Shadowrealm (10 page)

The archfiend's features hardened, and when they did they reminded Brennus of someone, though he could not draw forth the name.

"You should have inquired, shadeling. By summoning him, you have offended me. I am here to receive your apology."

Two thousand years of co-rule in Shade Enclave rendered Brennus unused to demands. He held the archfiend's gaze with difficulty.

"I intended no offense, Lord of the Eighth." He waved a hand and released the binding. "You are released."

He expected Mephistopheles to dissipate, return to Cania. Instead, the archfiend remained before him, towering, solid, threatening.

"You are dismissed," Brennus said, and put power into his voice.

The archfiend drew in his wings. "I do not wish to leave. There are matters we should discuss."

The homunculi squeaked and tried to burrow farther into Brennus's cloak. Despite his trepidation, Brennus was intrigued by the archfiend's words.

"You wish—"

Words failed him as Mephistopheles reached through the magical field that encapsulated the summoning triangle and binding circle. The magic flared a feeble orange as the archfiend broke through, the whole of Brennus's binding mere cobwebs to the archfiend's power.

"First, apologize," Mephistopheles said.

Brennus backed up a step, activated the communication ring

on his finger. His heart slammed against his ribs. The shadows in the room darkened, churned.

Rivalen, lam in my summoning chamber in the enclave. Attend me with the Most High. I have—

"Your ring is not functioning," Mephistopheles said. He picked up one of the candles from the thaumaturgic triangle, and snuffed the flame with thumb and forefinger. "Apologize."

Brennus retreated another step, drew the shadows around him, and prepared to ride them to the mansion of the Most High where he would get aid to face the archfiend.

"Your spells will not serve you either, nor your powers over darkness," the archfiend said, his voice rising. He extended his wings, and dark power, deeper and blacker than shadows, haloed his form. "Apologize!"

The power in the archfiend's voice shook the manse, cracked the quartz roof of the summoning chamber, and dusted Brennus and the entire room in ice.

"My apologies, Mephistopheles," Brennus said, the humiliating words bitter on his tongue. He refused to bow, even halfway. "I intended you no offense. I merely wished to question Baziel on certain matters beyond my Art to answer alone."

Power retreated back into the archfiend's form and his voice returned to normal. He seemed to shrink, to shed some of the threat implicit in his mere existence.

"We understand one another now." He smiled and inclined his head. "I accept your apology, Prince of Shade. And the matters about which you wished to query Baziel are the matters that I wish us to discuss. Kesson Rel?"

Brennus looked up, his mind racing. He knew all fiends to be liars. If Mephistopheles wished to answer Brennus's questions, it was because his answer, whether true or false, served the archfiend's purpose. What stake did Mephistopheles have in matters in Sembia?

"Why make this offer?"

"It amuses me to see you correctly informed."

Brennus bluffed. "I have no questions."

Mephistopheles smiled. "You lie poorly."

The shadows around Brennus swirled.

"You bear an interesting trinket," the archfiend said, and nodded at Brennus's chest.

It took Brennus a moment to process the conversational detour. The archfiend meant his mother's necklace. He tried to keep eagerness from his tone. The necklace suddenly felt warm against his flesh. He could feel his heart pounding against it.

"You know something of it?"

"Now you have questions?"

"Do you?"

Mephistopheles made a dismissive gesture. "Perhaps." Brennus took a step toward the summoning circle, the whiff of a revelation drawing him forward. "Who murdered my mother?" "Kesson Rel."

Brennus stopped short. "Kesson Rel?" "We were discussing Kesson Rel."

Brennus shook his head. "No, no. We were discussing my mothei."

"Were we?"

"Yes. Yes. Tell me about my mother!"

Mephistopheles crossed his muscular arms across his chest. "No. First things first."

Brennus realized he was breathing rapidly. The shadows around him whirled and spun.

"Kesson Rel," he said.

The archfiend nodded. "Continue."

"We want him dead."

"He is powerful, infused with the power of a god."

"A god? Not a goddess?"

Mephistopheles smiled. "Kesson Rel stole his power from the Shadowlord. Shar lays claims to it, now. Of course, how the Shadowlord came by it is... another tale."

Brennus processed the new information, and would ponder its implications later. He looked up at the crack in the quartz ceiling, at the dusting of ice that still rimed the room, back at the fiend. "Can it be done? Can Kesson Rel be killed?"

The archfiend beat his wings, once, stirring a breeze that smelled of corpses. "Everything dies. Even worlds."

Brennus did not understand that last. "How then, if he is as powerful as you say?"

Irritation wrinkled Mephistopheles's high brow, narrowed the orbs of his eyes.

"Because his power is not his own. He came by it as all faithless thieves do. By stealing it. He thinks to have locked it away, but the key yet remains. You will find it in Ephyras."

"The world from which he came?"

The fiend nodded. Smoke issued from his nostrils.

Brennus considered the information. "You want him dead, too, else you would not have come. Why?"

The archfiend's face was expressionless. "To collect a debt."

Brennus knew he would get nothing more. "Tell me how to do it. Then tell me of my mother."

Mephistopheles chuckled. "I will tell you one or the other. How to kill Kesson Rel or the identity of your mother's murderer. Which will you have answered?"

Brennus swallowed his anger, his frustration, struggled, and finally said, "Tell me how to kill Kesson Rel."

The archfiend smiled, and began to speak.

--- a Ť-----

Lifelong habits died only with difficulty and time. As he had for over a decade, Abelar awakened before the dawn. He lay on a bed of wool blankets set on the cold, damp earth in his tent. Elden slept on the cot near him and the sound of his son's breathing, easy and untroubled, soothed Abelar's troubled spirit. After a short time, he donned trousers, cloak, and boots, kissed Elden on the forehead, and stepped out of the tent.

The rain had slacked and the faint light of false dawn painted the water-soaked camp in lurid grays. Coughs and soft conversation carried from here and there among the cluster of tents. The smell of pipe smoke carried from somewhere.

He looked east to the rising sun, but saw there only the swirling dark clouds of the magical storm, a black lesion marring the sky. It had grown during the night. It was coming for them, for all of Sembia.

Atop the rise overlooking the camp he saw the men and women of his company, servants of Lathander, gathered for Dawnmeet. His separateness sent an ache through him. He led them now only on the field, not in worship. They looked east, their backs to Abelar, facing the sky where the shadows masked the dawn sun. The sound of their voices carried through the morning's quiet.

"Dawn dispels the night and births the world anew."

The words resounded in Abelar's mind, the echo of the thousands of Dawnmeets when he had spoken the same words to his god. He recalled the first time—he had been a mere boy—when Abbot Denril had first taught him the liturgy. Said in the face of the Shadowstorm, the words seemed hollow.

"May Lathander light our way, show us wisdom," said his companions, their voices carried to him on the morning mist. His own lips formed the words, but he did not speak them aloud, would not, ever again.

"You should be among them," said his father's voice, turning Abelar around.

Endren wore his blade, a mail shirt, and a tabard embroidered with the Corrinthal horse and sun. He looked thin to Abelar, and the weight of recent events had turned his hair entirely gray. His ragged beard, untrimmed in days, gave him the look of a prophet, or a madman. The stump of his left hand, too, looked ragged.

Abelar shook his head. "I am no longer one of them."

"The symbol you wore was not what made you one of them."

Endren's soft words surprised Abelar. "You have never shown such respect for my faith before, Father."

Endren put his good hand on Abelar's shoulder. "I am not showing respect for your faith. I am showing respect for my son. The light is in you, Abelar. Isn't that what you say?"

Abelar felt himself color, nodded.

"Lathander did not put it there," Endren said. "And Lathander did not make what was there brighter. Gods know I did not put it in there. But the light is in you."

Abelar was not so certain but said only, "Thank you, Father."

Endren gave him a final pat as the Lathanderians completed the Dawnmeet.

"Elden is well?" Endren asked.

"Yes. Sleeping."

"That is well."

Father and son stood together for a time in silence, watched the light of the sun war with the storm of shadows, watched gray dawn give way to a stark, shadow-shrouded day.

"We will need to break camp as soon as possible," Abelar said. "Flee west. That storm grows uglier by the hour."

"West takes us to the Mudslide. The droughts have shrunk it, but this sky—" Endren indicated the clouds—"seeks to refill it."

Abelar nodded. "We will cross at the Stonebridge, continue around the southern horn of the Thunder Peaks and toward Daerlun. Maybe even all the way to Cormyr. There, we can reorganize, perhaps gain aid from Alusair or the western nobility."

Endren eyed the distant storm. Thunder rumbled. "That will be a long, hard journey for these people. They are not soldiers used to marching so far. And I expect we'll be adding refugees to our numbers as we go. No one outside of a protected city will willingly sit in the path of whatever magic summoned that storm."

"What do we know of the whereabouts of the overmistress's army?" Abelar said. "If we must leave a force to delay their pursuit..." Abelar almost volunteered to lead a rearguard but trapped his words behind his teeth. He would not leave his son again. "Regg will lead it."

Endren nodded. Perhaps he understood Abelar's stutter. "Scouts are in the field. I have not yet had word this morning. I will start to get the camp prepared. It may take a day or two to get all in order."

A scream from within Abelar's tent put a blade in his hand and speed in his feet.

"Elden!"

Abelar and Endren raced into the tent and found Elden sitting upright in his bed, brown eyes wide with fear, tears cutting a path through the layer of grime on his face. He saw Abelar and held out his arms.

"Papa!"

Abelar scanned the tent and the shadows, but saw nothing. His father did the same. Abelar sheathed his blade, hurried to his son's bedside, and took him in his arms.

"What is it, Elden? What's wrong?"

"My dreamed of bad men, Papa. Bad."

Abelar surrounded Elden with his arms. His son buried his face in Abelar's cloak. Tears shook Elden's small body and

Abelar's relief at finding no real danger to his son moved aside for a sudden stab of rage that caused him to wish he had prolonged Forrin's suffering. His son would have nightmares for years because of what Forrin had ordered done.

"It's all right," Abelar said, stroking his son's hair, speaking to both himself and his son. "It will be all right."

Endren put a hand on Elden and his stump on Abelar. After a time, Elden stopped crying. He looked up and Abelar wiped the tears and snot from his face with the sleeve of his cloak.

"You good man, Papa?"

The question took Abelar unawares, set his heart to running and stole his voice. He stared into his son's brown eyes, unable to find words.

"Papa? You good?"

Endren rescued him. "He is a good man, Elden. He's always been a good man."

Elden smiled at his grandfather and embraced his father again.

Abelar nodded gratitude at Endren, held onto his son, and wondered.

Brennus ate, rested for a time, then walked the shadow shrouded halls of his manse on Shade Enclave. He did not relish the coming conversation but nevertheless reached out to Rivalen through his ring.

What have you learned? Rivalen asked.

Brennus recounted what Mephistopheles had told him. There is a world called Ephyras, a dead world, on which stands a temple at the edge of nothing, a temple that will soon be destroyed itself. Within is the Black Chalice, a holy artifact from which Kesson Rel drank to obtain his divinity.

Brennus paused, hesitant to continue. He felt Rivalen's

impatience through the connection. And?

And a drink from the Black Chalice will transform the imbiber into a weapon who can take back what Kesson Rel stole, which appears to be a portion of Mask's divine power.

Satisfaction, not surprise, poured through the magical conduit. Well done, Brother.

You already knew that Kesson Rel's divinity has its origin in Mask and not Shar?

I did.

Brennus was not surprised. Rivalen was as secretive as his goddess.

Is there more? Rivalen asked.

Brennus hesitated, steeled himself, and dived ahead. Only a Chosen of Mask may imbibefrom the Black Chalice. Any other will die. The artifact is holy to the Shadowlord.

Silence. So Rivalen had not known that.

Brennus felt Rivalen's anger and understood it. A heretic of Shar threatened their plans for Sembia. To thwart him, it appealed they needed to beg the assistance of an enemy, an enemy who would profit in the bargain.

Erevis Cale, Rivalen said, the words hot with anger.

So it seems. Since Kesson Rel stole a portion of Mask's divinity, it is not of him. Upon his death, presumably, it will revert to the Chosen of Mask who drank from the chalice.

We cannot allow that, Rivalen said.

Agreed, Brennus said.

After a time, Rivalen said, will arrange for the assistance of Erevis Cale. Meanwhile, I have another task for you, Brennus. Brennus waited.