Shadowstorm (18 page)

The men and women around him murmured.

“We saw that dawn,” Roen said from behind him. “All marveled at it.”

Abelar nodded, continued. “As I stand here now, I swear that

all who stood in the light of that dawn were healed. All of them. The entire village. It was miracle.” Regg bowed his head.

Roen said, “The light of renewal. The Morninglord is gracious.”

Abelar nodded solemnly. “It is good to see you,” he said to Regg. “All of you.”

Regg clasped his forearm. “And you.”

He and Regg had stood together through blood and steel for years. Neither had fought a battle without the other in more than a decade.

Regg said, “The miracle could not have been for naught. All will be well with Elden and my father, I think.” “You speak my hopes,” Abelar said.

After the company ate, the men settled in for the night and Abelar lit a short candle. He meditated, prayed, and thanked Lathander for his blessings. He slept little. When the candle burned down, he roused the men and the company set off in the pre-dawn darkness. He did not like to start a day’s ride in darkness, but he wanted to cover as much ground as possible. They had two hours behind them before they paused at dawn to greet the rising sun. Afterward, they rode hard and fast.

He let Swiftdawn set the pace. A gift from Lathander after he had matured in his faith, she was superior to an ordinary warhorse in every way: faster, stronger, more intelligent. Regg’s mount, Firstlight, was of the same sire and exhibited the same qualities. The rest of the company’s mounts struggled to say with them but Abelar did not slow.

“Ride, Swiftdawn,” he urged her. “Ride.”

She whinnied and tore across the plains. Firstlight answered with her own snort of excitement and matched her stride for stride. Both horses neighed encouragement at the mounts near them.

Abelar reveled in the sunlight, and prayed to the god who had blessed his son’s Nameday with light, to keep his son safe.

Regg spoke over the pound of hooves. “Kaesa is a wise woman. She will flee before Forrin’s forces ever arrive. Everyone will.”

Abelar nodded but knew his friend was overly hopeful. The Corrinthal estate of Fairhaven lay to the east of Saerb itself. No one in it, including Kaesa, Elden’s nurse, would learn of the approach of Forrin’s forces until it was too late to flee anywhere.

And war would hit the whole area hard. Saerb had no strategic value of any kind and it was not built with warfare in mind. It had no walls and no standing army. Abelar had not mustered his forces there precisely because he did not want to give the overmistress an excuse to bring battle to the city.

Forrin could have only two purposes in marching on Saerb—to draw Abelar into battle, and to make the fate of the city an example to others who might defy the overmistress. To do the latter, Forrin not only needed to burn, he needed to kill. Abelar figured he would send an advance force ahead, probably under cover of night, to cut off any possible retreat of Saerb’s residents. The entire population would be penned and slaughtered. The overmistress and her vile niece would not restrict war to warriors. Yhaunn would be Mirabeta’s excuse. Forrin would be her instrument.

Abelar dug his heels into Swiftdawn’s flanks and rode.

Cale, Riven, and Magadon appeared on the other side of the gate.

“Still the Plane of Shadow,” Magadon observed.

Cale was not so certain. The gloom felt… different.

They stood on a platform high above a wide, concave basin of smooth rock, not unlike a drained lake bed. Polished smooth by time, the surface of the basin glistened like black glass. The gate they had stepped through sizzled behind them. Sheer stone cliffs surrounded the basin on all sides, giving it an effect like a bowl. The jagged peaks of nearby mountains rose above the walls,

looking like enormous fangs. Cool air stirred the men’s cloaks.

Over the center of the basin floated a tower of black rock, a spear jutting into the gloom. Tall thin windows and numerous balconies dotted its facade. Clots of deeper darkness noared around it. Creatures of shadow—their forms impossible to distinguish in the distance—flitted through the air along its sides, in and out of the apertures. Green crystals dotted its surface here and there and cast a baleful luminescence. The glassy surface of the basin dully reflected the tower’s image and the reflection pointed directly at Cale, Riven, and Magadon.

Four thick chains, the links as thick around as a man’s waist, anchored the spire to the basin, as if it would otherwise launch itself like a quarrel. Directly below the floating tower swirled a vast pool of inky shadows, churning slowly, hypnotically. Ropes of shadow, eerily similar to veins, rose out of the pool, wound their way up the chains, and spiraled around the tower.

Looking upon that roiling pool put a pit in Cale’s stomach. As he watched, three man-shaped shadows coagulated from the ink, struggled free of the pool, and burst into the air to join their brethren flitting about the tower.

A walkway of black metal, wide enough to accommodate two wagons abreast, described an enormous octagon around the basin, caging the tower. Like the tower, the walkway floated in the gloom, seemingly supported by nothing.

“We are moving,” Magadon said, nodding at the walkway.

The motion was ponderous but Magadon was correct. The walkway was slowly rotating around the tower. The tower’s reflection in the basin moved with them. Cale did not try to understand how.

A large metal platform stood at the intersection at each of the walkway’s eight corners. Each featured two towering poles of rune-encrusted metal, all of them as tall as a giant. Shadows spiraled around them. Between each pair of poles hung a sizzling curtain of dim green energy.

“More gates,” Magadon said, and nodded behind them at the

curtain they had stepped through. “This one comes from Elgrin Fau. What of the others, I wonder?” “Some kind of nexus,” Cale said.

“A planar crossroads,” Magadon said, nodding. “But to what purpose?”

Riven oathed softly and pointed a blade at the sky.

Cale looked up to see dark clouds streaking by so rapidly that they looked smeared across the sky. Lightning ripped the heavens, a sudden storm of bolts that flashed so fast and frequently that the entire sky looked veined with them. It made Cale dizzy to look upon it.

As fast as it had started, it ceased.

“What in the Nine Hells?” Riven asked, blinking from the flashes.

Magadon squinted up at the sky. “Clouds streaking past. An entire lightning storm in a heartbeat.” He looked at Cale and Riven, thoughtful. “Time is passing differently here relative to the outside.”

“But where exactly is ‘here’?” Cale said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Riven said. “We’re not staying for a visit. We find Kesson Rel, kill him, get clear.”

Before Cale could respond, a bass voice from their left said, “If that is your intent, then you are tardy. Kesson Rel has been dead these thousands of years. Well, thousands of years as time passes outside the Calyx.”

Out of the gloom of the walkway to their left stepped an enormous form. The towering, gray-skinned giant looked like a man but stood three times Cale’s height. Black eyes looked out from a gaunt, craggy face that could have been carved from stone. Long white hair contrasted with the shadows that clung to his form. Disproportionately long arms dangled almost to the giant’s knees. He wore no armor, but his gray flesh looked hard enough to turn a blade. The hilt of a sword stuck out over his shoulder. A leather bag that could have contained a man hung from his side.

Cale and Riven backed up a step but held their blades at the ready. The giant’s eyes lingered over Weaveshear. “Your weapons are unnecessary,” the giant said. “We will see,” Riven answered, and slowly spun his sabers. “Name yourself,” Cale demanded.

The giant inclined his head. “I am Esmor. And you are the Right and Left hands of the Shadowlord. This place is the Adumbral Calyx. The Divine One rules here, not Kesson Rel. I will take you to him and he will explain matters.”

Cale had never heard of the Divine One or the Adumbral Calyx.

Before Cale could respond, another giant stepped out of the gloom to their right. The damned creatures walked the shadows as easily as Cale. The newcomer looked similar to Esmor in appearance, except that his pate was bald.

“I’ve got left,” Cale said to Riven, and kept his face to Esmor.

“I’ve got right,” Riven said, and took position before the other giant.

Esmor nodded at the second giant. “This is Murgan.”

“Greetings, Right and Left,” Murgan said.

Esmor said, “Murgan will accompany us to the spire.”

Magadon’s black-streaked mindblade flared into existence. The giants blinked in the sudden flash of yellow light.

“We have not yet agreed to go anywhere with you,” Magadon said.

A flash of anger showed in Esmor’s black eyes but he reined it in quickly. Cale did not like the look of it.

“But you must,” Esmor said. “The Divine One wishes you brought to him.”

Cale kept Weaveshear at the ready. Darkness leaked from its tip. “You named us the Right and Left. How did you know that?”

The giant adopted an affected smile. Everything about the creature was false.

“The Divine One knows many things,” he answered. Cale looked to Riven, to Magadon, back to the giant. “Take us to him.”

Esmor looked at Murgan and something passed between them. Both seemed pleased. Murgan brandished a thin shaft of black crystal and pointed it at the tower. A thin ray of darkness shot from the wand, hit the tower near a large doorway, and stuck to it. The ray broadened and thickened until a flat expanse of shadow stretched from the walkway to the tower, forming a bridge.’

“Move quickly,” Esmor said, and stepped onto the span.

Cale, Riven, and Magadon followed, blades still at the ready. Murgan brought up the rear and boxed them in. Cale looked back to see the bridge disappearing behind them as they moved along it. There would be no retreat.

Other bridges formed suddenly, extending from the other platforms of the octagon to the spire. More giants walked across them. The creatures seemed to have been stationed at the other platforms.

The giants had been waiting for them, Cale realized. He hurriedly signaled Riven in handcant. The giant lies.

Riven shot back, Agreed. This is an ambush.

Cale felt a familiar tingle under his scalp—Magadon’s mind link. The connection opened and Magadon said,
do not trust them.p>

He is a liar, Cale said. And this is a trap. They were waiting for us at the gates. Look at them all. They knew we were coming but not where we were coming from.

How do we play it? Riven asked.

Cale shook his head. He did not have enough information.

The carrion birds are gathering, Riven said, nodding at the sky, at the gathering cloud of shadows that swooped and wheeled above them, red eyes burning. Hundreds more wheeled around the spire.

Mags, can you get inside Esmor’s head without him knowing?

Surface thoughts, Magadon said. Any deeper and he will know. Do it, Cale said. He needed to know more about their situation.

He could sense even this, Magadon said.

They were halfway to the spire. The basin glimmered below them. Undead shadows whirled above. The roiling black pit under the spire continued to birth its abominations.

Do it anyway, Cale said, and readied himself for things to get ugly. Beside him, Riven tensed. Cale felt a slight pressure in his head, indicating that the mindlink had gone quiescent.

Magadon did not break stride, merely closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment. Esmor scratched at his ear but otherwise showed no sign that he sensed the mental intrusion.

Cale felt the tingle of the reactivated mindlink.

The Divine One is Kesson Rel, Magadon said. And he plans to ambush us within the tower.

ŚŠŚ ŚŠ• ŚŠŚ

Elyril awakened, still groggy from minddust, to an irritating tickle on her ring finger. She lay in dim lanternlight in her room in Yhaunn. Kefil snored on the floor at the side of her bed. The book brought her by Shar’s agent lay beside her and her hand rested on it protectively. The fire in the hearth had burned down to embers. She sat up and hung her legs off the bed. Her head felt as if it had been beaten by maces.

Nightseer?

Dark Sister, Rivalen answered.

Elyril shook her head to clear it. I was sleeping, Nightseer. I—
know, Dark Sister.p>

His words and tone snapped Elyril to clarity. How could he have known she was sleeping?

You have well served the Lady of Loss, Rivalen said. War is now inevitable in Sembia.

The Nightseer’s praise left her unmoved. She served him only

until she could wrest from him the remainder of the book to be made whole. Then, she would usher in the Shadowstorm and serve Shar beside the Divine One. Then, the Nightseer would bend his knee to her. She smiled, reached back, and ran her fingertips over the book.

The Shadowstorm, too, is inevitable, Nightseer. It is, Rivalen agreed. Your work is done now. Elyril cocked her head, puzzled by the comment. Nightseer? You know the provenance of the war, Dark Sister. That secret must be kept.

She sat up straight, troubled. I will keep it, Nightseer. I know.

The tickle on Elyril’s finger turned to a twinge, an ache, a sting. She exclaimed, jumped to her feet, and pulled at the ring. She could not so much as turn it. It felt grafted to the bone of her finger. Her heart raced.

“No, Nightseer! You do not know—”

There is nothing I do not know.

The purple amethyst in the ring flared and the silver band blackened. An agonizing stab of pain ran the length of Elyril’s arm and started to spread into her chest. She gasped in pained horror as her fingers shriveled into thin twigs covered in wrinkled skin. The Nightseer’s ring shrank to maintain its hold on her finger even as the magic spread to her hand, rurning it to a husk. The magic crawled up her forearm, killing a little more of her with each breath.

She screamed. How could you do this to me?! How?!

Your bitterness is sweet to the Lady, Rivalen said, his voice soft, almost sympathetic. I offer it to her as you die. Darkjourney, Elyril Hraven.