Shadowrealm (22 page)

Rivalen said nothing, merely eyed the wreckage of a ruined world. A minor, divination fell from his lips and, presumably led by its pull, he stopped from time to time to pick at this or that in the black sand. He finally lifted what he had sought—a coin of black metal, the markings upon it nearly worn away entirely.

"You collecting trophies, Shadovar?" Riven asked.

"Reminders," Rivalen said, and the coin vanished into his shadows.

The dying sun made its way across the dark sky as the three men made their way across the dark world. The ruins grew more frequent as they progressed and Cale thought they might have been moving through the remains of a city. The skeletons of some buildings remained standing here and there, lonely, hollowed out testaments to the remorselessness of time and Shar.

Holding his holy symbol in hand, Rivalen whispered imprecations and Cale could not tell if the prince was awed or appalled.

Bones appeared in the dust. First just a few—a thighbone jutting from the earth, a skull leering from the ruins—but then more and more. Soon they couldn't take a step without walking over remains.

"This place is a graveyard," Riven said.

It was as if an entire city had been murdered at a stroke and the bodies left to rot in the open. Cale could not help but think of Ordulin.

"Keep moving," he said.

The wind kicked up, moaned.

"That's not the wind," Riven said, his eye narrowed.

The three men stopped and closed the distance between them. Shadows swirled around both Cale and Rivalen.

The moans, prolonged and agonized, sounded distant, muted, as if heard through thick stone walls. Cale looked around, up, and down. He stared at the black ground beneath his feet.

"Dark," he said.

"Ready yourselves," Rivalen said, his holy symbol dangling on its chain from his left hand. "Not all life is gone from this place. Not yet."

As if summoned by his words, the spirits of the dead rose from the corpse of Ephyras. Hundreds, thousands of gray, translucent forms floated out of the barren earth all around them and filled the sky. Their forms were humanlike, though slighter, with elongated heads and tiny ears. Their overlarge eyes were as dead and hollow as their world. Despairing moans issued from the holes of their mouths.

They were everywhere.

"Spectres," Rivalen said, and started to cast a spell.

Haunted, despair-filled faces fixed on the three men. The specters' miens twisted with hate and the moans turned from agonized to rage-filled.

Cale reached through Rivalen's shadows and grabbed him by the cloak, interrupting the casting.

"We cannot fight this many. We hold them at bay and keep moving. The temple is why we're here."

Rivalen's eyes flashed with anger for a moment before he nodded.

Cale held his mask in a sweaty hand, and the shadows around Rivalen's flesh curled around it. Riven empowered his blades until they bled shadows. The specters swarmed forward from all sides, a fog of dead souls so thick it obscured their vision.

Cale held Weaveshear forth in both hands, called upon Mask, and channeled divine power through the blade. Shadows poured from it, expanded, and formed a hemisphere of translucent darkness around the three men, under their feet.

Cale braced himself as the specters crashed into it by the tens, by the hundreds. He staggered under the onslaught and the sphere began to collapse inward. The moans and wails grew louder.

One of the specters stuck his hand through the sphere, tore open a gash about as long as a short sword, and started to squiim through. Hundreds of others lined up behind him, screaming, clawing at one another to get through.

Rivalen bounded forward, blades whirling. He caught the specter halfway through, and slashed it across the arms and shoulders. He dived under its incorporeal touch, drove both sabres up through its chest, and it dissipated with a dying moan. The other specters tried pushing through the hole.

"Rivalen!" Cale shouted, and held out his left hand, his shadow hand.

Rivalen took it in his own, called upon Shar and joined his power to Cale's, to Mask's. The sphere darkened and the gash resealed, severing in twain a specter caught halfway through the opening.

"Keep moving!" Cale said. He tried to ignore the unexpected kinship he felt with Rivalen. The divine power they each channeled meshed comfortably, much more so than Cale had ever felt when joining his power with Jak's. Cale chose not to ponder what it might mean.

The specters thronged around the hemisphere. Their moans drowned out the wind and their forms nearly blotted out visibility. Twisted faces, malformed mouths, and dead eyes pressed against the barrier. Cale had to peer through and past their translucent forms to keep his bearings. The intermittent flashes of lightning helped.

They moved as rapidly as they could, attracting more and more specters as they went. Sweat beaded Cale's brow and dripped into his eyes. Rivalen said nothing, merely gritted his teeth, held his holy symbol aloft, and joined his power to Cale's. Shadows poured from both of them to replenish the hemisphere as it weakened here or there.

The press of the undead caused Cale's head to ache. His body weakened with each step. His breath came hard. He felt like he was yoked to a wagon.

"I am failing," Cale said.

Riven pulled threads of darkness from the air, spiraled them around his fingers, and touched them to Cale. Healing energy poured into him, refreshed his mind, renewed his strength.

"Holding?" Riven asked.

"For now."

Cale looked at Rivalen, who also looked strained.

"Do what you can for him, too," Cale said.

"The Hells with him," Riven said softly.

"If he dies, we die. I cannot do this alone."

Riven frowned, went to Rivalen's side, and touched the prince with healing energy. He didn't wait for thanks or acknowledgement, and Rivalen offered neither.

The hemisphere shrank incrementally as they moved across a desert of bones and ruins. The moans of the specters wormed through Cale's ears to his skull, causing his temples to pound. The ground vibrated with the distant rumble of collapsing earth.

"What the Hells is that?" Riven asked, bracing himself against another tremor.

Cale could hardly see through the strain, the sweat, could hardly hear through the wind and moans. "How close are we, Riven? We cannot hold this much longer."

As if to prove his point, one side of the hemisphere collapsed, pressed in like a squeezed waterskin. He and Rivalen both groaned, sagged, channeled what power they had left.

The specters swarmed, but the border of divine power held— misshapen, failing, but intact for the moment. The moans of despair turned to wails of frustration.

Riven moved to the edge of the barrier and peered through the darkness, through the specters. Only the veil of Cale and Rivalen's power separated the assassin from hundreds of undead. The specters, driven mad by the proximity of their prey, scrabbled against the hemisphere, moaning desperately.

"I see it." Riven gave a start, went pale. "Dark, Cale. The world is disappearing behind it."

Again the ground shook under their feet. Cale had no time to ponder Riven's words. "We're out of time. We use the shadows. I will take us. Rivalen, hold as long as you can. I need only a moment."

Shadows churned around Rivalen but he nodded. Darkness poured from his holy symbol, supporting the shrinking hemisphere.

Cale ceased lending his power to the support of the barrier. The release elicited a strained grunt from Rivalen. The hemisphere shrank in on them. The specters pounded against it like mad things.

Cale peered through them, looked in the direction Riven had indicated.

He saw it in a depression below them—a temple.

The whole of it was composed of smoky quartz streaked with veins of black. A dome capped the structure. Spires stood at each corner, just more bones of the dead jutting from Ephyras's dust. Long threads of shadow weaved in an out of columns, arched windows, statues. Closed double doors faced toward them. Cale was surprised to see the temple intact. The fact that it stood whole on an otherwise dead world struck him as somehow obscene. Magic—or something else—must have preserved it.

Beyond it, he saw what Riven had seen. The earth fell away. A black hole several bowshots in diameter yawned in the earth, a void in the world. The ground immediately around the hole slowly turned, like the flow of water around the edge of a maelstrom. It cracked, crumbled, sent up a cloud of dust, collapsed into the hole that was eating the world. It was getting larger as it fed.

He wondered if there were other such holes on Ephyras, other voids devouring the world. "Transport us!" shouted Rivalen.

Cale pulled his eyes from the hole and drew the darkness about them. For a moment, he considered leaving Rivalen behind. He looked back, met Rivalen's gaze, and saw in the Shadovar's golden eyes that he realized what Cale was thinking. Cale saw no fear there.

Cale included Rivalen in the shadows he gathered. They would need him to defeat Kesson Rel. The darkness deepened around them as Rivalen shouted, fell, and the sphere collapsed entirely. The specters swarmed them, arms outstretched. Their touch reached through armor and flesh, cooled bones, slowed hearts, stole life. They filled the air, turned the already cold breeze frigid.

Cale held his focus in the midst of the chaos and rode the shadows to the temple, Riven and Rivalen in tow.

• ---- Sr
  

Regg mounted Firstlight so that his company could more easily see him. She remained calm despite the rain, thunder, and the onrushing Shadowstorm. Regg turned his back to the darkness to face his company, knowing as he looked upon them that all of them would die in the darkness and some would rise again as shadows. In the distance, Sakkors hovered in its cloak of ink.

Regg did not shout. He did not draw his blade. He spoke only loud enough to be heard over the rain. As he spoke, Roen and the priests moved from soldier to soldier, using spells and wands of pale birch to ward the men and women against the life draining power of the Shadowstorm. A flash of soft rose-hued light denoted the wards taking effect.

"Turn and look," Regg said to his company. "See the men and women and children you are bound to protect."

As one they turned, looked down on the Saerbian refugees huddled in their wagons and blankets against wind and rain, against evil and darkness.

"That is why we fight," Regg said. "They need time. It is their only hope. We must give it to them."

He patted Firstlight's neck and dismounted.

"Go," he told her, and swatted her flank. "Bear someone to safety."

She nuzzled him then trotted off to tejoin the rest of the company's horses.

Regg nodded at Trewe and the young soldier sounded his horn to signal the march. Heads emerged from wagons, tents, and carts. Hope animated the gazes of the refugees, though fear lurked behind it. Shouts carried over the rain—well-wishes. A

small boy stood at the back of his cart, soaked by the rain, one hand in a trouser pocket, the other raised in farewell. He didn't wave, just held a hand aloft, as still as a statue.

Regg returned the gesture, turned, and led his company on foot toward the darkness.

"That is why we fight," Trewe said from beside him.

The lightning framed the silhouette of a horseman on a rise to the fight of the company—Abelar on Swiftdawn. He held his blade in hand and with it, formally saluted them.

Thunder boomed.

Every blade of every man and woman in the company came from its scabbard and returned the salute as they passed and marched into darkness.

--- --•

Abelar sat his saddle in the rain and watched his company march on the double quick toward the Shadowstorm. He felt drawn after them, pulled by the faith that had been his companion for years. But his love for Elden tethered him to the camp. He could not abandon his son again. Elden couldn't take it. And neither could Abelar.

But he feared he could not take abandoning his company either.

He watched the company until darkness and the rain began to swallow them. They looked tiny, insignificant as they marched into the black wall of the Shadowstorm. He tried to catch their silhouettes in the frequent flashes of lightning but eventually lost them to the smear of night.

The Shadowstorm roiled and churned, as if eager for their arrival. Abelar had his doubts that mere men would be able to slow it. But he had no doubt that they had to tty. He would hold out hope.

He dismounted Swiftdawn, took her to the outskirts of the

camp where the company's other horses gathered, heads low, whickering in the storm. He rubbed Firstlight's nose. The other horses neighed, pranced nervously. Perhaps they smelled coming battle in the wind.

"Keep the rest of the horses calm," he said to Swiftdawn and Firstlight. "We may need them yet."

Both horses tossed their heads and neighed.

If he had to, Abelar would do as Regg had sugggested. He would put every refugee he could on the company's mounts and charge them over the Stonebridge. The Shadovar would resist, but perhaps some would get through.

After seeing to the horses' needs, he left them and walked through the rain among the Saerbians, asking after their spirits, calming them with his presence. They smiled gratefully for his attention and asked Lathander to bless him. He looked off in the distance, in the direction of his company, and felt unworthy of blessings.

A young mother with a child at hei breast looked up at him from out of a rain soaked tent. Rain pressed her brown hair to her head. Tears streaked her thin, wan face.

"Will we make it to Daerlun, Abelar Corrinthal?"

Abelar looked at her, at the suckling child, and found that his throat would not dislodge words. He nodded, forced a smile he did not feel, and turned back into the rain.

Frustration bubbled up in him, needing release. He wanted to shout his angei into the sky but held it in for fear of alarming the refugees. Instead, he walked the camp with clenched fists and clenched jaw, until he regained control of himself.