The Godborn

  “Did they have mounts?”

  “Not that I saw, Prince.”

  Brennus studied the map. His attention came back again and again to the Thunder Peaks.

  “And this shade, he stepped through the shadows?” Brennus asked.

  Ovith shook his head. “Not that I saw. No. He waded the river to reach me rather than stepping from one shadow to another.”

  “Did darkness regenerate his wounds?”

  Again, Ovith shook his head, uncertainty clouding his expression. “Not that I saw, but he was a shade, Lord Brennus. I’d swear it. Perhaps not exactly like us, but a shade. I saw the way the darkness clung to him, his skin, his eyes.”

  “A half-shade, perhaps,” Brennus said, closing his hand on the rose in his palm. A half -shade who was Erevis Cale’s son. Brennus still could not see the whole picture, but he’d just found another piece.

  “My Lord?”

  “Nothing. How old did he appear to you, this shade?”

  Ovith shrugged. “I can’t say with any certainty. He looked like a human of thirty winters.”

  Too young, but he could have aged very slowly. Or he could be the grandson or great grandson of Cale, rather than the son.

  “Did anyone say his name?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  Brennus nodded, his mind racing, connections forming. “You’ve done well, Ovith. Return to the barracks and stay there. I may have more questions for you later.”

  Again Ovith put an arm on his chest and took a knee. “My Prince.”

  As Ovith walked out of the library, Brennus called to him, “Speak of this to no one. If you disobey me in this, I’ll know.”

  “Of course, Prince Brennus.”

  After Ovith had gone, Brennus looked down at the rose. “I have you.”

  The Oracle, his perception focused by Amaunator’s prophetic gift, walked the halls of the abbey, Browny padding along at his side. The Oracle’s slippers whispered on the polished stone floors. Everywhere he saw the iconography of his patron—the blazing sun in murals, sunbeam images inset into the floor, blown glass globes lit with magical light. And here and there he saw the rose, the symbol of Lathander, the dawn guise of Amaunator. The Oracle’s father had worshiped Lathander. They’d done the same work, father and son. Each had played his part. Perhaps they’d end the Cycle of Night, for Toril, at least.

  After walking the halls, he returned to his sparsely furnished chambers on the abbey’s second floor. The small room held his wardrobe, his bed, a pile of old wool blankets for Browny, and a prayer mat on the floor before the east-facing window. He kneeled on the mat and looked out the window. Browny sat on the floor beside him, chin on his paws.

  The Oracle let his imagination pierce the shrouded sky, imagined golden sunlight, a blue sky.

  “Night gives way to dawn, and dawn to noon. Residing in the light, I fear no darkness.”

  He took his holy symbol, a blazing sun cast in silver, and held it in his hand. “Thank you for letting me serve, Dawnfather.”

  He stood and went to his wardrobe. Within, buried under his winter bedding and the traveling cloak he never worn, lay a large, steel shield. The slab of enchanted metal and wood showed scars from many battles, but the rose enameled on its face looked freshly painted. The shield had been Saint Abelar’s. His father had cast it into a lake when his faith had temporarily failed him because the Oracle, then a boy, had been made to suffer. Years later, a vision had led the Oracle to the lake and he’d recovered the shield, knowing that he was to hold it in trust for another, to help during a dark time that would one day come.

  A day that had arrived at last.

  He could not see how it would end. The timeline of gods stretched too far into the past and future. He only saw how it would begin. He suspected the day’s events would conclude in shadow, not light. His vision saw poorly into dark places.

  He lifted the shield and tested it on his arm. It felt strong, sturdy, impassable, like the father who’d borne it. The shield’s enchantment had kept the leather straps supple, even after one hundred years. He slipped it on, but the weight was far too much for him to bear with only one arm. Smiling softly, he slipped his arm free of the straps. He had not been born to be a warrior. He had been born to be a guide.

  “Come, Browny.”

  Carrying the shield, he walked through the abbey, past the central worship hall, and into the attached living quarters. He went to Vasen’s chambers, as sparsely furnished as the Oracle’s own.

  He saw much of himself in Vasen. Both of them had the need to serve others. Both of them had a father whose deeds had written many of the pages in the book of the son’s life. Both of them were like two minds in one body. But they differed in at least one important way.

  “You are a warrior,” the Oracle said, and stood his father’s shield against the chest at the foot of Vasen’s bed. “Fight well.”

  Thinking of his father, he walked to the Saint’s Shrine in the eastern tower. He would await the servants of Mephistopheles there.

  Chapter Ten

  Sayeed and Zeeahd moved quickly over the plains, cutting through the shadowed air. Minser huffed and stumbled, sweating and wheezing, but the occasional cuff on the head from Sayeed kept him moving. The cats, too, herded him along.

  “What will you do with me when we get there?” the peddler asked, gasping. Zeeahd looked over his shoulder. “I’ll decide when we arrive.” Minser’s fearful gaze went to Sayeed, to the cats. He muttered prayers under his breath as he staggered along.

  “No god is going to save you now, peddler,” Sayeed said. “We’re past that.” “My grace is all you can hope for,” said Zeeahd, and a slight cough wracked his body.

  The cats looked at Zeeahd curiously, hope in their evil expressions. Minser whined, perhaps fearing a similar fate to that of the woman in Fairelm. But Zeeahd’s coughing ended without a purge.

  Minser continued to pray under his breath as they walked. Ahead, the dark, jagged spikes of the Thunder Peaks rose from the plains, the exposed spine of some enormous beast that seemed to reach all the way to the sky. Within an hour they walked the foothills. The terrain began to rise steeply. Valleys and gorges cut the face of the mountains. The pass they sought could have been anywhere. They’d have never found it but for Minser.

  Minser led them on, his head bowed, his will broken. He stumbled and weaved as they walked, exhausted.

  “You’re certain of the way?” Sayeed asked him, and swatted the side of his head.

  Minser blanched, mumbled something inaudible, and plodded on. He looked around from time to time, as if taking stock of their location.

  “Speak, peddler,” Zeeahd said, and another coughing fit afflicted him.

  Sayeed was surprised to see his brother coughing again so soon after a purge. The disease within him must have been not only growing worse but doing so more quickly. Sayeed wondered if the changes wrought by the Spellplague in his own body were also worsening, but in a way he did not notice.

  “You heard him,” Sayeed said, pushing Minser to the ground. “You spoke of a pass. Where is it?”

  Minser looked up to speak, but before he did he turned green and puked. He tried to cover his mouth as he vomited but that served only to spray it in all directions. The rapid travel had taxed him. Spitting and gagging, he pointed ahead at one of the narrow openings in the mountains. It did not look like a pass so much as a slit.

  “If you’re lying. . . ” Sayeed said, and let Minser’s imagination make the most of the threat.

  The peddler shook his head, his chins jiggling.

  “Give him a drink and keep him moving,” Zeeahd said.

  Sayeed tossed Minser a waterskin and the peddler gulped greedily.

  “Get up,” Sayeed said, and lifted the fat man as easily as another might lift a child.

  When they reached the mouth of the pass, Zeeahd turned to Minser. The peddler quailed.

  “You’ll lead us through the pass.”

  Minse
r shook his head. “I don’t know the way. There was a mist, and. . . ”

  “And what?” Zeeahd snapped.

  “And nothing,” Minser said, and Sayeed knew he was lying.

  “Sayeed,” Zeeahd said, and nodded at Minser.

  Sayeed advanced on the peddler, who stumbled backward and fell, holding up his hands.

  “Please, no.”

  “Then speak truth to me, peddler,” Zeeahd said.

  Minser’s twisted expression evidenced the battle within him, but eventually fear won out.

  “There were . . . spirits in the mist.”

  Zeeahd’s voice was low and dangerous. “Guardian spirits?”

  “I see no mist,” Sayeed said.

  “And you thought these spirits would save you, perhaps?” Zeeahd asked Minser.

  To that, the peddler said nothing. His entire body shook with terror. The cats crowded close around him, mewling.

  “There is no mist,” Sayeed said again.

  “How long ago did you travel the pass?” Zeeahd asked.

  “Four years ago,” Minser answered.

  “The mist is gone,” Zeeahd said, clearing his throat wetly. “There are no guardian spirits.”

  “Gone?” Minser said, his tone that of a little boy.

  “Gone,” Zeeahd said. “And with it, whatever hope you had of escape. Now move.”

  With Sayeed dragging Minser by the collar, they entered the pass. Its narrow, sheer walls closed in on either side. Tunnels, cracks, and other natural openings led off in other directions almost immediately.

  “Which way?” Sayeed asked, shaking Minser.

  “I don’t know,” the peddler said. “I told you, there was a mist. We were guided.”

  “By who?” Sayeed asked.

  “By servants of Amaunator,” Zeeahd said, as he kneeled before a boulder. He pointed near the base of the boulder and there, carved deeply into the stone, was the symbol of the Dawnfather—a blazing sun over a closed rose.

  “They marked the path,” Sayeed said.

  Zeeahd stood, his hands on his hips. “So it seems. Do you remember other markers, Minser?”

  “There was mist, but yes. They checked from time to time for markers.”

  “Good,” Zeeahd said. “Very good. With them, we can find our way.”

  “So you can let me go now,” Minser said. The quaver in his voice betrayed his fear.

  “Yes,” Zeeahd said. “We no longer need you. Have your release.”

  He waved at the cats and they swarmed the peddler, snarling. He screamed and tried to run as they bit and clawed. His exhausted legs would not bear him and he fell. The cats latched onto his body and tore at his flesh and skin. Blood and screams flew.

  “Get them off! Get them off!”

  Sayeed watched the murder, feeling nothing. Zeeahd laughed when Minser tried to pick up a nearby rock to strike one of the cats. The cat easily dodged the clumsy blow and sank its teeth into Minser’s wrists.

  “The light preserve me! The light preserve me!”

  Death came slowly and painfully to the peddler. His screams bounced off the walls of the mountains. The cats, their fur soaked with Minser’s blood, licked delicately at his savaged body. The peddler’s lower lip dangled from the mouth of one of the creatures.

  Zeeahd kneeled once more before the mark of Amaunator, stared at it as if committing its form to memory. After a moment, he stood, removed a pearl from his cloak, shattered it with a rock, and gathered the dust in his hand. He found a forked stick, sprinkled the pearl dust on it, and incanted the words to a divination spell Sayeed had heard him use hundreds of times over the years.

  “Other than the symbol of Amaunator carved into the rock immediately before me,” Zeeahd said. “Show me the nearest such symbol.”

  The forked stick glowed opalescent and seemed to tug Zeeahd around, the magic pulling him to the next marker.

  “Come,” Zeeahd said excitedly. “This way.”

  They left Minser’s corpse behind them and, relying upon Zeeahd’s spellcraft, moved from marker to marker, picking their way through the labyrinthine pass, their excitement growing with each marker they passed.

  They heard a soft rush, growing as they moved forward—falling water. In time they exited the pass and below and before them stretched a valley ringed by sheer mountain walls, a long smear of green bisected by a slow-flowing river, itself fed by several cascades that poured from the cliff face. Dark tarns dotted the valley here and there.

  Stone structures nestled among the pines near the river. Sayeed could see cleared land for cultivation, barns and other outbuildings, several livestock pens, an orchard of apple trees. A large central structure—the Abbey of the Rose, home of the Oracle—sat in the center of it all.

  Built of granite taken from the mountains, the abbey was more cathedral than cloister. The diamond-shaped structure featured tall towers at the east and west ends. Glass was everywhere. Large windows, not only in the walls but in the roof, would have bathed the interior rooms in light, were there any light in night-shrouded Sembia. A covered portico featuring slender columns ran around much of the structure. Several balconies jutted from the second floor and the towers. Flagstone courtyards on the north and south sides of the abbey provided gathering places.

  Sayeed would have thought the building beautiful once, gentle in line despite the heavy stone of its construction. Either magic had aided the builders or they had spent greater than a decade erecting the building.

  “There could be hundreds of priests and warriors in there.”

  “I see no one,” Zeeahd said, concern raising the pitch of his voice.

  The cats sat at Zeeahd’s feet, disinterested in the spectacle, licking their paws. They left off only when Zeeahd hacked a cough and spat a black glob, which they pounced on and devoured.

  Sayeed saw no one, either. The abbey appeared abandoned, the Oracle gone. “What if he knew we were coming?” Sayeed said. “What if he knew?”

  Despair rose in him, his affliction unable to spare him the black hole that followed failed hopes. “To have come so far. . . ”

  Zeeahd cleared his throat, spat, and stalked down the rise toward the abbey. “It isn’t over yet.”

  Vasen watched the sky for Sakkors or any other sign of the Shadovar, but saw nothing. When they reached the site of the battle where they’d fought the Shadovar scouts, they found nothing. The veserab and the dead Shadovar soldier were gone.

  “We should have hidden the bodies, or moved them, at least,” Vasen said. “There was no time,” Orsin said.

  “You fought Shadovar here?” Gerak asked, scanning the ground. “How many?”

  “Two, with their mounts,” Orsin said.

  “And you killed them?”

  “No,” Vasen said. “One escaped.”

  Gerak seemed to consider that as they hurried on, moving at the doublequick. The effort left Gerak and Vasen sweating and gasping, but Orsin was untroubled. Vasen took the deva’s endurance as inspiration and pressed on. Soon the plains gave way to the rocky foothills, and in a few hours, even the dim air could not mask the rising, jagged bulk of the pine-ruffed Thunder Peaks. Seeing them, Vasen felt both hope and foreboding.

  “We’re near the pass,” he said.

  Gerak studied the ground as they moved.

  “Come on, man,” said Vasen.

  “Wait, look at these marks,” Gerak said, his brow furrowed. “A lot of people passed this way. Yesterday.”

  “Us, with the pilgrims.”

  “We didn’t walk this area,” Orsin said. “We were over there.” Vasen realized Orsin was right. He went to Gerak’s side. Whatever the man was looking at on the ground, Vasen could not see it. “How can you be sure it was yesterday?”

  “The rain has been steady,” Orsin said. “I would think—”

  “Two things I do well, Orsin,” Gerak said. “Archery and tracking. I’m sure.”

  Vasen and Orsin shared a look. Orsin spoke the conclusion both of them
had drawn.

  “The Oracle foresaw the attack. Everyone left the abbey.”

  Vasen was already shaking his head. He could not imagine the priests and the Oracle abandoning holy ground in the face of an attack.

  “The Oracle is, infirm. He couldn’t travel.”

  “He must have,” Gerak said. “Unless. . . ”

  And all at once Vasen knew. He replayed in his mind the Oracle’s words to him before he left the Abbey, the finality of the Oracle’s farewell.

  “By the light,” he swore. “He ordered everyone away. He’s there alone.”

  “Why would he do that?” Orsin asked.

  Vasen snapped at him, harsher than he intended. “Who knows why seers do what they do?”

  Orsin stared at him, blinking at Vasen’s tone.

  “I’m sorry,” Vasen said, putting a hand on Orsin’s shoulder. “He . . . said things to me before I left. They sound now like a farewell.”

  “Then we should move,” Orsin said.

  “Aye.”

  Valleys, gorges, and cutouts scarred the face of the mountains. But none of them misled Vasen. Following a path he could have walked blindly, he led his comrades over the rising terrain to the mouth of the winding pass that would take them to the abbey’s valley.

  “This way,” he said.

  The terrain rose steeply. Vasen guided them through a series of switchbacks and narrow, rock strewn passageways. Gerak seemed to be noting the terrain with care as they moved, nodding at noteworthy landmarks, presumably placing this or that marker in his mind.

  “Small wonder none found the valley without aid,” he said.

  Vasen uttered a prayer to Amaunator and let the power flow into his blade, which glowed with rose-colored light. “We’ll soon come to the mist. Guardian spirits live within it. Stay close to me and do not heed their whispers.”

  Speaking of the spirits reminded Vasen of his last trek through the pass. It felt as if it had been years ago, but it had been only a short time The spirits had spoken of his father and of Elgrin Fau. He wondered what he would hear now.

  As the pass leveled off and widened, he saw the first marker—a boulder chiseled on its base with a tiny rose. At its base lay a crumpled form. His heart sank and he ran toward it, his armor clanking. Before he reached the body, he realized it was too large to be the Oracle.