The Godborn

Chapter Three

The limbs of the malformed trees rattled in the wind and rain. Sayeed recalled the Sembia of a century before, before the Spellplague, even before the Shadowstorm: fields of barley, forests filled with game, rivers that ran fast and clear, merchants everywhere. But all of that was dead.

Like him, Sembia was alive while dead.

The last time Sayeed had walked the Sembian plains, the nation had been in the midst of a civil war, and he and Zeeahd had worn the uniforms of the overmistress’s armies. They and many others had been captured and maimed at the order of a Lathandarian, Abelar Corrinthal. Sayeed had taught himself to fight left-handed over the intervening years. And now Sembia was in the midst of a war again. Damp air and bad memories caused the nub of Sayeed’s thumb to ache distantly.

“Why do you slow?” Zeeahd barked over his shoulder.

Sayeed had not realized he had slowed. He hurried forward, the cats eyeing him as he moved through them to his brother’s side. Zeeahd’s hood obscured his face.

“I was. . thinking.”

“About?”

“The plains dredge up old memories.”

Zeeahd grunted.

“I was thinking about the Spellplague. About why we were. . changed as we were. I wonder if there’s purpose in it.”

Zeeahd spat, the cats pouncing on the spittle. “There’s no purpose in it. We were on that ship when the blue fire struck, just the wrong place at an ill time. And we were there because of this.”

Zeeahd held up his own right hand, the stump of his thumb a mirror of Sayeed’s, although marred with scales and a malformed joint.

“And we owe that to Abelar Corrinthal. Look for no more meaning than that. Men do awful things to other men. That’s the world.”

“That’s the world,” Sayeed echoed.

“We’ll be free of all this soon,” Zeeahd said. “The Lord of the Eighth promised. We need only find him the son.”

The son. They’d been seeking their prey for decades, scouring Faerun. By now, the son of Erevis Cale would be an old man. Or dead.

“You think this Oracle will tell us how to find him?” Sayeed asked.

“We’ll make him tell us,” Zeeahd said. “And if the son is already dead of age, we’ll find out where his corpse is and give that to Meph-to the Lord of Cania. And he will free us. Come on. We must find a village.”

Zeeahd picked up his pace, his gait lumbering, awkward, bestial. Sayeed fell in after him.

Over the next several hours the rain picked up until it fell in brown, stinking sheets. The whipgrass under their feet squirmed at the foul water’s touch.

“Do you require shelter?” Sayeed asked Zeeahd. “Sleep?”

“No,” his brother said, in a voice deeper than usual. The hood of Zeeahd’s cloak hid his face. “You know what I require, and I require it soon.”

They hustled through the rain, the wet ground sucking at their boots, the anticipatory cries of the hungry cats driving Sayeed to distraction. His brother wheezed, coughed frequently, and spat a black globule every few steps-to the delight of the cats, who feasted on it.

After a time, moans began to slip through Zeeahd’s lips and his form roiled under the robes. Sayeed could not help but stare. He’d never seen his brother so bad.

“Stop looking at me!” Zeeahd said to Sayeed, half turning his cowled head, his speech slurred and wet from malformed lips.

Sayeed licked his lips and looked away, queasy. The plains looked the same in all directions. The road they traveled appeared to lead nowhere. He feared that they would not be able to stop whatever was soon to happen to his brother.

A small, secret part of him wished that whatever was to happen would happen. His brother disgusted him. Their lives disgusted him. He tried to exorcise the traitorous thoughts with a half-hearted offer of aid.

“How can I help, Zeeahd?”

Zeeahd whirled on him. “You can find me a vessel! Or become one yourself!”

Sayeed’s eyes narrowed. His hand went to the hilt of his blade. As one, the cats turned to face him, all eyes and teeth and claws. He tightened his grip on the hilt, prepared to draw.

But a sound carried out of the rain, the distant scream of a woman from somewhere ahead. The cats arched their backs, cocked their heads.

“You heard it?” Zeeahd asked, still eyeing Sayeed out of the depths of his cowl. “It’s not a phantasm of my mind?”

“I heard it,” Sayeed said slowly, and relaxed his grip on his blade. More screams carried through the rain, terrified wails, dogs barking feverishly. “Someone requires aid.”

“Come on,” Zeeahd said, turning and staggering over the wet earth toward the screams. Despair raised his voice. “Hurry. I can’t continue like this.”

They ran over the slick earth, Sayeed leading, the cats trailing. Twice Zeeahd slipped and fell. Twice Sayeed turned back, lifted his brother to his feet, and felt the flesh and bone of his brother’s body swell and roil under his touch, as if something were nested in his flesh, squirming underneath it in an attempt to burst forth. Bile touched the back of his throat and shock pulled a question from him before he could block it with his teeth.

“What in the Hells is in you, Zeeahd?”

Zeeahd kept his cowled head turned away from his brother. His voice was guttural. “I told you before! I don’t know. He put something in me. To make sure I did his work. It’ll. . change me.” He shoved Sayeed ahead. “Please, hurry.”

Closer now, Sayeed distinguished the screams of several women and men, the frantic barking and growls of not one but two dogs. He topped a rise and crouched low amid a stand of broadleaf trees. Zeeahd crawled into position beside him, wheezing and moaning. The cats formed up around them, silent and staring.

Below them, the ribbon of the packed-earth wagon road stretched east to west. Two wagons lay overturned on it. A flotsam of household goods lay scattered in the grass: rain-sodden blankets, a small table, broken stoneware. Two bodies lay among the debris, both torn open at the abdomen, the ropes of their entrails smeared on the grass, glistening in the rain. A third corpse lay a few paces from the first two, arms and legs at grotesque angles, the skin drawn tightly against the bones, mummified, as if sucked dry.

A misshapen bipedal creature twice as tall as a man stood in the road. It appeared almost skeletal, but sickly black flesh and chunks of muscle wrapped the bones here and there. Overlong arms ended in finger-length black talons, and large, pointed ears walled a hairless, misshapen head. Green light burned in the depths of its sunken eye sockets. The fanged mouth was opened wide and a pink tongue as thick as Sayeed’s wrist and as long as his forearm dangled grotesquely from the opening. Currents of dark energy swirled around it, gathered on its claws.

It shrieked in hunger and hate, a high-pitched, ear-splitting sound that would have stood Sayeed’s hair on end a hundred years earlier.

Zeeahd coughed, spat a globule of dark phlegm. The cats pounced and consumed the black mass in a moment. “It’s a devourer. An undead that draws power from the Shadowfell.”

Two men-simple villagers, to judge from the homespun they wore and the wooden axes they wielded as weapons-circled the devourer at a distance of two paces, the weapons trembling in their grasps. A mastiff, barking frenetically, harried the devourer opposite the two men.

A boy’s body lay on the ground near the devourer’s feet, his head nearly ripped from his neck. A girl lay not far from the boy, her dress torn and covered in mud, face down, unmoving. The bodies of three other children lay around the road, their clothes and bodies torn, pieces of them scattered about like the wagon’s debris.

Two women hovered on the outskirts of the combat, shouting, cursing, crying, hurling rocks and stones and whatever they could find at the devourer, all to no effect. A second mastiff stood near the women, barking and growling.

“Run!” the tall, bearded man shouted to the women. “Run!”

“I won’t leave you,” the thick-set woman answered, crying. “Leave us be, creature!”

The bearded man lunged forward, axe held high. Before he could bring his weapon to bear, dark energy flared around the devourer, a cloud of darkness veined with green streaks that knocked the man from his feet. The second man, much younger, perhaps the first man’s son, shouted in anger, bounded forward, and sank his axe into the devourer’s leg. The weapon barely bit and the devourer showed no sign of pain. The creature lashed out with its overlong arm and claw and caught the young man across the face. The impact spun the youth completely around. Blood sprayed and he fell to the mud without a sound.

As he fell, the younger of the two women screamed in despair, her hands clasped before her as if in prayer. The dogs’ barking grew manic. The heavier woman tried to pull the younger girl away, but she seemed frozen to the spot.

The devourer lumbered forward, grasped the older, bearded man and lifted him triumphantly into the air. The man’s arms were pinned against his body, his axe hanging futilely from his fist.

“Run!” the man screamed at the women, his face twisted with pain and fear. “Please run!”

The devourer pulled the man close and ran its tongue over his face, leaving a road of blood and blisters and a ruined eye in its wake. The man wailed, legs kicking against the devourer’s chest, all to no effect. The devourer opened its fanged mouth as if in glee, tongue dangling. The dark energy that animated the creature spun and whirled in a black cloud around the man and the undead.

Green lines flared within the cloud, baleful veins connecting the man to the devourer. The man’s screams rose to a high pitch, and then turned to a distorted wail as his body began to shrink in on itself, the hole of his mouth appearing to get larger as the skin drew tight against his bones. The green lines pulsed, netted the dying man. A green glow formed within the devourer’s abdomen, a vile egg.

The energy flared, causing Sayeed to see spots, and the man’s wails stopped. When his vision cleared, Sayeed saw the devourer drop the shriveled, lifeless form of the man to the mud and turn to face the women.

Within the devourer’s abdomen, caged by the bars of its ribs, squirmed a tiny, naked effigy of the man, the devourer pregnant with horror. The effigy’s eyes and mouth were wide with pain and terror.

Sayeed knew what had occurred: The devourer had caged the man’s soul and would use it to power its own unholy force.

Seeing that, the women finally broke entirely. They shrieked and turned to run. The older slipped and fell in the mud, and the younger turned to help her. The devourer keened. Green energy flared from the effigy in its abdomen, traveled to its claws, and shot out toward the women and their dog. It struck all of them at once, and the barking and screaming ended, cut off as if by a blade. All three fell to the sodden earth, limp.

The tiny body within the devourer watched it all and opened its mouth in a wail of despair. The devourer ran its tongue over its lips and fangs, shuddered as if in ecstasy.

The surviving dog whined, turned circles in its agitation.

Sayeed stared at the small form of the trapped soul, wondering if he could die were his soul so trapped. It had been so long since he’d rested. He wondered if he could find peace in the belly of a horror. What would it would be like, to have his soul slowly-

“What are you doing?” Zeeahd said. “I need someone alive!”

Zeeahd stood and pushed past Sayeed while drawing his sword. He spoke words of power, his voice ragged and deep, and extended his blade in the direction of the devourer. A twisting spiral of smoking, deep red flames exploded from the steel and slammed into the devourer’s chest.

The creature staggered backward, bent, flesh charred and smoking, steadying itself by placing one clawed hand on the wet ground. Its green eyes scanned the rise, fixed on Zeeahd and Sayeed, and flashed with unholy light. It crouched, flexed its claws, and shrieked.

The cats hissed in answer.

The surviving dog took to barking and growling but did not get within the devourer’s reach. The soul of the trapped man writhed, veins of green energy pulsing from it to feed the devourer.

Black energy swirled from the devourer’s form. Green light flared in its abdomen, and the tiny effigy of the man imprisoned there squirmed, shrinking ever smaller as the devourer consumed him for power. As the effigy shrank, the burns Zeeahd had inflicted on the flesh of the devourer healed, the flesh knitting closed.

A coughing fit seized Zeeahd and he bent double, slipped in the wet, and fell to the grass on all fours. His form twisted under his clothing, getting taller, thinner. Sayeed started to help him up-feeling his brother’s bones twisting-but Zeeahd pushed him away.

“Go!” he said, and coughed. “That’s all I can do for now.”

Sayeed stood, drew his blade, and readied his shield.

Zeeahd’s hand reached up and closed on his wrist. His brother’s hand was feverishly hot, although he still kept his visage hidden within the cowl.

“That creature cannot give you peace, Sayeed. Your soul and mind would live on in its form, regenerating constantly, forever sating its appetite. You would suffer eternally.” Another cough, then, “The Lord of the Eighth has promised me a cure. Promised us a cure. Only through him will we find an end to this. He has already gifted me with hellfire. You saw, Saied. You saw.”

The devourer shrieked again and padded across the grass toward them, stepping heedlessly on the corpses of those it had slain, driving the bodies deeper into the mud.

“I saw,” Sayeed said to his brother. He didn’t trust Zeeahd-he hated Zeeahd-but what choice did he have?

The devourer broke into a loping run.

Sayeed didn’t wait for it. He roared and ran down the rise, his armor clanging, meeting the creature’s charge head on. The thrill of battle filled him, the only thing he felt with clarity anymore.

They closed in five strides. The devourer slashed with one of its huge claws, but Sayeed deflected it with his shield and did not slow, instead slamming his body into the devourer’s larger form while he drove his blade into the creature’s abdomen, through the effigy, and up through the neck. The enchanted blade vibrated gleefully in his hands as it found purchase in flesh, and the movement made the already deep wound jagged, more painful.

The devourer and the effigy both keened with pain. Dark energy swirled around them, a black fog that pulled at whatever withered bits of Sayeed’s soul remained. The stink of the creature, like a charnel house, filled Sayeed’s nostrils. The devourer shoved him away, nearly causing him to slip on the wet earth, and bounded after him, claws slashing. Sayeed parried with his shield and ducked under another blow, but the creature pressed, heedless of Sayeed’s blade.

Sayeed slashed the creature’s arms, leg, but the devourer grabbed his face with an enormous clawed hand and squeezed, the nails piercing Sayeed’s cheeks, penetrating gums, and scraping teeth. Blood poured into Sayeed’s mouth. He felt no pain but nearly vomited at the taste of the creature’s foul digits in his mouth.

With preternatural strength, the devourer lifted Sayeed by his head and cast him five paces away. Sayeed hit the ground in a clatter of metal, rolled with the momentum, and bounced to his feet. Already the flesh of his face was knitting closed. He spat out the taste of the devourer’s fingers and a mouthful of blood.

The devourer cocked its head and licked its fangs with the rope of its tongue, perhaps puzzled that Sayeed had not remained prone.

Sayeed’s weapon shook in his hands, hungry for more violence. Sayeed, eager to feed it and high on the rush of battle, roared and charged anew. He blocked an overhead claw strike with his shield and cleaved the creature at the knee. His blade bit through flesh and sheared bone, severing the leg.

As the devourer fell, it lashed out with its other claw, catching Sayeed on the shoulder, ripping through mail and flesh, and spinning him around with the impact. A blast of dark energy from the devourer engulfed him, cooled his body, and once more pulled at his soul.

His rage proved the hotter and he resisted the dark magic. He spun and drove his blade downward into the prone creature’s chest. He left it there, pinioning the creature to the ground, while the devourer tore at his legs and abdomen. Black energy from the devourer churned around him, a seething cloud of unholy power. Sayeed felt the blood running warm from his body, but ignored it. Straddling the creature, he took his shield by the sides, lifted it high, and slammed the sharpened edge of its bottom into the devourer’s neck. The slab of enchanted metal severed the devourer’s head, ending its shrieking, extinguishing the green light in its eyes. The dark energy around Sayeed subsided as the head fell away from the body, tongue still dangling from its mouth like some grotesque pennon.

Sayeed stood over the corpse while the rain fell, while his body healed its wounds. With battle over, the rush left him, and he once more returned to his usual emptiness.

The devourer’s corpse began to leak shadows, the stink of them like rotting meat. Its flesh fell away from bones that began to crumble. The trapped soul in its abdomen, like a malformed fetus, was the last to go, screaming as it dissolved into putrescence.

As Sayeed watched the rain wash the stain of the creature from the plains, he recognized that he was no more human than it had been. He should have felt fatigue, soreness, pain, but he did not. He occupied flesh, he moved, but he felt nothing, not unless he was killing something.

Standing there, he realized there was nothing left in him but hate, for himself, for his brother, for the world. The Spellplague had done more than transform his body. It had transformed his soul, robbed him of hope. He’d once tried to kill himself, slitting his own throat with a dagger. For a brief, glorious moment, his vision had blurred and sleep and death had seemed within reach. But his flesh had healed far more quickly than he could bleed out.

He wanted to die but the world would not let him.

Hearing his brother shambling near, he recovered himself, his blade, his shield. He used the grass to wipe the ichor from both. His brother was grunting like a beast. Sayeed tried to block out the sound, tried to quell the impulse to drive his blade into Zeeahd’s guts, expose whatever foulness polluted his brother’s flesh.

The surviving dog hovered at a distance, whimpering, unwilling to approach. Sayeed sheathed his blade and turned to the dog.

“Here, boy! Come!”

The mastiff bared its fangs, turned a circle, whined, and did not come any closer.

Animals always saw them for what they were, he and his brother.

Zeeahd lumbered among the carnage, gasping, awkward with the bulges and swells forming under his robes. The cats followed, their eyes glowing red in the dim light.

“Are none alive? Sayeed, are none alive?”

Zeeahd sounded as if he might weep.

Sayeed felt nothing for him.

“Sayeed!”

Sayeed sighed, sheathed his weapon, and slung his shield. He went to the women, the younger and the older, and kneeled beside them, found them both dead. The men and all the children were dead, too, all except one.

“The girl is alive,” he said, and gently rolled her over onto her back. She looked pale, her dark hair pulled back and tied with a leather tie. Her breast rose and fell with her shallow breaths. She might have been fifteen winters old.

The dog whined. The cats hissed at it, eyed it hungrily.

“Excellent! Excellent!” Zeeahd said, and waddled over. His voice was wet, as if he had a mouthful of liquid. “Leave her to me. Leave her, Sayeed.”

Sayeed stood, backed away a few steps. He made another attempt to win over the dog-he didn’t know why-but the mastiff would have none of it.

Zeeahd kneeled at the girl’s side, cradled her in his arms, and spoke words of healing. They came awkwardly to his brother’s lips, accustomed as they were to uttering arcane words that harmed.

The girl moaned and her eyes fluttered opened. Sayeed saw the panic form in them.

“Let me go! Let me go!”

“Be at ease, girl,” Zeeahd said, his words sloppy, wet with drool. “You’re safe now.”

Sayeed realized that his mouth was dry and that he still had the taste of the devourer in his mouth. Odd that he could barely taste even the finest food, but the foulness of a devourer lingered. He drank from his waterskin, swished, spit.

Thunder boomed.

The cats ringed Zeeahd and the girl, although they stared out at the growling dog with unmistakable hunger in their eyes.

“What happened?” the girl asked. “Who’re you? Where’re mama and papa?”

Zeeahd used his roiling girth to shield the girl from the sight of the corpses. “You were attacked. You were with your family?”

She craned her neck and looked around Zeeahd at the carnage.

Sayeed saw her expression fall, saw the light fade from her eyes. She had just died, although her body still lived. In that moment, she had become him.

“Not my mum and dad. Oh, no. Oh, no.” Tears leaked from her eyes, snot from her nose.

Zeeahd daubed at both, as gentle as a wet nurse, and wrapped the distraught girl in his overlong arms, enveloping her in his cloak. His body pulsed and seethed under the sodden cloth.

“There, there, my girl,” he said, his voice the gentle roll of thunder before the lightning. “It’s all over now.”

Sobs shook the girl’s small frame. The cats milled in a circle around them, their meows like a question. Zeeahd tried to shoo them while tending the girl. His hand poked from his cloak and Sayeed saw its malformation, the claws, the leathery skin, the fingers almost twice the length they should have been.

“That creature!” the girl said through her sobs. “It was awful. Oh, father!”

“There now,” Zeeahd said. “The creature is no more and that’s all that matters. What’s your name?”

“Lahni,” the girl said, her voice muffled by Zeeahd’s cloak. “Lahni Rabb.”

“That’s a beautiful name,” Zeeahd said, and stroked her hair.

Sayeed took another drink from his waterskin. He wished it was wine; he wished he could drink himself into unawareness. But even drunkenness was denied him. He toyed with the idea of decapitating Zeeahd, an idle thought that made him smile.

The mastiff whined, barked uncertainly, sniffed the air, hackles raised.

“The dog won’t come,” Sayeed said, because he had nothing else to say and the silence was awful.

The dog turned a circle, agitated. Spit frothed on its muzzle. It began to shiver, as if in fear, but did not abandon the girl.

“That’s our dog,” said Lahni. “Papa’s dog.”

“What’s its name?” Zeeahd asked.

“King,” she said.

“King,” Zeeahd said. “That’s a fine name. We’ll see to the dog.”

He waved an arm in the direction of the dog and the cats tore off past Sayeed toward King. The guttural sounds that emerged from their mouths were nothing Sayeed had ever heard from cats. The dog barked once in alarm, wheeled around, and fled, the cats in pursuit.

“What is this?” Zeeahd asked, his malformed fingers closing on a charm the girl wore on a leather thong around her neck. “Is it amber?”

“Mum gave it to me for my fifteenth lifeday.”

“It’s beautiful,” Zeeahd said. His clumsy fingers nearly dropped the amber charm.

“Oh, mum!” the girl said, and melted into Zeeahd’s grasp, sobbing.

Zeeahd stroked the girl’s hair, harder, harder.

“That hurts,” she said.

“I know,” Zeeahd said. “I know.”

“Stop,” she said, fear creeping into her voice. “You’re hurting me.” “I can’t stop,” Zeeahd said, his voice guttural.

“Please. . ”

“I’m sorry,” Zeeahd said, his voice little more than grunts.

The girl pulled back, looked up into his cowl, and her eyes widened. “What’s wrong with your face? Oh, gods! Help! Help!”

Sayeed had braced himself, but the girl’s screams still hit him like a knife stab. He wanted to turn away but his feet seemed rooted in place, stuck in the mud, stuck in the horror of his life with his brother.

Zeeahd held the struggling, screaming girl in his hands, his form roiling, and half turned to Sayeed, his face thankfully lost in the shadow of his cowl. “Stop looking at me, Sayeed!”

The words freed Sayeed to move. He turned away, bile in the back of his throat, acrid, harsh.

Lahni screamed, a pitiful, terrified shriek.

“One kiss for your savior,” Zeeahd grunted in the voice of a beast. He began to cough, to heave. “Just one.”

“Help! Help!”

The girl’s pleading stopped, replaced by muffled sounds of terror, a wet gurgling.

Sayeed tried not to hear his brother’s retches, the girl’s abortive wails, the final, violent wet heave followed by blissful silence.

Sayeed stared off at the plains, at the darkness, at the rain, and tried to make his mind as blank as his emotions.

“It’s done,” Zeeahd said at last.

Sayeed steeled himself and turned.

His brother, his form more normal than it had been in a tenday, stood over the limp, prone form of the girl. She looked tiny on the ground, her arms thrown out, her head thrown back, like a broken flower. Open eyes stared up into the rain. A rivulet of black phlegm hung from the corner of her mouth. The tendril of black mucous wriggled like a living thing and disappeared into her mouth.

“She was a girl,” Sayeed said. “Just a girl.”

“I know that!” Zeeahd said, wincing. “Do you think I don’t know that? This is the price I must pay to keep the curse at bay. He holds me between worlds to ensure I do his work and find the son.”

“Mephistopheles?”

Thunder rumbled and the darkness seemed to deepen.

“Do not say his name!” Zeeahd said in a hiss. He looked about, eyes wide with fear.

Somewhere, out in the plains, the dog, King, yelped with pain.

“We can’t continue like this,” Sayeed said dully. “I can’t.”

“We’ll have release,” Zeeahd said. “We need only find the son. Bear with it a while longer.”

In the years they’d sought Cale’s son, Zeeahd’s divinations had revealed nothing; consultations with seers and prophets had not availed them. It was as if the son had fallen out of the multiverse. But recently, Zeeahd’s divinations had pointed them to the legendary Oracle of the Abbey of the Rose.

“The Oracle will know how to find him,” Zeeahd said.

Sayeed looked past his brother to the girl, Lahni, lying still in the grass among the corpses of her family. He hoped the Oracle would know. Sayeed just wanted to sleep. He’d never wanted anything more in his life. His brother had turned into a monster serving the Lord of Cania. Sayeed had turned into a monster serving his brother.

The cats padded out of the shadows, their paws and muzzles covered in the dog’s blood. They stopped, sat, and licked their paws clean while they eyed Sayeed and Zeeahd.

Sayeed didn’t want to see the remains of the dog, if there were any. He turned back to his brother to find him staring at the cats.

“Why do we keep doing this, Zeeahd? I’m so tired.”

Zeeahd peeled his eyes from the bloody felines. “Because we must. Because my pact with him is the only hope we have. And because I’m getting worse.”

Vasen’s adoptive father, Derreg, had buried Varra in the common cemetery atop a rise in the eastern side of the valley. When Derreg died, Vasen laid him to rest beside Varra. They’d known each other only a short time, but Derreg had insisted that he be buried beside Varra in the cemetery for layfolk rather than in the catacombs under the abbey.

The stones that marked their graves were the same as those that marked all the other graves on the rise. A simple piece of limestone etched along the bottom with the spraying lines of the rising sun.

Vasen sat on his haunches before the graves. He’d plucked two of the pale orchids that grew at the base of the mountains and placed one on each of their graves.

“Rest well,” he said. “I’ll return when I can.”

He stood, turned, and looked out and down on the vale. The Abbey of the Rose sat in a deep, wooded valley, a gash hidden in the heart of the Thunder Peaks. A hundred years earlier, the Oracle, then only a child, had led the first pilgrims to the valley, telling them that it was a protected place into which the Shadovar could not see.

“We will be a light to their darkness,” he’d said, or so the story went.

And, as with all of the Oracle’s pronouncements, the words had proven true. The vale had remained unmolested by enemies, its location a secret to all but a select number of the faithful.

Ringed on three sides by cracked limestone cliffs that merged with the sloped sides of pine-covered mountains, the vale felt like a world unto itself, a pocket of light in the heart of shadow, a singular thing, like the rarely seen sun. Vasen loved it.

Foaming cascades from melting glaciers poured out of notches in the eastern and northern cliff faces, falling with a roar to the valley floor. The rushing waters joined to form a fast-moving river that bisected the vale before carving its way farther down the mountains. Smaller brooks and streams branched from the river to feed the vale’s lush vegetation. Dozens of tarns dotted the terrain, their still waters like dark mirrors.

Vasen took one last look back at his mother’s grave, at Derreg’s, then headed down the rise. When he reached the valley floor, he picked his way along the many walking paths that lined the pine forests. Pilgrims had trod the same paths for decades. Nesting cowbirds fluttered unseen in the branches; they’d head for warmer air to the south soon.

From time to time the canopy thinned enough overhead that he could glimpse the sky, the whole of it the gray of old metal, as if the Shadovar had encased the world in armor.

Despite the impenetrable sky, Vasen’s faith allowed him to perceive the sun’s location. He always knew where he could find the light. Yet he felt comfortable, even welcome in the shadows. He credited his blood for that, and it only rarely bothered him.

He had mostly reconciled himself to his dual existence. He told himself that his connection to both light and shadow gave him a better appreciation of each. He existed in the nexus of light and shadow, a creature of both, but a servant of only one.

His hand went to the rose symbol the Oracle had given him. Silver under the tarnish, light under the darkness.

“Where will you go when I die?” the Oracle had asked him.

He kicked a piece of deadwood and frowned. He could scarcely conceive of the Oracle’s death. The Oracle was the fixed star of Vasen’s existence. Vasen’s sworn purpose was to protect him. Without the Oracle, without the oath, what would Vasen have? Who would he be?

He didn’t know. He lacked family and friends. Without a purpose. .

He inhaled deeply to clear his somber mood. The air was thick with the smell of pine and wildflowers, the scent of his home.

“Wisdom and light, Dawnfather,” he said softly. “Wisdom and light.”

Ahead, a beam of sunlight escaped the cloak of the shadowed sky and cut a line down through the pines, a golden path that extended from the hidden sun to the hidden vale.

Vasen whispered his thanks and hurried forward to the boon. He placed his hand in the beam’s light and warmth. Shadows leaked from his dark flesh, the blade of Amaunator’s sun and the darkness of his blood coexisting in the light.

The beam lasted only a few moments before the sky swallowed it again, but it was enough. The Dawnfather had heard, and answered.

His spirits lightened, Vasen turned the direction of his thoughts from his own concerns to those of the pilgrims he would soon lead out into the dark.

He asked Amaunator for wisdom and strength, prayed that his light and that of the Dawnswords would be enough to see them all to safety.

A voice broke the spell of solitude. “Well met, Dawnsword.”

Surprise pulled a rush of shadows from Vasen’s flesh. He turned to see one of the pilgrims standing on the path a few paces behind him. The man had come with the most recent group from the war-torn Dalelands.

“The light keep you,” Vasen said, recovering himself enough to offer the standard greeting between believers. “Are you. . lost? I can escort you to the abbey if-”

The man smiled and approached. He wore a gray cloak, dark breeches, and a loose tunic. The compact stride of his lithe frame wasted little motion.

“Oh, I’ve been lost for years. But maybe I’m finding my way now.”

The man’s eyes struck Vasen immediately-pupilless orbs the color of milk. Vasen might have thought him blind had he not moved with such confidence. Tattoos decorated his bald head, his clean-shaven face, and his exposed neck-lines and spirals and whorls that made a map of his skin. He held an oak staff in his hand and carved lines and spirals grooved its length, too.

“I didn’t hear you approach. Orsin, isn’t it?”

“So I tell myself these days. And you’re Vasen.”

“Aye. Well met,” Vasen said, and extended a hand.

Orsin’s grip felt as if it could have crushed stone.

“Do you mind if I join you?” Orsin asked. “I was just. . walking the vale.”

Ordinarily Vasen preferred to prepare his mind and spirit in solitude. But he remembered the Oracle’s admonition-“Things change, Vasen.”

“Please do. I was just walking, too. And the company of a brother in the faith would be welcome.”

Orsin hesitated, an awkward smile hanging from his lips.

“Something wrong?” Vasen asked.

“Not wrong, but. . I should tell you that I’m not a worshiper of Amaunator.”

Given the context, the words struck Vasen as so unlikely that he thought he might have misheard.

“What? You’re not?”

Orsin shook his bald head. “I’m not.”

Now that he thought about it, Vasen did not recall seeing Orsin at dawn worship, or at any of the Oracle’s sermons, or at anything else associated with the faith. Concern pulled shadows from Vasen’s skin. He tensed.

“Then what. .”

Orsin held his hands loose at his side. Perhaps he read the concern in Vasen’s face. “I’m not an enemy.”

“All right,” Vasen said, still coiled, eyes narrowed. “But are you a friend?”

Orsin smiled. The expression seemed to come easy to him. “I was, once. I’d like to be again.”

“What does that mean?” Vasen asked.

“I ask myself the same thing often,” Orsin said.

Vasen’s faith allowed him to see into a man’s soul, and he saw no ill intent in Orsin. Besides, the man would have been magically interrogated in the Dalelands before being brought to the vale. And had he been hostile, the spirits of the pass would have barred his passage. Still, Vasen could not imagine anyone other than a follower of Amaunator risking the Sembian countryside to come to the abbey.

“I’m. . at a loss,” Vasen said. “I’ll need to tell the Oracle.”

“Oh, he knows.”

“He knows?”

Orsin smiled, shrugged. “He does.”

“I’m confused. Why are you here, then?”

Orsin’s milky eyes were unreadable. “That, too, is something I often ask myself. The answer, usually, is happenstance. I just follow the wind.”

Vasen could not quite make sense of either the reply or the man. He could tell Orsin was not giving him the entire truth, yet he sensed no lie in Orsin’s words.

“You’re a strange man, Orsin.”

“Would it surprise you to know that I’ve heard that before?” Orsin chuckled. “Does this change your answer? May I still walk with you?”

“Oh, I insist you walk with me now.”

“Very good, then,” Orsin said, and used his staff to scribe a line in the dirt before their feet.

“I hesitate to ask,” Vasen said. “What’s that you just did?”

He wondered if perhaps the man were mentally unsound.

“Lines mark borders, a beginning. This is before,” Orsin said, and used his staff to point to one side of the line. Then he pointed to the other side. “This is after. I hope there’s a friendship on this side.”

The words, so guileless, touched Vasen.

“Then I do, too,” Vasen said, and together they stepped over the line. Orsin’s steps were so light on the undergrowth that they made almost no sound.

“Where are you from?” Vasen asked him. He made a note to ask Byrne and Eldris about Orsin. In particular, he wanted to know how Orsin had slipped through the interrogation they performed on all would-be pilgrims. A non-worshiper getting through suggested a problem. The battles being fought in the Dales could not be an excuse for carelessness.

“I’m from the east, Telflammar,” Orsin said. “Do you know it?”

Vasen shook his head. It was just an exotic name he’d heard from time to time, although perhaps coming from Telflammar explained Orsin’s exotic appearance.

“It’s very far from here,” Orsin said, looking off in the distance. “It was. . changed in the Spellplague.”

“What wasn’t?”

“True, true,” Orsin said. “And you? Where are you from?”

Vasen made a gesture that took in the vale. “I’m from here.”

“Sembia?”

“Not Sembia, no. Sembia belongs to the Shadovar. I was born in this vale, and it belongs to us.”

“Us,” Orsin said. “You’re. . not Shadovar?”

Vasen had heard the question often from pilgrims and it no longer offended him. “No. I’m. . something else.”

“Something else, but. . akin to shadows, yes?”

Vasen held up a hand. “Listen. Do you hear that?”

Orsin looked puzzled. He cocked his head. “The water?”

Vasen nodded. “The cascades. They’re the first thing I hear when I lead pilgrims to the vale or return from taking them home. Hearing them, I know I’m home.”

“You walk much but never far.”

Vasen liked that. “Yes. Never far. Are you interrogating me, Orsin of Telflammar?”

“So it seems,” the man said with a grin. “You’ve spent your entire life here?”

“Since the day I was born. Only the Oracle has been here longer. All the others, even the abbot, rotate in and out. The gloom is not for everyone.”

“No, but it calls those it calls,” Orsin said. “And nothing lasts forever.”

Orsin’s words reminded Vasen of the Oracle’s words earlier. His expression must have turned somber. Orsin picked up on it.

“I’m sorry. Did I speak out of turn? I meant that the darkness couldn’t last forever.”

Vasen waved off the apology. “No need for sorry. Your words just put me in mind of words someone else said to me recently.”

“I see.”

“And if anything can last forever, I fear it’s this darkness.”

“I think not,” Orsin said.

Vasen smiled. “You’re sure you’re not a worshiper of the Dawnfather?”

“Very good,” Orsin said with a chuckle. “Very good.” The end of Orsin’s staff put little divots in the earth as they walked. “Where are we walking?”

“I’m just following the wind, same as you.”

They came to the river’s edge. The burbling water, shallow and fast moving, cut a groove in the valley’s floor. Trees jutted at odd angles from the steeply sloped bank. Round rocks like cairn stones lined the bank. Vasen felt a chill, and it reminded him of the dream of his father.

Directly across the river stood another pair of pilgrims-a middle-aged man with a scarred face who held the hand of a plump, long-haired woman, probably his wife.

Vasen held a hand aloft in greeting and called, “The light warm and keep you.”

The pilgrims stared at him for a moment, finally raised their hands in a tentative wave, and mumbled an echo of his blessing. They hurried on without another word.

“My appearance makes some uncomfortable,” he said, pointing a finger at his eyes, which he knew glowed yellow in dim light.

“My appearance does the same,” Orsin said. He looked in the direction the pilgrims had gone. “Seems unfair, since they owe their safety to you.”

“Fairness does not enter into it,” Vasen said. “It’s my honor to serve.”

“And true service often demands solitude.”

Vasen heard something forlorn in Orsin’s tone, an echo of his own feelings. “You speak as one who knows that firsthand.”

Orsin nodded. “I do.”

“Well, neither of us walks alone today, yeah?”

“Very good. Not alone. Not today.”

Abruptly, Vasen made a decision that surprised him. “Come on. I’ll show you a place.”

Orsin’s eyebrows rose in a question but his tongue did not utter it.

Vasen followed the bank of the river for a time. Ahead, through the thinning pines, he saw the cracked, pale face of the eastern wall of the vale, and above it, crags like teeth. The shadows of the mountains fell across the forest, darkening the already dim air further. Vasen felt the deepening darkness draw around him like a blanket, thick and comfortable.

He turned right, leaving the river behind. The ground sloped upward, and the pines, older and taller than elsewhere in the vale, towered over them. The scrub overgrew the walking path.

“Few come this way,” Orsin observed.

“I usually come here alone,” Vasen said. He’d always felt drawn to it.

“Thank you for letting me accompany you, then.”

Eventually they came to Vasen’s destination: a large tarn of still, dark water. Tall pines, the oldest in the vale, ringed the water, standing silent, dignified sentinels. One of the tall pines bordering the tarn had fallen over years earlier, blown down in a storm, perhaps. Half of its roots lay exposed, and a portion of it extended out into the tarn. Weather had stripped it of much of its bark, but still it lived.

When they stepped within the circle of the trees, sound seemed to fall away. The distant rush of the cascade, the stirring of birds, the hum of the wind, all diminished. Near the tarn there was only stillness, silence, shadows.

Orsin spoke softly. “This place is waiting.”

Vasen nodded. “That’s always been my feeling, also. I come here to meditate and commune with the Dawnfather. Although. .”

He did not say that the tarn pulled at the part of him he owed to Erevis Cale, the dark part, the shadow.

“Although?” Orsin prodded.

“For other reasons, too.”

Orsin looked at the earth, the trees, the tarn. “I don’t think this is the Dawnfather’s place. None come here but you?”

“None but me for a very long time,” Vasen acknowledged. “What do you mean, this isn’t the Dawnfather’s place?”

Orsin did not answer. He glided forward, his pale eyes fixed on the dark water. Vasen followed, his skin inexplicably goose pimpled.

“Who are you, Orsin?” Vasen asked. He felt as if much hung on the answer. He wondered why he had brought the man with him to his place of solitude. They’d only just met. He’d been walking with the man for half an hour and Vasen knew essentially nothing of him. “I think I should take you back to the abbey, explain matters to the Oracle-”

“I’m a walker,” Orsin said over his shoulder. He reached under his tunic to remove something, a disc of some kind, a symbol. “A hopeful wanderer. And a congregation of one.”

“Is that-?”

Orsin was nodding. “This is the symbol of my faith. This place doesn’t belong to the Dawnfather, but it’s holy still. And now I know why my path brought me here, why you brought me here.”

Kneeling at the water’s edge, Orsin held the symbol-a black disc bordered with a thin red line-over the water.

Vasen did not recognize the symbol but felt as if he knew it. He froze when shadows flowed up from the surface of the water to enwrap the symbol, twisted around Orsin’s hands. Orsin murmured words, a prayer, that Vasen could not hear.

Vasen looked at his own hands, also leaking shadows. His entire body was swimming in them, wrapped in them. Once more, he felt as if he were living life in a story written for him by another.

Write the story.

Orsin stood and turned to face Vasen. His white eyes widened slightly when he saw the mass of shadows swirling around Vasen.

“This place was left here. For me, maybe, but I think more likely for you. You’re connected to it. So I’ll ask you the same question you asked me. Who are you?” Vasen looked at his hands, leaking shadows.

“You’re a shade but not a Shadovar. How? Tell me.”

Vasen cleared his throat. He tried to pull the shadows back into his form but they would not diminish. “My. . father.”

Orsin took a step toward him, his fingers white around the disc of his holy symbol.

“Who was your father?”

Vasen looked past Orsin to the tarn, its deep, black water. “His name was Erevis Cale.”

Orsin’s hands fell slack to his side. “That. . can’t be.”

“You’ve heard his name? I thought you came from the east.”

Orsin took his symbol in both hands, held it to his chest. “Erevis Cale died more than a hundred years ago. You’re too young to be his son. It’s not possible, is it? How can it be?”

“Magic sent my mother here while I was still in the womb.” Vasen took a step toward Orsin, toward the tarn. “How do you know my father’s name?”

Vasen’s hand went to the hilt of his blade. Suspicion lodged in him, grew. Orsin seemed not to notice, or not to care if he did.

“Erevis Cale was the First of the Shadowlord.” Orsin brandished the symbol, held it out for Vasen to see. “The First of Mask.” Orsin was shaking his head, pacing now along the edge of the tarn. “I was led here to see this, to meet you, but why? I don’t see it. I don’t see it.”

Vasen said nothing, could say nothing, just stood in the midst of the shadows gathering around them. He let his hand fall from the hilt.

Orsin stopped suddenly, looked over at Vasen.

“This is their place, Vasen. Mask. Your father. This is their place.”

For a moment Vasen could not speak. His dreams of Erevis Cale reared up in his mind, dark visions of a cold place. “No. Mask is dead. Erevis Cale is dead. This can’t be their place.”

“I keep the faith alive, Vasen,” Orsin said. He gestured at the fallen tree. “It’s like that tree. Uprooted by a storm, broken on the rocks, but still it hangs onto life. So, too, does the Shadowlord’s faith. In me and maybe a few others.”

“You. . worship a dead god?”

“Not quite dead,” Orsin said. He pointed at the tarn as if it signified something. “This tarn is different from all of the others in the vale, yes?”

Vasen stepped to Orsin’s side, his eyes on the water. “It is. Deeper. No one has touched its bottom.”

The faint light of the dying, shrouded day cast their darkened reflection on the water, faceless and black, only half formed.

“You’ve tried?”

“Once. The water gets too cold and the depth is too great. It’s like. . a hole.”

Orsin inhaled deeply, put a hand on his hip, and looked up at the mountains. “I think I’ve stood on this ground before.”

Vasen shook his head. “You’ve never been to the abbey before. I’d remember if you had.”

Orsin smiled, no teeth, just a faint rise at the corners of his mouth. “There was no abbey here, then.”

Vasen could not control the swirl of shadows around him. “The abbey has been here since before you were born.”

“The spirit is eternal, Vasen,” Orsin said, nodding at some truth only he understood. “The body is not. Before going to its final rest, a spirit is often reborn into a new body. Sometimes this happens many times.” His white eyes looked distant as he fixed them on the dark water of the tarn. “But the essence of the spirit, its core, is the line that tethers its lives to one another through time. A thread that connects them all.”

Vasen thought he better understood the tattoos on Orsin, the grooves in his staff. “And you. .?”

“Have been reborn many times.” He smiled. “It seems I have a disquieted spirit.”

“Are you-? I don’t-”

“I’m not human, Vasen, at least not fully. The essence of the planes runs in my veins. In the Dalelands they called me a deva. But I’ve been called other things in other places, in other lives. Aasimar. Celestial. But deva suits me well enough. And Orsin suits me best.”

Vasen tried to process everything he was learning, to make sense of it. “And you came here-?”

Orsin shrugged. “Following the thread of previous lives. I told you the truth. I follow my feet where they lead.” His gesture took in the tarn, the vale. “I’m here now to see this. To see you, I think.”

Vasen felt the threads of his life being drawn into a knot, his dreams of Erevis, the Oracle’s words, Derreg’s admonition to be prepared, the appearance of Orsin.

“Why? To what purpose?”

Orsin disappointed him with a shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just walking a path that allows me to meet those I’ve known before. That’d be pleasant, I think.”

The hairs on Vasen’s neck stood on end. “Us? Then you think we’ve known each other before?”

Orsin smiled. “I believe so.”

Vasen had no words. He didn’t know if he believed Orsin, but he could not deny the connection he felt with the deva. He’d felt it the moment he’d seen him, like reuniting with an old friend. That was why he had brought him to the tarn. That was why he had tolerated the questioning.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Orsin said. “You’ve renewed my faith. It had been. . flagging.”

“You’re welcome?” Vasen managed.

“Very good,” Orsin said, chuckling. The deva tucked his holy symbol back under his tunic and took another look around. “Odd, not so, that a place holy to the Shadowlord is in a place holy to the Dawnfather?”

“Perhaps not so odd,” Vasen said, thinking of his own soul, his own life, the tarnished holy symbol he bore.

Orsin watched him and seemed to take his meaning. “No, perhaps not. Shadows require light, after all.”

The distant peal of the abbey’s bell sounded three times, breaking the spell of the moment.

“That’s the call to gather,” Vasen said.

Neither man moved. Vasen eyed the tarn, the trees, seeing all of them as if anew. He took the rose holy symbol in shadow-shrouded hands.

“Wisdom and light,” he whispered.

The bells sounded again, three peals.

“We must go,” he said. “The pilgrims are to leave the vale.”

Orsin’s pale eyebrows rose. “All of them? So soon?”

Vasen nodded. “Including you, I’m afraid.”

“Why now?”

“Because the Oracle commands it. He sees things we cannot. That’s his burden.”

Orsin’s expression fell, but he recovered with a smile. “Strange to say farewell so soon after we met. Strange, that I would have come so far only to cross paths with you for so short a time.”

“You won’t have to say it quite yet,” Vasen said. “I’ll be leading the pilgrims’ escort back to the Dales. The war there makes things especially dangerous. I should have gone last time. Although, then, perhaps,” he said with a smile, “I wouldn’t have let you come.”

Orsin chuckled. “So the shade-but-not-Shadovar will take us back to the sun, then. Very good. Very good. The lines of our lives will stay crossed, for a while longer at least.” He scraped another line into the soft earth and eyed Vasen. “Revelation means a new beginning. We walk together yet, Vasen Cale.”

No one had ever called him Vasen Cale before. He allowed that it sounded right.

Together, they stepped over the line and walked back toward the abbey.