Dawn of Night

by Paul S. Kemp

  Hold, Azriim projected to his broodmates, and took a moment to survey the destruction. He had not yet reached a mental count of ten. The attack had gone as smoothly as he had hoped.

  The heavy, sweet scent of cooked human flesh filled his nostrils. Black smoke churned from corpse and wagon alike, pooling around the stalactites above. Nothing was moving. Men, weapons, and animals lay cast about the chamber floor like so much flotsam. Except for the crackle of a few small fires—one of the slave wagon wheels and several of the corpses were burning cheerily—all was quiet. Scavengers would begin to arrive soon, Azriim knew, attracted by the stink of dead flesh. The Skulls too might soon arrive, attracted by the expended magic.

  Ensure that they are all dead, Azriim said to his broodmates.

  Serrin and Dolgan bounded out of hiding and down into the carnage.

  And eat nothing, Azriim added for Dolgan’s benefit.

  The big slaad slouched with disappointment but did as he was told.

  Serrin and Dolgan moved from corpse to corpse, stabbing or slicing the throats of any of the guards, teamsters, or slaves that did not seem suitably charred. Dolgan sometimes patted one of the human’s heads, as if to apologize for not eating the brains.

  Azriim followed his broodmates to the slaughter at a more leisurely pace. He savored the ease with which they had dispatched the caravan nearly as much as he savored the feeling that his plan was coming together. The Sojourner would be pleased. The transformation to gray would be Azriim’s reward.

  He picked his way through the dead and wreckage to one of the enclosed wagons. The fact that it had not burned suggested that it was warded with magical protections. With a grunt, he pulled the lock from its setting and tore the rear door from its hinges. The slab of wood exploded with a blue flash, sending a jolt of power through Azriim’s body: a magical trap. He nearly cursed, more annoyed than injured—though his hands did sting—and tossed the door atop two corpses that lay nearby. He knelt down on his haunches and looked inside.

  Within the wagon, thrown into disarray by the explosions, lay swords, several staffs, a scroll belt stuffed full, several gem-tipped wands wrapped in cloth, and three chests. One of the chests had broken open and was bleeding platinum. Azriim called upon his innate ability to detect dweomers and saw that most everything in the wagon except the currency was magical. A hurried examination of the second sealed wagon revealed much the same. Both were stuffed full with magic items and wealth destined for the Xanathar. Some of the agents carried magical goods as well, Azriim saw. Most such items had survived the inferno.

  The beholder would not leave unavenged the loss of so many men and so much magical treasure.

  Azriim could not contain his grin. The situation couldn’t have been better.

  Assist me, he projected to Serrin and Dolgan, who had finished their macabre task. We are taking it all.

  RETURN TO STARMANTLE

  After stepping through the gate, Cale, Riven, Jak, and Magadon found themselves standing in the midst of a stand of towering elms, blinking in the light of the midday sun. Compared to the gloom of the Plane of Shadow, the light of Toril’s sun was nearly blinding. Here and there, the sun’s rays cut through the elms’ canopy in a shower of beams.

  And hit Cale like crossbow bolts.

  His exposed skin felt as if it were being stabbed with sewing needles. His senses too felt duller, his hearing less keen, and his sight less sharp. While his skin was still dusky, the protective sheath of shadows was gone. He had known that while he stood in the light, his shade abilities would be lost to him. He hadn’t known that he would feel somehow less substantial. Faerûn’s sun melted a part of him away, as surely as if he were made of ice.

  Gritting his teeth at the pain caused him by the light, Cale threw the hood of his cloak over his face. Only then did he notice that his regenerated hand was gone. He stared at the stump of his wrist, not quite shocked, but simply uncomprehending. He felt the memory of his hand as though it still sprouted from the end of his wrist, but it was not there.

  Surreptitiously, so as not to draw attention from his comrades, he moved his hand into the darkness cast by the bole of an elm. He felt a tingling in his forearm and within those shadows, his hand rematerialized. He flexed the fingers, twisted the wrist, and it felt normal. He moved his arm back into the light, felt a sharp stab of pain in his wrist, and his hand again disappeared. He moved it back and forth for a moment, enduring the dichotomous sensation, and marveling at the appearance and disappearance of flesh and bone on the end of his wrist.

  Was it flesh and bone? he wondered.

  He realized in that instant that he was half-a-man whether he stood in light or shadow. The transformation into a shade had taken something of his soul but given him back his flesh; when the sun re-lit his soul it took a tithe of flesh as recompense.

  Fitting, he thought, and immediately chided himself.

  He recognized in his thoughts the beginnings of self-pity. Words floated to the front of his mind, something his favorite language teacher once had said to him back in Westgate, when Cale had thought his life a hard one: “Self-pity is an indulgence for artists and noblemen. Don’t spend any more time with it than you must. Hear what it says, learn from it if you can, then move on.”

  Cale prepared himself to do just that. He was both shade and man. And a man could not stand forever in the shadows.

  With that, he braced himself, threw back his hood, and endured the pain caused him by the sun. He welcomed it the way an Ilmaterite welcomed suffering—a way of purifying the soul through the pains of the body. The sun would be the instrument of Cale’s agony, and the instrument of his purification.

  “Cale! We’re home!” Jak said. “You did it.” The halfling fairly capered about the undergrowth. He stopped and stared at Cale, apparently noticing his discomfort for the first time. His smile faded. “Are you all right?”

  Cale, keeping his stump hidden by the sleeve of his cloak, nodded and said, “I’m all right, little man.”

  Jak recaptured his smile.

  “Good,” he said, then he let himself fall backward onto the grass. He spread his arms and legs out wide and soaked up the sun. He inhaled deeply the fragrance of the air. “Smell that? The air here reminds me of my family’s farm in Mistledale. Have you ever been to the Dalelands, Cale? I’ll take you sometime. You can try my mother’s cooking.”

  Cale nodded, though he could imagine Jak’s mother’s expression upon seeing a yellow-eyed, shadow-wrapped creature walk through her door.

  Magadon stood ten or so paces away with his eyes closed and the palm of one hand pressed against the bole of an elm. He looked as though he was drawing strength from it. He held his bow in his other hand. The guide must have felt Cale’s gaze. He opened his eyes, looked over to Cale, and smiled softly.

  “This elm is over ninety winters old. It has seen much in that time.” He studied Cale closely, cocked his head to the side, and said, “Your eyes appear normal now.”

  Cale was surprised and pleased, but knew that the man behind those eyes was far from normal.

  “Nothing has changed,” he said, “at least not really.”

  Cale knew that the moment he stepped back into darkness or shadow, he would again look like the creature he was.

  “No?” Magadon asked, looking at Cale’s sleeve, at his wrist.

  Jak sat up and followed Magadon’s gaze. Riven looked on with interest as well.

  Cale stared at Magadon for a moment before blowing out a sigh. The woodsman missed nothing. As though unveiling a shameful secret, Cale held up his arm and pulled back his sleeve to reveal the stump.

  “Your hand!” Jak exclaimed and leaped to his feet.

  Cale debated with himself for a moment before saying, “Yes, but watch.” He put his stump into shadow. His hand, with its slightly duskier skin, reappeared. Streams of shadows took shape around it. “It’s there in darkness or shadow, gone in the light.”

  “Like bad dreams,” Jak whispe
red, before blushing in embarrassment at his words. “Sorry,” he said.

  Riven wore a hard expression that Cale couldn’t quite read. Before Cale could figure it out, the assassin looked away, pulled his borrowed pipe, tamped, and lit.

  “There’s an idea,” Jak said softly. Still eyeing Cale’s wrist, he pulled out his own pipe. To Riven, Jak said, “You, Zhent, cannot come with us to Mistledale, since you’re an ungrateful bastard who insulted my mother’s potato soup.”

  “I insulted your potato soup,” Riven answered, smiling around the stem of his pipe.

  While his friends were thus engaged, Cale let his sleeve fall back over his stump. He looked out of the copse and into the sun. His eyes stung and began to tear up.

  He turned back and asked Magadon, “Where are we, Mags?”

  “We’re home, Cale,” Jak said as he struck a tindertwig and lit. From around his pipe stem he said, “And burn me if I ever want to go back to that place. No offense, Cale.”

  Cale caught Riven’s sidelong glance. This isn’t home anymore, the assassin’s eye said, and we’ll be going back to the Plane of Shadow soon enough.

  Cale offered Jak a half smile and said, “No offense taken, little man.”

  “I might be able to offer a bit more specificity than Jak,” Magadon said with a grin.

  The guide patted the elm near him as though it was a pet, and walked past Cale out of the shade of the copse and into the full light of the sun. He took off his hat, shaded his eyes, and looked across the plains.

  “We are on the southern plains between the Gulthmere and Starmantle,” Magadon said. “We’re two days away from the city.”

  “How long were we gone?” Cale asked.

  Magadon shrugged and answered, “No way to know that.”

  To Jak and Riven, both smoking away like chimneys, Cale said, “Take a few moments, then gear up. We need to move.”

  He knew that Azriim and the rest of the slaadi would not have been idle. Cale would spend the travel time back to Starmantle thinking of a way to track them down.

  Within hours they had reached the southern road out of Starmantle. A day and a half later and they had arrived at the city itself. By then, Cale had become almost inured to the pricks of pain caused him by the sun. Almost.

  As always, the gates of Starmantle were thrown open and the spear-armed guards hardly noted them as they passed inside, except to smirk at their filth. Glares from Cale and Riven wiped the guards’ smiles away.

  The city’s wide streets appeared much as Cale and his companions had left them—crowded with men, horses, humanoids, wagons, and stink—a stark contrast from the dark, desolate ruins of Elgrin Fau. The row of temples still loomed over the cityscape, supervising the sin with a knowing wink. Starmantle had not changed.

  But they had. The Plane of Shadow had changed them all. Cale looked at their clothes, all faded to shades of gray and black, and knew that each of them had left more than the color of their clothes behind in the darkness.

  Riven peeled off his dirt-caked cloak and tucked it under his arm.

  “Where and when are we meeting?” asked the assassin.

  Jak stuck a finger in his chest.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Zhent?” the halfling asked. “We ought to stick together.”

  Riven flashed his stained teeth. “You’re welcome to accompany me,” Riven answered. “I need to tend my gear, get cleaned up, take a meal, then take a whore. Food and flesh, Fleet. What else is there?”

  Jak looked mildly shocked and said, “Pipeweed, philosophy, religion, friendship … lots of things, Riven.”

  Riven offered a sincere, “Bah,” as he watched a stray dog sniff its way along the street. Cale would have sworn he saw caring in Riven’s face, but when the assassin looked up, his face was as hard as usual.

  “What about you, Cale?” Riven asked. “Mags? Either of you interested?”

  Cale hadn’t engaged the services a prostitute since he’d left the entirety of his feelings for Thazienne Uskevren scribed on a piece of paper back in Stormweather Towers, though he had felt the drive often enough. Self denial was another form of cleansing pain, he decided, and resolved that he would not surrender to his needs just then.

  “No,” he said, and left it at that.

  “Well enough,” Riven said. “Mags?”

  The guide doffed his cap, pushed his hair back, and shook his head.

  “I think not. I’ll gear us up for the next—” The guide stopped in mid-sentence and looked to Cale. “Where are we going next?”

  Cale did not yet have an answer, but he thought he had a means that might help them find out.

  “I’m still thinking,” he said. “I hope to know by tonight.”

  “Let me know when you know,” the guide said, “so I can equip us appropriately. Meantime, I’ll procure the necessities.”

  Cale nodded. For a moment, he debated with himself.

  Finally, he said to the guide, “Magadon, I feel like I owe it to you to say this …” He took a deep breath. “If you want to, if this is too much for too little, now is the time to walk away. I hope that you won’t, but I want you to know there’s an out. No shame and no hard feelings.”

  Cale regretted saying the words almost the moment he uttered them.

  A brief look of hurt and surprise flashed across Magadon’s face, but the guide recovered his composure quickly, fixed his knucklebone eyes on Cale, and offered a grin.

  “What do I look like,” he asked, “a Zhent assassin for hire?”

  Riven scoffed.

  Magadon continued, “We’re long past three hundred pieces of gold, Erevis. I’ll be seeing this through, if you please.”

  Cale couldn’t help but smile, both relieved and chagrined. In less than a tenday, he’d come to count on the guide’s solid presence. He thumped Magadon on the shoulder.

  “Good,” Cale said. “Mags, I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you meant,” Magadon said. “It’s appreciated but unnecessary. You remember our conversation back on the Plane of Shadow?”

  Cale nodded.

  “So do I,” Magadon said, and left it at that.

  Riven scoffed again and said, “There’s your friendship, Fleet, as sweet as a turnip, ain’t it?” The assassin looked to Cale. “If you’re done with the orders now, Cale, I’ll be finding my flesh.”

  To all of them, Cale said, “We meet at the Ninth Hell, around the tenth hour tonight. We’ll take our rest and … recreation today, but tomorrow we start again. In the meantime, stay clear of the Underworld.”

  Cale didn’t want any of them bumping into Dreeve and what remained of the gnoll’s pack. If the creature had returned to Starmantle, he probably still held a grudge.

  Cale seized each of them with his eyes before offering his last bit of advice: “And remember that the slaadi are shapechangers. They could be anywhere and anyone. Walk lightly, and stay sharp.”

  Each gave a serious nod, then Riven set off for his whore and Mags for his gear.

  Cale, looking forward to the darkness of a common room and the warmth of a meal, started in the direction of the Ninth Hell before he realized that Jak had lingered behind. He looked back and saw the halfling, with a wistful expression, watching Riven move through the crowd. Jak noticed Cale’s gaze on him, flushed with embarrassment, and jogged to catch up.

  “What is it?” Cale asked.

  “Nothing,” Jak said, but his eyes found the road. “Food sounds good, is all.”

  “We can get a meal at—” Realization dawned.

  Still staring at the ground, Jak wore an embarrassed grin. His cheeks flushed as red as an apple.

  “The touch of a woman’s hand doesn’t sound bad, either, eh?” Cale asked.

  Jak looked chagrined but did not deny it.

  “What was it your fat uncle always said?”

  Jak looked up but didn’t make eye contact as he replied, “A man’s work merits a man’s reward. Of course, he was talking abo
ut meals, not … other things.”

  Cale knew that, but the principle was the same.

  “You can still catch up,” he said, nodding after Riven. “I’ll see you at the inn.”

  Jak ran off like a bowshot.

  Despite its dire name, the Ninth Hell Inn and Eatery was well-tended, well-built, and well-run. The paunchy innkeeper, wearing a food-stained apron and sporting a lazy eye and thinning brown hair, greeted Cale with an insincere smile wanting for several teeth. Cale gave him a nod of welcome while he surveyed the common room out of professional habit: a single hearth with a low fire, eleven round tables with stools, windows on three sides, and a stairway leading up to the rooms. A handful of other patrons sat the inn’s tables—tan-faced day laborers on midday repast, mostly. No one and nothing dangerous.

  Assuming things were as they appeared.

  As he stepped out from behind the bar, the innkeeper ’s nose wrinkled a bit at Cale’s roadworn attire, but he quickly recaptured the hospitable look innate to the brotherhood of innkeepers. Thankfully, he seemed unbothered by Cale’s dusky skin. Cale had feared that his transformed appearance would cause him to stand out as clearly as an orc in a dwarfhold, but in truth, he probably looked like nothing more than a dark-skinned southerner. Like Magadon, he could pass for human with only a little work.

  “A meal, a room, and a bath for the road weary traveler,” the innkeeper said. “I’ll see to it immediately.”

  Cale couldn’t help but smile at the man’s effusiveness.

  “Two rooms,” Cale corrected. “Adjacent. I have three comrades. The rest is right.”

  He handed over to the innkeeper eight gold fivestars. He still didn’t have any local currency.

  “Sembian, eh?” the innkeeper said, eying the coins.