by Paul S. Kemp
Magadon was seated on a log near the blaze and appeared to be meditating. Not wanting to disturb the guide, Cale said nothing, merely sat across from Magadon and stared at the scaled leather cover of the book. Jak and Riven continued to sleep soundly in their bedrolls. Riven’s dreams did not seem to trouble him that night.
Just as Cale put his fingers to the corner of the book’s cover and prepared to turn it open, Magadon opened his eyes and spoke.
“Unable to sleep?”
“No,” Cale replied, and laid his hand flat on the cover, secretly relieved that he had not yet opened it.
He met the guide’s knucklebone eyes, which reflected the flickering tongues of flame. Magadon shifted his legs and cleared his throat.
“I’m restless too,” said the guide.
It didn’t show.
“Why?” Cale asked.
The guide looked as though the question surprised him.
“I was thinking about Nestor,” Magadon said.
It took Cale a moment to place the name: Nestor was the big fighter—actually a slaad—who had accompanied Magadon out of Starmantle.
“I wonder how the slaadi killed him,” the guide continued. “I wonder when? How long did I walk with that demonic, hellspawned creature at my side, rather than my friend.” He blew out a sigh. “Jak almost died because I failed to notice the change. Nestor’s death pains me only a little, and I wonder why that is. It seems very far away now.”
Cale understood that last statement. At the moment, everything that had happened on Toril seemed far away.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, and realized as he said it that he was not sure what he meant.
Magadon looked up, took in Cale’s eyes, his skin, and asked, “No?”
Cale saw the guilt in that look, and understood it.
“No,” said Cale. “You could not have known about him, or about … anything.”
The guide nodded. To Cale, it looked as though a weight had been lifted from Magadon’s shoulders. For the first time, Magadon seemed to notice what Cale held in his hand.
“That’s the book from the Fane?” the guide asked. “Yes,” Cale said, and ran his fingers over the leather cover.
“You’re going to read it?” Magadon asked.
Cale didn’t look up when he said, “I don’t know.”
They sat in silence for a time. Cale had once more worked up the nerve to open it when Magadon spoke again.
“A close thing earlier,” the woodsman said. “With the dragon, I mean.”
“Yes.” Cale didn’t have to read minds to sense Magadon’s internal struggle. He put the tome on the ground beside him and looked the guide in the face. “Why don’t you say what you want to say, Magadon.”
Magadon didn’t bother to protest, merely gave an embarrassed smile.
“Damned if you’re not direct, Erevis,” he said. “I suppose I should pay you the same courtesy, shouldn’t I?”
Cale made no answer.
The guide took a deep breath, looked Cale in the eyes, and said, “The Fane, the dragon, your skin, and your eyes….” He paused a moment, braced himself as though he was about to dive into a cold lake, then said, “You are no longer a human being.”
Cale went rigid, and he felt himself flush. Harsh words of denial rushed to his lips, but he kept them behind his teeth. He heard no judgment in Magadon’s tone, more like … sympathy?
Cale stared and waited for the guide to continue. His yellow-eyed gaze must have discomfited Magadon, who looked off into the darkness.
“I did not say that as an accusation, Erevis.”
“I know,” Cale said.
“That’s good.” The woodsman threw a few stray twigs into the flames and replied, “I said it because we have that in common.” He looked up into Cale’s eyes. “I am not human either.”
Cale could not keep the surprise from his voice.
“What?” he said, too loud. He looked over to Jak and Riven. The halfling stirred in his sleep, but neither he nor Riven roused. “What?” he said again, more softly.
Magadon smiled and said, “How do you think I came by these eyes?”
In truth, Cale hadn’t thought overmuch about it.
“I suppose I thought it had something to do with your mental abilities. Or an accident of birth, possibly.”
“An accident of birth?” Magadon’s expression grew distant for a moment, thoughtful, and Cale saw a hardness in the line of his mouth. The guide stoked the fire with a length of wood while he spoke. Sparks flew into the twilight. “No, my birth was no accident.” He looked up at Cale. “I am planetouched. Have you heard the word?”
Taken aback, Cale still managed a nod. He was familiar with the term. “Planetouched” was a word used to describe those who had the blood of an outer planar being in their ancestry. Those with celestial blood were aasimar, a word for which Cale had never been able to determine a linguistic origin. Those tainted with the blood of demons or devils were tieflings or fey’ri, both Elvish words. Those with elemental lords as ancestors were genasi, a word from ancient Calishite that literally meant “scion of the djinn.”
“Few know this about me,” Magadon continued. “With only a few precautions, I can pass for a normal man, though with unusual eyes. A normal … human.”
Cale didn’t try to respond.
“You wonder why I’m telling you this, don’t you?” Magadon asked.
Cale’s eyes narrowed and he asked, “Are you reading my mind, woodsman?”
“Just your face,” Magadon replied with a chuckle. “And before I answer that question, you should hear everything. Well enough? There’s a purpose to it.”
“Well enough,” Cale answered, intrigued.
“There are different types of planetouched,” Magadon said.
Cale nodded. “I know. Which are you?”
“I am—well, here.”
Magadon rose and came around the fire to Cale’s side. He sat on his haunches, removed his wide-brimmed hat, and pulled his long, black hair back from his forehead.
“There,” asked the guide, “do you see?”
Cale leaned in close. Just within Magadon’s hairline, two protuberances of bone budded. Horns.
“You’re a tiefling,” Cale said softly.
Magadon nodded, let his hair fall back and donned his hat. He sat on a log nearer to Cale.
“I am, but …”
When the guide looked into Cale’s eyes, Cale saw pain in his face, writ clear.
“It’s worse than even that,” Magadon continued.
The guide pushed back the left sleeve of his shirt, nearly to his shoulder. Cale saw that a tattoo adorned his bicep. No, not a tattoo—a birthmark unlike any Cale had seen before. It was in the form of a red hand with black nails, swathed in flames or mist. Pale, jagged scars crisscrossed the mark. Old scars.
Magadon was staring at him, reading his expression. He seemed relieved that Cale was not appalled.
“You do not recognize this symbol?” the guide asked.
“No,” Cale replied, though the mark did somehow make him uneasy, a feeling reminiscent of the way Riven’s use of the Black Speech made him feel. “But it’s …”
“Disquieting,” Magadon said, and lowered his sleeve. “It would be worse if you knew whose symbol it was.” He stared into the fire and spoke in a quiet voice. “I will not speak here the name of that creature. But I will tell you that he is a diabolical, dark being of great power. Evil incarnate. Not a god, but … nearly so.”
Cale felt the hair on his neck rise. The shadows around them seemed to grow deeper. The night sounds of the forest’s animals went quiet, even the howlers. A cool wind sent the flames of the campfire flickering. The breeze seemed to whisper a name, a sinister, sibilant name, but it danced away before Cale could recognize it.
Magadon threw some more dried limbs onto the blaze and the flames picked up.
“You’re descended from this being?” Cale asked.
Magadon
gave a short, hard laugh and answered, “It is not a lineage of which I am proud.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“I know,” Magadon said, nodding. “Forgive me. Speaking of him is difficult for me.” The guide shook his head, as though to dispel thoughts best left undisturbed. “For his amusement, this creature took human form and raped my mother. I was the result. The descendant of a devil. I suspect he has many. By all the accounts that I’ve heard, his lust is matched only by his evil.”
Magadon looked into Cale’s face, which Cale kept free of judgment. Cale would judge no one, not then.
“Immediately after my birth,” Magadon continued, “when my mother saw what she had brought forth, she exposed me, abandoned me to die in the forest. Afterward, she drowned herself in the Shining River.”
Cale heard the bitterness in the guide’s voice, bitterness softened only by regret at the mention of his mother’s death.
“Is your mother alive, Erevis?” Magadon asked softly. “Your father?”
Cale shook his head. He had never known his mother, the man who had come closest to being his father had died a year past, and the god who had come to serve as a father of sorts seemed to have adopted a second son.
“Forgive me for asking,” Magadon said, seemingly sensing Cale’s pain.
“It’s all right,” Cale said, waving away the sting. “Continue.”
Magadon cleared his throat and said, “I was abandoned. Before the cold could take me, a lame woodsman heard my wails and took me in. It was he who explained my origin to me, when I was old enough to understand it. It was he who taught me wood lore.”
Cale struggled to imagine the burden Magadon carried—rejected by his mother, sired by a fiend. Cale’s own past seemed ordinary by comparison.
“He always told me the truth,” Magadon said absently. “I loved him for that.”
“The woodsman?”
Magadon nodded.
“What was his name?”
Magadon smiled warmly.
“Father,” he said, and Cale could see the guide’s welling eyes reflecting the firelight.
Cale understood. He left Magadon alone with his memories for a time.
When the guide seemed ready again to speak, Cale asked, “Did your father also teach you how to … to use your mental powers?”
Magadon shook his head and stared into the fire.
“No,” he said. “Psionics cannot be taught, Erevis. They are inborn, and I’ve developed them as I’ve aged. My mental powers I attribute to the bloodline of the rapist whose seed conceived me, as much as I do these horns. And like my horns, they’ve become more pronounced as I’ve aged. I’m changing too, you see.”
Cale nodded. It seemed they were all changing.
Magadon looked into Cale’s eyes and said, “Two fathers, Erevis. One a rapist archdevil, one a cripple with a noble spirit. Life is sometimes strange, is it not?”
Cale nodded and looked away into the distance. He could think of nothing to say, though he understood well what it was to serve two fathers. The silence stretched on.
At last, Cale said, “You were going to tell me why you were confiding in me. You had a purpose?”
“So I was and so I do,” Magadon said, and adjusted his posture on the log. “Here it is: For years I struggled with what I was. Devilspawn, Erevis. How could I move past that?”
Cale looked at him from under his brows, genuinely curious, and asked, “How did you?”
“That’s the question,” Magadon whispered. He shook his head and smiled softly, as if amused by a private jest. “I pitied myself. You saw the scars on my birthmark. When I learned what it was, I tried to cut that mark from my flesh a dozen times, but always it returned.”
He extended his arm and held his hand fully in the flames. Cale gave a start but Magadon’s skin didn’t char and the guide did not wince.
He looked into Cale’s face and said, “Another gift from the rapist.” He pulled his hand from the flames and looked at the unmarred skin. “Everywhere I turned, I was faced with my heritage. With each passing year, my flesh changed to show more and more of my devil sire. I fear how I may appear in my dotage.”
He smiled, but Cale saw it was forced.
“So I couldn’t move past it, Erevis,” the guide said. “Not really.” He flexed his unburned fingers. “It’s part of me. It’s part of what I am. When I accepted that, things became bearable. But—” and here he made a cutting gesture with his hand—“accepting the fact of my blood does not mean that I let it dictate the course of my life. The blood of an archdevil determines what I am in body; it does not determine the nature of my soul. And it’s a soul that makes a man, Erevis. Do you see? Your transformation changed your skin, your eyes, but not your soul. You remain who you always were.”
Cale heard Magadon’s words, heard the echoes of his own protestations in them, but smiled in response only out of politeness. It was what Cale always had been—before the transformation as much as after—that gave him concern. Accepting his nature would not free him from what he feared; it would free what he feared, that part of himself that he kept closely tethered. Unlike Magadon, Cale had no good side to turn to.
He thought of Tazi; her smile, the smell of her skin….
“Well?” Magadon pressed.
“I’ll think about what you’ve said,” Cale replied, to placate the guide.
Magadon nodded and said, “Fair enough.”
They said nothing for a time. When the silence at last grew uncomfortable, Cale filled it by changing the subject.
“How did you come to know him?” he asked, and indicated Riven. “You seem hardly the type of man who would befriend a Zhentarim assassin.”
Magadon’s reply came quickly: “How did you?”
Cale took the point. Strange times made for strange alliances.
“Does he know?” Cale asked. “About your … heritage?”
Magadon shrugged and said, “I’ve never told him, but he may have learned of it. He has a way of doing that. Why do you ask?”
In truth, Cale did not know.
“Curiosity,” he said, and left it at that.
The fire crackled, its smoke lost in the gloom of the forest.
“It’s affecting him too,” Magadon said at last. “Riven, I mean.”
“What?”
“This place; what he’s becoming.”
Cale looked at Magadon sharply and asked, “What is he becoming?”
“I don’t know,” Magadon answered. “Neither does he. That’s what makes him afraid.”
Cale’s doubt must have shown in his expression. To Cale, Riven seemed as calm and in control as ever. Magadon must have read his eyes—or his mind.
The guide said, “I know him better than you, Erevis. He has been your enemy, hasn’t he?”
Cale nodded.
“You see him through those eyes,” Magadon said. “But I’ve been in his head, and I see him through his own.” Magadon paused before adding, “You two are very much alike.”
Once, those words would have provoked a sharp denial, but not any more. Perhaps Cale and Riven were more alike than ever. Brothers in the faith if not the flesh. He looked at his regenerated hand and wondered again what he was becoming, or what he had already become. A shade, yes, but what else?
“Get some rest, Magadon,” Cale said. “I’ll keep watch for a while.”
Magadon rose. and said, “Well enough.” He hesitated, then extended his hand. “Call me Mags.”
Cale took the tiefling’s hand and looked into his white eyes.
“Mags it is.”
The woodsman had laid down to sleep, pulling his hat down over his eyes. Cale looked down at the tome from the Fane of Shadows, picked it up, and after a moment’s hesitation he flipped it open.
For a moment, he could not breathe.
A swatch of black cloth lay within its pages, formerly pressed between the cover and the first page. He stared at it a long while before brushing th
e silken mask with his fingertips.
A strange prologue, he thought, and placed what he knew to be his new holy symbol into his vest pocket.
Cale refused to admit to himself the comfort its presence brought him, the charge it sent through him.
He began to read, devouring the words as he once had done as a linguistics student back in Westgate. Written by several hands, alternatively in Thorass, Elvish, Infernal, and at least two tongues Cale did not recognize, the tome appeared to be a history of Shar, the Fane of Shadows as it manifested in several worlds, and the Weave Tap. As he read, he began to understand why Azriim—or Azriim’s master, the Sojourner—had sought the artifact.
And with that understanding came fear.
NURSING THE NIGHT
Vhostym uttered the words to a spell, waved his hand, and opened a dimensional portal through the smooth stone wall and into the nursery. The moment the aperture materialized, moans of pain hissed through the magical door, the steam of agony escaping a heated beaker. Vhostym tuned out the sounds, though he felt like moaning himself. His affliction grew worse daily, despite his spells and medicaments. His bones throbbed with pain. He imagined he could feel them putrefying within him, one at a time.
Pushing out of his mind an image of himself as a shapeless blob of flesh, Vhostym floated into the chamber.
The nursery opened wide around him, a circular cyst in the earth of his pocket plane. Forty-four paces in diameter, the polished walls of the perfectly spherical room gleamed in the dim green light of a single glowball. Lines of diamonds and amethysts glittered in alternating spiraling whorls inset into the walls—three thousand nine hundred and fifty nine of each stone. The amethysts, attuned to the shadow Weave, fairly hummed with channeled power; the diamonds, attuned to the Weave, sang at a slightly higher pitch. The sum of the stones, when combined with the one of the Weave Tap, equaled seven thousand nine hundred nineteen, the one thousandth prime number.
A number of power, Vhostym knew.
The gems, arcane spirals, and the Weave Tap combined to make the nursery a nexus of the Weave and the Shadow Weave, a place where the frayed edges of both lay exposed and sizzling. Fertile ground for arcana, so to speak; rich soil in which the Tap could grow.