by Paul S. Kemp
Brennus resisted the urge to turn the eye of his divinations to the interior of the spire. He didn’t want to alert Kesson Rel to his spying, lest Kesson redouble his wards. Still, he heard Kesson’s name in the dull thunder that rumbled within the Shadowstorm, and felt like an ache in his teeth Kesson’s immense power, even through the scrying cube. Brennus knew that Kesson Rel was no longer a man. He was semi-divine, a godling, and what the Shadovar intended to conquer and use, Kesson intended to pervert and destroy.
Brennus watched for a short time longer then deactivated the cube. Sweat soaked him. His body ached. Fatigue dulled his mind. But he needed to know more. He knew that Kesson’s divine nature would make killing him problematic.
Brennus occasionally relied on powerful extraplanar entities to assist his inquiries, immortal creatures whose knowledge and understanding sometimes exceeded even Brennus’s. He would have to rely on such assistance again were he to be of assistance to his brother. Knowledge floated on strange currents in the lower planes, and powerful devils sometimes learned important snippets of information about gods and men. Such information was as much the currency of the Nine Hells and the Abyss as were mortal souls.
He strode to the far corner of the room where a large triangle surrounded by a circle had been inlaid with lead into the floor. His movement awakened his homunculi. They yawned, smacked their lips, noticed the thaumaturgic triangle, and sat up straight.
“Devil!” they said, and clapped with glee.
“Retrieve candles,” Brennus said, and they jumped off his shoulders to perform their task.
In moments they returned with wrist-thick candles. Streaks of crimson spiraled around the otherwise ivory-colored shafts of the tapers. Brennus placed them so that their bases exactly straddled the three points where the triangle touched the circle that enveloped it. He backed away, lit them with a command word, and they birthed blue flames.
He cleared his mind and intoned the words to the summoning that would bring forth one of the most powerful devils in the Nine Hells, a fiend of the pit.
After the first stanza, the room grew cool His homunculi shivered and tried to wrap themselves in the loose folds of his cloak, chuckling nervously at the clouds their breathing formed. Ice rimed the lines of the thaumaturgic triangle. The blue flames burned steadily.
After the second and third stanzas, the air grew cold and a point of red light, a hole into the Nine Hells, formed in the air above the center of the summoning triangle. First groans then screams leaked through the hole, a tunnel that ended in a realm of suffering.
Shadows poured from Brennus as he voiced the words to the conjuration. Power coalesced in the room and concentrated in the air between his upraised hands and the summoning triangle. The air became frigid and frost formed on his fingers and palms, the cold like the bite of sharp teeth. He let nothing disturb his recitation of the arcane couplets.
After the fourth stanza the power of the spell peaked and Brennus pronounced the name of the devil he wished to draw forth.
“Baziel, come!”
The mention of the pit fiend’s name concentrated the arcane power, gave it voice, and his call went forth into the Hells.
In answer, a cyclone of coruscating fire formed in the space over the summoning triangle. Darkness gathered in the core of the flames, a black seed of evil that began to expand into a doorway between worlds. The flames whirled around it, flared. Smoke churned above the circle and mixed with the shadowy air, obscuring his vision. The smell of brimstone polluted the room and Brennus thought something had gone awry.
A form materialized in the doorway amidst the smoke and flame, and slowly took on definition, features. Brennus recognized the towering, muscular, red-skinned frame and membranous black wings of a pit fiend. He ended his summoning with the final words of binding.
“You are called, Baziel and you are bound to answer my …”
The devil stepped through the doorway and into the triangle and Brennus’s voice died. The fiend’s face resolved not into the bestial, horned visage of Baziel, but into a handsome mien that could have been human but for the black horns that jutted from the brow, but for the pupiless white eyes that stared out of the cavernous sockets and pinioned Brennus to the floor of the chamber.
Brennus recognized the fiend—the archfiend—immediately. Shadows whirled around Brennus, the physical manifestation of the jumble in his mind. The archfiend gazed around the room with only mild interest. He seemed to take up too much space, to be too heavy for the floor, too real, too present.
The homunculi lost their stomach for the summoning.
“Wrong devil!” they squealed, and darted into the folds of Brennus’s cloak, trembling with fear.
Brennus struggled to hold his ground under the weight of the fiend’s gaze. He licked his lips, fought for calm, and called to mind the various defensive spells at his disposal.
None of them would be of any use. The archfiend was beyond him. His father, with assistance perhaps, could match the fiend on the Prime Material Plane, but no other in Shade Enclave.
Only the binding circle and the constraints of the conjuration protected Brennus from soul death.
Or so he hoped.
Mephistopheles showed fangs in a smile, as if reading Brennus’s mind. His voice, deeper even than Rivalen’s, resonated with power ancient even by Shadovar standards.
“What a pleasant locale,” the archfiend said. With his clawed forefinger, he pulled a tendril of diaphanous shadow from the air, spun it around his finger, and watched it dissolve. “Shadows seem to be my lot in these days.”
Brennus cleared his throat. “The summoning called Baziel.”
He realized the stupidity of the words only after they exited his mouth.
“Baziel is in service to me, now, and resides in my court at Mephistar.”
“I … was not aware of that, Lord of Cania. It was not so when last I summoned him.”
The archfiend’s features hardened, and when they did they reminded Brennus of someone, though he could not draw forth the name.
“You should have inquired, shadeling. By summoning him, you have offended me. I am here to receive your apology.”
Two thousand years of co-rule in Shade Enclave rendered Brennus unused to demands. He held the archfiend’s gaze with difficulty.
“I intended no offense, Lord of the Eighth.” He waved a hand and released the binding. “You are released.”
He expected Mephistopheles to dissipate, return to Cania. Instead, the archfiend remained before him, towering, solid, threatening.
“You are dismissed,” Brennus said, and put power into his voice.
The archfiend drew in his wings. “I do not wish to leave. There are matters we should discuss.”
The homunculi squeaked and tried to burrow farther into Brennus’s cloak. Despite his trepidation, Brennus was intrigued by the archfiend’s words.
“You wish—”
Words failed him as Mephistopheles reached through the magical field that encapsulated the summoning triangle and binding circle. The magic flared a feeble orange as the archfiend broke through, the whole of Brennus’s binding mere cobwebs to the archfiend’s power.
“First, apologize,” Mephistopheles said.
Brennus backed up a step, activated the communication ring on his finger. His heart slammed against his ribs. The shadows in the room darkened, churned.
Rivalen, I am in my summoning chamber in the enclave. Attend me with the Most High. I have—
“Your ring is not functioning,” Mephistopheles said. He picked up one of the candles from the thaumaturgic triangle, and snuffed the flame with thumb and forefinger. “Apologize.”
Brennus retreated another step, drew the shadows around him, and prepared to ride them to the mansion of the Most High where he would get aid to face the archfiend.
“Your spells will not serve you either, nor your powers over darkness,” the archfiend said, his voice rising. He extended his wings, and dark po
wer, deeper and blacker than shadows, haloed his form. “Apologize!”
The power in the archfiend’s voice shook the manse, cracked the quartz roof of the summoning chamber, and dusted Brennus and the entire room in ice.
“My apologies, Mephistopheles,” Brennus said, the humiliating words bitter on his tongue. He refused to bow, even halfway. “I intended you no offense. I merely wished to question Baziel on certain matters beyond my Art to answer alone.”
Power retreated back into the archfiend’s form and his voice returned to normal. He seemed to shrink, to shed some of the threat implicit in his mere existence.
“We understand one another now.” He smiled and inclined his head. “I accept your apology, Prince of Shade. And the matters about which you wished to query Baziel are the matters that I wish us to discuss. Kesson Rel?”
Brennus looked up, his mind racing. He knew all fiends to be liars. If Mephistopheles wished to answer Brennus’s questions, it was because his answer, whether true or false, served the archfiend’s purpose. What stake did Mephistopheles have in matters in Sembia?
“Why make this offer?”
“It amuses me to see you correctly informed.”
Brennus bluffed. “I have no questions.”
Mephistopheles smiled. “You lie poorly.”
The shadows around Brennus swirled.
“You bear an interesting trinket,” the archfiend said, and nodded at Brennus’s chest.
It took Brennus a moment to process the conversational detour. The archfiend meant his mother’s necklace. He tried to keep eagerness from his tone. The necklace suddenly felt warm against his flesh. He could feel his heart pounding against it.
“You know something of it?”
“Now you have questions?”
“Do you?”
Mephistopheles made a dismissive gesture. “Perhaps.”
Brennus took a step toward the summoning circle, the whiff of a revelation drawing him forward.
“Who murdered my mother?”
“Kesson Rel.”
Brennus stopped short. “Kesson Rel?”
“We were discussing Kesson Rel.”
Brennus shook his head. “No, no. We were discussing my mother.”
“Were we?”
“Yes. Yes. Tell me about my mother!”
Mephistopheles crossed his muscular arms across his chest. “No. First things first.”
Brennus realized he was breathing rapidly. The shadows around him whirled and spun.
“Kesson Rel,” he said.
The archfiend nodded. “Continue.”
“We want him dead.”
“He is powerful, infused with the power of a god.”
“A god? Not a goddess?”
Mephistopheles smiled. “Kesson Rel stole his power from the Shadowlord. Shar lays claims to it, now. Of course, how the Shadowlord came by it is … another tale.”
Brennus processed the new information, and would ponder its implications later. He looked up at the crack in the quartz ceiling, at the dusting of ice that still rimed the room, back at the fiend. “Can it be done? Can Kesson Rel be killed?”
The archfiend beat his wings, once, stirring a breeze that smelled of corpses. “Everything dies. Even worlds.”
Brennus did not understand that last. “How then, if he is as powerful as you say?”
Irritation wrinkled Mephistopheles’s high brow, narrowed the orbs of his eyes.
“Because his power is not his own. He came by it as all faithless thieves do. By stealing it. He thinks to have locked it away, but the key yet remains. You will find it in Ephyras.”
“The world from which he came?”
The fiend nodded. Smoke issued from his nostrils.
Brennus considered the information. “You want him dead, too, else you would not have come. Why?”
The archfiend’s face was expressionless. “To collect a debt.”
Brennus knew he would get nothing more. “Tell me how to do it. Then tell me of my mother.”
Mephistopheles chuckled. “I will tell you one or the other. How to kill Kesson Rel or the identity of your mother’s murderer. Which will you have answered?”
Brennus swallowed his anger, his frustration, struggled, and finally said, “Tell me how to kill Kesson Rel.”
The archfiend smiled, and began to speak.
Lifelong habits died only with difficulty and time. As he had for over a decade, Abelar awakened before the dawn. He lay on a bed of wool blankets set on the cold, damp earth in his tent. Elden slept on the cot near him and the sound of his son’s breathing, easy and untroubled, soothed Abelar’s troubled spirit. After a short time, he donned trousers, cloak, and boots, kissed Elden on the forehead, and stepped out of the tent.
The rain had slacked and the faint light of false dawn painted the water-soaked camp in lurid grays. Coughs and soft conversation carried from here and there among the cluster of tents. The smell of pipe smoke carried from somewhere.
He looked east to the rising sun, but saw there only the swirling dark clouds of the magical storm, a black lesion marring the sky. It had grown during the night. It was coming for them, for all of Sembia.
Atop the rise overlooking the camp he saw the men and women of his company, servants of Lathander, gathered for Dawnmeet. His separateness sent an ache through him. He led them now only on the field, not in worship. They looked east, their backs to Abelar, facing the sky where the shadows masked the dawn sun. The sound of their voices carried through the morning’s quiet.
“Dawn dispels the night and births the world anew.”
The words resounded in Abelar’s mind, the echo of the thousands of Dawnmeets when he had spoken the same words to his god. He recalled the first time—he had been a mere boy—when Abbot Denril had first taught him the liturgy. Said in the face of the Shadowstorm, the words seemed hollow.
“May Lathander light our way, show us wisdom,” said his companions, their voices carried to him on the morning mist. His own lips formed the words, but he did not speak them aloud, would not, ever again.
“You should be among them,” said his father’s voice, turning Abelar around.
Endren wore his blade, a mail shirt, and a tabard embroidered with the Corrinthal horse and sun. He looked thin to Abelar, and the weight of recent events had turned his hair entirely gray. His ragged beard, untrimmed in days, gave him the look of a prophet, or a madman. The stump of his left hand, too, looked ragged.
Abelar shook his head. “I am no longer one of them.”
“The symbol you wore was not what made you one of them.”
Endren’s soft words surprised Abelar. “You have never shown such respect for my faith before, Father.”
Endren put his good hand on Abelar’s shoulder. “I am not showing respect for your faith. I am showing respect for my son. The light is in you, Abelar. Isn’t that what you say?”
Abelar felt himself color, nodded.
“Lathander did not put it there,” Endren said. “And Lathander did not make what was there brighter. Gods know I did not put it in there. But the light is in you.”
Abelar was not so certain but said only, “Thank you, Father.”
Endren gave him a final pat as the Lathanderians completed the Dawnmeet.
“Elden is well?” Endren asked.
“Yes. Sleeping.”
“That is well.”
Father and son stood together for a time in silence, watched the light of the sun war with the storm of shadows, watched gray dawn give way to a stark, shadow-shrouded day.
“We will need to break camp as soon as possible,” Abelar said. “Flee west. That storm grows uglier by the hour.”
“West takes us to the Mudslide. The droughts have shrunk it, but this sky—” Endren indicated the clouds—“seeks to refill it.”
Abelar nodded. “We will cross at the Stonebridge, continue around the southern horn of the Thunder Peaks and toward Daerlun. Maybe even all the way to Cormyr. There, we can r
eorganize, perhaps gain aid from Alusair or the western nobility.”
Endren eyed the distant storm. Thunder rumbled. “That will be a long, hard journey for these people. They are not soldiers used to marching so far. And I expect we’ll be adding refugees to our numbers as we go. No one outside of a protected city will willingly sit in the path of whatever magic summoned that storm.”
“What do we know of the whereabouts of the overmistress’s army?” Abelar said. “If we must leave a force to delay their pursuit …” Abelar almost volunteered to lead a rearguard but trapped his words behind his teeth. He would not leave his son again. “Regg will lead it.”
Endren nodded. Perhaps he understood Abelar’s stutter. “Scouts are in the field. I have not yet had word this morning. I will start to get the camp prepared. It may take a day or two to get all in order.”
A scream from within Abelar’s tent put a blade in his hand and speed in his feet.
“Elden!”
Abelar and Endren raced into the tent and found Elden sitting upright in his bed, brown eyes wide with fear, tears cutting a path through the layer of grime on his face. He saw Abelar and held out his arms.
“Papa!”
Abelar scanned the tent and the shadows, but saw nothing. His father did the same. Abelar sheathed his blade, hurried to his son’s bedside, and took him in his arms.
“What is it, Elden? What’s wrong?”
“My dreamed of bad men, Papa. Bad.”
Abelar surrounded Elden with his arms. His son buried his face in Abelar’s cloak. Tears shook Elden’s small body and Abelar’s relief at finding no real danger to his son moved aside for a sudden stab of rage that caused him to wish he had prolonged Forrin’s suffering. His son would have nightmares for years because of what Forrin had ordered done.
“It’s all right,” Abelar said, stroking his son’s hair, speaking to both himself and his son. “It will be all right.”