Paul Kemp - The Godborn

In it he saw himself.

“Give me your hand,” Rivalen said.

Sayeed turned, looked into Rivalen’s golden eyes, at his extended hand, the flesh swathed in shifting lines of shadow.

“Give me your hand, Sayeed. You’ll have what you wish. I’d thought to have my brother’s. . aid in this, but you will do better.”

Sayeed extended his hand.

Rivalen took it, his flesh cold and dry, his grip like a vise.

“Come. You must stand before Shar’s eye. She must see you.” Rivalen pulled him along toward the void, the eye, the mouth, the hole. As he drew closer, he realized that the emptiness he’d felt, the pit in the center of his being, the hopeless feeling of loss, of solitude, was a trivial reflection of what he felt emanating from Shar’s eye.

“Wait,” he said, and tried to stop, to pull away from Rivalen. Rivalen’s grip tightened, a vise. “It’s too late for that.”

“No!” Sayeed said and tried frantically to pull away. “No, wait!” Rivalen pulled him along as if Sayeed were a child, the Shadovar’s strength preternatural. Another step, another.

“Stop! Stop!”

Shadows boiled around Rivalen. His golden eyes flashed. “You wanted death, Sayeed! You’ll have it! But first I need you to translate!” “No! No!”

For the first time in a hundred years Sayeed felt something. Shar’s eye put a seed of fear in him, and it soon blossomed into terror. He felt her regard emanating from the hole-the hate, the spite, the hopelessness, the unadulterated contempt for everything and anything. He screamed, his sanity slipping from him. Rivalen drove him to his knees before the eye. The wind rushed around him. The papers orbiting the eye, moving in and out of it, gathering in a cloud before him. Her eye bore down on him like all the weight in the world.

It pinioned him to the earth, tiny before it. He felt himself wither under her regard. He was an insignificant, trivial thing. He’d been such a fool, such a ridiculous fool. The Spellplague had changed him into something other than a man. .

“Feast on her words,” Rivalen said, putting his hands on either side of Sayeed’s head.

But Sayeed had changed himself into something other than human, killed his own brother. Tears fell.

“Your bitterness is sweet to the Lady,” Rivalen said, and his fingers burrowed into Sayeed’s head, squeezing.

Pain lanced through Sayeed’s skull. He felt as if his eyes would pop from his head. His mouth opened wide in a scream that went unuttered, for the pages of the book floating in the air before him flew into his open mouth, one after another, rushing down his throat, filling his mouth, stuffing him.

He gagged, grunted, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, and through it all he felt Shar watching him, her eyes freighted with contempt.

Rivalen was holding little more than a rag doll in his hands, a hollow man useful now only as a vessel by which to translate the divine language of The Leaves of One Night . Not quite a corpse, not quite alive.

“Light is blinding,” Rivalen said, stating one of Shar’s Thirteen Truths as he forced dark, unholy energy into Sayeed’s limp form. “Only in darkness do we see clearly.”

Sayeed’s body spasmed, charged with baleful energy. Rivalen released him and Sayeed slumped to the ground, an empty penitent with his back to the sky and his eyes to the ground, suspended forever between life and death, able to participate in neither.

Sayeed’s bitterness and hopelessness, the essential core of his being, were the reagents that would transform Shar’s words into something her nightseer could understand.

Impatient for revelation, Rivalen tore Sayeed’s cloak and tunic from his back, ripped his armor from his torso and cast it aside, exposing the bare skin of Sayeed’s back. Small black lines squirmed under his skin, causing it to bubble and warp, the ink of Shar’s malice. The lines twisted and curled, formed themselves into tiny characters, and then into words, and words into promises.

Riven read them eagerly, the holy word of his goddess written in darkness on the skin of a man trapped in perpetual despair. He vacillated between elation and apprehension. The transfigured words of The Leaves of One Night were said to state the moment of Shar’s greatest triumph and the moment of her greatest weakness.

He leaned forward, traced a trembling finger along Sayeed’s back as he read. Shadows poured from Rivalen’s flesh, knowledge from Sayeed’s.

As Rivalen read, he began to understand. And as he began to understand, he began to laugh.

Rain fell. Thunder rumbled. Shadows swirled.

He looked up into Shar’s eye and wept.

“All is meaningless,” he said, intoning Shar’s fourteenth, secret Truth. “And nothing endures.”

He stood, the wind whipping his cloak and hair, and looked over his shoulder to the west.

They’d be coming, and their bitterness would be sweet to the Lady.

“Run to your father, little Cale,” Rivalen said. “Then bring everyone to me.”

Surprised silence greeted Riven’s words. Gerak broke it.

“This is madness. You can’t, Vasen. This is a fight for gods, not men.” “He must,” Riven said, and his one eye bored into Vasen. “You must.” “I’ll do it,” Vasen said without any hesitation. “When?”

“Now,” Riven said.

“I’ll come, too, of course,” said Orsin.

“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.”