Shadowbred

by Paul S. Kemp

  Elyril nodded. Both bird and wine were quite good. This was fortunate, as the lingering effects of the minddust made her taste buds more sensitive than usual. When she thought of Selgaunt, she thought of Zarin Terb, his fat body smoking on the floor of the council chamber. She giggled. Her aunt looked on, bemused.

  Two mute serving girls, both the product of Mirabeta’s breeding program, lingered at the walls to refill wine chalices and clear away dishes. They had polished the lacquered finish of the dining table to the gloss of a mirror. Elyril smiled at the eyeless, deformed faces that lived in the table. They looked at her from under its surface. She alone could see them—another boon from Shar.

  “The nobility should be receiving notice of the moot,” Elyril said.

  Mirabeta nodded.

  Magical missives and official couriers traveling under seal would have dispatched the news to all of the major cities of the realm by the next morning. News of Endren’s arrest had no doubt also circulated quickly. Tension lay thick in the capital and would be spreading to the rest of the realm. Despite Endren’s claim that he would not turn Ordulin into a battleground, scattered street fights between forces loyal to Endren and forces loyal to Mirabeta had left over three dozen dead.

  “The capital borders on chaos,” Mirabeta observed. “Too many soldiers and not enough food. The populace is restless.”

  Elyril sipped her wine, nodded. For years Mirabeta had sounded out her political ideas with Elyril over a meal. The faces that lived in the table told Elyril how to answer her aunt. She looked to them for guidance and they did not disappoint.

  “If the safety of the capital is at stake, it is the overmistress’s duty to end the threat. Raithspur and the guard answer to you now, aunt.”

  Mirabeta bit the meat off a quail bone. “Arresting those loyal to Endren could cause a riot.”

  The faces mouthed a response for Elyril. Her spell made her words compelling to her aunt. “Perhaps just a few of them, then? The key men, the leaders—Abelar Corrinthal, for certain.”

  “Abelar has fled the city using magical means,” Mirabeta said, making a dismissive gesture. “He has probably already returned to Saerb.”

  Elyril vented her frustration only with a frown. She would have enjoyed arranging for Abelar to die while in custody. She hated the Lathanderian.

  “Not Abelar, then, but the others. The guards could take them from their quarters late at night. You could also arrest a few unimportant men who are loyal to you. That way, you would appear to the commoners to be evenhanded.”

  Mirabeta devoured her quail, nodded thoughtfully. “The streets would be safe tomorrow if the order went out tonight.”

  “The citizens would thank you for returning the city to normalcy,” Elyril said, while silently thanking Shar and the faces in the table. “You could accompany the announcement of the arrests with the announcement of a new food distribution program. Extra grains could be purchased from abroad and ground in the city’s mills. You could order the temples to require that their underpriests use spells to create food.”

  “The temples would never stand for such a step. They will make food for their loyal worshipers, but not for all.”

  Elyril finished her wine. “You are the overmistress, aunt,” she said simply. “If they refuse to comply, threaten to revoke their land charter, or tax them until they accede.”

  Mirabeta cocked her head. “An interesting idea.”

  One of the mute serving girls appeared at Elyril’s side and refilled her wine chalice. The ceiling chandelier cast her silhouette on the table and the faces sprouted fangs and tore it to pieces. The mute’s shadow, silent no more, screamed as it died.

  “Have you determined how best to control the moot?” Elyril asked.

  Mirabeta’s face tightened. “There is no controlling it. I should not have agreed to it. There is no predicting the outcome of such a thing.”

  Elyril shook her head somberly and played the fool niece. “I do not understand why we have need of it. An overmistress has been selected. The moot creates uncertainty at a time when Sembia is most in need of stable leadership.”

  Mirabeta set down her wine glass and nodded. “Indeed.”

  The faces fed Elyril her next words. “I suppose there is little that could prevent the moot, now?”

  Mirabeta tore a wing from a second quail. “Little.”

  Elyril made a point of pondering. “Aunt, may I be candid?”

  Mirabeta regarded her over the rim of a wine chalice. She took a sip and placed the vessel on the table. “Have you not been candid in the past?”

  “What I am about to say is of a different cast,” Elyril said.

  Mirabeta studied her face and turned to the serving girls.

  “Leave us,” she commanded, and the mute girls scurried from the chamber, leaving behind the Uskevren wine.

  When they were alone, Elyril said, “Aunt, you hold power. Deservedly so. You cannot let it slip from your grasp because your election was held hostage to the threats of a murderer. The state will need you for more than nine tendays.”

  Mirabeta nodded. “Agreed. We are at a critical point in Sembia’s history. My cousin and the rest of the High Council stood by in idleness while the elves returned to Cormanthyr, while Cormyr drifted into chaos, while the harvest failed, and while the dragons raged. They were and remain fools. Endren did Sembia a service by killing Kendrick.”

  Elyril smiled at that. She enjoyed knowing the truth of the murder while her aunt did not. She said, “And now you must do the state a service by holding power.”

  Mirabeta nodded slowly and bit her lower lip. “I confess to having similar thoughts. There are some among the nobility who would support me in such a move. There are others I could buy. I do control the treasury. But they are too few to ensure my election.”

  Elyril shook her head in sympathy. She looked up as if struck with an idea. “Then why an election at all? Why not dissolve the High Council?”

  Mirabeta scoffed. “Because it will ensure a rebellion, foolish girl.”

  Elyril recognized the turned soil of the row and planted her seed. “Has not a rebellion already started, Aunt? A member of the High Council has murdered the overmaster and his men do battle on Ordulin’s streets. No doubt Abelar has returned to Saerb to raise an army to challenge you and free his father. It appears to me that sitting idly while such things progress is to play more the fool than Endren or the council ever did.”

  Mirabeta frowned, but Elyril could tell from her tone that she was intrigued.

  “You are venturing into deep waters, Elyril.”

  “But I learned to swim from you, Aunt. Endren’s treachery provides the opportunity for a great woman to take power and make her nation great. The time for a council of so-called peers has passed.”

  Mirabeta took another drink of wine. “The High Council has ever been an ill instrument of state. Speak your mind fully, Elyril. You are holding back.”

  Elyril rose, took the bottle of wine, and filled her aunt’s goblet. She stood beside her and affected a hesitant tone. “Aunt Mirabeta, imagine if some of those invited to the moot did not arrive safely because they were attacked by forces that appeared to be in service to Endren’s rebellion, now led by his son. They will be traveling the main roads of the realm. Only a modest guard will accompany them.”

  Mirabeta stared straight ahead and Elyril could not read her expression. The faces swarmed around her aunt’s distorted reflection in the table.

  Elyril tried to make the course more palatable.

  “I know that such a thing is hard to contemplate. But so, too, is Sembia with yet another weak leader. An attack by traitorous revolutionaries on the nobles traveling to the moot would precipitate an acute crisis. A strong leader could step to the fore and Sembia would thank her.”

  Mirabeta tapped her fingers on the table. The faces gnashed at her fingertips. Elyril took her seat and studied her aunt. She knew that what she proposed was feasible. Despite its size and
wealth, Sembia maintained little in the way of a standing army. Small forces of Sembian soldiers, known as Helms, quartered in the realm’s major cities. Their duties consisted largely of patrolling the roads around the cities and supplementing city guards as necessary. The garrisons were decentralized; their commanders answered to the local nobility.

  “To what end would forces loyal to Endren attack?” Mirabeta asked.

  Elyril waved her hand as if the answer mattered little. “Perhaps they fear the outcome of the moot. Perhaps they are mad for power and are attacking those who would not join in their treason against Kendrick, and now you. The minds of traitors can be fickle.”

  Mirabeta shook her head. “No one would believe Endren or Abelar to be behind it.”

  “People will believe what you want them to believe,” Elyril answered. “The story need not be true, it need only be plausible. And it is that. Properly characterizing events is critical, but you can control that. Proclamations could go out mere hours after the attacks, blaming them on Abelar Corrinthal and whichever other nobles suit your needs. Most of the rest of the nobility would rally to your cause. Given Sembia’s current state, the idea of a war would terrify them. They would want it ended quickly and decisively. The High Council would beg for you to take power as war regent.”

  Mirabeta shook her head, took another drink of wine. Elyril could see her aunt warming to the subject. Mirabeta said, “The High Council could be made irrelevant. We could hold a rump moot instead. They would elect me.”

  Elyril finished her aunt’s thought. “The very existence of the nation would be at stake. Who in the rump moot other than traitors would risk opposing your election as war regent?”

  Mirabeta looked thoughtful. “None.” She looked up at Elyril, her eyes gleaming. “It could work.”

  “It will work,” Elyril said. “Sembia will prosper again when the reins of the realm are once more in firm hands. History will name you Sembia’s first monarch. Your people will thank you.”

  Mirabeta leaned back in her chair and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.

  Elyril let the matter rest. Her aunt was taken with the idea and Elyril had done as Rivalen had demanded. Sembia had been a tinder-box for over a year. Mirabeta would be the spark to set it aflame.

  The Nightseer would have his civil war.

  Another night arrived and so did another dream of fire. Cale awoke, soaked in sweat and shadows, and slipped from the bed. He must not have been thrashing in his sleep because Varra still slept.

  He stepped through the shadows and into his sanctuary, the meadow outside the cottage in the dead of night. Stars shone out of a clear, moonless sky.

  “Where are you, Mags?” he said, worried.

  Cale did not know what to do next. Or rather, he did know what to do next, but did not want to do it. He had scoured Starmantle and Teziir but had learned nothing more than what Grathan had told him. With each night that passed, he felt more and more as if he were betraying Magadon by not turning to Mask for aid. Yet he felt that turning to Mask would betray Jak’s memory, or worse, betray himself.

  Midnight approached and with it came temptation. He could pray to Mask for a spell of divination, use it to locate Magadon. A simple prayer, used one time and never again. He looked at his hands, at the ribbons of shadow that dangled from his fingertips.

  He fought the impulse. Magadon would not want him to do it.

  He whispered an expletive at Mask and sat in his familiar chair under the elm, surrounded by the night, one with the dark. Crickets chirped. The nightjar cooed. A soft wind stirred the trees.

  He withdrew Jak’s pipe, the pipe he had smoked at midnight for the last year or more, the pipe with which he defied Mask. Holding it by the handle, he eyed it.

  For the first time, he put it aside unused.

  Midnight arrived and Cale cursed Mask again but could not bring himself to smoke. He felt the pull of his god. He resisted, but not for long.

  He could not let Magadon suffer due to his own stubbornness. He snatched darkness from the air and carefully formed it with shaking fingers into a mask of shadow, which he placed over his face. The shadows clung to his skin.

  He reached out to his god and prayed. He asked for only a single spell, something that would help him locate Magadon.

  Mask answered immediately, and Cale could not deny the rush he felt when he connected with his god. He felt a charge in his mind as the power to cast the spell embedded there. Mask tried to give him more power, to draw Cale back fully, but Cale cut off the connection despite the comfort it brought him. He wanted no more than necessary from the Shadowlord.

  Heart racing, breath coming fast, Cale wiped his palm through the air and smeared the darkness into a black rectangle that hovered before him. Ready, he murmured the words to the divination Mask had provided. As the spell took effect, Cale picture Magadon in his mind and spoke his name aloud. The magic went out in search of his friend.

  Swirls of pitch formed on the lens’s surface. Cale powered the spell with his will and again pronounced Magadon’s name.

  The lens remained dark. Cale tried again and still the spell revealed nothing. He poured all of his desire into the magic, but still it showed nothing.

  Cale let the magic dissipate, disappointed and worried. Wherever Magadon was, Cale’s scrying magic could not reach him. For the moment, there was nothing else to be done. He removed the mask of shadow from his face and dispersed it.

  “Nothing has changed between us,” he said to Mask, but he heard the lie in his words. Something had changed. Cale had opened a door he had closed over a year ago, and he liked what he found on the other side. Shutting it again would be difficult.

  For the next few hours he sat under the tree and watched the sky, trying to decide his next course. He watched stars rise and set. Hours passed and still he came to no decision.

  Dawn was only a few hours away when a tickle started in his ears, then increased to a buzzing. Hope rose in him and Cale rode it out of his chair and onto his feet.

  Magadon? Mags?

  The buzzing in his ears intensified and Cale did not feel the telltale sensation of mental contact. Instead, he realized the tingle was the touch of an ordinary spell. His hope turned to alarm and the names of several enemies he had left alive throughout the years ran through his brain. Darkness leaked defensively from his pores. He reached to his belt for Weaveshear but realized he had left the weapon in its scabbard back in the cottage. He cursed.

  The buzzing grew louder, but it slowed. He recognized it as a voice speaking rapidly, a sending. The buzz continually slowed until it matched the speed of a normal voice. When Cale heard it, he had trouble breathing. He had not heard it in a long while.

  Mundane means of contacting you failed, said Tamlin Uskevren, the son of his former lord. I need help. If you still love my mother, sister, the memory of my father, return to Stormweather immediately.

  Cale’s surprise at hearing from Tamlin caused his thoughts to bounce around like crazed bees. A thousand questions coursed through his mind, a thousand memories: of Tazi, of Shamur, of Thamalon, and of Stormweather Towers. A surge of emotion ripped through him, a feeling like he’d known while searching the Dragon Coast for Magadon. He recognized it for what it was: the feeling that things were right.

  He started to reply to the spell, to ask for some time to consider, but realized that it was nothing more than a one-way sending that did not allow for a reply. For all he knew, Tamlin could have cast it a tenday earlier. The magic could have been seeking Cale for days. Whatever crisis had caused Tamlin to seek him out may already have become more acute, or passed entirely.

  He had met his god and his past in the same night. Sephris Dwendon’s words bounced around his brain. Two and two are four.

  He looked to the cottage where Varra was sleeping, and guilt squeezed his stomach. He chided himself for bringing her there. While he had never misled her with words, he knew his actions had given her a false impression. She assumed
he would stay with her in the cottage. But he knew that he could not. A cottage in the forest was not where he belonged. Helping his friends, helping his family, that was where he belonged.

  Cale considered the implication of the sending. Tamlin had to be desperate to reach out to him. Cale and Tamlin had disagreed often, mostly over the young man’s dissolute lifestyle. And while Cale had seen Tamlin change for the better in the months before Cale had left Stormweather Towers, their relationship had never been warm.

  Cale looked up at the sky and imagined how it would feel to see the Uskevren again. He realized then that he had already made up his mind. At the moment, he could do nothing more to find Magadon, and Magadon would have told him to go help his family. He would leave at once. And after he had put matters with the Uskevren to right, he would return to the search for Magadon.

  He looked back at the cottage and saw Varra at the open window. The sight of her made his heart race. She ducked out of sight and soon a light flared in the cottage. She emerged carrying a small clay lamp. She wore only her night dress and the wind stirred her dark hair. The image reminded Cale eerily of the spirits that he, Jak, Magadon, and Riven had seen on the Plane of Shadow, moving through the ruins of Elgrin Fau—the Seekers of the Sun.

  Varra hurried over to the elm. He stood as she approached.

  “Did I awaken you?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Not you. Are you all right?”

  He nodded, positioned the other wooden chair beside his. She sat and so did he. He saw little good to come from equivocating.

  “I received a message.”

  She looked at him, puzzled. “A message? Tonight? How?”

  He cleared his throat. “A spell, from the son of a very old friend.”

  Varra looked only mildly surprised that Cale had received a magical sending in the dark of night.

  “The friend you have been seeking?”

  “No. Another.”

  She stared into the woods. So did he. The distance between them was much greater than that between the chairs.