Magadon was staring at him, reading his expression. He seemed relieved that Cale was not appalled.
"You do not recognize this symbol?" the guide asked.
"No," Cale replied, though the mark did somehow make him uneasy, a feeling reminiscent of the way Riven's use of the Black Speech made him feel. "But it's ..."
"Disquieting," Magadon said, and lowered his sleeve. "It would be worse if you knew whose symbol it was." He stared into the fire and spoke in a quiet voice. "I will not speak here the name of that creature. But I will tell you that he is a diabolical, dark being of great power. Evil incarnate. Not a god, but.. . nearly so."
Cale felt the hair on his neck rise. The shadows around them seemed to grow deeper. The night sounds of the forest's animals went quiet, even the howlers. A cool wind sent the flames of the campfire flickering. The breeze seemed to whisper a name, a sinister, sibilant name, but it danced away before Cale could recognize it.
Magadon threw some more dried limbs onto the blaze and the flames picked up.
"You're descended from this being?" Cale asked.
Magadon gave a short, hard laugh and answered, "It is not a lineage of which I am proud."
"That is not what I meant."
"I know," Magadon said, nodding. "Forgive me. Speaking of him is difficult for me." The guide shook his head, as though to dispel thoughts best left undisturbed. "For his amusement, this creature took human form and raped my mother. I was the result. The descendant of a devil. I suspect he has many. By all the accounts that I've heard, his lust is matched only by his evil."
Magadon looked into Cale's face, which Cale kept free of judgment. Cale would judge no one, not then.
"Immediately after my birth," Magadon continued, "when my mother saw what she had brought forth, she exposed me, abandoned me to die in the forest. Afterward, she drowned herself in the Shining River."
Cale heard the bitterness in the guide's voice, bitterness softened only by regret at the mention of his mother's death.
"Is your mother alive, Erevis?" Magadon asked softly. "Your father?"
Cale shook his head. He had never known his mother, the man who had come closest to being his father had died a year past, and the god who had come to serve as a father of sorts seemed to have adopted a second son.
"Forgive me for asking," Magadon said, seemingly sensing Cale's pain.
"It's all right," Cale said, waving away the sting. "Continue."
Magadon cleared his throat and said, "I was abandoned. Before the cold could take me, a lame woodsman heard my wails and took me in. It was he who explained my origin to me, when I was old enough to understand it. It was he who taught me wood lore."
Cale struggled to imagine the burden Magadon carried-rejected by his mother, sired by a fiend. Cale's own past seemed ordinary by comparison.
"He always told me the truth," Magadon said absently. "I loved him for that."
"The woodsman?"
Magadon nodded.
"What was his name?"
Magadon smiled warmly.
"Father," he said, and Cale could see the guide's welling eyes reflecting the firelight.
Cale understood. He left Magadon alone with his memories for a time.
When the guide seemed ready again to speak, Cale asked, "Did your father also teach you how to ... to use your mental powers?"
Magadon shook his head and stared into the fire.
"No," he said. "Psionics cannot be taught, Erevis. They are inborn, and I've developed them as I've aged. My mental powers I attribute to the bloodline of the rapist whose seed conceived me, as much as I do these horns. And like my horns, they've become more pronounced as I've aged. I'm changing too, you see."
Cale nodded. It seemed they were all changing.
Magadon looked into Cale's eyes and said, "Two fathers, Erevis. One a rapist archdevil, one a cripple with a noble spirit. Life is sometimes strange, is it not?"
Cale nodded and looked away into the distance. He could think of nothing to say, though he understood well what it was to serve two fathers. The silence stretched on.
At last, Cale said, "You were going to tell me why you were confiding in me. You had a purpose?"
"So I was and so I do," Magadon said, and adjusted his posture on the log. "Here it is: For years I struggled with what I was. Devilspawn, Erevis. How could I move past that?"
Cale looked at him from under his brows, genuinely curious, and asked, "How did you?"
"That's the question," Magadon whispered. He shook his head and smiled softly, as if amused by a private jest. "I pitied myself. You saw the scars on my birthmark. When I learned what it was, I tried to cut that mark from my flesh a dozen times, but always it returned."
He extended his arm and held his hand fully in the flames. Cale gave a start but Magadon's skin didn't char and the guide did not wince.
He looked into Cale's face and said, "Another gift from the rapist." He pulled his hand from the flames and looked at the unmarred skin. "Everywhere I turned, I was faced with my heritage. With each passing year, my flesh changed to show more and more of my devil sire. I fear how I may appear in my dotage."
He smiled, but Cale saw it was forced.
"So I couldn't move past it, Erevis," the guide said. "Not really." He flexed his unburned fingers. "It's part of me. It's part of what I am. When I accepted that, things became bearable. But-" and here he made a cutting gesture with his hand-"accepting the fact of my blood does not mean that I let it dictate the course of my life. The blood of an archdevil determines what I am in body; it does not determine the nature of my soul. And it's a soul that makes a man, Erevis. Do you see? Your transformation changed your skin, your eyes, but not your soul. You remain who you always were."
Cale heard Magadon's words, heard the echoes of his own protestations in them, but smiled in response only out of politeness. It was what Cale always had been-before the transformation as much as after-that gave him concern. Accepting his nature would not free him from what he feared; it would free what he feared, that part of himself that he kept closely tethered. Unlike Magadon, Cale had no good side to turn to.
He thought of Tazi; her smile, the smell of her skin. . . .
"Well?" Magadon pressed.
"I'll think about what you've said," Cale replied, to placate the guide.
Magadon nodded and said, "Fair enough."
They said nothing for a time. When the silence at last grew uncomfortable, Cale filled it by changing the subject.
"How did you come to know him?" he asked, and indicated Riven. "You seem hardly the type of man who would befriend a Zhentarim assassin."
Magadon's reply came quickly: "How did you?"
Cale took the point. Strange times made for strange alliances.
"Does he know?" Cale asked. "About your ... heritage?"
Magadon shrugged and said, "I've never told him, but he may have learned of it. He has a way of doing that. Why do you ask?"
In truth, Cale did not know.
"Curiosity," he said, and left it at that.
The fire crackled, its smoke lost in the gloom of the forest.
"It's affecting him too," Magadon said at last. "Riven, I mean."
"What?"
"This place; what he's becoming."
Cale looked at Magadon sharply and asked, "What is he becoming?"
"I don't know," Magadon answered. "Neither does he. That's what makes him afraid."
Cale's doubt must have shown in his expression. To Cale, Riven seemed as calm and in control as ever. Magadon must have read his eyes-or his mind.
The guide said, "I know him better than you, Erevis. He has been your enemy, hasn't he?"
Cale nodded.
"You see him through those eyes," Magadon said. "But I've been in his head, and I see him through his own." Magadon paused before adding, "You two are very much alike."
Once, those words would have provoked a sharp denial, but not any more. Perhaps Cale and Riven were more alike than ever. Brothers in the faith if not the flesh. He looked at his regenerated hand and wondered again what he was becoming, or what he had already become. A shade, yes, but what else?