Shadowstorm

by Paul S. Kemp

  You dare call to me? the Lord Sciagraph said.

  Dread devoured Elyril’s excitement. She fumbled for a reply. “I … did not. I am grateful my lord has blessed me with his presence. I … have news.”

  She kept her head down but held up the book given her by Phraig.

  Silence for a moment, then, You possess half of the book to be made whole. What is its secret?

  “A ritual hides behind the words.”

  You are my servant, and Shar’s.

  The praise sent such a thrill through Elyril that she gasped.

  “It was left behind by servants of Mask. The Lady put it into my hands.”

  The temperature in the room dropped noticeably. Elyril could see her breath when she exhaled.

  Volumvax touched the back of her head—he was not flesh, she realized, but shadow—and the touch filled her with such terror that it nearly stopped her heart.

  Mask? The servants of the Shadowlord are afoot?

  Elyril could not breathe, could not speak. An ache in her mind turned to a stab of pain, transformed to a flash of agony. She thought her eyes must pop out of her head. She screamed, but dared not look up.

  Speak now, Dark Sister, or your heart stops after its next beat.

  Her mouth was too dry. She nodded, tried to swallow.

  Give me their names.

  She nodded her head, gulped, croaked, “Erevis Cale and Drasek Riven, Lord Sciagraph.”

  Volumvax withdrew his touch and Elyril gasped with relief, sagged.

  Time is short, priestess. Obtain the rest of the book. When it is whole, perform the ritual and summon the storm …

  Elyril almost looked up but caught herself just in time. “Lord Sciagraph, I do not know how to find the rest of the book.”

  The Nightseer holds it, though he knows not what he holds.

  Elyril did not process the words immediately. “The … Nightseer?”

  It was I who arranged to put it into his hands through one of his underlings.

  Elyril was unsurprised that Volumvax had kept the secret of the book from her. Such was the habit of Shar’s inscrutable nature. She was pleased, however, that the Nightseer possessed it in ignorance.

  Before Elyril could ask anything more, Volumvax’s manifestation ended.

  Too weak to stand, Elyril crawled back into her chair, her mind racing.

  She thought it strange that the Lord Sciagraph had shown such anger at the mention of Mask. She thought it strange, too, that Shar and Volumvax seemed to be acting without the full knowledge of the other’s activities. Did the Lord Sciagraph keep secrets even from the Lady of Loss? No. It was blasphemy.

  Elyril put it from her mind and turned her thoughts to how she would obtain the rest of the book from the Nightseer.

  Kefil said to her, You are imagining all of this. It was a dream.

  “You lie,” Elyril said, and held the book tightly against her body.

  Rivalen returned to the darkness of his quarters and sat in a large armchair. Matters had progressed well with the Hulorn. Rivalen felt he could turn Tamlin to Shar whenever he wished. The boy’s ambition ruled his morality. Rivalen liked that about him.

  Cradling his holy symbol in his hands, he whispered the words to a spell that would allow him to send a short message to the Most High. When he felt the magical energy gather around him, he uttered the sending. “The Hulorn’s trust has been earned and Selgaunt is ours when we wish. War in Sembia is inevitable.”

  The magic carried his words across Faerûn, into the ears of the Most High. Rivalen awaited a response and it came quickly. He felt it as a buzzing in his ears followed by the whispered words of his father.

  Perhaps the non-Shadovar who know you to have created this war should be dealt with?

  Rivalen nodded. His own thoughts mirrored those of the Most High. He wanted the Hulorn to regard the Shadovar as saviors of his cause, not instigators of the war. Rivalen had taken care to ensure that only two non-Shadovar knew of Shar’s involvement in starting the conflict—Elyril Hraven and Vees Talendar. He would be direct with Elyril. For Vees, he planned something unique. It did not please him to ponder the killing of a Dark Sister and Brother, but he would do it nevertheless.

  The Most High continued, his voice harder. You have done well, Rivalen. Your mother would take pride in your accomplishments.

  The words pulled Rivalen to his feet. The magical sending ended.

  Shadows swirled around him, reflecting his concern. Jumbled thoughts careened around in his mind. The Most High’s words echoed through his brain.

  What had the Most High meant? He had never before mentioned Alashar in such a manner. Did the Most High know, or even suspect, that Rivalen had murdered Alashar at Shar’s command? How could he have learned it? Rivalen had revealed the secret to no one. Only he and Shar knew it.

  Rivalen replayed in his mind countless conversations he’d had with his father over the centuries, scouring them for hints. He remembered nothing that alarmed him and tried to put his mind at ease. His father could not have known. If he had, he would have killed Rivalen long ago. Unless …

  Unless Shar herself had informed the Most High and at the same time commanded him to take no vengeance. Perhaps the Most High’s Own Secret was that he knew the truth of Alashar’s murder. For centuries he could have been looking upon Rivalen not as a son, but as the murderer of his beloved, his need for revenge held in check only by Shar’s interdiction.

  Rivalen tried to dismiss the thoughts as blasphemous. He reminded himself that he knew nothing for certain and wondered if he were not imagining threats. He had seen it often among Sharrans. A faith so reliant on secrets sometimes bred among the faithful mistrust and wild imaginings that bordered on madness. Still, his theory rang true to him.

  “Why?” Rivalen asked the darkness. “Why betray your most powerful instrument?”

  Shar gave him no answers. She never did.

  But Rivalen saw an answer.

  Shar wanted a wedge between the Most High and Rivalen. She had betrayed Rivalen to bring him closer to her. She wanted Rivalen beholden to her, wanted him to choose his faith over his city and his family, the same way Rivalen wanted the Hulorn beholden to him.

  “I chose faith over family the day I murdered my mother, Lady.”

  The darkness held its silence, and its secrets.

  Thoughtful, Rivalen removed an exquisitely crafted miniature chest from an inner pocket. Concentrating on it, he triggered its magic, and its mate, a full-sized chest exactly alike in appearance to the miniature, appeared on the floor at his feet.

  He spoke the sequence of command words that discharged the protective wards he maintained on the chest, and used a minor spell to open its lock. He lifted the lid.

  Coils of shadow leaked from the opening, carrying indecipherable whispers into the air. Within the chest lay The Leaves of One Night. He had taken to carrying it with him, rather than leaving it in the vault of the temple in Shade Enclave. It seemed right to have it near him.

  He placed his hand atop the book’s black cover, felt its coolness, felt the characters written on it shifting under his touch. He intoned a prayer to Shar and the book whispered in his mind.

  He resolved that he would no longer secrete it on the ethereal plane. He wanted it closer to him, wanted Shar’s words nearer his ears. The chest and the book would remain warded in his quarters or on his person. If Shar had something to say to him through the book, he wanted it close enough to him that he would hear.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  21 Uktar, the Year of Lightning Storms

  Cale, Riven, and Magadon materialized not at the center of the cemetery, as Cale had intended, but at its edge, just outside the low, crumbling stone wall that described its perimeter. Black moss clung to the wall and the still, damp air stank of old rot.

  Within the wall, darkness gathered as thick as fog. Even with his shadesight, Cale could see only twenty paces through the miasma. In the distance he could just make out the d
im, diffuse green glow of the gate. The distorting swirl of darkness and shadows made it appear leagues away. The flash flared and died, flared and died, like a heartbeat.

  A city of crumbling gravestones, crypts, and mausoleums stood between them and the gate. Grass and weeds overgrew it all.

  “There must be some kind of ward,” Cale said, to explain why they had not materialized near the gate. Strangely, he felt little correspondence with the darkness inside the cemetery. He felt only the shadows and darkness very near him. He understood why. The cemetery’s shadows belonged to another.

  “We go afoot,” he said.

  Magadon looked out over the cemetery. The gate flashed again.

  “That’s a lot of ground to cover,” the mindmage said. “And a lot of wraiths,” Riven added.

  “It is,” Cale answered to both of them. He intoned a prayer to Mask that would shield him and his companions from the soul-draining power of the undead creatures. He touched himself, Magadon, and Riven in turn.

  “If they come, this will preserve our souls, but the cold of their touch will still steal your warmth. We stay together at all costs.”

  Riven, evidently resigned to their course, said, “We move fast and straight. Right for the gate.”

  They all shared a look, nodded.

  Cale vaulted the wall and dropped into the cemetery’s deeper darkness. The air closed in around him. It felt thick in his lungs, oily on his skin. His breathing sounded loud in his ears, while everything else sounded far away and muffled.

  Small gravestones worn smooth by time dotted the grass at his feet. Ghostly structures—crypts and mausoleums—lurked at the edge of his sight.

  Riven and Magadon dropped to the ground beside him.

  “The darkness is different in here,” Magadon said, and waved his hand in the air. “Like cobwebs.”

  “Damned air is like a vise,” Riven said. He cleared his throat and spit. “Tastes foul.”

  Cale nodded. The darkweaver spun strands of shadows the way a spider did a web. Cale imagined the creature lurking at the center of its shadowy net, waiting, feeling the vibrations in the shadows caused by their approach.

  “Let’s move,” Riven said.

  “This way,” Cale said, and led them deeper into the city of graves.

  He moved as fast as he dared in the darkness. The air grew colder with each step they took. Tombs surrounded them on all sides, foreboding and ominous. The air resisted Cale’s movements slightly, as if he were walking into a light wind, as if it were pawing at him.

  “It’s too goddamned quiet,” Riven said softly, and the darkness made his words a whisper.

  A hiss sounded from out in the darkness before them. They halted their advance.

  “It knows we’re here,” Riven said.

  “That it does,” Cale said softly. “Mags, some light.”

  Magadon nodded, concentrated, and a soft yellow light haloed his head for a moment. A ball of white luminescence formed over him and moved with him. The darkness squirmed away from it like a living thing. The light—dimming already under the unrelenting shadows—revealed the gossamer-thin filaments that veined the air.

  A muffled, haunting moan sounded, seemingly from deep under their feet. Another answered from their right. Another came from their left. Soon the moans carried from all directions, a chorus of hate sung by Elgrin Fau’s doomed citizens, all of them transformed by Kesson Rel’s foul magic into wraiths.

  The sound of their pain and malice curdled Cale’s flesh. The air grew so chill that his teeth chattered. Riven cursed, turned a circle, and twirled his blades. Shadows bled from Weaveshear, spiraled around Cale.

  Magadon focused his gaze on his palm and manifested his mindblade.

  “Keep moving,” Cale said, and strode quickly through the gravestones.

  Magadon and Riven flanked him. Their breath came hard. Despite the cold, sweat slicked Cale. There was no end to the graves, no sign of the gate. The thrice-damned thing had stopped flashing, or the darkweaver had draped it in darkness. Cale had no way to know how close they were to the portal. And they had awakened the dead. They were moving blindly.

  “Stop,” he said. “Stop for a moment.”

  He needed to get his bearings. He had lost his sense of direction. The frozen air turned his breath to mist. The shadowstrands were everywhere. He could determine nothing. They might easily be walking in a circle.

  The wraiths’ moans fell silent. Cale found it more ominous than comforting.

  “What is it?” Riven asked, his voice as tight as a bowstring.

  Cale shook his head. “I don’t know where we are. I don’t see the gate.”

  Magadon did not hesitate. “That way,” he said, and pointed over Cale’s shoulder. “You had it right.”

  Cale and Riven shared a look. Magadon caught its import.

  “I said I was with you. That way. Trust me.”

  Cale nodded, apologized with his eyes to Magadon for his mistrust.

  They took ten strides and all at once the wraiths issued forth from the surrounding tombs like a flock of crows. Black ghostly forms, only vaguely recognizable as humanoid, rose out of the ground, out of the crypts, out of the mausoleums. There were hundreds of them, thousands. Emberlike eyes glared out of the holes of their faces. Moans and whispers filled the air. Cale heard words in the whispers but could not make them out.

  “Cale?” Riven asked, eyeing the approaching wraiths.

  Cale said, “Stay close to me and keep moving. Mags, the more light the better.”

  Magadon’s brow furrowed and the ball of light hovering above his head flared. The wraiths moaned in answer, swirled in agitation. From somewhere off in the darkness, the darkweaver answered the wails of the wraiths with a hiss.

  “Move,” Cale said. He held forth his mask and let the Shadowlord’s power flow through it and surround them.

  Riven and Magadon closed ranks with him and they moved in lockstep in the direction of the gate. The wraiths closed on them, swirled around the edge of Cale’s power, glared at them from outside the radius of Magadon’s light. The creatures engulfed them like an unholy fog. Cale could not see where they were going.

  “Mags?”

  “Still this way, Cale,” Magadon answered.

  “Back to your rest!” Cale shouted at the wraiths, and pushed more power through his holy symbol. Divine energy flowed through him and into the air. It crashed into the wraiths, cutting a tunnel through the swarm. Moans chorused in Cale’s ears.

  Cale, Magadon, and Riven pushed through the opening. But there were so many. They pressed against Cale’s power. The strain was draining him. Magadon’s light was dimming. They would not be able to shield themselves for much longer, and when the barrier collapsed …

  Dark hands reached up out of the cold earth and clutched at them. Riven and Cale saw them and jumped aside but Magadon was too slow. The mindmage gasped at the touch of the undead and his light dimmed further.

  The wraiths took advantage and swarmed forward in a black tide. Cale braced himself and channeled divine power through Weaveshear and his mask.

  “Away!”

  But the wraiths did not slow. Moans sounded from all around. Black hands reached for them from all sides. Red eyes surged forward.

  Cale shouted as the black tide broke on them. He took Weaveshear in two hands and tore through one, two, three wraiths. They moaned as parts of their forms boiled away in foul-smelling black smoke. Cale barely felt any resistance as he cut through the incorporeal creatures. Riven twirled, spun, ducked, his blades whirling and whistling through the wraiths’ forms. Magadon stabbed his mindblade downward into the earth at the creature that had attacked him. Oily dark smoke and a moan rose from the sod.

  The wraiths were a black blizzard, their forms swarming around them, grasping, shrieking. Ghostly hands reached through Cale’s clothing, armor, and body to clutch at his heart. The cold caused him to gasp, slowed him. Many of the wraiths simply flew through the companions, one
after another, the unearthly chill of their forms taking its toll on flesh before they darted away.

  Cale, Riven, and Magadon’s blades slashed and cut but the tide of wraiths was unending. Magadon’s mindblade slashed through the torso of a wraith, stabbed another through the torso, but two of the creatures penetrated his guard and reached into his chest. He screamed and fell to his knees as one, another, and another wraith flowed through him. His scream died; his mouth hung open, frozen. His mindblade fell from his hand and dissipated.

  Cale drove back a handful of wraiths with a series of furious slashes, then bounded to Magadon’s side. He sliced Weaveshear through a wraith as it emerged from Magadon’s body and the creature dissolved into black fumes and a fading moan. He held the blade over his head and summoned as much divine power as he could. Shadows gushed from the blade and his voice boomed over the battle.

  “Away, dead of Elgrin Fau! Our quarrel is not with you but with Kesson Rel! Away!”

  Power veined the shadows leaking from the blade and the wraiths writhed, recoiled, and withdrew. They hovered at a distance, ringing Cale, Riven, and Magadon in a wall of black forms and burning eyes. Whispers replaced the wraiths’ moans.

  Riven helped Magadon to his feet and steadied him. The assassin drew darkness from the air with his fingertips, charged his hands with its power, and placed them on Magadon. Magadon’s face regained its color and he visibly strengthened. Riven thumped him on the shoulder and relaxed his grip on his companion.

  “Cale?” Riven asked, eyeing the wraiths.

  The creatures hovered motionless, regarding them, whispering.

  Cale shook his head but held Weaveshear at the ready. He did not know what to make of their strange pause. He did not think he was holding them at bay; he did not feel them challenging his power. The wraiths’ whispers sounded like falling rain.

  “What are they saying?” Magadon asked.

  Despite his facility with several languages, Cale did not understand the wraiths. Struck with an idea, he hurriedly intoned the words to a prayer that allowed him to understand and speak the tongue of any creature. As he uttered the final syllable, the cloud of wraiths fell silent and parted.