Paul Kemp: The Godborn

“That it is,” answered Riven.

Derreg stared at the blade. “The boy won’t need it.”

“No?”

“No. He has me.”

Riven scowled, shadows swirling around him. He lowered the weapon and advanced. Although short of stature, Riven nevertheless seemed to reach to the ceiling.

Derreg knew he had overstepped and his mouth went dry, his heart pounded.

“You’ll take this blade and you’ll keep it safe and when that boy is of age, you’ll tell him who his father was and you’ll give him that weapon. I owe Cale that much. And so do you. All of you.”

“I-”

“Nod your godsdamned stubborn head, son of Regg, or I swear I’ll remove it from your neck.”

Derreg did not care to test whether the threat was earnest. He fought down a prideful impulse and nodded. Riven offered him the blade once more, and Derreg took it. Shadows curled around his wrist. He felt as if the weapon was coated in oil. It seemed to squirm in his grip.

“Well enough,” Riven said, and the shadows about him slowed. He took a step back. “We’re done here now.”

Riven turned and shadows started to gather around his form. Derreg could barely see him.

“Why don’t you take him?” Erdan blurted.

“Shut up, Erdan,” Derreg said.

Riven did not turn. Shadows curled around him, slow, languid. “Because I’m hunted, and my only safe haven is no place for a child. He’ll be safe here for a time and he should have what peace this life can afford.” He paused, staring at the child. “I fear it won’t be much. I’ll return if I can, but I’m doubtful that will be possible. Meanwhile you keep him. And you prepare him.”

“Prepare him for what?”

“For what’s coming.”

“What do you mean? What’s coming?”

Riven shook his head. “I don’t know for certain. Others will be looking for him.”

“Why?”

“Because of who his father was, because grudges die harder than gods. And because the Cycle of Night is trying to find its end. He’s the key.”

“I. . don’t understand.”

“Nor I, not fully. Not yet. Someone’s scribbling new words in the book of the world, and I was never much of a reader.” He smiled, and it reached his good eye. “Two and two, it seems, still sum to four, even in this ruined world. He got that right, at least.”

“What?” Derreg’s head was spinning. “He?”

“Someone I once knew.” Riven shook his head, as if to clear it of an old memory. “I can’t stay any longer. My presence compromises the child’s safety.” He looked around. “Your Oracle has done good work here. This valley is. . peaceful. I especially like the lakes. Tell the Oracle I was here. Tell him to do his part. And ask him if he still enjoys jugglers.”

“What?”

“He’ll know what I mean.”

The darkness gathered, but before it obscured Riven entirely, he turned and looked at Derreg, at Vasen.

“What’s his name? The boy.”

“Vasen,” Derreg said, and felt Vasen’s yellow eyes fix on him when he spoke the word.

“Vasen,” Riven said, testing out the word. “A good name. Well met, Vasen. Welcome to the world. When we meet again, I think you’ll not be pleased to see me.”

Derreg blinked and Riven was gone. The room lightened. Vasen began to cry.

Erdan let out a long breath. “What just happened?”

“I’m not certain.”

“That wasn’t a man.”

“No,” Derreg said. “That was not.”

Eleint, the Year of the Awakened Sleepers (1484 DR)

Glaciers as old as creation collided, vied, and splintered-the crack of ancient ice like the snap of dry bones. The smell of brimstone and burning souls wafted up from rivers of fire that veined the terrain. Cania’s freezing gusts bore the innumerable screams of the damned, spicing the air with their pain. Towering, insectoid gelugons, their white carapaces hard to distinguish from the ice, patrolled the banks of the rivers. Their appetite for agony was insatiable, and with their hooked polearms they ripped and tore at the immolated damned who flailed and shrieked in the flames.

Mephistopheles perched atop an ice-capped crag a quarter-league high and stared down at his realm of ice and fire and pain. Plains of jagged ice stretched away in all directions. Black mountains hazed with smoke scraped a glowing red sky lit by a distant, pale sun.

And he ruled it all. Or almost all.

His gaze fixed on the mound of shadow-shrouded ice that had defied his will for a century, and his eyes narrowed. His anger stirred the embers of his power, and the air crackled around him, baleful emanations of the divinity he’d stolen from the god, Mask.

Staring at the shadowy cairn, he sensed that events were picking up speed, fates being decided, events determined, but he couldn’t see them. Matters were fouled and he suspected the shadowy cairn had something to do with it.

“Permutations,” he said, his voice as deep and dark as a chasm. “Endless permutations.”

He had schemed for decades to obtain a fraction of the divine power he now held, intending to use the power he’d gained in a coup against Asmodeus, the Lord of Nessus, a coup that would have resulted in Mephistopheles ruling the Nine Hells. But events on one of the worlds of the Prime had made a joke of his plans.

The Spellplague had ripped through the world of Toril, recombining it with its sister world, Abeir, and causing chaos among gods and godlings. A half-murdered god had literally fallen through the Astral Sea and into the Ninth Hell. Asmodeus had finished the murder and absorbed the divinity.

Mephistopheles, who had plotted for decades to become divine, had managed to take only a fraction of a fraction of a lesser god’s power, while the Lord of the Ninth had become a full god through luck. By chance. And Mephistopheles was, once more, second in Hell.

Worst of all, he feared that Asmodeus had recently learned of his plans. Mephistopheles’s spies in Nessus’s court spoke of mustering legions, of Asmodeus’s growing ire. A summons had reached Mephistar, Mephistopheles’s iron keep. Asmodeus’s words had been carried on the vile, forked tongue of the Lord of Nessus’s sometime-messenger, the she-bitch succubus, Malcanthet.

“His Majesty, the Supreme Overlord of the Hells, Asmodeus the Terrible, requires His Grace’s presence before his throne in Nessus.”

“Supreme, you said?”

“Shall I tell His Majesty that you take issue with his title?”

Mephistopheles bit back his retort. “He sends me Hell’s harlot to convey a summons? To what end is my presence required?”

Malcanthet had ignored the question, offering only, “His Majesty wished me to inform you that time is of the essence.”

“And my time is limited. I will attend when I’m able.”

“You will attend within a fortnight or His Majesty will be forced to assume that you are in rebellion. Those are the words of His Majesty.”

Mephistopheles had glared at her while his court had muttered and tittered. “Get out! Now!”

Malcanthet had bowed, smirking, and exited the court, leaving Mephistopheles to stew in uncertainties, his court to gossip in possibilities.

Mephistopheles had managed to put off a reckoning with Asmodeus for decades. He’d made excuse after excuse, but the Lord of the Ninth’s patience had finally worn thin. Mephistopheles had little time and few options. He wasn’t ready. Far below, the cairn of ice mocked him. Shadows leaked from it, dribbled out of its cracks in languid streams. Often he’d tried to burn his way to the bottom of the cairn, but the ice would not yield. He’d had hundreds of whip-driven devils tear into the mound with weapons and tools, all to no avail. He’d attempted to magically transport himself within the hill and failed. He could not even scry what lay at its bottom.