The Godborn

by Paul S. Kemp

  The man’s jaw tightened as he chewed on rising anger. “I serve myself. And my brother.”

  “Your brother is gone. Whatever he was, that isn’t him.”

  Sayeed’s expression fell but only for a moment before he recovered his stoicism. “We were—”

  He cut himself short, shaking his head.

  Again, Rivalen knew his words before he spoke them. “You were cursed. But not by the archdevil?”

  “No, not by him. The Spellplague changed us.”

  “Ah,” Rivalen said with a nod. “But Mephistopheles promised you release.” Rivalen gestured at the bound devil, Sayeed’s transformed brother. “And that is how an archfiend honors his word.”

  The man glared at Rivalen, his hands opening and closing on the hilt of his sword. “A Shadovar is no better.”

  Rivalen smiled. “Oh, you are world-weary, Sayeed. I see it clearly. I’ve known others like you, many others.” His memory flashed on Tamlin Uskevren, whose pain Rivalen had used to twist the young nobleman to his ends. “The world has treated you harshly. Hope wanes. Despair rises, replaced by bitterness. It’s warranted. You’re afflicted by hardship. I was, too, once. The Lady offers a place to lay such weight.”

  Sayeed shook his head, looked away, but Rivalen saw something awaken behind the indifference. “The Lady? Shar?”

  He said the word as many did, in hushed, fearful tones.

  Rivalen stepped close to Sayeed, the two of them eye to eye, Sayeed caught up in Rivalen’s shadows.

  “Shar, yes. The Lady of Loss knows your pain. What burden do you bear, Sayeed brother of Zeeahd? I’m her servant. Confess it to me.”

  Sayeed swallowed. “No. It’s mine to bear.”

  Rivalen admired the man’s stubbornness. “Share it. Perhaps I can help ease the weight.”

  Sayeed stuck out his chin. “I require no help.”

  Rivalen recognized the ground Sayeed stood on, offering the last bit of defiance. He saw potential in the man, a possible use. His despair and bitterness ran deeper, perhaps, than even Brennus’s. Shar had put Sayeed in Rivalen’s path, and Sayeed was but a small step away from where Rivalen needed him to be.

  “Well enough, then,” Rivalen said. “Luck to you.”

  He turned and glided away, allowing Sayeed a few moments to think.

  “You’ll leave us?” Sayeed said to his back.

  “What are you and your cursed brother to me, Sayeed?”

  Rivalen started to gather the shadows around him.

  “Wait!” Sayeed called, and Rivalen knew from the man’s tone that he had him. He let his hand brush the holy symbol of the Lady he kept on an electrum chain about his neck.

  “You said you could help,” Sayeed said.

  “I said ‘perhaps I could help.’ You’re yet to give name to your affliction.”

  “My affliction,” Sayeed said, and started to pace in agitation. “My affliction.”

  Rivalen waited, letting matters take their course.

  Sayeed walked a circle, an animal filled with pent-up anger. His voice gained volume as he spoke. “My affliction is that I’m no longer a man. I don’t taste food or drink. I don’t take pleasure in a woman’s touch! I feel nothing! Nothing! Not even pain!”

  Before Rivalen could act, Sayeed slid his hand along the length of his sword. He didn’t wince. Blood poured from the wound, but only for a moment before his skin closed. He held up his hand for Rivalen to see. It was unmarred.

  “I’m not alive, but death is kept from me. Can you help me with that, Shadovar? Can you? Kill me if you can!”

  Rivalen thought of Shar’s eye, of The Leaves of One Night. He stepped close and put his hand on Sayeed’s shoulder.

  “I can help you. Indeed, I can.”

  Sayeed looked up, his eyes clear, as dead as those of a corpse. “I want . . . help.”

  Rivalen steered Sayeed around until he faced his transformed brother. “You’ll have it. And you will help me in the process. Will you do that, Sayeed? Help me? Help the Lady?”

  Rivalen felt Sayeed’s body sag at the request, but he nodded vacantly. “What things?”

  “A small thing, but important. I need you to read something, is all.”

  “Read something?”

  The man was lost, broken, as soulless as a living human could be. He was exactly what Rivalen needed. He would serve even better than Brennus.

  “I’ll explain in time. But now you must do something else.” He nodded at the bone devil. “Kill it. Kill what’s left of your brother. Kill what’s left of your life before today, before this moment.”

  Shaking his head, Sayeed tried to step back but Rivalen held him fast, shadows swirling around him. “That’s my brother. I can’t. I won’t.”

  Rivalen tightened his grip on Sayeed’s shoulder. A man who felt pain would have cried out. Sayeed gave no response.

  “That is, indeed, your brother, but you must do as I say. He’s a tool of Mephistopheles, Sayeed, and Mephistopheles betrayed your brother and you. But you will have your revenge. I vow it. You will see Mephistopheles suffer. But first, you must do as I’ve asked.”

  Sayeed stared at the bone devil, the towering fiend held helpless by Rivalen’s spell.

  He needed reassurance, so Rivalen gave it to him.

  “This is how it must be. Free him, Sayeed. Give him death. End his suffering.”

  Sayeed’s jaw tightened. He nodded, his mouth set, his brow furrowed. He took his blade in both hands. “Release him.”

  “There’s no—”

  “I won’t execute him while he is helpless!”

  “Very well.”

  A minor exercise of will freed the bone devil from the spell. Instantly, the creature rushed forward, bony claws raised high, the spike of its tail curled up over its head.

  Rivalen backed away as Sayeed ducked under the devil’s claw slash and sidestepped the spike of its tail, which drove deeply into the soil. Sayeed rode his momentum into a spinning slash that severed the devil’s leg and sent it toppling to the earth.

  Sayeed was atop it before it could rise to even a sitting position.

  “I hate you!” he screamed, and drove his blade into the devil’s chest again and again. “I hate you for this!”

  Rivalen didn’t know if Sayeed was speaking to him or his transformed brother or to Mephistopheles, and he didn’t care.

  “Your bitterness is sweet to the Lady,” he muttered.

  Sayeed would be perfect. Perfect.

  Presently it was over. The devil’s body was chopped apart, ichor staining the grass. Sayeed wiped his blade clean on the turf and sheathed his weapon over his back.

  “You did him a service,” Rivalen said. “And now you’ll do so for me. The Lady’s eye is on you, Sayeed. She sees you clearly.”

  He gathered the shadows about them both and rode the darkness from that place to Ordulin.

  Brennus materialized in his safe room in Sakkors, a vaulted, lead-lined chamber stocked with multifarious magic wands, staffs, scrolls, and potions, and warded with the most powerful abjurations he knew. Two iron golems greeted his arrival with creaky nods; the towering metal constructs were obliged to attack anything and anyone that appeared in the safe room unescorted by Brennus.

  He doubted his defenses would be enough to keep Rivalen out, should his brother choose to attack, but it would at least allow Brennus advance warning.

  He collapsed into a chair, the shadows about him whirling madly. His homunculi emerged from his cloak and, instead of taking their usual perch on his shoulders, curled up in his lap, shivering. He rubbed their heads and in time their shivering stopped. Brennus’s rage, however, did not abate.

  He reached into his cloak and removed his mother’s platinum necklace— the jacinths looked dull in the darkness, like extinguished stars—and the rose holy symbol once borne by Vasen Cale. He resolved to die before leaving his mother’s murder unavenged. He simply needed to find a weakness in Rivalen, a crack in his defenses.

&nbs
p; Rivalen’s words haunted him.

  Rivalen knew it all. Rivalen had foreseen it all. Brennus could not stop him, could not avenge his mother’s murder.

  “Rivalen is going to destroy the world,” he said.

  He would have done anything to stop Rivalen, to kill him, but Brennus could see no way to do so.

  He had to try to get to Cale’s son. He was missing something. He had to be missing something.

  Because if he wasn’t, Rivalen would soon kill everything.

  Vasen seemed to fall forever. He had no idea which way was up. He was turned around, air-starved, dying. He prepared to inhale a lungful of water, to end it all, when strong hands grabbed him by the cloak, felt for his arms, and pulled him upward with a lurch.

  He emerged into darkness, gasping, shadows churning around him. A drumming sounded in his ears, a rhythmic beat that seemed to shake his entire body. He heard a roar, like the cascades of the valley but more ominous. As his vision cleared and the shadows around him diminished, he expected to be staring into the golden eyes of Rivalen Tanthul. Instead, he found himself staring into the tattooed face of Orsin, the deva’s white eyes filled with concern.

  “He lives,” Orsin said.

  Vasen sat up with a lurch, coughing, spitting dark water. The drumming he’d heard was not coming from his ears, nor the rush from the cascades. He sat on a polished obsidian floor in a small, rectangular chamber . . . somewhere.

  The air, viscous with shadows, felt thick in his lungs. As he had back in the woods of the valley, he felt the shadows all around him, felt them everywhere, to the limit of his perception. And he was connected to them, tethered. A swirling mass of darkness obscured the floor in one side of the room.

  “That’s where we came out,” Orsin said.

  “Came out?” Vasen said. His mind was fuzzy.

  Gerak stood at a narrow window nearby, looking out. His body looked bunched with stress. The drumming and roar came from outside the window. “Can you stand?” Orsin asked him.

  When Vasen nodded, Orsin pulled him to his feet. His entire body ached and his chest still burned. The energy from Rivalen’s spell had left a painful scorched patch on the skin of his hand. He sheathed Weaveshear. The weapon felt at home on his belt.

  “Where are we?” Vasen asked.

  “You tell us,” Gerak said over his shoulder. “Come here. Look.” Vasen and Orsin joined Gerak at the window and both of them gasped. The narrow window focused the volume of the drumming and roaring and the sound hit them like a gale. The three comrades stood in a high tower of obsidian, part of a larger keep or castle that featured delicate spires and high, smooth walls, the whole of it awash in shadows.

  Outside the walls, surrounding it on all sides, was a horde of nightmarish size. Devils stood in ranks, thousands of them, some horned, armored, and as tall as giants. Others short and fanged, like the spined devils. Some stood as tall as giants, others as short as halflings. Some flew in the air on membranous wings. Some oozed or crawled. Large horned devils, their red skin emitting flames the same way Vasen’s skin emitted shadows, moved among the multitude. Weapons bristled everywhere: pikes, axes, swords. The size of the force took Vasen’s breath away. Shadows poured from his flesh. And throughout the horde the same heraldry was featured, huge oriflammes that showed a black hand and a sword, both sheathed in flames.

  “Gods,” Vasen breathed.

  “We’re in the Hells,” Gerak said, a hint of panic in his tone. “We must be.” Vasen felt the shadows behind him deepen, fill with power. He turned to see a short, lithe man step from the darkness, although the shadows clung to his form in a mist. A goatee hid a mouth that looked like it never smiled. His angular face, the dark skin pockmarked with scars, looked sharp enough to cut wood. Twin rapiers hung from his belt and he held a pipe in his hand. Black smoke curled up from the pipe to mix with the shadows.

  “You’re not in the Hells,” said the man, his accented voice rich with power. “You’re in the Shadowfell. And it’s about time. Things are moving quickly now, and so must we.”

  Orsin assumed a fighting stance while Gerak fumbled for an arrow.

  The man’s mouth formed a sneer, showing stained teeth. The shadows about him whirled. He drew on the pipe, inhaled deeply, blew it out in a dark cloud.

  “Wait,” said Vasen to his comrades, and held up his hand.

  “Thinking before you act,” the man said with an approving nod. “Your father was the same way. Most of the time.”

  “You’re Drasek Riven,” Vasen said. He had to be.

  Riven nodded, took another draw on the pipe.

  “The Left Hand of Shadow,” Orsin breathed.

  Riven looked sidelong at Orsin. “If you fall to your knees, shadowalker, I promise you I’ll stab you in the face.”

  Outside, the roar of the fiendish army and the beat of the drums rose higher, seemed to make the entire citadel shake.

  Riven seemed barely to notice. He had eyes only for Vasen. “We don’t have a lot of time for explanations. You’re going to have to do as I tell you.”

  As if to make his point, a blare of horns from outside sounded.

  “I don’t even know what’s happening,” Vasen said. “I just watched my abbey burn, saw the Oracle die. We fought devils, Shadovar—”

  “Shadovar? Which Shadovar?”

  “What?” Vasen said. He was still processing events.

  “Rivalen,” Orsin offered.

  Riven’s face darkened. Shadows swirled around him. “Rivalen left Ordulin? What did he say?”

  “He didn’t say much of anything,” Vasen said, and shadows boiled from his skin.

  Riven paced the room. “He saw you and let you go?”

  “We escaped,” Vasen said. “He didn’t let us do anything.”

  “What are you saying?” Orsin asked.

  “I’m saying you’re here because he let you go. If he wanted you dead, you’d be dead. I didn’t . . . see that.” He looked sharply at Vasen. “Do you feel anything unusual when you look at me?”

  Vasen shook his head. “I don’t understand. Should I?”

  Riven stared into his face. “He changed you, Vasen. Or rather I changed you. . . Shit, shit, shit. Did I miss something? What am I overlooking? I thought you’d know, that you’d come here and know.”

  Shadow churned around Vasen, too. “You thought I’d know what?”

  Riven whirled on him. “Know how to get this out of me! And out of Rivalen and Mephistopheles! You’re the key, Vasen! You’re supposed to be able to get the godhood out of all of us.”

  A long silence followed.

  “I don’t know how to do that,” Vasen said at last.

  Riven stared at him a long moment, their shadows, their lives, intersecting, crossing.

  “I see that,” he said at last, and took a step back. He exhaled, shadows churning around him. “Fine. Things are where they are. We have to keep going.”

  “Going where?” Gerak asked.

  “To the Hells,” Riven said. “Vasen is going to Cania to rescue his father. Erevis Cale is our best hope now.”

  “You’re mad,” Vasen said. “My father’s dead.”

  “No, Riven said. “He’s alive. Trapped in magical stasis. And you’re going to get him out.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The shadows blanketed Sayeed and he heard, or maybe felt, a rushing sound. When the darkness lifted, it revealed a ruined city shrouded in night. “Ordulin,” Rivalen said.

  “The maelstrom,” Sayeed said. “I was here when it was still a city.” “It’s something else now,” Rivalen said.

  Shattered, half-collapsed buildings dotted the area, jagged and crooked, like rotten teeth poking from the earth. Swirling shadows darkened the air. The wind blew in fierce gusts. Green lightning split the sky again and again. The ruins smelled like a graveyard, an entire city murdered and left on the face of the world to rot. Chunks of stone and statuary littered broken roads once filled with carriages and wagons and commer
ce. A hundred years ago, Sayeed had walked Ordulin’s streets under the sun. Now he walked its ruins in darkness, himself ruined.

  As they went Sayeed wiped his hands on his trousers, again and again, but whatever stained them would not come off to his satisfaction. He’d killed his own brother. He had no one, nothing for which to live. He had only a single desire, powerful and true, and that was to die. He was a hole. There’d be no filling him ever again.

  “It’s dark here,” he observed.

  Rivalen, half-merged with the shadows, his golden eyes like stars, said, “Always.”

  Thunder rumbled.

  “I want to die,” Sayeed blurted. The words sounded limp, dead as they exited his mouth. “You promised me that. I need to die.”

  “I know,” Rivalen said, and lightning lit the sky in veins of green. “I can oblige. Come.”

  Undead prowled the ruined city: wraiths, specters, living shadows. There were hundreds, thousands perhaps. They broke on Rivalen’s presence like water on stone, flowing around and over him, never approaching too closely. Rivalen said, “Many thousands of years ago I murdered my mother to show the Lady the truth of my faith.”

  Sayeed said nothing.

  “As she died, she asked for my hand.”

  They came to a wide flagged plaza. Building-sized chunks of dark stone littered it here and there, as if they’d rained from the sky. Hovering over the center of the plaza was a void, an emptiness. The sight of it made him dizzy and mildly nauseated. Paper flitted around it, into it, out of it, as if it were chewing on them and spitting them out.

  Sayeed could not keep his eyes on the void, not entirely. It seemed to slip away and he never quite saw it squarely. But he saw enough, he felt its emptiness, felt the bitterness that poured from it, the spite. It was a mirror.

  In it he saw himself.

  “Give me your hand,” Rivalen said.

  Sayeed turned, looked into Rivalen’s golden eyes, at his extended hand, the flesh swathed in shifting lines of shadow.