Shadowrealm

CHAPTER SEVEN

4 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms

Cale and Riven took a meal with Abelar, Regg, and Endren then assisted the refugees with their preparations. Meanwhile, the sun continued its westward course across Faerun's sky and by late afternoon it broke out of the leading edge of the Shadowstorm like it was newly born. Light penetrated the rain clouds and blanketed the refugees' camp. Spirits visibly lifted as the refugees went about their work. Cale stood in the light, his hand disincorporated, his powers diminished, and tried to feel human.

The rest of the Lathanderians moved among the refugees, assisting and encouraging them. Abelar, Endren, and Elden prepared a covered wagon for their transport. Regg approached, sloshing through the muck, the rose on his chest mud-spattered.

"The scouts report no sign of Forrin's army," Regg said to Abelar. "The entire force has vanished."

Cale looked out at the expanding, lightning-veined blackness of the Shadowstorm and guessed at what had happened to them.

"Darkness eats its own," said Abelar. "The storm has them, I'd wager."

"Agreed," said Regg. "I only regret that we were not able to avenge their attack on Saerb ourselves."

"Aye," Abelar said, and loaded a pack into the wagon. Elden climbed over barrels and bags, whooping as some tipped and he rode them down.

"Be mindful, Elden," Abelar said, and Elden paid him no heed whatsoever.

Regg said, "The camp is prepared, Abelar. I have Swiftdawn ready for you."

Abelar looked in the wagon to Elden, back to Regg. "I will ride in the wagon for a time, Regg."

Regg kept his face expressionless, though his body stiffened some. "Well enough."

"Our paths part here," Cale said. He embraced Abelar and Endren then clasped Regg's hand. Riven did the same.

"We will see you again in Daerlun," Abelar said.

"In Daerlun," Cale agreed.

Riven peeked into the wagon. "You show me what you can do with those balls when I see you again, yes?"

"Yes," Elden peeped.

Riven returned to Cale's side. Cale stood in Riven's shadow, intensified the darkness, stared at the distant Shadowstorm, and felt for the shadows within it. Strangely, the contact eluded him. As it had been with Elgrin Fau, the darkness in the storm did not answer to him easily.

He felt instead for the edge of the storm, the point at which his ability to feel the correspondence ended. As the darkness closed on them, he heard Abelar call to them, "Good hunting."

"Aye, that," said Regg.

The shadows transported them across Sembia, to the edge of the Shadowstorm.

Brennus sat at his dining table. His mother looked down on him from her portrait and he saw accusations in her eyes. He took her necklace from his pocket and set it on the table. Shadows poured from him. Grief poured from him. He had lost his mother and been betrayed by his brother and his father. He had heard the truth only from an archfiend.

His homunculi sat on the table facing him, their legs crossed, their chins in their palms.

"You sad, Master?" one of them asked.

Brennus reached out and scratched the creature's head, eliciting a growl of pleasure. The other, jealous, inched over to receive a scratching of his own. The creatures made him smile, made him think of his mother.

"I wish she could have seen you two," he said.

His constructs had amused her endlessly. The homunculi were simple creations for him now, hardly representative of his Art, but their antics would have brought her delight.

"They are wondrous, Brennus," she would have said in her clear voice, and he would have beamed.

His memories of her were so clear. It seemed only a day since he had last spoken with her, not two millennia. For some reason, he associated her memory with sunlight. He was pleased she had not lived to flee to the Plane of Shadow with them. She had been too bright for it.

He did not understand his father, nor did he forgive him. Shar had demanded the sacrifice of his mother's body. Now his father demanded that Brennus sacrifice his memory of her, poison it with inaction.

He could not do it. He would not.

He drew the darkness to him and pictured his makeshift quarters on Sakkors, now hovering over northern Sembia, and rode the shadows there.

Cale and Riven materialized at the edge of the storm. Rain poured from the pitch above, softening the ground, soaking their clothes, chilling their bones. Green lightning split the sky, cast the air in smears of vermilion and black. The wind gusted and swirled. Dead and dying vegetation covered the darkened plains before them. Trees shook in the wind, their twisted forms testament to the transformative powers of the Shadowstorm. The leading edge of the storm pulsed and lurched grotesquely as it shrouded the land.

The mental connection between Cale and Magadon flew open, startling him.

He is in there, Cale, Magadon said in his mind.

Cale nodded. He tried again to feel the correspondence between where he stood and the darkness within the Shadowstorm. The feeling was there, but it was distant, alien. The darkness in the storm was foreign to him. His inability to connect to it fully struck him oddly. It had been a long while since he had not been one with the darkness. It made him feel more himself.

"Ready?" Cale said to Riven.

The assassin fiddled with the teleportation ring on his finger. "We could use the ring, Cale. Go directly to Ordulin."

Cale shook his head. "We do not know what we will find there. Things would get ugly if we appeared in the midst of a score of shadow giants."

"Ugly for them," Riven said.

"We can cover ground less rapidly by stepping from shadow to shadow, but we'll at least see what we're in for before appearing neck deep in it."

Riven inclined his head. "That's sense."

"Let's move," Cale said.

"No need," Riven replied.

The leading edge of the Shadowstorm lunged forward like a predator, covering them in its darkness. Sound deadened. Color faded. It was as if a veil had been drawn across the land, as if they had been submerged in murky water.

"The air is different than last time," Riven said.

As if to make his point, the grass under their feet curled, browned, withered, and died. Trees and shrubs near them cracked and split as the Shadowstorm remade them into twisted, thorny versions of themselves.

Cale nodded. "It's getting more powerful as it grows."

The air in the Shadowstorm felt charged, powerful. The coolness seeped into Cale, pulled at his warmth, at his essence. They would need protective wards or they would soon be drained of warmth and strength.

"Hold a moment."

He held his mask and intoned the words to a prayer of protection. When he finished, he touched a hand to himself then to Riven. He felt its effect instantly as the Shadowstorm released its hold on his essence.

"Better," Riven said.

"It will last for a few hours," Cale said. He followed with the words to a prayer that would ward him and Riven against the chill. When he completed the spell, he let the warmth of the magic flow into him, touched Riven's arm, and did the same.

"Best be moving," Riven said.

Cale nodded and chose a spot within the Shadowstorm at the limits of his vision, a rise under a deformed oak. He stepped through the darkness and they appeared under the oak. The gusting wind drove the rain so hard it felt like a hail of nails. Lightning lit the transformed landscape. Thunder rumbled.

"Which way?" Riven asked.

"East until we reach the Dawnpost road. We take it all the way to Ordulin."

Riven nodded. "Which way is east?"

Magadon? Cale sent.

Cale?

We need to head east, but we can see nothing in the storm.

Cale felt a twinge in his mind, as if Magadon had pinched his brain.

Turn an arc, Magadon said. You will feel it as a pull.

Cale looked out across the Sembian plains, the sea of dead grass, the skeletal shapes of deformed trees. He pivoted his body, felt a pull at a certain point.

I feel it.

That is east.

Only after they had started moving again did it register with Cale that Magadon had used his powers through their connection. He had not known Magadon would be able to do so through an ordinary mindlink. Then it occurred to him that Magadon might have linked them with something other than an ordinary mindlink.

Mags…?

Cale?

Cale could think of no way to ask the question without it coming across as an accusation. Forget it.

Hurry, Cale, Magadon said, and the connection went quiet.

Together, Cale and Riven shadowstepped through the storm. They covered a bowshot at a stride and the leagues fell behind them. The storm worsened as they penetrated farther into it.

Swarms of shadows thronged the darkness, on the ground, in the air. They flocked in groups numbering as few as a score to gatherings in the hundreds. There seemed no end of them. When Cale and Riven saw the red eyes of the undead break the otherwise uniform blackness of the air, usually they simply sheltered under trees, boulders, or shrubs, and blended into the shadows. Other times they shadowstepped past or around the creatures. They were an island within an ocean of the creatures. Cale did not know how long they could go undetected. One slip would be all it took.

"Stay sharp," he said. Fatigue would take its toll on Riven before it would him.

"Do not worry over that. No giants, yet."

"Not yet," Cale said.

A few hours in, they stepped into a copse of twisted larch. The limbs of the trees, jutting at odd angles, reminded Cale of mace-broken bones. The needles hissed in the rain and wind, whispered indecipherable threats in ominous tones. Cale looked out of the copse and stared out into the storm.

"What in the Hells?"

Riven stepped to his side. "What is it?"

"Bodies."

A long bowshot before them, the remains of a battle littered the plains. Bodies, weapons, and shields lay scattered over the ground.

Cale eyed the immediate area, the sky, and saw no sign of any shadows. He wrapped the darkness around him and Riven and shadowstepped to the battlefield.

Desiccated bodies dotted the plains. They looked like skeletons wrapped tightly in flesh. None showed any wounds from weapons. Horse carcasses, too, lay scattered across the grass, their abdomens bloated, ready to burst.

"Shadows did this," Cale said, and Riven nodded.

Shrunken, withered faces stared out of helms and mail coifs, the sunken eye sockets as black as the sky. Lips drawn back by tightening skin offered them mocking smiles. Skeletal hands still clutched blades or crossbows. The soldiers wore rain-soaked tabards that featured the golden wheel of Ordulin. The Shadowstorm had already started to drain the color from them.

"The overmistress's army," Riven said, lifting one of the tabards with a blade.

Cale nodded.

They walked the carnage for a time. The bodies of horses and men covered a wide area, faced his way and that. The battle appeared to have been a confused affair.

"Look," Riven said, and pointed past Cale with a saber.

Cale turned and saw a single horse standing on the battlefield. It appeared so unlikely that Cale thought it the leftover remnant of a spell, or a hallucination.

"How can that be?"

He and Riven hurried toward the creature, but slowed as they neared. The horse was real enough.

"It's all right," Cale said, but sounded insincere. He had never been comfortable around horses.

Riven whickered, approached more assuredly. "Steady, girl. Steady."

The horse-a muscular brown mare-stood on three legs over a corpse, perhaps that of its rider. It held its other leg off the ground, bent at the knee, and Cale saw a shard of bone sticking through the flesh above the hoof. The horse trembled with cold, with terror, with woundshock. Wild eyes watched them approach. It snorted, shifted on its feet, stumbled, and nearly fell.

"Steady," Riven said in a calm tone. "Steady, now."

The assassin moved forward slowly, took the horse by the reins. He rubbed its neck and nose, making soothing noises. The horse blew out an exhalation and its trembling subsided somewhat.

"She should not be alive," Cale said. Curious, he cast a minor spell that allowed him to see dweomers. The horse's saddle glowed a faint red in his sight.

"Saddle is enchanted. It must shield her from the effects of the storm."

"Tymora smiled on you," Riven said to the mare. He kneeled, eyed the fracture just above the fetlock. The mare eyed him warily.

"She needs to be put down," Riven said.

"We could heal her."

Riven shook his head. "Then what? There are shadows everywhere. Better to die by the blade than those things."

"They haven't bothered her yet."

Riven considered, shook his head. "No. She's freezing. And how will she find her way?"

Cale felt his anger rising, but could not articulate why. "I can shield her against the cold. And animals find their way. Give her a chance, Riven. You are too damned ready to put down whatever you cannot save for certain."

Riven stood, eyed him through the rain. "Her? Are we still talking about a horse?"

Cale realized that he was not and he understood his anger. He calmed himself. "A chance. Yes?"

Riven relented, shrugged. "Well enough." He pulled darkness around his hands, used it to gently wrap the horse's leg, temporarily hiding the fracture. The horse whinnied, and Riven jumped back to avoid a kick. When the shadows dissipated, the wound was healed. The mare put her weight on the leg, gently at first, then more confidently.

Cale approached her from the side, whispering soothing words. He placed a hand on her flank and intoned the words to a spell that would ward her from cold, at least for a few hours.

Riven faced her in the direction they had come and removed her bit. He smacked her on the flank and shouted. She neighed and bolted away at a dead run. Cale wished her well. They watched her until she vanished into the darkness and rain.

"She's got a chance," Cale said.

"Maybe," answered Riven.

"So does Mags," Cale said.

"Maybe."

They stared at each other a long moment before the roll of thunder ended the moment.

"Let's keep moving," Cale said.

Magadon's voice sounded in Cale's head. How close are you, Cale? Matters are… difficult for me here.

We're moving fast, Mags. Not long now.

Still dodging red-eyed shadows, Cale and Riven made their way east over the dead landscape. Soon they reached the Dawnpost. The winding, packed earth ribbon of the road stretched east, impaling the darkness. Marker stones lined its length at intervals. They reminded Cale of grave markers.

Using the darkness as stepping stones, they ate up the leagues. The storm continued to worsen as they moved toward Ordulin. The landscape itself grew more and more like the Plane of Shadow-drained of color, twisted, cold.

Wagons and carts stood abandoned along the Dawnpost here and there. Dried out corpses or animal carcasses sometimes lay near the deserted vehicles. They checked for survivors, found none, and kept moving.

Ahead, the land started to drop away, sinking toward the River Arkhen. The Dawnpost led toward a cluster of buildings that crowded the river's banks. A mid-sized stone wall enclosed the center of the town, but dozens of buildings appeared to have spilled outside the wall. Most were one story and composed of mortared river stones, but a few two and three story structures deeper in the town peeked over the walls-the villas of the rich.

"Archenbridge," Cale said.

Cale had been to Archenbridge only once, years before, escorting Thamalon while the Old Owl negotiated a caravan contract. That day seemed to have happened a hundred years before, on another world.

The town appeared abandoned. Cale hoped the inhabitants had fled north into the Dales and not been caught up in the storm. He picked the next spot into which he would shadowstep when movement drew his eye. He put a hand on Riven's arm, pointed.

Four shadow giants appeared, walking the streets of the town outside the walls. They ducked through doors and shouted to one another over the thunder. Mail shirts covered their muscular, stooped forms and shadows bled from their pale flesh.

One of the giants emerged from a building with a chest in his hands. He shook it, grinned, and shouted to his companions. The other three giants materialized from the shadows near their fellow, one of them bearing another chest. The giants tossed both chests to the street and they broke open, spilling coins. The giants crouched down on their haunches and set to counting, speaking amongst themselves.

"Looting," Riven said.

Cale nodded. Greed was universal, he supposed.

Riven looked over at Cale. "Storm seems not to affect them. They warded, too?"

Cale doubted it. "They are native to the Calyx. Maybe that renders them immune."

"Well, they aren't native to Sembia," Riven said. "And if they're the only four…"

"Risky," Cale said, and studied the buildings and streets nearby. He saw no other giants, no shadows. "But doable, though none can escape."

"None will."

"I've got the two on our left."

Riven nodded. "Well enough. I'll use the ring. On a three count. One, two, three."

Cale stepped through the shadows, appeared behind one of the crouching giants, and drove Weaveshear through the creature's throat. Blood spattered the giant's comrades, and scattered the coins. Shadows exploded from the giant's form. The towering creature tried to stand but collapsed before getting out of its crouch. Cale jerked Weaveshear free.

Riven appeared behind the giant across from Cale and put a sabre into the creature's back. It started to stand, roared, and turned. Riven slit its throat before it gained its feet and it fell, bleeding, leaking shadows and gurgling.

The other two giants lurched to their feet, scattering coins, and pulled their blades, but Cale and Riven were already upon them. With one saber Riven deflected a wild stab by a giant, with the other he opened a gash in the creature's chest. The giant stumbled backward, slipped in the mud, and fell. Riven drove both sabers through its chest and heart.

Cale lunged forward at the last giant, feinted low, drew the creature off balance, and drove Weaveshear through its mail and into its gut. He jerked the blade free as the giant roared with pain, bent double. A two handed slash to the exposed neck separated its head from its body. Weaveshear leaked blood and shadows.

Riven and Cale went back to back as the corpses spasmed, watching the darkness for more giants, shadows, anything.

"Nothing," Cale said.

"Nothing," agreed Riven.

Both relaxed.

Riven spit on the corpses and said, "We keep moving."

The rain had already washed most of the giants' blood into the ground, but did nothing to clean the earth of the invasion the giants represented.

"We walk through the town, first," Cale said. "Ensure there are no survivors. Besides, someone needs to bear witness to this."

"Yes," Riven said, wiping his blades clean on a giant's trousers.

They left the corpses of the giants behind them and walked the streets of Archenbridge. Shutters and open doors banged open and closed in the wind. Murky water overflowed catch barrels and horse troughs. Plazas stood empty, forlorn, haunted only by the past.

Hints of a rapid evacuation littered the streets-loose sacks lay strewn about. Stacked barrels, coffers, chairs, divans, and other household furnishings had been left outside on the walks but never loaded onto carts, all of it a testament to lives disturbed, changed forever. A cooking pan lay half submerged in the mud of the street; Cale could not take his eyes from it.

They found no survivors but also no human bodies, though the carcasses of dogs and cats haunted doorways, curled up as if the creatures had fallen asleep and never awakened. Perhaps they had scratched at the doors for owners long departed before the life-draining storm had finally taken them.

Riven noted each dead dog, his eye hard, and Cale imagined him keeping a count in his mind, a ledger for which he would ultimately hold Kesson Rel to account.

The buildings of Archenbridge struck Cale in a way that the twisted plains had not, in a way that the bodies back on the Dawnpost had not. The empty structures represented not just a loss of life, but the loss of a way of life. The areas affected by the Shadowstorm would never be the same. Emerging from the wind and rain and darkness like the gravestones of titans, the buildings seemed like monuments to a lost world. By the time they reached the edge of the town and the graceful stone arch that spanned the Arkhen, Cale felt exhausted. Archenbridge was Sembia, was all of Faerun, if they did not stop the storm. The realization weighed on him.

They passed the bridge's toll gate and walked the arch side by side, saying nothing. The churn from the storm had turned the Arkhen's waters brown. They seethed under the rain's onslaught. Hundreds of dead fish floated in the current, gathered in the shallows.

Halfway across the bridge, a flutter in Cale's stomach stopped him. His mouth went dry and he found it hard to breathe. The shadows around him roiled.

"Feel that," he said to Riven.

Riven tried to speak but failed, and nodded instead.

Both of them slid their blades free and sank into the darkness on one side of the bridge. With an effort of will, Cale deepened the shadows around them.

"Kesson?" Riven asked.

Cale shook his head. He didn't know.

The dread grew palpable, thicker and more oppressive than the rain. It weighed on Cale's chest, stole his breath, and set his heart to racing. Shadows boiled from him, from Weaveshear. Beside him, Riven looked as tense as a bowstring.

What in the Nine Hells is causing that? Riven signed with a shaking hand.

Both of them peered out over the bridge, across the water, into the darkness. Even with his shadesight, the rain prevented Cale from seeing much on the other side of the river.

The dread intensified, rooted in Cale's mind. Tremors shook him. He stared across the river for the source, unable to move, unable to blink. He knew it was supernatural fear, that he had to fight it, but it overwhelmed his will.

A barrage of lightning flashed in the distance and Cale saw the source of his feeling, saw its silhouette framed for an instant by the sickly vermilion of the lightning bolts.

"Gods," Cale said.

In form it had the shape of a man, but stood as tall as three shadow giants, looming over even the tallest buildings in Archenbridge. The blackness that composed its immense body was more than mere darkness; it was a hole, the night brought to life. Cale knew it was not Kesson Rel. It was instead the embodiment of fear, terror made manifest.

It stalked silently along the riverbank with the slow, methodical stride of a predator that had nothing to fear from other creatures. Supernatural terror leaked from it the way shadows leaked from Cale.

Cale held his breath as the creature paused before the bridge. It turned a featureless black face toward Archendale. Its head bobbed as if it were sniffing for spoor.

Prepare yourself, Cale signed to Riven, and the prospect of a battle helped clear his mind. His heart slowed. His breath came easier. He put both hands on Weaveshear's hilt, and readied himself.

The creature put a foot on the bridge, seemed to think better of it, and turned and continued its path along the riverbank. Cale and Riven watched in relieved silence until it disappeared into the darkness.

"Dark and empty," Riven said.

Cale agreed. There were darker things stalking the Shadowstorm than mere shadows and giants.

"We need to get to Ordulin," he said.