Shadowbred

by Paul S. Kemp

  Elyril popped the snuffbox with her thumb. The piquant, bitter aroma of dried and powdered minddust filled her nostrils. The drug was a poor substitute for Volumvax’s touch, but she found it pleasing nevertheless. She’d once heard from an apothecary that prolonged minddust use drove its users mad. Elyril found the notion absurd. She’d been using the powdered leaf for nearly a decade and showed no ill effects.

  She took a pinch between her fingers, brought it to her nose, and inhaled sharply. The drug danced over the back of her throat, tickled her senses. She felt the effects almost instantaneously. Her head went light, she heard a melody in the crackling of the fire, and the hairs on her arms stood on end, tingled in the air.

  She caught the servant-boy watching her from the corner of his eye as he leaned over her bed and pulled in the sheets and pillow. He bunched the bedding into a ball, bowed—Elyril heard a poem in the tinkling of the head wrap’s bells—and prepared to leave.

  Elyril held out the snuff box and purred, “Do you wish to try some?”

  He froze for a moment, shook his head, and refused to look at her.

  “I wish you to try some,” she said. “Come here.”

  He lifted his eyes to hers for only a moment before restoring his gaze to her feet. She could smell the fear in his sweat and it intoxicated her nearly as much as the minddust. She took another pinch from the box, inhaled it, and laughed aloud.

  “Come,” she ordered. “This instant.”

  He took a slow step toward her, another, and she glided the rest of the distance to him. Her shift clung to her as she moved and showed her body to best effect.

  The boy trembled, uncertainty and fear writ clear on his troubled brow.

  “You are a pretty boy,” she said.

  Still looking at the floor, the boy said, “The mistress is gracious, but I should see to these sheets immediately, lest the stain become difficult to remove.”

  Elyril smiled and clapped her hands. The boy was clever, moreso than most. Mirabeta’s breeding program had resulted in a fine specimen.

  “You are articulate,” she said, and leaned in close to let her breath warm his cheek. Before he could frame an answer, she lightly ran a fingertip over his arm.

  Startled by her touch, the boy stumbled backward a step and nearly fell down. The bells on his wrap tinkled loudly. Their melody told her to kill the boy.

  The youth scrambled to his feet, holding the bedding defensively between himself and Elyril. Vomit from the sheets smeared his clothing. “Mistress, I—”

  Kefil padded around the bed and the boy froze. Kefil sniffed around his legs.

  May I maul him? Kefil projected.

  Elyril considered it but decided that she did not want blood in her chamber. She could chop him up and feed him to the dogs later.

  Devour his shadow, she answered.

  The mastiff seized the boy’s shadow from the floor, shook it, and devoured it as it screamed. The boy never made a sound, never moved. Kefil finished his repast and let out a satisfied grunt. He sank to the floor beside the boy.

  “What is your name?” Elyril asked the slave at last, keeping her voice level. She liked to know the names of those she would sacrifice to Shar.

  “Mard, Mistress,” the boy said, and she could hear the beginnings of tears in his voice.

  “Mard,” she said. She let the word hang between them for a long, delicious moment before deciding to end the game. “Mard, do not get your tears on my sheets. Begone from me. Alert one of the kennel boys that Kefil requires a walk.”

  Mard stared at her for a moment, as if unsure what she had said.

  “This instant,” she ordered.

  “Thank you, Mistress,” he said, and fled the room.

  She watched him go, thinking how pleasant it would be to hear him scream as he died.

  Kefil belched, sated on shadows.

  In the darkened chambers of his mansion in Shade Enclave, Rivalen stared at his coin collection and let the ache in his temples subside. He always found mental contact with Elyril uncomfortable. Her minddust madness polluted the connection and made his head throb, and it had grown worse over the years. Still, she was a useful tool to him as he prepared to bring his plan to fruition. The most high wanted a new Netherese empire. His goddess wanted the Shadowstorm. Rivalen knew that the two goals were compatible. He would use the one to bring about the other. And a Sembian civil war would be the means.

  Over the centuries, Rivalen had spent much intellectual energy finding ways to make the requirements of his faith compatible with his duty to his city, his people, and his father. So far, he had been successful, but Hadrhune’s words made him worry that the day would arrive when he would not.

  Rivalen did not know the entirety of the Lady’s plan—such was the nature of Shar’s faith. Through the years, Shar had revealed to Rivalen only bits at a time. But Rivalen had faith that she would reveal to him what he needed to know when he needed to know it, and that she would reward his successes. While he dared not hope to be Shar’s Chosen, after experiencing firsthand the power of Mystra’s Chosen, he had allowed himself to … consider the possibility.

  He dismissed such thoughts as unproductive and continued with his sendings. He activated the magic of his sending ring and thought of another of his Sembian agents, the Sharran dark brother in Selgaunt. The familiar tingle of the magic tickled his scalp. He sensed the channel opening.

  Prince Rivalen, answered the dark brother, an heir to a wealthy Sembian family.

  Rivalen knew him to be an effective servant of the Lady, posing as a rich dilettante.

  Is all prepared? Rivalen asked.

  As well as it can be. Construction proceeds apace. None suspect the truth.

  See that it is complete within the next three months, Rivalen said. There will be still more for you to do afterward.

  The night shroud you, Nightseer.

  And you, Rivalen answered, and terminated the magical connection.

  Rivalen went on to contact the leaders of each Sharran cell in Sembia, over two dozen of them. Each wore a sending ring paired to his master ring, though none knew the other powers of the rings. To each, he gave a variation of the same message: Be prepared. The Shadowstorm is brewing.

  None asked him questions, for they all knew they would receive no answers.

  Prior to Rivalen’s involvement, the Sharran cells in the heartlands had operated independently, mostly ignorant of each other. But after Variance, at Rivalen’s command, had recovered The Leaves of One Night, Shar had revealed to him the identities of the leaders of the cells. One by one, he and Variance had contacted the cells and brought them all under his leadership, until finally Rivalen commanded the grandest conspiracy in Faerûn. A small army of Sharrans lurked beneath the veneer of Sembian society, eating away at the core.

  His sendings complete, Rivalen relaxed by sipping tea and examining his coin collection. He stored his coins in a large case of magically hardened glass, each piece placed in a black velvet setting. He had an electrum falcon from the year of Cormyr’s founding, one-hundred-year-old gold belbolts from Chessenta, a cursed copper fandar from Amn that caused the bearer’s business decisions to go poorly, a magical platinum Calishite kilarch that returned to its spender thrice, and a host of other coins, both magical and mundane, from all across Faerûn, from almost all eras of its history. He looked to the empty place in his collection where he had kept his Sakkoran thurhn. The hole in his collection reminded him of the magnitude of his tasks. He had many holes to fill in the coming years.

  He finished his tea and turned his mind to the first of his holes—the problem of awakening the sentience in Sakkor’s mythallar. He would need Brennus’s divinations to find the mind mage.

  CHAPTER THREE

  30 Eleint, the Year of Lightning Storms

  The sight of the oak brought a smile to Magadon’s face. He had passed the soaring old tree many times in his journeys to and from Starmantle, though it had been almost a year since he had se
en it last. It looked almost exactly as he remembered it—a lone soldier standing sentry over an expanse of knee-high whip grass. Other trees dotted the plain here and there, but none were as large as the oak. He was their general.

  Magadon ignored the chatter from the camp behind him and ran his fingertips over the tree’s bole. The deep ridges of the bark and the size of the bole put the tree’s age somewhere between seventy and eighty winters—a grand old man. A few tumors bulged here and there from the trunk, and the crotch showed a ragged scar from a recent lightning strike, but Magadon thought the tree hale. The world had thrown another year at it, and there it stood.

  Magadon figured there was a lesson in that. Too bad he had not learned it sooner. Magadon had not had the oak’s strength. The last year had broken him.

  “Or bent me, at least,” he murmured.

  The oak’s leaves were changing from green to autumn red. They looked beautiful even at night, especially at night, framed against the starry sky and glinting in the silver moonlight of the newly risen crescent of Selûne and her Tears.

  Magadon flattened his palm against the oak. He had missed the tree, or he had missed … the part of his life it represented.

  But he was reclaiming that part of his life, reclaiming himself.

  Droppings at the base of the tree caught his eye. He knelt to examine them, and recognized raccoon pellets. He stood, smiling. Things were coming back to him. He had not forgotten his woodlore.

  A soft skitter sounded up in the tree. Magadon looked up and found two pairs of masked eyes peeking down at him—a mother raccoon and one of her young. He would not have seen the creatures but for the nightvision granted him by his fiendish blood.

  “You’ve picked a good home, mother,” he said to the larger raccoon.

  Mother and baby cocked their heads to the side, chittered, and ducked back into their hidden den.

  Magadon patted the tree’s trunk.

  “Can you bear some more company, old man? I promise you will find me an easy guest.”

  The oak kept its own counsel, so Magadon unslung his pack—stuffed full with gear, as always—and sat with his back against the trunk, facing the camp. The campfire was going strong, and merchants and men-at-arms sat around it on barrels, crates, and logs, talking, drinking, laughing.

  Magadon stretched out his legs, interlaced his fingers behind his neck, and blew out a sigh. The oak felt good at his back. His friend Nestor had once said, “There’s naught steadier than an old oak.” Magadon knew it to be true. And he knew there was much to be said for steadiness.

  He hoisted his waterskin in remembrance of Nestor and took a long drink. Thinking of Nestor and his death brought back a wash of memories, some good—of Erevis, Riven, and Jak—and some bad—of the Sojourner, the slaads, the Weave Tap, and … the Source.

  Recalling the Source made him squirm. He cleared his throat and tried to forget what it had shown him, what he had known, what he had been, for those few moments of contact. But memories were stubborn things.

  He unclenched his hands from behind his neck and held them before his face. A tremor shook them, softly at first, but growing stronger. He knew what was coming. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and waited. He had seen the same shaking in minddust addicts who had gone too long without their snuff.

  The need came on him, the hunger. A tic caused his right eye to twitch.

  The Source had given him so much knowledge, so much power. He could have done such good with it….

  He should find it, go to it, and bond with it once more.

  “No,” he said, and shook his head. Even if he had surrendered to his need, he could not have gone to it. The Source lay at the bottom of the Inner Sea, sticking out of the head of a creature as large as a city.

  Magadon recognized what was happening and fought, as he did every day, to keep hold of himself. His mental addiction to the Source had caused him to lose himself once. An entire year of his life had vanished into a haze. He would not allow it to happen again.

  He took a deep, shaky breath, felt the oak at his back, the breeze on his face, and the clean air in his lungs, and heard the laughter of the caravaneers, and rode out the pull.

  After a time, it passed, more quickly than the day before. He was beating it. The realization strengthened him further.

  Another chitter came from above. He looked up to find not two, but a row of six raccoon faces staring down at him, presumably the mother and all of her young. He could not help but smile at their wide-eyed, curious expressions. One of the young climbed over another and the mother chittered at them.

  “Very well,” he said. “I will be on my way, but only after I eat.”

  The raccoons continued to stare at him with bright eyes through their masks.

  Magadon pulled a half-wheel of cheese and two mostly-brown apples from a leather bag in his backpack. He habitually ate alone, separating himself from the caravaneers. He did not quite feel up to companionship. He thought the men of the caravan decent fellows, but he needed meditation more than company. Or so he told himself.

  The raccoons chittered at him in irritation.

  He took another bite of apple. “You don’t frighten me,” he said to them with a smile. “I have seen angry eyes behind a mask before.”

  He took another bite of apple and noticed the black, clawed nails that had once been his normal fingernails. He sank them into the apple to hide them.

  Inexplicably, his contact with the Source had changed not only his mind but also his body, somehow stirring the blood of the archdevil father that polluted his veins. As his mental powers had expanded, his body had come to more closely resemble that of his diabolical sire. As had his proclivities.

  Soon after his separation from the Source, the nightmares had begun. The Nine Hells haunted his dreams. When he slept, he saw souls burning, writhing, screaming in pits of fire while leering devils looked on. The visions had grown worse over time. He felt as if they were moving toward some climax that would drive him mad. For months, he had feared sleep.

  He had grown desperate, had sublimated his desire for the Source and his need to escape the dreams by turning first to drink, and when that did not stupefy him adequately, to drugs. He had lost himself for months. The dreams had not stopped, his need for the Source had not stopped, but he had been so dulled that they had bothered him less.

  He scarcely remembered those days. He did remember that during the all-too-rare moments of clear-headedness, he had considered reaching out with his mind to Erevis or Riven, his friends, but had lacked the courage. His stupor had not dulled his shame over what he had become. He had not wanted his friends to know of it.

  Besides, each of them had their own burdens to carry.

  The visions of the Hells had eventually left his dreams and invaded his waking hours. He’d hallucinated immolations on the city streets at midday, heard his father’s voice in the call of street vendors, seen devils in the darkness of every alley. He was falling into madness, but could not stop the descent.

  Blood of my blood, his father assured him in a voice smoother than Calishite velvet. I can end all this and give you what you want, what you need.

  Magadon had never been sure if the voice had been real or imagined, but he had been tempted. He awoke one night in a dust den, his shirt stained with blood—someone else’s. He’d known then that he had to do something to save himself or he would die, in spirit if not in body.

  Ironically, the Source, by expanding his mental powers, had given him the tool he needed. He used it, performing a kind of psychic chirurgery on his own mind, walling off most of the dark, addicted portions of his consciousness from the rest. He likened it to cutting off a gangrenous limb, but this was more like splintering himself. He’d had to divide himself to save the whole. He could not cut off all of the addiction or all of the dark impulses, but he had severed most of them from his core.

  And it worked. Mostly.

  He still dreamed of the Hells. His body told him t
hat he had not slept well in months, but his conscious mind did not remember. That was the important thing. He worried what kind of rot was occurring within him, unnoticed behind the mental wall, but he figured a man half-saved was better than a man wholly-damned.

  A loud round of laughter from the merchants shook Magadon from his ponderings. One of the merchants, a brown-haired man with a pot belly and receding hairline, stood up and called over to him. Magadon thought he remembered his name was Grathan.

  “Woodsman! We’ve a wager here. We all know that you never doff that hat.”

  “Even when you sleep,” one of the men-at-arms shouted.

  Grathan nodded. “Even when you sleep. I say you’ve something even more peculiar than your eyes under it.”

  Magadon’s eyes—colorless but for the pupils—often drew comment. He had explained them to the merchants as a defect of birth, and he supposed it was, coming as it did from his fiendish blood. Most called them “asp eyes” because they looked like single pips on the dice: an unlucky roll.

  “A scar or somesuch, perhaps,” Grathan said.

  “Or maybe a balder head than Grathan’s,” shouted another of the merchants, bringing the rest to hoarse laughter.

  “That’d be bald, indeed! A scar’d be better.”

  Grathan waited for the laughter to die down, then gestured at a young merchant who sat near him. “Tark here says you wear it out of superstition, for luck or somesuch. Which is it? There are twenty silver falcons to the man with the right of it.”

  Magadon pushed his floppy, wide-brimmed hat back on his head, though he took care to keep it over his horns.

  “This hat?”

  “None other,” said the merchant.

  Magadon decided to amuse himself by telling them the truth. “I wear it to hide the devil horns sticking from my brow. Or somesuch. And that makes you both as wrong as an orc in a dwarfhold, so you can add the twenty falcons to my fee.”

  The merchants and men-at-arms loosed raucous guffaws.