Midnight's mask

CHAPTER 18

Vhostym smiled through his pain. He had teleported out of his tower and now stood, in his own flesh for the first time in centuries, on the surface of Toril.

The starlight, visible in the dark sky around the Crown of Flame, caused needle stabs of pain in his flesh but he did not care. The pain on his skin was paltry compared to the agony of his rapidly deliquescing organs and bones. He would be dead soon, but he had accomplished what he had planned for so long. He could die content.

His spell, his greatest spell, caused the umbra of the Crown of Flame to fall directly on his island, casting a perfect circle of shadow over it and the surrounding sea. As Toril continued its orbit around the sun, as Toril spun and wobbled on its axis, the magic of Vhostym's spell constantly adjusted to keep Selune's tear before the fiery orb, poking a black hole in the sky, projecting a black spot onto Faerun's surface, onto Vhostym's island. He had turned day into night and claimed that night for his own. He reveled in his final act of dominion over the multiverse.

Looking up through watery, stinging eyes, Vhostym admired the white flares of the corona that shot out in vaporous streams from the black hole of the sun-it was his father, millennia ago, who had called the corona the Crown of Flame. Vhostym had thought it beautiful then and he thought it more beautiful now than a rage of dragons in flight, more wondrous than the magma cascades of the Plane of Fire. He thought of his father's face, something he had not done in a long while-the long chin, deep set eyes, the thin-lipped mouth that so rarely smiled. He wondered if his father would have been proud of all Vhostym had done, all he had created and destroyed.

Vhostym had only a short time left, he knew. He had finished his work only just in time. He who had lived for millennia now had only hours remaining to him. Vhostym felt no melancholy about his impending death. He had lived well and accomplished all he wished.

He could have walked Faerun during a natural eclipse, of course. Toril experienced many. But during a natural eclipse the umbra raced across Faerun's surface as the celestial bodies continued in their orbits. He would have been able to spend only moments in its darkness.

He wanted more. He wanted to create the eclipse, to hold it in place, to spend a day on the surface. To control it, as he had controlled so much in his life. And he had done it.

Instead of his habitual flight, Vhostym walked on one of the Wayrock's rocky shorelines, shoeless. He stumbled often, but the feel of the stones under his feet, the sound of the surf in his ears, the smell of sea salt, all of it was more precious to him than all of the treasures he had accumulated. He savored each moment. He would pass into nothingness with the satisfaction of having spent a life accomplishing much.

Cale's grief and rage had given way to a simmering, inexhaustible need that could be met only in the Sojourner's death. Cale did not understand the Sojourner's purpose in blocking the sun and did not care. He wanted only one thing-chororim. Justice, vengeance. For Jak and for himself.

He walked the shadow space to the island outside.

Darkness reigned, as black as pitch. In Selgaunt, the eclipse had been partial. Here, as Cale had expected, it was total.

For now.

A ring of white fire surrounded the black hole in the sky. Dim stars were visible beyond the absent sun.

The tower loomed behind him but no magical energy rose from it to seize the rocky sphere in the sky. Cale had ended that when he killed the Weave Tap. The eclipse continued for now, but soon Toril would spin the Wayrock out from under its shadow. The Sojourner's spell was dead; he just didn't know it yet.

And so was the Sojourner.

Cale saw nothing around him except the tower and an unending series of rocky outcroppings and sandy beaches. Even the gulls, tricked by the eclipse into thinking it was night, had returned to their nests. The roar of the breaking surf was the only sound. He stepped through the darkness to a high promontory and scanned the ground below. He did not see the Sojourner. He would need to scour the island, and do it rapidly. If the Sojourner did not yet know that his spell had ended, he soon would.

With an act of will, Cale caused the darkness to make him invisible, visualized the dark spaces between visible space, and stepped across the island, covering a spearcast at a stride. He moved methodically across the terrain, from beach to promontory to hilltop.

He heard the Sojourner before he saw him. Cackling, grotesque laughter carried above the sound of the surf. Cale followed it to its source, blood on his mind.

On a sandy beach below him, ankle deep in the foamy water, a pale, sticklike figure moved feebly along the beach. With effort, the figure held his thin arms out, as if enjoying the fresh air. He stumbled often in the surf, nearly falling several times. He grabbed at his thin chest from time to time, his breath rattling. Gasps of pain escaped his lips but always gave way to another bout of laughter.

He was dying, Cale saw, and the realization made his pulse pound. The Sojourner was going to die in only one way-by Cale's hand.

Watching the small, pathetic creature wade in the surf, Cale realized that there was no grand plan. The Sojourner had not strived for power or immortality. He had schemed and risked the lives of thousands to walk the sand in the darkness he had created. Nothing more. Cale could hardly believe it. Cale thought the Sojourner worse than any power-mad mage he had ever heard of. Jak had died for nothing.

Cale's anger flared, burned hot, but he resisted the impulse to attack. He knew the Sojourner's power. He knew he could not simply cut the wizard down. His defenses would be powerful. Cale needed an opportunity.

He looked to the hole in the sky and knew it would come soon enough.

So he did what all assassins do-he watched and waited for his chance to kill. He pulled on his mask and whispered the words to a series of protective spells, ending with a spell that allowed him to see dweomers.

Unsurprisingly, the Sojourner glowed like the sun in his sight. Layer upon layer of spells cloaked him. Cale studied them for a few moments, trying to discern their purpose. Some he recognized as defensive wards, others he could not identify.

The island brightened. In the sky above, a fingernail of light peeked out from the edge of the eclipse. Toril was turning and the misplaced moon was not keeping pace. A flare of magical energy, some last vestige of the Sojourner's spell, engulfed the moon, caused it to glow silver. Cracks formed in its surface.

The returning light made Cale uncomfortable but it made the Sojourner's skin blister. Cale could not distinguish between the Sojourner's continuing laughter and his hisses of pain. The sun sneaked farther out from behind Selune's tear. The cracks in the moon grew wider. The light grew. The Sojourner stumbled again, looked up. He rubbed his bare arms. Wisps of smoke rose from his skin. He was burning in the sun. Cale saw his lips peeled back in a grimace of pain.

Cale drew Weaveshear and waited.

The Sojourner looked up as if to the great deepstars overhead, then quickly turned away, hissing with pain. The light surely must have burned his eyes. He stumbled, nearly fell.

Cale struck.

He stepped from the shadows near him and into the Sojourner's own shadow. His proximity triggered the Sojourner's defensive wards. Lightning flared, a fan of flame, a cloud of negative energy. Cale held Weaveshear before him and the blade drank what it could. But the power of the spells was too much for the blade to consume and some of the energy reached Cale. His muscles violently contracted and lightning burned a hole in his stomach. He bit down involuntarily on his tongue, so hard he nearly severed the end. Blood filled his mouth. The last of the negative energy ward stole some of his soul and chilled him to the bone.

He endured it all, cast Weaveshear aside-this was not a matter for the weapon of Mask, but for Cale's own hands-and wrapped his arms, still powered by the spells that augmented his size and strength, around the frail body of the Sojourner. The creature did not struggle against his hold, did not even seem surprised.

Cale clamped one huge hand over the Sojourner's mouth and his palm nearly covered the creature's entire face. He would not let the Sojourner utter a magical word, not a sound. He felt the Sojourner's wet respiration against his fingers. The Sojourner stank of medicines.

Cale spit a mouthful of blood and said though his pain, "This is over."

Cale felt a tingling behind his eyes, the Sojourner's mental fingers, and feared that his protective spell had not worked. The creature's voice sounded in his head: You have protected yourself against attack but not communication.

Cale held the Sojourner still and said in his ear, "You killed my friend."

Did I? I would do it again. I've killed many. I suspect you have too.

Cale wanted to kill him then, but he could not. He had to know.

"Why all this? Did you do it for nothing more than a stroll in the godsdamned sand?"

A shudder wracked the Sojourner's body. It took Cale a moment to realize it was laughter and not pain.

Men always ask why, as if there must be some overarching reason for events. Not this time, priest. There is no such reason. Thousands will die to satisfy my whim.

Cale thought of his words to Riven: This is more than personal. He had been wrong; Riven had been right. There was nothing bigger than the personal.

He gritted his teeth and started to squeeze. Calmly, the Sojourner projected: What moments do you remember most fondly from your youth, priest?

Cale did not answer but he hesitated. He remembered nothing from his youth with fondness.

When death comes for you, you will look back to those moments, long for them as you do for nothing else. All that I have done, I have done to satisfy that longing. To walk the surface in my own form, to feel the wind, to see the Crown of Flame, as I did in my youth. Yes. Is that enough of a why for you?

Cale was disgusted, but in a barely acknowledged corner of his mind, admiring. He hung onto the disgust. He looked up to the sky, to the moon, to the growing slice of the sun. He remembered telling Jak and Magadon that the Sojourner would not involve himself in something small. But he had. His methods had been large but his goal was no more ambitious than that of any man.

"You speak of killing as if it were a small thing."

And you speak as though I should be concerned with the deaths of others. What are all those hundreds, even thousands, to me? I have killed entire worlds for less.

Cale struggled for words, found none.

The Sojourner said, I have seen and done what I willed. Nothing matters anymore. I will be dead by the end of the day.

"It's already night," Cale said.

He lifted the Sojourner from his feet and squeezed.

The frail creature gasped as Cale brought his strength to bear on the thin body, the weak bones. A final protective ward on the Sojourner flared green and Cale felt a surge through his body.

The Sojourner's ribs snapped, folded in on themselves, his collarbone cracked. Cale echoed with his lips the mental screams of the creature that he heard in his brain, for the final ward on the Sojourner was some kind of reciprocity spell. Cale experienced the damage that he inflicted on the Sojourner-the shattered bones, the pain, the pierced organs. His shade flesh tried to repair the damage but the pain made him vomit down his shirt, down the back of the Sojourner's cloak.

Cale did not know whether pain prevented the Sojourner from casting a spell, or whether he was even interested in trying. Cale did not care; he squeezed and the Sojourner screamed. Cale took satisfaction in his own agony because he knew it mirrored what was felt by the Sojourner. He smiled at the creature's screams, smiled at his own, feeling soiled but unable to stop himself. He pulled the Sojourner so tight against him that they might as well have been melded. Cale's bones ground against bones; his lungs filled with blood. He forced his shattered chest to draw another breath, another.

He was killing the Sojourner, and he was killing himself. He did not care. He thought of Jak and squeezed. The Sojourner's frail body broke to pieces in his grasp; his own body shattered. Soon the pain became unbearable; he could not see, he could not breathe. His ruined arms could not hold the creature. The Sojourner slipped from his grasp to the beach. Cale too collapsed. He could not tell if he was screaming alone or if the Sojourner's mental screams continued.

The last thing he saw before he passed out from the agony was the sun emerging fully from behind Selune's tear.

Cale awoke. He lay on his back on the beach, broken, twisted, in agony. His chest felt heavy; blood was filling his lungs. His arms and shoulders were shattered, immovable. The pain nearly caused him to lose consciousness but he held on doggedly. The sun was directly overhead. No shadows lay anywhere near him. His shade flesh could not regenerate in the direct light of the sun. He would be dead soon, long before the sun set.

He listened to the surf, watched in amazed horror as the Sojourner's cracked moon grew larger in the sky. Without the spell to hold it in place, it was plummeting toward Toril. He could not imagine the destruction it would wreak. He thought of Tazi, of Varra. He hung on to the memory of their faces. He wondered if Tazi was watching the sky fall.

Beside him, the Sojourner's broken body smoked and burned until it was nothing more than ash. The surf washed the ashes into the sand, pulled at scraps of robes, trying to draw them out to sea.

The moon caught fire as it fell, grew a long tail of flame. Its size quickly doubled as it approached. Cale could hear it pelting through the sky, sizzling.

It would destroy kingdoms.

He thought of Jak, of Sephris, and closed his eyes.

He snapped them open when an explosion thundered across the sky.

Selune's tear had separated into five large chunks, each cutting a flaming path through the sky. Even as he watched, those chunks broke apart into smaller pieces, and those into smaller. Soon, thousands of tiny pieces of the tear blazed their way through the heavens.

He smiled, laughed, choked on his own blood.

It was beautiful.

Consciousness started to slip from him again. He sank into an oblivion of pain, watching a swarm of fireflies dart across the sky.

He awoke an indeterminate time later to the sound of boots crunching against the sand. Someone stood over him, a dark form-Riven.

"We split up to find you," Riven said. The assassin stared down at him but did not move to help. Riven shaded his eyes and looked up at the sun. "Light's bothering you, eh?"

The assassin looked down at Cale, his expression hard. Cale saw Riven's internal debate writ clear in the hard set of his jaw, the hole of his eye. Riven could kill Cale; the Second could kill the First.

The surf beat against the sand. Cale and Riven stared at each other, saying nothing. The silence stretched.

Cale tried to speak but his dry throat could not form words. He managed only a defiant snarl before pain assailed him and his vision went black. He fought his way back to consciousness. He would look Riven in the eye when he died.

When he regained focus, he saw that Riven had drawn his blade. The assassin gave a hard smile and jabbed downward.

Not at Cale, at the remains of the Sojourner's robes.

"He didn't like the sun much either, I see."

Riven laughed harshly, kneeled, and retrieved a handful of items from the pile of ash and bones that had been the Sojourner. He pocketed them as he stood. Cale assumed they were the magical stones that had circled the Sojourner's head.

Riven stood over him again, blade bare. He cocked his head to the side, considering. Finally, he sighed and said, "Look where we are, Cale. Look what we've become." He stepped around Cale until his body shielded Cale from the sun.

The darkness energized Cale. Covered in Riven's shadow, Cale's flesh began to regenerate. Bones and organs slowly reknit. Agonizing jabs of pain coursed through his body. He could not contain a hiss of pain. Riven stood by and watched it all in silence, like a Sembian wallman-a bodyguard-of old. Riven was Cale's wallman, his right hand.

When Cale's wounds had healed enough to allow him to stand, he climbed to his feet. He and Riven stared at each other for a moment.

Cale nodded his thanks. Riven nodded in acknowledgement. They did not need to say anything more.

"Let's find Mags," Cale said, squinting uncomfortably in the sun. "There's one more thing left to do."

"Fleet," Riven said, nodding. Cale was surprised to see Riven's expression soften as he spoke Jak's name.

"Yes," Cale said.

"He won't do it," Riven said.

The assassin did not need to say whom he meant by "he," or what he meant by "it."

"He will," Cale said. "I'll make him."

Together, Cale, Riven, and Magadon entered the Sojourner's tower. As they walked the halls, Cale noticed for the first time the images on the defaced murals. He noticed too the jawless skull motif that appeared on some of the door handles.

"This was a temple to Cyric," he said. "Or at least part of a temple."

Riven nodded and rubbed the black disc he wore on a chain around his neck. "That was why he did it, Cale. He arranged all of this to spite Cyric. To steal one of the Dark Sun's temples for his own."

Cale did not credit Mask as being that skillful a schemer. He said, "Or maybe he just got lucky. Either way, he did not do it-we did. He owes us."

To that, Riven said nothing.

They made a pilgrimage to Jak through the curving corridor. Riven and Magadon had placed Jak's body on the floor in a small, unused chamber off the central corridor on the second floor. The room bore no sign of having been used in Cyric's rites.

A wool blanket covered Jak up to his chin. He looked as if he were sleeping. Seeing his friend's body reopened the scab of Cale's grief. He donned his mask to cover his tears.

He sat on the floor next to his friend but did not touch him. After a moment, he reached under the blanket and took Jak's hand in his. The little man's hand was cold, rigid. Emotion flooded Cale.

"You owe me this," he said to the vaulted ceiling, to Mask. He raised his voice. "You owe me this!"

The Shadowlord had asked him again and again to sacrifice, and again and again he had-his family, his blood, his humanity, and his best friend. It was too much. He wanted repayment.

"Do you hear me?" His voice rang off the ceiling. "You owe me. And now you are going to pay."

It was not midnight but Cale nevertheless bowed his head, closed his eyes, and began to pray. Not for multiple spells, as was typical, but for a single spell. A spell that would bring Jak back from the dead. He knew it was possible. He had heard tales.

He sent his thoughts, his need to save his friend, flying through the planes to Mask. He knew the god heard him. He had to have heard him.

No response.

Cale's anger grew. He demanded that Mask listen, demanded that he answer.

Nothing came. Jak lay beside him, limp and cold.

A hand on his shoulder-Magadon's.

"Erevis …" the guide began.

Cale shook the guide's hand free. "No. No, dammit, Mags. He's going to answer me." He looked up and shouted, "You will give me this or I walk away from you forever. And if I do that, I swear on the soul of my best friend that I will hunt down and kill every one of your priests that I can find. Every godsdamned one! And I'll be able to find a lot. You've given me too much. Trained me too well. No one will be able to stop me. No one." He looked back over his shoulder to Riven.

The assassin stared at him, nodded.

Cale turned back. "No one will stop us."

He waited.

Nothing.

He waited longer, growing increasingly angry.

"Have it your way," he said softly, and started to stand. He would start in Sembia, then Cormyr, then the rest of the Heartlands, then-

Knowledge filled his brain, knocked him back to his knees-the words to a prayer that performed the greatest of miracles. It could bring the dead back to life.

He felt a surge, could not contain a fierce grin.

"I can do it," he said to the room. "He's answered."

Cale put his palms on Jak's chest and recited the words to the prayer.

Jak sat at the table of his mother's cottage, listening to the chatter of his family, inhaling the warm smells of his mother's cooking. He could not stop smiling.

"You'll fill your bowl more than that, Jakert Fleet," said his mother, while she buttered a piece of flatbread. "Look at you. You're a bag of bones. Eat. Eat."

"Yes, mother," Jak said. He knew better than to dispute his mother at the table.

As usual, his father offered him a consoling smile but said nothing.

"Pass the honey," Jak said to his brother.

Cob made as though he would throw a dripping honeycomb down to Jak, but his mother said, "Cobdon Fleet, if that comb leaves so much as a drop on my new tablecloth, not even Yolanda Warmhearth will be able to spare you my wrath."

Cob froze in mid throw and said sheepishly, "I was just funning Jak, mother."

"Of course you were, dearheart," his mother said, and took a small bite of her buttered bread. "Now put that comb back on its plate and pass the plate to your brother."

Cob did exactly that and Jak grinned at his brother's discomfiture. Jak dribbled honey from the comb onto a piece of bread and took a bite. It was as sweet as he remembered. Probably his father-a beekeeper-had taken it from one of his hives that morning. When Jak had been a boy, Mai Fleet's apiary and the honey it produced had provided well for his family. Of course, it also had resulted in more stings to the Fleet boys than Jak cared to recall. Still, he had long missed his father's honey at table, and his mother's soup. It was good to be home.

He set to his mother's potato soup, dunking his honeyed bread in the bowl between spoonfuls. His mother sat at the head of the table and looked on with approval.

"The soup is wonderful, moth-"

From outside, somewhere in the distance, he heard someone call his name. He could not quite place the voice-a friend's voice, he knew, but the name escaped him.

"Did you hear that?" he asked his brother, his father.

All of them kept their heads down.

Cob spoke around a mouthful of soup. "I didn't hear anything."

"Nor I," said his father, soaking his bread in honey. His mother always said of his father that if his nature had been as sweet as his sweet tooth, he could have married better. "There is not better," had always been his father's reply, and it had always earned him a smile from his wife.

"Eat your food, Jak," said his mother.

The voice called him again.

Jak pushed back his chair and rose. "There it is again."

Power filled Cale. He had never before cast a spell so demanding. His entire body shook. Sweat poured from him.

But it was working.

A rosy glow suffused Jak's body. The wound in his throat closed to a pink scar, to unmarred skin; the bruises on his arms and face healed. The spell remade his flesh, providing a complete and whole vessel for the returning soul. The spell then created a conduit between Jak's body and whatever plane to which his soul had traveled, opening a door that otherwise always remained closed. Cale put himself in the door, held it open, and called Jak's name.

Cale's voice grew in volume until it boomed, reverberated through the room, carried from the Sojourner's tower into the planes. He called Jak's name, trying to pull his soul back from its rest to re-inhabit his body.

"Jak!"

An unwelcome memory surfaced-Sephris Dwendon, changed after his forced resurrection, filled with bitterness. The memory of Jak's words surged back to Cale. When I'm dead, leave me that way.

Cale's voice faltered.

Was he doing the right thing? Was he acting to help Jak or satisfy his own desire to have Jak back? He did not like what he thought was the answer. But Jak had told him that friends, not places, were home, and Cale needed him.

His doubt caused the spell to start to unravel.

He remembered Sephris's bitter words, his admission that he had returned only out of a sense of duty. Jak would do the same. Cale could not bear to think of an embittered Jak.

Tears of guilt flowed down his face. He controlled the sob that threatened to burst from his throat.

He realized that he could not ask Jak to return. He would not. Wherever Jak was, that was home now.

He ceased the invocation and the power went out of him. He put his hand on Jak's forehead.

"Goodbye, my friend."

He reached into one of Jak's pouches, took his ivory-bowled pipe, and put it in a pouch at his own belt. He would keep the smell of Jak's pipeweed near to him-always.

Jak cocked his head and listened. The call did not repeat. For a reason he could not explain, profound sadness struck him. He had lost something, he knew. But he did not know what.

"Finish your soup, son," said his father. "You're free to stay now."

Jak did not know what that meant and his father did not explain. His father smiled and said, "Cob and I have taken care of the hives for the day. We can all go fishing at dusk, if you'd like. There's pond nearby, stuffed with longfin."

That sounded grand to Jak. The sadness diminished in the glow of his family's love. He sat back down at the table with his family and ate his mother's soup.

Magadon, Cale, and Riven stood looking at one another in a central chamber of the tower.

"What now?" Magadon said at last.

"I will take Jak and you both back," Cale said. "I have some things I need to do."

Magadon nodded.

"I'm staying," Riven said.

"Why?" Magadon asked.

"There are things I need to do also," Riven answered.

Cale looked around the temple, once Cyric's, now Mask's, and understood.

"This has only just begun," Riven said to Cale. "You realize that?"

Cale thought of Sephris, of the Source's call across Faerun. He nodded. He knew that Mask was not through with them yet. But for now, he had his own matters to address.

"You can leave Jak here," Riven said. "With me. You'll have a reason to come back."

Cale looked Riven in the eye. He thought again of Jak's words to him on the streets of Selgaunt-friends are home.

He nodded. "You'll see to him?"

Cale could not put Jak's body in the ground, could not be there when it happened.

"I will," Riven said.

Cale looked Riven in the face. Riven returned the stare.

The moment stretched. As one they stepped forward and embraced, briefly. A warriors' farewell.

Cale stepped back, pulled the shadows around him, and said, "Let's go, Mags."