Shadowrealm (13 page)

Cale nodded. He wanted to feel fondness for them but did not. He didn't know what he felt. He pitied them, understood their plight, but felt no connection, at least no human connection.

He was broken, too. Or cracked. And he was not fixable.

By the time they had reached the center of the camp, they had picked up a contingent of children and young men. Cale did not need his darkness-enhanced hearing to hear the frequent mention of the words "hero," "shadows," and "Mask."

Two of Abelar's company directed them to Abelar and shooed the children back to their duties.

They found Abelar standing among a stand of trees at the shore of the lake, away from those gathering water, arms across his chest, staring out at the still waters as if he had lost something in them. Cale and Riven navigated down the riverbank.

"Abelar," Cale said, and his voice pulled Abelar around only reluctantly. Cale noted the lack of a holy symbol, the new breastplate that did not feature an enameled rose.

Abelar smiled a welcome, stepped forward and clasped hands.

"Erevis, Riven, well met and welcome. I am pleased to see you returned. How did matters fare within the storm? Your woman?"

Cale shook his head.

Abelar put his other hand on Cale's shoulder. "I am sorry, my friend."

"Thank you," Cale said.

Abelar's eyes grazed Riven's holy symbol, moved away. His jaw tightened and a tic caused his left eye to blink.

"We came to warn you about the storm," Cale said, nodding back at the growing blackness. "Seems you scarce needed it."

"We thought it dark magic out of Ordulin. It seemed best to stay out of its path."

"It did not originate in Ordulin," said Cale. "But in the Plane of Shadow, with Sharrans."

"Sharrans," Abelar said, the word a curse. His eyes again returned to the surface of the lake.

"I fear Ordulin may be... gone," Cale said, thinking of his conversation with Mask on the Wayrock.

Abelar turned to him, a stricken look on his face. Cale envied him his empathy.

"There are tens of thousands of people there," Abelar said. "And the Dawn Tower? Gone? What magic is this?"

Before Cale could answer, a voice from atop the bank carried over the rain.

"Papa! Papa! Rain coming! Hurry!"

The three men looked up to see Elden appear at the top of the riverbank. Exertion reddened his round face. Labored breaths came from his mouth, still somehow slack even in a smile. But his eyes shone with... something. Cale thought it insight or perhaps unfiltered love. He found he envied Elden, too.

The boy's expression fell when he saw Cale and Riven. He looked uncertain, eased back a step, and looked over his shoulder.

"Grandpapa."

Endren appeared behind him and his reassuring hand on Elden's shoulder seemed to steady the boy. Endren, dressed in mail and with a blade at his belt, nodded at Cale and Riven, crouched, and said something in Elden's ear. The boy visibly relaxed.

"The healers have done well by my son,," Abelar said, waving to Elden. He smiled at his boy, though the fate of Ordulin still haunted his eyes. He took Cale and Riven each by the shoulder and turned them around. "Come."

They started up the rise and Elden's eyes grew wider at Cale and Riven's approach. He looked like he might bolt, but Endren kept a hand on his back and the boy held his ground. Father and son both had nerve, it seemed.

"These are the men who brought you back to us, Elden," Endren said, loud enough for them all to hear.

"My knows," Elden said. He slid behind his grandfather and peeked out from behind his legs like an archer through an arrow slit.

They gained the rise. Cale and Riven nodded a greeting at Endren, at Elden. The boy avoided eye contact.

"It rain again soon, Papa," Elden said to Abelar, avoiding eye contact with Cale and Riven. "Hurry to tent. Hurry."

"First, a dragon grab," Abelar said. He knelt, arms out, and the expression he had carried when looking at the lake—the look of having lost something—disappeared entirely. Instead, he looked like a man who had found something.

Elden smiled and braved his uncertainty. He charged Abelar and leaped into his embrace. Abelar roared like a dragon, nuzzled the boy's neck, and Elden giggled uncontrollably.

Cale could not help it. He chuckled, too. The boy's laugh was as contagious as plague. Even Riven smiled.

Abelar stood, his son under one arm.

"Elden, these are Papa's friends, Erevis and Riven. Do you remember them?"

The boy didn't look at them. He pointed at the sky. "It going rain.

"These are the men that saved you," Abelar said to him. "They returned you to me."

A cloud passed over Elden's face, a personal Shadowstorm. He put his cheek on Abelar's shoulder.

"Rain, Papa."

"It's all right," Cale said to Elden, to Abelar. He could imagine how he must appear to some children. He would not have made much of a father.

Abelar kissed his son and placed him in the ground. "Grandpapa will take you back to the tent. I need to speak to Erevis and Riven. I will be along soon."

Elden nodded and hugged his father again. He turned and actually looked at Cale and Riven, studying them. The peculiar

vacancy of his other features contrasted markedly with his eyes, which looked as sharp as daggers. "Tank you," the boy said.

Cale kneeled down, forced the shadows leaking from his flesh to subside. "You are welcome, Elden." "Watch this, boy," Riven said.

The assassin produced four small, painted wooden balls from a belt pouch.

Elden eyed them with curiosity. "What you do?"

"Watch," Riven said. He tossed them into the air one after another and juggled them with facility.

Elden grinned and clapped with delight. "Him juggle!"

Cale thought that of all the sights he had seen in his life, none had been as incongruous as Riven entertaining a child by juggling painted balls. Riven caught the balls one after another, finished with a flourish, and held them out to Elden.

"These are for you. Practice when you have time. Next time I see you, you can show me what you have learned."

Elden, still smiling, took the painted wooden balls, his reticence around Riven forgotten.

"Run and play with Grandpapa," said Abelar. "I will be along."

"Come, Elden," said Endren.

"Tank you," Elden said to Riven, who smiled in return.

To Endren, Abelar said, "They have brought news. I will share it with you later."

Endren nodded and he and Elden walked off, the boy tossing and dropping the balls as he went.

"You spend time with a troupe in a fair?" Cale asked Riven, smiling.

"Something like that. In Skullport. Long time ago." Riven spit, looked away.

Cale lost his smile. "Sorry, Riven. I didn't mean—"

"As I said, long time ago, Cale. No harm in your words. I

carried those around... Hells, I don't know why I carried those around." He reached into another pouch. "I need a smoke."

While Riven found, tamped, and lit his pipe, Cale told Abelar what they knew. As he spoke, droplets of the rain Elden had prophesized started to fall, as thick and heavy as footsteps on the leaves, the trees, the surface of the lake. They took shelter under the canopy of an elm and Cale told Abelar of the Shadow-stotm, of Kesson Rel, of Selgaunt's alliance with the Shadovar, of Rivalen Tanthul, servant of Shat.

"Shar is everywhere in this," Abelar said, and his gaze went back to the surface of the lake. He looked uncertain.

"Not everywhere," Riven said, and exhaled a cloud of smoke.

The three stood under the elm, isolated from the rest of the camp in a bubble formed of the sky's tears.

"You are part of this now," Cale asked Abelar. "Do you want to hear it all?"

Abelar didn't look at Cale. He looked out at the lake, the surface boiling in the rain, and nodded.

Cale told him of lost Elgrin Fau, the dead who haunted it, and his promise to them. He told him of their role in freeing Kesson Rel, of Furlinastis, and of Magadon and Mephistopheles.

When he finished, Abelar shook his head. "You have done a lot of good."

Riven chuckled and blew out smoke.

Cale said, "No. We've done what we had to do."

"I understand that," Abelar said. He looked Cale in the face, cleared his throat. "What turned you to your god, Erevis?"

The question took Cale aback; he struggled for an answer, felt Riven's eyes on him, too. "No one thing, I suppose. It's been a process, gradual, like it... unfolded."

"Like the events of your entire life had been arranged beforehand to bring you to faith," Abelar said, nodding.

"Yes."

Abelar turned away. "Strange that one moment, one thing, can entirely undo a choice born in a multitude of moments across a lifetime. Is it not?"

Riven answered before Cale. "You've got to live with yourself before you have to live with your faith, Abelar. Your son needed to be avenged. There's nothing more to it. You made the right choice." Riven looked at both Cale and Abelar and spoke slowly. "You made the right choice."

"I made the only choice," Abelar said, and shook his head. "And there is the problem."

Riven blew a cloud of smoke. "Not the way I see it."

Abelar turned back to them, smiling through his pain. "But then you've only one eye."

Riven smiled around his pipe but his tone was serious. "And you've only one son. Remember that."

Abelar lost his smile. He glanced back at the lake, the surface vibrating under the onslaught of rain. He looked back to Riven and said, "Truth."

Cale realized that Abelar was not broken, or cracked. He was torn. Like Magadon between devil and fiend. Like Cale between past and present, human and... inhuman.

"What will you do now?" Cale asked.

"Stay with my son. See these people to safety. What will you do?"

Riven chuckled and extinguished his pipe. Cale said, "Go kill a god."

S ---

Brennus stood before the thaumaturgic triangle, incant-ing the summoning. Shadows and arcane power whirled slow spirals around him, around the room. The thrum of gathering energy formed the dark seed over the triangle, expanded into a window on the Hells. Screams and stink poured through the

opening. Brennus called the name of the archfiend over the tumult and his voice boomed across the planes.

Mephistopheles answered. The shadow of his muscular, winged form appeared in the planar window. Brennus gagged at the charnel reek. The power peaked and Mephistopheles manifested within the circle. His white eyes fixed on Brennus, narrowed. Unholy power rippled from his glowing red flesh.

"You presume to summon me again, shadeling? For that—" He stopped, sniffed the air, and frowned. His mouth split in a fanged smile. "You ate not alone."

Telemont, Hadrhune, and five archwizards of Telamont's court let the shadows around them fall away.

"No, he is not alone," Telemont said.

As one, the shadow mages incanted words of power. Mephistopheles roared, and grew in a heartbeat to the size of a titan. A three-tined iron polearm longer than Brennus was tall appeared in his hand, sheathed in a black cloud of unholy might.

He stepped from the circle, piercing Brennus's binding with ease. He held out a hand and a bolt of black energy arced from his palm, struck one of the archwizards, and reduced him to a pile of twitching gore.

Telemont, Hadrhune, and the remaining archwizards completed their spell and chains of shadow squirmed from the floor at the archfiend's feet, shackling him at ankles and wrists. Telemont made a cutting gesture with his hand and a final chain, thicker than the rest, sprung from the floor and ringed the archfiend's waist.

Mephistopheles beat his wings, pulled against his bindings, but the chains, composed of the stuff of Shade Enclave itself, rattled and held him fast. He glared at Telemont and viridian beams shot from his white eyes. They struck the Most High and shadows exploded around him. He groaned, staggered backward, but kept his feet. Telemont shouted a word of power, held a hand before him palm out, and the chains on Mephistopheles tightened.

Mephistopheles exhaled a cloud of power at Telemont but it stopped a few paces from the fiend's face, dissipating into the dark air.

"The shackles suppress your power now," Telemont said, his voice strained.

Mephistopheles roared, beat his wings, and pulled in a frenzy against his bindings. Brennus backed away, his heart racing.

Power seethed around the archfiend, a black cloud shot through with lines of crackling green power. Veins and sinew looked like ropes in his straining muscles. He roared again and chunks of quartz from the dome above rained down, shattering on the floor into hundreds of jagged shards. He lurched from side to side and yanked against his bonds. The whole of Shade Enclave bucked and rolled. Brennus fell and the shards of quartz skittered across the floor.

Telemont and Hadrhune merely watched, their eyes aglow.

"You have him, Most High," said Hadrhune.

After a time Mephistopheles ceased his struggles. Huge breaths expanded his mammoth chest and his lips peeled back to show his fangs.

"You cannot harm me, shade," he said to Telemont. "Even on this plane, in this form, I am well beyond you. And you cannot hold me here forever. Yet forever is how long I have." He nodded at the archwizards and pulled at the shadow chains. "How long before one of your lackeys errs and these chains weaken? I forget and forgive nothing, Tanthul."

Brennus stood, remembered to breathe. The shadows around him churned in time to his racing heart.

"You speak truth," Telemont said. The Most High glided forward until he was nearly within reach of the archfiend. Dark power shrouded them both, though Mephistopheles towered over Telemont. "But your realm will suffer in your absence."

Mephistopheles snarled. "And your realm will suffer in my presence."

Telemont inclined his head, conceding the point. "We will free you if you tell me what I wish to know." Mephistopheles's eyes flashed cunning at the mention of a deal.

"Ask and I will decide whether to answer you with truth, lies, or not at all."