“Of course you will,” Riven said. “After a hundred years, you shadowalkers are still the same. All balls and no sense.”
Orsin grinned. “A compliment from a god?”
“Take it as you wish,” Riven said, but his tone indicated that he had, indeed, meant it as a compliment.
“Gerak, you can stay here,” Vasen said, then looked to Riven. “He can stay here, yes?”
Riven shrugged. “He can, but I won’t be able to look out for him. We have to move. Come on.”
He headed off through a door and down a hall, and the three men fell in behind him.
“I don’t need looking out for,” Gerak snapped.
“If you stay here you might,” Riven said.
Ten steps later, Gerak said, “I’ll come.”
“Gerak. .” Vasen began.
Gerak cut him off. “Where else would I go?”
“So we’re all madmen. Well enough.”
As they hurried through the shadowed, stone corridors and staircases of the Citadel of Shadow, two fat dogs fell in beside Riven, trotting and puffing along. Like Riven, they seemed clothed in shadows.
“My girls,” Riven explained with a father’s pride. The dogs took a liking to Gerak, and despite the woodsman’s dark mood, he made a point to pet them as he walked.
“Good dogs,” Gerak said.
Riven descended a stairway, picking up his pace. Outside, the drums and horns of the host of the Hells continued to thump and bray.
“They’ll be attacking soon,” Riven said. “You need to be gone before that.” “You going to hold them off alone?” Gerak asked. “Where are your forces?”
“They’re around,” Riven said.
“You’ll send us to the Hells?” Vasen asked Riven.
Riven nodded. “I’d free Cale myself but the moment I showed, Mephistopheles would sense me there. Everything would fall apart.” “What’s everything?” Orsin asked.
“Wish I knew,” Riven said.
“How will we get back?” Orsin asked.
“Cale,” Riven said.
“Cale?” Vasen asked. “What if he can’t?”
“He can. He must. Vasen, you can free the divinity in me, in Rivalen, and in Mephistopheles. When you do that, Mask will return. And when he returns, the Cycle of Night will be stopped.
“What’s the Cycle of Night?” Gerak asked.
“I don’t have time for all of this!” Riven snapped. He inhaled to calm himself and looked at Vasen. “You say you don’t know how to do it. I believe you. So Cale must. He must, Vasen. Mask kept him alive and in stasis for a reason. He’ll be able to get you out of there.”
“And if he can’t?” Vasen asked.
“Then we all die. And eventually Shar gets her way, restarts the Cycle of Night, and all of Toril dies, too. That’s the shape of it. Well enough? Vasen nodded, trying not to show how overwhelmed he felt. “Well enough.” Riven held out a hand. On his palm sat an opalescent black sphere, about the size of a sparrow’s egg. “This is a sending. Use it when you have your father out. Break it and speak and I’ll hear. Clear?”
Vasen secreted the small gemstone in one of his belt pouches. “Clear.” They stood before a pair of large doors that Vasen assumed must open out onto the plain. The sound of the army outside caused the doors to vibrate.
Dust floated in the air.
“Question,” Orsin said to Riven.
Riven raised his eyebrows, waiting.
“It’s personal.”
Riven tapped a foot impatiently. “You want a kiss?”
Orsin laughed.
“Come on, man,” Riven said. “Ask it.”
Orsin said, “You want the divinity out? That’s what you said. But why would you go back to being a man after being a god? How can you go back?” Riven stared at Orsin a long time. “I never did like you shadowalkers much.” Orsin stared at him, but said nothing.
Riven eyed each of them in turn. “When I open those doors, you just wait here, no matter what happens out there. When the time is right, I’ll send you to Cania. Move fast, free your father, and get out. He’s trapped under a cairn of ice and shadow.”
The three men nodded. Shadows swirled rapidly around Vasen. His heart hammered his ribs.
“After you free him,” Riven said. “Tell him to take you to the plaza in Ordulin where he and I faced Kesson Rel. He’ll know where I mean.” Gerak said, “Ordulin’s in ruins, haunted.”
“What’s that to you now?” Riven said. “You’re standing in the Shadowfell.
Soon you’ll stand in the Eighth Hell. How’s that for a daytrip, woodsman?” He thumped Gerak on the shoulder and the bowman, despite himself, grinned. Riven said, “Ordulin is where this ends. One way or another.” Shadows leaked from Vasen’s flesh. He thought of the Oracle, his father, Derreg, his mother. “What’ll happen in Ordulin?”
“The end happens in Ordulin,” Riven said. Then, to Vasen, “Use Weaveshear to cut through Mephistopheles’s wards around your father’s cairn. You tell Cale. . it all comes down to him.”
“I will,” Vasen said.
“I’ll send you to Cania when the time is right. Be ready.”
“When will the time be right?” Orsin asked.
“When I get Mephistopheles to show,” Riven said. He winked. “Shouldn’t take long.”
He touched the double doors and they swung open and the blast of sound from the army almost knocked them over. The stink of brimstone flowed in, filled the air.
Riven had his sabers in hand. “Good luck,” he said to the three companions, then darted out the doors in the cloud of shadow. He shouted as he went, his voice a match for the drums of Cania’s legions.
“To me, dead of Elgrin Fau! Once more to me!”
A great moan went up. It seemed to come from everywhere, from below Vasen’s feet, from the walls of the Citadel of Shadow, from the air itself. The three men stared, awestruck, and thousands upon thousands of living shadows, human-shaped but dark and cold, emerged from the earth, from the walls of the Citadel, from the shadowed air. Their red eyes glowed in the darkness, a constellation of coals and hate, as they swarmed forth behind Riven. “Those are the guardians of the pass,” Vasen breathed, his flesh growing goose pimples. “The Oracle knew all along. He must have sent them.” A keening and more moans sounded from the left and right, from above.
Out of the mountains from which the Citadel was carved swooped a black tide of more undead-towering nightwalkers, clouds of shadows, keening banshees, wraiths, specters, and ghosts. It was as though the entire Shadowfell had vomited forth its denizens, tens of thousands of them to face the legions of Mephistopheles. The air was black with undead, and leading them all, swathed in shadows, bounding across the plains, was Drasek Riven, the God of Shadows.
“Gods,” Gerak said, wide-eyed, his bow slack in his hands. Orsin had his holy symbol in hand and he prayed softly over it, watching his god in the flesh.
Vasen looked away from the battle, took his tarnished silver holy symbol in hand, the rose given him by the Oracle, and intoned his own prayer. “Light, wisdom, and strength, Dawnfather,” he said. “Light, wisdom, and much strength.”
Riven sprinted out to face thousands of devils, the dead of Elgrin Fau flew behind him like a black fog, rose out of the earth in the thousands. Riven picked up the mind link left in his consciousness by Magadon. Meet me in Ordulin, Mags, he projected. The plaza in the center of the maelstrom. I don’t know how this is going to end. Cale will be there. Just be ready.
Riven’s mental voice reverberated through Magadon’s consciousness like a gong. His adrenaline spiked. He stood.
“Cale,” Magadon said, and grinned.
I need you now, Magadon projected to the Source. Will you help me?
From the cold embers where the last flickers of the Source’s consciousness still glowed, he received an affirmative answer.
I’m coming to you, Magadon said.
He pictured the huge chamber in the center of the inverted mountain in which the Source floated. He’d been there before, when he’d lost himself. Now he’d go there again, now that he’d found himself. He pictured it in his mind, as clearly as if he were looking right at it. He drew on his mental energy, orange light haloed his head, and he moved himself there.