Realms of War a-12

by Paul S. Kemp

  She stepped out into the meadow, under the eye of the storm, and headed northwest, into the unknown, following the fleeing forest animals. She did not know Sembia, but she knew there was a north-south road not far away.

  Only after the sun rose to make a losing war in the heavens with the darkness did she think of Erevis and wonder if he was safe.

  Brennus, standing before the enormous cube of smooth metal, the faces of which served as his scrying lenses, turned the focus of his divination to the magical storm that had frightened Cale's woman.

  When the roiling, lightning-veined clouds took focus on the cube's face, the twin homunculi perched on his shoulders whistled. Their small claws dug into his flesh.

  He recognized the storm immediately for what it was-a planar rift. The Plane of Shadow had been released onto the Prime. But how had it been done, and who had done it?

  "What is it?" asked one of his homunculi in its high-pitched voice.

  "Silence, now," he said, and intoned the words to a divination.

  When he completed the spell, he focused it on the image of the storm, felt around the edge of the clouds, and learned what it could tell him. He cast another divination, another, forcing his magic to worm its way into the core of a tenebrous sea, to unearth its secrets. Undead shadows teemed in its depths. Shadow giants stomped through its murk.

  Ordulin lay festering and twisted on the Sembian plains, its buildings, parks, and citizens transformed into places and creatures of darkness.

  And the storm whispered two names.

  "Shar," said one of his homunculi in a hushed tone.

  "Volumvax," said the other.

  Brennus tried to make sense of events. His brother was Shar's Nightseer, yet Brennus knew Rivalen did not cause the rift. There was no purpose in it. Shade Enclave wished to annex Sembia, not destroy it. But the creation of the rift could not have been an accident.

  "Look," said one of his homunculi, clapping with delight as a cascade of green lightning ripped through the mass of clouds.

  "Be silent and let me think," Brennus said.

  The destruction of Ordulin changed the dynamic of the Sembian civil war, perhaps changed the dynamic of his brother's relationship to his goddess.

  The homunculi giggled as a swarm of shadows flew before the scrying lens, their eyes like glowing coals.

  "Enough," Brennus said, though he was speaking to himself as much as to his constructs.

  Both homunculi, book ends to his ears, glared and stuck out their tongues.

  Despite the seriousness of the moment, Brennus smiled at the audacity of his constructs. He endured their inso shy;lence with a father's patience and pride. While his own father had forced him to take the path of the diviner, his mother had nurtured his fascination with constructs, automata, golems, and clockworks. Some of his fondest memories of his childhood were of showing off to his delighted mother the crude mechanical toys he had fashioned. He still missed her sometimes. She would smile at how far his craft had progressed.

  He wondered why he thought of that now, of her.

  "Treat," one of the homunculi said, and the other turned it into a chant. "Treat. Treat."

  Brennus pulled a sweetmeat from an inner pocket and unwrapped it while the homunculi clapped and smacked their lips. He offered it to them and they devoured it. While they ate, he triggered the magic of the communication ring he wore, felt the connection to Rivalen open.

  Rivalen. I have news.

  His brother's mental voice, fatigued, answered him. Erevis Cale?

  No, Brennus answered, and related to Rivalen all that he had seen and learned. Rivalen answered him with silence.

  It will have to be stopped or little of Sembia will remain to occupy, Brennus said.

  Still Rivalen said nothing.

  Rivalen? Are you unwell? Shall I infirm the Most High?

  The tension crackled through the magical connection. No. I will inform our father. Continue to watch the woman. Erevis Cale will come.

  Erevis Cale seems hardly to be-

  Watch the woman, his brother said. I know the name Volumvax. He is an apostate. He once served Mask before turning to the Lady of Loss.

  Mask? Brennus said, and the shadows around him roiled. Erevis Cale serves Mask.

  Watch the woman. There is more to this than we yet see.

  Brennus did not doubt it.

  Varra trudged the game trails, trusting that she was headed west, until at last the forest thinned and finally gave way to the sun-bleached grass of the Sembian plains. Wind stirred the tall grass. Copses of trees dotted the otherwise empty land shy;scape in the distance, lonely sentries bending in the breeze, as if paying obeisance to the coming storm. The ribbon of a packed-earth road split the plains. Pleased to have gotten so far so fast, Varra put the expanding storm to her back and hurried to the road.

  Hours passed. The landscape appeared empty, populated only by ghosts and the threats issuing from the rumbling sky. Either the famine or the magical storm had driven most from their homes already. The wind from the south, from the storm, pawed aggressively at her cloak. The darkness weighed on her, dogged her steps, gained on her. She pulled her cloak more tightly around her and hurried on.

  Nervousness rooted in her stomach as the sun moved from east to west. She imagined herself asleep on the plain, exposed at nightfall, with the darkness closing the distance. Fighting down the panic, she resolved to walk through the night. She would not stop until she found someone else, anyone else.

  The storm growled at her resolve.

  An hour later, as the sun shot its final, defiant rays into the darkening sky, she heard the creak of wagons and the low murmur of distant voices from behind her. She turned, hopeful, to see a ragtag group of five wagons winding up the road toward her. Perhaps a dozen men and women walked beside the wagons. Most carried packs stuffed with blankets, pots, tools, the leftovers from a home abandoned.

  Almost tearful at the realization that she would not have to face the night alone, she stopped and waited for them to approach.

  Tired, fearful eyes looked out of faces creased with anxiety and caked with road dust. A few smiled and nodded greetings. Most simply looked away. All spoke in hushed tones, as if they feared someone would overhear.

  "Keep moving, lassie," said an elderly man. "They say Ordulin is destroyed. That everyone's dead."

  A woman made a protective sign with her fingers. "I heard Shar herself stepped out of the sky. It's the Time of Troubles all over again."

  "The darkness is following us," said a middle-aged man with a pronounced limp. "It has eyes. The Dales and Elminster are our only hope."

  Mutterings, nods, and muffled tears greeted the pronouncements.

  Varra was too tired and afraid to try to make sense of the words.

  "We know nothing for certain," said the heavyset driver of a mule-pulled wagon. Household furnishings were piled high in the wagon: furniture, blankets, buckets, hand tools… A leather hat capped the top of the driver's head, and his belly hung over a wide leather belt. Gray whiskers dotted his unremark shy;able face. "For now we just keep moving. There'll be safety in the Dales." He looked around the caravan, holding the eyes of any who looked at him, speaking loud enough for all to hear. "There'll be safety there."

  His words quieted the murmurings, but fear hung over the group. The man halted the mule and looked down on Varra.

  "You alone, little sister?"

  The words struck her oddly, and a pit opened in her stomach.

  "Yes."

  "Where are you going?"

  She gestured vaguely down the road. "I… I'm not sure."

  "Where are you from?"

  She waved vaguely back at the forest.

  The man shared a glance with the elderly woman seated beside him in the wagon. She wore a homespun dress over a veined, age-spotted frame that made a scarecrow look hale. Thin gray hair poked unevenly out from under her shawl. A thin, dark-haired man in a black leather jack slept in the seat behind them
.

  "I am Denthim," the heavyset driver said. "This is my mum. That other is another wanderer like you." He extended a calloused hand to her. "Up you come, if you will it. You'll be safer with us, I think. And I'd wager a fivestar that there's naught but abandoned villages before us for miles."

  "And darkness behind," said the old woman.

  The sleeping man stirred, mumbling something incomprehensible.

  Varra took his hand, smiled in gratitude, and climbed aboard the wagon. "Thank you, goodsir."

  The elderly woman grinned at her, showing age-blackened teeth, and gestured her to sit. Varra squeezed into the wagon, amid the sleeping man and pans, blankets, and barrels.

  She glanced back once at the storm. It was gaining on them.

  The sleeping man chuckled in his dream.

  Rivalen's room darkened, as did his mood. The shadows around him churned. He sat on a divan, wrapped in shadows, in questions, and turned in his fingers the burned silver and amethyst ring Elyril Hraven had left in his lockbox for him to find, to announce that she had stolen The Leaves of One Night. He took the ring between thumb and forefinger and crushed it.

  A rap at his door jarred him.

  "Speak," he called, too harshly.

  The voice of the Hulorn's chamberlain, Thriistin, sounded through the wood.

  "Prince Rivalen, the Hulorn requests your presence. There is news from Ordulin. Something… strange is afoot."

  Strange, indeed, Rivalen thought. He inhaled deeply and adopted his false face.

  "Inform the Hulorn that I will attend him apace. I have only a small matter to consider first."

  "Yes, Prince Rivalen."

  The moment Thriistin walked away, Rivalen snarled and flung Elyril's ring so hard into the door of his townhouse that it dented the wood. He jerked the enameled black disc that served as his holy symbol from around the chain at his throat and stared his rage into its black hole.

  "Why, Lady?"

  She had kept her secrets from him, led him to believe one thing while doing another.

  "I am your Nightseer," he said to the shadows.

  The darkness made no answer.

  He engulfed the symbol in his palm and started to squeeze.

  "It was I who was to summon the Shadowstorm in your name. I."

  The disc bit into his skin. Warm blood seeped between his fingers even as his regenerative flesh tried to repair the damage. Still he squeezed, his rage building, his blood flowing.

  "Why?" he said, his voice rising. The shadows around him swirled through the room, mirroring in miniature the Shadowstorm over Ordulin.

  "Why?" The disc snapped in his hand with a loud crack and the sound brought home the realization of what he had done. His rage abated. The shadows around him subsided. He opened his palm to look at the symbol of his faith, broken and bloody in his palm.

  "I had hoped to be your instrument, Lady."

  The words caused him to think of his mother. He did not know why. And they also brought him revelation. He realized, with a clarity born of pain, that hope had been his transgression.

  Accepting what he had done, he composed himself, stood, placed the cloven holy symbol in his pocket, and walked out of the room to attend the Hulorn.

  The caravan arranged the wagons into a circle at nightfall, on the road but near the edge of the forest. Denthim organized the able-bodied men into watches and tried to calm the rest of the group. He distributed thin brass rods to the watchmen. Varra did not know what they were.

  Denthim's mother, assisted by a few other women in the caravan, cooked several kettles full of thin broth. Children cried and laughed and played around the fires. Men and women spoke softly, fearfully, and looked back on the storm.

  Varra helped as she could but mostly tried to avoid getting underfoot. A wave of nausea prevented her from enjoying the broth.

  "Feeling unwell?" said the man who had been sleeping in the wagon.

  His voice startled her, and she disliked his smirk, the knowing look in his dark eyes, though something about him reminded her of Erevis. "I am fine."

  "Something in your belly, no doubt," he said with a wink, and turned away from her. She decided to ignore him, and he seemed content to ignore her.

  The camp eventually settled into sleep. When Denthim returned to the wagon, his mother and the dark man were already asleep in the wagon. Varra's nausea had kept her awake and she smiled a greeting. Denthim smiled in return, though he looked weary.

  "Wind is picking up," he said. He grunted as he pulled his girth up onto the wagon.

  "It is."

  He patted her hand. "Try to get some sleep, little sister. Tomorrow we move quickly. That storm is closing on us."

  She nodded and decided not to look south. Denthim took more of the brass rods from an inner pocket. Varra saw that each was tipped with a dollop of a translucent substance.

  "Sunrods," Denthim explained, no doubt seeing her curious look. "Tap the end on something and it glows like a lantern. Bought them from a peddler once. Had them for years. Here."

  He handed her three. They felt warm in her hand. Denthim settled into the bench, and soon his snores joined the hiss of the wind. Varra rolled up in a blanket that smelled like hay, and slept.

  She awoke later to a howling wind and a roiling stomach. Denthim and his mother slept near her in the wagon, stirring fitfully. The dark man lay curled up in the far corner of the wagon, difficult to see in the darkness. She realized that she had not learned his name.

  Her stomach grew worse, and she knew she would need to retch. Unwilling to wake the others with the sound of her vomiting, she climbed out of the wagon and hurried toward the forest. She patted the shoulder of one of the men maintaining a watch as she passed.

  "Need privacy," she said, and he grunted in reply.

  She made it into the darkness of the trees, put her hands on her knees, and vomited. When she was done, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  A violent gust of wind rattled the trees, and sent them to whispering. Goose pimples rose on Varra's skin. She felt the air change, felt it cool, felt it grow heavy. Something was wrong. She dashed for the camp.

  "Awaken! Awaken!"

  Before she had taken five steps she tripped on an exposed root and fell. The impact knocked the breath from her, and her warning died in a painful wheeze. The wind picked up still more, a gale that tore leaves and limbs from trees, and it carried on its currents hateful moans that made Varra's bones ache.

  Screams erupted from the camp-one, another, another. Lights flared to life in the watchmen's hands-Denthim's sunrods. Varra half-crawled, half-ran back to the edge of the forest.

  The wind sent a fog of dirt and dust through the camp. She made out dark, roughly humanoid-shaped figures with eyes like burning coals whirling in the wind, whipping through the camp, a storm of clotted forms. There were three living shadows for every person in the caravan.

  The shadows, perhaps attracted to the light, swarmed the watchmen with sunrods. Dozens of forms whipped around the men, blotting out the light, reaching into and through the watchmen's flesh with cold, black arms. In moments all of the watchmen were dead, all of the sunrods extinguished.

  Children cried. Women and men shouted, screamed. Varra could barely hear them above the moans of the shadows, above the wail of the wind. The shadows flitted through the camp, reaching out for warm flesh. And where they touched, they killed.

  The camp devolved into chaos. People scrambled from their wagons, panicked and desperate. Horses and mules bucked and kicked against their tethers. Shadows swarmed the site, moaning, killing.

  Varra heard Denthim shouting orders. He stood near his wagon, holding the bridle of his panicked mule, even as the creature sought to break free of its yoke.

  "Here," he shouted. "Here!"

  Others took up his call, and a pocket of fighting men and women-sheltering the children, elderly, and those who could not fight for themselves-formed a rough line and hurried toward Denthim. />
  A dozen corpses dotted the plain. Shadows wheeled everywhere.

  Varra knew no one would escape, not unless the shadows could be drawn off.

  She acted before she thought. Sheltered behind the bole of a tree, she struck one of her sunrods on the trunk and it burst into light. She hurled it into the forest away from her.

  A dozen pairs of red eyes turned from the attack and darted for the light. Varra ran farther back into the forest and struck another sunrod, casting it in the opposite direction of the first. The shadows' moans chased after it.

  Varra ran deeper into the trees and ducked behind a tree, breathing heavily. She poked out her head to see that the shadows had already extinguished the first light. As she watched, they squelched the second. She had not delayed them long. She could still hear shouts from the campsite.

  She held the last sunrod in her hand, stared at it, considered, her heart bouncing around in her breast.

  She made up her mind, closed her eyes, and struck it on the tree.

  "Here!" she shouted. "Here I am!"

  She held the sunrod aloft and ran for her life into the forest.

  Bone-chilling moans chased her into the trees. The sounds from the beleaguered camp faded. She heard only her own breathing, only the threats on the wind, the moans of the shadows.

  She resolved to hold onto the rod until she had gotten far from the camp.

  Sweat dripped into her eyes, felt cool on her skin. Limbs slapped her face, snagged her cloak. She stumbled once, twice, and little exclamations of terror escaped her lips. Fatigue and terror drained her strength. She threw her legs one in front of the other but felt as if she had sacks hanging from her belt sash. The shadows were drawing nearer. The air grew chill, the moans more pronounced.

  She could not go on. Casting the sunrod as far from her as she could, she staggered off in the other direction. She didn't make it far before she sagged against a tree and tried to catch her breath. She heard the shadows moaning behind her, around her, but dared not peek out.

  A hand closed over her mouth, and panic caused her to utter a muffled scream. She went limp; her body had no strength left with which to fight.