by Paul S. Kemp
Cale knew then that he could not harm Mask, not permanently, but he did not care. He lifted himself to his feet and brandished Weaveshear.
“Let’s finish this,” he said. “Now. Here.”
Mask studied him for a moment. He put two fingers to the bridge of his nose and tested the flesh.
“That was a good blow,” he said, and chuckled.
Cale’s flesh had mended his broken wrist and partially repaired his ribs. He took a step forward, blade ready. “I have another one for you.”
Mask shook his head and sighed. He sheathed his dagger and held up his hands in mock surrender. “Very well. I will never say his name again. Well enough?”
Cale said nothing but stopped his advance, breathing heavily.
Mask chuckled. “Ao, but you are stubborn. You should have been Torm’s Chosen.”
A rush of emotion pulled words from Cale. “I should not have been anyone’s Chosen!”
Mask scoffed, then sneered. The latter expression looked so like Riven’s that Cale would have thought them brothers.
“Come now,” the god said. “You are what you are, Erevis. You chose me as much as I you. That is the way of the multiverse. How could it be otherwise?”
Cale recognized the truth in the words and hated it. He had chosen Mask. Again and again he’d had the opportunity to walk away. He never did. He never would. He’d left the Uskevren to serve Mask; he’d left Varra to serve Mask.
The anger went out of him. He had no one to blame but himself.
Mask continued. “Chin up now, priest. You have done very well for yourself and for me. And what were you before we met? An assassin dressed up as a butler, preoccupied with the petty goings-on of Sembian nobility. Now the fates of thousands turn on your actions, tens of thousands. Admit it. You would not have it otherwise.”
Cale did not bother to respond. Mask knew the truth of the words, the same as Cale. He could not imagine going back to his old life. He did not want to go back to it.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“You mean why am I sullying my divine form on this drab plane in this revolting alley? In short, I was waiting for you to make up your mind. You can badger a decision as well as Tyr himself.”
Cale leaned on Weaveshear to steady himself. “As usual,” Cale said, “that is no answer to my question.”
Mask smiled. “True. Here is the answer, then. I came here because I wanted to give you something and to ask you for something.”
“You can keep whatever you’d give. I’ve had enough of what you offer.”
Mask said, “Ah, but you have already accepted my offer. I gave you a place to put your anger.” He looked down and poked a finger through the hole Cale had put in his leathers. “I think that should do it. You feel better, no?”
Actually, Cale did, though he did not say so.
“Good. Now take the mask from your pocket and put it on. Cast a spell. Do what you were called to do. There is no time for your doubts.”
Cale thought of Jak, stood up straight, and sheathed Weaveshear. “No.”
Mask looked surprised, then puzzled, then angry. “No?”
“In my own time,” Cale said. “If ever. You aren’t the one to whom I answer.”
“That halfling again,” Mask said, and shook his head. “Time is running out, priest, your own and that of everyone else. You will learn that soon enough.”
Cale held his ground. “In my own time, I said.”
Mask glared at him. “Who do you think you are? You are nothing more than my tool, my weapon.”
Cale answered the glare with one of his own and dared speak his thoughts aloud. “A bluff. You chose me and I chose you. You said so yourself. I may be your tool, but you are also mine. I am your Chosen, the First of Five. I may need you, but you need me, too.”
Mask stared at him, clucked his tongue. Then he shrugged and tried to look casual. “I will get another. The Second will do.”
Mask’s Second was Drasek Riven, a one-time rival of Cale’s, but now a friend.
“A lie,” Cale said. “Riven is as loyal to me as he is to you. And we are too far along for a change. As you said, time is running out.”
He let that sit.
After a time, Mask nodded and his face softened to a smile. “All right. True. I need you. But as you admitted, you need me, too. So, we need each other. Well enough?”
Cale shrugged. Mask seemed to take it as agreement.
“Things will start happening soon,” Mask said. “When they do, you will be glad to be my Chosen.”
“Enough riddles,” Cale said. “What will start happening?”
Mask said, “The Cycle of Shadows. And that is not as good as it sounds, I am sorry to say. Since this city is where you and I had our beginning, it seemed fitting that it also be where we begin the end.”
A pit formed in Cale’s stomach. “The end? The end of what?”
Mask made a gesture that indicated all of Selgaunt, or maybe all of Sembia. “This. That. Many things.”
Cale shook his head. “You are saying nothing. You make no more sense than Sephris.”
Mask raised his eyebrows. “Sephris Dwendon made consummate sense. You know that. That is why you ponder his words so often. You know, I was much like you, once. Rebellious, thinking I had the right of everything.” He rubbed his chin. “I was more handsome, of course. And laughed more. And killed less, at least then. But otherwise, we would have been kith.”
The words surprised Cale. “You … were a man?”
Mask made an uncertain gesture with his hands. “Maybe. More like a god who mistook himself for a man. Took me a while to see the truth.” He looked at Cale and winked. “That happens sometimes.”
Cale’s breath caught. He did not know how to respond.
“Frightening, eh?” Mask asked.
Mask’s meanings were impossible to follow. He could be saying one thing, he could be saying another. Cale’d had enough.
“Ask me for what you want,” Cale said. “I have seen enough of you. I returned to see my family.”
“You are seeing your family.”
Cale could not form words for a moment. At last, he said, “I mean the Uskevren.”
Mask nodded. “I know what you mean. Very well. Listen to me, priest. When the time comes, I want you to recover something for me. I want your word that you will do it.”
Cale said, “Do it yourself.”
Mask shook his head. “The rules do not allow for that, I fear. I am already breaking them—bending them, at least—by talking to you in person. But things are changing, and who better to bend the rules than the God of Thieves? No, you must do it for me. Your word.”
“What is the item?” Cale asked.
“I did not say it was an item. It is something someone stole from me long ago. You will know it when you see it, and when the time is right to take it.”
Cale could not help but chuckle. “Someone stole something from the God of Thieves?”
“See! You do have a sense of humor. I knew it.”
“Who took it?” Cale asked, and thought immediately of the answer. “Kesson Rel?”
Mask’s smile disappeared and he nodded. “Kesson Rel. A most disappointing creature. Most disappointing.”
“Why should I do it?” Cale asked.
“Do I have to say it? You will do it because you can do nothing else. Two and two are four and all that.”
Cale considered. “Then you must do something for me.”
“I have already granted you the satisfaction of wounding me.”
“I want something more,” Cale said.
“You have been too long among Sembians,” Mask said. “You haggle even with your god.”
Cale waited. Mask waved him on. Cale said, “Tell me where Magadon is.”
Mask smiled and Cale saw the maliciousness in it. “If I tell you, you will not be able to save him, and others—many others—will suffer and die. Shall I tell you anyway? If I do not, I think y
ou will learn it …” he smiled, “… in your own time. But Magadon will suffer in the meanwhile.”
Cale stared into Mask’s face. “You are a bastard.”
“Yes,” Mask said, and bowed. “Much more than you know. But not how you think. Shall I tell you where Magadon is?”
Cale considered, tempted, but shook his head. Magadon would not want others to suffer in his stead.
“No,” he said.
“You still must give me your word,” Mask said.
“You have it,” Cale said absently.
Mask nodded. “Then I will give you this without additional charge: Magadon’s fate is tied to Sembia’s. Go back to Stormweather and help the Uskevren, as you planned. It will all lead back to Magadon, eventually, though you may not like where it ends up.”
Cale said nothing.
“Done, then,” Mask said, his tone satisfied.
Cale was struck by the fact that he had just bargained with a god as if he were a street vendor. Mask was not at all what he had expected. He seemed more man than god. He almost said as much, but thought better of it.
Mask grinned and tapped his temple. “I know what you are thinking, Erevis. But this is just flesh, just one of the … masks I wear when I move among mortals. Here, have a look behind.”
Mask held his arms out wide, stripped away the flesh, and unveiled his divinity.
Cale stared into eternity. He saw, but did not comprehend a consciousness that extended back to the beginning of all. He lost himself in it. He could not breathe. His legs weakened. He was falling, falling …
Mask redonned his flesh. “Now you know.”
Cale struggled to draw breath. He forced himself to keep his feet, though the alley was spinning. The awe had returned but Cale refused—refused—to abase himself before his god.
Mask smiled. “So stubborn, and so prideful. That is why I chose you, you know. That and … a few other reasons.”
Mask’s voice sounded far away. Cale feared he was losing consciousness.
Mask said, “In a few hours, this will start to fade. You will tell yourself it was just a dream, or a trick, or a vision. And maybe it was. But your promise stands. And when events start to speed ahead, remember that I did not create any of this. Others are responsible for it. I am just fiddling around the edges, responding to the inevitable. You do not understand now, but you will, a long time from now.”
Cale vomited onto the alleyway and heaved until he had emptied his stomach. When he looked up, Mask was gone.
He spit to clear his mouth and reached back for the wall to steady himself.
He took some time to let his head and stomach settle. Something glinted on the ground: the fivestars he had tossed to Mask. Hadn’t Mask taken them?
He needed time to think. His head felt muddled. He had just spoken with a god, looked into the unveiled face of the divine.
Hadn’t he?
He stared at the coins, unsure. He left them where they lay and walked out of the alley onto the street.
Shadows cloaked him and Cale found comfort in their embrace. He walked the street in silence. The Shadowlord’s words remained in his memory, as light as the fragments of a dream, as heavy as an anchor. Cale sensed the same fatalism in Mask’s words that he had heard in Sephris’s prophecies but refused to surrender to it. He might not be able to change what was coming, but he would fight his damnedest anyway. That was who he was.
The resolution centered him.
Charcoal street lamps dotted the wide, paved avenue, their fuel burning low. The flames danced in the salt-tanged, late autumn breeze that blew off the bay. Brick warehouses and wood-framed storerooms lined the street, one on top of the other, doors closed, windows dark. Livestock lowed or snorted softly in the stockyards. A few abandoned pullcarts and wagons dotted the pavement.
The dung sweepers were running late. Usually they had already cleaned the city’s streets, but Cale smelled the day’s waste lingering in the open gutters. He spotted transients sleeping in some of the alleys—more than he had remembered.
He knew that his return to Stormweather Towers would have to wait until dawn. He could not knock on the doors of a noble household three hours before daybreak. He decided to spend the time reacquainting himself with the city he once had called home.
Stepping through the shadows, covering blocks at a stride, he headed south and east, toward the center of the city. He crossed the old crumbling stone wall that symbolically separated transients from residents, and entered the Foreign District.
Inns, eateries, taverns, and equipment shops predominated, so many they made a rickety mob. Despite the late hour, a few merchants, teamsters, and caravaneers sat at tables inside the taverns. Smoke and hushed conversation leaked from the unshuttered windows. Here and there Cale noted the usual thugs, whores, and thieves, but the late hour made even those ragged folk look tired. He kept to the dark places and they did not notice him.
As had been true in the Warehouse District, a surprisingly large number of people slept in doorways or under the trees that dotted Selgaunt’s roads. Some were the usual drunks but many were not. Cale had never seen the city so crowded. Everywhere he went he saw huddled forms in the streets, heard throaty coughs, smelled the stink of filthy streets.
He found the bazaar quiet but for the snores of peddlers sleeping in their carts and vendors sleeping in their stalls. His keen ears picked up a few murmured conversations that carried through the night but he ignored them.
He left the Foreign District and moved south, to the area near Temple Avenue that housed Selgaunt’s artists, scholars, and wealthy merchants. The roads narrowed and the inns grew fewer, replaced by well-tended two-story residences and shops. Fewer people slept on the streets, but some were evident. A pair of city guardsmen, Selgaunt’s Scepters, dressed in dark green weathercloaks and wrapped in mail, walked the streets with a lantern. They shone its light into alleys as they passed, shooed along any loiterers they found. Cale sank into the shadows as the Scepters drew near. Even in the light of the lantern, the two men passed him by without noticing, though he could have reached out and touched them.
“… in Ordulin,” the shorter one said.
The other shrugged. “Endren Corrinthal? Well, who can say? Damned nobles …”
Their conversation drifted away as they continued their patrol. Cale walked through a plaza and got a clear view to the southeast, where the gray stone walls of the old Hulorn’s Hunting Garden dominated the skyline. Glowballs and magical violet fires limned the walls. Peculiar statuary dotted the crenellations. The old hulorn’s artistic tastes—he favored depictions of strange hybrid creatures such as manticores, chimerae, and others—had long been a subject of conversation in the city. Mad Andeth Ilchammar, he’d been called, and Cale thought the title fitting.
Cale realized that he did not know who currently occupied the office of hulorn. The last he knew, the members of the Old Chauncel had been squabbling over the prize.
The Hulorn’s garden looked down on the spires of Temple Avenue. Cale saw the top of the bell tower of the House of Song and the narrow, pennon-festooned spire of the Palace of Holy Festivals. Cale had no desire to see Temple Avenue. He’d had enough of gods for the night. Besides, Temple Avenue reminded him of Sephris. He imagined the mad prophet lying awake in his bed in the House of Higher Achievement, counting the number of cracks in the ceiling, the number of breaths he took in an hour, applying one of his obscure calculations, and deriving the fate of Faerûn.
A few blocks over, the top of a tower rose above the rooftops. Cale recognized it. Decades before it had been the tower home of a minor wizard, Delikor Saan. Subsequently, an eccentric artist—Cale had forgotten his name—had bought it and converted it into an art gallery and curio shop that catered to the city’s wealthy. Cale gauged its height at a full six stories, a suitable perch for a view of most of Selgaunt.
Eyeing the top of the tower, he pulled the shadows about him and stepped through them. He appeared on the t
ower’s top. The wind hit him immediately. His cloak billowed out behind him. He crouched low and steadied himself on the tiles of the pitched roof. He looked out on the city.
Streetlamps lit the main thoroughfares: Rauncel’s Ride, Sarn Street, Larawkan Lane, the Wide Way. The broad avenues wound their way through the city like glowing snakes. The Elzimmer River ran along part of its northern wall before emptying into Selgaunt Bay.
Cale could see over the wall to the lamplit flotilla of fishing boats, cargo barges, and ferryboats that dotted the far side of the river. The waterway flowed in clean from the northwest, collected much of the city’s filth as it passed by the northern wall, and dumped the dredge in the bay. Cale knew many men who had done exactly the same thing—entered Selgaunt clean, gotten dirty while inside, and ended up in the bay.
He looked to the west, to the Noble District and the grand mansions of Selgaunt’s ruling noble families, the Old Chauncel. Even from a distance, he could make out the squat turrets of Stormweather Towers, its gated gardens, the meticulously maintained grounds. He had spent many good days within its walls, with Thamalon, with Tazi, with Shamur. He had fought a shadow demon in Stormweather’s great hall, then turned to Mask soon afterward.
He felt a pang of nervousness about seeing them again. They had not seen him since he had been transformed. With effort, he could disguise his appearance as a shade, but even under the best circumstances, he knew he looked different. He worried over how they would respond.
Feeling uncertain, he reached into his pocket and took out the mask. He unfolded it, held it before his face, and looked through the eyeholes. Shadows emerged from his fingers, entwined themselves around and through the mask. The wind pulled at his cloak, at his hair, at his soul. He realized for the first time that unless he died in violence, the shadowstuff that made up his body would allow him to outlive everyone and everything he cared about. He would outlive elves. He could find common ground only with gods.
He put his fingers through the eyeholes, tempted, before shoving it back into his pocket. “In my own time,” he said.
He turned around and looked out on Selgaunt Bay, glittering in the starlight. Countless piers, like the fingers of giants, jutted into the bay. A forest of masts rose into the night sky. Cale had last been at sea with Magadon and Jak aboard Demon Binder. They had discovered the Source and its guardian, the kraken. The beast was still out there, Cale knew. And so, too, was the Wayrock, the island home of the temple Mask had stolen from Cyric. Drasek Riven, Mask’s Second, was out there. Cale wondered if Mask had appeared to Riven, too.
