Shadowrealm (37 page)

Thamalon looked past her, saw only the hallway and its purple carpet. "I think he will see me."

Variance smiled, the expression made sinister by the way the skin of her cheek creased around her scar.

"Remain here. I will inquire of the Nightseer."

Without waiting for an acknowledgement, she turned and walked down the corridor. She soon melted into the darkness of the windowless space.

Thamalon stood in the hall, irritated with the presumptuous manner in which Variance had ordered him to remain.

"As if I were a dog," he murmured.

His irritation only grew as the moments passed. He looked down the corridor, but saw nothing but the purple carpet and bare stone walls. Could she have forgotten him?

"Damn it all," he said, and started down the hallway after Variance.

"Hulorn," Rivalen said from behind him.

Surprise jolted Thamalon's heart. He turned to see Rivalen step from the darkness.

"You startled me," Thamalon said. "I did not see you."

Rivalen let the shadows fall away from him entirely. "Do you see me now?"

"I do," Thamalon said. "You look... different."

Rivalen stood no taller than he ever had, yet he appeared to Thamalon to fill the hall, to occupy more than mere space. The shadows enshrouding him appeared darker, like a bottomless hole. His exposed left hand was black, as if formed of coalesced shadows. The regard of his golden eyes made Thamalon uncomfortable. Thamalon had no desire to know what secret Rivalen had confessed to the darkness.

"You have disturbed my worship, Hulorn."

The incivility of the prince's words surprised Thamalon. Anger lurked in Rivalen's tone. Thamalon reminded himself that he was the Hulorn, soon to be ruler of all of Sembia. He and Rivalen were peers.

"I received word that you had returned, but had no word of the outcome of events. I expected to receive that from you."

Rivalen's eyes narrowed. "Expected? Why?"

Thamalon tried not to wilt under Rivalen's gaze. "Because I am the Hulorn."

Rivalen seemed to advance on him, though he did not move. "And what is that to me?"

"I..." Thamalon stuttered, swallowed, adopted a more deferential tone. "I should have said 'hoped,' Prince. I did not expectyou to report to me. I hoped'you would. We had kept close counsel previously and I... assumed that would continue."

"It will," Rivalen said, and something hid within the words, "We were... successful. The rift was closed. The Shadowstorm will retreat from Sembia, though Ordulin is lost to darkness forever."

Thamalon's heart surged at the news. "And what of Mister Cale? The Saerbians?"

Rivalen's brow furrowed, as if the question pained him. "Mister Cale is dead."

Thamalon could not contain a grin. He knew he must look like a gloating buffoon but he didn't care.

"Splendid news, Prince Rivalen! Splendid!"

Rivalen continued, "I allowed the surviving Saerbians safe passage through Sembia. They may settle where they will."

Thamalon lost his grin and his good humor. "You allowed?"

Thamalon regretted the emphasis the moment the words bid farewell to his teeth.

Rivalen stared at him, the shadows around him whirling. "Yes. I allowed."

"Of course," said Thamalon, forcing a smile. "You have the authority to act in my name."

Rivalen stared down at Thamalon, his mouth a hard line. "You will find that our relationship will change somewhat as Sembia is consolidated under Shadovar rule."

A small pit opened in Thamalon's stomach, a place for the truth to settle.

"I fear 'somewhat' does much work in that sentence, Prince."

Rivalen waved a hand in the air, batting aside Thamalon's point. "You will remain titular head of Sembia but you will answer ultimately to me and to the Most High."

Thamalon tried to keep the shock from his face and voice. "But I assumed we would rule as equals. I thought—"

"Your assumption was incorrect. We are not equals. You are an instrument of my will, and the Lady's."

Thamalon's mind spun. He struggled to keep his mental balance. "After all we have accomplished?"

"We accomplished nothing. I accomplished all. You are but the face of it to the outside."

Thamalon flushed. "But—but I worship the Mistress. I minted coins, Prince. I thought to become a shade, like you. I thought we were... friends."

Only after he had uttered the words did he realize how ridiculous they sounded, like the whines of a child. Embarrassment heated his cheeks.

"You will become a shade, Hulorn," Rivalen said. "I will keep my word. Promises are kept in these days."

"Thank you, Prince," Thamalon said, pleased at least by that, though he could not meet Rivalen's eyes.

"The transformation is prolonged and painful. Your body and soul are torn asunder and remade."

Thamalon backed up a step, eyes wide.

Rivalen followed. "The agony will plague your dreams for years."

Thamalon felt nauseated, and backed up another step. "Your family and friends will die and turn to dust. You will linger, alone."

Thamalon bumped up against a wall. Rivalen loomed over him.

"But in the end, you will be hardened, made a better servant to the Lady, made a better servant to me." "That is not what I wanted, Prince."

"It is exactly what you wanted. Power. You simply wanted to pay no price for it. But you are a Sembian, Hulorn. You should have known there is always a price. And the price will be pain and eternal loneliness."

Rivalen said it in the tone of one who knew that of which he spoke.

Thamalon gulped, imagined the pain of his transformation. He looked into his future and saw a friendless, solitary existence, feared and hated by those he ostensibly ruled. He did not want it, not anymore.

"Please, Prince. No. I abdicate. Here, now. To you."

"It is too late for that."

Tears leaked from Thamalon's eyes.

"What have I done?" he said, his voice soft.

Rivalen smiled, his fangs making him look diabolical. "Your bitterness is sweet to the Lady."

Mask manifested in a place that was no place, amidst the nothingness of cold and featureless gray. He manifested fully, not in one of the trivial, semi-divine forms he sometimes showed to worshipers.

He floated alone and small in an infinite void, the womb of creation. He marveled that the bustling, colorful, life-filled multiverse had been born from such yawning emptiness. He marveled, too, that the creation would one day return to the void. He was pleased he would not see it, though he knew he would have played his small role in causing it.

As would those who came after him and took his station.

Or perhaps not, if things went as he wished. He had planted his own seeds in creation's womb. Time would tell what fruit they bore.

"I am here," he said, and his voice echoed through infinity.

Fatigue settled on him all at once. He had been running a long while, delaying the inevitable. Surrender was not in him. He supposed that was why she had chosen him, why he had chosen his own servants.

His voice died as the feeling of nothingness, of endless solitude, intensified. He felt hollow, as empty as the space around him.

She was coming.

He held his ground and his nerve. The moment was foreordained. Within him, he carried all of the power he had stolen many millennia before, plus some—but not all—of the added power that he'd amassed since his ascension. And power was the coin she demanded in payment of his debts. The Cycle had turned.

"Show yourself. You owe me that, at least."

It had taken him a long while to accept that he would not be the herald who broke the Cycle of Shadows. He had stolen the power thinking he would. His hubris amused him. He found hope in the possibility that those he had chosen might break it, sever the circle.

"I see hope in your expression," she said, her voice as beautiful and cold as he remembered. "Hope is ill-suited to this place."

He swallowed and held his ground as the nothingness took on presence and he felt the regard of a vast intelligence that existed at once in multiple places, multiple times. She had seen the birth of creation. She would see it end.

"The Cycle turns," she said.

He felt her cold hands on him, felt the spark of divinity within him answer to its original owner's touch. She had taken her favorite form among many—a pale-skinned maiden with black hair that fell to her waist. The emptiness of the void yawned in her eyes. He looked at a point on her face below her eyes—he dared not look into those eyes lest he see his fate. The

slash of her red lips against the paleness of her face struck him as obscene.

"I am come to pay my debt," he said, and bowed his head. He found his form quaking. In her presence he experienced the frailties he had not felt since his ascension. The experience pleased him.

She ran a hand through his hair, put her forehead to his.

"Your debt is long overdue. Mere repayment is inadequate recompense. Surely you know this, Lessinor."

He had not heard his birth name spoken in so long its pronouncement caused him to look up into his mother's eyes... and regret it.

He saw there the oblivion of non-existence, the emptiness that awaited him. He had not wished to see it. He had wished it only to happen, one moment existence, one moment nonexistence. He did not wish to know.

The frailties endemic to his one-time humanity resurfaced. His body shook. He did not wish to end. He did not wish to know what "end" meant. All that he had done, all that he had been, for nothing.

Or perhaps not. This time, he kept the hope from his face.

"Ah," his mother said, and sighed with satisfaction. "You see it now, here, at the end of things."

He nodded.

"Interest is due on your debt, my son."

He nodded once more. He had expected as much and prepared. In the millennia in which he had been worshiped the faith of his followers had made him something greater than that which he had initially stolen from her. That she knew. But she did not know its scope, and that he had hidden some.

"I am come to pay that, as well... Lady."

He could not bring himself to name her his mother. She had possessed a vessel to birth a herald, nothing more.

"I know," she said, and drew him to her in an embrace. Her

arms enfolded him, cooled him. She stroked his hair, cooed. He put his head on her shoulder and wept.

Only then did he realize that he was cooling, that his power was leeching away, that the void he had seen in her eyes was coming for him. He gripped her tightet, closed his eyes, but could not dismiss the image of the end that awaited him.

"Shh," she hissed, and held him tightly.

He was sinking, disappearing in her vastness, entering the void. Non-existence yawned before him. He tried to speak, to tebel at the final moment, but could not escape her grasp.

Darkness closed in on him. He tried to enter the void with hope in his heart, recalling that he, the son of the Lady of Sectets, had kept a secret from—

EPILOGUE

9 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)

The ghosts of the past haunt my mind, specters of memory that manifest in sadness. I run an alehouse in Daerlun, now. It is a small thing but small things are all I find myself suited to how. My appearance startles no one in these days; most have seen creatures mote exotic than me. I fill cups, tell jokes, hire bards, and try to brighten a few spirits in otherwise dark times. I call my place The Tenth Hell and the catavaneers and hireswords who stream through Daerlun seem to like the name.

The Tenth is my personal Hell, I tell them, and they think I am making a joke, given my horns and obvious fiendish lineage. But I do not mean it as a joke.

One hundred years have passed since Erevis Cale died. There have been other landmarks in my

life since then, other tragedies, but his loss remains the most painful, the point that defines the "after" in my life. He sacrificed himself to save me when I did not merit saving. For that, I owe him what I am. And I owe it to him to be worthy of what he did.

There are still days when I tap a keg and convince myself that he is not gone, not forever. How can he be? I saw him do too much, survive too much, to be gone. I stare into the shadowy corners of my place, eye the dark alleys of Daerlun, looking for him, expecting him to step from the darkness, serious as usual, and call to me:

"Mags," he will say.

But he never does.

He is gone, forever I suppose, and no one has called me Mags in over ninety years. I do not allow it to anyone but Riven, and we have not spoken since two years after the Shadowstorm retreated.

He looked different when I saw him, darker, more there. Over a tankard of stout in the alehouse that I would buy seventy years later (it was called The Red Hen, then), he told me what he had become.

I believed him. I could see it in the depths of his eye, in the way the darkness hugged his form. He sat in the alehouse for several hours and I'd wager that only one or two patrons other than me even noticed him. He had become the shadows.

"Faerűn thinks Mask is dead," I said.

He took his pipe out of his mouth and exhaled a cloud of exotic smelling smoke. Shadows bled from his flesh, as they once had from Cale. He looked at me with an expression that did not belong to a mere man. His voice was a whisper, the rush of the wind through night shrouded trees.

"He is, but not forever. Let's keep that our secret, Mags."

I detected a threat in the statement, in the way the darkness around me deepened. I nodded, changed the subject.

Our conversation started with tecent events and moved back through time. We spoke of Cale, Kesson Rel, Rivalen Tanthul, the Sojourner, Azriim the slaad, even our days in Westgate. I asked after his dogs, the temple. He did not touch his stout and when we parted it had the feeling of permanence.

"Take care, Mags," he had said.

I almost touched his arm but lost my nerve at the last moment. "Are we friends, Drasek?" "Always, Mags."

I turned for a moment at the crash of a breaking tankard and the string of curses that accompanied it. When I turned back, he was gone. We spoke again only once more.