by Paul S. Kemp
“High,” Cale said.
“Low,” Riven answered, and both lunged forward, blades bare.
Cale took a two-handed slash across Kesson’s throat; Riven stabbed his sabres in the middle of Kesson’s back.
Their blades passed through him as if he were air.
“Illusion,” Cale said, as the image disappeared. Riven cursed.
Kesson’s voice, intoning a spell, carried on the wind from somewhere to their right. They whirled, sought him, saw nothing.
Holding his mask, Cale spoke a brief prayer and a circle of force radiated outward from him in all directions to about twenty paces, countering invisibility in its path.
Kesson appeared, hovering low over the plains, energy gathering in both his hands.
“I have Rivalen,” Cale said, and winced as a wave of Magadon’s mental energy caused a spike of pain in his head. “Go.”
Riven nodded, and charged Kesson.
I am power, Magadon said in Cale’s head, his voice an echo of Mephistopheles’s. And I am hate.
Riven threw one of his enchanted sabres at Kesson as he charged. The curved blade, poorly balanced for throwing, cut an irregular arc through the air and struck Kesson in the shoulder. If the blade cut flesh, Riven couldn’t tell. He could tell that it had no effect on Kesson’s casting.
Kesson’s dark eyes fixed on Riven. He flapped his wings, pointed both hands.
Cale shadowstepped to Rivalen’s side and gagged at the stench. The Shadovar’s body had been opened, as if his skin had been unbuttoned and the vitals pulled forth. One of his arms was little more than a withered stick.
Blood vessels, tendons, intestines all lay in a twisted heap on the ruins of his flesh. His eyes fixed on Cale, still aglow, filled with rage and pain. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing more emerged than a wet gurgle. Cale saw that Rivalen’s hand still held his holy symbol, slicked with his blood. Perhaps the Shadovar’s regenerative flesh would heal him in time. Perhaps not.
Intoning a rapid prayer, Cale cast his most powerful healing spell and fought back bile as the magic caused Rivalen’s innards to squirm back into place and closed the flesh over them.
Rivalen, still slick and sticky with his own blood, inhaled in a gasp.
“Get up,” Cale said, and pulled him to his feet.
Magadon’s voice rang in his head.
I am power.
Magadon! Cale projected through the mental connection. This is not you! Get control! Get out of the Source, Mags. Get out.
I have control, Magadon answered, and began to laugh. And I will never get out.
Cale looked back the way they had come and saw through the darkness, through the raging battle of wraiths and shadows, a huge form moving through the storm, a floating city.
Sakkors.
And Magadon.
Riven dodged to his right as energy flew from both of Kesson’s fists. A glowing orange ball of power streaked toward Riven from Kesson’s left hand, while a line of green energy from his right hand coalesced in the air and formed itself around Riven into the shape of a large, barred cage. Riven slammed into its unyielding bars. He was trapped inside with the orange ball, which began to spin and hum.
Riven cut at the bars, but he might as well have been chopping at adamantine.
The ball spun ever more rapidly, emitting a high pitched whine. Riven backed away from it as far as the cage allowed. He looked over and saw Cale pull Rivalen, mostly whole, to his feet.
“Cale!”
The ball exploded, filling the cage with billowing black smoke shot through with burning streams of red-hot embers. Riven had nowhere to hide, no cover, and smoke and embers saturated him. He screamed as his flesh blistered, blackened, as his clothes caught fire.
Cale heard Riven’s screams. Lines of burning embers snaked through a cloud of smoke, glowing runes of heat and agony traced in the air. The smoke leaked through the bars of a magical cage. Riven had nowhere to run.
“Forcecage,” Rivalen said, and spit a tooth and blood.
Cale felt for the darkness within the cage, found it, held his breath, and stepped to it. Lines of fire wrote letters of pain on his flesh. He gritted his teeth, endured, and followed Riven’s screams through the smoke. He found the assassin writhing on the ground, burning. Cale grabbed his cloak and rode the shadows out of the cage and onto the plains. He rolled Riven around on the the rain-swept grass as Cale’s regenerative flesh healed the burns on his own skin.
Riven grunted with pain through bared teeth, as much angry as pained. His face and hands were blistered, blackened like seared meat. Blades of grass clung to the charred flesh from where Cale had rolled him on the turf. His hair was melted.
Rivalen stepped from the shadows next to Cale.
“Be still,” Rivalen said, and held Riven still with his one hand. He chanted a healing prayer, the language not unlike that which Cale had used to heal Rivalen, and Riven’s skin regenerated before their eyes. His breathing eased, though his hair and beard remained blackened and curled.
“Good?” Cale asked him.
“No,” Riven said, and sat up. He drew a dagger to pair with his saber. He must have lost his other saber during the battle. He stood. “But that’s not new. We cannot beat him, Cale.”
Cale nodded. “I know.”
Not even Rivalen protested.
“But we see it through,” Cale said and looked across the plains to Kesson Rel. The First Chosen of Mask rose into the sky, energy in his hands. Kesson touched his hand to himself once, twice, presumably warding himself against attack.
Cale was about to speak when a blast of power soaked his mind, caused his nose to bleed, and sent him to his knees.
Sakkors, draped in shadows, floated over the battlefield.
I am come! Magadon projected.
Rivalen and Riven both covered their ears and groaned. Even Kesson grimaced.
And Cale realized what he must do. He rose to his feet.
“Spread out,” he said. “And wait for my say so.”
Blows rained down on Furlinastis’s body. His good wing hung in shreds. He’d lost two teeth on a giant’s breastplate. He could scarcely see and pinpointed his targets as much by sound and smell as sight. Roaring, he pinned a giant under one claw, pressed down, and felt the satisfying crunch of the giant’s rib-cage collapsing.
A pair of giants slashed at his throat, opened huge gashes in his scales. He whirled, caught one by the leg in his jaws, and shook him until the leg came free. He gulped it down as the giant bled out on the grass.
Three giants to his left nocked arrows, drew, and loosed. All three sank to the fletching in his side. He whipped his body around, caught two of them with a tail lash, and shattered their knees.
But he was failing. A group of two score giants charged him. He reared up, roaring.
And a roar from behind joined his own.
The companions of Abelar Corrinthal charged the giants, breaking around and past Furlinastis, their numbers ablaze in magical light.
Regg and his company flowed around the dragon, shouting battle cries. The shadowwalkers, cloaked in darkness even in the midst of Roen and his priests’ light spells, ran in the vanguard of the force.
The dragon roared as they passed, lumbered after. With the number of wounds the creature had suffered, Regg did not know how it even moved.
Trewe sounded a blast and the company hit the remaining giants like a maul. Regg sidestepped a giant’s stab and hacked into the creature’s knee. When it fell, roaring, he drove his blade through the back of its neck. A giant staggered into him, spouting blood from a throat wound, and knocked him down. Another loomed out of the battle, sword raised over his head for a killing blow.
The dragon’s head shot out of the chaos of combat on his long neck and the giant vanished in a flash of teeth and spray of blood. Regg climbed to his feet and hacked about him until he could no longer feel his arms.
Cale and Rivalen shadowstepped away from Riven. Together, the th
ree men formed a triangle around Mask’s First Chosen, who flew in the air above them.
“You are not enough,” Kesson said, and Cale knew he was right. They were not enough. To have any chance, Cale had to risk Magadon.
Rain drizzled from the sky. For a time, the four combatants simply regarded one another, each waiting for the other to begin the final act.
Cale tried to focus his mind, to push his thoughts through the blizzard of mental energy pouring through his connection with Magadon.
Look through my eyes, Mags. Kesson Rel is here. We need you to help us.
Kesson Rel began to cast. Rivalen did the same.
Now, Mags. Look through my eyes! Now!
A hand closed on Regg’s shoulder. He whirled in a backhand slash, but a shadow-shrouded hand caught his forearm in a powerful grip and stopped the blow.
A shadowwalker.
Blood, rain, and sweat coated the small man. He had a gash in one cheek and stood uneasily on his left leg. His face remained as impassive as ever.
“It is over,” the shadowwalker said in his accented Common.
Regg surveyed the field and realized for the first time that it was raining again.
Hundreds of giants lay on the grass, their enormous bodies torn by fang and claw or slashed by blades. The rain drained their blood into the soil. Most of Regg’s company lay dead on the field, too. He saw Roen and Trewe among a few score others start to walk among the bodies, checking for signs of life. When they found it, Roen or one of his fellow priests channelled Lathander’s power into a spell of healing.
Regg caught Trewe’s gaze, and held up his hand. Trewe, perhaps too exhausted to raise his own arm, merely nodded.
The ten or so shadowwalkers flitted among the giants’ bodies, crushing the windpipes of any that still breathed. Regg was too tired to protest. Besides, he could take no prisoners.
The dragon, its enormous, shadow-shrouded form sprawled over the field, with bloody pieces of giants still clinging to his teeth and claws, inhaled a rattling breath. Regg staggered to his side, along his neck, noting the gashes, the spurting blood. The wyrm’s eyes were open. Ribbons of shadow and ragged breaths leaked from his nose and mouth. The slits of his pupils dilated to focus on Regg.
Regg removed his gauntlet and put his hand on the ridge over the wyrm’s eye.
“I have seen nobility in strange places this day.”
The dragon’s chest rattled, perhaps in a laugh.
“The one who rode me, Abelar, was at peace,” the dragon whispered.
“I know,” Regg said, and tears wet his face. “Be at peace also.”
Regg stared into the dragon’s eye until it closed.
“Dawn dispels the night and births the world anew,” Regg said. “May Lathander light your way and show you wisdom and mercy. Today you were a light to others.”
Shouts turned Regg around. The members of his company looked past Regg and into the sky, pointing with their blades.
“Sakkors!”
Regg looked up and saw the floating, shadow-cloaked Shadovar city emerge from the darkness.
Cale felt the tell-tale tingle behind his eyes, the displacement of his own consciousness as Magadon shared his senses. The mental energy racing through his brain surged, driving him to his knees. His mouth opened to speak but the voice was not his own.
“Kesson Rel!” Magadon screamed through him.
Use all of the power in the Source, Mags, Cale projected, cursing himself for the words. Kill him if you can and we can save you.
Cale knew that those words would stain him forever, that he might have just surrendered his friend to mental slavery to the Source. He vowed to himself that he would do whatever he must to save Magadon.
But first he had to survive.
I am saved, Magadon said. But I will kill nevertheless. First him, then Rivalen, then you.
Kesson Rel!
Regg heard the deep voice in his mind and felt as if his head must come apart. He gritted his teeth and groaned. Sparks exploded behind his eyes. Moans from the men and women of his company told him they were experiencing the same thing.
Beside him, Nayan stood with one hand held to his brow, his mouth fixed in a hard line, and his eyes half-closed as if against a storm.
“The mindmage,” Nayan said
In the air above, the shadows and wraiths, bent on annihilating one another, wailed and keened.
The pressure diminished in moments, leaving only a dull throb in its wake. Regg watched in awe as a faint orange glow haloed the edifice upon which Sakkors stood. The air around him felt charged. His hair stood on end.
The entire company exclaimed as the mountaintop upon which Sakkors sat began to sink rapidly toward the earth, as if the power keeping it afloat had failed, or been diverted.
The power churning through Cale’s head lit his body afire. The shadows around him spun wildly. Sakkors and its flying mountain flared with Magadon’s power, glowing orange and red like a tiny sun as it sank toward the ground.
I am hate! Magadon shouted. And I am power!
Above them, Kesson’s chanting gave way to a scream of agony. His horns shattered, and blood poured from his nose, his ears, his eyes. The shadows around him spun. He grabbed hold of his head, screamed again, and fell face-first to the ground.
“Now!” Cale said, and staggered forward, bent as if against a gale.
Riven and Rivalen, blades bear, did the same. Both men bled freely from their nose and ears.
Sakkors shined red and orange as it slowly sank, its light chasing the pitch of the Shadowstorm, overhwhelming the shroud that surrounded Sakkors. To Regg, it seemed an artificial dawn and he fell to his knees.
“There is light even in darkness,” he said.
Lathander had provided him another sign. His work was not yet done. He stood and looked around the glowing plains.
Through the rain and darkness he saw four forms in the distance, and marked them as Erevis Cale, Riven, the Shadovar, and Kesson Rel.
He grabbed Nayan by the arm. “There! Can your men take us there?”
Nayan looked, saw, nodded.
“Roen, gather your priests!”
Cale, Riven, and Rivalen stumbled forward to execute Kesson Rel.
But Kesson, his head haloed in red light and bleeding from his eyes, ears, and nose, with pulsing veins tracing a throbbing web on his brow, rose to all fours.
“No!” he said, and made a cutting gesture.
No! Magadon shrieked, and Cale heard madness in the tone.
The red glow around Kesson’s head winked out. Cale cursed, lunged forward, and raised Weaveshear high for a killing stroke across the back of Kesson’s neck.
Kesson threw an arm out blindly behind him and power exploded outward from his form. Black energy slammed into Cale, Riven, and Rivalen. It blew all of them backward five paces, cracked bone, opened flesh.
Exhausted and bloodied, Cale rose to all fours, knowing they had missed their opportunity, knowing they were all going to die.
He found himself staring at a booted foot. Hands took him under his armpits and lifted him to his feet. Regg stood there, looking past him, through him, to Kesson Rel. Nayan stood behind the Lathanderian, his expression unreadable.
Cale glanced around and saw Roen and the priests of the company, ten in all, arrayed in a circle around Kesson Rel, who rose haltingly to his feet.
Warmth suffused Regg’s body. The armor and shields of Roen and his fellow priests glowed orange in the setting sun of Sakkors’ fall. He thought of Abelar, of faith, of friendship. The thoughts lit a fire in his spirit and he dropped to one knee, brandished his battle-scarred shield, and channeled the divine light of his god. The seed Abelar had planted in his soul bloomed fully.
“Dawn dispels the night and births the world anew,” he began, and the rose on his shield began to glow.
Roen fell to one knee, held forth his own shield, his own rose, and joined his voice, and his light, to Regg’s.
�
��May Lathander light our way, show us wisdom …”
The remaining priests fell to one knee, held their shields before them, and joined in the Dawnmeet prayer.
“… and in so doing allow us be a light to others.”
The shields of Lathander’s faithful glowed with a brightness to rival a dawn sun. Regg’s spirit soared to see their faith so embodied in the symbol of their god. He wept as the holy luminescence exposed the darkness of Kesson Rel.
Kesson, already weakened, screamed in the blast of light, fell to the ground. Their light burned away the shadows that shrouded him. He writhed on the ground as if he were afire, shrieking.
“Finish it,” Regg said to Cale.
The light from the Lathanderians made Cale queasy but he endured. He watched Kesson fall, shriek, watched the darkness around Mask’s First Chosen fall away. He took Weaveshear in both hands and stepped into the circle. Riven did the same.
The light stripped away the shadows that coated Cale, his shadow hand, and for the first time in a long time he felt human. He glanced at Regg and Roen, and thanked them for that with his eyes.
Still, the emptiness of his spirit, the hole dug by the Black Chalice, needed filled.
He and Riven stepped up to Kesson Rel. Riven stabbed him through the chest with a saber. Cale cut off his head, and his screams, with Weaveshear.
Power began to gather.
Rivalen watched blood and shadows pour from the stump of Kesson Rel’s neck. His thoughts seethed, frustration burned. He clutched his holy symbol so hard in his good hand that it cut his flesh.
He had schemed for centuries only to watch it fall apart before his eyes. He didn’t know the spells he needed to steal Kesson’s divinity. Instead, he had to stand idle and watch Erevis Cale become a god.
He cursed Brennus, cursed fate.
Above, thunder rumbled. A lightning storm lit the sky. The Lathanderians rose, their light diminished, and backed away from Kesson’s corpse. One of the shadowwalkers started forward, but the Lathanderian Cale had named Regg held him back.
