by Paul S. Kemp
He blew out a sigh and hung all but one of the tankards he’d cleaned on their pegs behind the bar. He filled the one he’d kept from the half-full hogshead and raised it in a salute. After draining it, he set to closing down the tavern for another night, all of it routine. His life had become rote.
He went to the tables, each of them wobbling on uneven legs, and blew out the lamps. The low fire in the hearth provided the room’s only light. He checked the stew pot on its hook near the hearth, saw that almost nothing remained, and decided to leave cleaning it for the morning. He took the iron poker from the wall, intending to spread the coals and head to his garret next door, where he’d lay awake and think of the past, then fall asleep and dream of the Source.
All at once the air in the room grew heavy, pressed against his ears, and a cough sounded from behind him. He whirled around, brandishing the poker. Instinct caused him to draw on his mental energy and a soft, red glow haloed his head.
The darkness in the tavern had deepened so that he could not see into the corners of the room. He stood in a bubble of light cast by the faint glow of his power and the fire’s embers. He slid to his left, holding the poker defensively, and put his back against the hearth. He’d left his damned weapons behind the bar.
“Show yourself,” he said.
He charged the metal poker with mental energy, enough to penetrate a dragon’s scales. Its end glowed bright red. The light cast shadows on the walls.
“I said: Show yourself.”
“You carry that instead of a blade now?” said a voice from his right.
Magadon whirled toward the voice and shock almost caused him to drop the poker.
“Riven.”
The darkness in the room relented. The weightiness in the air did not.
“Nice that someone remembers that name,” Riven said. He stepped from the darkness, emerged from it as if stepping out from behind dark curtains, all compact movement and blurry edges. Sabers hung from his belt. A sneer hung from his lips. He hadn’t aged, but then he wouldn’t have. Magadon reminded himself that he was not talking to a man but a god.
Riven glided across the room, his footsteps soundless, and Magadon could not think of a single word to say. Riven smiled through his goatee and extended his hand. Magadon hesitated, then took it. Shadows crawled off Riven and onto Magadon’s forearm.
“It’s good to see you again, Mags. I don’t have long. My being here puts you at risk.”
“At risk? From what? I don’t—”
Riven was already nodding. “I know you don’t. I know. And that’s as it must be. Mags, the Cycle of Night either succeeds or fails. And that’s up to us. Maybe.”
Magadon’s head was spinning. His thoughts were inchoate. “The Cycle of Night?”
Riven nodded, started pacing, dragging his fingertips over the tabletops as he moved, the shadows clinging to his form. “This is a shithole, Mags.”
“What?”
Riven chuckled. “I caught you by surprise here. Apologies. I need you to be ready when I call. I just . . . need someone I can rely on. Can you do that?”
Magadon could not quite gather his runaway thoughts. He resisted the impulse to cough out another stupid question. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Riven looked almost sympathetic. “I know you don’t. But that’s good for now. I don’t even know what I’m talking about half the time because they’re not my words and only half my thoughts.”
Magadon blinked, confused.
Riven looked at him directly, his regard like a punch. “Can you be ready, Mags?”
“I . . . don’t know.”
Riven nodded, as if he’d expected ambivalence. “Where’s your pack? Your bow and blade?”
Magadon started to find his conversational footing. “Behind the bar.”
“A barkeep,” Riven said, chuckling. “Not how I saw things going for you.”
“Not how I saw things going for me, either,” Magadon admitted with a shrug. “It’s been a hundred years, Riven. You show up, you talk about things as if I should know what they are, but I don’t and—”
“I found Cale’s son. Thirty years ago. I found him.”
The words stopped Magadon cold. “Found him where? He was alive thirty years ago? He’d have been over seventy years old.”
Riven shook his head. A pipe was in his hand, although Magadon had not seen him take it out. “You have a match?”
Magadon shook his head.
“Gods, Mags. You used to be prepared for anything.” He shook his head. “No matter.”
He put the pipe in his mouth and it lit. He inhaled, the glow of the bowl showing the pockmarks in his face, the vacancy where his left eye should have been. The smoke joined the shadows in curling around him.
“He’s not seventy,” Riven said. “He was newborn thirty years ago. It’s a long story.”
“How could he have been newborn thirty years ago? Cale would’ve been dead seventy years by then.”
A smile curled the corners of Riven’s mouth. “I told you it was a long story.” “I’ve nothing but time.”
Riven nodded, blew out a cloud of smoke. “But I don’t.”
“You’re telling me he’s still alive? The son?”
“He’s alive and he’s the key, Mags.”
Magadon shook his head, unable to make sense of things. “The key to what?”
“The key to fixing all this, undoing it, making it as it should have been, stopping Shar’s Cycle of Night. But it’ll have to happen in Ordulin.”
Magadon was still not following, although the mention of Ordulin turned Magadon’s mind to the Shadovar, to Rivalen Tanthul, Shar’s nightseer. Magadon had been captured and tortured by Rivalen and his brother, Brennus, long ago. “Rivalen and the Shadovar are involved?”
Riven nodded. “More than involved. Rivalen’s trying to complete the Cycle, and he’s clever, Mags, very clever. But maybe too clever this time. Your father’s involved in this, too, although he’s a bit player. And so are you. Or at least you are now.”
“My father?” The last time Magadon had seen his father, Mephistopheles, the archdevil had flayed his soul. He banished the memory.
“You all right?” Riven asked.
Magadon nodded. “Where’s Cale’s son?”
Riven’s eye looked past Magadon, to the east. “He’s out there in the dark. A light in darkness, is what they say. He’s safe, though.”
“You tell me where he is, I can go to him. Keep him safe.”
Riven shook his head. “No, you can’t. He’s where he’s supposed to be. Now he’s gotta come to me. Besides, I need you here.”
“For what?”
“I told you. To be ready when I call.”
“What does that even mean? You’re talking in circles.”
Riven grinned around his pipe stem. “I don’t know what it means yet. I’m figuring this out as we go. I just know I want you ready. I’ll need your help. Just like always, just like it was back before . . . everything.”
“Like it was back before,” Magadon echoed. He pointed with his chin at the stew pot, still hanging over the embers. “Do you eat? Now that . . . you are what you are? There’s a little stew there. Or an ale, maybe?”
“I eat,” Riven said, losing his smile. “But it’s not the same anymore. It’s like I can’t help but analyze instead of just enjoy it.” He shook his head. “It’s complicated.”
Magadon put a hand on Riven’s shoulder in sympathy, but Riven pushed it aside and cocked his head, as if he’d heard something, and a half-beat later a loud thud sounded from above, a powerful impact on the roof that cracked a crossbeam and shook the entire tavern. Dust and debris sprinkled down.
Magadon looked up. “What—?”
Another thud, the crossbeam cracked further, and the entire roof sagged.
“Shit,” Riven said, exhaling smoke. The pipe was already gone and he had his sabers in hand. Magadon had not even seen him draw them.
&n
bsp; A heavy tread on the roof, creaking wood, a scrabbling on the roof tiles, as of blade or claw.
“They must’ve followed me,” Riven said, taking position beside Magadon, his body coiled, shadows swirling. “They must’ve been watching me in the Shadowfell somehow, waiting. Or maybe they’ve been here the whole time? See anything unusual recently?”
“What? No.”
Another thump, more splintering and dust, more tension.
Magadon drew on his store of mental energy, shaped it, formed it into a cocoon of transparent force that surrounded his body and would protect him as well as plate armor. He tightened his grip on the poker, looked up at the bowed roof.
“Who followed you?” he whispered.
“Agents of your father,” Riven said, his voice low and edged.
“Devils, then.”
A crash and a sharp prolonged splintering as the roof gave way entirely. The main crossbeam hit the floor with a boom, in the process crushing a table and two chairs. Tiles and wood planks and two winged fiendish forms poured down through the hole. The devils hit the floor in a crouch, narrow eyes on Riven and Magadon, tridents clutched in clawed hands, membranous wings tucked behind their back.
The fiends—Magadon recognized them as malebranche—stood taller than even a very tall man. Thick muscles clotted in bunches under their gray, leathery skin. Each wore ornate vambraces and a pauldron over one shoulder. Two curved horns jutted from their brows, overlooking vaguely reptilian features. Their oversized mouths had a pronounced underbite, and a pair of tusks stabbed upward from their lower jaw.
“Shadows aren’t the same here as they are in the Shadowfell,” one of them said, its voice gravelly. The other grabbed a chair and hurled it at Riven. Riven ducked under it casually. The chair smashed against the hearth and splintered, spilling the stew pot.
“They’re about the same,” Riven said with a sneer.
The devils opened their mouths in a deep growl. Licks of flame danced between the tines of their tridents.
“They can’t get out alive,” Riven said. “Neither escapes.”
“Understood,” Magadon said. He pulled from the deep pool of mental energy that filled his core, shaped it into a field of latent force, and transferred it once more to the tip of the poker he held. A halo of red energy formed around the point.
The devils leaped at them, the tree-trunks of their legs propelling them forward like shot quarrels. Magadon hurled the energized poker at one of them, while Riven bounded forward with preternatural speed, meeting the larger malebranche’s charge with a charge of his own.
The fireplace poker flew true and slammed into the smaller fiend in midleap. The latent force with which Magadon had charged the tip allowed the makeshift weapon to strike with exaggerated force. The impact knocked the fiend out of the air and into a table. It bellowed with pain and rage, the poker sunk a hand span into its hide.
Meanwhile, Riven faced the other devil, his blades a whirlwind of steel, his movements trailing shadows. He sidestepped the devil’s charge and a stab from its trident, leaped over another stab, slashed and spun and cut. The devil retreated under Riven’s onslaught, bumping into tables, stumbling into chairs, its trident too slow to parry the speed of Riven’s assault. Two clay lamps hit the ground and shattered, spilling their oil.
Riven, his speed and skill that of a god, carved flesh from the devil in gory ribbons. The creature roared, ichor spraying from its wounds, and stabbed at Riven with its trident again and again, hitting only empty air. Its trident scraped the floor, and the flames between the tines ignited the oil.
The devil Magadon had knocked prone jerked the poker from its flesh and intentionally toppled another table into the flames. The lamp atop it broke, spilling its oil. Tables caught fire, a chair, another chair, the floor. Smoke clotted the air.
Magadon cursed and sprinted across the common room. The fiend leaped to its feet and gave chase. Magadon jumped over the bar, sending two tankards and a plate clattering to the floor, and landed in a heap on the other side. He scrambled to his feet and looked back to see the fiend coiling for a leap.
Drawing from his reserve of mental energy, Magadon formed it into a spike of force that bound the devil’s leg to the floor. The fiend leaped anyway, and the floor planks that now adhered to its clawed feet tore loose, the dislodged nails and wood screeching like the damned. Thrown off balance, the fiend fell forward into a table, splintering it under its weight.
Behind it, more smoke and flames. Riven and devil dueling in the flames. The room would soon be an inferno.
Magadon grabbed for his bow and quiver and had both in hand by the time the devil had regained its feet. Magadon nocked, charged his arrow with mental energy, drew, and fired into its face. The missile sunk into the devil’s throat and it screamed, staggered back, clutching at its neck. As it did, it made a wild throw with its flaming trident, and the huge weapon struck Magadon squarely in the chest.
Although the tines did not penetrate the field of force that sheathed him, the sheer power of the blow drove him backward against the wall, cracked ribs, and drove the air from his lungs. Dislodged by the impact, tankards rained from their pegs. The hogshead fell to the floor, broke open, and covered the floor in beer.
Gasping for air, coughing on the growing cloud of smoke, Magadon staggered back to the bar and reached for another arrow from his quiver. The devil he’d shot spun frenetically around the burning common room, toppling tables and chairs, screaming, its breathing an audible squeal through the hole Magadon had put in its throat.
Behind the wounded devil, Riven continued his dissection of the larger devil. Riven’s blades were a blur, slashing, stabbing, cutting. The devil roared and spun, lashed out with claws, trident, even a kick, but nothing landed. Riven was too fast, too precise. The fiend bled dark ichor from dozens of wounds. Its flesh hung in scraps from its body. A final crosscut from Riven’s saber severed its head.
As Magadon nocked another arrow, the surviving devil finally pulled the arrow from its throat, screaming in agony. It fixed its eyes on Magadon, its huge chest rising and falling. It spit a mouthful of black ichor and rushed him.
Magadon sighted and powered his arrow with enough mental energy to fell a horse. The tip glowed an angry, hot red. He picked a spot between the devil’s eyes and prepared to draw.
Before he could loose his shot, Riven stepped through the shadows, covering the length of the room in a single stride. He appeared in front of the devil, his sabers sheathed. He held a thin loop of reified shadow in his hands.
He dodged a surprised slash from the fiend’s claws, spun, and looped the line of shadow around the fiend’s neck. Before the devil could respond, Riven leaped atop the fiend’s back, wrapped his legs around the devil’s mid-section, and pulled the line taut.
The devil reared back, eyes wide, choking, gasping for breath, shooting a mist of blood from the hole Magadon had put in its throat. It spun, reached back to claw at Riven, staggered around the room, bumping into tables, chairs, walking through the flames. Throughout, Riven rode its back in calm, deadly silence, the shadow garrote choking out its life.
Magadon relaxed, set his bow on the bar, and his body lit up with pain, the suddenness of it like a lightning strike. The tip of a black sword exploded out from his abdomen and showered the bar in blood. He gasped, screamed, looked down uncomprehendingly at the dark wedge of steel protruding from his guts. His mouth was filling with blood. He gagged on it. His vision blurred.
“Shit!” He heard Riven shout. “Mags!”
“I’m all right,” he tried to say, but he wasn’t, and no words emerged, just a gurgle of blood. He put a hand on the gore-slicked bar to stay upright as his knees started to buckle. His clothing was already soaked in blood, his thoughts overwhelmed by pain.
A chuckle from behind.
He turned his head—it seemed to take forever—and saw a male devil standing behind him, holding the dark blade on which Magadon’s dying body hung. It wasn’t an
other malebranche. It looked almost human, save for its violet skin and the two thin horns that jutted from its head. Shadows and leather armor wrapped its lithe body. Magadon recognized it as a breed of stealthy fiend used by other devils as quiet killers and assassins. It must have entered the tavern with the malebranche, invisible or clad in darkness. Magadon had missed it. And it had killed him.
“Riven,” Magadon tried to say, but it just came out an inarticulate gurgle of blood. He tried to focus but his eyes wouldn’t hold onto anything but the devil’s face, the red eyes, the fanged mouth.
The fiend gave a smile as it twisted the blade in Magadon’s guts, then jerked it free, scraping ribs, widening the wound. A gush of warmth poured from the slit. Magadon screamed and the pain displaced numbness.
Desperately he grabbed at the pain, focused on it, lived in its center for a moment, a moment during which he ignored the blood and shit seeping from the hole in him. He grabbed at the devil with arms gone weak. He lurched, staggered, and would have fallen had he not gotten hold of the fiend by the forearm.
The devil tried to shake him loose but Magadon held on. The devil pulled back his blade for another stab but before he could Magadon made a spike of his will and drove it into the fiend’s mind.
The devil sensed its danger immediately. It resisted the mental intrusion, tried to shake Magadon’s grip loose, but its desperation fed Magadon’s physical and mental grip. His fingernails sank into the fiend’s skin and his mind put a psychic hook in the devil’s consciousness.
The devil stabbed him again, but Magadon was beyond pain, and heard, more than felt, the blade slice his flesh and organs, grate on bone. Lights flashed before his eyes, sparks, then darkness. He was fading, falling, but he held onto the fiend’s mind and used their connection to set up an empathetic connection. When he felt the connection take firm hold, felt the psychic bridge between them, he grinned, tasting blood, and transferred the wounds and every damned bit of pain in his ruined body through the connection and into the devil.
The fiend’s eyes went as wide as coins. It dropped its blade as its fanged mouth opened in a wail of pain. Shadows swirled around it, a storm of darkness. A jagged hole opened in the devil’s abdomen, spilling gore, as the hole in Magadon pinched closed and painfully healed.
