Shadowrealm (14 page)

"Kesson Rel's death will free the Shadowlord's stolen divinity. I wish to divert it before it returns to the god or enters another of his Chosen."

The statement seemed to surprise the archfiend. Behind the white eyes, Brennus saw the complicated workings of an ancient, powerful intelligence calculating.

"It cannot be done."

The shadows around Telemont swirled. He glided forward another step and said, "A lie. I can detect them even from you."

Mephistopheles pondered for a moment, perhaps considering Telamont's claim.

"Can you?" he murmured.

Telemont waited, saying nothing. The archfiend looked past him to the archwizards, to Hadrhune, to Brennus, where his gaze lingered for a moment. Brennus again sensed the fiend's mind working through possibilities.

"Perhaps Baalzebul has noticed your absence already," the Most High said. "Perhaps he prepares a move against Mephistar while you scheme in your chains."

At the mention of one of his rivals, Mephistopheles's eyes narrowed. His flesh brightened to crimson and smoke exited his nostrils.

"Very well, shadeling. It can be done."

"Tell me how."

Brennus listened with interest as Mephistopheles told them the series of spells and the focus necessary to do what they intended. They would have little time once Kesson Rel was dead.

Afterward, Telemont nodded, and backed away. "My thanks, Lord of Cania. You are free."

The Most High gestured and the shackles opened, though the chains remained near Mephistopheles, ready to re-bind him should he do ought but leave. Power sizzled in the air around the archfiend. The shadows in the room darkened.

The archfiend began to fade. Before he did, he pointed a finger at Brennus.

"You wish to know the name of he who murdered your mother?"

"My Lord!" Hadrhune said, stepping forward. Telemont gestured as if to cast a spell but did not complete it in time.

"Your brother," Mephistopheles said. "Rivalen Tanthul murdered your mother to seal a pact with Shar."

With that, the archfiend vanished in a cloud of smoke and brimstone.

Silence expanded to fill the room. The dead or nearly dead archwizard made wet sounds.

Jumbled thoughts bounced around inside Brennus's skull. The shadows around him whirled and spun in response. He grabbed hold of the thought that Mephistopheles was a liar, that he had, in fact, lied. But the archfiend would also know that Brennus could use his spells to determine the truth of the claim.

Why lie, then?

Hadrhune breezed past Brennus to Telemont. "He says nothing out of pique, my lord. He plans to seize the power, too. This complicates matters."

Telemont nodded. "It does. But we must trust in the Lady, Hadrhune. Events will be what they will be."

Brennus could not understand his father's indifference to the fiend's words.

"Did you hear his accusation, Most High?"

Telemont shared a look with Hadrhune, with his archwizards. The latter bowed and vanished into the shadows after teleporting the gore of their fellow from the room.

The Most High and Hadrhune turned to face Brennus and their somber expressions told Brennus all he needed to know.

It was true. Rivalen had murdered his mother.

And his father had known.

"You knew?"

The Most High looked away and Brennus flew at his father. Hadrhune interposed himself but Telemont moved him aside with a hand. Brennus grabbed his father by the cloak, shook him, stared into the thin, dark face. The light of his platinum eyes did nothing to illuminate the blackness in the hollows of his cheeks, the circles under his eyes.

"You knew and did nothing? For how long? For how long?"

The tears wetting Brennus's face embarrassed him but he could not stop their flow. The betrayal drained him of strength. He released his father.

Hadrhune said, "The Most High learned of it long after—"

"I asked you nothing, lackey!" Brennus spat. "This is a family matter."

Hadrhune's eyes flashed but he inclined his head and took a step back.

Telemont put a thin hand on Brennus's arm. "Shar revealed it to me more than a century after the enclave fled Karsus's Folly for the Plane of Shadow."

"Shar?"

Telemont nodded. "And in doing so she forbade my punishing him." He shook his head. The darkness around him roiled like boiling water. "But I do not know if I would have even if she had allowed it. By then, Rivalen had proven himself invaluable to me, to us. He headed her church and her church preserved our people in those darkest of days in the Plane of Shadow. We owe him much, Brennus."

Brennus remembered well the war with the malaugrym, the constant challenges facing the enclave after the Fall. But none of it justified what his father had done.

"To the Hells with her church, her faith. She is the reason my mother is dead."

"She saved our city and people when the other enclaves fell from the sky. Through her a new Netheril will be born on Faerűn. Matters are... complicated, Brennus."

"Complicated? Complicated? My mother is dead. Your wife."

Anger fired Telamont's eyes and Brennus knew he had gone too far. Telemont grabbed Brennus, shook him with a strength that should not have been contained in his thin body.

"I know the price I pay for this, boy! Do not think to lecture me on grief! You are a child in such matters!"

Brennus stared into his father's face, his mouth open but wordless.

Telemont released him, regained control. "Forgive me, Brennus."

Brennus knew he would not. He tried to understand, but could not. "Rivalen should be made to pay."

The shadows around Telemont churned. "He will."

"How? You would allow him to become a god. He will be beyond our ability to punish if he succeeds."

"The power he seeks, once gained, is punishment enough."

"I do not understand."

"You would not. But I have looked into the void, Brennus. I stand on its edge each day but do not enter. Rivalen will embrace it and live with it the rest of his existence."

"It is not enough. He murdered my mother."

"What is enough is not for you to say. You will obey me in this as in all things. Assist Rivalen as you have been. He loves you, Brennus, in his way, considers you as much friend as brother. But he cannot know that I know. Not ever. And if you betray me in this, I will kill you."

Brennus looked into his father's eyes and knew he spoke truth. He did not give his father the satisfaction of more tears. "You are not a man, Father."

Telemont regarded him with an odd expression, both sad and defiant. "No. Not for a long time, Brennus." "All this for empire, Most High?"

Telemont looked puzzled at the question. "What else is there?"

CHAPTER SEVEN

4 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms

Cale and Riven took a meal with Abelar, Regg, and Endren then assisted the refugees with their preparations. Meanwhile, the sun continued its westward course across Faerűn's sky and by late afternoon it broke out of the leading edge of the Shadowstorm like it was newly born. Light penetrated the rain clouds and blanketed the refugees' camp. Spirits visibly lifted as the refugees went about their work. Cale stood in the light, his hand disincorporated, his powers diminished, and ttied to feel human.

The rest of the Lathanderians moved among the refugees, assisting and encouraging them. Abelar, Endren, and Elden prepared a covered wagon for their transport. Regg approached, sloshing through the muck, the rose on his chest mud-spattered.

"The scouts report no sign of Forrin's army," Regg said to Abelar. "The entire force has vanished."

Cale looked out at the expanding, lightning-veined blackness of the Shadowstorm and guessed at what had happened to them.

"Darkness eats its own," said Abelar. "The storm has them, I'd wager."

"Agreed," said Regg. "I only regret that we were not able to avenge their attack on Saerb ourselves."

"Aye," Abelar said, and loaded a pack into the wagon. Elden climbed over barrels and bags, whooping as some tipped and he rode them down.

"Be mindful, Elden," Abelar said, and Elden paid him no heed whatsoever.

Regg said, "The camp is prepared, Abelar. I have Swiftdawn ready for you."

Abelar looked in the wagon to Elden, back to Regg. "I will ride in the wagon for a time, Regg."

Regg kept his face expressionless, though his body stiffened some. "Well enough."

"Our paths part here," Cale said. He embraced Abelar and Endren then clasped Regg's hand. Riven did the same.

"We will see you again in Daerlun," Abelar said.

"In Daerlun," Cale agreed.

Riven peeked into the wagon. "You show me what you can do with those balls when I see you again, yes?" "Yes," Elden peeped.

Riven returned to Cale's side. Cale stood in Riven's shadow, intensified the darkness, stared at the distant Shadowstorm, and felt for the shadows within it. Strangely, the contact eluded him. As it had been with Elgrin Fau, the darkness in the storm did not answer to him easily.

He felt instead for the edge of the storm, the point at which his ability to feel the correspondence ended. As the

darkness closed on them, he heard Abelar call to them, "Good hunting."

"Aye, that," said Regg.

The shadows transported them across Sembia, to the edge of the Shadowstorm.

Brennus sat at his dining table. His mother looked down on him from her portrait and he saw accusations in her eyes. He took her necklace from his pocket and set it on the table. Shadows poured from him. Grief poured from him. He had lost his mother and been betrayed by his brother and his father. He had heard the truth only from an archfiend.

His homunculi sat on the table facing him, their legs crossed, their chins in their palms.

"You sad, Master?" one of them asked.

Brennus reached out and scratched the creature's head, eliciting a growl of pleasure. The other, jealous, inched over to receive a scratching of his own. The creatures made him smile, made him think of his mother.

"I wish she could have seen you two," he said.

His constructs had amused her endlessly. The homunculi were simple creations for him now, hardly representative of his Art, but their antics would have brought her delight.

"They are wondrous, Brennus," she would have said in her clear voice, and he would have beamed.

His memories of her were so clear. It seemed only a day since he had last spoken with her, not two millennia. For some reason, he associated her memory with sunlight. He was pleased she had not lived to flee to the Plane of Shadow with them. She had been too bright for it.

He did not understand his father, nor did he forgive him. Shar had demanded the sacrifice of his mother's body. Now

his father demanded that Brennus sacrifice his memory of her, poison it with inaction.

He could not do it. He would not.

He drew the darkness to him and pictured his makeshift quarters on Sakkors, now hovering over northern Sembia, and rode the shadows there.

----€-------

Cale and Riven materialized at the edge of the storm. Rain poured from the pitch above, softening the ground, soaking their clothes, chilling their bones. Green lightning split the sky, cast the air in smears of vermillion and black. The wind gusted and swirled. Dead and dying vegetation covered the darkened plains before them. Trees shook in the wind, their twisted forms testament to the transformative powers of the Shadowstorm. The leading edge of the storm pulsed and lurched grotesquely as it shrouded the land.

The mental connection between Cale and Magadon flew open, startling him.

He is in there, Cale, Magadon said in his mind.

Cale nodded. He tried again to feel the correspondence between where he stood and the darkness within the Shadowstorm. The feeling was there, but it was distant, alien. The darkness in the storm was foreign to him. His inability to connect to it fully struck him oddly. It had been a long while since he had not been one with the darkness. It made him feel more himself.

"Ready?" Cale said to Riven.

The assassin fiddled with the teleportation ring on his finger. "We could use the ring, Cale. Go directly to Ordulin."

Cale shook his head. "We do not know what we will find there. Things would get ugly if we appeared in the midst of a score of shadow giants."

"Ugly for them," Riven said.

"We can cover ground less rapidly by stepping from shadow to shadow, but we'll at least see what we're in for before appearing neck deep in it."

Riven inclined his head. "That's sense."

"Let's move," Cale said.

"No need," Riven replied.

The leading edge of the Shadowstorm lunged forward like a predator, covering them in its darkness. Sound deadened. Color faded. It was as if a veil had been drawn across the land, as if they had been submerged in murky water.

"The air is different than last time," Riven said.

As if to make his point, the grass under their feet curled, browned, withered, and died. Trees and shrubs near them cracked and split as the Shadowstorm remade them into twisted, thorny versions of themselves.

Cale nodded. "It's getting more powerful as it grows."

The air in the Shadowstorm felt charged, powerful. The coolness seeped into Cale, pulled at his warmth, at his essence. They would need protective wards or they would soon be drained of warmth and sttength.

"Hold a moment."

He held his mask and intoned the words to a prayer of protection. When he finished, he touched a hand to himself then to Riven. He felt its effect instantly as the Shadowstorm released its hold on his essence.

"Better," Riven said.

"It will last for a few hours," Cale said. He followed with the words to a prayer that would ward him and Riven against the chill. When he completed the spell, he let the warmth of the magic flow into him, touched Riven's arm, and did the same.

"Best be moving," Riven said.

Cale nodded and chose a spot within the Shadowstorm at the limits of his vision, a rise under a deformed oak. He stepped

through the darkness and they appeared under the oak. The gusting wind drove the rain so hard it felt like a hail of nails. Lightning lit the transformed landscape. Thunder rumbled. "Which way?" Riven asked.