by Paul S. Kemp
“For whatever comes,” Derreg would answer softly, and the concern in his eyes spoke louder than his words. “And you must not fail.” And now Erevis echoed Derreg in Vasen’s dream. The voices of his two fathers, the one of his blood, the other of his heart, had merged into a single demand.
You must not fail.
He stared at the symbol inlaid into the wall over the hearth, a blazing sun over a blossoming red rose.
“I won’t,” he said. Whatever came, he would bear it. And he would not fail. Hard raps on his door startled him. As always when his emotions spiked, shadows leaked from his skin.
“Hold a moment,” he said.
He stood and the morning chill resurrected his goose pimples. The fire in his hearth had burned down to ash and embers. He pulled on his tunic, his holy symbol on its sturdy chain, splashed water from the washbasin on his face, and padded the few steps to the door of his small chamber. He opened the door and blinked in surprise.
The Oracle stood in the doorway, his red, orange, and yellow robes glowing softly. His eyes were the solid, otherworldly orange of a seeing trance. A shining platinum sun, with a rose raised in relief on the circle of its center, hung from a chain around his thin neck. He stared not at Vasen but at a point just to Vasen’s left.
The Oracle’s guide, a large, tawny-coated fey dog with intelligent eyes, stood beside the elderly seer, tongue lolling, tail upright and entirely still.
Vasen realized that he had never once heard the dog bark.
“O-Oracle,” Vasen said, shock summoning a stutter from his mouth and shadows from his flesh. He had never heard of the Oracle entering a seeing trance outside the sanctum.
The Oracle smiled, showing toothless gums and deepening the web of grooves that lined his hawkish face. Age spots dotted the skin of his scalp, visible through the thin fluff of his gray hair. His skin looked parchment thin and lit with a soft, inner glow.
“His light and warmth keep you, Vasen,” said the Oracle. Despite his age, his voice was the steady, even tone of the valley’s cascades, so different from the voice he used when not in a trance.
“And you, Oracle.”
“You may go, Browny,” the Oracle said to the dog. The creature licked the Oracle’s hand, eyed Vasen, and disappeared in a flash of pale light. Vasen always marveled at the dog’s ability to magically transport itself. Standing face to face with the Oracle, Vasen keenly felt the differences between them. The Oracle’s pale skin, deprived of direct sunlight for a century, but illuminated by the inner glow of his trance, contrasted markedly with Vasen’s dark skin, dimmed as it was by the legacy of his bloodline. The Oracle was lit with Amaunator’s light. Vasen was dimmed by Erevis Cale’s shadow.
“Do you . . . wish to come in, Oracle?” Vasen said. He realized the words sounded foolish, but was not sure what else to say.
Again that toothless grin. “Vasen, did you know that Abelar Corrinthal was my father?”
The abrupt conversational turn took Vasen aback, but he managed a nod.
“My father told me.”
“Which father?”
Recalling the dream that had awakened him, Vasen had trouble forming a reply. “Derreg. My adoptive father. I’ve never known another. You know this, Oracle.”
“But you see Erevis. Sometimes. In your dreams.”
Vasen could not deny it. “Yes. But they’re just dreams, and he’s long dead.” “So it’s said.”
Shadows leaked from Vasen’s skin. Once more the goose pimples. “What do you mean?”
“I see him, too, Vasen son of Varra.”
Vasen swallowed the bulge in his throat. “And what do you see when you see him?”
“I see you,” the Oracle said.
“I . . . I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either. I met Erevis Cale. Did you know that?”
“I didn’t, but I wondered sometimes.”
“Why did you never ask?”
Vasen answered truthfully. “It seemed a betrayal of Derreg. And I was afraid. I didn’t want to . . . know him.”
“He was hard to know, I think. I saw him twice when I was a boy. The first time he was a man haunted. The second time, he was no longer a man at all, but he was still haunted.”
“Haunted? By what?”
“Doubt, I think,” the Oracle said, then changed the subject. “Your father, your adoptive father, was the son of Regg, who rode with my father. Did you know that?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Vasen could not shake the impression that he and the Oracle were simply reciting words written out for them by someone else. He still did not understand the purpose of the Oracle’s visit.
“You, like your father, and like his father before him, swore to remain here and protect this abbey, to protect me. And you have done so.” Vasen did not answer. He felt humbled by the Oracle’s acknowledgment. “You have been here the longest with me and have done credit to the memory of Derreg and Regg. You have even become the first blade. But change comes to everything.”
“It does,” Vasen said haltingly. “But what’s to change?”
“The world. I see a swirl of events, Vasen, but I cannot make sense of it.
Gods, their Chosen, gods beyond gods, the rules of creation, the Tablets of Fate. Wars, Vasen. We see it already in the Dales. War is sweeping Toril. Something is changing. And in the midst of it all I see shadows and I see a growing darkness that threatens it all.”
Vasen’s head swam. He could make no sense of the Oracle’s words. “I am one hundred and six years old, Vasen,” the Oracle continued. “Where will you go when I die?”
The question startled Vasen. “What?”
“Already pilgrims come only rarely. Traveling the realm of the Shadovar is too dangerous. Monsters walk the plains and, where they do not, Sembian soldiers march. When I die, still fewer will come.”
“They will come to see your father’s tomb.”
“Perhaps some.”
“They will come to see your tomb, as well, to honor your memory, the work you’ve done here. A light in the darkness, Oracle.”
The Oracle smiled and Vasen saw that it was forced. His lined face wrinkled with remembered pain.
“That, I fear, will not be.”
“Are you . . . dying?”
“We’re all dying,” the Oracle said. “So I ask again: Where will you go when I go to the Dawnfather?”
Vasen shook his head. He had dedicated his life to service and had never conceived a life for himself outside the valley. He had no family anymore, no real friends. The pilgrims and his comrades-in-arms respected him, but none were friends. His blood and appearance made him different. He lived his life in solitude.
“I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll remain here. This is my home.” The Oracle smiled, as if he knew better. “Indeed it is. Here, there is something you must have.”
From the pocket of his robe, he withdrew a thick silver chain from which hung an exquisitely made charm of a rose. Age had left the silver black with tarnish.
“This was my father’s. . .”
Vasen held up his hands. “Oracle, I cannot—”
“Abelar Corrinthal, the Dawnlord of the Abbey, my father, would be pleased for you to have it. This I know.”
Vasen felt himself flush. He could not refuse the Oracle. He bowed his head to allow the charm around his neck. The touch of the symbol, once worn by Dawnlord Abelar, made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “It is tarnished,” the Oracle said. “But scratch away the tarnish and there is silver and light beneath. Many things are that way.”
Vasen took the Oracle’s point. “I understand.”
“The darkness in you is not born of Erevis Cale.”
Vasen stiffened. “Who, then?”
“You separate yourself from everyone, from everything except your duty because you think yourself bound by the past to a future you cannot change.
And you intend to face that future alone.”
Vasen’
s anger kindled in the heat of the truth. Shadows swirled from his skin.
“Is that not true? Isn’t that what you see for me?”
The Oracle shook his head. “No, I see hard choices before you, but I don’t see what you will choose. They’re to be your choices. Remember that. Nothing is foreordained. Nothing is written.”
Write me a story.
“And listen to me carefully,” the Oracle said, continuing. “You do not need to face them alone. You should not face them alone.”
Vasen’s anger dissolved in the face of the Oracle’s concerned tone. He bowed his head again. “I apologize for my outburst. Thank you for your words, Oracle.”
The Oracle smiled softly. “It’s nothing. And you may regret your gratitude someday.”
“Never.”
“Listen to me, Vasen. The light is in you, and burns brighter than the rest of us because it fights the darkness of your blood. Will you remember that?” “I will.”
Smiling, the Oracle said, “Very good. Then be well, Vasen son of Derreg and Erevis and Varra.”
“Wait! Is that . . . all?”
But it was too late. The Oracle’s face slackened and the glow left his skin.
The orange light of Amaunator fled his eyes and they returned to the filmy, bleary eyes of an old man. He sagged, his aged body unable to so suddenly bear his weight. Vasen caught him to prevent a fall. He felt like a bundle of sticks under his robes.
“It’s Vasen, Oracle.”
“Vazn,” said the Oracle in his slow, awkward way. “Where Bownie?”
“You sent Browny away,” Vasen said. “I’m sure he’s nearby, though.”
“Bownie!” the Oracle called, alarm in his expression. “Bownie!”
Vasen found it difficult to reconcile the sure, powerful voice of the Oracle when he was in a trance with the childlike voice of the mentally infirm Oracle when he was not.
A soft pop and flash of light announced Browny’s return to the Oracle’s side. The dog nuzzled the Oracle’s hand.
“Bownie came!” the Oracle said, grinning.
“I’ll escort you back to your sanctum, Oracle,” Vasen said.
The Oracle shook his head. “No, Vazn. When the bell calls, have pilgrims sent to me for a seeing. I speak to them, then all leave this day. All. You take them.”
The latest group of pilgrims—the first in months—had arrived less than a tenday earlier, dodging Sembian troops along the way. They would be disappointed to leave so soon.
“They only just arrived, Oracle. And the Dales are wracked by war. We’ll have to take them north through the foothills toward Highmoon. Even that way may be closing. Sembian troops are massed all along the borders of the Dales.”
“I know. But they go, Vazn.”
Vasen knew better than to dispute with the Oracle. “Very well.” The Oracle smiled at him. “Farewell, Vazn.”
“The light keep and warm you, Oracle.”
He watched the Oracle, one hand on Browny, totter off down the corridor.
Vasen closed the door, mind racing. First the dream, then a personal visit and seeing from the Oracle. What did it all mean?
He took the rose holy symbol from his neck. Thin threads of shadow spiraled from his fingertips, around the rose. He imagined Saint Abelar using the symbol to channel the power of Amaunator while facing the nightwalker at the Battle of Sakkors.
He studied its petals, the stem, the two thorns. It was so finely crafted it could have been an actual rose magically transformed into metal, not unlike the rose gardens around the abbey that the Spellplague had petrified. With his thumbnail, he scratched at the tarnish of one petal to reveal a line of shining silver, light under the darkness.
Smiling, he returned it to his neck. He would try to be worthy of it. His eyes fell on the dusty, locked chest he kept in one corner of his chamber and he lost his smile. The chest held the dark, magical blade once borne by Erevis Cale: Weaveshear. Vasen had held its cool, slippery hilt only once, when, as a boy, Derreg had first given it to him. Shadows from the blade had mingled with the shadows of his flesh. The weapon had felt an extension of him, but the familiarity had frightened him and he had never touched it again. And he would not touch it today. Today was a day for light and hope, not shadow and somber remembrances.
Mindful of the Oracle’s words, he donned his padded shirt and mail, his breastplate, slung his shield over his back, strapped his weapon belt with its ordinary sword around his hips, and headed out.
As was his habit, he would commune with Amaunator at highsun, walk the vale, and see his mother’s grave before he took the pilgrims back out into the dark.
Rain fell in straight lines from the dark Sembian sky, beating the whipgrass into a flat, twisted mat. The sky cleared its throat with thunder. The stink of decay suffused the air, as if the entire world were slowly decomposing.
“Quickly!” Zeeahd said, his voice as coarse as a blade drawn over a whetstone. “Quickly! It will come soon, Sayeed.”
Sayeed swallowed, nodded, and kept pace with his brother’s hurried, shambling steps. He would have offered Zeeahd a reassuring touch, an arm to steady him, but Sayeed disliked the way his brother’s flesh squirmed under his hand.
They walked—walked because horses would bear neither of them—under a bleak sky and over sodden, spongy earth. They moved cross country because Sembian soldiers and wagon trains had become too common on the roads.
Sayeed’s rain-soaked cloak hung from his shoulders like a hundredweight, like the burden of the fourteen decades he’d lived.
Beside him Zeeahd sagged under the weight of his own burdens. He wheezed above the hiss of the rain, and the hump of his back was more pronounced than usual. Zeeahd’s wet robes hugged his form, and their grip hinted at the shape of the warped body beneath, the flesh polluted by the wild magic of the Spellplague.
Around them thronged the pack of mongrel cats his brother had summoned when they crossed into Sembia’s shadow-shrouded borders.
“Feral cats?” Sayeed had asked.
“Feral, yes,” his brother had answered, staring at the creatures with his glassy eyes. “But not cats.”
Sayeed counted thirteen of the felines, although the numbers seemed to change slightly from time to time. They held their tails low and the rain pressed their mangy fur to their bodies, showing with each stride the workings of bones and muscles. Their heads looked overlarge on their thin necks, their legs disproportionately long. They seemed composed entirely of black eyes, thick sinew, and sharp teeth.
Dark clouds stretched across the sky, blotting out the sun. It was midday but was as dark as dusk in winter. Sayeed and Zeeahd had been walking through perpetual night for many tendays, avoiding airborne Shadovar patrols and Sembian foot soldiers as they traced a winding path across the ruined Sembian countryside. Rumors spoke of pitched battles in the Dalelands, as Sembia moved against its northern neighbors.
Sayeed and Zeeahd wanted nothing of war. They had come in search of the Abbey of the Rose and its oracle.
“What if this abbey and its oracle are just myth? Then what do we do? Both could be stories the Sembians tell themselves to preserve hope.”
“No,” Zeeahd said, shaking his head emphatically. “They exist.”
“How do you know?”
Zeeahd stopped and turned on him. “Because they must! Because he told me! Because this,” he gestured helplessly at his body. “This must end! It must!”
Sayeed knew who Zeeahd meant by “he”—Mephistopheles, the archdevil who ruled Cania, the eighth layer of Hell. Merely thinking the archfiend’s name caused Sayeed to hear sinister whispers in the falling rain. He took a moment to drink from his waterskin: a habit, nothing more, the ghost of a human need. Sayeed did not need to drink, or eat, or sleep, not anymore, not since he had been changed. If the Spellplague had fouled his brother’s body, it had perfected Sayeed’s, although the price of perfection had been to make him as much automaton as man.
“Why are you slowi
ng to drink?” Zeeahd called. “I said we must hurry!”
Zeeahd’s agitation conjured coughs from his ruined lungs, thick and wet with phlegm. The cats mewled and crowded close to him, their feral, knowing eyes watching with terrible intensity. Between hacks, Zeeahd tried to shoo the animals away with his boot, and Sayeed tried to ignore the unnatural way his brother’s leg flopped at the hip as he kicked at the cats. The coughing fit ended without a purge and the disappointed cats wandered back into their orbits, tails sagging with disappointment.
“The cats disgust me,” Sayeed said.
“Not cats, and they’re a gift,” Zeeahd mumbled, as he wiped his mouth with a hand partially covered in scales. His dark eyes stared out at Sayeed from the deep, shadowed pits of their sockets. His hatchet-shaped faced was dotted with pockmarks, the result of a childhood illness.
Sayeed looked past his brother, across the plains, and his mind moved to old memories. “I can’t picture our mother’s face. Can you? She had long brown hair, I think.”
Zeeahd drank of his own waterskin, swished and spit. The cats pounced on it, saw it was naught but water, and left off.
“It was black,” Zeeahd said.
“I used to dream of her, back when I slept.”
“You’ll sleep again, Sayeed. And dream. When we find the Oracle, we’ll make him tell us—”
His voice cracked and broke into a cough. Sayeed moved to help but Zeeahd waved him off with a hand, and one cough followed another into a wracking, wet fit.
Once more the cats crowded close, mewling, circling, jostling for position as Zeeahd fought the poison the Spellplague had put in him. He hunched over in the rain, coughing, warring with the foulness of his innards.
Sayeed could only watch, disgusted. He looked away and tried to remember his mother, the exercise helping distract him from the shifting swells and lumps that bulged under his brother’s robes, the mucous-filled gasps, the wet heaves.
Sayeed could not recall his mother’s eyes, or even her name. His memory was fading. It was as if he were someone new every day, someone he hated more and more. He remembered with clarity only one day from the distant past, one moment that connected who he was now to who he had been before the Spellplague—the moment Abelar Corrinthal’s men had chopped off his right thumb with a hatchet.
