Shadowrealm

CHAPTER TWO

1 Nightal, The Year of Lightning Storms

Cale and Riven materialized in darkness as thick and black as a pool of ink. A cutting wind gusted from the east, and knifed through their clothes. Rain pelted them, and carried down from the black sky the musty smell of old decay. Tangible swirls of shadow turned the cool air thick, gauzy.

"Where is this place, Cale?" Riven asked over the wind.

"Home," Cale shouted in answer. "For a time." It was also in the center of the storm. They stood in the meadow not far from the small cottage where Cale had lived with Varra. The sentinel elm, towering over them, whispered and creaked in the wind, sizzled in the rain. The furniture Cale had made from deadwood lay overturned in the grass. The wildflowers Varra had planted were browned and dead on the stalks. The window shutters and door of the cottage flapped in the gusts, all of them beating as if in anger against the cottage's walls.

"Varra!" Cale shouted. "Varra!"

His voice barely penetrated the howl of wind and rain. Lightning lit the meadow. The downpour and wind hissed against the trees in the surrounding forest.

"You feel that air?" Riven shouted, and drew his blades. "Same as in the Calyx."

Cale nodded, and drew Weaveshear. "Same as in Elgrin Fau." He rode the darkness into the cottage. "Varra!"

He found their old home empty, their bed unmade. The wind shrieked through the open windows and doors. Blankets, utensils, pails, and broken pieces of clay lamps lay strewn about the floor, dislodged by the wind. He tore open cabinets, trunks, piles of linens, looking for any sign of what might have happened.

"Varra!"

He cursed himself for bringing her out of Skullport, cursed himself for leaving her alone in an unfamiliar place. He had not merely left her alone; he had abandoned her. She could be wandering in the woods, lost in the storm, anywhere.

He tossed their room, found one of the smocks she sometimes wore in the summer, and decided to use it as the focus for a divination. He held his mask in one hand, the smock in his shadowborn hand, and intoned over the wind the words to a spell that would locate her.

The magic manifested and the shadows darkened before his face, forming a lens in the air. But he felt no connection to Varra. He poured power into the spell, willed it to show her, but the lens remained black, dead.

Cursing, he ended it.

He stood in the center of the ruins of their life together, wondering if she was dead. He hesitated for only a moment before making up his mind. He cast another spell that allowed him to commune with his god. The wind-driven beat of the shutters and door on the walls kept time with his heart.

"Is she alive?" Cale asked, his voice a monotone in the wind's wail.

The darkness swirled around him and the voice of his god whispered in his brain, She lives and is safe, far from you, but not in distance.

He exhaled with relief, tried to process the rest of the reply, but Riven's shout from outside carried over the shriek of the wind.

"Cale! Get out here!"

Cale cloaked himself in shadows and rode them back out to the meadow. He emerged from the darkness beside Riven, in Varra's garden. Lightning ripped the sky, cast the meadow in sickening green. The wind picked up, took on an odd keening that stood the hairs on his arms on end. It bent the trees of the forest, sent a barrage of leaves and loose sticks into the meadow.

"Up there," Riven said, and pointed skyward with one of his sabers.

Astride his mount, Reht crested a rise and looked at the edge of the crawling darkness. His commanders crowded around him. All squinted against the wind and rain. All cursed.

His army stood arrayed a spear cast behind them, cloaks drawn, shields held over heads to shelter them from the pounding of the rain. Dawn would break in a few hours, but Reht thought it unlikely they would notice once they entered the storm. It looked like ink.

"Gods," said Norsim, a towering junior commander with a reputation for good luck.

A wall of black fog lay before them, extending from the ground to the sky. Tendrils and spirals of pitch reached out of it, seemed to pull it along in dark billows. The fog cloaked the ground, sank into the hollows, and shrouded everything in its path. Its edge seemed to demarcate more than the border between light and shadow. The earth looked different under its shroud, foreign, deformed. They could not see more than a stone's throw within in.

Lightning flashed from time to time, turning the thick haze the greenish black of a bruise. Reht's horse neighed nervously, pawed the ground, tossed its head. Shifts in the saddle betrayed the concern of his commanders, though none spoke their fears aloud.

"Shadovar magic," Mennick said.

"Aye," Reht said.

Enken's horse tossed its head, blew a spray of spit. "There could be ten thousand men within it."

"Or there could be a few hundred," Reht said.

"Or none," Norsim said.

"Not even you are that lucky," said Enken.

Kelgar slammed a gauntleted fist against the lightning bolts on his shield. "Let us hope that it is ten thousand. The Thunderer demands blood for Vors."

Reht saw motion within the darkness. Forms separated from the murk and the shadows birthed the silhouettes of two men and horses. No one else seemed to notice. Reht still had his archer's eyes.

"Scouts are returning," he said.

"Where?" asked Enken, leaning forward into the rain. "Ah."

Othel and Phlen burst from the fog, trailing stubborn streams of black disinclined to release them. They shook their heads as they emerged from the fog, spotted Reht and his commanders, and raced toward them.

"Ten fivestars on Othel," Norsim said, though the offer sounded half-hearted.

No one took the wager.

Othel and Phlen, with Phlen in the lead, tore toward the gathered commanders and wheeled to a stop. Both of the men looked pale, the mud spatters that covered them dark by contrast.

"General," Othel said to Reht, as his horse turned a circle, neighed, and pawed the earth.

Enken tossed Othel a waterskin. The scout took a long draw then wiped his mouth.

"Report," Reht said.

"It is cool within the fog and grew cooler as we advanced," Othel said. "Visibility is poor but light can cut through it. I found it difficult to keep my sense of direction."

"As did I," Phlen agreed, nodding. Othel passed him the waterskin and he drank.

Othel said, "We rode in half a league and encountered nothing. It appears to be nothing more than an unusual storm. If Shadovar forces are within, they are farther back than we advanced."

Kelgar looked past the scouts to the storm. "The Shadovar are in there."

"Your spells tell you as much?" Reht asked.

Kelgar thumped his breastplate with his fist, over his heart. "This tells me as much. There's battle in there, General."

Reht made up his mind and spoke to his commanders.

"Put the men in a skirmish line, with three man teams scouting all sides. Mennick, use the darkvision wands on all the scouts and all senior commanders. Scouts are to return with word on the half hour."

Enken eyed the storm, and licked his lips. Lightning lit up the clouds. "I don't like it, Reht. Could be anything in there."

"Then you best prepare for anything," said Kelgar with contempt.

Enken edged his horse toward Kelgar's. "Close your hole before I fill it with steel, priest. Revenge for your dead fellow and Forrin's snatching is not reason to be rash."

The Talassans glared at Enken and snarled. Enken answered with his own glare, his hand on one of his knives. The other commanders took position near Enken, facing off the priests.

"Calmer heads, men," Reht said. "All of you. There's work ahead." To Enken, he said, "You think it rash?"

"Yes," Enken said, and tilted his head. "But I don't see many options. If we retreat before it, it will chase us into the Saerbian forces, which may be the intent. Even if it stops advancing it cuts us off from Ordulin and leaves us unsupplied. Moving south toward Selgaunt is not an option. I'd rather enter it and take our chances than sit on my hands." He smiled. "But that doesn't make it any less rash."

Reht chuckled. "Agreed. Sometimes rashness is a soldier's ally. That's why we keep Norsim and his luck at our side."

Norsim smiled.

Reht continued, "Let's keep the men sharp and see what we see."

"Aye," Enken said. He spat at the feet of Kelgar's mount. "Maybe these battle-happy fools can lead the advance, eh?"

"We've been leading since we arrived," Kelgar answered.

The men all laughed as the group dispersed back to their units.

"Remain," Reht said to Mennick, and when they stood alone atop the rise, he said, "What have you learned?"

The mage shook his head. "Nothing. Whoever took the general is well warded against scrying." He nodded at the storm as distant thunder rumbled. "And divinations reveal nothing about the storm. It's a void, Commander."

"Ordulin and the Overmistress?"

"I cannot make contact with anyone there. The storm may be blocking the magic."

Behind them, horns blew and men shouted, the army forming up.

Reht eyed the black wall before him, and the twisted look of the world under its shroud. He and his army were isolated in the field, with scant knowledge of their enemy, supply lines cut by the storm, and no instructions from their ostensible leaders in Ordulin. He did not like the courses open to him but had to choose one.

"Get yourself ready," he said to Mennick. "We go in. If the Shadovar are within the storm, we engage. If this is just a ruse or magic gone awry, we push through it, return to Ordulin, and regroup."

When the mage was gone, Reht whispered a prayer to Tempus, asking the Lord of Battle to strengthen his men.

Cale looked up into the dark sky. Above the tree line he saw thousands of tiny points of red light streaking toward the meadow. From a distance they looked like a swarm of fireflies, a swirling constellation of red stars. But Cale recognized them for what they were-eyes.

"Shadows," he said.

Riven nodded, and absently spun his sabers. "She's not here? Varra?"

Cale shook his head.

The air grew cooler as the undead approached. The wind pasted Cale's cloak to his skin. "This storm, the shadows. It's like the Calyx."

Riven nodded. "Kesson Rel is in Faerun, His shadow giants cannot be far off."

Cale tried to count the shadows as they swarmed toward them but gave up. There were thousands. Cale remembered the pit under the spire in the Adumbral Calyx, the black hole that vomited newly formed shadows into the world.

"He has opened a gate," Cale said. "Or a rift."

Cale had seen something similar, long ago, when a portion of the Abyss had bled into the guildhouse of the Night Knives.

"Too many," Riven said, as the undead creatures closed. Hundreds of them descended into the forest, still flying for the meadow, and the soft glow of their eyes cast the boles and boughs of the trees in crimson. Riven bounced on the balls of his feet, slowly twirling his sabers.

"Too many, Cale."

Cale tried to imagine the scope of the deaths that thousands of shadows could cause, but it was too large. He thought of the Saerbians, Selgaunt. He sagged under the weight of his role in it.

"We did this," he said.

Riven stopped spinning his sabers. "No. Kesson Rel did this."

Cale tried to agree, but failed. "We freed him to do it when we killed Furlinastis. Kesson Rel played us, and now he is come to Faerun."

"We didn't know."

"We didn't think. We just acted."

The shadows drew closer, the keening louder.

Riven looked over at Cale. "We aren't going to undo it here. There are too many."

Cale barely heard him. He thought of Varra, of his spell's verdict: She is safe, far from you.

Wasn't that true of everyone he cared about? He thought of Thazienne and the demonic attack that had nearly killed her, thought of Magadon and the archfiend who had torn his soul in half, thought of Jak, who'd died at the claws and teeth of a slaad who'd never paid, not in full…

"Cale."

He had failed everyone and now he had wrought the ruin of an entire realm.

"Cale…"

Cale pulled his mask from his cloak and donned it. Darkness leaked from Weaveshear; darkness leaked from Cale. He let divine power flow into him. He would cut his way to Kesson Rel or die trying.

"We aren't going to undo it," he said. "We're going to end it."

Huge forms materialized from the shadows at the edge of the meadow, ten gangly giants as tall as three men, the vanguard of the army of shadows. Darkness swirled in strands around their stooped forms, twisted around their gray flesh. Their long white hair whipped in the wind. Each wore a hauberk of dull gray links and bore swords in their hands almost as long as Cale was tall. Their black eyes took in the meadow, looking for prey. Their gazes fixed on Cale and Riven. They pointed.

"We are leaving," Riven said. "Cale, think."

"No," Cale said to him, his eyes on the shadows arrowing toward them, the giants stalking across the meadow. "I am finishing this."

He felt Riven staring at him, into him.

"No," Riven said.

The darkness around Cale whirled. "No?"

Riven's good eye narrowed. "No."

Four giants stepped through the shadows and materialized before Cale and Riven, huge blades held high.

Before Cale could brandish Weaveshear, he felt a flash of warmth as the magic of Riven's teleportation ring took hold. He tried to resist it, failed, and Riven transported them across Faerun.

Three hours after Reht's army entered the storm, the rain turned to a downpour, the wind to a gale. The scouts stopped returning word back to the lines. Perhaps they had gotten lost.

The army was marching blind and the men were edgy. Reht could sense it.

Dawn had come but the storm put a blanket between the earth and sky. What little sunlight penetrated the swirling clouds and rain served only to gild the abnormality of the earth under the storm with a lurid glow. The wind pulled at Reht's cloak. His mount tossed her head and whinnied into the storm. He rode a little behind his men in the center of the line, bent against the rain, clutching his cloak closed, his mount sinking into the sloppy earth. The air seemed to pull at him. He felt his strength diminishing.

The line of his army extended a bowshot in either direction but even under the effect of a spell that granted him darkvision he could see little more than the score or so men to his immediate left and right. The shadows and rain swallowed the rest.

"Tighten up the line," he shouted at two of the runners who lingered near him. "Pass it to the commanders."

"Aye," the runners said. They saluted and galloped off, one to the left, one to the right, shouting to tighten up the line. The wind, rain, and darkness soon ate their voices and Reht lost sight of them.

"How can we fight in this?" Reht said to no one in particular. "The air itself is an enemy."

The line gradually tightened, the men crowding more closely together. Reht could see maybe three score men, all of them squinting against the rain and magical darkness. Many had blades drawn, though there was no visible enemy.

The cold seeped into Reht's bones. Mennick, Kelgar, and several more runners rode beside him. Reht looked at their shadowed faces and saw blue lips, pale skin, and uncertain eyes.

Lightning painted the fog green. Thunder boomed and their horses reared and neighed. Men cursed. He steadied his mount with effort.

"Steady men!" he shouted. "Steady!"

The darkness and rain played havoc with his perception. He frequently saw movement at the edge of his vision, ominous hints of creatures or men, but moving forward they found nothing. Shouts from his men sounded from out in the blackness, faint and distant. His men, too, were seeing ghosts, or becoming ghosts.

"The Shadovar cannot turn us back with wind and darkness," Kelgar shouted, though the shadows hollowed out his words. A few "ayes" answered the big warpriest, but most of the men continued forward in sullen silence.

"This is uncanny," said Mennick, though Reht barely heard his voice. Mennick pointed. "Look at the trees."

Stands of trees materialized out of the darkness. Leafless, skeletal, their limbs stuck out of the boles at twisted, agonized angles. Their dry boughs rattled in the wind. The men pointed and murmured.

Mennick steered his horse close to Reht's side and spoke in a tone only Reht could hear.

"Do you feel the air, Commander? It has changed. As the storm grows stronger, the air seems to steal strength. I find it hard to breathe. Do you feel it?"

Reht nodded.

"The deeper we move in, the worse it is becoming."

Reht looked the mage in the eye and saw concern there. The nervous seed in Reht's stomach sprouted leaves.

"We've made a mistake," he said.

The storm was not Shadovar magic. It was something else entirely, something not of Faerun, and he had led his men right into it.

"Halt," he said, but his voice broke. He turned to the runners, cleared his throat, kept his voice steady. "Halt! We are calling a halt and turning around. Do it now!"

"Commander…" Kelgar said.

Reht threw back his hood and stared at the warpriest. "You see what this is as clearly as I. There are no Shadovar here, priest. This is something else and we need to get clear of it. Now, follow your orders."

Kelgar stared back, nodded. "Aye, General."

"I don't know if we'll be able to get out," Mennick said.

To that, Reht said nothing. He did not know either.

Word spread but slowly in the rain, in the darkness. The line stopped at last and reorganized for a march out of the storm. Horns sounded, their clarion strangely muffled.

"On the double quick!" Reht said to his runners. "Pass it on!"

"The scouts?" Mennick asked, his horse blinking in the rain.

They had not had word in hours. The scouts were either lost or… something else. Reht shook his head, refusing to give voice to his concerns.

"They will have to catch up with us."

Mennick nodded, and looked back into the darkness.

Orders carried through the pitch, the men prepping to move out on the double quick. The rain abated and some of the men cheered. The darkness, however, remained unrelenting.

Reht found the absence of rain more ominous than comforting. Black mist curled around the muddy ground, around the twisted dead trees, and around the nervous hooves of their horses, who pranced and neighed. For the first time, Reht realized that he had not seen a wild animal in hours. He stilled his heart and forced calm into his voice.

"On the double quick! Move!"

The wind at their backs swallowed the last of his order as it picked up, howled, and took on a strange keening. The line lurched forward as the cold deepened. Reht's teeth chattered and the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end. He felt eyes on him, looked over his shoulder, but saw nothing save the darkness. His instincts screamed at him to run, told him that something unforgiving out there in the darkness was coming for him. He saw the same sentiment reflected in the alarmed faces around him.

They were moving too slowly.

"On the double quick! On the double quick, damn it!"

"There!" someone shouted, the word nearly lost in the wind. "There!"

Shouts erupted along the line and carried through the black. Reht turned in his saddle to see thousands of coal red points of light floating in the darkness, as numerous as the stars.

Eyes.

The darkness was coming for them.

The keening sounded again, a mistuned longflute, and Reht realized it was not the wind. It was the creatures, shrieking at them, closing on them.

"Around and hold formation!" he shouted, and hated himself for the tremor in his voice. "Around and hold!"

The shouts of commanders carried through the darkness, echoing his words. Horns sounded again, making a cacophony with the keening.

The army scrambled into formation as the wind turned to a gale and the creatures sped toward them. A few men deserted, fled with their horses at a dead run. Reht cursed them for cowards.

Armor chinked, men cursed, and weapons were readied. Hundreds of crossbows and bows twanged. A swarm of bolts and arrows flew into the darkness at the eyes, veering wildly in the wind. The creatures wailed again, apparently unharmed, and closed. Soul deadening cold went before them.

Reht drew his blade, readied his shield. His magically augmented vision allowed him to distinguish the creatures as they neared, but barely. Vaguely humanoid in shape and composed of living shadow, they rode the wind and flew like arrow shots through the night. Red eyes glowed with malice.

"Shadows!" Kelgar shouted, and clanged his blade on his shield.

The darkness deepened as the throng of shadows closed. Some darted into the earth and disappeared. Others flew high and circled around the army. Still others flew directly for them. There were still more behind the initial wave, so numerous they blotted out the storm. They seemed unending, filling the air with their cold, their shrieks, their hate.

They hit Reht's army and men and horses began to scream. Beside Reht, Kelgar roared a battle cry and galloped into the shadows. A lightning bolt shot from the war priest's outstretched hand as he charged the undead. Two other Talassans followed him, whooping battle cries.

"Hold your ground, dammit! Hold!"

The darkness prevented a large-scale organized response and the battle turned into a series of isolated melees. Shadows darted in and out of Reht's field of vision, merging with the darkness in the air. Red eyes flashed past him, around him, over him, under him. He slashed and stabbed at any within reach, heard the men near him do the same. His horse reared, kicked, whinnied.

He and a dozen other men formed a circle, but it proved useless. The incorporeal shadows moved as freely through the earth as through the air. He and his men were attacked from all sides no matter their formation. The cold hand of panic gripped some of the men, more.

Magical globes of light formed in the darkness but lasted only moments before the shadows blotted them out. Screams sounded from all directions, muted shrieks, all of it an eerily beautiful symphony for the dying.

Reht's mount neighed and bucked as a throng of shadows burst from the ground under it. The movement threw Reht, and he hit the ground in a clatter of steel. His mount wheeled, nearly trampled him, and darted off in a panic.

Reht scrambled to his knees, to his feet, slashing, shouting. Men fought and died beside him, around him. The shadows nearest him focused their dead, glowing eyes on him and in the otherwise blank holes of their faces he was able to distinguish features.

"Lorgan?"

His fellow commander's expression wrinkled with hate. Reht saw other faces he recognized and understood what had happened to Lorgan and his men.

And what would happen to Reht and his.

"Find peace, old friend," Reht said, and charged Lorgan.

Lorgan shrieked and his features dissolved again into indistinguishable darkness. Other shadows darted in close, reached through Reht's shield and armor, cooled his flesh, diminished his soul. He screamed, and slashed at Lorgan. His enchanted blade bit Lorgan's shadowy form and sent streamers of deeper darkness boiling away into the air, but Lorgan reached into Reht's chest and nearly stopped his heart. Reht staggered backward, gasping, his vision blurred.

In the distance, he heard the sound of chanting, the Talassans calling upon the power of their god to fight the undead. Reht glanced around, saw men and horses dead and dying all around him. He heard their shouts, screams, and whinnies, but he felt isolated, alone in a cyst of darkness warring against his own personal shadows.

The surrounding sounds diminished then went silent. He heard only his own labored breathing, his grunts as he swung his blade, and the sound of his own heartbeat keeping time in his ears. He slashed, backed away, stabbed, twisted, stabbed again. Shadows emerged from the ground and passed into and through him. Others flew, heedlessly, at and through his blade, reached into his chest to his lungs and heart, stole his breath, his strength. He staggered, still breathing, still fighting. He looked around for a mount, any mount, saw none. He tripped over a corpse and fell on his back.

Shadows swarmed him. He felt so cold he could not breathe, felt his heart slow. He saw Lorgan's face in one of the shadows over him, Enken's on another, both of them caricatures of the living men they once were.

They reached for him. He felt himself drifting, floating. He reached for the maps at his side, thinking of his father, and the cartographer to whom he should have been apprenticed, the life he should have led. Cold filled him and he gasped. He could not see anything but red eyes and darkness.

He died thinking of maps and regrets.

He rose thinking of hate.