The Godborn

by Paul S. Kemp

  “I’m so sorry, Lahni.”

  What could have done this to her?

  Thunder sounded. A trickle of rain started to fall.

  He sat there for a long while, engulfed in night, wrapped in a sense of grief not just for Lahni and her family but for himself and Elle and the baby, for all of Sembia. The land itself was corrupted by darkness. He had to get out, get Elle out, but he could not just leave Lahni there. He had to do something with her body, burn it. It was the least he could do.

  He found his wood axe amid the scattered debris of the camp, split some dead broadleaf limbs he found nearby, and started to build a pyre around Lahni’s body. He took her by the wrists to move her a bit and get some of the logs under her. As he did he realized that she was holding something in her closed hand.

  He uncoiled Lahni’s swollen, misshapen fingers, already stiffening in death, to reveal Elle’s locket—a bronze sun. Of all the things in the campsite, she’d taken Elle’s locket. He remembered once, long ago, Lahni telling Elle how beautiful the locket was. Elle had mussed her hair, thanked her, and Lahni had run off.

  Emotion bubbled up in Gerak, raw, bitter, and he couldn’t swallow it back down. He wept as he worked, and in time had built a serviceable pyre. A pyre for an adolescent girl that Sembia had turned into a monster. He gently placed Elle’s locket back in her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to her again, and worked on the kindling. When it took, he tended the logs until the fire was going strong. He thought he should say something, a prayer, but he could not manage one.

  “The gods damn this place,” he said softly, as the flames darkened Lahni’s bloated body. “The gods damn it all.”

  He watched for a while, until he was sure it was going, then gathered what he could find of his gear and headed back out. He had to get back to Fairelm and get Elle away.

  He walked with his bow in one hand, his sword in the other. He had no intention of stopping, and he put leagues behind him before exhaustion made his vision blurry and caused him to stumble. Still he pressed on. His purpose compelled him, a fishhook of fear set deep in his guts, pulling him back to Fairelm and Elle.

  After two hours, he was blinking so much with fatigue that he could hardly see. His legs felt as if they were made of lead, slabs of meat attached to him at the hip. He stumbled, fell, crawled, and finally collapsed. He attempted to stand but couldn’t. His face hit the wet ground. His strength went out of him, drained away into the ground. Shivering with cold and exertion, he decided he’d rest for just a moment. Just a moment. . .

  Rain fell as the pilgrims gathered on the high rise that overlooked the valley. They stood in a huddled, sodden, miserable mass, hoods pulled over their heads. All but Orsin. He stood apart from the others, dressed only in his tunic, trousers, tattoos, and boots. The rain seemed not to bother him. The pilgrims gave him a wide berth. He was not one of them, and they must have sensed it.

  The deva caught Vasen’s gaze, nodded.

  The pilgrims stared down at the valley, its towering pines backed by the teeth of the mountains, the vein of the river, the pitted stone walls of the abbey nestled among the greenery. Not for the first time, Vasen wondered what the valley would look like bathed in sunlight. He imagined the river flecked with silver, the bits of mica in the walls of the abbey glittering like jewels, the snow caps of the mountains shining like lanterns. It saddened him that the valley would never see unadulterated sunlight. He vowed to himself that when he saw the pilgrims to the Dales, out from under the Shadovar’s shroud, he would allow himself a few hours of sunlight before returning to the darkness.

  “Your thoughts wander, First Blade,” said Byrne, standing beside him.

  Vasen turned to look into Byrne’s heavy lidded eyes, overhung by thick brows. A jagged scar marked Byrne’s temple. Vasen sighed.

  “My thoughts seem to do that a lot of late.”

  “It’s the time of year,” Byrne said, gesturing at the sky with a gloved hand. “Winter approaches. The mind wanders in hopes of finding spring. But soon we’ll see the sun.”

  “We will,” Vasen said with a firm nod. “The pilgrims are ready? You’ve done a head count?”

  Byrne nodded, his conical helm falling over his eyes. He seated it more snugly on his head and said, “Twenty-three, plus the four of us.”

  The four of them. Four servants of Amaunator would lead the faithful through the Shadovar’s perpetual night. Eldris, Nald, Byrne, and Vasen, the first blade. Veterans all, good men. Each of them knew the markers to follow across the plains to the Dales, to safety, to the sun.

  “Take position, then,” Vasen said to Byrne. “A prayer, and then we move.”

  “Aye.”

  Vasen pulled his long hair back into a horse’s tail and secured it while Byrne, Eldris, and Nald took position around the pilgrims, shepherds ringing their flock. When they were ready, Vasen ran his hand over his beard and addressed the pilgrims. He saw the fear in their eyes and did what he could to dispel it.

  He drew his blade and held it high. Byrne, Nald, and Eldris did the same. Shadows snaked from Vasen’s flesh, spiraled around his forearm and hand, but he channeled the power of the Dawnfather, and his blade glowed with a bright, rosy hue. It fell on the pilgrims, on the Dawnswords, its power steeling their spirits, amplifying their hopes, even while painting their shadows on the ground. Vasen felt both the warmth of the light and presence of the shadows. The glow elevated the pilgrims’ expressions. Many made the sign of the rising sun and bowed their heads.

  “We walk now into darkness on a journey toward the sun,” Vasen said. “A common faith binds us, a common purpose. We are each warmed by the light that’s in our fellows. In faith we’ll hold the darkness at bay. His light keep us.”

  “And warm us,” the pilgrims answered.

  Vasen and the Dawnswords lowered their blades, the glow faded, and Sembia’s darkness once more crept close. Everyone awaited Vasen’s order to begin. Before giving it, he turned and called Orsin to his side.

  The other Dawnswords eyed him strangely, but Vasen did not care.

  “Vasen?”

  Vasen raised his eyebrows, nodded at the ground, at Orsin’s staff.

  “Lines signify new beginnings, you said. Maybe draw one?”

  Orsin smiled. “Very good. Very good, indeed.” He dragged a line in the mud.

  “We go,” Vasen called, and the column moved, crossing the border Orsin had drawn.

  The sky relieved itself in a drizzle as they walked the labyrinthine pass, navigating its switchbacks, its hidden paths, its deadfalls. Orsin hovered near the front of the column, near Vasen. The other Dawnswords assisted those who stumbled or bore the packs of those who sagged under the weight.

  The air thickened with moisture as they moved. Mist gathered around their feet, rose to their knees. Ahead, a wall of swirling gray, within which lived the spirits of the pass. Vasen did not understand what the spirits were. He only knew they had been harvested from elsewhere by the blue fire of the Spellplague and deposited in the pass. Perhaps they couldn’t leave. Perhaps they didn’t wish to. They seemed to answer to the Oracle in some way that Vasen did not comprehend. They let Dawnswords and pilgrims pass unmolested. Others, they led astray. From time to time through the years, the Dawnswords had found errant wanderers in this or that switchback, dead for lack of food or water, their eyes wide with fear.

  The mist swirled around him as they neared the fog, climbed up his thighs. His flesh answered with shadows. Muttering filled his ears, whispers, a meaningless chatter that threatened to cloud his thinking.

  He touched the holy symbol at his throat, uttered a prayer, drew upon Amaunator’s power, and channeled it into his shield. Energy charged the metal and wood. It began to glow with light, grew warm in his grasp. The voices in his head fell back to distant whispers.

  Behind him, Nald, Eldris, and Byrne did the same, and soon Amaunator’s light hedged the pilgrims.

  “Stay within the glow,” Vasen said. “It wi
ll be as it was when you came through the first time. You’ll hear the spirits, perhaps even see them, but heed nothing. They won’t harm you directly, but if you wander in the pass, it will be hard to find you again. We won’t stop until we’re through. Hold hands with the person nearest you. If one of you stumbles or cannot keep up, shout for aid immediately.”

  Grunts and murmurs of assent answered his words. A child whimpered. A cough, cleared throat.

  Vasen led them into the wall of the fog and it enveloped him immediately, deadened sound, attenuated his connection to the world, to himself. He felt cocooned in it. Even with the light from his shield he could see only a few paces. But he’d known what to expect, so he kept his wits.

  “Stay together,” he called over his shoulder.

  Behind him he heard the footsteps of the pilgrims, the soft crunch of sandal and boot on rock, but the sound seemed distant, and he seemed separated from them by more than mist. The reflected light of his shield glowed white on the whorls and eddies of the mist. He sought the markers as he moved, boulders with glowing sigils etched into the base. He found the first, the glowing rose of Amaunator’s dawn incarnation scribed into the stone.

  “We’re at the first marker,” he said. “Nald? Byrne? Eldris?”

  “With you,” they all answered.

  Two more markers and they’d be clear, the way etched into Vasen’s memory as clearly as the markers were etched into rock.

  In the churn of the mist he saw ghostly faces outlined, mouths open and full of secrets, eyes that were holes into which one could fall forever. Whispering from all around him, the sound like the hiss of falling rain, the words hard to distinguish, an eerie sibilance.

  A bearded face before him, mouth open in a scream.

  A woman’s visage to his left, eyes wide with terror.

  A child’s gaze, forlorn, lost.

  He kept his mind focused, his feet on the path, same as always.

  Snippets of phrases rose out of the inchoate storm of whispers.

  “The City of Silver,” said a man’s voice.

  “Elgrin Fau,” hissed a woman.

  Vasen ignored them, as he had countless times before.

  “You must free him,” said a boy’s voice.

  “You’re the heir. Write the story.”

  The words halted Vasen in his steps. They recalled to his mind the dreams he’d had of his father, the words of the Oracle.

  “Byrne?” he called. “Nald?”

  No response. Had he gotten separated? Had he lost his charges?

  “Eldris?”

  He turned a circle, realizing immediately that he’d made a mistake. The mist had scrambled his senses. Dizziness seized him. The world spun and he stumbled on a boulder, nearly fell. The light from his shield dimmed. Shadows poured from his flesh, mixed with the mist. He put his hand on the holy symbol at his throat, held onto it as if his life depended upon never letting go.

  The whispers intensified. The mist closed in on him, a funereal shroud. He muttered a prayer, tried to drown them out, but they grew closer, louder, a rush in his ears, the cascades of the valley falling all around him in a foam of voices.

  “Save him,” said a deep voice.

  “You must.”

  “Save him. Then write the story.”

  “Save who?” he shouted, but he already knew the answer.

  The air around him grew cold, freezing, knives on his flesh. His teeth chattered. He tried to speak, to call for his comrades, but frost rimed his lips and prevented speech. The wind picked up, pawed at his cloak with frozen fingers. The whispers of the spirits gave way to screams, prolonged wails of agony. He smelled brimstone, the stink of burning flesh.

  “What is happening?” he tried to shout, but no words emerged, just a croak and a cloud of frozen breath.

  The mist parted before him to reveal distant mountains larger than any he’d ever seen, jagged ice-covered towers that reached to a glowing red sky. Smoke poured into the sky in thick columns. He stood on a precipice overlooking a plain of ice. Below, he saw a mound of ice, like a cairn, alone in a flat frozen plain. Shadows curled out of cracks in the mound. A river of fire cut through the plain, veins of red in which, in which. . .

  “By the light,” he whispered, and sweated darkness.

  Souls burned in the river, their screams rising into the air with the smoke. Towering insectoid devils stabbed at them with long polearms, lifted them from the fire like speared fish.

  “Cania,” a deep, powerful voice said to his right.

  He turned but saw no one.

  “Is that where he is?” Vasen called. “In Hell? Tell me!”

  No answer. He turned back to look upon the horror once more, but the vision of Cania, of Hell, had faded. Warmth returned, as did the mist, as did the dizziness, the whispers.

  “Save him,” said another voice. “He is cold.”

  Vasen stumbled on legs gone weak, but before he fell a hand closed on his shoulder and pulled him roughly around. He brought his shield to bear, readied his blade.

  But it was Orsin. Orsin had pulled him around.

  “You wander,” the deva said. “Are you unwell?”

  “No. Yes. They showed me things, Orsin. Horrible things.”

  Orsin’s pupilless eyes fixed on Vasen, the pale orbs strangely analogous to the mist. Worry lines in his brow creased the lines of ink on his flesh.

  “I’ve seen nothing,” he said. “But I hear them. They whisper of Elgrin Fau, the City of Silver. They speak of your father. It was not so when I journeyed through the mist on my way to the temple. Then I heard only jabberings.”

  “It’s never been so,” Vasen said, his thoughts clearing. “And what’s the City of Silver? And how could they know of my father?”

  Orsin looked around as if he could decode an answer from the swirl of the mist, from the malformed faces staring out of the gray at them. “I don’t know. Maybe something has changed?”

  Vasen held onto the deva like a lifeline. “Changed. Aye.”

  Orsin patted Vasen on the shoulder. “We’ll speak more of this when we clear the mist.”

  Orsin’s words moored Vasen, reminded him of his duty. He shook his head to clear it, called out. “Eldris? Byrne? Nald? Speak!”

  One after another they called out, their voices not far from him.

  “And the pilgrims?” Vasen called, his voice hollow in the mist.

  “Accounted for,” answered Byrne.

  “All is well,” Orsin said. “It was you we worried after. You spoke strangely and walked off.”

  “And you followed? You could have been lost.”

  Orsin pulled back, showed Vasen his quarterstaff, scribed with lines, his flesh, made into a map from the tattoos that covered him. He smiled. “I seldom lose my path, Vasen.”

  Despite himself, Vasen smiled. “No, I suppose not. You have my thanks. Come on. Let’s get everyone clear of here.”

  Rather than walking a few paces behind, Orsin walked beside Vasen, to his right, and Vasen welcomed his presence. The spirits receded to silence, as if they’d had their say, and the column had only to manage the fog and switchbacks as they journeyed through the pass.

  “This is a maze,” Orsin said.

  “A challenge to even those who seldom lose their path, not so?”

  Orsin chuckled. “Very good.”

  “The pass has kept the abbey safe for a century. When he was only a boy born dumb, the Oracle entered his first seeing trance and led the survivors of the Battle of Sakkors through the pass.”

  “Sakkors,” Orsin said. “Where Kesson Rel fell.”

  “Yes,” Vasen said, and shadows leaked from his skin.

  A whisper went through the spirits of the mist.

  “He fell to your father and Drasek Riven and a Shadovar, Rivalen Tanthul,” Orsin said.

  “He fell, too, to the light of the servants of Amaunator. Among them my adoptive father’s sire, Regg, and Abelar Corrinthal, the Oracle’s father.”

&
nbsp; “Shadow and light working as one,” Orsin said.

  “Yes,” Vasen said, and eyed Orsin sidelong. The deva’s hand was over the holy symbol he wore under his tunic. Vasen continued, “And when the survivors reached the valley, the Oracle pronounced it the place where light would thrive in darkness. The abbey was built over the next decade and there it has stood since.”

  “I hear your pride in the accomplishment.”

  “The Order does Amaunator’s work here. Good work. I’m privileged to serve.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Orsin said. He walked in silence for a time, then said, “I’m pleased our paths crossed, Vasen.”

  “I share the sentiment. Although our meeting appears to have been no accident.”

  “No,” Orsin agreed. “No accident.”

  They said nothing more as they led the pilgrims out of the pass. As the mist thinned and finally parted, the dark sky spit a heavier rain.

  Chapter Six

  Vasen led the pilgrims down toward the rocky foothills of the Thunder Peaks. He stopped them there. Beyond the hills stretched the Sembian plains, a vast expanse of whipgrass dotted with large and small stands of broadleaf trees and pines. Occasional elms and maples, the giants of the plains, loomed like protective parents over the smaller trees. The bleak Sembian sky merged into the dark of the plains at the horizon line, the one blurring into the other. All was darkness and rain.

  Vasen scanned the sky for any sign of a Shadovar patrol. The floating city of Sakkors had not been seen so far north in a long while, but Vasen would take no chances with pilgrims in his charge. Now and again the Dawnswords had seen airborne Shadovar patrols, two or three soldiers mounted on the flying, scaled worms they called veserabs, but even those had grown uncommon. Vasen suspected the Shadovar had diverted the bulk of their forces toward Cormyr and the Dales. The Dawnswords scouted the area around the Thunder Peaks and knew a Sembian force was encamped on the plains south and west, blocking the passage between the southern Thunder Peaks and the sea. Probably to hold any forces from Cormyr that might otherwise try to aid the Dales, which had already endured months of attacks by Sembian forces.