Shadowrealm

by Paul S. Kemp

  The wind whipped. Darkness formed around Kesson’s body, a cloud of impenetrable blackness. Cale and Riven eased back a step. The wind became a gale, tearing at their robes, turning the drizzle into a sizzling spray. Thunder and lightning lit the sky and shook the ground. Power gathered in the shroud around Kesson’s body, the stolen divinity separating from its mortal vessel. It leaked into the air over his corpse to form a cloud that looked less like darkness and more like a hole. Rivalen saw in it the echo of the emptiness devouring Ephyras.

  And in the emptiness Rivalen found revelation.

  Brennus had told him that only a Chosen of Mask could safely partake of the Black Chalice, but Brennus had not known of the relationship between Shar and Mask. They were related, and so too were their servants. A Chosen of Shar, too, should be able to safely drink.

  Cale and Riven fell to their knees as the power gathered. A hum filled the air, growing in volume. The clot of shadows continued to coagulate over Kesson, expanding.

  Rivalen spoke an arcane word and summoned the Black Chalice from the extra-dimensional space in which he had stored it. It materialized in his hand, heavy with promise.

  “I am your Chosen, or I am your failure,” Rivalen said to Shar.

  He drank, and screamed.

  The hole in Cale’s being yawned, and pulled at the dark power seething over Kesson. Cale heard a humming in his ears, the roll of thunder, a scream, and he could not be sure that it was not his. Shadows churned around him. The power gathering over Kesson expanded. The wind blew so hard it threatened to flatten him to the ground. A continuous boom of thunder shook the ground. Lightning shot from the sky, struck the inky cloud above Kesson, once, twice, again, again. The cloud roiled, seethed, the power within it gathering.

  Cale braced himself. The hum increased in volume, the wind, the thunder.

  A beam of darkness and power shot from the cloud at Cale, but not just at Cale. Another beam struck Riven in the chest. Another struck Rivalen.

  All three screamed as a fraction of the stolen divinity filled their beings, overwhelmed their souls, transformed them from men to gods. Cale’s senses felt afire. His nose burned. His eyes watered. His bones ached. He fell to all fours as his mortal soul recoiled, as divine power filled the hollow spaces in him.

  Then it was over.

  The wind died. The thunder and lightning relented.

  “Are you well?” Regg called from behind, his voice uncertain. “Erevis?”

  “Stay back,” Cale said, and the shadows around him roiled. “Far back. Now, Regg. Hurry. You also, Nayan.”

  Cale heard armor and weapons chink as the Lathanderians and shadowwalkers backed away ten, twenty paces. He heard their every whisper.

  “What just happened?”

  “Kesson is dead.”

  “What are they?”

  Cale looked up, over to Riven, and nodded. Riven nodded in return. Neither would have to die, at least not for lack of divinity.

  He looked to Rivalen, saw the Shadovar rise, terrible and dark. Cale and Riven did the same.

  Two gods stood to face one.

  They stared at one another over Kesson’s corpse. The rain fell.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  7 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms

  We stand with you,” Regg called from behind. “You need only give us the word, Cale.”

  “As do we,” Nayan said in his accented Common.

  Before Cale could respond, a stream of wraiths—mere hundreds had survived the battle with the shadows—swooped down from the dark sky in a long ribbon and flew between the three gods, swirled in a cyclone over Kesson’s form.

  “Leave them,” Cale said to Riven, to Rivalen, to Regg and the Lathanderians.

  A towering wraith, one of the Lords of Silver, separated from the swirl and hovered before Cale. His red eyes flared. He leaned in close, as if catching a whiff of divine spoor.

  “He is yours,” Cale said, and the power in his voice caused the wraith to recoil.

  The wraith studied Cale a moment, bowed, and said in his whispery voice, “His corpse will rot in Elgrin Fau.”

  The Lord of Silver returned to the rest and the cyclone of undead whirled, their moans not despairing but triumphant. They lifted Kesson Rel’s body and severed head from the ground and streaked across the battlefield, toward the rift Cale had opened.

  After they’d gone, Cale, Riven, and Rivalen continued to stare at one another, their minds struggling to comprehend their new capabilities.

  Cale knew a battle between them would turn Sembia into a wasteland, would destroy Sakkors, would kill everyone on the field. Rivalen had to know it too.

  “A battle between us leaves nothing to the victor,” Cale said.

  Rivalen smiled, and energy gathered. “I disagree.”

  “Rivalen,” Cale began, but a shriek from Magadon filled Cale’s mind, filled the minds of everyone on the battlefield, the sound thick with power, incoherent with rage.

  The Lathanderians and shadowwalkers fell to the ground, groaning with pain. Cale, Riven, and Rivalen winced. Pressure mounted in Cale’s skull. He felt a warm trickle of blood leaking from one nostril. He tried to reach through the rage to Magadon.

  Mags, he’s dead. Kesson is dead. I can save you now.

  But there was not enough of Magadon left to understand.

  I do not need to be saved! he screamed.

  Behind Cale, the Lathanderians began to scream, to die.

  Power stormed in Cale’s mind. His eyes felt as if they would jump out of his head. His thoughts grew confused. He tried to focus.

  This is how you pay for your betrayal of me, Magadon said.

  Cale staggered, felt blood drip from his ears.

  “Your city is dying,” he said to Rivalen through gritted teeth.

  “So is your friend,” Rivalen answered, and wiped the blood falling from his nose. His golden eyes, pained, looked as wide as coins.

  Cale knew. Magadon had little time. If he could still be saved, Cale had to do something soon. He had already made a deal with one devil. He could make a deal with another.

  “A bargain,” Cale said.

  Rivalen nodded, hissed with pain. “Speak what you will.”

  “The Saerbians settle where they wish and are left alone,” Cale said, his voice punctuated by grunts of pain. “Magadon goes free and unharmed.”

  “Magadon is already dead.”

  “No,” Cale said with heat. “Not yet.”

  Rivalen looked to Cale, to Riven. “Sembia belongs to the Shadovar.”

  Cale nodded, wiped the blood from his face. “Done. Now we need time. Do as I do.”

  Cale called upon his newfound power, trusting that Rivalen and Riven would recognize his intent as he began to cast.

  The pressure in his mind mounted.

  Die! Die! Magadon railed.

  Rivalen and Riven recognized Cale’s intent and their voices joined his.

  Ignoring the screams of Regg and his company, the shadowwalkers, Magadon’s rage, they drew on thier shared godhead and stopped time.

  When they completed the casting, raindrops hung suspended in mid-air. A lightning bolt split the sky, frozen in place. Sakkors hung atilt in the air, still glowing, perhaps two bowshots from a collision with the ground. The Lathanderians and the shadowwalkers, light and shadow, were frozen in the moment on the wet ground, faces contorted with pain, blood pouring from eyes, ears, noses.

  Cale had only a short time before time would resume, before Magadon would die. While the spell was in effect, they could affect no mortal beings, not directly. With no time to waste, Cale wasted none. He had already made up his mind.

  “I am saving Magadon,” he said to Riven and let the words register.

  Riven nodded, missing his point. “Agreed, but how? We have only moments.”

  Cale looked him in the face. “There’s only one way.”

  Riven looked up sharply. “You can’t pay, Cale. It doesn’t come out, except …”<
br />
  His eye widened.

  Cale nodded. The divinity could come out of him only when he died.

  Riven’s face fell. He shook his head, began to pace. “No, no, no. There’s another way.”

  “This is the only way.”

  Riven stopped pacing and glared him. “We have this power, we can do something else. There’s another way.”

  Cale knew better. Even if they could defeat Mephistopheles, they could not do so before he destroyed what he had taken from Magadon. “Riven, it’s the only way. Riven—”

  Riven held up his hands, as if trying to stop Cale’s words from charging toward him.

  “Just give me a damned moment, Cale. A moment.”

  Cale waited, felt the power of the spell draining away. He shifted on his feet.

  Riven looked up, his expression hard. “No, you’re giving up again, Cale.”

  Emotion flooded Cale but he could not determine if it was anger or something else. He stepped forward and grabbed Riven by the cloak. The shadows around him engulfed them both, spun and whirled.

  “I’m not! I’m fighting all the way.” He calmed himself, spoke in a softer voice, releasing Riven. “I’m fighting all the way, Riven.”

  Maybe Riven understood, maybe he didn’t.

  They stared at one another a long moment. Riven’s face fell.

  “How can it be the only way, Cale? After all this?”

  Cale shook his head, smiling softly. “How can it not? How else could it end?”

  Riven looked away, down. “You’re doing this for him?”

  “There’s nothing else,” Cale said. “Just us. That’s the reason for everything. Understand?”

  Riven looked up, his face stricken.

  Cale held out a hand. “You’ve been my friend, Riven.”

  Riven’s lower lip trembled. He clasped Cale’s hand, pulled him close for an embrace.

  Cale took Weaveshear by the blade, handed it hilt first to Riven. The reality of his decision started to settle on him. His legs felt soft under him. His hand shook. Riven pretended not to notice.

  “The fiend doesn’t get this,” Cale said. Riven took it, nodded.

  “I will keep my promise,” Cale said. “You keep ours to him. You remember it?”

  Riven’s face hardened. He nodded again. “I remember it.”

  Cale turned to Rivalen. “Keep your word, too, Shadovar.”

  Rivalen’s face was expressionless, his eyes aglow.

  Faces and memories poured through Cale’s mind but he pushed them aside and pictured Cania. He drew the darkness around him.

  At the last moment, he changed his mind and pictured not the icy wastes of the Eighth Hell but the face of a grateful boy, the boy who had once invited him into the light. It suddenly seemed the most important thing in the world that Cale see Aril, a boy he had met only once.

  “Good-bye,” Cale said to Riven.

  Riven didn’t speak, perhaps he couldn’t. Eyes averted, he signed, “Farewell” in handcant.

  Aril slept on his side, peaceful in his small bed. Blankets covered him to the neck. His head, with its mop of hair, poked from the bedding. Cale stared at the boy for a time, thinking of times past, friends and enemies, all of them the scar tissue of a lifetime. Aril slept peacefully, contentedly. Cale found the moment … fitting.

  A boy sleeping safely in his bed, free of fear, with his whole life before him. He realized why he had needed to see Aril instead of Shamur, Tamlin, or Tazi. He wanted the last person he saw on Faerûn to be innocent.

  He put the back of his shadow-dusted hand on the boy’s cheek and thought of Jak.

  “I did what I could.”

  He hoped it made a difference for someone, somewhere.

  He stepped through the shadows and into the darkness outside the small cottage. The quietude of the village seemed alien after the chaos of the battlefied. He had only a short while before time back in the Shadowstorm would resume.

  The smell of chimney fires filled the cool air. He glanced around the village. Three score cottages sat nestled around a tree-dotted commons, quiet, peaceful, safe. The two-story temple of Yondalla, the lone stone structure among the log and mud-brick buildings of the village, sat near the common’s edge and rose protectively over the whole, a shepherd to the sheep. Smoke issued from the temple’s two chimneys, filling the glen with the smell of cedar, and home. The hearths burned fragrant wood and were never allowed to grow cold.

  Cale inhaled deeply. He fought back tears born in realizations come too late.

  He allowed that on at least one night not long ago the village owed its safety not to Yondalla, but to him. He had killed a score of trolls while he had answered to Jak’s ghost, while he tried to climb into the light.

  But there was no answering to the dead, and the light was not for him. Not anymore. Not ever.

  He looked up into the vault of the sky, unplagued by the roiling ink of the Shadowstorm. The Sea of Stars twinkled above him, Selûne and her train of glowing Tears. He fancied he could see an absence in the celestial cluster circling the silver disc of the moon, the hole out of which one of the Tears had plummeted to Faerûn, the hole for which Jak had died, the hole mirrored in Cale’s soul. He thought of the little man and his pipe, tried to smile, but failed. He had never filled the hole. And now he never would.

  Power burned in him, cold, dark, near limitless. He could hear words spoken in the shadows on the other side of Toril, could rend mountains with his words. He knew more, sensed more, was more, than he could have imagined. His memories, Mask’s memories, reached back thousands of years—before Ephyras even—recollections of deeds, people, and places long gone.

  Melancholy shrouded him, wrapped him as thoroughly as the shadows. He understood Mask at last, but only now, at the end of things. He realized, too, that Mask had understood him, perhaps better than he had understood himself.

  You wish to transcend, Mephistopheles had told him once.

  Mask had said it to him, too, though not in words.

  And Cale had wished to transcend, and so he would, though not in the way he had conceived.

  He felt the connection to Riven back in Sembia, a connection that reached through time and distance. The assassin’s grief, buried deeply but present, touched Cale. He swallowed the fist that formed in his throat.

  They were friends, by the end. It had gone unacknowledged too long. He was glad they had said appropriate good-byes. The words had seemed small for so profound a moment. Cale would miss Riven, as he had Jak.

  He reached into the pocket of his cloak and removed the small throwing stone Aril had given him. He had carried it for months, a reminder, a talisman of hope. The events involving Aril seemed ancient, something that had happened on another world, in another time. The smooth rock felt warm in his hand, solid.

  “Shadowman,” he whispered, recalling the name the half-lings had given him.

  He placed the stone on the ground in the doorway of the cottage where Aril and his mother slept, a gravestone to mark his passing. The last thing his hand touched on Faerûn would be a river stone given him by a grateful halfing boy who had named him “Shadowman.” He thought it fitting.

  “Good-bye,” he said, thinking not just of Aril.

  He closed his eyes and readied himself. He did not lack for resolve but he still wanted the moment to stretch. An eternity passed between heartbeats. He savored the faint smell of pine carried by the westerly wind, the thrill of energy that permeated everything around him, all of Faerûn.

  He had only seen it in full in that moment. He would miss it. He took comfort in the fact that he had helped preserve it, at least for a time.

  Ready, he sank into the comforting familiarity of the darkness. It saturated him, warmed him. He knew the night now the way he knew his own skin. It was part of him. It was him.

  He bade it good-bye, too, and stepped through the shadows, through the planes, to Cania.

  The ordinary darkness of a Faerûnian night yielded t
o the soul-blighting darkness of the Hells. The reach of the time stop did not extend to Cania.

  Cale sensed the cold of the Eighth Hell but his newfound power rendered him immune to its bite. But his enhanced senses and expanded consciousness made the horrors of the Eighth Hell more acute.

  He stood on a wind-blasted plateau of cracked ice that overlooked a frozen plain cut by wide, jagged rivers of flame. Damned, agonized souls squirmed in the rivers, seethed in its heat like desperate, dying fish caught in a tidal pond. Others wandered the endless ice with empty expressions, dazed and frozen, their minds empty, their fates as cold and unforgiving as the air.

  Towering, insectoid gelugons made playthings of the damned in the rivers, eviscerating, impaling, or flaying them as caprice took. Despair saturated the plane, a miasma as palpable as the cold and darkness. Shrieks of pain filled the wind, prolonged, agonized wails that Cale knew would never end. In the distance glaciers as old as the cosmos ground against each other and Cale felt in his bones the vibrations of their never-ending war.

  The wind tore at his cloak, howled in his ears, and exhaled the stink of a charnel house, the reek of millions upon millions of dead who would spend eternity in pain. The suffering was eternal.

  The darkness around Cale, the darkness that was Cale, swirled and churned. He felt the shadows of Cania, its deep and hidden places, its dark holes, but not as he felt them elsewhere. All shadows answered to Cale, but not to the same degree. Mephistopheles’s power touched everything in Cania, tainted it, made it foreign even to Cale’s divine consciousness. Cale forced Cania’s darkness to answer his will and shrouded himself in its cover.

  It was time to keep his promise.

  Through their connection, Riven felt Cale leave Faerûn and move to Cania, felt the oppressive despair and unending suffering almost as strongly as if he were standing on its ice himself. He held Weaveshear in his hand, the weapon dripping darkness. He willed his lost saber back into its scabbard and it appeared there instantly.