Shadowstorm (3 page)

“No more,” Magadon said in a broken voice.

“Your obeisance comes too late, half-breed.”

To Cale, Mephistopheles said, “What’s left of him is yours. But if you renege, I will destroy utterly what I have taken and come for the rest. You cannot protect him. Bring me what you’ve promised, and I shall vomit him up and do him no further harm.”

With that, he threw Magadon toward Cale.

At the same moment, the spell holding Cale and Riven immobile ended.

Cale could do nothing but catch his blood-slicked friend, who groaned and collapsed in his arms, but Riven twirled his blades and stalked toward the archdevil.

“No, Riven!” Cale shouted immediately. “No!”

The assassin did not look at Cale but stopped his advance. His breath came like a bellows.

“Not now,” Cale said.

The assassin stared hate at the archdevil.

Magadon started to shake in Cale’s arms. It took a moment for Cale to realize that he was sobbing.

“Riven,” Cale said, more softly. “We are leaving.”

Riven looked back at Cale, saw Magadon, and his expression softened. He turned back to the archdevil, spat at his feet, and sheathed his blades.

Mephistopheles only cocked an eyebrow in amusement.

Cale held his friend and stared into Mephistopheles’s face, into his eyes, and did not blanch.

“I will get you what I’ve promised and you will return the rest of him to me. And when that bargain is concluded, I will exact payment for this.”

“And the price will be high,” Riven added, as he stepped beside Cale. He put a hand on Magadon’s shoulder, gently, the way Cale had seen him touch his dogs.

Mephistopheles lost the amused expression. “You make another promise you will find difficult to keep, First of Five.”

Cale shook his head and stared. “I have never made a promise more easily kept.”

“That’s truth,” Riven added coldly.

Mephistopheles did not even glance at Riven. He studied Cale’s face for a moment.

“You, too, could have been one of mine, I think.”

Cale stared. “You know nothing about me.”

“I know you entirely. I know what you want. I know what you are willing to do to have it.”

Shadows oozed from Cale’s flesh. He felt Riven’s eye on him, Magadon’s eyes.

“Shall I say it?” the archdevil asked. “If I do, it will never happen.”

“You know nothing,” Cale said, but his voice lacked conviction.

Mephistopheles looked upon Cale and smiled. “You wish to transcend, wish it desperately. So do all men who hate themselves. But you never shall. Not now.”

The truth of the words was too evident to deny.

Mephistopheles filled the silence with a chuckle. “Now,

begone from my realm. Skulk back into the shadows in which you cower and get me what you’ve promised.”

He blew out a black cloud that engulfed the three comrades.

“And remember always that I am a liar,” the archdevil said.

Cale’s stomach lurched as they moved between worlds.

ŚŠŚ ŚŠŚ ŚŠŚŚŠŚ

Elyril sat cross-legged and nude on the carpeted floor, her back to the hearth. The darkness in the chamber caressed her skin, teased pleasantly at the soft hairs of her arms and legs. She took a pinch of minddust from the small metal box on the floor at her side. The pungent drug took effect immediately and her consciousness expanded.

The flames from the fire behind her cast malformed shadows on the pale plaster wall opposite. The minddust darkened them, sharpened their lines. Elyril watched them dance and spin and tried to understand their truth.

What do they say? projected Kefil.

The enormous mastiff lay curled beside her, a mountain of black fur, muscle, and teeth.

They keep their secrets, she answered. Silence, now, Kefil.

Kefil sighed, licked her hand, and shifted position.

Elyril watched faces and shapes form and dissipate in the chaos on the wall. She willed them to speak, to give her wisdom. She wished to know the secret of the sign and the book to be made whole. She held her arms aloft, stirring the shadows, and whispered, “In the darkness of the night, we hear the whisper of the void.”

Her words set the images to roiling. Dozens of faces formed momentarily in the darkness and leered at her from the wall. They said nothing, offered her no secrets, and her frustration grew. She shifted her position to change her perspective. Kefil groaned and rolled over on his back. Elyril inhaled another pinch of minddust and lit her senses on fire.

The wall darkened and the faces withdrew. Stillness ruled the

room. She was alone in the darkness. The air thickened. She saw her heart beating in her shadow.

A diabolical face appeared on the wall and lunged out of the plaster to hang in the air before her—a devil sent her by Shar, or Volumvax. Horns jutted from the brow to shadow the malevolent eyes.

Elyril recoiled in surprise but recovered herself quickly.

“Speak,” she ordered the image. “Where is the book to be made whole?”

The fiend licked its lips, mockingly smiled a mouthful of fangs, and spoke to her in a tongue that she could not understand, but with such power that the words nauseated her.

She knew there was truth in the speech, if she could only understand. She needed more minddust.

She reached for her tin of drugs, took a pinch between her fingers, and inhaled, but the face withdrew into the wall, smirking. She clenched her fists in anger.

“I do not understand!”

Her voice took physical form and bounced off the walls and around the room.

“.. . not understand … not understand …”

Kefil raised his head and looked around the room. To whom do you speak? The fire is long dead. There are no shadows on the wall.

“What? You lie.”

But he did not. The fire behind her was dead. She was alone in the darkness. How long had she been sitting so? How could there have been shadows without the fire?

Kefil stood, sighed, and stretched. What is it you wish to understand, Mistress?

Elyril pulled a nearby wool blanket about her. The minddust made her skin sensitive and the blanket chafed. She threw it aside.

“The location of the book to be made whole. The nature of the sign.”

So that you may free the Divine One?

Elyril smiled and nodded. “So that I may sit at his side as the Shadowstorm darkens the world.”

Kefil scratched his ear with a hind leg. Perhaps you will never know the location ofthe book or the nature of the sign. Perhaps Shar will keep this secret from you always. Perhaps not knowing will drive you mad.

Elyril glared at the mastiff.

“And perhaps I shall make a rug from your pelt.”

Kefil said nothing more.

Elyril spent the rest of the night praying and trying to wrest information from the darkness. But Shar held her secrets, and the truth of events lay just beyond Elyril’s reach.

15 Uktar, the Year of Lightning Storms

The slim stone towers and high walls of the Abbey of Dawn perched atop a rise in southeastern Sembia, not far from the coast of the Dragon Sea. The three tapered spires of the abbey’s east-facing chapel gave the impression of reaching for the heavens, of something about to take flight. The polished limestone walls and accents of rose-colored stone glittered in dawn’s light.

A pear orchard and a patchwork of barley and vegetable fields stood within the shadow of the walls—the harvest had already been brought in—and beyond that lay only the whipgrass of the plains, clusters of yellow and purple wildflowers, and copses of larch and ash. The winding wagon path that meandered through the plains from Rauthauvyr’s Road to the north was barely visible in the swaying grass. Few used the path. The abbey served as a cloister for

servants of Lathander and was almost entirely self-sufficient. Most who came spent years there.

As an adolescent, Abelar had worked the barley and turnip fields, carted bushels of pears from the orchard to the abbey, drawn water from the wells. The work had taught him the value and nobility in a day’s hard labor.

As a man, he had stood watch on the abbey’s walls and rode forth with his fellows of the Order of the Aster to do battle against darkness. His time in the Order had taught him the value of strong steel and courageous men and women.

But those days seemed far in the past. He had been away from the abbey for months. Schism had rent Lathander’s church, had taken root in the abbey, and Abelar had been declared unwelcome. It saddened him that the abbey at which he had sworn his life to Lathander had become a kiln where heresy was hardened and the Morninglord’s faith weakened.

“Abelar?”

Abelar’s mind returned to the present. He sat atop his mare, Swiftdawn, amid the whispering grass, perhaps half a league from the abbey. The wagon path stretched before him. The rising sun warmed his cheek.

“You spoke?” Abelar asked Regg, who sat beside him on his roan mare, Firstlight.

“I asked if you were certain of this course,” Regg said.

Road dust covered Regg’s cloak and plate armor, and several days’ growth of beard covered his cheeks. Regg eyed the abbey the way he might a skittish colt. Like Abelar, Regg also served Lathander, but he had not taken rites at the Abbey of Dawn.

Abelar nodded. “I am certain.”

Regg’s mare, sweaty and road weary, turned a circle and snorted in the cool air. Abelar’s mare, too, snorted. Perhaps they smelled a wolf in the wind. Abelar stroked Swiftdawn’s neck and whickered. She tossed her head but calmed.

Abelar and Regg had left the rest of the men in a village to the northwest and journeyed to the abbey alone. Abelar had been

concerned that his appearance at the head of an armed force would be misconstrued. He had come to mend the rift as best he could. He needed to persuade with words, not weapons.

“Swiftdawn and Firstlight do not share your resolve,” Regg said, patting his nervous mare.

“Our brethren are within that abbey, Regg.”

Regg stilled Firstlight and scoffed. “Brethren? They are Risen Sun heretics. They look for their so-called Deliverance while the world collapses around them. What have they done since Mirabeta took power? Even Morninglord Duskroon in Ordulin sits idle. His silence ratifies Mirabeta’s claims to power. I hardly recognize our faith, Abelar. Those who lead it are fools.”

Abelar shook his head. “Lathander leads it, Regg. But some who follow have lost their way. They are misguided, but not fools. They will heed us. They will see the light.”

He hoped that saying the words would make them so. The Risen Sun heresy had originated months ago and spread like a wildfire among many of Lathander’s clergy, including those at the abbey. The heretics asserted that the Deliverance, an event in which the Morninglord would remake himself as the ancient sun god Amaunator, was imminent. The heretics so focused on gaining new converts and preparing the way for the Deliverance, which they presumed would not only remake Lathander but also usher in a new era of worship and hope, that they lost sight of the church’s duty to Faerun. They wanted Lathander to change the world for them, rather than changing it themselves in Lathander’s name.

“They will not heed us,” Regg said. “And they may arrest us. They banished you, Abelar. Abbot Denril sent you from them.”

Abelar nodded. “That, he did.”

The memory pained him. Abelar had learned how to wield a blade and shield from Denril, long before the priest had become Abbot and taken charge of the abbey. Denril had sponsored Abelar’s entry into the Order of the Aster after Abelar, at eighteen winters, had saved a passing caravan by slaying a rampaging

ogre single-handedly. Denril also had presided over Abelar’s dismissal from the Order and the abbey after Abelar had refused to acknowledge the truth of the Risen Sun heresy. Their parting had been bitter.

“He is as much politician as priest,” Regg said with contempt.

“You underestimate him,” Abelar said.

Regg looked at him from under his bushy brows. “I pray you are correct, but fear you are not. He would gain much were he to turn you over to Mirabeta.”

Sunlight caught the flecks of mica embedded in the abbey’s smooth walls and they sparkled like a dragon’s trove. The stained glass arches set into the upper windows of the chapel’s towers flashed in the sun.

When he had first come to the abbey, Abelar had sometimes snuck out before dawn just to sit in the grass, commune with Lathander, and watch the light from the rising sun grace the abbey. He missed the feeling of those days. They had been… innocent. It had been easy then to know friend from foe, right from wrong.

Much had changed.

“They will be at Dawnmeet,” Regg said.

“We will give them time to finish,” Abelar said, and turned Swiftdawn so that she faced the rising sun.

Regg did the same and they held their own Dawnmeet service, reciting a brief prayer together.

“Dawn dispels the night and births the world anew,” they said in unison. “May Lathander light our way, show us wisdom, and in so doing, allow us to be a light to others.”

They dismounted and took a meal of hardtack in silence. Like everyone in Sembia, they rationed their food. The priests in Abelar’s company used their spells to provide the men with enough food to stave off hunger, but Abelar hoarded it like it was gold.

After they had eaten, they remounted and rode toward the abbey.

“The guards in the gatehouse will soon see us coming,” Regg said. “They will be prepared for our arrival.”

“Aye,” said Abelar. He held his shield forward, in plain view, so that the rose of Lathander emblazoned on it would be visible.

ŚŠŚ

Elyril and Mirabeta sat at a small table on the open-air balcony of the three-story tallhouse that the overmistress occupied while in Ordulin. Elyril wore a simple, long-sleeved dress to shield her pale skin from the morning sun. Her dark-haired aunt wore a formal green day gown.

A banner flying Sembia’s heraldry—the raven and silver— hung from the roof eaves above them. Smaller pennons flanked it to either side, both flying Ordulin’s golden wagon wheel on a field of green. All three flapped softly in the gentle breeze. The hum of conversation and the rumble of wagons carried up from the cobblestone street below. Elyril heard the occasional order barked by the uniformed Helms who kept the pedestrian traffic at a discreet distance from the overmistress’s tallhouse.