Gale looked around stupefied, dazed. The shrine was empty and silent.
It took a few moments to register. Yrsillar was gone. They had won. The realization affected him strangely. He fell back and tried to laugh, but managed only a pained grimace. He wasn't yet ready for laughter. Emotion flooded him though-not happiness, but something he couldn't quite put a name to. His eyes welled. He blinked away the tears.
How? he wondered, but already knew the answer.
Mask had banished Yrsillar, or Gale had banished Yrsillar with the power of Mask. It no longer mattered which. He was now a man of faith.
I accept, you bastard, he thought with a half-smile. I accept.
He lay still and let his emotions run their course. After a few moments, he recovered himself enough to climb unsteadily to his feet. Jak needed him.
He staggered along the aisle, past the body of the Righteous Man. The guildmaster's abdomen gaped from where Gale had slashed it open. The rest of the body looked shrunken and dried out, sucked empty. The felt mask lay on the floor beside it. Gale stooped to retrieve it.
"Caaale," the Righteous Man croaked.
Startled, Cale jerked back.
"Gale…" A thin arm tried to move, failed, and instead a bony finger beckoned.
After a moment's hesitation, Cale moved forward and knelt beside his former guildmaster. "I'm here."
The Righteous Man's eyes fluttered open. Cale gave a start-the sockets sat empty, mere pink holes in his sunken, wrinkled face.
Cale resisted the impulse to touch him, to give him comfort. He felt no affection for the guildmaster, only a distant anger. "What happened? How-"
"You're the Champion," the Righteous Man whispered.
"I am," Cale acknowledged. With his good hand, he picked up the felt mask and placed it in his pocket. "I am." There was nothing more to be said. Jak needed him. He started to rise, but the Righteous Man gripped him by the forearm with surprising strength.
"Wait, Erevis," he wheezed.
The Righteous Man's touch was dry and cold.
"I'm not afraid to die. I'm at peace with the Shadow-lord now. I see his plan." He coughed a bloody foam onto his chin. "But I want to be at peace with you, Erevis, Champion." Another round of coughing. He pulled Cale closer. "I didn't mean for Yrsillar to go free…"
Cale waited another moment but the guildmaster said nothing more. Cale gave him what absolution he could; no one should die with guilt on their soul. "I know," he said, disengaged his hand, and started to rise.
The Righteous Man jerked to consciousness, coughed, beckoned Cale closer. "No, that's not what I meant. I didn't free him…"
Cale stiffened at that. If the Righteous Man hadn't freed Yrsillar, then who?
The guildmaster struggled to say something. A word hung on his blood-flecked lips. Cale leaned forward, clutched the guildmaster's tattered robe with his good hand"Riven," the Righteous Man softly hissed. "Riven and the Zhentarim set Yrsillar free."
Cale knelt over Jak, probed his jaw with gentle fingers. Not broken, though the little man had lost several teeth. His cheeks had swollen enough to distort his face. His head would be fuzzy for hours.
"Jak," he called, and gently nudged his friend. "Jak."
After a few moments, the little man's eyes fluttered open, focused blearily on Cale.
"Cale?"
Cale smiled. "Yrsillar's gone. We won, my friend."
Despite his words, he didn't feel like he had won. He felt little more than tired and angry at Riven and the Zhentarim.
"Gone." Jak's" small hand found Gale's arm and squeezed. The little man sighed and closed his eyes. "How?"
Cale quickly related the story of the combat, of the mask and Yrsillar's banishment. Afterwards, he looked at the mask he held in his hand. "I'm his Champion, it seems."
Jak regarded the mask for a moment, looked into Gale's eyes, and nodded knowingly. "You're his Champion. But you're still your own man, Erevis." He chuckled and said, "That's probably why he chose you in the first place."
"I am still my own man," Cale affirmed. He knew now that he could have his faith and his individuality. Smiling, he used his good hand to help the little man to sit upright. Careful not to jolt his broken wrist, he took his waterskin from his pack and offered it to his friend.
Jak took a sip, swished it around in his mouth, and spat blood. Afterward, he eyed Cale shrewdly. "Can you cast spells?"
Surprisingly, Cale did not find the question alarming. "I don't know. How would I know?"
Jak took another gulp from the waterskin. He swallowed this one down. "You just know."
Cale considered the mask. My holy symbol,he reminded himself. He didn't feel any different- certainly didn't feel like a priest, or a Champion. "Then I don't think so. No, I can't."
"Try it," Jak said.
"How in the name of the gods do I try it? I've never cast a spell before."
Jak looked at him as though he were a dolt. "Dark, Cale, you're not a mage. You don't need years of training. It's a divine gift. You will it to happen."
"Will it? That's it?"
"You will it," Jak said with a nod and a pained wince, "then pray to your god to realize your will."
Cale was incredulous. "That's it?"
"That's it," Jak replied. "Now try it."
Though he felt an idiot, Cale held the mask in his hand, closed his eyes, and willed his wrist healed.
Nothing happened.
"You have to pray," Jak said. "You can do it silently if you need to."
Cale saw Jak's smirk but chose to ignore it. He calmed himself and for the second time that day, prayed silently to Mask, this time for the power to heal. At first nothing happened, but then his consciousness flew open. A dam had burst in his brain.
"Dark," he whispered, awed. A warmth filled him, a presence joined with him and made its will his own. He knew then the feeling of serving something greater than himself, knew then the transcendence of the divine.
His wrist began to tingle. Suddenly, bones and tendons knit back together. The pain ceased. He opened his eyes, held his hand before his face, and rotated his wrist-no pain. The pain in his back and chest, too, had vanished. He had healed. The realization humbled and exhilarated him.
"You're still your own man," Jak reassured him.
"I know," he replied. Mask had made no demands. Cale would have done everything he had done with or without Mask's involvement. A convergence of the mortal and divine interests, Jak had called it.
So be it, he thought. Touching Jak, he prayed, and willed his best friend healed. The swelling in the little man's face diminished until it had all but vanished. Jak's bruises disappeared. His color returned and he shot Cale a grateful smile.
"This is going to be an interesting time, Cale," he said, and rose to his feet.
"Indeed," Cale replied. He gently tucked his holy symbol into his pocket.
Jak's smile fell when he looked around the shrine- ghoul corpses, charred pews, the stink of death. His eyes lingered long on the corpse of the Righteous Man.
"I guess you're finally out of the guild."
"I am," Cale replied. He had, however, entered into a brotherhood of a different sort.
"And I'm out of the Harpers."
"You are."
"So what now?"
Cale too looked around the shrine. The whole guild-house had become a slaughter-pen, an abomination to man and god.
"We burn it," he said. "Gut the entire place. The sewer entrance too. There's oil in a storeroom upstairs."
•(c)• • amp;• • amp;• • amp;• •€›•
They spent the next hour soaking the basement in lantern oil. Cale had seen many such fires set by Night Mask arsonists back in Westgate-he knew how to ensure a good burn. Afterward, he threw a torch on the kindling point. The fire would gut the basement before the flames were even visible from the street outside.