Cale and Riven sprinted for a nearby doorway, leaping rubble, dodging corpses.
Black fire exploded behind them, blew them off their feet, turned the rubble into projectiles. The fire seared Cale's flesh; shards of stone knifed into him.
He pulled Riven to his feet, the shadows around him swirling, and ran for the building.
I cannot let you leave, Cale, Magadon said. Cale felt a tingle in his limbs, suddenly felt separate from them.
Before he reached the building, Magadon stopped him, turned him around.
Fight, Cale. Gods damn you to the Hells. There may not be another chance. And I am out of time.
Riven grabbed Cale by the shoulder. "What are you doing? Come on!"
"It's Mags," Cale said through gritted teeth, and his body tried to shake free of Riven's grasp.
Riven cursed, kicked Cale behind his knee, knocked him down, and dragged him toward the nearby building.
"Let him go, Mags!" Riven shouted.
Stop, Mags, Cale said. Stop. We will try again.
He fought against Magadon's control, but the mind mage's hold was too strong.
Mags, if you don't release me, Riven and I will die here, now.
"Walls won't stop the shadows," Riven said, and plucked pieces of rock from the flesh of his face.
Help me, Erevis, Magadon said, and freed Cale's body.
I will, Cale said, but the connection went dormant and he was not sure that Magadon heard him.
He put it out of his mind and worked to get around Kesson's binding spell again.
The building started to shake. Beams of wood and slabs of rock fell from the ceiling.
"Cale," Riven said.
Outside, the keening of the shadows grew louder. Through an opening in the building's front, they saw a multitude of red eyes in a cloud of black forms.
"Cale!"
The ceiling groaned, and started to fall.
Cale again slipped Kesson's binding spell and the green glow flashed out for a moment. Once more Cale pictured the spot on the Dawnpost and rode the shadows away.
CHAPTER NINE
4 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms
They materialized not along the Dawnpost but somewhere in the Shadowstorm. The echo of Magadon's rage and despair rang in Cale's mind like a temple bell. Rain thudded into their cloaks. Thunder rumbled. Flashes of green lightning illuminated the twisted landscape in ghastly glimpses. The Shadowstorm pawed at their unprotected souls, drained away their essence. Cale hurriedly intoned the words to the protective wards that shielded them from the life draining energy of the storm, touched a hand to himself, to Riven, and replaced what Kesson Rel had stolen.
"Dark and empty," Riven cursed. Smoke still rose from his charred armor. Blisters dotted the exposed skin of his seared arms and face. Slivers of rock were still embedded in the flesh of his cheeks and brow.
Cale shared the sentiment. The faint green glow of Kesson's spell flashed in and out, warring with the shadows that cloaked him. His regenerative flesh collected the darkness around him and filled his wounds with it. He winced as burns healed, gashes closed.
You failed me, Cale, Magadon said in his mind, and the calm pronouncement hit him as hard as a maul.
Cale was too tired to argue.
Moving gingerly, Riven spun a hand in the air, wrapped his fingers in shadows, and patted them into his wounds, the way he might a healing loam. The magic pulled the slivers of stone from his flesh, healed some of his blisters, but did not heal his wounds entirely. Cale placed his palms on him and intoned a healing spell to Mask. The assassin breathed easier, and nodded thanks.
"Where are we?" Riven asked, looking around.
Cale shook his head. "Not where I intended. This-" he indicated the intermittently flashing green glow around him- "interferes with my abilities even when I'm able to slip it."
Riven paced a circle, his hands on the hilts of his sabers. "He's more powerful than the Sojourner."
"Maybe," Cale said.
Riven stared into Cale's face, a look in his eyes, then he resumed pacing.
"Something you want to say?" Cale asked.
Riven stopped pacing and looked off into the darkness. "I don't know, Cale. I don't."
The sense of Riven's sentence echoed in Cale's head: I don't know if we can stop Kesson Rel.
"There has to be a way," Cale said.
Oathbreaking bastard, Magadon said in his mind.
Cale shook his head, as if he could shake Magadon loose from his thoughts. In handcant, he said to Riven, Mags is almost gone.
Riven stared at Cale a long while before he signaled back, Then we keep our promise to him.
"No." Cale shook his head. "No."
"You see another way?" Riven asked, then signed, He almost killed us both.
They stared at each other through the rain, the funeral of their friend suspended in the dark between them.
What are you discussing? Magadon asked.
It's a mercy killing, Riven signed.
Cale signed back, his gestures sharp and cutting. For who? And we are not there yet.
Not yet, Riven signed. But soon. Get your head around it. He's a risk. We've seen what he can do. He's in your head, Cale. He took control of you.
Cale could not deny it. Anger boiled up in him and he shouted it into the sky. "Dark!"
Go back, Cale, Magadon said in his mind. Please go back. Do what you promised.
The shadows around Cale boiled.
"Damn it, Mags, I will go back! I will kill Kesson! But we need another way."
I have no time for another way, Magadon said, the voice more his own. Before Cale could answer, the connection went quiescent. Cale still felt the uncomfortable itch of mental contact deep in his skull, but it was as though the door through which he and Magadon communicated had been left ajar only a sliver. Only Magadon could reopen it. Cale could not.
Riven exhaled a change of subject, shook the fatigue from his arms. He looked around, squinting in the rain. "Kesson will be coming. As long as we're in the Shadowstorm, he'll be coming."
"He will have to find us first," Cale said. He cast a series of wards to shield them against scrying and divinations, but had his doubts they would work against Kesson. "I can try to get us out, back to Lake Veladon…"
Riven was already shaking his head. "Not with that spell on you. We could end up anywhere-back in Ordulin."
Riven looked at his right hand, as if pondering the absence of the ring Kesson had slagged with his spell.
"We walk, then," Cale said, and threw up his hood.
"So we do," Riven said with a nod. "Bad things in this storm, though."
Cale remembered the looming, dark creature whose presence they had fled on their way in.
"Nothing for it," he said, his mind on Magadon. "We have to find another way. I am not putting Magadon down. Get your head around that. The horse got out, yes?"
"Cale, if we have to-"
Cale stopped, turned, and stared at Riven. "We are not giving up on him."
"I can offer another way," said a voice to their right, a voice that put Weaveshear in Cale's hand and Riven's sabers in his.
Rivalen Tanthul's golden eyes appeared to float freely in space until the Shadovar disengaged from the darkness. He bore no visible weapon. The shadows hugged his form, blurred his borders.
Cale and Riven fell in side by side, weapons ready. Cale scanned the darkness around them, but saw no one else.
"I am alone," Rivalen said. He held his hands at his side.
"All the worse for you," said Riven.
Cale put his free hand on Riven's shoulder to prevent him from charging. "He could have attacked already," he said. What Cale did not say was that Rivalen had mentioned another way and Cale was prepared to grasp at anything to save Magadon, even the words of a Shadovar.