Shadowbred (37 page)

Riven stared at him, nodded, and they walked up the drawbridge.

“I presume we’ll hit the Hole after midnight?” Riven asked.

Cale nodded. “Well after.”

Guards would be not only fewer, but tired in the small hours. Cale had killed many men during the sleepy hours before dawn. He knew Riven had done the same.

They strode through towering iron doors and inro the temple’s foyer. The dogs were gone. The bare entryway appeared exactly as it had when Cale had last seen it. A pair of wooden double doors stood opposite them, with a wide stairway beyond it leading up into darkness.

“I had thought to fit the place out,” Riven said by way of explanation. “Transform it into a temple for Mask. I thought that was what he wanted.”

Cale knew that guessing at what Mask wanted was a fool’s game. “But it wasn’t?”

Riven shook his head. “I don’t think stealing this place was about getting a new temple. Or at least it was only partially about that.” He looked at Cale sidelong and said, “I think it was about us.”

They walked through the double doors and started to climb the wide stone stairway beyond.

“Us? What makes you think that?” Cale asked.

“They do,” Riven said, and nodded at the top of the stairs.

Cale stopped in his steps.

At the top of the stairs stood seven men clad in darkness. Long dark hair hung loose around clean-shaven brown faces. At first Cale thought each wore a mask over the top half of his face but he realized it was a tattoo of a mask. The dark eyes looking out of the tattoos featured the eyefolds typical of those from the far east.

All wore gray cloaks, gray breeches, and soft leather shoes. None wore weapons, but all showed battle scars on their hands and forearms. Torchlight from the hall behind them backlit their silhouettes.

“They said a vision brought them here,” Riven said.

“A vision ?” Cale walked up the rest of the steps, Riven beside him, until he stood face to face with the foremost of the seven men, whom Cale took to be the leader. The man, smaller and less muscular than Riven, gave a nod and the others bowed slightly. All seven regarded Cale with open curiosity, though they said nothing.

“What kind of vision?” Cale asked the leader.

The man said nothing, merely studied Cale’s eyes, the shadows that leaked from his skin, the darkness that flowed around him like fog.

“I asked you a question,” Cale said.

“They arrived two months after you left,” Riven explained. “They almost never speak, but I know they call themselves shadowwalkers. They may not be shades, but I have seen them move and they are damned close.”

“What are they doing here?” Cale asked Riven, though he continued to eye the shadowwalkers.

” ‘Waiting,’ is all they would say.”

“Waiting?” Cale asked. He stared into the leader’s dark eyes.

“For what?”

“They won’t answer you, Cale. They’re just here … waiting. And they won’t help us with Yhaunn. I have tried to enlist them before. Whatever they are waiting for, it hasn’t happened yet.”

“And you think it has to do with us?”

“With you.”

Cale turned to him. “Me?”

“They aren’t priests,” Riven said, nodding at the shadowwalkers. He pulled the tie out of his hair and let it fall down his shoulders. “Hells, I don’t know what they are. But they serve priests, or they did. They’re from Telflamm, Cale. Mask has a large remple there, a large following. When they arrived, they said the Shadowlord had stopped answering the prayers of the priesrs. When they learned of that, they had the vision that led them here. They say they follow the Twilight Path.”

Shadows leaked from Cale’s skin as the implications of Riven’s story settled on him. Mask had not stopped answering his prayers. Mask had chatted with him in an alley, or at least he thought so.

He looked at Riven and said, “Sometimes gods do not answer the prayers of even their priests.”

Riven shook his head. “This is not one wayward priest. They said none of their priests received spells. None.”

Cale shook his head, his mind spinning. What if he was the only priest to whom Mask spoke?

“What about you?” Riven asked, his voice quiet. “Does he still grant you spells?”

Cale hesitated, turned back to look at the shadowwalkers.

They were gone.

“I told you they were good,” Riven explained. “What about it, Cale? Does he still grant you spells?”

Cale answered Riven with a question of his own. “What about you? Can you still heal with your touch? Does he still grant you that?”

Riven nodded. “That… and the rest.”

Riven’s candor surprised Cale. The assassin had been surprising him since Cale had appeared on the island. Cale decided to be honest.

“Yes, I can still cast spells. Though I went a long while without praying.”

Riven’s face showed first relief, then a question. “Why a long while?”

Cale could hardly believe Riven was asking the question. “Why? Because Jak is dead. Because I’m … this.” He held out his arm and let the shadows spiral around his flesh. “Because he did it all so he could steal a thrice-damned temple.”

Riven’s face remained calm.

“I told you this was not about the temple. There’s more to it.”

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.

ŚŠŚ •Š••ŠŚ ŚŠŚ

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 doot 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 doot 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.

ŚŠŚŚŠŚŚŠŚŚŠŚ •ŠŚ

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 anothet 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 goodbye 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 Firsr.”

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.