A voice from the alley to his right stopped him short. “Gerak.”
Gerak turned, blinked, his flesh growing goose pimples. Riven stood in the mouth of the alley. He wore his cloak, his sabers, his sneer and goatee, and his presence crowded out everything else on the street. Behind him, the alley was cast in deep shadows, so dark that Gerak could not see into it.
Riven regarded him with one knowing eye and one empty socket. “Where you headed?”
Gerak looked around. No one else seemed alarmed at the presence of a god on the street. He walked up to Riven, cautiously, the way he might a dangerous animal.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“You don’t look good.”
“I’m fine. Just about to grab a drink, is all.”
Riven sneered. “You look like you’ve already had a few.”
“Maybe I have,” Gerak said. “What’s that to you? A god has come to lecture me about my habits?”
It occurred to him in passing that he was snarling at a reincarnated god; Mask stood before him.
“That’s because I know those habits,” Riven said. “You just did a big thing, saw wonders, right? But now it’s over. And you got no family or home to come back to. You’re feeling alone, kind of empty. Not even anyone you’d call friends to visit with, or at least not good friends.”
Gerak started to protest, but Riven silenced him with a raised hand and a nod.
“Oh, I know. You want to say Vasen and Orsin are your friends, and you’d be right. But you know how things are. Those two, they’re like brothers. You, you’re just a sometime cousin. They welcome you, but you’re not necessary. Is that about it?”
“I guess that’s about the shape of it, yeah. You’re familiar?”
Riven nodded. “I know how that is, yeah. And when it’s like that, when you have nobody, the bottom of an empty ale cup seems like a good friend. That’s the road you’re on. You see that, right?”
Gerak didn’t answer, but he saw it. He saw it well.
“You know what kept me from that?”
Gerak heard movement in the shadows behind Riven, a soft chuffing. He recognized it right away. Riven’s girls stepped out of the shadows, each to one side of their master. They blinked in the natural light of the Prime, noses raised at scents they probably hadn’t smelled in decades.
Seeing them instantly lightened Gerak’s spirits. He kneeled and held out a hand. They looked up at Riven, as if for permission.
“Go on,” Riven said, and they did, waddling up to Gerak, licking his hands. He rubbed their flanks, their muzzles.
“Good girls,” Gerak said. “Good girls.”
“They can’t come with me,” Riven said, and Gerak pretended not to hear the break in his voice. “And even if they could. . ”
Gerak looked up at Riven. “You want me to. .?”
Riven had eyes only for his girls. Shadows swirled around him. He nodded, once. “I don’t know how long they have now, but I want them to spend whatever time they have left in the sun, in their home, not mine.”
Gerak’s gaze fell at that. His eyes welled. “Their home is with you.”
“Not anymore,” Riven said. “It’s with you now. You take care of them, give them a home, and they’ll give you one. No more ale cups. Don’t disappoint me, Gerak. I’ll be watching.”
“I won’t,” he said, smiling and rubbing the dogs.
“Goodbye, girls. You saved me, and I love you.”
Gerak was silent a long moment. Finally he looked up and asked, “What are their names?”
Riven was already gone.
Orsin had left Vasen and Erevis to commune in solitude with his god. He’d picked his way through the Valley of the Rose, following the same path Vasen had once led him down, until he stood beside the dark waters of the shadowed tarn. The shroud the Shadovar had put over Sembia remained, but cracks appeared in it, lines of red cast by the setting sun. Shadows darkened the vale, the water. The towering pines behind him whispered in a soft breeze. Insects chirped.
Orsin felt the many lives he’d lived converging around the one he lived now, as if all of them had been a prelude to this, his finale. His people believed that the soul reincarnated again and again across time and worlds in an attempt to perfect itself or achieve its purpose. Perhaps Orsin’s spirit had finally achieved its goal in standing beside Vasen. He had trouble imagining future lives before him, certainly he could imagine none richer.
Days before he had worshiped a dead god. But his god had been reborn before his eyes. He’d been a congregation of one, but that would not be so for much longer.
He pulled his holy symbol out from under his tunic and held it in one hand. The disc felt warm to his touch, alive. He stepped into the shadow of a pine, at the edge of the shadowed tarn, and with his staff scribed a prayer circle around himself. He kneeled and prayed.
“Lord of Shadows,” he intoned. “Hear my words.”
Shock gave way to a smile when he heard Riven’s voice in his head. Fine, but first get off your damned knees, Shadowalker.
Hands clasped behind his back, Telemont looked through the glassteel window out on Thultanthar. It floated alone in the empire’s sky. Rivalen’s hopes had raised Sakkors from the depths of the Inner Sea, and his ambition and nihilism had brought it down in ruins.
The empire had lost a city, but Telemont had lost two sons. He’d wept only twice in the last two thousand years. Once when he’d first learned of Alashar’s death and once when he’d learned for himself that his own son had been her murderer.
Outside, Thultanthar’s towers and domes and soaring roofs rose out of the gloom.
“I don’t know what’s coming, Hadrhune,” he said over his shoulder.
His most trusted counselor cleared his throat. “Most High?”
“The world has changed, and is changing yet. Our reach is shorter. And I’ve lost two of my sons.”
“Yes, Most High. Shall we. . continue the program with the Chosen?”
Telemont sighed, nodded. “Yes. Capture and hold what Chosen we can. Interrogate them all. Someone must know something. In any event I imagine their power will be of use to us when we see events more clearly.”
“The gods themselves seem to be involved in affairs.”
“Indeed, Hadrhune.”
The Shadovar had not yet returned to Toril when the so-called Time of Troubles took place, when the gods themselves walked the earth and the entire divine order had been upset and reordered. Telemont feared similar changes afoot currently. He’d struggle to maintain the empire during such upheaval.
“Most High,” Hadrhune said, his tone stilted and uncomfortable. “There is one other thing. It’s a bit. . strange.”
Telemont turned to face his counselor.
Hadrhune stood near the door, deep in shadows, his glowing eyes like steel stars in the black constellation of his face.
“What is it, Hadrhune?”
Two small, bald gray heads poked out of Hadrhune’s cloak, tiny ears raised and alert. They looked on Telemont with terror, but behind the fear their opalescent eyes looked profoundly sad.
Telemont froze. Shadows roiled around him. “Are those. .?”
Hadrhune nodded. “They are, Most High. Prince Brennus’s constructs. They should have died when. . he died. I can’t explain it.”
“We lost,” the homunculi said in their high-pitched voices.
“Me, too,” Telemont said.
“Forgive me, Most High,” Hadrhune said, pushing the homunculi back into his cloak. They squeaked in protest. “I should not have troubled you with this.”
“No, you did the right thing,” Telemont said. “Leave them.”
“Most High?”
“Leave them with me, Hadrhune. Is that unclear?”
“No, Most High. Of course. Shoo,” he said to the homunculi, and shook them from his cloak.
They hit the ground and cowered, keeping one hand each on Hadrhune’s cloak, eyeing Telemont fearfully.