by Paul S. Kemp
“You disliked Vors. We know what happened on the last raid.”
“I hated him passionately,” Reht said, eliciting a growl from Kelgar. “But he was a soldier in this army. My army. That is all that matters.”
The Talassan stared into Reht’s eyes, measuring him. Reht gave no ground.
Finally the priest smirked, stepped back, and nodded. No spit.
“Well enough … Commander.”
Reht stepped aside and let them through. “We’ll have a council with all the junior commanders in one hour. You are to be there.”
Kelgar grunted agreement and entered the tent with his fellows. The moment they saw the carnage they shouted curses and blood oaths.
Gavist and Othel cleared out of the way and Reht stood in the tent’s doorway as the warpriests honored their dead by howling over his body and destroying his possessions, overturning tables, shattering glass, slashing carpets and bedding. Reht had seen it before. Talos reveled in destruction and battle. So did his priests. The Talassans would pile up the wreckage and set it all aflame with a summoned lightning strike before dawn.
As if in answer to the funereal rage of the Talassan warpriests, the sky rumbled with thunder, a lasting peal that reached a booming crescendo.
“Double the men on guard duty,” Reht said to Gavist, and the young junior commander nodded.
“You think the assassins might return?”
“I don’t. Vors, at least, looks to have been personal. But we may as well take precautions. Taking Forrin could be a precursor to an attack.”
Mennick, the army’s most powerful wizard, strode through the men as the Talassans within the tent unleashed their own storm. Magic kept Mennick’s dark robes and gray-streaked hair shielded from the rain.
“You’ve heard?” Reht asked.
Mennick’s eyes clouded over. He’d known Forrin for many years. “Yes.”
“Mages are at work in this,” Reht said. “Shadovar mages. Do what you can to prevent this from happening again.”
“I can raise some wards,” Mennick said. “I should start with you.”
“Fine. Inform the overmistress via sending, then find out who did this and where they are.”
Mennick nodded and looked over and past Reht in thought, his brow grooved.
Lightning flashed and his eyes widened. He pointed at the horizon.
“Look at that.”
Reht turned to see pitch devour the eastern sky, swallowing stars. Not storm clouds, but a churning fog of impenetrable night. Streaks of green lightning sliced through it at intervals. An uneasy murmur went through the gathered men as the darkness expanded.
“Not natural,” Mennick said.
“Shadovar?” Reht asked.
Mennick shrugged. “Seems likely.”
“Shadovar troops could be moving under cover of that storm,” Gavist said.
“Possible,” Mennick said. “They take Forrin, thinking to disrupt our command, then attack under cover of darkness.”
Reht nodded, thoughtful. The storm was moving west toward them, bracketing Reht’s army between it and the Saerbian forces. He liked it little.
He decided he would not sit idle while his enemies determined the field of battle. He had thought to march against the Saerbians, but now he had a different target, one whose agents had attacked his camp.
“Sound the muster,” Reht said to Gavist. “Get the men geared up. We’re moving into that storm. We take the fight to them.”
Gavist saluted, and headed off.
“Scouts forward with half hour reporting,” Reht shouted to Gavist’s back. “And double the scouts to the rear. I don’t want the Saerbians taking us unawares. And get some scouts in the field looking for Lorgan.”
A raised hand acknowledged the orders and the camp soon erupted in activity.
Reht walked among his men, watching the approaching storm. It was still hours away, given its slow advance. In his mind’s eye, he imagined the Saerbian forces marching from Lake Veladon, thinking to catch Reht in a vise.
“No, no,” he said. He would engage the Shadovar as soon as possible. After defeating them, he’d turn and finish the approaching Saerbians. He had the forces to do it.
Behind him, the Talassans ignited Vors’s body, possessions, and tent. Their roars of rage chased the smoke into the dark sky.
The next day would bring battle.
Once, the prospect would have lit a fire in his belly. Now, it kindled only a spark. A long life of soldiering had shaped Reht into a certain kind of man, and sometimes he tired of himself. He’d almost been apprenticed in his adolescence to a cartographer but the man had taken on another instead, a nephew. Reht had always loved maps, still did. He wondered what his life would have been like had he spent it as a map-maker. Would he have married? Had children? Certainly he’d have had fewer scars.
He shook his head, rebuking himself for being sentimental. He had made his choice, had put aside maps for steel.
Donning his helmet, he put cartography and regrets out of his mind and saw to the preparation of his army.
CHAPTER TWO
1 Nightal, The Year of Lightning Storms
Cale and Riven materialized in darkness as thick and black as a pool of ink. A cutting wind gusted from the east, and knifed through their clothes. Rain pelted them, and carried down from the black sky the musty smell of old decay. Tangible swirls of shadow turned the cool air thick, gauzy.
“Where is this place, Cale?” Riven asked over the wind.
“Home,” Cale shouted in answer. “For a time.”
It was also in the center of the storm. They stood in the meadow not far from the small cottage where Cale had lived with Varra. The sentinel elm, towering over them, whispered and creaked in the wind, sizzled in the rain. The furniture Cale had made from deadwood lay overturned in the grass. The wildflowers Varra had planted were browned and dead on the stalks. The window shutters and door of the cottage flapped in the gusts, all of them beating as if in anger against the cottage’s walls.
“Varra!” Cale shouted. “Varra!”
His voice barely penetrated the howl of wind and rain. Lightning lit the meadow. The downpour and wind hissed against the trees in the surrounding forest.
“You feel that air?” Riven shouted, and drew his blades. “Same as in the Calyx.”
Cale nodded, and drew Weaveshear. “Same as in Elgrin Fau.” He rode the darkness into the cottage. “Varra!”
He found their old home empty, their bed unmade. The wind shrieked through the open windows and doors. Blankets, utensils, pails, and broken pieces of clay lamps lay strewn about the floor, dislodged by the wind. He tore open cabinets, trunks, piles of linens, looking for any sign of what might have happened.
“Varra!”
He cursed himself for bringing her out of Skullport, cursed himself for leaving her alone in an unfamiliar place. He had not merely left her alone; he had abandoned her. She could be wandering in the woods, lost in the storm, anywhere.
He tossed their room, found one of the smocks she sometimes wore in the summer, and decided to use it as the focus for a divination. He held his mask in one hand, the smock in his shadowborn hand, and intoned over the wind the words to a spell that would locate her.
The magic manifested and the shadows darkened before his face, forming a lens in the air. But he felt no connection to Varra. He poured power into the spell, willed it to show her, but the lens remained black, dead.
Cursing, he ended it.
He stood in the center of the ruins of their life together, wondering if she was dead. He hesitated for only a moment before making up his mind. He cast another spell that allowed him to commune with his god. The wind-driven beat of the shutters and door on the walls kept time with his heart.
“Is she alive?” Cale asked, his voice a monotone in the wind’s wail.
The darkness swirled around him and the voice of his god whispered in his brain, She lives and is safe, far from you, but not in distance.
He exhaled with relief, tried to process the rest of the reply, but Riven’s shout from outside carried over the shriek of the wind.
“Cale! Get out here!”
Cale cloaked himself in shadows and rode them back out to the meadow. He emerged from the darkness beside Riven, in Varra’s garden. Lightning ripped the sky, cast the meadow in sickening green. The wind picked up, took on an odd keening that stood the hairs on his arms on end. It bent the trees of the forest, sent a barrage of leaves and loose sticks into the meadow.
“Up there,” Riven said, and pointed skyward with one of his sabers.
Astride his mount, Reht crested a rise and looked at the edge of the crawling darkness. His commanders crowded around him. All squinted against the wind and rain. All cursed.
His army stood arrayed a spear cast behind them, cloaks drawn, shields held over heads to shelter them from the pounding of the rain. Dawn would break in a few hours, but Reht thought it unlikely they would notice once they entered the storm. It looked like ink.
“Gods,” said Norsim, a towering junior commander with a reputation for good luck.
A wall of black fog lay before them, extending from the ground to the sky. Tendrils and spirals of pitch reached out of it, seemed to pull it along in dark billows. The fog cloaked the ground, sank into the hollows, and shrouded everything in its path. Its edge seemed to demarcate more than the border between light and shadow. The earth looked different under its shroud, foreign, deformed. They could not see more than a stone’s throw within in.
Lightning flashed from time to time, turning the thick haze the greenish black of a bruise. Reht’s horse neighed nervously, pawed the ground, tossed its head. Shifts in the saddle betrayed the concern of his commanders, though none spoke their fears aloud.
“Shadovar magic,” Mennick said.
“Aye,” Reht said.
Enken’s horse tossed its head, blew a spray of spit. “There could be ten thousand men within it.”
“Or there could be a few hundred,” Reht said.
“Or none,” Norsim said.
“Not even you are that lucky,” said Enken.
Kelgar slammed a gauntleted fist against the lightning bolts on his shield. “Let us hope that it is ten thousand. The Thunderer demands blood for Vors.”
Reht saw motion within the darkness. Forms separated from the murk and the shadows birthed the silhouettes of two men and horses. No one else seemed to notice. Reht still had his archer’s eyes.
“Scouts are returning,” he said.
“Where?” asked Enken, leaning forward into the rain. “Ah.”
Othel and Phlen burst from the fog, trailing stubborn streams of black disinclined to release them. They shook their heads as they emerged from the fog, spotted Reht and his commanders, and raced toward them.
“Ten fivestars on Othel,” Norsim said, though the offer sounded half-hearted.
No one took the wager.
Othel and Phlen, with Phlen in the lead, tore toward the gathered commanders and wheeled to a stop. Both of the men looked pale, the mud spatters that covered them dark by contrast.
“General,” Othel said to Reht, as his horse turned a circle, neighed, and pawed the earth.
Enken tossed Othel a waterskin. The scout took a long draw then wiped his mouth.
“Report,” Reht said.
“It is cool within the fog and grew cooler as we advanced,” Othel said. “Visibility is poor but light can cut through it. I found it difficult to keep my sense of direction.”
“As did I,” Phlen agreed, nodding. Othel passed him the waterskin and he drank.
Othel said, “We rode in half a league and encountered nothing. It appears to be nothing more than an unusual storm. If Shadovar forces are within, they are farther back than we advanced.”
Kelgar looked past the scouts to the storm. “The Shadovar are in there.”
“Your spells tell you as much?” Reht asked.
Kelgar thumped his breastplate with his fist, over his heart. “This tells me as much. There’s battle in there, General.”
Reht made up his mind and spoke to his commanders.
“Put the men in a skirmish line, with three man teams scouting all sides. Mennick, use the darkvision wands on all the scouts and all senior commanders. Scouts are to return with word on the half hour.”
Enken eyed the storm, and licked his lips. Lightning lit up the clouds. “I don’t like it, Reht. Could be anything in there.”
“Then you best prepare for anything,” said Kelgar with contempt.
Enken edged his horse toward Kelgar’s. “Close your hole before I fill it with steel, priest. Revenge for your dead fellow and Forrin’s snatching is not reason to be rash.”
The Talassans glared at Enken and snarled. Enken answered with his own glare, his hand on one of his knives. The other commanders took position near Enken, facing off the priests.
“Calmer heads, men,” Reht said. “All of you. There’s work ahead.” To Enken, he said, “You think it rash?”
“Yes,” Enken said, and tilted his head. “But I don’t see many options. If we retreat before it, it will chase us into the Saerbian forces, which may be the intent. Even if it stops advancing it cuts us off from Ordulin and leaves us unsupplied. Moving south toward Selgaunt is not an option. I’d rather enter it and take our chances than sit on my hands.” He smiled. “But that doesn’t make it any less rash.”
Reht chuckled. “Agreed. Sometimes rashness is a soldier’s ally. That’s why we keep Norsim and his luck at our side.”
Norsim smiled.
Reht continued, “Let’s keep the men sharp and see what we see.”
“Aye,” Enken said. He spat at the feet of Kelgar’s mount. “Maybe these battle-happy fools can lead the advance, eh?”
“We’ve been leading since we arrived,” Kelgar answered.
The men all laughed as the group dispersed back to their units.
“Remain,” Reht said to Mennick, and when they stood alone atop the rise, he said, “What have you learned?”
The mage shook his head. “Nothing. Whoever took the general is well warded against scrying.” He nodded at the storm as distant thunder rumbled. “And divinations reveal nothing about the storm. It’s a void, Commander.”
“Ordulin and the Overmistress?”
“I cannot make contact with anyone there. The storm may be blocking the magic.”
Behind them, horns blew and men shouted, the army forming up.
Reht eyed the black wall before him, and the twisted look of the world under its shroud. He and his army were isolated in the field, with scant knowledge of their enemy, supply lines cut by the storm, and no instructions from their ostensible leaders in Ordulin. He did not like the courses open to him but had to choose one.
“Get yourself ready,” he said to Mennick. “We go in. If the Shadovar are within the storm, we engage. If this is just a ruse or magic gone awry, we push through it, return to Ordulin, and regroup.”
When the mage was gone, Reht whispered a prayer to Tempus, asking the Lord of Battle to strengthen his men.
Cale looked up into the dark sky. Above the tree line he saw thousands of tiny points of red light streaking toward the meadow. From a distance they looked like a swarm of fireflies, a swirling constellation of red stars. But Cale recognized them for what they were—eyes.
“Shadows,” he said.
Riven nodded, and absently spun his sabers. “She’s not here? Varra?”
Cale shook his head.
The air grew cooler as the undead approached. The wind pasted Cale’s cloak to his skin. “This storm, the shadows. It’s like the Calyx.”
Riven nodded. “Kesson Rel is in Faerûn, His shadow giants cannot be far off.”
Cale tried to count the shadows as they swarmed toward them but gave up. There were thousands. Cale remembered the pit under the spire in the Adumbral Calyx, the black hole that vomited newly formed shadows into the world.
&
nbsp; “He has opened a gate,” Cale said. “Or a rift.”
Cale had seen something similar, long ago, when a portion of the Abyss had bled into the guildhouse of the Night Knives.
“Too many,” Riven said, as the undead creatures closed. Hundreds of them descended into the forest, still flying for the meadow, and the soft glow of their eyes cast the boles and boughs of the trees in crimson. Riven bounced on the balls of his feet, slowly twirling his sabers.
“Too many, Cale.”
Cale tried to imagine the scope of the deaths that thousands of shadows could cause, but it was too large. He thought of the Saerbians, Selgaunt. He sagged under the weight of his role in it.
“We did this,” he said.
Riven stopped spinning his sabers. “No. Kesson Rel did this.”
Cale tried to agree, but failed. “We freed him to do it when we killed Furlinastis. Kesson Rel played us, and now he is come to Faerûn.”
“We didn’t know.”
“We didn’t think. We just acted.”
The shadows drew closer, the keening louder.
Riven looked over at Cale. “We aren’t going to undo it here. There are too many.”
Cale barely heard him. He thought of Varra, of his spell’s verdict: She is safe, far from you.
Wasn’t that true of everyone he cared about? He thought of Thazienne and the demonic attack that had nearly killed her, thought of Magadon and the archfiend who had torn his soul in half, thought of Jak, who’d died at the claws and teeth of a slaad who’d never paid, not in full …
“Cale.”
He had failed everyone and now he had wrought the ruin of an entire realm.
“Cale …”
Cale pulled his mask from his cloak and donned it. Darkness leaked from Weaveshear; darkness leaked from Cale. He let divine power flow into him. He would cut his way to Kesson Rel or die trying.
“We aren’t going to undo it,” he said. “We’re going to end it.”
Huge forms materialized from the shadows at the edge of the meadow, ten gangly giants as tall as three men, the vanguard of the army of shadows. Darkness swirled in strands around their stooped forms, twisted around their gray flesh. Their long white hair whipped in the wind. Each wore a hauberk of dull gray links and bore swords in their hands almost as long as Cale was tall. Their black eyes took in the meadow, looking for prey. Their gazes fixed on Cale and Riven. They pointed.
