he’d ever seen before. He needed a mortal filter to translate it, a despairing soul to serve as the lens. And that mortal filter would suffer in the process.
He intended to use Brennus. He’d lied when he said he hadn’t killed his brother because they were already dead. He hadn’t killed Brennus because he needed him, and because Brennus was not yet ripe for picking. The bitterness in his brother grew with each passing year, a tumor in Brennus’s soul. Rivalen had heightened it by showing Brennus the murder of their mother.
Rivalen would read the book’s words through the lens of his brother’s bitterness and despair.
The thought made Rivalen smile. Shadows whirled around him.