by Paul S. Kemp
“Give me your hand, Sayeed. You’ll have what you wish. I’d thought to have my brother’s . . . .aid in this, but you will do better.”
Sayeed extended his hand.
Rivalen took it, his flesh cold and dry, his grip like a vise.
“Come. You must stand before Shar’s eye. She must see you.” Rivalen pulled him along toward the void, the eye, the mouth, the hole. As he drew closer, he realized that the emptiness he’d felt, the pit in the center of his being, the hopeless feeling of loss, of solitude, was a trivial reflection of what he felt emanating from Shar’s eye.
“Wait,” he said, and tried to stop, to pull away from Rivalen. Rivalen’s grip tightened, a vise. “It’s too late for that.”
“No!” Sayeed said and tried frantically to pull away. “No, wait!” Rivalen pulled him along as if Sayeed were a child, the Shadovar’s strength preternatural. Another step, another.
“Stop! Stop!”
Shadows boiled around Rivalen. His golden eyes flashed. “You wanted death, Sayeed! You’ll have it! But first I need you to translate!” “No! No!”
For the first time in a hundred years Sayeed felt something. Shar’s eye put a seed of fear in him, and it soon blossomed into terror. He felt her regard emanating from the hole—the hate, the spite, the hopelessness, the unadulterated contempt for everything and anything. He screamed, his sanity slipping from him. Rivalen drove him to his knees before the eye. The wind rushed around him. The papers orbiting the eye, moving in and out of it, gathering in a cloud before him. Her eye bore down on him like all the weight in the world.
It pinioned him to the earth, tiny before it. He felt himself wither under her regard. He was an insignificant, trivial thing. He’d been such a fool, such a ridiculous fool. The Spellplague had changed him into something other than a man. . .
“Feast on her words,” Rivalen said, putting his hands on either side of Sayeed’s head.
But Sayeed had changed himself into something other than human, killed his own brother. Tears fell.
“Your bitterness is sweet to the Lady,” Rivalen said, and his fingers burrowed into Sayeed’s head, squeezing.
Pain lanced through Sayeed’s skull. He felt as if his eyes would pop from his head. His mouth opened wide in a scream that went unuttered, for the pages of the book floating in the air before him flew into his open mouth, one after another, rushing down his throat, filling his mouth, stuffing him.
He gagged, grunted, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, and through it all he felt Shar watching him, her eyes freighted with contempt.
Rivalen was holding little more than a rag doll in his hands, a hollow man useful now only as a vessel by which to translate the divine language of The Leaves of One Night. Not quite a corpse, not quite alive.
“Light is blinding,” Rivalen said, stating one of Shar’s Thirteen Truths as he forced dark, unholy energy into Sayeed’s limp form. “Only in darkness do we see clearly.”
Sayeed’s body spasmed, charged with baleful energy. Rivalen released him and Sayeed slumped to the ground, an empty penitent with his back to the sky and his eyes to the ground, suspended forever between life and death, able to participate in neither.
Sayeed’s bitterness and hopelessness, the essential core of his being, were the reagents that would transform Shar’s words into something her nightseer could understand.
Impatient for revelation, Rivalen tore Sayeed’s cloak and tunic from his back, ripped his armor from his torso and cast it aside, exposing the bare skin of Sayeed’s back. Small black lines squirmed under his skin, causing it to bubble and warp, the ink of Shar’s malice. The lines twisted and curled, formed themselves into tiny characters, and then into words, and words into promises.
Riven read them eagerly, the holy word of his goddess written in darkness on the skin of a man trapped in perpetual despair. He vacillated between elation and apprehension. The transfigured words of The Leaves of One Night were said to state the moment of Shar’s greatest triumph and the moment of her greatest weakness.
He leaned forward, traced a trembling finger along Sayeed’s back as he read. Shadows poured from Rivalen’s flesh, knowledge from Sayeed’s.
As Rivalen read, he began to understand. And as he began to understand, he began to laugh.
Rain fell. Thunder rumbled. Shadows swirled.
He looked up into Shar’s eye and wept.
“All is meaningless,” he said, intoning Shar’s fourteenth, secret Truth. “And nothing endures.”
He stood, the wind whipping his cloak and hair, and looked over his shoulder to the west.
They’d be coming, and their bitterness would be sweet to the Lady.
“Run to your father, little Cale,” Rivalen said. “Then bring everyone to me.”
Surprised silence greeted Riven’s words. Gerak broke it.
“This is madness. You can’t, Vasen. This is a fight for gods, not men.” “He must,” Riven said, and his one eye bored into Vasen. “You must.” “I’ll do it,” Vasen said without any hesitation. “When?”
“Now,” Riven said.
“I’ll come, too, of course,” said Orsin.
“Of course you will,” Riven said. “After a hundred years, you shadowalkers are still the same. All balls and no sense.”
Orsin grinned. “A compliment from a god?”
“Take it as you wish,” Riven said, but his tone indicated that he had, indeed, meant it as a compliment.
“Gerak, you can stay here,” Vasen said, then looked to Riven. “He can stay here, yes?”
Riven shrugged. “He can, but I won’t be able to look out for him. We have to move. Come on.”
He headed off through a door and down a hall, and the three men fell in behind him.
“I don’t need looking out for,” Gerak snapped.
“If you stay here you might,” Riven said.
Ten steps later, Gerak said, “I’ll come.”
“Gerak. . .” Vasen began.
Gerak cut him off. “Where else would I go?”
“So we’re all madmen. Well enough.”
As they hurried through the shadowed, stone corridors and staircases of the Citadel of Shadow, two fat dogs fell in beside Riven, trotting and puffing along. Like Riven, they seemed clothed in shadows.
“My girls,” Riven explained with a father’s pride. The dogs took a liking to Gerak, and despite the woodsman’s dark mood, he made a point to pet them as he walked.
“Good dogs,” Gerak said.
Riven descended a stairway, picking up his pace. Outside, the drums and horns of the host of the Hells continued to thump and bray.
“They’ll be attacking soon,” Riven said. “You need to be gone before that.” “You going to hold them off alone?” Gerak asked. “Where are your forces?”
“They’re around,” Riven said.
“You’ll send us to the Hells?” Vasen asked Riven.
Riven nodded. “I’d free Cale myself but the moment I showed, Mephistopheles would sense me there. Everything would fall apart.” “What’s everything?” Orsin asked.
“Wish I knew,” Riven said.
“How will we get back?” Orsin asked.
“Cale,” Riven said.
“Cale?” Vasen asked. “What if he can’t?”
“He can. He must. Vasen, you can free the divinity in me, in Rivalen, and in Mephistopheles. When you do that, Mask will return. And when he returns, the Cycle of Night will be stopped.
“What’s the Cycle of Night?” Gerak asked.
“I don’t have time for all of this!” Riven snapped. He inhaled to calm himself and looked at Vasen. “You say you don’t know how to do it. I believe you. So Cale must. He must, Vasen. Mask kept him alive and in stasis for a reason. He’ll be able to get you out of there.”
“And if he can’t?” Vasen asked.
“Then we all die. And eventually Shar gets her way, restarts the Cycle of Night, and all of Toril dies, too. That’s the shape of it. W
ell enough? Vasen nodded, trying not to show how overwhelmed he felt. “Well enough.” Riven held out a hand. On his palm sat an opalescent black sphere, about the size of a sparrow’s egg. “This is a sending. Use it when you have your father out. Break it and speak and I’ll hear. Clear?”
Vasen secreted the small gemstone in one of his belt pouches. “Clear.” They stood before a pair of large doors that Vasen assumed must open out onto the plain. The sound of the army outside caused the doors to vibrate.
Dust floated in the air.
“Question,” Orsin said to Riven.
Riven raised his eyebrows, waiting.
“It’s personal.”
Riven tapped a foot impatiently. “You want a kiss?”
Orsin laughed.
“Come on, man,” Riven said. “Ask it.”
Orsin said, “You want the divinity out? That’s what you said. But why would you go back to being a man after being a god? How can you go back?” Riven stared at Orsin a long time. “I never did like you shadowalkers much.” Orsin stared at him, but said nothing.
Riven eyed each of them in turn. “When I open those doors, you just wait here, no matter what happens out there. When the time is right, I’ll send you to Cania. Move fast, free your father, and get out. He’s trapped under a cairn of ice and shadow.”
The three men nodded. Shadows swirled rapidly around Vasen. His heart hammered his ribs.
“After you free him,” Riven said. “Tell him to take you to the plaza in Ordulin where he and I faced Kesson Rel. He’ll know where I mean.” Gerak said, “Ordulin’s in ruins, haunted.”
“What’s that to you now?” Riven said. “You’re standing in the Shadowfell.
Soon you’ll stand in the Eighth Hell. How’s that for a daytrip, woodsman?” He thumped Gerak on the shoulder and the bowman, despite himself, grinned. Riven said, “Ordulin is where this ends. One way or another.” Shadows leaked from Vasen’s flesh. He thought of the Oracle, his father, Derreg, his mother. “What’ll happen in Ordulin?”
“The end happens in Ordulin,” Riven said. Then, to Vasen, “Use Weaveshear to cut through Mephistopheles’s wards around your father’s cairn. You tell Cale . . . it all comes down to him.”
“I will,” Vasen said.
“I’ll send you to Cania when the time is right. Be ready.”
“When will the time be right?” Orsin asked.
“When I get Mephistopheles to show,” Riven said. He winked. “Shouldn’t take long.”
He touched the double doors and they swung open and the blast of sound from the army almost knocked them over. The stink of brimstone flowed in, filled the air.
Riven had his sabers in hand. “Good luck,” he said to the three companions, then darted out the doors in the cloud of shadow. He shouted as he went, his voice a match for the drums of Cania’s legions.
“To me, dead of Elgrin Fau! Once more to me!”
A great moan went up. It seemed to come from everywhere, from below Vasen’s feet, from the walls of the Citadel of Shadow, from the air itself. The three men stared, awestruck, and thousands upon thousands of living shadows, human-shaped but dark and cold, emerged from the earth, from the walls of the Citadel, from the shadowed air. Their red eyes glowed in the darkness, a constellation of coals and hate, as they swarmed forth behind Riven. “Those are the guardians of the pass,” Vasen breathed, his flesh growing goose pimples. “The Oracle knew all along. He must have sent them.” A keening and more moans sounded from the left and right, from above.
Out of the mountains from which the Citadel was carved swooped a black tide of more undead—towering nightwalkers, clouds of shadows, keening banshees, wraiths, specters, and ghosts. It was as though the entire Shadowfell had vomited forth its denizens, tens of thousands of them to face the legions of Mephistopheles. The air was black with undead, and leading them all, swathed in shadows, bounding across the plains, was Drasek Riven, the God of Shadows.
“Gods,” Gerak said, wide-eyed, his bow slack in his hands. Orsin had his holy symbol in hand and he prayed softly over it, watching his god in the flesh.
Vasen looked away from the battle, took his tarnished silver holy symbol in hand, the rose given him by the Oracle, and intoned his own prayer. “Light, wisdom, and strength, Dawnfather,” he said. “Light, wisdom, and much strength.”
Riven sprinted out to face thousands of devils, the dead of Elgrin Fau flew behind him like a black fog, rose out of the earth in the thousands. Riven picked up the mind link left in his consciousness by Magadon. Meet me in Ordulin, Mags, he projected. The plaza in the center of the maelstrom. I don’t know how this is going to end. Cale will be there. Just be ready.
Riven’s mental voice reverberated through Magadon’s consciousness like a gong. His adrenaline spiked. He stood.
“Cale,” Magadon said, and grinned.
I need you now, Magadon projected to the Source. Will you help me?
From the cold embers where the last flickers of the Source’s consciousness still glowed, he received an affirmative answer.
I’m coming to you, Magadon said.
He pictured the huge chamber in the center of the inverted mountain in which the Source floated. He’d been there before, when he’d lost himself. Now he’d go there again, now that he’d found himself. He pictured it in his mind, as clearly as if he were looking right at it. He drew on his mental energy, orange light haloed his head, and he moved himself there.
The Source, a huge, perfectly symmetrical red crystal, hung unsupported in the air, perpendicular to the smooth stone floor. Its facets hummed with power, power that kept an entire city afloat.
The hemispherical chamber in which the Source had lived and dreamed and felt and hoped for thousands of years had no doors. The Source’s home was a cyst in the core of the mountain on which Sakkors floated, an abscess, with no means of non-magical ingress or egress. The Source glowed red, bathing the large chamber in light the color of blood. The fading but still regular waves of its mental emanations struck Magadon with the regularity of a heartbeat.
The semicircular ceiling of Source’s chamber was crafted into polished rectangular plates that reflected the image of the Source over and over again, reflected Magadon’s image over and over again, a reminder of the thousand lives they’d lived together in the Source’s dreams.
Magadon did not draw on the Source’s power, not yet, but the air was so rich with it that some diffused into him without his intent. His mind expanded. His thoughts sharpened. His power doubled, tripled. He smiled at the rush, but held onto himself, held onto his purpose.
Please take Sakkors toward Ordulin. As fast as you can.
The Source did not respond. Its consciousness was floating deep in its dying dreams.
Magadon drew on some of the power suffusing the air around him, used it to burrow his thoughts deep into the Source’s mindscape.
Can you hear me, my lovely? There’s nothing to fear. Can you take Sakkors toward Ordulin? As fast as you can? Can you do that?
He smiled with relief when the Source answered him.
The entire city lurched as it suddenly slowed, stopped, changed direction, and flew toward the Ordulin maelstrom at speed.
He hoped Sakkors’s citizens would realize that something had gone wrong and start leaving the city. If he had to, he could use the Source’s power to augment his own and send everyone on Sakkors a powerful mental compulsion to leave. Whether they would be able to get off a floating city zooming through the sky was, of course, another matter.
Brennus cursed in frustration. Even with the rose holy symbol in his hand, his scrying spells could not pick up Vasen Cale.
He was about to start another divination when Sakkors lurched to a stop, causing him to stagger. His scrying cube shifted position, its weight causing it to score the stone floor as it slid, the sound of its movement like a scream. Through his windows, he heard stone crack outside, the rumble of a collapsing building, the shouts of citizens. His homunculi, sen
t skittering across the polished stone floor, loosed a string of expletives.
“What just happened?” he asked, but there was no one in the room to answer him.
Without warning, the city started moving again, to the southeast, and fast, faster than it had ever moved before.
More cracking and rumbling from outside, more shouts. The city’s structures were not built to withstand such movement.
Brennus ran to a window, trailed by his homunculi. He saw nothing to indicate an attack, nothing to . . .
And then he realized what must have happened. Something was wrong with the mythallar that powered the city. He knew it was sentient, unlike the mythallar that powered Thultanthar. Had it gone mad? Was it being controlled?
And then he realized something else.
Sakkors was moving directly toward Ordulin, toward Rivalen. He cursed, hurriedly composed a sending to his father.
Something is wrong with Sakkors’s mythallar. The city is speeding toward Ordulin. Rivalen may have control. Come if you can.
“Stay here,” Brennus said to his homunculi. He renewed the various magical wards that protected him, drew the shadows about him, pictured in his mind’s eye the chamber in which the Source floated, and moved himself there.
The moment he arrived in the chamber, a knife stab of pain in his skull sent him to his knees. He groaned and the shadows around him whirled.
“Rivalen!” he said through gritted teeth. Somehow his brother must have . . .
He felt a consciousness sifting through his brains, sorting through his thoughts. Not Rivalen, then.
“Prince Brennus,” said a voice. “I wonder if you remember me.”
The voice sounded familiar to Brennus, but he could not quite place it.
“You and your brother took me prisoner and tortured me. Long ago. Forced me to awaken the Source.”
“The Source?” At first Brennus did not understand the reference. “You mean the mythallar?” Realization dawned. “You’re the mindmage. Magadon Kest.”
A spike of pain in his temples made him wince. His head felt as if a hot poker had been driven through his skull. He could not organize his thoughts enough to raise a defense. His wards were useless against mind magic.