by Paul S. Kemp
Kesson looked down at the blade, his black eyes wide.
Riven twisted it once and jerked it free.
Blood poured from Kesson’s mouth. He staggered, looked down at Cale, and … smiled.
Cale tried to utter a warning to Riven but could manage only an incoherent shout. He rose to all fours as Kesson whirled around to Riven and spoke a couplet of arcane words. The Divine One finished and shouted, “Away!”
The magic of his spell augmented the shout to such volume and power that even with Kesson’s back to him, Cale felt as if knives had been driven into his eardrums. The power in Kesson’s voice cracked the floor, shattered several of Riven’s teeth, shredded his clothing, and drove him to the floor, flat on his back. Somehow the magical stone about his head survived the onslaught. Riven did not move. Blood dripped from the sides of his mouth, his ears.
Kesson recovered himself and intoned a spell to close the hole in his abdomen.
Another impact shook the wall of stone. Another.
Cale willed his legs solid under him.
Kesson incanted another spell and black energy engulfed his hand. On the floor before him, Riven’s hand twitched. Kesson bent and reached for Riven.
Before he could touch the assassin, two arrows, both glowing red with energy, streaked through the wall of blades and sank into Kesson’s flesh. He stood upright, reaching around his wings to clutch at the arrows.
Do something, Cale! Magadon said.
Cale did. He rose and rushed Kesson, stumbling but determined. He took the root of one of Kesson’s wings in his hand and shoved the Divine One past Riven and toward the spinning blades. Kesson shouted with surprise, tried to flap his wings, tried to bury his heels in the floor. Cale grunted, leaned into him, leaned into Magadon’s arrows, and kept him moving.
Kesson shouted and Cale heard fear in it. The Divine One reached back blindly with his spell-empowered hand and touched Cale at the waist.
The spell cracked Cale’s ribs and ankle, rent the skin of his legs. Pain blinded him but he held on and pushed. But he was weakening.
Kesson resisted, held his ground.
Cale was falling, failing.
“Kill him, godsdammit!” shouted Magadon from a hundred leagues away.
Three more arrows streaked through the wall of blades but they hit nothing.
Cale grunted, pushed, but he could not move Kesson. The Divine One began to incant another spell. Cale shouted in despair.
Riven appeared at his side and slammed his shoulder into Kesson’s back. His added strength was enough. The Divine One lurched forward.
“Push this bastard!” Riven grunted. The assassin used his shoulder to drive Magadon’s arrow deeper into Kesson’s flesh and the Divine One exclaimed with pain, losing the thread of whatever spell he had intended to cast.
Kesson roared with frustration and fear as Riven and Cale together held him by the wings and levered him toward the blades. Kesson could not stop them. The two were greater than the one. Desperate, Kesson tried to fall to the ground to stop their advance but they held him on his feet.
Kesson screamed and held up his arms as if to brace himself against the blades.
The storm of steel sent his fingers flying, his hands, his forearms. Kesson howled with pain. Blood, bone, and skin showered the floor.
“Yes!” Magadon shouted. “Yes!”
Cale and Riven roared in answer to Kesson’s screams and pushed him farther into the blades. He squirmed but they would not allow him to escape.
The blades chewed up Kesson’s arms, face, chest, and legs. A shower of gore rained on Cale and Riven. Soon they each held only the stump of a wing.
Kesson Rel was dead, his remains cast about the floor in glistening scarlet lumps.
Abruptly the wings and gore on the floor dissolved, melted like ice into nothingness. Cale and Riven stepped back, breathing heavily. The wall of blades, too, vanished.
Another boom shook the wall. Cale heard stone crack. He and Riven stared at one another.
“Why is nothing happening?” Riven asked.
Cale shook his head. He had expected a rush of divine energy, an explosion of power, something, anything.
Instead, nothing.
“Where is it?” Magadon shouted. He moved across the chamber, holding the dead elf’s bow in his hand. His face was drawn and pale from taking Cale’s pain. “Where is it?”
Cale looked at the floor, at his hand.
“All this,” Riven said. “For nothing?”
A series of thuds sounded against the stone. It held, but the giants were trying something new. It was only a matter of time before they got in.
“We have to leave,” Cale said, and Riven nodded.
But first Cale had to fix his broken body. He wanted to order Magadon to rid them of the light, to let his flesh regenerate in the darkness, but he knew darkness would invite the undead shadows. Instead he cast a powerful healing spell on himself. He groaned as his bones rejoined and wounds closed. Riven did the same. The assassin moved a few paces and recovered Weaveshear. He returned it to Cale, hilt first. Kesson’s blood was not on it.
“Doesn’t fit me,” Riven said.
Cale took it, sheathed it. “Seemed to fit you fine.”
“We cannot leave, Cale,” Magadon said, and Cale heard despair in his voice. “You promised me.”
“I know, Mags. I—”
Near Magadon, the gnome woman audibly groaned.
Magadon whirled on her. “She is still alive. She can tell us what is happening.”
Cale and Riven shared a look as another impact shook the stone. Cale intoned the words to a spell that placed a second stone wall behind the first, doubling its width. He had bought them some time.
They moved to the gnome woman’s side. She rolled over and her eyes opened.
“Sit up,” Cale said. “Do only what we say or you die.”
She sat up, wincing with pain. She wore a necklace of dried eyeballs around her neck. Her teeth were as black as her heart. Blood stained her shirt and leather jerkin. She looked around the chamber, eyes wide.
“You … you killed the Divine One?” she stammered.
“Not so divine anymore,” Riven said with a sneer.
“How is that possible?” she asked, dazed. “How can that be?”
Cale loomed over her. “This can be difficult or easy, woman.”
Her expression hardened and she stared defiance at Cale. “I will tell you nothing, Maskarran.”
Cale put Weaveshear’s tip to her throat. Shadows swirled from the blade, circled her neck like a garrote. She eyed Cale with hate and Cale saw the fear behind it. He nodded at Riven.
The assassin moved behind her, pulled her to her feet, and held her with a forearm around her throat.
Her breath came fast. She swallowed reflexively. “I will tell you nothing,” she said. “Nothing.”
Riven tightened his grip on her throat and she gagged. He put his mouth to her ear. “I promise you that you will.”
The gnome blinked, struggled. She looked like nothing so much as a trapped rat.
“I can compel you with spells,” Cale said. “You will eventually succumb.”
A boom shook the wall. Another. Another. The gnome shook her head. “I will resist. You do not have time.”
“Then I will compel you with sharp steel,” Riven said, his voice low and dangerous. “And you will succumb sooner.”
To that, the gnome said nothing, but her skin whitened. Cale feared she might faint.
Cale said, “We will have what we came for. One way or another.”
“Leave her to me,” Magadon said, his voice cold.
“Mags …” Cale began.
“It is my soul at stake!” Magadon snapped, his eyes flaring.
Cale could not argue the point.
“Can you do it?” Riven asked him.
Magadon stared at the gnome. “Mephistopheles did not take power, Riven. He took conscience.”
Cale and
Riven shared a look. Cale said, “Do it.”
“You are going to like this,” Riven said to the gnome, and released her.
Before she could run, a red glow flared around Magadon’s head. The gnome stiffened and she froze. Her eyes went wide.
“No,” she said, her voice hushed.
Magadon advanced on her.
Her fists clenched. She gritted her teeth. “I will tell you nothing,” she hissed, and shook her head. Spit flew.
“No, but you will show me everything,” Magadon said, and his voice sounded deeper. Cale was reminded of Mephistopheles’s voice and almost called a stop to matters.
Magadon loomed over her. With his horns and his demonic flesh, he looked the way Mephistopheles had looked standing over Magadon on Cania. Red light flared around his head, brighter than before. Veins pulsed in his brow.
The gnome screamed.
“I see,” Magadon said.
The gnome’s mouth hung open, spit suspended between her teeth, eyes wide and vacant. She made no sound.
Magadon reached down and covered her brow with his palm. At his touch, her body spasmed and she whimpered.
Cale and Riven looked at one another with concern but neither moved to stop the mindmage. They needed the information.
Cale imagined Magadon boring into the gnome’s memories, peeling her mind open layer by layer. It could not be pleasant.
Magadon spoke. “Kesson Rel was infused by the Shadowlord with a shard of his divine power.”
Cale nodded. He knew as much.
“Later, he defied his god and drank of the Black Chalice. He was named heretic by his fellow priests and cast out. Kesson secretly abandoned the Shadowlord for Shar and took the name Volumvax. Shar prevented Mask from retaking what he had given and Kesson Rel avenged himself on his fellows by bringing first the Hall of Shadows, then all of Elgrin Fau to the Plane of Shadow to die.”
Cale nodded again. He knew Kesson Rel’s crimes, but hearing them spoken aloud reinforced the magnitude of the murders.
Magadon continued. “To accomplish his work, he bound a dragon to his service. To bind the dragon, he was forced to use some of the divine essence given him by Mask. Kesson meant it to be temporary, but Kesson’s fellow priests sacrificed themselves to cage the divine essence within the dragon. The dragon’s name was Furlinastis.”
Riven and Cale looked at one another and cursed in unison.
“Kesson sought the dragon for millennia,” Magadon said. “To kill him and recover what he had lost, but he could not locate the beast. As the centuries passed, Kesson grew weak from his lack. Soon he had power only on the Plane of Shadow, then only in the Adumbral Calyx, then only in his spire.”
The gnome shrieked. The tendons and veins in her neck stood out like ropes under her skin.
Cale had heard enough. Kesson Rel did not have Mask’s divine spark. Furlinastis did. They had been on the wrong hunt.
“Let her go, Mags. We’ve got what we need. The dragon is our prey, now. And we know where to find him.”
Magadon held onto the gnome.
“There is more here yet, Cale,” the mindmage said, his eyes hard. “It’s deep, but I can get it.”
Magadon’s pupils disappeared altogether. His eyes went solid white, like those of Mephistopheles.
“Enough, Mags,” Cale said.
Magadon seemed not to hear him. Creases and veins lined his brow. The gnome screamed again. Magadon smiled. He was taking pleasure in exerting his will over another.
“Enough, Mags,” Cale said. “We have what we need. We are leaving.”
Magadon did not stop. The gnome started to shake. The blood vessels in her eyes popped, drenching them in blood.
“Mags, enough!” Riven said. “Enough.”
The assassin took Magadon by the shoulder and pulled him away from the gnome.
Magadon snarled, whirled on Riven. The assassin had a blade drawn and at Magadon’s throat so fast it was a blur.
“Slow down, Mags,” Riven said softly.
The rage left Magadon’s eyes. His pupils returned.
“All right?” Cale asked him, and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Yes,” Magadon answered. “I’m sorry, Riven.”
Riven lowered his blade, nodded.
Magadon looked back on the gnome, her small form gibbering on the floor. He looked away, regret on his face.
Cale said, “Don’t give in, Mags. I understand your fight.”
“You cannot,” Magadon said, and offered no further explanation.
Cale could think of nothing more to say.
Another boom shook the stone hemispheres he had created.
“Lower the light,” he said, and pictured in his mind the hill outside Elgrin Fau.
The light dimmed and shadows formed.
Cale breathed easier and his flesh began to regenerate. He recited the words to a counterspell and unwound the magic that prevented magical transport from the room.
The moment he did, patches of shadow clotted all over the room and giants materialized, blades in hand and violence in their eyes. No longer held at bay by Magadon’s light, undead shadows streaked in through the floors, ceiling, walls.
Cale ignored them all, pulled the shadows about himself and his comrades, and rode the darkness to Elgrin Fau, leaving the Adumbral Calyx behind.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
29 Uktar, the Year of Lightning Storms
Dawn’s light showed distant smoke on the horizon. The faint stink of it hung in the air. Saerb was still a few leagues to the east. The smoke was to the northeast, not from Saerb, but from the direction of the Corrinthal estate. Abelar did not call for a Dawnmeet. He stared at the smoke, his heart and mind racing.
“It cannot have been Forrin. We would have seen signs of his forces.”
“Agreed,” Endren said, and Abelar heard the concern in his father’s voice.
Regg said, “It could be nothing more than a brushfire.”
Abelar nodded but the expanding pit in his stomach belied the gesture. It did not smell like a brushfire. And even if Forrin’s main body had not yet reached Saerb, he knew that an advance force of scouts or raiders could have attacked the estate. Forrin had already shown his willingness to target civilians.
Abelar, Endren, and Regg stared at the smoke in silence for a time while the company geared up. Abelar’s hand went to his holy symbol. He chose to believe the smoke came from something other than the Corrinthal estate. He did not think Lathander would have granted the miracle back in the village, would have returned his father to him, only to have Abelar fail to reach his son in time. But belief did not chase his fears.
“Mount up,” he said to his father and Regg, then called Jiiris to him. Her green eyes mirrored his fears back at him. She understood what the smoke might mean. Everyone did. Abelar held onto his emotions and kept his voice level.
“Ride on to Saerb. We’re ahead of Forrin’s main force. Endren, Regg, Roen, and I will take two score men to investigate … the smoke.”
She nodded, reached as if to touch his hand, but stopped just short.
“I would rather accompany you, Abelar.”
He shook his head. “No. Take the company to Saerb and organize an evacuation. Regg’s father will be at Oakhaven, and he is ill. Send men to secure his safety. Then send word to the nobility that we are to muster on the western shore of Lake Veladon. Make sure they know that my father rides with us, that he is calling the muster.”
Jiiris nodded. “And from there?”
Endren put in, “Depends on our numbers. And Forrin’s. Once our forces are assembled, we’ll evaluate.”
Abelar said, “We will meet you there. Be wary, Jiiris. There may be raiders afoot.”
She lowered her gaze, nodded. “I am sorry, Abelar.”
He refused to acknowledge the implication of her words.
“Stay in the light,” he said to her.
She looked him in the eyes, firmed up. “And you, my lord.”
The company said its farewells. The bulk of the men moved east to Saerb. Abelar, Endren, Regg, Roen, and a score more headed northeast toward the smoke, toward the Corrinthal estate, toward Elden.
They pushed their mounts into a gallop. Abelar tried to keep alert for any signs of raiders but he could not focus. The grass and the trees blurred in his vision.
The men spoke little, and the silence was telling. Abelar felt numb, dazed. With each of Swiftdawn’s strides, he felt a little more of him shaken loose. He could not stop imagining one horrible end or another for his son. Tears wetted his cheeks and he gave Swiftdawn her head. She pulled away from the rest of the group. Abelar heard his companions calling after him but he ignored them. He had to see. He had to know.
And he had to be first.
The smell of smoke grew stronger as he dashed through the grasslands and woods that he knew well enough to navigate in his sleep. Clouds masked the sun. Abelar’s mouth went dry as he neared a familiar rise that would allow him to see the estate. He slowed Swiftdawn, topped the rise, and saw the destruction below him.
“No,” he said, and the tears started anew. He had expected it, but expecting it did nothing to prepare him for the sight of it.
He heeled Swiftdawn and she tore off down the rise and toward the estate.
The gates lay flattened on the ground, trampled underfoot. Dried blood spattered the gatehouse. Flames had consumed the manse and barracks. Both were little more than blackened skeletons of wood and stone. They still radiated heat. The village stood unmolested, but unoccupied and ghostly. The stables, too, remained, but they were empty of horses. Abelar halted Swiftdawn near the gatehouse. He saw no bodies.
Perhaps most of them had fled. Perhaps Elden was safe in Saerb even now.
“Hail!” he called. “Anyone!”
A murder of crows, startled by his shout, took flight from behind the manse. Their caws mocked his hopes. His heart climbed up his throat.
“Abelar!” Endren called from behind him.
The rest of his companions had reached the rise. They, too, saw the destruction, the crows.
“Wait, Abelar!”
His companions thundered down the rise and over the plains, but Abelar did not wait. He had to see. He whickered at Swiftdawn and she walked him around the ruins of the manse. Spots of churned earth dotted the grounds; blood stained the grass here and there.
