Twilight Falling

by Paul S. Kemp

  He’d heard of creatures who could take the form of men—doppelgangers and their ilk—but he’d never encountered any, though rumors to that effect had swirled around the Faceless One back in Westgate. No wonder then that their imitations of the house guards had been so perfect.

  Jak nodded and popped his pipe in his mouth.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” the halfling said.

  He pulled out a tindertwig, struck it on the cobbles, and lit up.

  “Dark,” Cale oathed again.

  Riven scoffed, but Cale heard the doubt in it.

  “That makes it all the more important that we learn what this sphere really is,” Cale said. “I want to know what in the Nine Hells is going on.”

  Vraggen’s remark about not needing sleep seemed more ominous. What was the mage after?

  Riven shifted from foot to foot, as though full of anxious energy. He still had not sheathed his blades.

  “Then let’s stop standing around in this damned alley and get to where we’re going,” said the assassin.

  “Take us to this loremaster, little man,” Cale agreed.

  “All right, but …” Jak said, pausing to blow out a cloud of smoke. “There’s something else, Cale. Your sword. Did you see how it made some kind of connection with the sphere.”

  “I did,” Cale said.

  He could no longer deny that his blade’s contact with the sphere had changed it somehow.

  “So?” asked Riven.

  Cale put his hand on the blade’s hilt and said, “That’s a question for later, not now.”

  For now, all he needed to know was that its edge could still draw blood.

  CHAPTER 9

  REVELATIONS

  Moving quickly through the broad avenues and daytime street traffic, Cale, Riven, and Jak made their way uptown. Before long, the two-story brick and wood buildings of the Foreign Quarter gave way to the more elegant and architecturally varied worked-stone residences near the Temple District.

  While far from the manses of Selgaunt’s Old Chauncel, the homes near Temple Avenue, mostly those of academics, artists with wealthy patrons, and priests, nevertheless indicated the relative wealth of the owners. Cut stone facades, glass windows, covered gardens, lacquered carriages, and gated, well-tended patios and walkways were the rule. Sculptures of magical beasts loomed in every plaza and perched on the corners of most roofs, often carved from the black veined marble imported from the nearby Sunset Mountains. Even the sewer grates, into which the road channels drained, were of cast bronze, with stylized dragons as lift handles.

  Selgaunt soared skyward on all sides of the neighborhood. Against the skyline to the north, Cale could see the octagonal bell tower of the House of Song towering over the cityscape. Near it stood Lliira’s Spire, the elegant, limestone-faced tower of the Temple of Festivals, festooned as always with long, streaming pennons of green and violet.

  To the north, on a high rise overlooking Selgaunt Bay, stood the many-towered, sprawling palace of the Hulorn. The complex looked as twisted and warped as the late ruler’s mind. The palace was slowly being abandoned by the dead Hulorn’s staff, while agents of the Old Chauncel looted its secrets and argued over who would be its next tenant.

  “Nearly there,” Jak said. “That’s it. At the end of the road.”

  Ahead, alone in a cul-de-sac, stood a stone house of the Colskyran style, called such after the mage-architect who had pioneered the style two decades earlier. Characterized by elaborate, magically-shaped stonework around the doors and windows, stylized downspouts, and colorful tiled roofs, Colskyran buildings could look as grand as any manse. Not so that home, where there were gaps in the roofing—broken tiles that had never been replaced—unrepaired cracks in the stone scrollwork around the windows, and crumbling mortar between the river stones in the low wall that surrounded the property. Broken statuary lay untended in the courtyard. Shrubs, creepers, and ivy had overgrown the lot. Cale thought that the flora must have grown wild and untended for years.

  “This is where you Harpers keep your sage, Fleet?” Riven sneered. “Small wonder your people never knew what was going on.”

  Jak turned on the assassin and his green eyes flared. “You keep your mouth shut, Drasek Riven.” In a softer voice, he added, “And I’m not a Harper anymore.”

  Surprised, Riven looked as though he wanted to say something further but held his tongue.

  In truth, Cale too wondered what sort of sage lived in a house like that.

  “Jak,” Cale asked, “who is this loremaster?”

  Jak pursed his lips. His hands went to the pockets of his trousers and he said, “His name is Sephris. Sephris Dwendon. He assisted the Harpers sometimes …”

  Riven chuckled at that.

  “Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” snapped the halfling.

  Cale interposed before Riven could make a reply.

  “Assisted?” asked Cale. “He doesn’t anymore?”

  “No. Listen, Cale.” Jak took a deep breath and said, “He’s was a priest of Oghma … until they forbade him from performing services.”

  Riven smiled and opened his mouth to speak, but a fierce glare from Jak kept him from saying whatever he’d been contemplating.

  “Why?” Cale asked, increasingly dubious.

  Jak shifted from foot to foot and said, “Well … he holds to some unusual ideas. About numbers, mostly, but other things too. I think they think he’s insane. Healing spells didn’t help him, though.”

  Cale squatted down to look Jak in the eye and asked, “Numbers? How do you mean?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Cale was doubtful, but kept it from his face so as not to hurt Jak’s feelings. Still, perhaps Jak’s loremaster was not their best play. Maybe Elaena at Deneir’s temple would remember them and would help.

  “Little man—” Cale began.

  Jak shook his head and put a small hand on Cale’s shoulder.

  “Cale,” he said, “I wouldn’t have brought us here if I didn’t think he could help. Just trust me. I don’t think he’s insane. I mean—“Jak’s eyes found the ground—“he might be, but … he’s a genius, Cale. Really. The church still takes care of him, despite his illness. It’s because he’s such an asset to them. He knows things.”

  Cale looked past Jak to the poorly maintained house. His doubt must have shown on his face.

  Jak went on, “He doesn’t care about things like the house, and the church doesn’t want to pay for a groundskeeper. He doesn’t even see people much anymore, but he’ll see me. We were friends a long time ago, before he … started to think the way he thinks.”

  “And this loremaster is expensive?” Riven asked, amusement in his voice.

  Jak stared daggers at Riven. “He doesn’t charge, Zhent. But the church requires a ‘donation’ to see him.”

  Riven’s one eye narrowed and fixed on Jak.

  “I’m not a Zhent any more than you’re a Harper, Fleet.”

  “And I believe that as much as I believe that black is white,” Jak spat.

  “Believe what you will,” Riven said, low and dangerous.

  “Enough,” Cale ordered, before the argument went out of control.

  Riven eyed Cale and said, “If I cared what this sphere was—and I don’t—I’d tell you you’re both fools to consult this so-called ‘loremaster.’”

  Cale looked him in his one good eye and replied, “And if I cared what you thought, I’d ask.”

  To that, Riven only stared.

  Jak looked at Cale, awaiting a decision.

  Cale made up his mind quickly—they really had no other option. He had no reason to think that Elaena could help them, even if she was willing. He would trust the halfling’s judgment.

  “Let’s see what he has to say,” said Cale. “It’s only coin. If it’s a waste of time, we’ll know it soon enough.” He looked to Riven and added, “You can wait here if you like.”

  “Oh, no,” Riven sneered. “I wouldn’t miss this.”r />
  With that, the three of them strode for the house. The small gateman’s shack stood empty and overgrown, the iron gate unlocked and rusted. They walked a cracked flagstone path through the overgrowth and approached the house. If Cale hadn’t known better, he would have thought the place abandoned. He wondered if the loremaster might have died some time before, unbeknownst to Jak.

  Before they reached the porch, the heavy wooden door creaked open and a tall, balding man with a wreath of brown hair exited. He wore a pinched frown and dark green robes, the raiment of a priest of Oghma. A bronze holy symbol in the shape of an unfurled scroll hung from a chain around his neck. He took in their weapons and armor, still frowning, and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “I don’t believe—”

  Jak cut him off. “We have come to see Sephris Dwendon. We’re prepared to make a donation to the Lord of Knowledge.”

  The priest pursed his thin lips, obviously perturbed by Jak’s interruption. Cale was pleased to see that the man was not the sage, as he had at first thought.

  “Sephris is indisposed,” said the priest, but he didn’t turn to leave.

  Cale well understood the game, priest or no priest. He would have smiled but for the bad taste it left in his mouth.

  “We’re prepared to make a large donation to the Sanctum of the Scroll,” Cale said. “We will not require much of Sephris’s time, or yours.”

  The priest took that in and gave them an appraising look, as though evaluating their capacity to pay what Cale had promised.

  After a moment, he said, “Very well, then. I shall see if Master Sephris is receiving visitors.”

  He turned to reenter the house.

  Jak called after his back, “Tell him Jak Fleet is here to see him. Jak Fleet.”

  The priest did not acknowledge that he’d heard.

  They waited, Riven smirking all the while.

  “They rotate priests as caretakers for him,” Jak explained. “It’s not a highly regarded job. Sephris can be difficult.”

  “That explains him then,” Cale said, referring to the priest.

  After a few moments, the priest returned. In his hands, he held an open silver box lined with red velvet.

  “Sephris will see you, but I must collect the donation first, of course.”

  Riven sneered, but Cale wasn’t surprised by the request. In Sembia, even religion was business.

  “Of course,” Cale said.

  He took from his belt the pouch of platinum suns given him by Tamlin, counted out ten, and placed them in the donation box.

  The priest gave a tight smile and snapped the box closed. Cale wondered how much of that coin would actually find its way to the church’s coffers.

  “Follow me,” the priest said. “Sephris is in the library, as always.”

  They entered the tiled foyer of the home and walked down the main hall. The windows, screened by the overgrown trees and shrubs outside, let in only scant light. No paintings hung on the walls, only scrawled numbers and equations, written floor to ceiling in Elvish, Dwarvish, and Chondathan. Cale stared at them uncomprehending. The mathematics were either very advanced or utterly nonsensical.

  “We erase them,” the priest explained, nodding at the numbers, “when Sephris moves on to another room. The whole house is this way.”

  Cale shared a glance with Riven. Rather than smug, as Cale had expected, the assassin looked … coiled.

  Did evidence of madness make him uncomfortable? Cale wondered. A still more uncomfortable thought surfaced in Cale’s mind—did serving a god ultimately render all priests at least a little insane? Cale had encountered at least two before: the Righteous Man, and Jurid Gauston.

  The priest led them to a pair of walnut double doors, notable for the lack of numbers written upon them.

  There, he turned and said to the three, “He may have already forgotten that I told him of you. After announcing you, I will await you here in the hall. Do not unnecessarily agitate him. Do you understand?”

  Cale realized then that he didn’t know the priest’s name, and that the priest didn’t know his. It was better that way, he supposed.

  They all three nodded. The priest opened the doors.

  The circular, high-ceilinged library smelled of ink and esenal root, an herbal paper preservative. Books, scrolls, and papers were crammed so tightly into the wall shelves that the room appeared built of books rather than wood and stone. Thamalon’s collection was paltry compared to it. The single room alone rivaled the temple of Deneir’s borrowing library. Books and papers, covered in numbers and equations, lay strewn haphazardly across the floor as though blown by a whirlwind. Small teaching slates, similar to those used by Cale’s language instructors back in Westgate, lay here and there around the library, filled with chalked formulae written in a tiny, precise script.

  Sephris sat at a huge, ornate oak desk in the center of the library, furiously writing with a stick of chalk on another such slate. His thinning brown hair, neatly parted on the side, sprouted from a round, overlarge head. He could have seen fifty winters, he could have seen forty. He wore a heavy, embroidered red robe, and where his arms peeked out of the sleeves, Cale could see numbers inked on his skin. The man had covered his body the same way he’d covered the walls.

  The priest cleared his throat and said, “Sephris, the men I spoke of are here.”

  Sephris looked up at them, though his hand continued to scribble on the slate, as though propelled by another mind. His brown eyes, piercing and thoughtful, narrowed.

  “I see them,” Sephris said. “You may go.”

  The priest nodded and excused himself from the room, closing the door as he departed.

  “I knew you were coming,” Sephris said to them. His eyes looked at them but didn’t seem to focus. “See?” He held up the slate upon which he had been scribbling. It was covered in various mathematical formulae. Cale could make no sense of it. Sephris must have sensed their confusion. He tapped a number in the lower left hand corner of the slate. “Three heroes. See?”

  Cale didn’t. Neither did Riven, it seemed.

  “This is madness, Cale,” muttered the assassin. “He thinks scribblings told him we were coming. How? Madness.”

  Cale heard tension in the assassin’s voice.

  Sephris smiled softly, set down his slate, and rose from his desk. He dusted chalk from his robe and looked at Riven.

  “You wonder how?” the loremaster asked.

  Riven made no response but took half a step back.

  “How many heavens are there?” Sephris asked him.

  Riven fidgeted uncomfortably. He looked to Cale and Jak as though for help. Cale had none to give.

  “How many?” Sephris asked again.

  “How would I know?” Riven snapped.

  “There are seven,” said Sephris, and he clicked his tongue. “How many Hells?”

  Riven scoffed—nervously, Cale thought—and gave no answer. Sephris waited, fingers twitching.

  Cale answered, “Nine. Nine Hells.”

  “Correct. And there’s your answer. That’s how I knew.”

  “What?” Cale asked.

  But Sephris’s mind had already moved on. He stared hard at the halfling, as though trying to remember who he was.

  “It is good to see you, Sephris,” said Jak slowly. “Do you remember me? Jak Fleet. We met through Brelgin.”

  Sephris nodded, smiled as though he had just remembered a truth, and said, “It is good to see you, Jak Fleet.” He snapped his fingers. “You are one of the three. Servant of the eighteenth god. You remain a seventeen. That is well.”

  His eyes went vacant. Hurriedly, he bent over the desk and scribbled something on the slate, muttering to himself.

  Cale, Jak, and Riven shared a look. None knew what to do or say.

  Sephris completed his calculation, or his mad scribbling, examined the result, and nodded.

  He looked up at them and said, “I’d offer you a seat, but as you can see, I ha
ve none to offer. Zero.”

  He focused his gaze on Cale, a studied look that made Cale uncomfortable.

  “You’re the first,” Sephris said. “One of the five. Were you aware of that?”

  “One of the five what?”

  Sephris ignored him and studied Riven in the same way.

  “You,” he said to the assassin, “You’re the second of the five. Two blades, one eye. Your soul is dark. Do you know why you lost your eye?”

  Cale felt Riven tense beside him.

  “Easy,” Cale said to the assassin under his breath.

  “You don’t know anything about me, old fool,” Riven said, his voice low.

  Sephris sighed, the longsuffering sound of the misunderstood. He stepped out from behind his desk and walked across the library, hopping to avoid stepping on any of the papers and books, and stood in front of them. Cale readied himself to prevent Riven from doing the old man violence.

  “Ten words, thirteen syllables.”

  “What?”

  Sephris signed in exasperation and said, “The words you just spoke. Ten words, thirteen syllables. Do you believe that to be chance? Choice?”

  Riven said nothing, which didn’t seem to trouble Sephris.

  “Not so. Not choice. The necessary answer. Two and two are always four.”

  For a reason Cale could not explain, hearing those words from Sephris reminded him of his attempt to articulate Fate.

  “I see what you cannot,” Sephris said to Riven, to all of them, “and I know what you do not.” He gestured with his arms to indicate the papers on the floor. “Numbers … formulae. The universe is an equation. Did you know that? Each of us is a sub-equation. Every question a function. Each, therefore, solvable.” He looked Riven in the eye and asked, “You don’t want to be solved though, do you? Fearful of the answer?”

  Riven looked like he wanted to spit. His hand hovered near his blade.

  “He’s mad,” the assassin said, but sounded unsure of himself.

  “No,” said Jak, “he just knows things. He just … thinks differently.”

  “Indeed,” said Sephris softly, and he smiled at Jak. “Differently.” He turned and walked away from them, again careful to avoid stepping on any papers or tomes. “Sit where you like. It does not matter.”