Shadowrealm

CHAPTER FIVE

4 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms

Rivalen considered Brennus's information from all angles and no matter how the light struck it, he saw it the same way. He did not have much time. The Shadowstorm was spreading. He had to stop it or there would be no Sembia to annex. And he had to stop it soon, or Mystra's Chosen would take a hand.

He made up his mind, stepped through the shadows in the corner of his great room, and completed the stride by emerging in the foyer of Stormweather Towers, the Hulorn's family estate. Afternoon light filtered in through high windows, cross-hatching the carpeted floor with alternating lines of light and shadow.

A gasp greeted Rivalen's arrival. The majordomo, Irwyl, stood two paces from Rivalen, his dull eyes wide, his hands on a medium sized wooden chest he bore.

"I have need to see the Hulorn," Rivalen said.

The gangly, graying Irwyl stood frozen, rooted to the floor, a creaky oak in a well-tailored shirt rolled up to his elbows.

Rivalen strode toward him and Irwyl looked as if he might bolt. The contents in the chest, whatever they were, audibly shook.

Irwyl stared at a point somewhere around Rivalen's chin. "I was clearing the study." He held up the chest as evidence, or to interpose a barrier between himself and Rivalen. "The laborers have not yet arrived, but I thought I should remove the small valuables before they did."

Irritation caused the shadows around Rivalen to swirl.

"Where is the Hulorn?"

Irwyl shook his head. "I believe he returned in the carriage to the Palace. He seemed not himself. He seemed…"

Rivalen rode the shadows in the hall across the city, to the foyer entry of the Hulorn's Palace. The helmed, spear-wielding guards looked startled at his sudden appearance, but only for a moment. They had gotten used to his comings and goings and the Hulorn had authorized his free movement throughout any part of the city.

"Prince Rivalen," the bearded sergeant said, and inclined his head.

Both the sergeant and the guards eyed with ill-concealed wonder the shadows that shrouded him.

"Where is the Hulorn?" Rivalen said.

"Is the Hulorn expecting you?" said a voice from the far side of the foyer.

Thristiin emerged from wherever it was that he laired and smiled his tight smile at Rivalen. His thin gray hair was neatly parted on his age-spotted pate and his clothing, down to the tufted shirt cuffs, looked freshly cleaned and donned.

"He is not," Rivalen answered, and walked across the tiled floor to stand before Thristiin. "Do you suppose that means he will not see me?"

Thristiin sought a refuge for his gaze that did not include Rivalen's face.

"Of course not, Prince. He is in the map room. May I escort you so that I may announce your arrival?"

Thristiin led Rivalen through the wide, comfortably dark corridors of the palace. Thayan and Chessentan rugs dotted the floors. Tapestries bedecked the walls.

"Prince Rivalen of Shade Enclave," Thristiin announced, as he opened the door to the map room.

Tamlin stood with arms crossed over a large, rectangular oak table on which lay an unrolled map of Sembia, the Dalelands, and Cormyr. Chess pieces from the set that had been in the study in Stormweather Towers stood here and there on the parchment, denoting various locations. Rivalen smiled to see the white king positioned near Selgaunt. Tamlin still needed to think of himself as pure.

"Prince," Tamlin said. "I did not expect to see you until our customary repast after sunset."

"Forgive me, Hulorn, but I must speak with you on a matter of some import."

Thristiin took Rivalen's point. "If there is nothing else, Hulorn?"

"You may go," Tamlin instructed the chamberlain.

Thristiin bowed to each of Tamlin and Rivalen then exited the room, closing the door behind him.

Tamlin wore a thin blade at his belt. His holy symbol of Shar hung from a silver chain around his neck, open for all to see.

Rivalen stepped to the table, eyed the map. A black bishop was toppled on Saerloon, while the other stood on Urlamspyr. A toppled white knight lay on Saerb. Black rooks stood on Daerlun and Yhaunn. Black pawns were arranged in an arc across northeastern Sembia. Rivalen assumed they denoted the leading edge of the Shadowstorm. The remaining pieces from the set sat in a velvet-lined coffer to one side of the map.

Tamlin took position beside Rivalen, close enough that the shadows around Rivalen brushed him.

"I brought my father's chess set from Stormweather Towers and you see my poor attempt to represent matters as they stand. This is all based on the most recent reports of our scouts as well as what divinations have shown. The Shadowstorm appears to be accelerating as it moves west."

"It grows in power as it consumes more life," Rivalen said.

Tamlin stared at him for a long moment. "Yes-" he cleared his throat-"well, it seems it is not yet spreading east. Yhaunn, so far as we know, remains untouched. But we must wonder for how long? I think we must stop it soon, Prince."

"You are correct," Rivalen said. He withdrew the black king from the coffer, placed it over Ordulin on the map. "Kesson Rel is the cause of the Shadowstorm. To stop it, we must kill him."

He toppled the king, though he knew perfectly well he could not stop the Shadowstorm. He would not even try. The Shadowstorm was Shar's will. He could only contain it. Perhaps.

"Sensible," Tamlin said and rubbed his hands together.

Rivalen picked up a black pawn, eyed it, and showed it to Tamlin.

"But to kill him, I require the assistance of Erevis Cale."

The words stopped Tamlin in mid-nod, froze his hands, flushed his skin. "Mister Cale? Why? Surely you and I can accomplish whatever needs accomplished."

Rivalen knew he had to trod with care. He played and would continue to play on Tamlin's sense of inferiority relative to Mister Cale, but he knew not to play too hard lest the strings snap.

"Ordinarily, I would agree. But this is a matter of a unique kind."

Tamlin shook his head, paced, then gestured at the map. "Look what we have done so far. How can Mister Cale be necessary?"

Tamlin spun on his heel, paced some more, and nearly spat his next words. "Mister Cale. Erevis Cale. What can require Mister Cale that I cannot do?" He stopped, eyeing Rivalen. "Is it because he is a shade? Then make me one. You know I want it."

"It is not because he is a shade. It is because he is a Maskarran."

"I do not understand. How is that relevant?"

The shadows around Rivalen churned with irritation, but he kept his voice patient. He did not wish to damage the relationship he had so painstakingly built.

"Kesson Rel is a divine being. A god. Quite minor, it is true, but divine nevertheless."

Tamlin's voice sounded small. "A god you say?"

Rivalen nodded. "Yes, but the unique circumstances involved in Kesson's ascension render him uniquely vulnerable. That vulnerability can be exploited only by a special servant of Mask."

"Mister Cale," Tamlin said, with surrender in his tone. He took another black pawn from the coffer, closed his fist around it until the knuckles were white. "He will not help us."

"Not willingly."

Tamlin looked up, eyebrows arched in a question.

"Brennus is unable to scry Cale directly, but he has learned that Cale has been of service to Abelar Corrinthal. Our spies among the Saerbian refugees-"

"You have spies among the refugees?"

"Do not interrupt me again or ever," Rivalen said, his voice rising with his ire. "Do you understand?"

Tamlin's mouth hung slack under his wide eyes. He nodded slowly.

"Yes," Rivalen said, more calmly. "We have spies. Not in human form, of course. But a few."

Tamlin, his face still red from Rivalen's rebuke, went for a wine chalice on a side table, and drank. Of late, Rivalen thought the Hulorn drank more than had been his custom.

"You will use the refugees against Mister Cale?" Tamlin asked.

"Mister Cale has an interest in their safety. We can use that to compel his cooperation."

Tamlin's expression showed pleasure at the thought of compelling Cale. "How?"

Rivalen took a white rook from the coffer, held it in the air over Saerb, beside the toppled white knight. He used a minor magic, released it, and it hovered in place.

"Leave that to me," Rivalen said.

"And afterward? What of Mister Cale? I would rather he not be involved in what we have built here. His presence will vex me."

Rivalen knew what Tamlin wanted to hear. He crushed the pawn in his fist, and let the pieces fall to the floor.

"Leave that to me, also."

Tamlin licked his lips. "I would participate in that."

Rivalen heard sincerity rather than bravado in Tamlin's tone. It both surprised and pleased him.

"Perhaps you will have that chance," Rivalen said.

"I would like a chance at more," Tamlin said. "Shadedom, as I mentioned."

Before Rivalen could respond, Tamlin went on. He must have rehearsed the words in the privacy of his mind many times.

"I have converted to Shar. Fully. I feel her here." He touched his chest. "A weight. But welcome. My soul is hers."

Rivalen nodded.

"I wish to complete my conversion. Make my body hers as well."

"You negotiate this with me as if it were just another contract between merchants. It is more."

Tamlin looked crestfallen. "I know that, Prince. I do not make the request lightly. I know it is more."

Rivalen eyed Tamlin, nodded, and the shadows around him swirled. He had done his work well.

"Understand, Tamlin, that becoming a shade does more than simply transform your body. You will no longer be human. You will live alone, with history as your companion. Your family will die, your friends, even elves die and you live on. Everything will crumble and you will continue. Imagine watching the world slowly surrender to its end, the end Shar's teachings tell us is inevitable. You will be a witness to the end. No peace of the grave for you. Perhaps this sounds appealing, but I assure you it is as much burden as boon."

"It is a burden I am ready to bear. I am already alone."

"Very well," Rivalen said. He gestured with a fingertip and a charge of arcane power disintegrated the prone black king nestled within the Shadowstorm. "But first things first."

Kesson Rel stood on one of the stone balconies that protruded from his spire. He had moved his entire tower from the Adumbral Calyx to Toril. It hung over the blasted, withered ruins of Ordulin like an accusatory finger, a black dagger driven into the heart of the city. The stink of Ordulin's dead hung in the air, as thick as the darkness.

Black clouds roiled in the sky as far as he could see, an expanding blanket of night that obliterated the sun, obliterated life.

In the distance, jagged bolts of green lightning knifed through the darkness, each bolt the byproduct of the energy gathered by the storm as it murdered Toril, each a conduit through which the energy was transferred back to Kesson's spire, where a continual stream of crackling bolts attached the spire's top to the sky like a hundred umbilicals. The spire transformed the gathered energy, focused it on a point in Ordulin below the floating spire. There, a small dark seed had rooted in Toril's reality. Out of its emptiness would grow the annihilation of the world.

Kesson touched the holy symbol embroidered on his robes, the black disc of Shar, and smiled.

Living shadows thronged the air around the tower, wheeled and spun like a cloud of bats, their eyes like coals. Regiments of shadow giants marched in the darkness. And still darker things roamed the outer fringes of the storm. Kesson felt every life within the growing darkness, mice and men, felt each of them die in turn.

He savored the taste of destruction, luxuriated in the bitter tang of death. It had been a long while since he had enjoyed it on so massive a scale. He had destroyed Elgrin Fau long ago, but only imperfectly murdered his world. Its slow demise continued even now, thousands of years after it had begun. He still could not return to finish what he had begun. He had failed Shar then and his failure had driven him to madness. His goddess had bound him in the Calyx as punishment for his failure, allowing him freedom to Faerun only now.

He would not fail her again. And his atonement would be the end of Toril.

Rivalen left and Tamlin walked the halls of the Hulorn's Palace, his mind and body afire for his transformation.

His feet bore him up stairways until he stood on the highest balcony of the palace's northwest tower. These days he often retreated to the balcony when he wished solitude, a moment with his thoughts away from the burden of leadership.

The brisk wind carried the smell of fish off the bay and snapped the pennons atop the turrets above him. The high vantage afforded him a panorama view of his city, of Selgaunt Bay, of the floating mountain of Sakkors. From so high up Selgaunt and the water of the bay looked still, quiet, like a painting, the bustle lost in the lens of distance.

The forest of the Hulorn's hunting gardens stretched before him, a walled swath of green that fell away to reveal the towering spires, domes, and towers of Temple Avenue. The avenue was quiet, almost dead. No bells tolled the hour in Milil's Tower of Song, and no flames danced in the everburning ewers on the portico of Sune Firehair's House. No festive pennons danced atop the spires of the Palace of Holy Festivals. Temple doors up and down the avenue were closed, their priests and priestesses arrested or fled, their windows dark, pews and worship benches empty. Only the gray stone of Shar's temple had open doors and lit glowballs, and the Shadovar priestess Variance Mattick presided over the prayers to the Lady. Tamlin fancied he could hear the sound of the Thirteen Truths in the air. He touched his holy symbol and whispered them to the wind.

He looked past the tangle of Selgaunt's winding streets and broad thoroughfares, past the packed bunches of wood-shingled and tiled roofs, past the turrets of the mansions of the Old Chauncel, and past the Khyber Gate, to where Sakkors hovered three bowshots up in the air on its craggy, inverted mountaintop. Shadows enshrouded it. It looked like a storm cloud, like he imagined the Shadowstorm must look. Not even the afternoon sun could defeat its fog of darkness. From time to time the breeze parted the swirl of shadows and hinted at a tiled rooftop, an elegant turret, a soaring spire, but the entirety of its appearance was a mystery, a secret. The patrol of shade-mounted veserabs had withdrawn into the city. It was soon to travel north and west in answer to Rivalen's will.

When it did, it would take with it the priests and priestesses of the other Selgauntan faiths, currently held captive in the Shadovar enclave. Tamlin suspected their quarters to be less than luxurious and the suspicion pleased him. He regarded them all as traitors, but could not yet bring himself to give the order to execute them. Some of them had headed their temples since Tamlin was a boy at his father's knee.

He began instead to let them drift into the background of his mind, let concern for their fate slip into the recesses of public consciousness. When they had adequately faded from the collective memory, he would do what needed done. Rivalen had told him it was necessary. Perhaps Tamlin would assure Rivalen that he was worthy of shadedom when he gave the order for their execution. He would have the order drawn up.

Meanwhile, only Shar's worship would be sanctioned in Selgaunt. And soon, Shar's worship would predominate across all of Sembia. Perhaps Tamlin would tolerate other faiths for a time, but only for a time. The Lady of Loss consumed rival faiths the way the Shadowstorm consumed Sembia, drowning them in her darkness.

A distant rumble of thunder sounded from the north, from the Shadowstorm. Tamlin's dreams of rule depended upon Prince Rivalen stopping it. He looked toward Ordulin and imagined he could see the advancing edge of the Shadowstorm.

"Goodbye, Mirabeta."

He hoped she had died in pain. She merited such a death.

His thoughts surprised him for a moment, but only a moment. He realized that his religious conversion had freed him to think openly about matters he once would not have considered, or at least would not have acknowledged. The self-realization pleased him. Shar and Rivalen had freed him from the shackles of his past, the shackles of an outdated morality. The old Tamlin had died the moment he plunged the sacrificial dagger into Vees Talendar. And Tamlin had buried the body of his past self in the depths of his worship.

An urge struck him, a desire to symbolize his death and rebirth. He knew how he would do it.

The diminutive of his father's name died with the old Tamlin. He was, after all, not smaller than his father. He was larger than his father could ever have hoped. He was not Tamlin, not Deuce, but Thamalon II, and would be from then on. Perhaps he would order a coin minted to that effect. He thought Rivalen would appreciate the gesture.

As the sun sank lower, roofed the sky in the crimson of blood, Sakkors began to move. Watching the monumental edifice, the whole of it as large as Selgaunt, fly through the air brought Shar's praises to Tamlin's lips. Rivalen would take it north, toward Saerb, and trap the Saerbian refugees between a Shadovar army and the onrushing Shadowstorm. He hoped thereby to force Mister Cale to assist him in destroying Kesson Rel.

Rivalen had seemed unsure that Mister Cale would accede, but Thamalon knew Cale would. Mister Cale still thought about morality the way Thamalon once did, the way Thamalon's father once had. Thamalon knew better now. The refugees were a tool to be used to achieve a greater end. Their individual lives were of no moment.

"Love is a lie," he recited. "Only hate endures."

He stood on the balcony for over an hour, watching Sakkors vanish into the night. His city came to life with nightfall. Link-boys illuminated the streetlamps. Shop windows glowed. He watched it all with a smile. He had fed his people in the midst of famine, defended them against an unwarranted attack instigated by an ambitious, lying overmistress. Saerloon was already his.

Urlamspyr would soon follow, as would Yhaunn.

If anyone had the right to rule Sembia, it was him. He had earned it. He need only convince Prince Rivalen to share with him the secret of transforming into a shade. Then his rule would last for a thousand years.

He looked into the darkening sky. Selune had not yet risen. The moonless twilight belonged to Shar.

"In the darkness of night, I hear the whisper of the void."

He found he was wiping his right hand on his trousers and could not understand why.