by Paul S. Kemp
Cale’s skin continued to close, pulling the exposed threads of his veins and arteries back into his flesh. Darkness swirled protectively around him, comforting him, sheltering him. Riven’s hands darkened and he touched them to Cale. More healing energy flowed into him.
With Riven’s aid, he stood.
Magadon stood under the mythallar, small and emaciated. He looked as if he had not eaten in days. He held his thin arms up so that his hands touched the crystal’s surface. Black veins grew out of the mythallar and twined into Magadon’s hands, forearms, and biceps. It looked as if the crystal were eating Magadon, one small bite at a time, beginning with his fingertips.
Magadon wore a vacant expression and his pupilless eyes showed no white; instead, they glowed red, the same red as the mythallar. The horns in his brow had grown a full finger’s length since the last time Cale had seen him. The tattoo on his arm—a red hand shrouded in dark flames, the symbol of Magadon’s father—stood out markedly against his pale skin.
“Get him free of it,” Cale said to Riven. His voice was wet with gore.
Magadon cocked his head and said slowly, “Erevis?”
Cale gritted his teeth as his body painfully knit back together.
“We’re here, Mags,” Cale said, and nearly fell. “Riven and I are both here. Get him, Riven.”
He knew Rivalen would be coming.
Riven moved warily under the huge crystal and put his hands on Magadon’s shoulders. Riven was as gentle with Magadon as Cale had seen him with his dogs.
“It’s part of him,” Riven said, nodding at the Source’s veins that grew into Magadon’s flesh.
“Leave me,” Magadon said, and grinned like a madman. He showed fangs for eyeteeth. “There’s power here. And wonders. Leave me. I am content.”
Cale remembered the kraken, its mind lost in the false world of the Source. He remembered Magadon had said to him once that contact with the Source exacted a price. He was seeing it firsthand.
Get me out, Magadon said in Cale’s mind.
Cale tried to walk, found that his legs could support him, and moved to Riven’s side. He threw aside his cloak, soaked as it was with blood.
“We pull him out or cut him out,” Cale said.
“I will harm you if you try,” Magadon said absently.
I will not allow it, but you must hurry, Magadon projected.
The shadows across the room started to deepen and churn.
“Pull him,” Cale said in alarm, and whispered a healing spell to accelerate his recovery. Mask’s healing energy warmed him, eased the pain.
Riven tried to pull Magadon free, failed. Cale assisted and the two Chosen of Mask tried to pull their friend free of his addiction.
The veins of the Source started to give way. Magadon screamed as the strings grew taught, ripped his flesh. Blood oozed from his arms. Cale watched glowing eyes form in the darkness across the chamber. Riven saw them, too. They pulled harder. Magadon groaned as a number of black veins, glistening with blood, snaked out of his skin, but Magadon did not come free. He dangled there, a macabre marionette.
“Stop! Leave me and I will give you what you need to defeat the Shadovar, Erevis. The whole power of the Source channeled into one weapon. Here. Now.”
Magadon and the Source flared and pulsed rapidly.
Power went into Weaveshear. The blade vibrated in Cale’s hand. Shadows poured from it, darker than before, and spiraled around them. With so much power diverted from the mythallar to Cale’s blade, Sakkors began to slowly descend.
Cale watched Rivalen and the two other Shadovar emerge fully from the darkness, their glowing eyes wide as their city started to lower back into the sea.
“Your blade,” Magadon said, his voice far away. “It will absorb even their shadow magic spells. Cut them down, Erevis. The power of an entire city is in your hand. Just leave me. You are my friend. Leave me.”
Cale hesitated, tempted. Magadon grinned, nodded, his eyes pulsing in time with the Source.
Free us! Magadon screamed in Cale’s head. He is almost gone!
Rivalen pulled a thin black blade from the scabbard at his belt. The pommel, inset with an amethyst, was tinged with purple light.
“Give me the power of the Source, Magadon,” Rivalen said.
Magadon laughed. “No. I gave it to him. I am free of you.”
Rivalen’s eyes widened and all three shades began to incant.
“Pull him loose,” Riven said to Cale.
“No. You are my friend,” Magadon said again. “Leave me.”
“I am your friend,” Cale said. “That’s why I can’t leave you.”
Cale slashed the exposed veins hanging between Magadon and the Source.
Magadon screamed and collapsed. The sinewy cords spat sparks of red energy and squirmed back into the crystal.
Rivalen’s companion fired a blistering beam of green energy that hit Cale in the chest. Cale’s flesh repelled the magic and it dissipated harmlessly.
“I will return for you,” Cale said to Rivalen, and pointed the charged Weaveshear at him.
“We will be here,” Rivalen said.
Cale imagined the Wayrock in his mind. His mind was cloudy, the image faint. He held onto it as best he could, wrapped Magadon and Riven in his darkness, and stepped through the shadows.
When the darkness parted, they were not on the Wayrock. They were sitting atop a hillock of ash-covered ice, under a steel gray sky, overlooking an icy plain dotted with pits of hellfire. The souls of the damned squirmed in the pits, screaming their agony into the sky. The smell of brimstone polluted the freezing air. A frigid breeze stirred up a cloud of ash and ice and carried with it the stink of a charnel house.
“Welcome to Cania,” said a voice.
Mephistopheles’s voice.
Shadows bled from Cale’s skin. A trickle of blood leaked from his ears.
Magadon began to laugh.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul S. Kemp is a graduate of the University of Michigan-Dearborn and the University of Michigan Law School. He practices corporate law in a suburb of Detroit. There, chained to his desk, he remains a hapless slave to the unforgiving Capitalist Machine. When he manages to steal a few private moments out of the eyeshot of his merciless bureaucratic captors, he types a few meager words on an old Vic 20 computer—the writing is his sole release from a life otherwise filled with unending toil.
Before he was locked in his office, never again to see the sun, Paul was known to enjoy the company of a lovely redhead he vaguely remembers as his wife, Jennifer, and that of his twin sons. He also enjoyed Yankee baseball, University of Michigan football, a well-poured Guinness, a fine cigar, and any decent sci-fi or fantasy flick, but that was all before his life became a living hell of memos, legal briefs, and utterly pointless emails.
He lives in Grosse Pointe, Michigan with his family, a spastic but great dog, and far, far too many cats.
The Twilight War, Book I
SHADOWBRED
©2006 Wizards of the Coast LLC
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. FORGOTTEN REALMS, WIZARDS OF THE COAST, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC, in the U.S.A. and other countries.
Map by Todd Gamble
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2005935524
eISBN: 978-0-7869-5689-0
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