Paul Kemp - The Godborn

When Vasen nodded, Orsin pulled him to his feet. His entire body ached and his chest still burned. The energy from Rivalen’s spell had left a painful scorched patch on the skin of his hand. He sheathed Weaveshear. The weapon felt at home on his belt.

“Where are we?” Vasen asked.

“You tell us,” Gerak said over his shoulder. “Come here. Look.” Vasen and Orsin joined Gerak at the window and both of them gasped. The narrow window focused the volume of the drumming and roaring and the sound hit them like a gale. The three comrades stood in a high tower of obsidian, part of a larger keep or castle that featured delicate spires and high, smooth walls, the whole of it awash in shadows.

Outside the walls, surrounding it on all sides, was a horde of nightmarish size. Devils stood in ranks, thousands of them, some horned, armored, and as tall as giants. Others short and fanged, like the spined devils. Some stood as tall as giants, others as short as halflings. Some flew in the air on membranous wings. Some oozed or crawled. Large horned devils, their red skin emitting flames the same way Vasen’s skin emitted shadows, moved among the multitude. Weapons bristled everywhere: pikes, axes, swords. The size of the force took Vasen’s breath away. Shadows poured from his flesh. And throughout the horde the same heraldry was featured, huge oriflammes that showed a black hand and a sword, both sheathed in flames.

“Gods,” Vasen breathed.

“We’re in the Hells,” Gerak said, a hint of panic in his tone. “We must be.” Vasen felt the shadows behind him deepen, fill with power. He turned to see a short, lithe man step from the darkness, although the shadows clung to his form in a mist. A goatee hid a mouth that looked like it never smiled. His angular face, the dark skin pockmarked with scars, looked sharp enough to cut wood. Twin rapiers hung from his belt and he held a pipe in his hand. Black smoke curled up from the pipe to mix with the shadows.

“You’re not in the Hells,” said the man, his accented voice rich with power. “You’re in the Shadowfell. And it’s about time. Things are moving quickly now, and so must we.”

Orsin assumed a fighting stance while Gerak fumbled for an arrow.

The man’s mouth formed a sneer, showing stained teeth. The shadows about him whirled. He drew on the pipe, inhaled deeply, blew it out in a dark cloud.

“Wait,” said Vasen to his comrades, and held up his hand.

“Thinking before you act,” the man said with an approving nod. “Your father was the same way. Most of the time.”

“You’re Drasek Riven,” Vasen said. He had to be.

Riven nodded, took another draw on the pipe.

“The Left Hand of Shadow,” Orsin breathed.

Riven looked sidelong at Orsin. “If you fall to your knees, shadowalker, I promise you I’ll stab you in the face.”

Outside, the roar of the fiendish army and the beat of the drums rose higher, seemed to make the entire citadel shake.

Riven seemed barely to notice. He had eyes only for Vasen. “We don’t have a lot of time for explanations. You’re going to have to do as I tell you.”

As if to make his point, a blare of horns from outside sounded.

“I don’t even know what’s happening,” Vasen said. “I just watched my abbey burn, saw the Oracle die. We fought devils, Shadovar-”

“Shadovar? Which Shadovar?”

“What?” Vasen said. He was still processing events.

“Rivalen,” Orsin offered.

Riven’s face darkened. Shadows swirled around him. “Rivalen left Ordulin? What did he say?”

“He didn’t say much of anything,” Vasen said, and shadows boiled from his skin.

Riven paced the room. “He saw you and let you go?”

“We escaped,” Vasen said. “He didn’t let us do anything.”

“What are you saying?” Orsin asked.

“I’m saying you’re here because he let you go. If he wanted you dead, you’d be dead. I didn’t. . see that.” He looked sharply at Vasen. “Do you feel anything unusual when you look at me?”

Vasen shook his head. “I don’t understand. Should I?”

Riven stared into his face. “He changed you, Vasen. Or rather I changed you. . Shit, shit, shit. Did I miss something? What am I overlooking? I thought you’d know, that you’d come here and know.”

Shadow churned around Vasen, too. “You thought I’d know what?”

Riven whirled on him. “Know how to get this out of me! And out of Rivalen and Mephistopheles! You’re the key, Vasen! You’re supposed to be able to get the godhood out of all of us.”

A long silence followed.

“I don’t know how to do that,” Vasen said at last.

Riven stared at him a long moment, their shadows, their lives, intersecting, crossing.

“I see that,” he said at last, and took a step back. He exhaled, shadows churning around him. “Fine. Things are where they are. We have to keep going.”

“Going where?” Gerak asked.

“To the Hells,” Riven said. “Vasen is going to Cania to rescue his father. Erevis Cale is our best hope now.”

“You’re mad,” Vasen said. “My father’s dead.”

“No, Riven said. “He’s alive. Trapped in magical stasis. And you’re going to get him out.”

The shadows blanketed Sayeed and he heard, or maybe felt, a rushing sound. When the darkness lifted, it revealed a ruined city shrouded in night. “Ordulin,” Rivalen said.

“The maelstrom,” Sayeed said. “I was here when it was still a city.” “It’s something else now,” Rivalen said.

Shattered, half-collapsed buildings dotted the area, jagged and crooked, like rotten teeth poking from the earth. Swirling shadows darkened the air. The wind blew in fierce gusts. Green lightning split the sky again and again. The ruins smelled like a graveyard, an entire city murdered and left on the face of the world to rot. Chunks of stone and statuary littered broken roads once filled with carriages and wagons and commerce. A hundred years ago, Sayeed had walked Ordulin’s streets under the sun. Now he walked its ruins in darkness, himself ruined.

As they went Sayeed wiped his hands on his trousers, again and again, but whatever stained them would not come off to his satisfaction. He’d killed his own brother. He had no one, nothing for which to live. He had only a single desire, powerful and true, and that was to die. He was a hole. There’d be no filling him ever again.

“It’s dark here,” he observed.

Rivalen, half-merged with the shadows, his golden eyes like stars, said, “Always.”

Thunder rumbled.

“I want to die,” Sayeed blurted. The words sounded limp, dead as they exited his mouth. “You promised me that. I need to die.”

“I know,” Rivalen said, and lightning lit the sky in veins of green. “I can oblige. Come.”

Undead prowled the ruined city: wraiths, specters, living shadows. There were hundreds, thousands perhaps. They broke on Rivalen’s presence like water on stone, flowing around and over him, never approaching too closely. Rivalen said, “Many thousands of years ago I murdered my mother to show the Lady the truth of my faith.”

Sayeed said nothing.

“As she died, she asked for my hand.”

They came to a wide flagged plaza. Building-sized chunks of dark stone littered it here and there, as if they’d rained from the sky. Hovering over the center of the plaza was a void, an emptiness. The sight of it made him dizzy and mildly nauseated. Paper flitted around it, into it, out of it, as if it were chewing on them and spitting them out.

Sayeed could not keep his eyes on the void, not entirely. It seemed to slip away and he never quite saw it squarely. But he saw enough, he felt its emptiness, felt the bitterness that poured from it, the spite. It was a mirror.