Shadowrealm (32 page)

Rivalen had nothing around him but air yet he felt walls closing in on him, his plans unravelling before his eyes, the thread of his life being pulled from the weave of history.

will not cause your death but neither will I cause your deification. I will simply hate you forever.

The words pained Rivalen faintly. He had felt closer to Brennus than other members of his family.

have not told the Most High, Brennus answered. Nor will I.

This is between us, Rivalen. And it will be between us forever.

Rivalen understood Brennus's meaning. He had lost his brother. Soon he would lose his life. He was about to speak when a surge of surprise carried through the connection

What is it? he asked

Sakkors is moving, Brennus answered, and cut off the connection.

Rivalen glanced back and saw Kesson touch himself with his right hand as he completed a spell—an illusion, peihaps— that caused his form to shimmer for an instant, after which he extended his left hand at Rivalen and fired a line of orange energy that Rivalen could not avoid.

Rivalen screamed as his body exploded and he fell back to earth.

Broken bones and damaged organs caused Furlinastis to roar with pain. Blood poured out of him, fountaining around the giant's sword that spiked his chest. He was dying, vaguely aware of the Lathanderians forming up somewhere near him.

Unable to take revenge on Kesson Rel, he decided to take it on Kesson Rel's creatures.

Lurching forward into a mass of giants, he crushed two under his body, impaled another on his right claw, pulled the giant to his mouth, andbit him half. The blood and flesh fired his rage and he roared anew.

The giants shouted and bounded forward. Blades rained down on Furlinastis's scales. Giants shadowstepped atop his back, tried to drive their blades down into his spine. He lurched, throwing them off of him, crushed another under his body, and tore the arm off another with his fangs.

But some of the giants' blows penetrated his scales. Furlinastis leaked shadows and blood. He was slowing, weakening.

Cale and Riven stepped through the darkness and materialized two strides behind Kesson Rel, in time to watch Rivalen's body burst in a shower of blood as veins and arteries exploded outward from his flesh. The Shadovar prince fell to the ground in a twitching heap of glistening gore. Shadows still streamed from his ruined body.

"High," Cale said.

"Low," Riven answered, and both lunged forward, blades bare.

Cale took a two-handed slash across Kesson's throat; Riven stabbed his sabres in the middle of Kesson's back.

Their blades passed through him as if he were air.

"Illusion," Cale said, as the image disappeared. Riven cursed.

Kesson's voice, intoning a spell, carried on the wind from somewhere to their right. They whirled, sought him, saw nothing.

Holding his mask, Cale spoke a brief prayer and a circle of force radiated outward from him in all directions to about twenty paces, countering invisibility in its path.

Kesson appeared, hovering low over the plains, energy gathering in both his hands.

"I have Rivalen," Cale said, and winced as a wave of Maga-don's mental energy caused a spike of pain in his head. "Go."

Riven nodded, and charged Kesson.

am power, Magadon said in Cale's head, his voice an echo of Mephistopheles's. And I am hate.

Riven threw one of his enchanted sabres at Kesson as he charged. The curved blade, poorly balanced for throwing, cut an irregular arc through the air and struck Kesson in the

shoulder. If the blade cut flesh, Riven couldn't tell. He could tell that it had no effect on Kesson's casting.

Kesson's daik eyes fixed on Riven. He flapped his wings, pointed both hands.

Cale shadowstepped to Rivalen's side and gagged at the stench. The Shadovar's body had been opened, as if his skin had been unbuttoned and the vitals pulled forth. One of his arms was little more than a withered stick.

Blood vessels, tendons, intestines all lay in a twisted heap on the ruins of his flesh. His eyes fixed on Cale, still aglow, filled with rage and pain. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing more emerged than a wet gurgle. Cale saw that Rivalen's hand still held his holy symbol, slicked with his blood. Perhaps the Shadovar's regenerative flesh would heal him in time. Perhaps not.

Intoning a rapid prayer, Cale cast his most powerful healing spell and fought back bile as the magic caused Rivalen's innards to squirm back into place and closed the flesh over them.

Rivalen, still slick and sticky with his own blood, inhaled in a gasp.

"Get up," Cale said, and pulled him to his feet. Magadon's voice rang in his head. I am power.

Magadon! Cale projected through the mental connection. This is not you! Get control! Get out ofthe Source, Mags. Get out.

I have control, Magadon answered, and began to laugh. And I will never get out.

Cale looked back the way they had come and saw through the darkness, through the raging battle of wraiths and shadows, a huge form moving through the storm, a floating city.

Sakkors.

And Magadon.

Riven dodged to his right as energy flew from both of Kesson's fists. A glowing orange ball of power streaked toward Riven from Kesson's left hand, while a line of green energy from his right hand coalesced in the air and formed itself around Riven into the shape of a large, barred cage. Riven slammed into its unyielding bars. He was trapped inside with the orange ball, which began to spin and hum.

Riven cut at the bars, but he might as well have been chopping at adamantine.

The ball spun ever more rapidly, emitting a high pitched whine. Riven backed away from it as far as the cage allowed. He looked over and saw Cale pull Rivalen, mostly whole, to his feet.

"Cale!"

The ball exploded, filling the cage with billowing black smoke shot through with burning streams of red-hot embers. Riven had nowhere to hide, no cover, and smoke and embers saturated him. He screamed as his flesh blistered, blackened, as his clothes caught fire.

Cale heard Riven's screams. Lines of burning embers snaked through a cloud of smoke, glowing runes of heat and agony traced in the air. The smoke leaked through the bars of a magical cage. Riven had nowhere to run.

"Forcecage," Rivalen said, and spit a tooth and blood.

Cale felt for the darkness within the cage, found it, held his breath, and stepped to it. Lines of file wrote letters of pain on his flesh. He gritted his teeth, endured, and followed Riven's screams through the smoke. He found the assassin writhing on the ground, burning. Cale grabbed his cloak and rode the

shadows ouc of the cage and onto the plains. He rolled Riven around on the the rain-swept grass as Cale's regenerative flesh healed the burns on his own skin.

Riven grunted with pain through bared teeth, as much angry as pained. His face and hands were blistered, blackened like seared meat. Blades of grass clung to the charred flesh from where Cale had rolled him on the turf. His hair was melted.

Rivalen stepped from the shadows next to Cale.

"Be still," Rivalen said, and held Riven still with his one hand. He chanted a healing prayer, the language not unlike that which Cale had used to heal Rivalen, and Riven's skin regenerated before their eyes. His breathing eased, though his hair and beard remained blackened and curled.

"Good?" Cale asked him.

"No," Riven said, and sat up. He drew a dagger to pair with his saber. He must have lost his other saber during the battle. He stood. "But that's not new. We cannot beat him, Cale."

Cale nodded. "I know."

Not even Rivalen protested.

"But we see it through," Cale said and looked across the plains to Kesson Rel. The First Chosen of Mask rose into the sky, energy in his hands. Kesson touched his hand to himself once, twice, presumably warding himself against attack.

Cale was about to speak when a blast of power soaked his mind, caused his nose to bleed, and sent him to his knees.

Sakkors, draped in shadows, floated over the battlefield.

I am come! Magadon projected.

Rivalen and Riven both covered their ears and groaned. Even Kesson grimaced.

And Cale realized what he must do. He rose to his feet. "Spread out," he said. "And wait for my say so."

Blows rained down on Furlinastis's body. His good wing hung in shreds. He'd lost two teeth on a giant's breastplate. He could scarcely see and pinpointed his targets as much by sound and smell as sight. Roaring, he pinned a giant under one claw, pressed down, and felt the satisfying crunch of the giant's rib-cage collapsing.

A pair of giants slashed at his throat, opened huge gashes in his scales. He whirled, caught one by the leg in his jaws, and shook him until the leg came free. He gulped it down as the giant bled out on the grass.

Three giants to his left nocked arrows, drew, and loosed. All three sank to the fletching in his side. He whipped his body around, caught two of them with a tail lash, and shattered their knees.

But he was failing. A group of two score giants charged him. He reared up, roaring.

And a roar from behind joined his own.

The companions of Abelar Corrinthal charged the giants, breaking around and past Furlinastis, their numbers ablaze in magical light.

Regg and his company flowed around the dragon, shouting battle cries. The shadowwalkers, cloaked in darkness even in the midst of Roen and his priests' light spells, ran in the vanguard of the force.

The dragon roared as they passed, lumbered after. With the number of wounds the creature had suffered, Regg did not know how it even moved.

Trewe sounded a blast and the company hit the remaining giants like a maul. Regg sidestepped a giant's stab and hacked into the creature's knee. When it fell, roaring, he drove his blade through the back of its neck. A giant staggered into him,

spouting blood from a throat wound, and knocked him down. Another loomed out of the battle, sword raised over his head for a killing blow.

The dragon's head shot out of the chaos of combat on his long neck and the giant vanished in a flash of teeth and spray of blood. Regg climbed to his feet and hacked about him until he could no longer feel his arms.

Cale and Rivalen shadowstepped away from Riven. Together, the three men formed a triangle around Mask's First Chosen, who flew in the air above them.

"You are not enough," Kesson said, and Cale knew he was right. They were not enough. To have any chance, Cale had to risk Magadon.

Rain drizzled from the sky. For a time, the four combatants simply regarded one another, each waiting for the other to begin the final act.

Cale tried to focus his mind, to push his thoughts through the blizzard of mental energy pouring through his connection with Magadon.

Look through my eyes, Mags. Kesson Rel is here. We need you to help us.

Kesson Rel began to cast. Rivalen did the same. Now, Mags. Look through my eyes! Now!

A hand closed on Regg's shoulder. He whirled in a backhand slash, but a shadow-shrouded hand caught his forearm in a powerful grip and stopped the blow.

A shadowwalker.

Blood, rain, and sweat coated the small man. He had a

gash in one cheek and stood uneasily on his left leg. His face remained as impassive as ever.

"It is over," the shadowwalker said in his accented Common.

Regg surveyed the field and realized for the first time that it was raining again.

Hundreds of giants lay on the grass, their enormous bodies torn by fang and claw or slashed by blades. The rain drained their blood into the soil. Most of Regg's company lay dead on the field, too. He saw Roen and Trewe among a few score others start to walk among the bodies, checking for signs of life. When they found it, Roen or one of his fellow priests channelled Lathander's power into a spell of healing.

Regg caught Trewe's gaze, and held up his hand. Trewe, perhaps too exhausted to raise his own arm, merely nodded.

The ten or so shadowwalkers flitted among the giants' bodies, crushing the windpipes of any that still breathed. Regg was too tired to protest. Besides, he could take no prisoners.

The dragon, its enormous, shadow-shrouded form sprawled over the field, with bloody pieces of giants still clinging to his teeth and claws, inhaled a rattling breath. Regg staggered to his side, along his neck, noting the gashes, the spurting blood. The wyrm's eyes were open. Ribbons of shadow and ragged breaths leaked from his nose and mouth. The slits of his pupils dilated to focus on Regg.

Regg removed his gauntlet and put his hand on the ridge over the wyrm's eye.

"I have seen nobility in strange places this day."

The dragon's chest rattled, perhaps in a laugh.

"The one who rode me, Abelar, was at peace," the dragon whispered.

"I know," Regg said, and tears wet his face. "Be at peace also."

Regg stared into the dragon's eye until it closed.

"Dawn dispels the night and births the world anew," Regg said. "May Lathander light your way and show you wisdom and mercy. Today you were a light to others."

Shouts turned Regg around. The members of his company looked past Regg and into the sky, pointing with their blades.

"Sakkors!"

Regg looked up and saw the floating, shadow-cloaked Shadovar city emerge from the darkness.

Cale felt the tell-tale tingle behind his eyes, the displacement of his own consciousness as Magadon shared his senses. The mental energy racing through his brain surged, driving him to his knees. His mouth opened to speak but the voice was not his own.

"Kesson Rel!" Magadon screamed through him.

Use all of the power in the Source, Mags, Cale projected, cursing himself for the words. Kill him if you can and we can save you.

Cale knew that those words would stain him forever, that he might have just surrendered his friend to mental slavery to the Source. He vowed to himself that he would do whatever he must to save Magadon.

But first he had to survive.

am saved, Magadon said. But I will kill nevertheless. First him, then Rivalen, then you.

Kesson Rel!