Shadowbred

by Paul S. Kemp

  Cale felt chill. Shadows played over his flesh. “Yes. No. I mean, I am not certain.”

  “Your skin is gooseflesh.” She ran her hand across his chest. Shadows wove around her fingers.

  He stroked her hair. “It is nothing, Varra. Just a dream.”

  She nodded and asked no more questions.

  Cale stared up at the ceiling beams and pondered the dream, the words he spoke in his sleep. The phrase, ‘two and two are four’ came from Sephris Dwendon, the mad seer of Oghma. Sephris meant by it that there was no escaping fate.

  Cale decided that he had to find Magadon. His friend was in trouble. The dreams were some kind of vision, some kind of plea. Magadon needed his help.

  His mind made up, Cale waited for Varra to fall back to sleep. When she did, he stole out of bed and silently gathered his clothing, his boots, and his blades, and shadowstepped outside to the meadow. As he dressed, he pictured Starmantle in his mind, the city Magadon called home. He imagined the row of temples that stared down on the dirty, vice-infested trading hub. He pictured the rickety wooden docks teeming with goods and workers, the streets thronged with wagons and carts.

  When he had a clear mental image, he surrounded himself in shadows and used them to leap across Faerûn. He traveled leagues in the blink of an eye, leaving Varra and the cottage far behind.

  He appeared in a dark alley in Starmantle, his arrival unnoticed by any save a mangy dog. The scruffy pup growled at his sudden appearance and slinked off, tail between his legs.

  Cale wasted no time. He prowled the taverns, festhalls, inns, and docks. Sometimes he moved invisibly among the crowds and tables, listening. Sometimes he used coin to pry tongues loose. Other times he used threats to get what he wanted.

  All manner of beings filled the establishments in Starmantle. The city aspired to become a great trading center, and so held its gates open to all. Cale questioned not only men, elves, and dwarves, but also towering gnolls, hairy bugbear mercenaries, tusked half orcs, and squeaky-voiced goblin laborers. For the first time in months, he felt like himself, felt like he was doing what he was supposed to do. He met with no success the first night, but his dreams continued, so he returned to do the same, night after night.

  He traveled the unnamed drinking holes that festered in the dark places along the docks, ventured into secret drug dens hidden in dank cellars near the city walls, visited the brothels where women and men went for coppers and all manner of tastes were indulged.

  And there, as he scraped the bottom of Starmantle’s underworld, he picked up Magadon’s trail. He heard tell of Magadon as a drunk, a misthead, a babbling madman, or all three.

  Cale’s worry for his friend grew. The Magadon that Cale had known had demonstrated no weakness for such vices. But that had been before Magadon had melded with the Source. Cale knew that Magadon’s contact with the Source had changed the mind mage. But he’d had no inkling of how much.

  He followed Magadon’s trail to Teziir, and there learned to his relief that his friend—apparently clear headed—had taken work as a guide for the wagons of the Three Diamond Trading Coster. Cale followed that trail from Teziir back to Starmantle. There, he tracked down an overweight merchant named Grathan, the master of the caravan with which Magadon had taken employment. Cale arranged a meeting.

  They met across a cracked wooden table in the Buxom Mermaid, one of the few quality inns located in Starmantle’s Dock Ward. Cale took the merchant’s measure as he sat down. Grathan wore tailored breeches, a dyed shirt, a green jacket, and a threadbare overcloak that had seen much travel. The few pieces of jewelry he wore were of modest quality. Cale concluded that he was well off, but not rich. He wore a gentleman’s rapier at his hip, but Cale doubted it saw much use. The man had no hardness in his eyes.

  “Thank you for coming, Master Grathan,” Cale said. With conscious effort, he kept shadowstuff from leaking from his flesh.

  “What is this about, now?” Grathan said. “Are you interested in my goods?”

  Cale casually surveyed the inn. He spotted the merchant’s guards with little difficulty—two burly sellswords in chain mail vests on opposite sides of the common room, both trying too hard to avoid looking at Cale’s table.

  “No,” Cale said. “But I will compensate you for your time. You headed a Three Diamond Coster out of Teziir?”

  “Yes,” Grathan said, nodding.

  “I am looking for the guide you used. Unusual eyes?”

  The moment Cale described Magadon, Grathan wilted and sank into himself. Cale saw the fear behind his puffy eyes.

  “You know who I mean,” Cale said softly. “I can see it in your face. Where is he?”

  Despite his efforts, shadows spiraled from Cale’s flesh.

  Grathan saw the shadows and his eyes went wide. He scooted back his chair and started to stand.

  “I have nothing more to say to you—”

  Cale jumped up, grabbed him by the shirt, and pulled him bodily across the table. More shadows spun from him.

  “Unhand me, sir!”

  Cale nodded at Grathan’s guards, who were starting toward the table, hands on daggers. Other patrons stared at Cale in alarm, though none rose to intervene.

  “Call them off or I will kill you right now,” Cale said, and left no doubt from his tone that he meant what he said. Darkness swirled around them both. “No one can stop me and I will be gone from here before you finish bleeding.”

  Grathan awkwardly signaled his guards to hold their ground.

  They did, eyeing Cale coldly.

  “I will ask only one more time. Where is my friend?”

  The fear in Grathan’s wide eyes turned to puzzlement. He looked into Cale’s eyes as if looking for a lie. Apparently seeing none, his body went slack.

  “Friend? You say you are his friend?”

  Cale nodded but did not let the merchant go, though he did loosen his grip a bit.

  “Release me,” Grathan said. “Let me sit like a gentleman. I will tell you what I saw.”

  Cale let him slip back into his chair and Grathan waved off his bodyguards. The rest of the patrons went back to their own business.

  “My apologies for the rough treatment,” Cale said insincerely. He subdued his shadows once more.

  Grathan adjusted his jacket, examined it for tears. “Accepted. A man looking after his friend. I can understand that.”

  “Where is he?” Cale asked.

  “I do not know. Something happened on the road.”

  Cale waited for the merchant to continue.

  “We made camp one night as we always did. I’d gone to my wagon for sleep. I left your friend at the fire. I was awakened later by a noise.”

  “Describe it.”

  “Like a wind or somesuch, but there was no wind. I sensed something amiss and sneaked from my bed. That’s when I saw it.”

  Cale’s fists clenched. “Saw what?”

  “Something had happened to the rest of the men. Not one of them stirred. They slept right through the noise. A spell or somesuch, I presume. But this,” he touched a silver clasp on his cloak, “protects me from things of that sort, else I probably would have slept through it, too.”

  Cale gestured impatiently for him to continue.

  “Magadon was not affected, either. He rose and shouted challenges into the night. I do not know to whom he was speaking. He could see something that I could not. He fired his bow into the darkness. The arrows glowed red, like they were dripping magic or somesuch. Finally …” Grathan shook his head. “It was like … the night itself opened up to take him. There was a cloud of darkness above the camp. Magadon looked up at it and dropped his weapons. It descended on him and when it lifted, he was gone. I told the men the next day that he had deserted us in the night. They remembered nothing and I did not want to alarm them.”

  Cale studied Grathan’s face, saw no lie there.

  “That is everything? Why did you lie to your men? Why didn’t you report it to the watch?”

/>   Grathan looked away in shame. “I want you to know that I asked after Magadon, but quietly. I liked him, for the short time I knew him. But I did not want news of the attack to be widely known. Bad for morale. Bad for trade.”

  “Trade is no excuse for cowardice,” Cale said harshly.

  Grathan’s face contorted with angry denial but Cale’s cold expression froze whatever words the fat merchant might have wanted to utter. Grathan looked away.

  Cale stood. He did not bother to control the darkness leaking from his skin or the contempt leaking from his tone. “My gratitude for your time, merchant.” He tossed two platinum suns on the table.

  Grathan ignored the coins, looked up at him, and said, “I was afraid. So was Magadon. Any man would have been. But I hope you find him, and that he is all right.”

  Cale heard sincerity in Grathan’s voice. He nodded, turned, breezed past one of Grathan’s bodyguards, and left the inn. When he found an isolated alley, he drew the shadows about him and rode them back to Varra and their cottage in Sembia, more worried than ever for his friend.

  I stand in the doorway and a gentle wind carries the smell of pine to my nostrils. A stream babbles somewhere nearby. I step out of the cell and look about.

  I am standing on a hillside, overlooking an unsullied landscape. Conifers blanket the terrain. Ideas, dripping with promise, hang from the branches. A clear stream cascades down the hill into the wooded dale below. Thoughts swim in its current, silver and quick.

  I notice the sky and gasp.

  A translucent red dome roofs the world and defines its borders. Sharp edges and smooth, flat planes recall the surface of something crystalline. I stand inside a hemisphere—a thought bubble. I recall the words someone said to me once around a campfire: All men keep a coffer of secrets in their soul. I realize that I am standing in my coffer.

  Flashes of light intermittently flare within the crystal sky, bathing the whole landscape in red light. Whorls of orange and crimson slowly churn within the sky’s depths. Dark, pulsing lines trace jagged paths across the glassy surface; they remind me of veins.

  I look away, my head swimming. In the distance, I notice the wall.

  On the far side of the hemisphere is a wall of black stone. It rises from the earth to the sky, and curves from one side of the hemisphere to the other. The stream flows toward it.

  It is immense, and I am supposed to break through it. How can I? I turn, intending to go back into the cell and tell Courage that I cannot do it.

  The cell is gone. So is Courage.

  I am alone.

  Except for some thoughts. Except for some ideas.

  A breeze stirs the pines and carries malevolent laughter from somewhere in the distance. I reach for my blade and remember that I have no weapons. I scan the forest, see nothing.

  “Who are you?” I call. “Show yourself.”

  No response but the laughter.

  I have a long road to take to reach the wall. I know I need a weapon, something more useful than a club torn from a tree.

  I turn inward, searching my mind for any scrap of psychic power that I can use. I find none. I am only a piece of the whole and the core has given me only what I need to exist separately.

  The laughter mocks me. I try to ignore it.

  Then I remember the words of Courage: You are a weapon. I consider the words and think I understand.

  Reaching deep into my consciousness, I draw on my sense of purpose, the strongest part of me, ordinarily not a reserve of psychic power. But it is now—in this moment, in this place. Power sparks in my mind, sharp and bright. Not much, but enough. I pull it forth, hold out my hand, and focus my concentration. A globe of pale yellow light forms on my palm. I force my mind into the light, bend it to my will, form it to my purpose.

  I am a weapon. I am a weapon.

  A single ray of light shoots upward from the ball. I give it an edge with my mind, hone it on my will, and shape it into a blade. At the same time, I close my fist over the globe and squeeze until it is a hilt perfectly fitted to my grasp.

  Pleased, I smile and feel no fangs on my lips. I test the mind blade with a few practice cuts. It hums when I swing it and it has little weight. The lack of heft will require compensation. I am accustomed to the weight of steel in my hand. I step to a nearby pine tree and swing the blade downward at a wrist-thick branch, severing it cleanly.

  I am ready.

  The laughter dies and I take that as a good sign. I start down the hillside, following the stream.

  Before I have gone twenty paces, a crack sounds from above, so loud I instinctively duck and brandish my blade. I look up for the source of the sound. There is no missing it.

  A jagged crack mars the crystal sky. As I watch, it expands halfway across the world’s ceiling. A mass of wriggling black shapes throngs the other side of the crack, trying in vain to ooze through. I do not know what they are and I do not want to find out.

  I hurry down the hillside at a run, certain with every step that one of the black things would drop from the sky and fall upon me.

  I have a long way to go to reach the wall.

  As if sensing my burgeoning despair, the laughter returns and a voice speaks.

  “Hurry, now. We are waiting for you.”

  I stop because I recognize the voice.

  It is my own.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  28 Marpenoth, the Year of Lightning Storms

  Kendrick Selkirk was in the family tomb, Mirabeta was giddy with power, and Elyril stood alone on the third-story balcony that overlooked one of the stone gardens dotting the grounds of Ravenholme, her aunt’s estate. Magical lighting of various hues illuminated unnatural arrangements of rocks and boulders, some of them imported from as far west as Baldur’s Gate, as far east as Thay. A manmade rill cascaded through the rocks and collected in a small pool at the garden’s far end.

  Selûne was new, banished from the night sky, a holy time for Shar’s servants. Elyril often spent moonless evenings on the balcony staring up at the night, contemplating the majesty of the Lady of Loss, imagining the day when night would shroud Faerûn forever. She reached into an inner pocket and retrieved the invisible disc that served as her holy symbol.

  Holding the symbol to her breast, she replayed the Lord Sciagraph’s words in her head: Follow the Nightseer until the sign is given and the book is made whole. As she had done so often since receiving the vision, she wondered, what sign, what book?

  She chided herself for such questions. Shar and the Lord Sciagraph would reveal to her what she needed to know and keep the rest to themselves. Elyril took comfort in the belief that she would know the sign when she saw it, see the book when the time had come.

  Still, she wondered when the Lord Sciagraph would contact her again and reveal more of Shar’s plan. She resisted the temptation to commit the offense of hope, but recalled fondly Volumvax’s touch, the smooth feel of his divine fingers. She felt herself flush.

  “I will be the one to free you,” she whispered into the sky. She also would be the one to sit at his hand. Together, they would rule in Shar’s name.

  Elyril did not know how the Lord Sciagraph had been bound to his realm, the Adumbral Calyx, at the heart of the Plane of Shadow. Elyril did not pry into his secrets. She knew only that he could not leave it, not unless Elyril freed him. Until then, she would serve the Nightseer, as Volumvax had instructed her.

  She activated her sending ring. When she felt contact with Rivalen, she relayed her news. Nightseer, Mirabeta is installed as temporary Overmistress. Endren Corrinthal is arrested and under guard.

  Well done, dark sister, Rivalen answered. Encourage your aunt to aspire to more.

  Elyril considered. Any grab at power by Mirabeta would trigger an uproar in Sembia’s nobility. She said as much to Rivalen.

  Precisely, Rivalen answered.

  Elyril suddenly understood the Nightseer’s purpose. Civil war, Nightseer?

  If the Lady wills it, Rivalen answered. Find co
mfort in the night, dark sister.

  The night shroud you, Prince Rivalen.

  The sending ended. Elyril’s heart raced. Civil war? Could that be the sign? If so, what of the book?

  She resolved to see it done. Her aunt’s ambition could be steered, but Mirabeta was no fool. Elyril would need to be subtle.

  Elyril spent the hour before dinner in her chamber inhaling minddust and praying to Shar and Volumvax. Kefil warmed himself before the fire and watched her.

  “The Nightseer wishes civil war in Sembia,” she said to the dog.

  To what end? Kefil asked. His tail thumped the floor.

  Elyril shook her head. “The Nightseer keeps his own counsel. But he serves Shar, as do I.”

  You serve the Divine One.

  Elyril cocked her head. “The will of Shar and Volumvax is as one.”

  Kefil yawned and rolled over on his side. Perhaps the Nightseer would not agree.

  Elyril glared at the old mastiff. “The Nightseer will not have a chance to disagree because he will never know.”

  Kefil closed his eyes. Of course, Mistress.

  “Are you threatening to reveal my secret to him, Kefil?”

  Kefil did not look at her. He dared not. I serve only you, Mistress.

  Elyril nodded. “And I serve the Nightseer only until I receive the sign and the book is made whole. Shar has called me through the Divine One to a higher purpose. When Volumvax is freed, even the Nightseer will bend his knee to him.”

  And to you, Kefil said. He licked his hindquarters. Unless you are mad, that is, and none of this is real.

  Elyril considered the dog’s words for a moment, dismissed them as nonsense, and returned to her prayers. Later, when it was time to dine, she held her invisible holy symbol in her hand and whispered a spell that would make her words more persuasive. When the spell was complete, she went to the dining hall.

  There, she and her aunt enjoyed a meal of stuffed quail and roasted vegetables. Much of Sembia might suffer deprivation, but Mirabeta’s fortune allowed for her and Elyril to dine well.

  “The huntmaster took the quail yesterday,” Mirabeta said. “And the wine is Selgite, from the Uskevren vineyards.”