Shadowbred

  Riven’s calmness only stoked Cale’s anger. “What if there isn’t, Riven? Hells, why don’t you question? What kind of faith doesn’t doubt? Look what he took from us!”

  Riven shook his head. “What kind of faith always doubts, Cale? And look what he gave us.”

  Cale blew out a breath and looked away. Riven said, “No Cyricists have come to take vengeance for the theft of the temple.”

  Cale said nothing and Riven repeated himself, as if he thought his words significant.

  “Did you hear me? No Cyricists have tried to take back the temple, Cale. Not one, not ever. They’re either ignorant of what happened or occupied with something bigger. I think it’s the latter. Something is coming, Cale. You feel it. I know you do. I feel it, too. So do the shadowwalkers. That’s why they’re here.”

  “A storm,” Cale said absently, and rubbed the back of his neck. For some reason, his mind turned to the book in his pack. “Sephris called it a storm.”

  “Sephris? The old prophet?”

  Cale nodded.

  “Cale, that’s why Mask is withdrawing from his servants. All but us. This temple, the Sojourner, all of it was designed to prepare us. Don’t you see that?”

  Shadows leaked from Cale’s fingers. He watched them dissipate into the darkness. “Prepare us for what?”

  “For the storm,” Riven said. “For whatever is coming.”

  Cale shook his head. “No. Not even gods plan that well. Besides, he’s preparing himself, not us.”

  “It’s the same thing,” Riven said. “Let me show you something else. Come.”

  Cale took Riven by the shoulder. “I don’t need any more surprises.”

  Riven looked him in the eye, his expression … soft? “One more,” he said.

  Riven led Cale through the darkened temple. Although the structure lacked any formal accoutrements of Mask’s faith, Cale figured the Shadowlord found the darkness and shadows of the windowless temple pleasing. Torches lit their way through bare stone corridors and rooms.

  Riven led Cale up a flight of stairs to a closed wooden door. Cale recognized the room and his throat caught. They had laid Jak’s body there. He looked a question at Riven.

  “Open it. You’ll see.”

  Cale studied Riven’s face.

  “Open it,” Riven insisted.

  Slowly, reluctantly, Cale pushed open the door. When he saw what was within, his heart rattled in his ribcage and words stuck in his throat.

  I sprint through the grass, my legs burning, my breath rattling. The stone cell is just ahead.

  I hear a fear just behind me and lash out blindly backward with the mind blade. I feel it bite flesh and the fear wails with pain and anger.

  Twenty paces to the door. Ten. Five. I lose my footing, fall to all fours, and scramble frantically the final few paces. I slam into the door, praying it is not locked.

  It opens.

  I fall in, throw the door shut behind me, and brace my back against it.

  It’s freezing inside.

  The fears throw themselves against the door and drive it ajar. Grunting, I press my body against it, shut it again, and feel around desperately for some kind of lock, anything. My fingers close on a rusty frigid iron bar on the floor near the door. I find the bracket on the door by touch and slide the bar in.

  The fears again throw themselves against the door. It shudders under the impact but the bar holds and they howl their frustration. Thumps on the roof and walls tell me they are looking for another way in.

  Breathing heavily and sweating, I hold up my mind blade and look around the interior of the cell. Thankfully, I do not see any other means of ingress.

  The wall opposite me is the wall and a crack runs through it from floor to ceiling. It is lined with smoke-blackened ice. Otherwise, the cell is a mirror of the one in which I had first awakened. Empty, with a bare stone floor.

  The fears hit the door with such impact that it rattles on its hinges. Others beat at the roof, at the walls.

  “Magadon,” says a voice, the voice at the wall, coming from behind the crack. “Come here. To the crack.”

  I do not move. I stare across the cell at the crack in the wall while the fears try to beat their way inside.

  “Terrifying, are they not?” the voice asks, and chuckles. “Come here, Magadon.”

  Clutching the mind blade, I cross the cell and stand before the wall. The crack cuts a jagged, irregular path down its face. Stink and cold leaks through—brimstone mixed with the fetid, rotting odor of a charnel house. I put my hand on the stone and find it icy to the touch.

  “The wall is weakest here,” says the voice eagerly. “You can break through it. Use your weapon.”

  The fears beat against the cell in a frenzy. The walls vibrate; the door rattles; the roof shakes. I am concerned that the whole structure may soon collapse. In my mind’s eye, I imagine the black forms of the fears coating the cell like a layer of oil, encapsulating it in terror.

  “You must hurry,” says the voice. “Time is short.”

  I will the mind blade into the form of a large pickaxe and start chipping away at the wall, expanding the crack.

  Jak lay on the same bed that they had placed him on soon after his death.

  “This is not possible,” Cale said, and shadows spiraled out of his skin. His legs felt weak. Jak should have been buried, decomposed. It had been over a year.

  Despite his better sense, he allowed himself to hope and called, “Jak?”

  The little man did not move.

  “Go in, Cale,” said Riven.

  Cale entered the room in a daze and walked cautiously to the bed. His friend looked exactly as he had in life. His small frame barely put a dent in the bed. A mop of red hair framed a face that could have been sleeping. He looked at peace.

  Cale fought back tears, and kneeled on his haunches at the head of the bed.

  “Jak?”

  The scab peeled away from his grief and the hole in his gut yawned. The tears came then. He could not stop them. He reached out a hand, tentatively, and touched Jak’s cheek. He recoiled with a gasp.

  Riven’s voice sounded behind him and gave him another start.

  “He is still warm,” Riven said. “I could not bury him like that. So I left him there. I check him every day. Nothing has changed.”

  Cale nodded but did not turn. Shadows bled from his skin, swirled around him. He stared at Jak, hoping, fearing, wondering. What did it mean? He thought Jak’s eyes could open at any moment. Did it mean that Jak wanted to come back?

  “This is not possible,” was all he could manage.

  Riven stepped beside him and stared down at Jak. “And yet, there he is.”

  Cale shook his head. “Why? How?”

  Riven eyed him sidelong. “Cale, I think … that he is waiting, too. Like the shadowwalkers.”

  “For what?” Cale started to say, but could not find his voice at first. “For what?”

  “For you to let him go.” Riven gestured at Jak. “He is as you left him when you stopped your resurrection spell in the middle of casting it. Let him go now.”

  Cale’s eyes welled. He reached into his pocket and put his hand on Jak’s wooden pipe. He had said good-bye to his friend but he knew he had never let go, not fully. That’s why he had attacked Mask in the alley. That is why he burned a pipe at midnight every night. And it was the reason that he carried the dead weight of regret around in his gut. He had asked Riven to bury Jak. He had never even returned to visit the grave, or what he thought was a grave.

  Cale thought of his promise to Jak and the words came out before he could stop them.

  “I promised him I’d try to be a hero.”

  Riven neither sneered nor laughed, surprising Cale again. “You will keep that promise. I will help you because you are the First. That is my promise. Now … let him go.”

  Cale shook his head and the tears flowed. Riven put a hand on his shoulder. “You must. Whatever is coming, there is no more room
for doubt, no more room for questions. There is room for you, me, and the Shadowlord. Nothing more and nothing less.”

  Cale heard the truth of his words, knew the truth of his words.

  “Who in the Nine Hells are you?” he asked Riven, and tried to smile. “This temple has gone to your head.”

  Riven looked him in the eyes. “It has, but not in the way you think. Cale, I am the Second of Mask. We are more than comrades, more than friends. I am at your shoulder through whatever comes. Now … be the First.”

  Cale stared into Riven’s good eye and remembered Mask’s words to him in the alley in Selgaunt. Do what you were born to do.

  “Be the First,” Riven repeated.

  Cale swallowed, steadied himself. “This is the way it will be, then?”

  “It cannot be any other way.”

  Cale looked at Jak, back at Riven, and nodded. He put his hand over Jak’s.

  “Go,” he said to Jak, and meant it. “Thank you for the second chance. You are my friend, always. But that’s enough. Rest, now.”

  Jak’s flesh began to cool in his hand. Cale did not recoil. He held Jak’s tiny hand in his own, took a deep breath, and turned to Riven.

  “Spades?”

  Riven nodded. “Somewhere.”

  “I will carry him,” Cale said. “Also, bring something small and sharp.”

  Riven looked a question at him but Cale did not explain. He picked up the body of his friend and carried him out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the temple. When he got outside into the night, he walked like an ordinary man up to the top of a small hill near the temple. It afforded a view of the island but not the sea, which was just as well. Jak had disliked the sea.

  Cale sat on the earth and awaited Riven. Jak was growing colder; his body was stiffening.

  Riven soon arrived, bearing two metal spades. His dogs followed. Together, the First and Second of Mask dug a grave and gently placed a friend and priest of Brandobaris in it. They had no coffin. The dogs watched it all.

  Cale threw the first shovelful of dirt over Jak. Riven said nothing, merely helped him fill the hole. The dogs howled. They worked until Jak was buried. Cale started to put Jak’s pipe on the earthen mound as a marker, but Riven said, “He’d want you to keep it.”

  Cale looked at the pipe, nodded, put it in his pocket.

  “Did you bring what I asked?” he asked Riven.

  Riven produced a small, flat-bladed knife with a rounded tip.

  “Small and sharp,” Riven said.

  Cale tested the edge and found it satisfactory. He kneeled at the side of the grave and started to cut his hair, first cutting it to a short, choppy length, then to stubs, then shaving it off with the knife. The wind blew it away and the dogs chased it. Cale opened countless gashes in his scalp, but the bleeding and pain lasted only a moment before the shadowstuff in his flesh repaired the damage.

  Riven watched it all in silence.

  When Cale had finished the job, he stood, returned the knife to Riven, and ran a hand over his bald pate. Shadows leaked from him and he felt like himself.

  Riven eyed him, nodded.

  Cale took out Jak’s pipe, stuffed it with pipeweed, and smoked graveside. Riven pulled a wooden pipe from his belt pouch—a pipe like the one Jak had once given the assassin—and joined Cale. Afterward, they collected the spades and walked back to the temple.

  The shadowwalkers awaited them on the drawbridge. Shadows swirled around them, around Cale, around Riven. The wind blew their cloaks.

  Cale approached the leader. “Tell me your name.”

  “Nayan,” the man said, his voice as soft as rainfall.

  “Nayan,” Cale said, testing the word.

  Nayan turned to his fellows and indicated each in turn. The men bowed as their names were spoken. “Shadem, Vyrhas, Erynd, Dynd, Skelan, and Dahtem.”

  “Erevis Cale,” Cale said.

  “Drasek Riven,” said Riven.

  Nayan nodded to each, and held up both hands as he said, “You are the right and left hands of the Shadowlord and he still speaks through you.”

  “That is so,” Cale said, and preferred Nayan’s words to “First” and “Second.”

  Nayan said, “We are servants of the Shadowlord and therefore servants of his Chosen.”

  “You’re offering to help us?” Riven asked.

  Nayan nodded once.

  Cale looked the shadowwalkers in the eyes. “You have been blooded. Anyone can see that. But being blooded is not enough. Where are your weapons?”

  Nayan held up his hands again, touched his elbows, his knees, his feet. Cale understood—the shadowwalkers fought without weapons. Cale knew some men could do it, but it took years of training and discipline. Cale decided to be candid with Nayan.

  “We are not … kind men, Nayan. Do you take my meaning?”

  “I know what you are,” Nayan said, and held Cale’s gaze.

  Cale stared into Nayan’s face, studied his impassive expression. He had known many killers through the years and all of them had the same cold, dead look in their eyes. Riven had it. Cale had it.

  Nayan had it.

  Cale nodded and looked to Riven. “They come. All of them.”

  Riven said to the shadowwalkers, “Get some sleep and prepare your gear. We hit the Hole of Yhaunn tomorrow night.”

  After they were gone, Riven said, “Looks like they are done waiting, too.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  11 Uktar, the Year of Lightning Storms

  At Vees’s urging, Tamlin decided to meet the Shadovar representative unaccompanied by other members of the Old Chauncel.

  “The Shadovar prefer quiet negotiations,” Vees told him.

  Tamlin stood behind a polished conference table in a meeting room in the palace. Magical protections shrouded him, and the chamber itself was screened against scrying and magical transport. Glowballs in the corners of the chamber provided light.

  The Shadovar delegation had arrived at twilight by magical means. A score of dark-armored men with wide swords had walked out of the night and entered Selgaunt through its Mountarr Gate. A ceremonial guard of Scepters escorted the delegation through the city’s streets, and the dark strangers were the talk of the taverns. Tamlin provided the Shadovar with lodging in the eastern wing of the palace. After allowing them time to get settled, he requested a formal meeting with the Shadovar ambassador, Rivalen Tanthul, a prince of Shade Enclave.

  Tamlin did not know what to expect. He had never met with anyone from Shade Enclave, and the stakes could not have been higher. Selgaunt needed assistance from outside of Sembia, or it would fall to the gathering army of the Overmistress. Tamlin, his family, the Old Chauncel, and the nobility of Saerb would all hang as traitors.

  He calmed himself by recalling the words his father had oft spoke before important trade meetings: No matter their station, all men are men. Tamlin whispered the words to himself as he listened to the approaching footfalls of Rivalen Tanthul.

  Vees stood beside him. Both men wore their finest jackets and stiff-collared shirts. A silver tray of sweetmeats, bread, cheese, and two bottles of red wine had been laid out on the table. A banner bearing Selgaunt’s arms hung from the ceiling. Tamlin thought the room was lacking in the ceremonial trappings merited by the meeting, but they had done what they could on short notice.

  “Here we go,” Vees said to him softly. “Their appearance is unusual. Do not let it alarm you.”

  The door to the chamber opened and Chamberlain Thriistin, dressed in his finest attire, announced the ambassador.

  “My Lord Hulorn, I present Rivalen Tanthul, Prince of Shade Enclave, emissary of the Shadovar.”

  The darkness swirled like mist around Thriistin as a towering figure strode past him into the chamber. Rivalen Tanthul stood only slightly shorter than Mister Cale. Golden eyes shone out of a dark, angular face that featured a large, sharp nose. Long black hair hung loose to his broad shoulders. His drab cloak did not hide the narrow sword at
his hip. Darkness alternately clung or flowed from him.

  Tamlin realized immediately that Rivalen was a shade, like Mister Cale. He managed to meet and hold the Shadovar’s gaze.

  “Prince Rivalen,” he said, and bowed.

  “Hulorn,” the Shadovar said, and his deep voice sounded as if it had emerged from the bottom of a well.

  Thriistin scurried around Prince Rivalen, poured wine into three goblets, and took his leave.

  “Please sit,” Tamlin said, and gestured at the comfortable armchair before the table. “And enjoy the food. The wine is from my personal vineyards.”

  Rivalen walked up to the table but did not sit. He brought the shadows with him and the light in the room dimmed.

  “You are gracious, Hulorn,” Rivalen said. He lifted the wine and inhaled its bouquet but did not drink.

  “I regret the informality of our reception,” Tamlin said. “I hope you understand.”

  “Formality is a crutch for the foolish,” Rivalen said, and held up his goblet. “To Selgaunt.”

  Vees handed Tamlin a goblet. He raised it and said, “To the Shadovar.”

  “And to a new friendship between us,” Rivalen said.

  “Indeed,” Vees said with enthusiasm.

  The three men sat. Vees started the discussion. “It is a pleasure to see you once more, Prince Rivalen. I trust the Talendar stone has met your expectations?”

  Rivalen nodded. “It has.” He eyed Tamlin. “My Lord Hulorn, I know it is customary for ambassadors to exchange gifts and pleasantries before discussing weighty matters, but I propose—since we are dispensing with formality—that we ignore such trivia and move directly to the point.”

  Tamlin nodded. He said, “Very well, then. You are a shade.”

  Vees choked on his wine. “Hulorn, that is—”

  Rivalen held up a dusky hand to silence Vees. He wore several rings, all of them silver or platinum and of archaic design. One of them was an amethyst ring not unlike the one favored by Vees.

  “That is so,” Rivalen said. “In the interest of serving the good of all our citizens, a fortunate few among my people are selected to become shades.”

  Tamlin could not hide his surprise or keep in his words. “Fortunate? I have heard others describe the transformation as a curse.”