"Leave me alone!"
"Mags, it's me. Erevis."
Magadon opened his eyes, the movement so slow his eyelids could have been made of lead. The whites of the mind mage's eyes glowed in the darkness.
"Cale."
The mind mage's voice sounded far away, and Cale wondered in what far realm his thoughts had been wandering.
Cale stepped into the cell, across the spear of starlight, and kneeled beside his friend. Magadon smelled of old sweat, a sick room. Cale put a hand on Magadon's shoulder.
"Are you all right?"
The black dots of Magadon's pupils pinioned Cale. "No."
"I'm sorry."
"I know."
Cale stood, extended a hand to Magadon. "On your feet."
Magadon took his hand, rose.
"I'll fix this, Mags. I'm going now."
Magadon licked his lips and blinked away sleep. "I want to come with you. I should be part of it."
"You know you cannot be there. But I want you to link us and keep us linked. Can you? Or is it too much?"
Magadon consulted his will, nodded. "I can do it."
"If you need me, if anything happens, if you… start slipping, you tell me."
Magadon held his eyes for a moment then nodded.
"No farther, Mags."
Magadon smiled, and Cale saw in it the last bit of hope wrung from the husk of his deteriorating mental state.
"There's not much farther to fall, Cale," Magadon said.
"Do it," Cale said.
Magadon closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. He winced as a red glow flared around his head. Cale felt the irritating itch root behind his eyes, the effect of the opening mental connection.
It will need to be latent most of the time, Magadon projected.
Cale noted that Magadon's mental voice sounded deeper than it had previously, more like his father's voice.
If you need me, Cale said. Tell me and I'll come.
Magadon nodded. Cale squeezed his shoulder and left him with his thoughts, with the war in his skull. The moment he left the cell, he felt the connection go latent.
Cale sought Nayan, found him sitting alone in a dining hall lit only by the two thin tapers melting away into their holders. Looking upon him sitting there, Cale decided that the Wayrock Temple had become a mausoleum, where the dead and dying sat alone in dark stone rooms.
The small man wore a loose shirt and trousers and a sense of purpose. He stood as Cale entered. A plate of bread and cheese sat on the table before him. Cale was distantly pleased that Nayan had not heard him approach.
"Sit," Cale said. "Eat."
Nayan tilted his head in gratitude. His body sat but his eyes never left Cale's face.
"The Shadowlord visits you in physical form," Nayan said.
"Sometimes."
"You are blessed."
Cale chucked. "So you say. Nayan, I need you and the others to remain here and watch over Magadon."
Nayan's expression did not change, but the shadows around him surged. "You are leaving?"
"For a time. With Riven."
"We would accompany you. Serving the Right and Left hands of the Shadowlord is what brought us here."
"You will be serving me by watching my friend. He cannot be left alone. But he cannot come with me."
Nayan studied Cale's face, and finally nodded. "Where are you going?"
Cale thought about the answer for a moment. "To kill a god," he said, and exited the hall to find Riven. He found the assassin in the central hall on the second story, his two dogs in tow. They wagged their tails at Cale but did not leave their master's side.
A question lodged in the lines of Riven's brow, then smoothed into an answer.
"Found something, after all, I see."
Riven could read him.
"Something," Cale acknowledged, thinking of Mask, of Magadon, of Jak.
"What next, then?" Riven asked.
The shadows around Cale swirled. "We tell Abelar the nature of the Shadowstorm so he can get the refugees out of its path."
"Then?"
"We kill Kesson Rel. Or die trying. Mags is nearly gone."
Riven inhaled, nodded. "Plan?"
"Go to Ordulin. Find him. Kill him."
Riven chuckled through his goatee. "Must have taken you a while to come up with that."
Cale smiled despite himself. He still found the rare demonstrations of Riven's humor as incongruous as beardless cheeks on a dwarf.
"That double of him that we fought back in the Calyx," Riven said. "The real him will be stronger than that."
Cale nodded. "I know."
Riven looked away, nodding, finally bent down and pet his dogs, the gesture one of farewell. He stood.
"There's nothing for it. Let's gear up."
CHAPTER FOUR
4 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms
Brennus held his mother's platinum necklace in his palm. The facets of the large jacinths caught the dim light of the glowballs and sparkled like flames.
"Pretty," said the homunculi perched on his shoulder.
He nodded. His father had given it to his mother thousands of years earlier, on the night she died. Her body had been found in her chambers that night, as though she had died in her sleep, but the missing necklace suggested something else-murder. Despite a magical and mundane search of first the palace then the city, the murderer and the necklace had never been found.
Until recently.
Brennus had found the necklace buried in the soft earth of a meadow in a Sembian forest while he had been trying to determine the whereabouts of Erevis Cale's woman, Varra. Varra, pursued by living shadows, had inexplicably disappeared from the face of Faerun. Brennus had scoured the meadow from which she'd vanished. He'd found no clue to Varra's fate, but had found one to his mother's.
The find unnerved him. He recalled Rivalen's words about the involvement of Mask and Shar in the events unfolding in Sembia. Like Rivalen, Brennus did not accept coincidence.
He turned the necklace over, eyed the inscription on the charm, the words of another age resurrected from a shallow Sembian grave: For Alashar, my love.
He had mentioned the necklace to no one, not Rivalen or his other brothers, not his father. The necklace had torn open the scab of long forgotten grief, returned to him memories and feelings buried with his mother's body centuries ago. Perhaps that was why he had not shared his find with his brothers or father. He saw no reason to raise their grief from the dead.
He had cast numerous divinations on the necklace to ensure its authenticity, used it as the focus for other divinations, all in an effort to determine his mother's true fate, and all to no avail. Thousands of years had passed since her death. He knew the murderer was dead. But he still had to know the truth. He owed his mother that much.
He had been closer to his mother than any of his brothers. She nurtured his love of constructs, clapped with delight at the first gear-driven wood and leather automatons he had built as a boy. He mastered the art of divination only later, at his father's urging, to learn the truth of his mother's fate.
But the truth had eluded him then, as it did now, and now the inquiry must wait still longer. He needed to turn his Art fully to Erevis Cale, to Kesson Rel, to the Shadowstorm. He and Rivalen needed information if they were to fulfill the Most High's charge to annex Sembia and make it the economic workhorse of the reborn Empire of Netheril. To that end, they were to leave the realm only mildly scarred by war.
The Shadowstorm would leave more than mild scars were it not stopped soon.
He puzzled only a little over the religious implications of the fact that two of Shar's most powerful servants, Rivalen the Nightseer and Kesson Rel the Divine One, seemed at cross-purposes in Sembia's fate. Brennus's faith in Shar started and ended with nothing more than words, and those mostly to appease his father and Rivalen. Belief did not sink below the surface in him. Whatever conflict existed in the Sharran church, it was a matter for Rivalen to answer for himself. Though he would also answer to the Most High should he be unable to stop Kesson Rel.