Shadowbred

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

10 Uktar, the Year of Lightning Storms

Cale bade the house guards at the gate goodeve, strode down the walkway, and stepped out onto the darkness of Rauncel's Ride. Street torches pasted shadows over the cobbles, the sides of buildings. A few wagons rumbled up the streets and dozens of pedestrians walked the avenue. All of them wore worry on their faces. There was barely enough food to prevent starvation through the winter, and spring would bring war.

Cale adjusted his pack. He checked his weapons and his mask, and thanked Mask again for the spells that filled his mind. He walked the street until he found a deserted alley. It stank, of course, as all alleys did these days. Despite his grim mood, he smiled, thinking of Mask's request to him that he cease appearing and disappearing from alleys.

"Old habits are slow to die," he said, and pulled the darkness about him. He imagined the Wayrock in his mind-a rocky, gull-covered isle jutting from the blue expanse of the Inner Sea, with the temple that Mask had stolen from Cyric pointing up from its center.

Cale had not returned to the Wayrock since killing the Sojourner, since Jak had died. He knew he would find Riven there, serving Mask, and he would also find Jak's grave. He had not helped bury his friend-the pain had been too sharp, then-and he regretted it. He had never said good-bye, not really.

Remembering the halfling, how he had felt, cold and lifeless in Cale's arms, sent a swell of emotion through Cale like a fist in his throat. He beat back the tears and reached down to touch the pipe in his belt pouch-Jak's pipe. For a moment, the smell of pipeweed was so powerful that Cale could have sworn Jak was standing beside him.

But it was only a phantom, a memory, and it vanished with the breeze. Cale tried to send his grief with it. He had work to get done.

He reached out to make a connection between the night in Selgaunt and the night at the Wayrock, found it, and moved across the Inner Sea in a moment.

He appeared near the center of the island, just outside the tower. The surf murmured in the distance. The smell of fish and sea salt spiced the air.

The spire, a gray stone cylinder unmarred by windows, looked much the same as the last time he had seen it, when it had channeled enough magical power to pull one of Selune's tears from the Outer Darkness. The drawbridge was lowered and the open archway leered. Torches burned on either side of the entry and the flames danced in the wind. Cale saw no guards. Mask's temple appeared abandoned.

A figure materialized out of the darkness of the archway. Cale recognized Riven from his stature and stance, from the two sabers that hung from his weapon belt. He wore a black cloak rather than his usual crimson.

He did not bother to hail Riven and Riven did not bother to hail him. Cale started up the drawbridge; Riven started down. Cale was Mask's First; Riven was Mask's Second. They met in the middle, cloaked in the night.

"He told me you were coming," Riven said. "I have been waiting."

Like the tower, Riven looked much the same as the last time Cale had seen him-short, muscular, and precise. He wore his long black hair pulled back and tied. The scarred hole of his right eye looked like a pit in the swarthy skin of his face. The signature sneer and stained teeth nested in a black goatee. He wore a black disc on a chain around his throat-a symbol of Mask.

Cale did not waste time with niceties. "I need help, Riven."

Riven cocked an eyebrow over his empty socket. "What kind of help?"

"I need to pull a man out of the Hole of Yhaunn."

Riven scoffed until he saw that Cale was serious. "You came here for that? No one comes out of the Hole, Cale."

"He must, and soon."

Riven raised his eyebrows to ask why.

"Long tale," Cale said. "There is much at stake."

"For who?" Riven asked.

"For Mask. For Magadon."

Both struck bone. Riven's eye narrowed. "Magadon's in the Hole?"

"No. Magadon's missing."

"Missing?"

Cale hesitated, then dived in. "Have you… dreamed of him?"

Riven's eye widened and he nodded slowly. "A blizzard of ice, devils. He's falling. They stopped, though. A while back."

"For me, too," Cale said, nodding, though Cale had dreamed of flames, not ice. "But it's all related somehow: the dreams, the Hole, Mask." He stared into Riven's face. "I need your help, Riven."

"You are the First," Riven said, and the words surprised Cale, for he heard no envy in them. Riven stroked his goatee. "The Hole is dead to magic. Spells do not work there. Magical weapons or toys. Nothing."

Cale had not known. The fact complicated matters. "Nothing works?"

"Nothing," Riven answered. "When I was with the Zhents-just starting out-they considered trying to get a man out of there but called it off. They thought it impossible. It's not the guards. There aren't that many. It's that it's in a city, with only one way in and out, and no way to use magic."

"Nothing is impossible."

"True," Riven said. "But it can't help but be ugly."

"That's why I need you," Cale said.

Riven smiled at that. "We'll need to be fast."

"Speed is critical," Cale said, nodding. "We take a guard and force him to tell us where our man is. We get him and get out."

Riven looked him in the face. "Who's the target?"

"A Sembian nobleman. Endren Corrinthal."

Riven's face showed no recognition.

"Ordulin is making an armed play for all of Sembia. It's all lies, but Selgaunt and Saerb are the falls. Endren would rally some of the neutrals to Selgaunt and Saerb."

"Civil war in Sembia," Riven said, shaking his head. "Coin counters at war. They're in for some hard lessons." He looked at Cale. "I'll do this because you're the First and because you believe it ties back to Magadon. I care nothing for a Sembian civil war."

"Well enough," Cale said. He would get no better from Riven.

"When do we move?" Riven asked.

Cale considered. "Tomorrow night. Do you know the layout from your Zhent days? The number of guards?"

Riven shook his head. "I wasn't part of the Zhents' planning. Just muscle, then."

"Then we go in blind and improvise," Cale said.

"So we do," Riven said. He offered his hand. Cale was surprised, but took it. They had said good-bye with the same gesture after Jak's death.

"Welcome back," Riven said, and the words sounded almost exactly like those Mask had whispered in Cale's ear before the battle with Malkur Forrin's mercenaries.

"Almost there, now," Cale said softly, echoing Mask's words.

"What did you say?" Riven asked.

"Nothing. It's good to be back," Cale said, and meant it. He had come to rely on Riven, his Second, and Riven had not let him down.

Riven gazed into the night, licked his lips. "There are some things you need to see. Things have happened since you were last here."

Riven was rarely cryptic and his words raised Cale's curiosity. "Such as?"

"Follow me," Riven said.

They turned and walked up the drawbridge side by side. Before they reached the tower's archway, two short-haired hounds darted out of the tower and dashed toward them. Both had birder in them, judging from their ears and black and brown spots.

"My girls," Riven said by way of explanation. His voice held a surprising softness.

Cale kneeled as the canines rushed toward them. Riven halfheartedly ordered the dogs to heel and neither even slowed.

Cale held out his shadowhand to the dogs. They sniffed it suspiciously, whined, and backed off, but Cale persisted and the larger came back again to tentatively sniff, and the smaller followed suit. Moving slowly, Cale rubbed the larger one on her muzzle, the smaller on her flanks.

That did it. Tails wagged and they licked his fingers. Cale gave them a final pat.

"They're good dogs," he said, standing.

"Loyal," Riven answered quietly.

"A good quality," Cale said, not necessarily meaning the dogs.

"That's truth," Riven said.

Tongues lolling, the dogs bounced from Cale to Riven, and the assassin stroked each of their heads in turn. They licked his hand and both fell over and showed their bellies. Riven scratched each. Cale found the scene entirely incongruous. Until then, he had never seen Riven gentle with anything.

"I never understood your fondness for dogs," Cale said good-naturedly.

"And I never understood your fondness for Jak Fleet," Riven said as he stood.

Anger chased Cale's smile and hot words formed on his lips. He started to speak but Riven shook his head, held up his hand, and cut him off.

"That's a lie. I did understand it. Fleet and I… reached an understanding before the end. I'm sorry for those words, Cale. Old habits return when I see you."

"Old habits are slow to die," Cale said, echoing the words he had spoken to Mask moments before.

"Go on," Riven said to the dogs, and gestured at the archway. The dogs turned and darted inside, tails wagging. Riven watched them go, then turned to Cale.

"Let's say we end all this, beginning now."

"End what?"

"The posturing," Riven said, making a frustrated gesture. "All of it. We've been through too much, Cale. You are Mask's First and I am his Second, and that's the end of it."

Cale managed a nod through his surprise. They had been through too much. "Well enough," he said. "We are past it. Starting now."

Riven stared at him, nodded, and they walked up the drawbridge.

"I presume we'll hit the Hole after midnight?" Riven asked.

Cale nodded. "Well after."

Guards would be not only fewer, but tired in the small hours. Cale had killed many men during the sleepy hours before dawn. He knew Riven had done the same.

They strode through towering iron doors and into the temple's foyer. The dogs were gone. The bare entryway appeared exactly as it had when Cale had last seen it. A pair of wooden double doors stood opposite them, with a wide stairway beyond it leading up into darkness.

"I had thought to fit the place out," Riven said by way of explanation. "Transform it into a temple for Mask. I thought that was what he wanted."

Cale knew that guessing at what Mask wanted was a fool's game. "But it wasn't?"

Riven shook his head. "I don't think stealing this place was about getting a new temple. Or at least it was only partially about that." He looked at Cale sidelong and said, "I think it was about us."

They walked through the double doors and started to climb the wide stone stairway beyond.

"Us? What makes you think that?" Cale asked.

"They do," Riven said, and nodded at the top of the stairs.

Cale stopped in his steps.

At the top of the stairs stood seven men clad in darkness. Long dark hair hung loose around clean-shaven brown faces. At first Cale thought each wore a mask over the top half of his face but he realized it was a tattoo of a mask. The dark eyes looking out of the tattoos featured the eyefolds typical of those from the far east.

All wore gray cloaks, gray breeches, and soft leather shoes. None wore weapons, but all showed battle scars on their hands and forearms. Torchlight from the hall behind them backlit their silhouettes.

"They said a vision brought them here," Riven said.

"A vision?" Cale walked up the rest of the steps, Riven beside him, until he stood face to face with the foremost of the seven men, whom Cale took to be the leader. The man, smaller and less muscular than Riven, gave a nod and the others bowed slightly. All seven regarded Cale with open curiosity, though they said nothing.

"What kind of vision?" Cale asked the leader.

The man said nothing, merely studied Cale's eyes, the shadows that leaked from his skin, the darkness that flowed around him like fog.

"I asked you a question," Cale said.

"They arrived two months after you left," Riven explained. "They almost never speak, but I know they call themselves shadowwalkers. They may not be shades, but I have seen them move and they are damned close."

"What are they doing here?" Cale asked Riven, though he continued to eye the shadowwalkers.

" 'Waiting,' is all they would say."

"Waiting?" Cale asked. He stared into the leader's dark eyes.

"For what?"

"They won't answer you, Cale. They're just here… waiting. And they won't help us with Yhaunn. I have tried to enlist them before. Whatever they are waiting for, it hasn't happened yet."

"And you think it has to do with us?"

"With you."

Cale turned to him. "Me?"

"They aren't priests," Riven said, nodding at the shadowwalkers. He pulled the tie out of his hair and let it fall down his shoulders. "Hells, I don't know what they are. But they serve priests, or they did. They're from Telflamm, Cale. Mask has a large temple there, a large following. When they arrived, they said the Shadowlord had stopped answering the prayers of the priests. When they learned of that, they had the vision that led them here. They say they follow the Twilight Path."

Shadows leaked from Cale's skin as the implications of Riven's story settled on him. Mask had not stopped answering his prayers. Mask had chatted with him in an alley, or at least he thought so.

He looked at Riven and said, "Sometimes gods do not answer the prayers of even their priests."

Riven shook his head. "This is not one wayward priest. They said none of their priests received spells. None."

Cale shook his head, his mind spinning. What if he was the only priest to whom Mask spoke?

"What about you?" Riven asked, his voice quiet. "Does he still grant you spells?"

Cale hesitated, turned back to look at the shadowwalkers.

They were gone.

"I told you they were good," Riven explained. "What about it, Cale? Does he still grant you spells?"

Cale answered Riven with a question of his own. "What about you? Can you still heal with your touch? Does he still grant you that?"

Riven nodded. "That… and the rest."

Riven's candor surprised Cale. The assassin had been surprising him since Cale had appeared on the island. Cale decided to be honest.

"Yes, I can still cast spells. Though I went a long while without praying."

Riven's face showed first relief, then a question. "Why a long while?"

Cale could hardly believe Riven was asking the question. "Why? Because Jak is dead. Because I'm… this." He held out his arm and let the shadows spiral around his flesh. "Because he did it all so he could steal a thrice-damned temple."

Riven's face remained calm.

"I told you this was not about the temple. There's more to it."

Riven's calmness only stoked Cale's anger. "What if there isn't, Riven? Hells, why don't you question? What kind of faith doesn't doubt? Look what he took from us!"

Riven shook his head. "What kind of faith always doubts, Cale? And look what he gave us."

Cale blew out a breath and looked away. Riven said, "No Cyricists have come to take vengeance for the theft of the temple."

Cale said nothing and Riven repeated himself, as if he thought his words significant.

"Did you hear me? No Cyricists have tried to take back the temple, Cale. Not one, not ever. They're either ignorant of what happened or occupied with something bigger. I think it's the latter. Something is coming, Cale. You feel it. I know you do. I feel it, too. So do the shadowwalkers. That's why they're here."

"A storm," Cale said absently, and rubbed the back of his neck. For some reason, his mind turned to the book in his pack. "Sephris called it a storm."

"Sephris? The old prophet?"

Cale nodded.

"Cale, that's why Mask is withdrawing from his servants. All but us. This temple, the Sojourner, all of it was designed to prepare us. Don't you see that?"

Shadows leaked from Cale's fingers. He watched them dissipate into the darkness. "Prepare us for what?"

"For the storm," Riven said. "For whatever is coming."

Cale shook his head. "No. Not even gods plan that well. Besides, he's preparing himself, not us."

"It's the same thing," Riven said. "Let me show you something else. Come."

Cale took Riven by the shoulder. "I don't need any more surprises."

Riven looked him in the eye, his expression… soft? "One more," he said.

Riven led Cale through the darkened temple. Although the structure lacked any formal accoutrements of Mask's faith, Cale figured the Shadowlord found the darkness and shadows of the windowless temple pleasing. Torches lit their way through bare stone corridors and rooms.

Riven led Cale up a flight of stairs to a closed wooden door. Cale recognized the room and his throat caught. They had laid Jak's body there. He looked a question at Riven.

"Open it. You'll see."

Cale studied Riven's face.

"Open it," Riven insisted.

Slowly, reluctantly, Cale pushed open the door. When he saw what was within, his heart rattled in his ribcage and words stuck in his throat.

I sprint through the grass, my legs burning, my breath rattling. The stone cell is just ahead.

I hear a fear just behind me and lash out blindly backward with the mind blade. I feel it bite flesh and the fear wails with pain and anger.

Twenty paces to the door. Ten. Five. I lose my footing, fall to all fours, and scramble frantically the final few paces. 1 slam into the door, praying it is not locked.

It opens.

I fall in, throw the door shut behind me, and brace my back against it.

It's freezing inside.

The fears throw themselves against the door and drive it ajar. Grunting, I press my body against it, shut it again, and feel around desperately for some kind of lock, anything. My fingers close on a rusty frigid iron bar on the floor near the door. I find the bracket on the door by touch and slide the bar in.

The fears again throw themselves against the door. It shudders under the impact but the bar holds and they howl their frustration. Thumps on the roof and walls tell me they are looking for another way in.

Breathing heavily and sweating, I hold up my mind blade and look around the interior of the cell. Thankfully, I do not see any other means of ingress.

The wall opposite me is the wall and a crack runs through it from floor to ceiling. It is lined with smoke-blackened ice. Otherwise, the cell is a mirror of the one in which I had first awakened. Empty, with a bare stone floor.

The fears hit the door with such impact that it rattles on its hinges. Others beat at the roof, at the walls.

"Magadon," says a voice, the voice at the wall, coming from behind the crack. "Come here. To the crack."

I do not move. I stare across the cell at the crack in the wall while the fears try to beat their way inside.

"Terrifying, are they not?" the voice asks, and chuckles. "Come here, Magadon."

Clutching the mind blade, I cross the cell and stand before the wall. The crack cuts a jagged, irregular path down its face. Stink and cold leaks through-brimstone mixed with the fetid, rotting odor of a charnel house. I put my hand on the stone and find it icy to the touch.

"The wall is weakest here," says the voice eagerly. "You can break through it. Use your weapon."

The fears beat against the cell in a frenzy. The walls vibrate; the door rattles; the roof shakes. I am concerned that the whole structure may soon collapse. In my mind's eye, I imagine the black forms of the fears coating the cell like a layer of oil, encapsulating it in terror.

"You must hurry," says the voice. "Time is short."

I will the mind blade into the form of a large pickaxe and start chipping away at the wall, expanding the crack.

Jak lay on the same bed that they had placed him on soon after his death.

"This is not possible," Cale said, and shadows spiraled out of his skin. His legs felt weak. Jak should have been buried, decomposed. It had been over a year.

Despite his better sense, he allowed himself to hope and called, "Jak?"

The little man did not move.

"Go in, Cale," said Riven.

Cale entered the room in a daze and walked cautiously to the bed. His friend looked exactly as he had in life. His small frame barely put a dent in the bed. A mop of red hair framed a face that could have been sleeping. He looked at peace.

Cale fought back tears, and kneeled on his haunches at the head of the bed.

"Jak?"

The scab peeled away from his grief and the hole in his gut yawned. The tears came then. He could not stop them. He reached out a hand, tentatively, and touched Jak's cheek. He recoiled with a gasp.

Riven's voice sounded behind him and gave him another start.

"He is still warm," Riven said. "I could not bury him like that. So I left him there. I check him every day. Nothing has changed."

Cale nodded but did not turn. Shadows bled from his skin, swirled around him. He stared at Jak, hoping, fearing, wondering. What did it mean? He thought Jak's eyes could open at any moment. Did it mean that Jak wanted to come back?

"This is not possible," was all he could manage.

Riven stepped beside him and stared down at Jak. "And yet, there he is."

Cale shook his head. "Why? How?"

Riven eyed him sidelong. "Cale, I think… that he is waiting, too. Like the shadowwalkers."

"For what?" Cale started to say, but could not find his voice at first. "For what?"

"For you to let him go." Riven gestured at Jak. "He is as you left him when you stopped your resurrection spell in the middle of casting it. Let him go now."

Cale's eyes welled. He reached into his pocket and put his hand on Jak's wooden pipe. He had said good-bye to his friend but he knew he had never let go, not fully. That's why he had attacked Mask in the alley. That is why he burned a pipe at midnight every night. And it was the reason that he carried the dead weight of regret around in his gut. He had asked Riven to bury Jak. He had never even returned to visit the grave, or what he thought was a grave.

Cale thought of his promise to Jak and the words came out before he could stop them.

"I promised him I'd try to be a hero."

Riven neither sneered nor laughed, surprising Cale again. "You will keep that promise. I will help you because you are the First. That is my promise. Now… let him go."

Cale shook his head and the tears flowed. Riven put a hand on his shoulder. "You must. Whatever is coming, there is no more room for doubt, no more room for questions. There is room for you, me, and the Shadowlord. Nothing more and nothing less."

Cale heard the truth of his words, knew the truth of his words.

"Who in the Nine Hells are you?" he asked Riven, and tried to smile. "This temple has gone to your head."

Riven looked him in the eyes. "It has, but not in the way you think. Cale, I am the Second of Mask. We are more than comrades, more than friends. I am at your shoulder through whatever comes. Now… be the First."

Cale stared into Riven's good eye and remembered Mask's words to him in the alley in Selgaunt. Do what you were born to do.

"Be the First," Riven repeated.

Cale swallowed, steadied himself. "This is the way it will be, then?"

"It cannot be any other way."

Cale looked at Jak, back at Riven, and nodded. He put his hand over Jak's.

"Go," he said to Jak, and meant it. "Thank you for the second chance. You are my friend, always. But that's enough. Rest, now."

Jak's flesh began to cool in his hand. Cale did not recoil. He held Jak's tiny hand in his own, took a deep breath, and turned to Riven.

"Spades?"

Riven nodded. "Somewhere."

"I will carry him," Cale said. "Also, bring something small and sharp."

Riven looked a question at him but Cale did not explain. He picked up the body of his friend and carried him out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the temple. When he got outside into the night, he walked like an ordinary man up to the top of a small hill near the temple. It afforded a view of the island but not the sea, which was just as well. Jak had disliked the sea.

Cale sat on the earth and awaited Riven. Jak was growing colder; his body was stiffening.

Riven soon arrived, bearing two metal spades. His dogs followed. Together, the First and Second of Mask dug a grave and gently placed a friend and priest of Brandobaris in it. They had no coffin. The dogs watched it all.

Cale threw the first shovelful of dirt over Jak. Riven said nothing, merely helped him fill the hole. The dogs howled. They worked until Jak was buried. Cale started to put Jak's pipe on the earthen mound as a marker, but Riven said, "He'd want you to keep it."

Cale looked at the pipe, nodded, put it in his pocket.

"Did you bring what I asked?" he asked Riven.

Riven produced a small, flat-bladed knife with a rounded tip.

"Small and sharp," Riven said.

Cale tested the edge and found it satisfactory. He kneeled at the side of the grave and started to cut his hair, first cutting it to a short, choppy length, then to stubs, then shaving it off with the knife. The wind blew it away and the dogs chased it. Cale opened countless gashes in his scalp, but the bleeding and pain lasted only a moment before the shadowstuff in his flesh repaired the damage.

Riven watched it all in silence.

When Cale had finished the job, he stood, returned the knife to Riven, and ran a hand over his bald pate. Shadows leaked from him and he felt like himself.

Riven eyed him, nodded.

Cale took out Jak's pipe, stuffed it with pipeweed, and smoked graveside. Riven pulled a wooden pipe from his belt pouch-a pipe like the one Jak had once given the assassin-and joined Cale. Afterward, they collected the spades and walked back to the temple.

The shadowwalkers awaited them on the drawbridge. Shadows swirled around them, around Cale, around Riven. The wind blew their cloaks.

Cale approached the leader. "Tell me your name."

"Nayan," the man said, his voice as soft as rainfall.

"Nayan," Cale said, testing the word.

Nayan turned to his fellows and indicated each in turn. The men bowed as their names were spoken. "Shadem, Vyrhas, Erynd, Dynd, Skelan, and Dahtem."

"Erevis Cale," Cale said.

"Drasek Riven," said Riven.

Nayan nodded to each, and held up both hands as he said, "You are the right and left hands of the Shadowlord and he still speaks through you."

"That is so," Cale said, and preferred Nayan's words to "First" and "Second."

Nayan said, "We are servants of the Shadowlord and therefore servants of his Chosen."

"You're offering to help us?" Riven asked.

Nayan nodded once.

Cale looked the shadowwalkers in the eyes. "You have been blooded. Anyone can see that. But being blooded is not enough. Where are your weapons?"

Nayan held up his hands again, touched his elbows, his knees, his feet. Cale understood-the shadowwalkers fought without weapons.

Cale knew some men could do it, but it took years of training and discipline. Cale decided to be candid with Nayan.

"We are not… kind men, Nayan. Do you take my meaning?"

"I know what you are," Nayan said, and held Cale's gaze.

Cale stared into Nayan's face, studied his impassive expression. He had known many killers through the years and all of them had the same cold, dead look in their eyes. Riven had it. Cale had it.

Nayan had it.

Cale nodded and looked to Riven. "They come. All of them."

Riven said to the shadowwalkers, "Get some sleep and prepare your gear. We hit the Hole of Yhaunn tomorrow night."

After they were gone, Riven said, "Looks like they are done waiting, too."