by Paul S. Kemp
Kesson winced, grunting with each blow Riven dealt him. The beat of his wings slowed and they started to descend. Hope rose in Cale and he finished his spell. Dark power gathered in his hands, already gripping Kesson’s robes. He let it flow through him to Kesson but it was as if the spell had struck a wall. Kesson’s body resisted magic, the same as Cale’s.
Cale cursed and reached for a dagger as his regenerative flesh worked to heal the damage he had suffered, closing gashes, repairing organs. Kesson’s flesh did the same where Riven had stabbed him.
The First Chosen of Mask steadied himself in flight, nearly shook Cale and Riven loose, and held his position in the air. They were not going to ground.
Kesson began another spell.
Riven, his clothes and armor smoking, stained dark with blood, reared back for another blow, but the punch dagger glowed red hot in his hand. He screamed and dropped it. His clothes caught fire where other metal implements on his person reached almost to their melting point—buckles, snaps, knives, caltrops. Cale could see the teleportation ring on Riven’s finger glowing orange, could see the flesh around it turning black and curling. Riven screamed, a prolonged, stubborn wail of agony, but refused to release his grip on Kesson.
Cale grabbed at Riven, put a hand on him, and rode the shadows to a nearby rooftop.
The moment they appeared, Riven, roaring with pain, tore off or cut off the metal buckles, clips, and other items burning on his person. A rain of implements pattered on the rooftop. He tried to get the teleportation ring off his finger but could not grip it to pull it.
“Cale,” he said through the pain, and held out his ring finger.
Cale drew one of his daggers, pried the ring loose from a finger that looked like a burned sausage. Riven hissed with agony. The ring, made malleable by the spell, split from the force of Cale’s dagger.
“Damn it,” Riven said, cradling his hand.
Cale hurriedly intoned a spell of healing, put his hands over Riven’s, and let the energy flow into the assassin.
Riven winced as the wounds closed. “I put that dagger in his gut four times, Cale. I don’t think I hurt him.”
“My spells did nothing either,” Cale said, and turned to scan the sky.
Kesson was gone. The shadows, too, were not in sight and their keening had fallen silent. Lightning lit the city.
Both men drew their larger blades. Shadows boiled from Cale’s flesh.
“Where is he?” Riven said.
“Here,” Kesson answered from behind them. His spell of invisibility ended when he put a clawed hand on each of them, and a surge of magical energy poured through Cale’s resistance and into his flesh. The magic pulled at the wards and other spells that enhanced Cale’s size, strength, and speed, ripping all of them away, and to judge from the sudden increase in Kesson’s size, transfered them all to Kesson. Meanwhile, Riven screamed as baleful energy poured into his body, searing his flesh from the inside out.
Cale twisted free of Kesson’s grasp and stabbed low with Weaveshear while Riven knocked Kesson’s hand from him and slashed high with his sabers. But Kesson bounded backward with frightful, magic enhanced speed. The holy symbol of Shar he wore on a chain at his throat bounced with each beat of his wings.
Cale and Riven stalked after him but he backed off and kept his distance.
The keening of the shadows broke the silence behind them and Cale whirled to see hundreds of the creatures swarming toward them up from the ground, red eyes aglow.
His wards were gone. So were Riven’s.
“We leave,” Cale said.
Magadon’s voice screamed in his head. Do not leave, Cale. Do not. Kill him.
Riven threw three daggers in rapid succession at Kesson’s chest. All struck an invisible field of force around him and fell to the rooftop.
“My ring is gone,” Riven said.
“You will not be allowed to leave, shade,” Kesson said, and emitted a green beam from his eyes. Cale could not dodge it. It struck him, warred with the magic resistant shadowstuff in his body, overcame it, and haloed him in a soft green glow.
“Such paltry vessels the Shadowlord has chosen in this age,” Kesson said.
The shadows closed from behind and Kesson stopped retreating. He intoned words of power, and darkness gathered in his hands.
Cale drew the darkness around Riven and himself, and imagined the point along the Dawnpost where they had seen the road marker for Ordulin. They could regroup, plan another attack …
He did not feel the correspondence.
Shadows leaked from his flesh, and mingled with the green glow of Kesson’s spell. He tried to use the darkness to step through to a nearby alley, but felt nothing.
The shadows shrieked. The power grew in Kesson’s hands. He strode toward them, half again as tall as Cale, fire in his black eyes.
“Cale?” Riven said, and twirled his blades, his gaze moving between Kesson and the onrushing shadows.
Kill him, Cale, Magadon projected. You promised me!
Cale ignored Magadon’s pleas, felt around the edges of Kesson’s spell, probed for weakness, found a spot, and tried to slip around the interference. The green light shrouding him winked out and he rode the shadows to the Dawnpost.
But instead of the Dawnpost, they instead appeared in the middle of one of Ordulin’s streets, a short distance from the building on which they had stood moments before. The green glow reappeared, flashing intermittently.
The shadows thronged the top of the building, whirling around it in frustration. Kesson rose into their midst and eyed the area.
“What in the Hells, Cale?”
Kesson’s gaze fell on them.
Cale shook his head. “His spell is affecting my abilities.”
The shadows turned like a flock of birds on the wing and darted toward them. Kesson followed them, a great dark bird of prey with holes for eyes. The power in Kesson’s hands formed black flames around his fists.
Cale and Riven sprinted for a nearby doorway, leaping rubble, dodging corpses.
Black fire exploded behind them, blew them off their feet, turned the rubble into projectiles. The fire seared Cale’s flesh; shards of stone knifed into him.
He pulled Riven to his feet, the shadows around him swirling, and ran for the building.
I cannot let you leave, Cale, Magadon said. Cale felt a tingle in his limbs, suddenly felt separate from them.
Before he reached the building, Magadon stopped him, turned him around.
Fight, Cale. Gods damn you to the Hells. There may not be another chance. And I am out of time.
Riven grabbed Cale by the shoulder. “What are you doing? Come on!”
“It’s Mags,” Cale said through gritted teeth, and his body tried to shake free of Riven’s grasp.
Riven cursed, kicked Cale behind his knee, knocked him down, and dragged him toward the nearby building.
“Let him go, Mags!” Riven shouted.
Stop, Mags, Cale said. Stop. We will try again.
He fought against Magadon’s control, but the mindmage’s hold was too strong.
Mags, if you don’t release me, Riven and I will die here, now.
“Walls won’t stop the shadows,” Riven said, and plucked pieces of rock from the flesh of his face.
Help me, Erevis, Magadon said, and freed Cale’s body.
I will, Cale said, but the connection went dormant and he was not sure that Magadon heard him.
He put it out of his mind and worked to get around Kesson’s binding spell again.
The building started to shake. Beams of wood and slabs of rock fell from the ceiling.
“Cale,” Riven said.
Outside, the keening of the shadows grew louder. Through an opening in the building’s front, they saw a multitude of red eyes in a cloud of black forms.
“Cale!”
The ceiling groaned, and started to fall.
Cale again slipped Kesson’s binding spell and the green glow flashed out for a
moment. Once more Cale pictured the spot on the Dawnpost and rode the shadows away.
CHAPTER NINE
4 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms
They materialized not along the Dawnpost but somewhere in the Shadowstorm. The echo of Magadon’s rage and despair rang in Cale’s mind like a temple bell. Rain thudded into their cloaks. Thunder rumbled. Flashes of green lightning illuminated the twisted landscape in ghastly glimpses. The Shadowstorm pawed at their unprotected souls, drained away their essence. Cale hurriedly intoned the words to the protective wards that shielded them from the life draining energy of the storm, touched a hand to himself, to Riven, and replaced what Kesson Rel had stolen.
“Dark and empty,” Riven cursed. Smoke still rose from his charred armor. Blisters dotted the exposed skin of his seared arms and face. Slivers of rock were still embedded in the flesh of his cheeks and brow.
Cale shared the sentiment. The faint green glow of Kesson’s spell flashed in and out, warring with the shadows that cloaked him. His regenerative flesh collected the darkness around him and filled his wounds with it. He winced as burns healed, gashes closed.
You failed me, Cale, Magadon said in his mind, and the calm pronouncement hit him as hard as a maul.
Cale was too tired to argue.
Moving gingerly, Riven spun a hand in the air, wrapped his fingers in shadows, and patted them into his wounds, the way he might a healing loam. The magic pulled the slivers of stone from his flesh, healed some of his blisters, but did not heal his wounds entirely. Cale placed his palms on him and intoned a healing spell to Mask. The assassin breathed easier, and nodded thanks.
“Where are we?” Riven asked, looking around.
Cale shook his head. “Not where I intended. This—” he indicated the intermittently flashing green glow around him—“interferes with my abilities even when I’m able to slip it.”
Riven paced a circle, his hands on the hilts of his sabers. “He’s more powerful than the Sojourner.”
“Maybe,” Cale said.
Riven stared into Cale’s face, a look in his eyes, then he resumed pacing.
“Something you want to say?” Cale asked.
Riven stopped pacing and looked off into the darkness. “I don’t know, Cale. I don’t.”
The sense of Riven’s sentence echoed in Cale’s head: I don’t know if we can stop Kesson Rel.
“There has to be a way,” Cale said.
Oathbreaking bastard, Magadon said in his mind.
Cale shook his head, as if he could shake Magadon loose from his thoughts. In handcant, he said to Riven, Mags is almost gone.
Riven stared at Cale a long while before he signaled back, Then we keep our promise to him.
“No.” Cale shook his head. “No.”
“You see another way?” Riven asked, then signed, He almost killed us both.
They stared at each other through the rain, the funeral of their friend suspended in the dark between them.
What are you discussing? Magadon asked.
It’s a mercy killing, Riven signed.
Cale signed back, his gestures sharp and cutting. For who? And we are not there yet.
Not yet, Riven signed. But soon. Get your head around it. He’s a risk. We’ve seen what he can do. He’s in your head, Cale. He took control of you.
Cale could not deny it. Anger boiled up in him and he shouted it into the sky. “Dark!”
Go back, Cale, Magadon said in his mind. Please go back. Do what you promised.
The shadows around Cale boiled.
“Damn it, Mags, I will go back! I will kill Kesson! But we need another way.”
I have no time for another way, Magadon said, the voice more his own. Before Cale could answer, the connection went quiescent. Cale still felt the uncomfortable itch of mental contact deep in his skull, but it was as though the door through which he and Magadon communicated had been left ajar only a sliver. Only Magadon could reopen it. Cale could not.
Riven exhaled a change of subject, shook the fatigue from his arms. He looked around, squinting in the rain. “Kesson will be coming. As long as we’re in the Shadowstorm, he’ll be coming.”
“He will have to find us first,” Cale said. He cast a series of wards to shield them against scrying and divinations, but had his doubts they would work against Kesson. “I can try to get us out, back to Lake Veladon …”
Riven was already shaking his head. “Not with that spell on you. We could end up anywhere—back in Ordulin.”
Riven looked at his right hand, as if pondering the absence of the ring Kesson had slagged with his spell.
“We walk, then,” Cale said, and threw up his hood.
“So we do,” Riven said with a nod. “Bad things in this storm, though.”
Cale remembered the looming, dark creature whose presence they had fled on their way in.
“Nothing for it,” he said, his mind on Magadon. “We have to find another way. I am not putting Magadon down. Get your head around that. The horse got out, yes?”
“Cale, if we have to—”
Cale stopped, turned, and stared at Riven. “We are not giving up on him.”
“I can offer another way,” said a voice to their right, a voice that put Weaveshear in Cale’s hand and Riven’s sabers in his.
Rivalen Tanthul’s golden eyes appeared to float freely in space until the Shadovar disengaged from the darkness. He bore no visible weapon. The shadows hugged his form, blurred his borders.
Cale and Riven fell in side by side, weapons ready. Cale scanned the darkness around them, but saw no one else.
“I am alone,” Rivalen said. He held his hands at his side.
“All the worse for you,” said Riven.
Cale put his free hand on Riven’s shoulder to prevent him from charging. “He could have attacked already,” he said. What Cale did not say was that Rivalen had mentioned another way and Cale was prepared to grasp at anything to save Magadon, even the words of a Shadovar.
Rivalen eyed Cale, inclined his head.
The tension went out of Riven. Somewhat.
“You wonder why I am here,” Rivalen said. He advanced a few steps and stopped, perhaps eight paces from Cale and Riven.
“You are a Sharran dog and Kesson has your leash,” Riven said.
Genuine anger flashed in Rivalen’s eyes before he hid it behind a mask of calm.
“Your words are those of a fool,” the Shadovar said.
Cale held onto Riven as his mind hurried through possibilities. He did not think Rivalen was delaying them for his fellow Sharran. The Shadovar prince could have simply watched them from afar, and brought Kesson whenever he wished. They had not known Rivalen was near. And had the Shadovar wanted to attack, he could have. They would not have seen it coming.
“This makes no sense,” Cale said. Shadows leaked from his body, from his blade.
“That is because you think Kesson Rel and I are allies because we both serve Shar. Not all who serve the same god are allies.”
Cale understood that well. He and Riven had started in service to Mask as rivals.
“Kesson Rel is a heretic,” Rivalen said. “I want him dead, the Shadowstorm stopped.”
In answer to his words, the wind gusted and thunder rumbled.
Riven scoffed. “That’s a dungpile.”
Rivalen’s eyes flared, and the shadows around him whirled.
“Why?” Cale asked.
Rivalen smiled. “He is destroying Sembia, and Sembia is an ally of the Shadovar.”
“Another dungpile,” Riven said, and Cale agreed. If Rivalen was offering even a little truth, there was much more to the matter than he was sharing.
“Stop him, then,” Cale said. “You will find him in Ordulin.” “I know where he is but I have learned that I cannot stop him alone. It will take a Chosen of Mask.”
The shadows around Cale spun. “Learned? How?”
“I am willing to lay our past differences aside …”
; “I’m not,” Riven said.
Rivalen continued, “… to rid Sembia of this threat. Our interests coincide. We both want the same man dead.” “He’s not a man,” Cale said.
The shadows around Rivalen churned. “No. He’s not. But we can end this, and him, together.”
Cale considered. He wondered if Rivalen, too, sought what Kesson had stolen from Mask. He reminded himself that Rivalen had kidnapped Magadon, bonded him to the Source. That had been the beginning of Magadon’s descent. Rivalen Tanthul was a bastard, not to be trusted.
“To the Hells with him, Cale,” Riven said. “We do it our way.”
“Agreed,” Cale said reluctantly. “No.”
Riven sneered. “You fly away now, little shade. And the next time we see you, our discussion will be a little different.”
Rivalen never lost his mask. He showed no anger, did not even raise his voice.
“I believe I can make you reconsider.”
Drizzle sank through Abelar’s armor and caused the leather and padding under the steel to chafe. After spending several hours riding with his father and son in the wagon, he rode on Swiftdawn at the head of the column of Saerbians. His father and Elden rode in the body of the caravan.
Behind them, the Shadowstorm expanded, devouring the sky and casting Sembia in darkness. The roiling black thunderhead, streaked through with flashes of lightning, was gaining on them.
“We need to move faster,” he said to Regg. He kept his eyes from the rose enameled on Regg’s breastplate.
His friend looked back at the storm and nodded. “We may have to abandon the wagons. There are not enough horses for all, but we would move faster afoot.”
“Not with the children and elderly,” Abelar said. “And they would all be exhausted in a few days.”
Regg surrendered to Abelar’s point and grunted agreement.
Abelar looked on the long column of men, women, children, and wagons that snaked out behind him. Oxen and horses, heads lowered against the rain, stubbornly pulled their burdens through the muck. Mothers cradled children, and tried to shield themselves from the rain with blankets and cloaks. Men walked beside wagons and helped push when they bogged down in the soft earth. They were moving at a crawl. If the storm continued its present course and speed, they would be caught in mere days.
