"The world from which he came?"
The fiend nodded. Smoke issued from his nostrils.
Brennus considered the information. "You want him dead, too, else you would not have come. Why?"
The archfiend's face was expressionless. "To collect a debt."
Brennus knew he would get nothing more. "Tell me how to do it. Then tell me of my mother."
Mephistopheles chuckled. "I will tell you one or the other. How to kill Kesson Rel or the identity of your mother's murderer. Which will you have answered?"
Brennus swallowed his anger, his frustration, struggled, and finally said, "Tell me how to kill Kesson Rel."
The archfiend smiled, and began to speak.
Lifelong habits died only with difficulty and time. As he had for over a decade, Abelar awakened before the dawn. He lay on a bed of wool blankets set on the cold, damp earth in his tent. Elden slept on the cot near him and the sound of his son's breathing, easy and untroubled, soothed Abelar's troubled spirit. After a short time, he donned trousers, cloak, and boots, kissed Elden on the forehead, and stepped out of the tent.
The rain had slacked and the faint light of false dawn painted the water-soaked camp in lurid grays. Coughs and soft conversation carried from here and there among the cluster of tents. The smell of pipe smoke carried from somewhere.
He looked east to the rising sun, but saw there only the swirling dark clouds of the magical storm, a black lesion marring the sky. It had grown during the night. It was coming for them, for all of Sembia.
Atop the rise overlooking the camp he saw the men and women of his company, servants of Lathander, gathered for Dawnmeet. His separateness sent an ache through him. He led them now only on the field, not in worship. They looked east, their backs to Abelar, facing the sky where the shadows masked the dawn sun. The sound of their voices carried through the morning's quiet.
"Dawn dispels the night and births the world anew."
The words resounded in Abelar's mind, the echo of the thousands of Dawnmeets when he had spoken the same words to his god. He recalled the first time-he had been a mere boy-when Abbot Denril had first taught him the liturgy. Said in the face of the Shadowstorm, the words seemed hollow.
"May Lathander light our way, show us wisdom," said his companions, their voices carried to him on the morning mist. His own lips formed the words, but he did not speak them aloud, would not, ever again.
"You should be among them," said his father's voice, turning Abelar around.
Endren wore his blade, a mail shirt, and a tabard embroidered with the Corrinthal horse and sun. He looked thin to Abelar, and the weight of recent events had turned his hair entirely gray. His ragged beard, untrimmed in days, gave him the look of a prophet, or a madman. The stump of his left hand, too, looked ragged.
Abelar shook his head. "I am no longer one of them."
"The symbol you wore was not what made you one of them."
Endren's soft words surprised Abelar. "You have never shown such respect for my faith before, Father."
Endren put his good hand on Abelar's shoulder. "I am not showing respect for your faith. I am showing respect for my son. The light is in you, Abelar. Isn't that what you say?"
Abelar felt himself color, nodded.
"Lathander did not put it there," Endren said. "And Lathander did not make what was there brighter. Gods know I did not put it in there. But the light is in you."
Abelar was not so certain but said only, "Thank you, Father."
Endren gave him a final pat as the Lathanderians completed the Dawnmeet.
"Elden is well?" Endren asked.
"Yes. Sleeping."
"That is well."
Father and son stood together for a time in silence, watched the light of the sun war with the storm of shadows, watched gray dawn give way to a stark, shadow-shrouded day.
"We will need to break camp as soon as possible," Abelar said. "Flee west. That storm grows uglier by the hour."
"West takes us to the Mudslide. The droughts have shrunk it, but this sky-" Endren indicated the clouds-"seeks to refill it."
Abelar nodded. "We will cross at the Stonebridge, continue around the southern horn of the Thunder Peaks and toward Daerlun. Maybe even all the way to Cormyr. There, we can reorganize, perhaps gain aid from Alusair or the western nobility."
Endren eyed the distant storm. Thunder rumbled. "That will be a long, hard journey for these people. They are not soldiers used to marching so far. And I expect we'll be adding refugees to our numbers as we go. No one outside of a protected city will willingly sit in the path of whatever magic summoned that storm."
"What do we know of the whereabouts of the overmistress's army?" Abelar said. "If we must leave a force to delay their pursuit…" Abelar almost volunteered to lead a rearguard but trapped his words behind his teeth. He would not leave his son again. "Regg will lead it."
Endren nodded. Perhaps he understood Abelar's stutter. "Scouts are in the field. I have not yet had word this morning. I will start to get the camp prepared. It may take a day or two to get all in order."
A scream from within Abelar's tent put a blade in his hand and speed in his feet.
"Elden!"
Abelar and Endren raced into the tent and found Elden sitting upright in his bed, brown eyes wide with fear, tears cutting a path through the layer of grime on his face. He saw Abelar and held out his arms.
"Papa!"
Abelar scanned the tent and the shadows, but saw nothing. His father did the same. Abelar sheathed his blade, hurried to his son's bedside, and took him in his arms.
"What is it, Elden? What's wrong?"
"My dreamed of bad men, Papa. Bad."
Abelar surrounded Elden with his arms. His son buried his face in Abelar's cloak. Tears shook Elden's small body and Abelar's relief at finding no real danger to his son moved aside for a sudden stab of rage that caused him to wish he had prolonged Forrin's suffering. His son would have nightmares for years because of what Forrin had ordered done.
"It's all right," Abelar said, stroking his son's hair, speaking to both himself and his son. "It will be all right."
Endren put a hand on Elden and his stump on Abelar. After a time, Elden stopped crying. He looked up and Abelar wiped the tears and snot from his face with the sleeve of his cloak.
"You good man, Papa?"
The question took Abelar unawares, set his heart to running and stole his voice. He stared into his son's brown eyes, unable to find words.
"Papa? You good?"
Endren rescued him. "He is a good man, Elden. He's always been a good man."
Elden smiled at his grandfather and embraced his father again.
Abelar nodded gratitude at Endren, held onto his son, and wondered.
Brennus ate, rested for a time, then walked the shadow-shrouded halls of his manse on Shade Enclave. He did not relish the coming conversation but nevertheless reached out to Rivalen through his ring.
What have you learned? Rivalen asked.
Brennus recounted what Mephistopheles had told him. There is a world called Ephyras, a dead world, on which stands a temple at the edge of nothing, a temple that will soon be destroyed itself. Within is the Black Chalice, a holy artifact from which Kesson Rel drank to obtain his divinity.
Brennus paused, hesitant to continue. He felt Rivalen's impatience through the connection.
And?
And a drink from the Black Chalice will transform the imbiber into a weapon who can take back what Kesson Rel stole, which appears to be a portion of Mask's divine power.
Satisfaction, not surprise, poured through the magical conduit. Well done, Brother.