Paul Kemp - The Godborn

In moments, Magadon stood outside the gates, with the basalt walls of the city behind him. He stared across the plains at the distant wall of shadowed air that blanketed Sembia. He’d walked Sembia in the dark before, with Erevis Cale at his side. They’d braved the Shadowstorm and trekked to Ordulin. The memory made Magadon smile.

“Walking in our footsteps, old friend,” he said, and started off. Using the Source’s mental emanations, he kenned the direction and distance of Sakkors. It floated in Sembia’s perpetual night south of the Thunder Peaks, about halfway between Daerlun and Ordulin. And Riven had said that whatever was to happen must happen in Ordulin.

Riven said he wanted Magadon’s help. But how could Magadon be of assistance to a god? The same way he had assisted in the murder of a god a century before. He would draw on the power of the Source to augment his own. He felt the Source’s mental emanations, answered them with his own. See you soon , he projected.

He avoided the roads-fearing he’d encounter Sembian troops-and instead moved rapidly across the plains. His bow and woodcraft kept him fed and his mind magic and stealth kept him unobserved. Even traveling cross-country he spotted Shadovar patrols from time to time, once including what appeared to be a prisoner-transport caravan. He stayed well south of the Thunder Peaks and the Way of the Manticore, but he still saw signs of the gathered Sembian troops there. Even the perpetual gloom could not hide the light, like faintly burning stars, from thousands of campfires in the distance.

The Sembians had blocked the road between Daerlun and Cormyr on the one hand and the Dalelands on the other. Whatever army the Dalelands had to face, they’d face alone.

Magadon did not take time to investigate any of it more thoroughly.

Riven had asked him to be ready, so he kept moving east, moving directly for Sakkors, for the Source.

The twisted, malformed trees and whipgrass of the Sembian countryside saddened him. He’d walked the plains when they’d been lush with old trees and fields of barley. Now the leafless skeletons of old elms and oaks rattled in the gusty wind. He put a hand on the trunk of any old elms he encountered, a moment of bonding between two living things that had once seen a Sembia under the sun.

He stayed off the roads and skirted wide around villages, although many appeared abandoned, their fields fallow and weedy. Possibly they’d fled as Sembian forces had marched east or possibly something worse had happened to them.

Monsters prowled the plains. From time to time Magadon heard growls and roars in the distance, occasionally caught motion out of the corner of his eye. Often he nocked an energized arrow into his bow, but he never had to fire. The creatures that stalked the darkness left him unmolested. The pull of the Source grew stronger as he covered the leagues. And as he grew closer, he sensed an undercurrent to its pull, a sadness. The Source’s mind seemed dulled and melancholy. He didn’t understand it. As he neared it, as he sensed the full scope of its power, he grew nervous. He feared he could lose himself in it again. But by the time he actually spotted Sakkors in the distance, a dark star hanging in the lightning lit sky of Sembia’s night, he knew for certain he could resist its pull. He could use the Source and still keep himself. He’d been broken once before by using it, shattered, really, but his reassembled self was stronger than the original.

Small, dark figures flitted around the floating mountain on which Sakkors stood. They looked tiny from afar, but Magadon knew them to be Shadovar cavalry mounted on scaly-winged veserabs. The Source seemed finally to sense him fully, and its pull grew plaintive. It wanted him to come closer, to deepen their connection.

He eyed a stand of pine directly under the floating mountain and drew on his reserve of power. A dim orange glow haloed his head, and a mirror of the glow shone in the spot he’d mentally chosen under Sakkors. He activated the mind magic and it moved him instantly to the wooded spot under Sakkors. The mountain floated over him, huge and ominous. And somewhere within its center was the Source.

Magadon opened his mind and let the Source’s touch wash through him, let part of its power, its ancient consciousness, become part of his own. He sensed right away that it had lost no power, but it had lost acuity, and in an instant Magadon understood.

The Source had been calling to him, for a hundred years it had been sending mental energy out into the world in a desperate effort to reach out to him. It missed him. It wanted him near.

Why? He projected, but knew the answer before the Source offered it. The Source was dying, its sentience slowly fading away. Worse, it was aware of its impending demise, the slow erosion of its self-awareness. It was afraid. And it was alone, surrounded by beings that didn’t understand it and could not connect with it.

I’m so sorry , he projected.

The Source’s fear and sadness tightened his chest, caught him up in its swirl, and swept through him. He sank to the bed of pine needles, weeping, and wrapped his arms around his knees.

It had wanted him to come to it, for a century, and he had not answered.

He’d failed it.

Forgive me , he projected.

It did. In fact, it had nothing for him but affection, and his connection with it, and his sympathy, mitigated its sadness and alleviated its fear. It welcomed his companionship the way a thirsty man welcomed a drink, another mind to keep it company as it faded. It had simply not wanted to die alone. I’ll stay with you throughout , he promised. When the city moves, I’ll move with it. I won’t leave you .

He felt its gratitude. He made a place for himself under the city, hidden by his mind magic and the pine trees, and kept company with the oldest consciousness he’d ever encountered. Shadovar patrols came and went, sometimes cavalry on veserabs, sometimes soldiers afoot, but none ever noticed him. Over the days and nights, the Source showed him many things, events from its past, possible futures, jumbles of nonsequential nonsensical things that he could not follow. Time passed oddly for him as he walked in the Source’s dying thoughts. Its consciousness took odd turns, made strange connections, moved from things extraordinary to things mundane. He came to understand that he’d lost himself in the Source the first time not because of the Source’s malice but because of its loneliness. It was a consciousness with no body, and it had wanted mental and emotional companionship so much that its over exuberant consciousness had simply overwhelmed his. He’d been unready then. But one hundred years had passed since, and he was ready now. Magadon experienced months and years in moments, lived lives in hours, laughed and cried and raged. But always he kept a firm hold on himself, on his purpose.

There may come a time when I need your help , he said. Will you help me? The Source answered, in its way, that it would if it still could. Magadon broke his connection with the Source only once, to send a message to Riven through their mind link. He didn’t know if Riven would receive it, but he wanted to try.

I’m ready , he projected, and nothing more.

Then he waited, keeping deathwatch on the Source, his thoughts often turning back to Riven’s words.

Erevis is alive. And he has a son. And his son is the key to everything.

Vasen had never known the father whose blood ran in his veins, but Erevis Cale lived on in him somehow, haunting his dreams. Vasen always saw him as a dark man with a dark sword, a dark soul. In the dreams he never saw his father’s face, and rarely heard his voice. They somehow communed without truly seeing one another, in blindness, in quietude, and over the years through the sense-starved dream connection Vasen believed he’d come to understand what Erevis would’ve wished for him to know-the depths of loss, the pain of regret. Everything he’d learned of his father seemed to circle around regret.