The Godborn

  “You see them?” he called.

  “No, my lord!”

  “No, Lord Brennus!”

  He felt an itch on his flesh, the touch of a powerful divination, and immediately knew from where it came: Rivalen. He cursed again. His brother would be coming.

  Below, a handful of spined devils prowled the blazing woods, bounding through the inferno. A bone devil strode among them. He looked back to the abbey, which sat dark and apparently abandoned, more like a mausoleum than a sanctuary of Amaunator that had evaded Shadovar detection for a century.

  “What changed?” Brennus asked himself.

  “No one home,” said one of the homunculi perched on his shoulder. “But why? Why now?”

  Holding the rose of Amaunator by the few remaining links of its lanyard, Brennus intoned the words to another divination, focusing the magic around the son of Erevis Cale. When he finished the spell, he felt it latch onto its target. The rose symbol lifted from his palm and flew toward the east, pulling against the lanyard.

  He did not bother to alert his men. Eager, he spurred his veserab to the east. The huge creature veered, beat its wings, and flew like a shot quarrel through the air.

  “Have him now?” one of the homunculi asked.

  “Yes,” Brennus said. “We have him. But the nightseer is coming.” The homunculi cowered in Brennus’s cloak, shivering.

  The three comrades materialized in the woods on the eastern side of the valley. Mountains loomed before them, forming a dark wall. The rush of the cascades sounded loud in Vasen’s ears. Wind whispered through the pines. The relative quiet felt expectant.

  “The tarn,” Orsin said, nodding.

  “You said it was holy,” Vasen said.

  The line of shadow extending from Weaveshear led off into the woods, toward the tarn.

  “What tarn?” asked Gerak. “What just happened?”

  In the distance they could see the orange glow of the burning woods.

  The dark, winged forms of the veserabs flitted over the inferno. One of the Shadovar had peeled away from the burning woods and flew in their direction, each beat of his mount’s huge wings devouring the distance.

  “The Shadovar are coming,” Orsin said.

  Vasen started toward the tarn. “Come on.”

  They followed the line of darkness that connected Weaveshear to the water.

  Standing at the tarn’s edge, they looked down into water so dark and still it looked like a hole. The shadows from the sword plunged into the depths. “So?” asked Gerak, looking over his shoulder.

  Orsin looked to Vasen.

  Vasen stared at the water, licked his lips. “We follow it.”

  Gerak looked at him as if he were mad. “Into the water?”

  A series of shrieks from behind turned them around—a veserab. The canopy blocked their view of the approaching Shadovar, but Vasen knew he was close.

  “Yes, into the water.”

  “There are better places to hide,” Gerak said. “I could lead us—”

  “It’s not to hide. It’s to go.”

  “Go? Go where?” Gerak asked.

  Vasen shrugged. “Go where . . . I’m supposed to go. I know how this sounds. But I also know I’m right.”

  Gerak shook his head, cursed softly. He looked at Orsin. “This makes sense to you?”

  Orsin nodded slowly. “It does.”

  “Well, past lives make sense to you, too, so I don’t credit your opinion much.”

  Orsin chuckled at that.

  Gerak eyed the water warily. “I don’t swim,” he admitted at last.

  Vasen smiled, then lied. “Me, neither. But I don’t think we’ll need to.”

  Closer shrieks from the veserabs, the susurrus of beating wings.

  “I’m asking you to trust me,” Vasen said.

  Gerak looked from Vasen, to Orsin, back to Vasen. “If you’re wrong, I’ll find you in our next life.”

  Again Orsin chuckled. Vasen joined him. “Well enough.”

  The shadows ten paces from them swirled, deepened, and two pinpoints of steel gray light formed in their midst. The darkness coagulated into the form of the Shadovar leader. His lower body vanished into the darkness, so that he appeared to disincorporate below the knees. His thin, angular face showed no expression. His hands glittered with rings. Two tiny creatures, their skin like clay, perched on his shoulders—homunculi.

  “Wait,” the Shadovar said, and extended his hand. Energy gathered on his fingertips, writhing tentacles of shadows.

  Vasen didn’t wait. He raised his shield, brandishing Saint Abelar’s rose, and channeled his faith into it. Rose-colored light exploded out from it in a blaze of beams, casting the entire meadow in bright light. The Shadovar and his homunculi cried out, shielding their eyes from the sudden glare.

  “Go!” Vasen said, and tried to push Orsin and Gerak into the water.

  But before any of them could jump in, the sky above them ripped open with a thunderclap, the sound so loud that it made Vasen’s bones ache and flattened him to the ground. Ears ringing, he raised himself to all fours.

  “I’ve sought you for decades, son of Cale,” said a deep, resonant voice from above, a voice so full of power that it seemed to use up all the air. Vasen could hardly breathe. “And here you’ve been all the while, hiding under my nose.”

  Vasen staggered to his feet, his shield still blazing, and looked up.

  Another Shadovar descended from a glowing green rift in the dark clouds. He had no mount. He rode only the column of his power. Darkness spun around him, mingled with the swirl of his dark robes. Power went before him, palpable in its strength. He seemed more . . . present than anything else in the world, more solid, more there. Golden eyes blazed in the dark hole of his face.

  “Rivalen,” said the steel-eyed Shadovar, his tone dark with hate.

  Vasen knew the name. Prince Rivalen Tanthul, the Nightseer of Shar, rumored to be divine.

  “Rivalen,” Orsin whispered. “One of the three.”

  “We must go,” Vasen said softly, helping Gerak and Orsin to their feet. He edged them toward the water.

  Rivalen reached the ground, a cloud of darkness swirling at this feet. His entire lower body was lost to the shadows. He looked as if he were riding a thunderhead as he walked toward them.

  “You aren’t leaving,” Rivalen said. “None of you are.”

  “Rivalen,” the other Shadovar said.

  “Be silent, Brennus,” Rivalen said, and made a cutting gesture with his hand that lifted Brennus from his feet and drove him backward into one of the pine trees. Either wood or bone or both cracked from the impact.

  “You think your infantile plotting is unknown to me?” Rivalen said to Brennus. “You think your intent is unknown to me?”

  To Vasen’s shock, Brennus climbed to his feet. “No,” he said, his steel eyes flashing. He held something up in his hand, a jeweled necklace. “I’ve made my intent plain. And nothing has changed.”

  Rivalen’s eyes never left Vasen. “You’re mistaken, Brennus. We’ve found the son of Cale. Everything has changed.” He waved his hand and the light went out of Vasen’s shield. “Enough with that shield.”

  Brennus’s gaze went from Rivalen to Vasen and back to Rivalen.

  Vasen backed toward the shadowed tarn, Gerak and Orsin beside him. He held his shield and Weaveshear at the ready, although he expected neither to be of any use.

  “I don’t fear you, Shadovar,” Vasen said, and meant it. “And my name is Vasen.”

  Rivalen smiled, revealing small fangs. “You should fear me. You have your father’s spirit, Vasen. But it won’t save you. Or the world.”

  Rivalen glided toward them, the ground seeming to vibrate under the weight of his power.

  “Run, you fools!” Brennus shouted to Vasen, and started to incant the words to a spell.

  Rivalen’s expression hardened, his eyes flashed.

  Vasen whirled, grabbed Orsin and Gerak by the bicep, and before th
ey could protest shoved them into the tarn. They sank out of sight instantly. He looked over his shoulder as he jumped in himself.

  A column of flame extended from Brennus’s hand and engulfed Rivalen. Rivalen stood unharmed in the midst of the fire, the dark eye of a blazing storm, and loosed a jagged bolt of green energy not at Brennus but at Vasen.

  Vasen interposed sword and shield as his feet hit the water. He expected death or worse, but the energy of the spell was drawn to Weaveshear like metal shavings to a lodestone. The weapon seemed to absorb much of the power of the magic, although the force of the spell still sent Vasen skittering over the surface of the tarn like a skipped stone.

  He sank into the water with the energy of the spell still sizzling around his blade, the green glow lighting the otherwise inky confines of the tarn. The water seemed to seize him in its grasp, pull him downward, as green lines of energy from Rivalen’s magic snaked around the blade, around the hilt. Vasen thought to release the blade too late and the energy touched his flesh.

  He screamed, expelling a stream of bubbles, as a jolt of agony coursed through his body and his heart seized. He felt as if his ribs had been shattered. His vision blurred and he struggled to remain conscious. His body spasmed, and even with his darkness-enhanced vision he could see nothing. He expected a splash to sound from above—Rivalen pursuing to retrieve his corpse—but he heard nothing, just the quiet of his own agony.

  He knew he was dying because the water felt not cold but warm, pulling him rapidly down, drinking him in, swallowing him whole. In his rush to escape he’d killed not only himself but Gerak and Orsin. They’d all drown, lost in the shadowed tarn forever.

  Darkness swirled around him, a manifestation of his regrets, his pain, his failure. He was falling, falling forever into the deep.

  “See you soon,” Rivalen said to Vasen, and flew to the edge of the tarn. He saw only the ghost of his reflection on the deep water, his golden eyes staring back at him like stars.

  The tarn must have been a latent portal, activated by Weaveshear. He knew in that moment Drasek Riven must have put it there. It amused Rivalen to think of Riven, a small minded fool with his plots and counterplots, trying to foil Rivalen’s own. Riven was just another pawn in Rivalen’s game.

  Brennus’s chuckle pulled him around. “Not even a godling gets what he wants all the time. You failed, Rivalen. You wanted Vasen Cale and you failed to get him.”

  Rivalen laughed, loud and long. “I wasn’t here to capture him, Brennus. He has a role yet to play. I was here to make sure that you didn’t capture him. It’s you who’ve failed. You’ve who’ve done nothing but further my ends. You see nothing, little brother, and at every turn do as I wish.”

  Shadows swirled around Brennus “You lie!”

  Rivalen laughed more. “Your bitterness is sweet to the lady.”

  Brennus’s steel eyes blazed with anger.

  “I don’t have to kill you to hurt you, Brennus. Remember that. Now run back to Sakkors, obsess about mother and revenge, and watch, helpless, as my plans end this world.”

  Brennus visibly bit back whatever words he might have said. His shoulders sagged as shadows gathered around him, deepened, and transported him back to whatever hidey-hole he had prepared for himself.

  Rivalen smiled after his brother left. Brennus had once more had his hopes crushed. He was almost ripe for the picking, ready to serve as Rivalen’s tool in translating The Leaves of One Night. Brennus’s despair and bitterness ran deep.

  Rivalen rose into the air on a column of darkness and power, surveying the valley. He had one more matter to which he must attend.

  The Shadovar who served his brother had vanished, presumably following Brennus in flight. A handful of spined devils ran amok in the wood, burning everything flammable, torturing what animals they could find and catch. The valley was ablaze in fire and torment, a miniature version of the Hells. A bone devil prowled the pines among its smaller kin, aimless in its strides.

  Rivalen saw Mephistopheles’s hand in it. As always, the Lord of Cania sought the divine power that Drasek Riven and Rivalen had taken from Kesson Rel. The archfiend, too, must have guessed that Vasen Cale was the key to unlocking the divinity from its three holders.

  Of course, Mephistopheles wanted the power only to give him the upper hand in his war against Asmodeus. Rivalen didn’t want it at all. He wanted to use it, feed his goddess with it, and in so doing, restart the Cycle of Night and end everything.

  Rivalen rode the shadows to the abbey. Much of it was ablaze, but fire and smoke could not harm Rivalen. He walked among the flames, amused that the home of the sun god finally radiated light, but only in its immolation. Tapestries curled as they burned. Roof timbers gave way in a shower of sparks. Stone cracked, fell in a hail of rubble.

  Amid the ruins Rivalen found the corpses of two spined devils and the body of an old man, beaten beyond recognition. No other bodies.

  That gave Rivalen pause.

  The Oracle must have known an attack was coming. So he’d sent everyone away.

  What else had he known?

  His feet carried him through the fires to what appeared to be a shrine. The room included two burned biers, one knocked from its pedestal, the lid defaced and burned, the body that had been within burned to an unrecognizable cinder. He wondered who had been interred there, then reminded himself that it didn’t matter. The world and everyone in it, including him, would soon end in nothingness.

  He pointed a finger at the ceiling and discharged a ray of energy that disintegrated a perfect circle through it, revealing the dark sky above. Through that he flew up and out into the night.

  He rose high into the sky, one with the darkness, and looked down on the narrow gash of the flaming valley, the burned-out abbey.

  Below, the devils continued to burn the woods and kill whatever creatures they could find.

  “Mephistopheles’s creatures,” he said, irritated at their presence.

  He moved from the darkness in the sky to the darkness under the canopy of the woods, a few paces from two of the spined devils. His sudden appearance halted their loping strides through the undergrowth. They crouched low, spines raised, teeth bare. He gestured, let power flow from his hand, and ripped every spine from their hides in a shower of flames and ichor. They yelped with agony and fell rolling to the ground, their raw, exposed flesh accreting pine needles and dirt. The cloud spines hung over them. He reversed all of them, pointed the barbed tips downward, and drove all of them back into the devils’ flesh. They shrieked and died.

  He felt the darkness around him, the velvet of its touch across the entire valley. He sensed the location of another devil, stepped through the shadows to it, and, with a flick of his finger and a minor exercise of power, turned it inside out.

  He moved to another, another, methodically destroying each of the creatures in ever more grotesque fashion.

  “Stay in your hole in Cania, Archfiend,” he said, as a blast of life-draining energy left another spined devil a lifeless bag of hide and bones. “When the time is right, we’ll meet in Ordulin. All of us will.”

  He saved the bone devil for last. The thin, lumbering creature stalked through the pines, its mouth open in a pained scream. It thrashed about wildly with its overlong arms and clawed hands, the long, curling tail that ended in a sharp spade of bone.

  “Freedom!” it shouted, the word nonsensical, the tone tinged with madness.

  Rivalen stepped from the shadows before it, let it see him. It halted, crouched, and flexed its claws. Its lower jaw dropped open, the fangs dripping with foul saliva. Stupidly, it pelted toward Rivalen, shrieking for blood.

  Rivalen raised a hand, palm outward, and immobilized the creature in mid-stride. Dark energy whirled around it, holding it fast, keeping it silent. Rivalen stalked forward, contemplating suitable ends.

  He felt a presence in the trees behind the devil, and an armored man burst out of the tree line. He was as tall as Rivalen but built as thickly a
s a barrel. He bore a large single-edge sword and a square shield in his hands. Dark, dead eyes stared out of a face barely visible for the thick beard he wore. Rivalen sensed the minor enchantments on the man’s shield, sword, and armor, but it was the twisting, odd signature of the magic affecting the man himself that kept Rivalen from annihilating him where he stood.

  “Get away, Shadovar!” the man said, pointing his sword at Rivalen. “Back, I said.”

  He advanced on Rivalen with blade and shield at the ready.

  Curious, Rivalen retreated a step, hands held up in a gesture of harmlessness.

  Rivalen tried to mask his power but the man seemed to pick up on it as he neared. He stopped his advance, a stride or two before the immobilized devil.

  “Just leave us,” the man said.

  “Us?”

  The man’s eyes moved to the bound bone devil, back to Rivalen.

  “Leave, Shadovar.”

  Rivalen took a step forward, let more of his power manifest. Perhaps sensing what Rivalen was, the man fell back a step, eyes wide. “You’ve a fondness for devils? Who’s this creature to you?”

  The man found his nerve and looked up sharply, as if Rivalen had slapped him. “He’s no creature, shade. He was—is—my brother.”

  Rivalen understood the implication immediately. “And now he serves Mephistopheles?”

  “He was betrayed by Mephistopheles! We both were!”

  Rivalen saw an opportunity, used his power to put guile into his voice. “And the archfiend’s betrayal turned him into . . . that?”

  The man nodded hard, once.

  “What’s your name?” Rivalen glided forward, closing the distance between them.

  “What difference does it make? It’s all lost now. Everything. It was all for nothing.”

  The words pleased Rivalen. He pulled the man’s name from his mind. “Sayeed. Your name is Sayeed.”

  Sayeed’s brow furrowed. He took another step back, sword and shield ready.

  “There’s nothing to fear,” Rivalen said, waving a shadow-strewn hand dismissively. “A minor cantrip. Your name hovered at the forefront of your thinking because I asked the question. You serve the archfiend as well, Sayeed?”