Shadowbred

CHAPTER FOUR

10 Marpenoth, the Year of Lightning Storms

Cale dreamed of Magadon, though his friend's voice sounded like Aril's, the halfling boy whom Cale had saved almost two tendays earlier. Cale watched, frozen, as Magadon slipped into a dark void, screaming for help. Cale forced himself from his paralysis, shadowstepped to the edge of the void, dived for Magadon's outstretched hand, and barely caught it. He seized a firm grip, then saw that Magadon's fingernails had turned to black claws, and that his eyes, ordinarily colorless but for the black pupils, were golden.

Startled, he lost his grip. Magadon disappeared into the shadows, screaming. Cale shouted after him, "Mask! Mask!"

But there was no answer. Magadon was gone.

The roll of distant thunder woke him. He lay on his back in bed, heart racing, and stared up at the log crossbeams of the cottage, barely visible in the dark. The dream had set his heart to racing. He had called Magadon by the name of his god. The realization unsettled him.

Mags? he projected, tentatively. As a mind mage, Magadon had easily contacted Cale through dreams before.

No response. Just a dream, then. He exhaled slowly and calmed himself. The deep of night surrounded him. He found comfort in the darkness. A distant lightning flash lit the room and pasted shadows on the walls. Cale sensed every one of them, knew every one of them for the instant of their existence.

Midnight was near, he knew. The Chosen of Mask always knew when the Shadowlord's holy hour approached.

He had been asleep only an hour, perhaps two. He had not even bothered to change his clothing before getting into bed. The stink of another night's travels, another night's killings, clung to his clothes.

Varra lay beside him, warm, soft, human. Her even breathing steadied his jumbled mind. He often lay awake through the night and listened to her breathe, watched the rise and fall of her breast. Since his transformation into a shade, he needed less and less sleep. But he always needed warmth; he always needed someone near him to remind him that he was still human, at least in part.

He drew the night about him and moved his body instantly across the room into the darkness near the shuttered window. Varra stirred slightly at his sudden absence but did not awaken.

Thunder rumbled again in the distance, the deep-chested growl of a beast. A storm was coming-a big one. It had been a long while since they had seen rain.

In silence, Cale lifted the latch on the window shutters and gently pushed them open. Moonlight spilled into the cottage. Its touch nettled Cale's flesh. Tendrils of darkness swirled protectively across his skin.

A cloud bank loomed in the distance, bearing toward the cottage, devouring the stars as it came. Lightning split the sky, and its afterglow limned the clouds with a purple cast. Cale thought it ominous. Thunder quickly followed and Cale fancied the thunder had a voice.

Everything dies, it rumbled.

He searched the sky for Selune and found her hanging low in a half-circle over the top of the forest, trailing the glowing cascade of her Tears. Cale could not look at the Tears without thinking of Jak.

Just about a year ago, he had seen the most powerful wizard he'd ever known pull one of the Tears from the Outer Darkness and use it to eclipse the sun. In the end, the wizard's reasons for doing so had been small ones, human ones, though the wizard had been far from human. Cale almost admired him for his reasons. But the admiration had not kept Cale from killing him, because the wizard's small reasons had led to the death of Cale's best friend.

Thunder rolled, soft, threatening, and mocking. Everything dies.

The memory of those days darkened Cale's already somber mood. The night answered his emotions and the air around him swirled with black tendrils. Behind him, Varra turned in her sleep.

"I still blame you," he whispered to Mask.

When he looked back on the events involving the wizard, Cale saw the Shadowlord's manipulation in all of it. Through his scheming, Mask had managed to steal an entire temple of Cyric. The whole plot had been little more than divine burglary, petty theft. And it had cost Cale his humanity and Jak his life. Cale could not forgive Mask for exacting so high a price.

Before Jak had died, Cale promised his friend that he would try to be a hero. He had saved Aril and the halfling village, had done similar deeds throughout upcountry Sembia for months. But it did not feel like enough; he did not feel like himself. He missed his friends, missed… something he could not articulate.

He looked out on the dark forest meadow. An elm of middling size dominated the oval expanse of low, browning grass. Patches of wildflowers, mostly purplesnaps, daisies, and lady's slipper, dotted the meadow. Varra had tried transplanting the wildflowers into a more orderly arrangement, but the flowers she moved invariably died.

Despite the strange weather and lack of rain, Varra had managed to grow a thriving vegetable garden of cabbages, turnips, carrots, and beans. At Cale's request, she also grew pipeweed. Large stones from the nearby stream walled the vegetable garden to keep the rabbits at bay. The garden did not produce enough to live on, but Varra supplemented their needs with monthly trips to a nearby village, though she had been returning with less and less of late.

A table and two chairs sat under the elm. Cale had made them from forest deadwood. Not bad work. Varra loved to sit in the shade of the tree and watch the flowers in the sun. She had come out of the darkness of Skullport and made the forest cottage and sun-drenched meadow in upcountry Sembia her home. Cale thought her amazing for that.

Cale had bought the cottage and its land from the heirs of a dead woodsman. The place belonged to him, but more and more he knew it wasn't his home. He remembered words Jak had spoken once-For men like us, friends are home. Cale missed his friends. The time he'd spent in the cottage had been a welcome respite, but a temporary one. Something was coming for him, coming for him as certain as the storm. He was not sure how he would tell Varra. He looked back on her sleeping form and wondered if she already knew.

Their relationship was unusual. They had lived together a year but Cale knew little about her past, and made a point not to ask. She, in turn, respected his privacy in the same way. They shared a home, a bed, their bodies from time to time, but little else. Cale cared for her deeply, and she cared for him, but he knew he could not stay with her much longer.

He ticked the moments away as midnight drew closer. When Mask's holy hour was imminent, he let the shadows in the meadow steal into his mind, and willed himself into the darkness under the elm, near the two chairs. Always keen of ear, and even sharper of ear in darkness, Cale heard the fauna stalking the woods, the chirp of crickets, the soft coo of the nightjar that nested on the ground under the scrub, the rush of the wind through the forest.

He moved the chair so he could watch the storm approach over the woods. He reached into his pocket and took out the smooth, oval stone that Aril had given him.

"Shadowman," he said, and smiled. He treasured the stone.

The clouds ate more of the sky. Thunder rumbled its promise.

Cale ran his thumb over the smooth stone, thoughtful. He heard the hiss of approaching rain. The wind set the trees to swaying. Lightning cut the sky. Thunder boomed. He wondered if it would wake Varra. After so much time living underground, she still had not grown accustomed to thunderstorms.

He reached into another pocket and retrieved Jak's ivory-bowled pipe, the pipe Cale had taken from his dead friend as a token of remembrance. He took out a small leather pouch of pipeweed, grown in Varra's garden, and filled the pipe's bowl. He tamped, struck a tindertwig, and lit.

Midnight arrived. Cale felt it as a charge in his bones. Rain came with it.

A year ago, Cale would have spent the next hour in prayer, asking Mask to imprint his mind with the power to cast spells. But not any more. Cale had not prayed to Mask or cast a spell since Jak's death. He had created his own ritual for the midnight hour.

He took a draw on the pipe and exhaled a cloud of smoke. He watched the cloud dance between the raindrops and stream off into the night sky.

The elm shielded him from the worst of the rain, but he welcomed the downpour. It washed the stink of his travels from him. It lasted only a short time-the rain never lingered.

Cale spent the next hours in his chair, listening to the wind, and communing not with his god, but with his past.

"I do not belong to you any more," he said to Mask. "And neither does the night."

It belonged to the shadowman.

I awaken in a perfectly square room. A soft red glow suffuses the air, providing light. I see no sign of Rivalen Tanthul and I no longer smell the sea. My bonds are gone.

Have I escaped? I remember shouting, a flash of green, but little else. My mind feels as thick as mud. I know I tried to do something to escape but I cannot remember.

How long have I been here?

The room looks vaguely familiar to me but I cannot place it. I have been here before, though, I am sure of that. The room reminds me of a prison cell. There are no windows and only a single iron-bound door.

Looking at the door, I feel certain that I am supposed to do something. But I cannot remember. The lapse troubles me.

I sit on the floor and the smooth cobblestones feel cool through my clothes. My body aches, as if I have been in combat, or beaten.

Have I been tortured?

I have none of my gear or weapons. I wear only a loose wool tunic, breeches, and boots. Even my hat is gone, and I never take off my hat. I reach up to feel my exposed horns…

… they are gone.

Startled, I run my hands over my brow. I feel nothing but smooth skin. Has Rivalen removed my horns and healed the wounds? I hold out my arms to examine the rest of my body…

The birthmark on my biceps, the sword ensheathed in flames, the brand of my father, is also gone. How is that possible? I tried for years to efface that brand, scarring my skin in the process. Even the scars are gone. So, too, is the patch of scales on the small of my back. I feel only smooth skin, human skin. My heart races.

Someone has stripped my fiendish blood from me.

"This is not possible," I say.

"You have come at last," says a voice behind me.

I scramble to my feet and whirl around. I see no one else in the room. The voice sounds familiar, though, almost…

"Up here. On the wall."

I look up and my head swims with dizziness. For a moment, I cannot not focus my eyes. I wobble on my feet, hold out my arms for balance. The feeling passes and I notice a thin, horizontal slit in the stone, more than three-quarters of the way up the wall. If it were not so high, it would be a feeding slit.

I move slowly to the wall, wary for a trick.

"Who are you?" I ask. I keep my voice low for no reason I can articulate.

"Come up so you can see me. I will show you."

The request turns my skin cold. "Tell me who you are," I demand.

"In a moment. Come up, first. I… need help."

Help? The word sends a thrill through me. I cannot deny someone who needs help. I study the slit. I might be able to jump up and get my fingers in it, then pull myself up.

"I don't know if I can make it."

"You can," says the voice with certainty. "Do it now."

Without thinking, I jump up and catch the edge of the slit with both hands. I scrabble my boots against the wall for leverage and heave myself up with a grunt. When I can peer through the opening, I find myself staring at another pair of eyes exactly like mine-black pupils, no color. I gasp, startled, and lose my grip. I fall back to the floor in a heap. The impact knocks the breath from me.

"I am sorry," says the voice. "I should have prepared you. Are you all right?"

I climb to my feet, eyeing the slit, stammering, "Your eyes are like mine! How can that be?"

"No," says the voice. "Your eyes are different. I saw them. They are green."

I reel. Green? I am still groggy from the escape, or from the torture, or whatever has happened to me. This does not make sense. How can my eyes be green?

"Are you still there?" asks the voice.

I nod, though the speaker cannot see me.

"Are you a prisoner here?" I ask. "Where are we? Who are you? And why do you look like… like I should look?" The speaker sighs, as if at a precocious child. "Listen carefully. What I am about to say will alarm you. Are you prepared?"

I'm sweating, and I don't know why. My skin turns goose flesh.

"Yes," I lie.

The voice says, "There is no 'here' and you are not a prisoner."