Curse of the Shadowmage

One

It was the cold that woke the boy.

Kellen Caldorien opened his eyes and found himself gazing up at the slanted ceiling of the attic room where he slept. Faint illumination filled the small chamber, the steely light that comes before the dawn and that casts no shadows. When he breathed out, his breath hung on the frigid air above him like the pale ghost of a bird. The inn was quiet at this hour, and the silence seemed heavy with portent. Kellen had the feeling that something was going to happen today. He didn’t know what it would be, nor when exactly it would occur, nor whether it would be for good or ill—only that something would happen. Something important.

As quickly as it came, the odd feeling of prescience vanished, and the last vestiges of dreaminess with it. Wide awake now, Kellen slipped from his bed, shuddering with the cold, and realized at once the source of the fierce chill. The chamber’s round window hung open, and a steady wind blew in. Even this early in the month of Uktar, when the days could still be fine and golden, the nights were sharp with the promise of winter. The window must have blown open during the night.

Kellen padded barefoot across the cold wooden floor and reached out to shut the window. Abruptly he paused, his eyes glowing with curiosity in the half-light. The surface of the glass bore a patch of pearly frost. Being autumn, this was not unusual. That the patch of frost was shaped exactly like a human hand was far more peculiar. It appeared as if some terribly cold being had pressed its fingers against the glass for a moment, leaving behind pale crystals of ice. Slowly, Kellen reached out his own hand and placed it over the frosty print. His hand was much smaller, but the heat of it melted the frost, and in moments the mysterious handprint was gone. He wondered if this was the something he had felt was going to happen today. After a moment he decided that this mysterious occurrence wasn’t the awaited event, but that it might be related.

“I will simply have to wait and see,” he whispered. Unlike most children, Kellen knew how to be patient.

Turning from the window, he shrugged off his nightshirt and in its place pulled on woolen breeches, a wine-colored tunic, and soft deerskin boots. He combed his almost-black hair with a wooden comb. Fine boned and slight of build, Kellen was often mistaken for a child of seven or eight years rather than the eleven he was. Strangers often found this discrepancy unsettling, for he spoke with uncanny precision, and a wisdom in his gray-green eyes that no eleven-year-old boy should have possessed.

When he had finished dressing, Kellen knelt to open a battered trunk beside his bed. Gently he took out his greatest treasure, a bone flute that his father had carved for him. Kellen slipped the instrument into a leather pouch at his belt. He left his room—shutting the door quietly, as it was still early—and made his way down two winding flights of stairs to the inn’s common room.

A halfling woman with nut-brown eyes looked up from the fieldstone hearth. She was stirring the coals that had been banked beneath the ashes for the night. “You’re up early, Kellen,” she said merrily.

“Yes, Estah,” he replied seriously. “I am.”

Estah was the proprietor of the Sign of the Dreaming Dragon, the inn where Kellen lived with his father, Caledan Caldorien. The halfling innkeeper stood, dusting her hands against her homespun apron. Grown woman though she was, she stood only as high as Kellen’s shoulder. A curious look crossed her broad face.

“And may I ask what roused you from your bed before the sun has even climbed from his own?”

Kellen considered whether he should tell Estah about the frosty handprint he had seen on his bedchamber window. He knew that Estah, unlike many adults, would listen to a young boy’s words. However, she tended to worry unduly, and he didn’t want to distract her from her tasks about the inn, which were considerable. After a moment he decided against telling her. He could wait until his father was awake, if he must tell somebody.

“I thought I would help you knead the bread dough today,” he said instead.

Estah studied him for a moment. Then she laughed, eyes crinkling. “Very well, then. To the kitchen with you.”

Kellen liked kneading dough. He leaned over a halfling-sized wooden table in the center of the warm kitchen, rolling up the sleeves of his tunic so he could stick his arms deep into the floury mass. Mountains, castles, and dragons all took shape under his deft hands before he squashed them, laughing, like a careless giant. When the dough and Kellen’s arms needed a rest, Estah sat him down in front of the kitchen’s massive stone fireplace with a breakfast of oat porridge, honey, and sausages. The first red-gold glow of dawn was gilding the kitchen’s windows when Jolle, Estah’s husband, tramped inside with a load of firewood. As the halfling man went back out to the courtyard for more, Kellen got up and neatly stacked the wood he had brought in.

“It looks as if someone’s in a helpful mood today,” Jolle observed with a broad grin as he returned, setting down a second armful of wood. Like his wife, the halfling man was not even as tall as Kellen, but he was sturdily built.

“More so than usual, actually,” Estah commented with a sharp glance at Kellen.

Kellen just smiled mysteriously, returning to his breakfast. Sometimes it was fun to make adults wonder if you had done something wrong.

Soon Jolle had a summer-fattened piglet roasting over a steady fire in the gigantic fireplace. Kellen finished his breakfast and returned to the bread dough, this time shaping it into loaves instead of unicorns and wyverns. Before long these were baking in the ovens next to the fireplace, filling the kitchen with their warm fragrance. Kellen was wiping excess flour off the table when two voices drifted from the inn’s back hallway.

“I told you I would take care of the problem, Caledan.” The first voice was rich, like wine and smoke, but there was a sharp edge of annoyance to it.

“What’s the difference, Mari?” This voice was rougher than the first, almost a growl, but with a note of musicality to it all the same. “You wanted the problem taken care of, and I took care of it. It doesn’t really matter whether it was my knife or yours.”

The first voice was blistering. “For your information, Caledan, ‘take care of the problem’ does not universally mean ‘put a dagger in its heart.’ ”

Kellen looked up to see a man and a woman enter the kitchen. The woman was not pretty. She was tall and rawboned—though not at all ungainly—wearing doeskin breeches and a green velvet jacket over a billowing white shirt. She tossed her thick, darkfire hair over a shoulder like a horse tossing its mane; indeed there was something rather horsey about her large features and too-square jaw, though in a pleasing way.

If the woman was equine, the man was wolfish. He was lean and broad shouldered, and moved with a stiff, predatory grace. Gray flecked his dark hair, and his eyebrows were shaggy above gray-green eyes. His slate-colored doublet was well kept, but over it he wore a travel-stained cloak of midnight blue.

Kellen knew the pair well. The wolfish man was his father, Caledan Caldorien, while the square-jawed woman was Caledan’s companion, Mari Al’maren. The two of them were more than lovers; they were partners as well, for both Caledan and Mari were Harpers. As a team, they embarked on dangerous and invariably secretive missions for the mysterious, benevolent organization known as the Harpers. Kellen’s mother had died over two years ago. As his father’s constant companion, Mari might have filled the void. However, Estah was more than enough mother for everybody who lived at the inn. Thus, over time, Mari had become more like an aunt to Kellen, and a very special friend. Together they made up stories, practiced at archery—for Mari was a master of the longbow—and went for long treks in the rolling hills outside the city, hunting for lizards, interesting stones, and buried treasure. For a time, Kellen had imagined that Mari and his father might get married one day. Now he was not so certain. The two had always been contentious in their relationship. However, these days arguing was all they seemed to accomplish.

“Good morning, Kellen,” Caledan said, his grin cheerful if a bit haggard. Apparently, Harper work had kept the pair out all night, as it often did. He flopped into a chair and started to put his boots up on the table, but a sharp glare from Estah made him think twice. He lowered his mud-spattered boots to the floor. Mari paced tensely in front of the fire, arms crossed. She cast a smile at Kellen, but it was thin and fleeting. Kellen shot her his warmest smile in return, for which she gave him a grateful look.

“The spy we discovered in the High Tower could well have been Zhentarim, Caledan,” Mari went on in a low voice. “If so, he would have known if there are others of his kind in Iriaebor, and whether it’s the Black Network that’s behind the unexplained murders in the city. I really would have liked to have kept him alive long enough to ask him a few questions.”

Caledan gave a rough snort of laughter. “Answering questions is difficult when one has a dagger in one’s back. It’s very distracting to one’s concentration. At least so I’ve heard.”

Estah scowled at this. “Well, that’s fine talk for present company,” she said sharply, giving a meaningful nod in Kellen’s direction.

Caledan seemed not to hear the halfling’s reproving words. As happened increasingly often of late, his gaze had gone suddenly distant, as if he stared into some far-off place that the others could not fathom. It was just one of several peculiarities Caledan had been exhibiting recently. At times he seemed terribly far away, while on other occasions his temper would flare hotly at the most minor of annoyances, and he might laugh loudly—almost too loudly—at unlikely things such as a coal bursting on the hearth or a dropped plate shattering against the floor. Shadows hung beneath his eyes, gathering in the hollows of his cheeks. He had not been eating much lately, to Estah’s great concern. Kellen was beginning to wonder if his father might be ill.

Caledan’s gaze came back to his surroundings. “I don’t see why you’re so mad at me, Mari,” he went on as if there had been no pause. “I was having some fun and got a little carried away, that’s all.”

Mari stared at him in shock. “It isn’t like you to be so cavalier about Zhentarim, Caledan. If the Black Network could find a way to get Iriaebor under its yoke again, it’d do it in a second. And these murders may be the beginning of some plan to do just that.”

Caledan and Mari didn’t usually speak to Kellen of their work for the Harpers. Despite this, he gleaned much from what they let slip in his presence. For instance, he knew the Zhentarim were a sort of cult. They followed no god in particular, though they cultivated many of the darker ones to gain magic, but instead worshiped gold and power, stopping at nothing to win these. The Harpers worked against all evils in the Heartlands, but the Zhentarim were their time-honored enemies.

Several years ago, the Black Network had taken control of Iriaebor, enslaving the populace and bleeding the city dry. It was Caledan and Mari, on a mission for the Harpers, who finally had ousted the Zhents from Iriaebor. The Black Network was still furious at losing its grip on the wealthy city and would do anything to regain control.

If Mari’s suspicions were right, now the Zhentarim were trying to do just that. Since Higharvestide, there had been over a dozen murders in Iriaebor. Each of the murders shared the same grisly details: All occurred at night, with the corpses horribly mauled. In each case the victim was a less-than-savory individual, ranging from back-alley hoodlums to corrupt petty nobles. The Harpers feared the deaths were part of some Zhentarim plot—perhaps sacrifices for a ritual magic of dark and unknown purpose—and that the Black Network was preying on the dregs of society for some mysterious reason. Mari and Caledan had been given orders to investigate. However, it looked as if they had no answer to these strange occurrences.

Kellen thought of his intention to tell his father about the curious handprint he had seen on his window. He looked at Caledan, then Mari. Both seemed weary from their night’s travails, and from their argument. After a moment, he decided he would have to figure out for himself what the handprint signified.

Mari took her leave then. “It was a long night,” she said with a deep sigh before heading upstairs to her chamber.

Caledan did not follow her. “I have some things to do down in the New City,” he explained gruffly. “I’ll be back before sundown.”

Estah only nodded, her lips pursed in a frown of disapproval. Caledan paused to ruffle Kellen’s hair affectionately, then disappeared out the inn’s back door.

Midday arrived dim and dreary. A storm had gathered over the city, and the failing light forced Jolle to light candles throughout the inn. The threatening cloudburst kept customers away; the inn’s long main room stayed empty. Kellen sat in a corner, playing a gentle melody on his bone flute while two very small people sprawled on the floor before him. These were Estah’s children, Pog and Nog. The girl, Pog, was the elder of the two; she was red-cheeked and impish. The boy, Nog, was quieter; he seemed to subscribe to the theory that actions spoke more strongly than words. Being the eldest, Kellen often found himself taking care of the two young halflings.

“Today I’m going to tell you the story of the Shadowking,” Kellen told them in a low voice.

“The Shadowking?” Pog gasped, her eyes wide. Nog let out a squeal of terror and delight.

“That’s right,” Kellen said mysteriously. “A long age ago, in a land called Ebenfar, there lived a king. This king was a great sorcerer, and his name was Verraketh.” Lifting the flute to his lips, Kellen played a few wild notes. He gestured to the shadows on the wall, cast by a flickering candle. Pog and Nog stared, wide-eyed. In time with Kellen’s music, the shadows swirled, silently reshaping themselves into jagged shapes that suggested a craggy landscape. Atop the highest peak stood the silhouette of a man, his cloak blowing behind him.

This was shadow magic. It was a rare talent that ran in Caldorien blood and that always appeared in a family member at least once in a generation. Caledan possessed it, and so did Kellen.

Kellen lowered his flute. “Although he was powerful beyond all others, Verraketh’s magic was dark at heart. In time it transformed him, until at last he was a man no longer, but an awful creature of evil—the Shadowking.” He played a dissonant melody on his pipes, and the shadows on the wall responded. The silhouette of the man expanded, twisting into a new form: a bestial shape crowned by pointed antlers. Pog and Nog let out small cries, clutching each other, but they did not take their eyes off the shadows.

Kellen went on in an eerie whisper. “For centuries, the Shadowking ruled from his dark throne in Ebenfar, laying waste to the land all around, for he drew strength and power from the destruction of living things. Eventually, the Shadowking decided to bring all the world of Toril under his dark dominion. Deep in a mountain cave, he forged a stone. The magic of the stone was that it could control the shadows that reside in a man’s heart—for all men have a dark aspect within—and thus control the man himself. It was called the Nightstone, and with it the Shadowking would have the power to rule the world.”

“But the Shadowking didn’t, did he?” Pog asked in a quavering voice. “Rule the world, I mean.”

Kellen shook his head. Pog and Nog knew the familiar tale almost by heart. “No, he didn’t. When the Shadowking tried to use the Nightstone, the troll who had worked the bellows of the forge threw off his disguise. He wasn’t a troll at all, but a man. His name was Talek Talembar, and he was a great bard. Unknown to the Shadowking, Talembar had bound an enchantment into the Nightstone as it was being forged. This was the shadow song. When Talembar played the song on his pipes, the Nightstone listened and would not obey the Shadowking. In fury, the Shadowking attacked Talek Talembar, and the two fought night and day for a year.”

Kellen played a stirring air on his flute, and the shadows reshaped themselves into the two titanic figures, caught in the throes of battle. Pog and Nog were mesmerized. “In the end, Talek Talembar used the shadow song to wrest the Nightstone from his foe, and thus the Shadowking was defeated. Talembar raised a great cairn over the crypt of the sorcerer-king of Ebenfar, so the evils of the Shadowking and his Nightstone were hidden away.” Kellen played a triumphant melody, and the outline of a mountain rose over the fallen silhouette of the Shadowking.

“But what happened to Talek Talembar?” Pog asked.

“Like many heroes, he met an unheroic end,” Kellen said quietly. “He was slain by a goblin’s arrow, in a land that is now lost under the Fields of the Dead, far to the west.” He played one last wistful note on the bone flute, and the shadows swirled like mist before a wind. When they coalesced again, it was in the shape of those mundane objects standing between candle and wall: chairs and tables and small halfling children. The shadowplay was over.

Pog’s forehead crinkled in a frown. “That’s not a good enough ending,” she protested. “Talek Talembar ought to live happily ever after.” Nog nodded emphatically in agreement.

“But that’s not what happened,” Kellen said softly. He cast a sad look toward the door of the kitchen. “Sometimes people don’t live happily ever after, and that’s just the way it is.”

Before Pog and Nog could protest further, Estah poked her head into the common room, calling her children to their chores. They groaned but obeyed, dragging their feet as they shuffled into the kitchen.

Alone, Kellen ran his fingers over the smooth bone flute. He thought about the part of the tale he had never told Pog and Nog. A thousand years after the time of Talek Talembar, the crypt of the Shadowking was found once more, and the Nightstone with it, and the Shadowking almost came to life again. It was a story Kellen knew all too well, for he himself had been a part of it.

It was Kellen’s own mother, the Zhentarim lord Ravendas, who discovered the crypt beneath the Tor—the crag upon which perched Iriaebor’s many-towered Old City. With the Nightstone, she aspired to rule all the Zhentarim. However, to remove the stone from its resting place, she needed someone with shadow magic, such as Talek Talembar himself had possessed. Kellen wasn’t entirely certain of the details—adults could be infuriatingly vague about certain subjects when they knew children were listening—but Ravendas tricked Caledan into thinking she was someone else, someone he loved, and thereby used him to create a baby. That baby was Kellen, who like Caledan possessed the shadow magic. Ravendas had what she needed.

Though Kellen didn’t know it at the time—his mother had kept him locked in a room in Iriaebor’s High Tower—the Harpers had sent Caledan and Mari to stop Ravendas. Helping them was the renowned Fellowship of the Dreaming Dragon, including Estah, the mage Morhion, a monk named Tyveris, and a thief called Ferret, who was lost forever in the destruction of the Shadowking’s crypt.

For indeed, it was destroyed in the end, as was Kellen’s mother, and by her own evil plan. When Ravendas seized the Nightstone, its magic consumed her. From her body burst a dark, monstrous shape: the Shadowking reborn. The Shadowking would have walked the face of Toril once more, but at the last moment Caledan discovered the long-lost secret of Talek Talembar’s shadow song. When he played the song on his pipes, the Nightstone burst asunder, and the Shadowking—as well as Ravendas—was no more.

The events in the crypt had taken place two and a half years ago. Afterward, Kellen went to live with Caledan and Mari at Estah’s inn, and for a time they had all been happy. For a time. Kellen sighed. Once again, he wondered why Caledan and Mari could not seem to get along. He supposed that, sometimes, even love wasn’t enough to overcome all differences. Picking up his flute, he played a melancholy tune. Shadows swirled once more on the wall, and the dark silhouettes of two birds whirled and dived gracefully. Kellen concentrated, and the music changed, growing bolder. Suddenly, the two bird shadows flew off the wall. Like wisps of dark silk, they swirled around Kellen’s head, flapping their silent wings in time to the music.

“Your father could never do that.”

Kellen jumped out of his chair at the sound of the voice, nearly dropping the flute. The shadow birds vanished like puffs of smoke. He spun around to see a tall man with eyes like blue ice and hair as long and golden as a lion’s mane. Though Kellen had seen the man only a handful of times over the last two years, he recognized him all the same. It was Morhion, the mage who had once belonged to the Fellowship of the Dreaming Dragon.

Morhion took a step closer. He was clad in shirt and breeches of pearl gray, and over these flowed a vest of twilight purple so long it almost reached the ground. The mage spoke again in his resonant voice. “Caledan can make shadows dance with his music, but I have never seen him pipe them right off the wall. How long have you been able to perform this feat, Kellen?”

Kellen thought about this. “Always, I suppose,” he said finally. “However, it was only a few months ago that I discovered I could do it. It isn’t so hard, really. I just think about the shadows jumping off the wall … and they do!”

A musing smile touched the handsome mage’s lips. “Something tells me that it is not quite so simple as you present it, Kellen. You have great talent at magic.”

Kellen only shrugged, but inwardly he beamed. He barely knew Morhion, but Kellen liked the mage all the same. Morhion was cool, even distant, but there was lightning in his blue eyes, and he wore power comfortably, like a soft cloak. An idea struck Kellen. “I think that we should be friends, Morhion.”

Morhion raised a single eyebrow. “Oh? And why is that?”

Kellen thought of the years he had spent locked in a tower room by his mother, so that his power over shadows would remain a secret. He knew Morhion spent most of his time in solitude in his own tower, studying spells. “Because,” he said finally, “we both know what it is to be alone with our magic.”

After a long moment, Morhion nodded. “I think perhaps you’re right. Very well. Come to my tower tomorrow, Kellen. We shall talk of magic, you and I.”

Kellen gave the mage a smile. Then, placing his flute in its leather pouch, he dashed off to the kitchen to help Estah and Jolle with the evening meal. Outside, the storm had passed, and by sundown the inn would be crowded with hungry patrons once again.

Caledan returned from his wanderings late in the afternoon. Mari came downstairs just as he stepped through the inn’s door. The two exchanged troubled looks but no words. Morhion spoke briefly with each. He had some news concerning their investigation into the unexplained deaths, though Kellen did not learn its precise nature. After that, Morhion left the inn to return to his tower. Belatedly, Kellen realized that the mage would have been the perfect person to tell about the frosty handprint.

“I suppose I can tell Morhion tomorrow,” Kellen decided as he cranked the handle of the iron spit, turning the sizzling piglet over the hot flames.

Estah appeared before him. “I need some more sage for the stew, Kellen. Do you think you could pick some in the garden for me?”

Kellen nodded and ran out the back door of the inn. He was glad to escape the heat of the fire; the cool evening air felt good against his glowing cheeks. The inn was perched on the precipitous western edge of the Tor, and Kellen paused to gaze at the distant horizon, watching the sun sink into a sea of clouds as brilliant as molten copper. He hurriedly made his way through the garden. This late in the year, the garden was mostly a tangle of dried brown plants and witchgrass. At last Kellen found a patch of dark green herbs. He knew which was sage by its dusty scent, and he picked a handful. Turning, he started back toward the inn.

That was when he saw them. They glittered on the hard ground, outlined in white crystals of frost. Footprints. Kellen’s heart skipped a beat. He took in a deep breath of air—air no longer just cool, but sharp and cold, like steel in the dead of winter. Slowly, he followed the trail of shimmering footprints with his eyes.

The ghost stood on the edge of the Tor.

The last rays of sunlight filtered through the man’s translucent body. He seemed to waver in and out of existence—now dim, now bright—like the flickering light of a dying candle. The man was clad in peculiar, ancient clothes, at once more flowing and more angular than modern attire. Although he wasn’t certain how, he realized who the spirit was. His father had encountered this same shade once before, though that had been far from here, in the desolate land known as the Fields of the Dead. Kellen’s breath fogged on the frigid air as he whispered the words.

“Talek Talembar.”

The ghost gazed at Kellen with eyes like emeralds, then stretched out his arms in a plaintive, urgent gesture. The spirit’s voice blended eerily with the low moan of the wind.

“The old king hath fallen … and a new king doth rise to take his place …”

As the last sliver of the sun slipped below the far horizon, the ghost vanished, leaving Kellen to shiver alone in the gathering gloom of the garden.