Shadowrealm

CHAPTER SIX

4 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms

Cale and Riven materialized on a rise in the shadow of a stand of towering larch at the outskirts of the Saerbian refugee camp at Lake Veladon. The wind tore leaves from the limbs, showering them in debris. Iron-gray clouds roofed the sky directly above. Behind them loomed the Shadowstorm. Cale did not turn but he felt the weight of it between his shoulder blades, imagined in his mind the dark clouds sliding across the sky, a black curtain closing on Sembia's final act. Thunder growled like a beast, announcing the storms hunger.

"We need to hurry," Cale said. He felt urgency down to his bones. He tried to contact Magadon.

No response. The connection remained dormant.

From their vantage point atop the rise, they saw the camp below bustling with activity. Wagons and mule-drawn carts were being arranged around the outskirts of the camp into a large caravan. Teamsters checked yokes, wheels, axles, the animals themselves. The horses, oxen, and mules endured their examinations with the passivity of the exhausted and underfed. Many gave starts or snorts with each roll of thunder.

The men and women of Abelar's company, their otherwise shining armor dulled by the wan light of a diseased day, supervised the organization of the caravan. Cale noted only a few score. He presumed the rest to be on patrol.

Several men stood knee deep in the lake, filling barrels and skins with water, then passing them on to pairs of youths who splashed out of the shallows and carried them to the wagons. Thin dogs darted around the camp, tails wagging, barking, excited by the activity.

"Breaking camp," Riven said.

"Wise," Cale said.

Behind them, the sky rumbled its disapproval.

"Come on," Cale said, and started down the rise. Riven's words slowed his stride.

"Abelar is as broken as Mags, Cale. He just doesn't know it yet. Remember that."

Cale considered the words, considered the man, and shook his head. "Not broken. Cracked. Both of them. But fixable."

Riven looked unconvinced but let it go. Together, they hurried down toward the camp.

The teamsters saw them coming, stopped their work, and hailed them. Children waved and smiled. Women and men packing up their goods took a moment to nod a greeting or utter a hail. Cale did not know where they found their resiliency.

"Tough folk," Riven said, taking the thoughts from Cale's head.

Cale nodded. He wanted to feel fondness for them but did not. He didn't know what he felt. He pitied them, understood their plight, but felt no connection, at least no human connection.

He was broken, too. Or cracked. And he was not fixable.

By the time they had reached the center of the camp, they had picked up a contingent of children and young men. Cale did not need his darkness-enhanced hearing to hear the frequent mention of the words "hero," "shadows," and "Mask."

Two of Abelar's company directed them to Abelar and shooed the children back to their duties.

They found Abelar standing among a stand of trees at the shore of the lake, away from those gathering water, arms across his chest, staring out at the still waters as if he had lost something in them. Cale and Riven navigated down the riverbank.

"Abelar," Cale said, and his voice pulled Abelar around only reluctantly. Cale noted the lack of a holy symbol, the new breastplate that did not feature an enameled rose.

Abelar smiled a welcome, stepped forward and clasped hands.

"Erevis, Riven, well met and welcome. I am pleased to see you returned. How did matters fare within the storm? Your woman?"

Cale shook his head.

Abelar put his other hand on Cale's shoulder. "I am sorry, my friend."

"Thank you," Cale said.

Abelar's eyes grazed Riven's holy symbol, moved away. His jaw tightened and a tic caused his left eye to blink.

"We came to warn you about the storm," Cale said, nodding back at the growing blackness. "Seems you scarce needed it."

"We thought it dark magic out of Ordulin. It seemed best to stay out of its path."

"It did not originate in Ordulin," said Cale. "But in the Plane of Shadow, with Sharrans."

"Sharrans," Abelar said, the word a curse. His eyes again returned to the surface of the lake.

"I fear Ordulin may be… gone," Cale said, thinking of his conversation with Mask on the Wayrock.

Abelar turned to him, a stricken look on his face. Cale envied him his empathy.

"There are tens of thousands of people there," Abelar said. "And the Dawn Tower? Gone? What magic is this?"

Before Cale could answer, a voice from atop the bank carried over the rain.

"Papa! Papa! Rain coming! Hurry!"

The three men looked up to see Elden appear at the top of the riverbank. Exertion reddened his round face. Labored breaths came from his mouth, still somehow slack even in a smile. But his eyes shone with… something. Cale thought it insight or perhaps unfiltered love. He found he envied Elden, too.

The boy's expression fell when he saw Cale and Riven. He looked uncertain, eased back a step, and looked over his shoulder.

"Grandpapa."

Endren appeared behind him and his reassuring hand on Elden's shoulder seemed to steady the boy. Endren, dressed in mail and with a blade at his belt, nodded at Cale and Riven, crouched, and said something in Elden's ear. The boy visibly relaxed.

"The healers have done well by my son," Abelar said, waving to Elden. He smiled at his boy, though the fate of Ordulin still haunted his eyes. He took Cale and Riven each by the shoulder and turned them around. "Come."

They started up the rise and Elden's eyes grew wider at Cale and Riven's approach. He looked like he might bolt, but Endren kept a hand on his back and the boy held his ground. Father and son both had nerve, it seemed.

"These are the men who brought you back to us, Elden," Endren said, loud enough for them all to hear.

"My knows," Elden said. He slid behind his grandfather and peeked out from behind his legs like an archer through an arrow slit.

They gained the rise. Cale and Riven nodded a greeting at Endren, at Elden. The boy avoided eye contact.

"It rain again soon, Papa," Elden said to Abelar, avoiding eye contact with Cale and Riven. "Hurry to tent. Hurry."

"First, a dragon grab," Abelar said. He knelt, arms out, and the expression he had carried when looking at the lake-the look of having lost something-disappeared entirely. Instead, he looked like a man who had found something.

Elden smiled and braved his uncertainty. He charged Abelar and leaped into his embrace. Abelar roared like a dragon, nuzzled the boy's neck, and Elden giggled uncontrollably.

Cale could not help it. He chuckled, too. The boys laugh was as contagious as plague. Even Riven smiled.

Abelar stood, his son under one arm.

"Elden, these are Papa's friends, Erevis and Riven. Do you remember them?"

The boy didn't look at them. He pointed at the sky. "It going rain."

"These are the men that saved you," Abelar said to him. "They returned you to me."

A cloud passed over Elden's face, a personal Shadowstorm. He put his cheek on Abelar's shoulder.

"Rain, Papa."

"It's all right," Cale said to Elden, to Abelar. He could imagine how he must appear to some children. He would not have made much of a father.

Abelar kissed his son and placed him in the ground. "Grandpapa will take you back to the tent. I need to speak to Erevis and Riven. I will be along soon."

Elden nodded and hugged his father again. He turned and actually looked at Cale and Riven, studying them. The peculiar vacancy of his other features contrasted markedly with his eyes, which looked as sharp as daggers.

"Tank you," the boy said.

Cale kneeled down, forced the shadows leaking from his flesh to subside. "You are welcome, Elden."

"Watch this, boy," Riven said.

The assassin produced four small, painted wooden balls from a belt pouch.

Elden eyed them with curiosity. "What you do?"

"Watch," Riven said. He tossed them into the air one after another and juggled them with facility.

Elden grinned and clapped with delight. "Him juggle!"

Cale thought that of all the sights he had seen in his life, none had been as incongruous as Riven entertaining a child by juggling painted balls. Riven caught the balls one after another, finished with a flourish, and held them out to Elden.

"These are for you. Practice when you have time. Next time I see you, you can show me what you have learned."

Elden, still smiling, took the painted wooden balls, his reticence around Riven forgotten.

"Run and play with Grandpapa," said Abelar. "I will be along."

"Come, Elden," said Endren.

"Tank you," Elden said to Riven, who smiled in return.

To Endren, Abelar said, "They have brought news. I will share it with you later."

Endren nodded and he and Elden walked off, the boy tossing and dropping the balls as he went.

"You spend time with a troupe in a fair?" Cale asked Riven, smiling.

"Something like that. In Skullport. Long time ago." Riven spit, looked away.

Cale lost his smile. "Sorry, Riven. I didn't mean-"

"As I said, long time ago, Cale. No harm in your words. I carried those around… Hells, I don't know why I carried those around." He reached into another pouch. "I need a smoke."

While Riven found, tamped, and lit his pipe, Cale told Abelar what they knew. As he spoke, droplets of the rain Elden had prophesized started to fall, as thick and heavy as footsteps on the leaves, the trees, the surface of the lake. They took shelter under the canopy of an elm and Cale told Abelar of the Shadowstorm, of Kesson Rel, of Selgaunt's alliance with the Shadovar, of Rivalen Tanthul, servant of Shar.

"Shar is everywhere in this," Abelar said, and his gaze went back to the surface of the lake. He looked uncertain.

"Not everywhere," Riven said, and exhaled a cloud of smoke.

The three stood under the elm, isolated from the rest of the camp in a bubble formed of the sky's tears.

"You are part of this now," Cale asked Abelar. "Do you want to hear it all?"

Abelar didn't look at Cale. He looked out at the lake, the surface boiling in the rain, and nodded.

Cale told him of lost Elgrin Fau, the dead who haunted it, and his promise to them. He told him of their role in freeing Kesson Rel, of Furlinastis, and of Magadon and Mephistopheles.

When he finished, Abelar shook his head. "You have done a lot of good."

Riven chuckled and blew out smoke.

Cale said, "No. We've done what we had to do."

"I understand that," Abelar said. He looked Cale in the face, cleared his throat. "What turned you to your god, Erevis?"

The question took Cale aback; he struggled for an answer, felt Riven's eyes on him, too. "No one thing, I suppose. It's been a process, gradual, like it… unfolded."

"Like the events of your entire life had been arranged beforehand to bring you to faith," Abelar said, nodding.

"Yes."

Abelar turned away. "Strange that one moment, one thing, can entirely undo a choice born in a multitude of moments across a lifetime. Is it not?"

Riven answered before Cale. "You've got to live with yourself before you have to live with your faith, Abelar. Your son needed to be avenged. There's nothing more to it. You made the right choice." Riven looked at both Cale and Abelar and spoke slowly. "You made the right choice."

"I made the only choice," Abelar said, and shook his head. "And there is the problem."

Riven blew a cloud of smoke. "Not the way I see it."

Abelar turned back to them, smiling through his pain. "But then you've only one eye."

Riven smiled around his pipe but his tone was serious. "And you've only one son. Remember that."

Abelar lost his smile. He glanced back at the lake, the surface vibrating under the onslaught of rain. He looked back to Riven and said, "Truth."

Cale realized that Abelar was not broken, or cracked. He was torn. Like Magadon between devil and fiend. Like Cale between past and present, human and… inhuman.

"What will you do now?" Cale asked.

"Stay with my son. See these people to safety. What will you do?"

Riven chuckled and extinguished his pipe.

Cale said, "Go kill a god."

Brennus stood before the thaumaturgic triangle, incanting the summoning. Shadows and arcane power whirled slow spirals around him, around the room. The thrum of gathering energy formed the dark seed over the triangle, expanded into a window on the Hells. Screams and stink poured through the opening. Brennus called the name of the archfiend over the tumult and his voice boomed across the planes.

Mephistopheles answered. The shadow of his muscular, winged form appeared in the planar window. Brennus gagged at the charnel reek. The power peaked and Mephistopheles manifested within the circle. His white eyes fixed on Brennus, narrowed. Unholy power rippled from his glowing red flesh.

"You presume to summon me again, shadeling? For that-" He stopped, sniffed the air, and frowned. His mouth split in a fanged smile. "You are not alone."

Telemont, Hadrhune, and five archwizards of Telamont's court let the shadows around them fall away.

"No, he is not alone," Telemont said.

As one, the shadow mages incanted words of power. Mephistopheles roared, and grew in a heartbeat to the size of a titan. A three-tined iron polearm longer than Brennus was tall appeared in his hand, sheathed in a black cloud of unholy might.

He stepped from the circle, piercing Brennus's binding with ease. He held out a hand and a bolt of black energy arced from his palm, struck one of the archwizards, and reduced him to a pile of twitching gore.

Telemont, Hadrhune, and the remaining archwizards completed their spell and chains of shadow squirmed from the floor at the archfiend's feet, shackling him at ankles and wrists. Telemont made a cutting gesture with his hand and a final chain, thicker than the rest, sprung from the floor and ringed the archfiend's waist.

Mephistopheles beat his wings, pulled against his bindings, but the chains, composed of the stuff of Shade Enclave itself, rattled and held him fast. He glared at Telemont and viridian beams shot from his white eyes. They struck the Most High and shadows exploded around him. He groaned, staggered backward, but kept his feet. Telemont shouted a word of power, held a hand before him palm out, and the chains on Mephistopheles tightened.

Mephistopheles exhaled a cloud of power at Telemont but it stopped a few paces from the fiend's face, dissipating into the dark air.

"The shackles suppress your power now," Telemont said, his voice strained.

Mephistopheles roared, beat his wings, and pulled in a frenzy against his bindings. Brennus backed away, his heart racing.

Power seethed around the archfiend, a black cloud shot through with lines of crackling green power. Veins and sinew looked like ropes in his straining muscles. He roared again and chunks of quartz from the dome above rained down, shattering on the floor into hundreds of jagged shards. He lurched from side to side and yanked against his bonds. The whole of Shade Enclave bucked and rolled. Brennus fell and the shards of quartz skittered across the floor.

Telemont and Hadrhune merely watched, their eyes aglow.

"You have him, Most High," said Hadrhune.

After a time Mephistopheles ceased his struggles. Huge breaths expanded his mammoth chest and his lips peeled back to show his fangs.

"You cannot harm me, shade," he said to Telemont. "Even on this plane, in this form, I am well beyond you. And you cannot hold me here forever. Yet forever is how long I have." He nodded at the archwizards and pulled at the shadow chains. "How long before one of your lackeys errs and these chains weaken? I forget and forgive nothing, Tanthul."

Brennus stood, remembered to breathe. The shadows around him churned in time to his racing heart.

"You speak truth," Telemont said. The Most High glided forward until he was nearly within reach of the archfiend. Dark power shrouded them both, though Mephistopheles towered over Telemont. "But your realm will suffer in your absence."

Mephistopheles snarled. "And your realm will suffer in my presence."

Telemont inclined his head, conceding the point.

"We will free you if you tell me what I wish to know."

Mephistopheles's eyes flashed cunning at the mention of a deal.

"Ask and I will decide whether to answer you with truth, lies, or not at all."

"Kesson Rel's death will free the Shadowlord's stolen divinity. I wish to divert it before it returns to the god or enters another of his Chosen."

The statement seemed to surprise the archfiend. Behind the white eyes, Brennus saw the complicated workings of an ancient, powerful intelligence calculating.

"It cannot be done."

The shadows around Telemont swirled. He glided forward another step and said, "A lie. I can detect them even from you."

Mephistopheles pondered for a moment, perhaps considering Telamont's claim.

"Can you?" he murmured.

Telemont waited, saying nothing. The archfiend looked past him to the archwizards, to Hadrhune, to Brennus, where his gaze lingered for a moment. Brennus again sensed the fiend's mind working through possibilities.

"Perhaps Baalzebul has noticed your absence already," the Most High said. "Perhaps he prepares a move against Mephistar while you scheme in your chains."

At the mention of one of his rivals, Mephistopheles's eyes narrowed. His flesh brightened to crimson and smoke exited his nostrils.

"Very well, shadeling. It can be done."

"Tell me how."

Brennus listened with interest as Mephistopheles told them the series of spells and the focus necessary to do what they intended. They would have little time once Kesson Rel was dead.

Afterward, Telemont nodded, and backed away. "My thanks, Lord of Cania. You are free."

The Most High gestured and the shackles opened, though the chains remained near Mephistopheles, ready to re-bind him should he do ought but leave. Power sizzled in the air around the archfiend. The shadows in the room darkened.

The archfiend began to fade. Before he did, he pointed a finger at Brennus.

"You wish to know the name of he who murdered your mother?"

"My Lord!" Hadrhune said, stepping forward.

Telemont gestured as if to cast a spell but did not complete it in time.

"Your brother," Mephistopheles said. "Rivalen Tanthul murdered your mother to seal a pact with Shar."

With that, the archfiend vanished in a cloud of smoke and brimstone.

Silence expanded to fill the room. The dead or nearly dead archwizard made wet sounds.

Jumbled thoughts bounced around inside Brennus's skull. The shadows around him whirled and spun in response. He grabbed hold of the thought that Mephistopheles was a liar, that he had, in fact, lied. But the archfiend would also know that Brennus could use his spells to determine the truth of the claim.

Why lie, then?

Hadrhune breezed past Brennus to Telemont. "He says nothing out of pique, my lord. He plans to seize the power, too. This complicates matters."

Telemont nodded. "It does. But we must trust in the Lady, Hadrhune. Events will be what they will be."

Brennus could not understand his father's indifference to the fiend's words.

"Did you hear his accusation, Most High?"

Telemont shared a look with Hadrhune, with his archwizards. The latter bowed and vanished into the shadows after teleporting the gore of their fellow from the room.

The Most High and Hadrhune turned to face Brennus and their somber expressions told Brennus all he needed to know.

It was true. Rivalen had murdered his mother.

And his father had known.

"You knew?"

The Most High looked away and Brennus flew at his father. Hadrhune interposed himself but Telemont moved him aside with a hand. Brennus grabbed his father by the cloak, shook him, stared into the thin, dark face. The light of his platinum eyes did nothing to illuminate the blackness in the hollows of his cheeks, the circles under his eyes.

"You knew and did nothing? For how long? For how long?"

The tears wetting Brennus's face embarrassed him but he could not stop their flow. The betrayal drained him of strength. He released his father.

Hadrhune said, "The Most High learned of it long after-"

"I asked you nothing, lackey!" Brennus spat. "This is a family matter."

Hadrhune's eyes flashed but he inclined his head and took a step back.

Telemont put a thin hand on Brennus's arm. "Shar revealed it to me more than a century after the enclave fled Karsus's Folly for the Plane of Shadow."

"Shar?"

Telemont nodded. "And in doing so she forbade my punishing him." He shook his head. The darkness around him roiled like boiling water. "But I do not know if I would have even if she had allowed it. By then, Rivalen had proven himself invaluable to me, to us. He headed her church and her church preserved our people in those darkest of days in the Plane of Shadow. We owe him much, Brennus."

Brennus remembered well the war with the malaugrym, the constant challenges facing the enclave after the Fall. But none of it justified what his father had done.

"To the Hells with her church, her faith. She is the reason my mother is dead."

"She saved our city and people when the other enclaves fell from the sky. Through her a new Netheril will be born on Faerun. Matters are… complicated, Brennus."

"Complicated? Complicated? My mother is dead. Your wife."

Anger fired Telamont's eyes and Brennus knew he had gone too far. Telemont grabbed Brennus, shook him with a strength that should not have been contained in his thin body.

"I know the price I pay for this, boy! Do not think to lecture me on grief! You are a child in such matters!"

Brennus stared into his father's face, his mouth open but wordless.

Telemont released him, regained control. "Forgive me, Brennus."

Brennus knew he would not. He tried to understand, but could not. "Rivalen should be made to pay."

The shadows around Telemont churned. "He will."

"How? You would allow him to become a god. He will be beyond our ability to punish if he succeeds."

"The power he seeks, once gained, is punishment enough."

"I do not understand."

"You would not. But I have looked into the void, Brennus. I stand on its edge each day but do not enter. Rivalen will embrace it and live with it the rest of his existence."

"It is not enough. He murdered my mother."

"What is enough is not for you to say. You will obey me in this as in all things. Assist Rivalen as you have been. He loves you, Brennus, in his way, considers you as much friend as brother. But he cannot know that I know. Not ever. And if you betray me in this, I will kill you."

Brennus looked into his father's eyes and knew he spoke truth. He did not give his father the satisfaction of more tears.

"You are not a man, Father."

Telemont regarded him with an odd expression, both sad and defiant. "No. Not for a long time, Brennus."

"All this for empire, Most High?"

Telemont looked puzzled at the question. "What else is there?"