Paul Kemp - The Godborn

“And if he can’t?” Vasen asked.

“Then we all die. And eventually Shar gets her way, restarts the Cycle of Night, and all of Toril dies, too. That’s the shape of it. Well enough? Vasen nodded, trying not to show how overwhelmed he felt. “Well enough.” Riven held out a hand. On his palm sat an opalescent black sphere, about the size of a sparrow’s egg. “This is a sending. Use it when you have your father out. Break it and speak and I’ll hear. Clear?”

Vasen secreted the small gemstone in one of his belt pouches. “Clear.” They stood before a pair of large doors that Vasen assumed must open out onto the plain. The sound of the army outside caused the doors to vibrate.

Dust floated in the air.

“Question,” Orsin said to Riven.

Riven raised his eyebrows, waiting.

“It’s personal.”

Riven tapped a foot impatiently. “You want a kiss?”

Orsin laughed.

“Come on, man,” Riven said. “Ask it.”

Orsin said, “You want the divinity out? That’s what you said. But why would you go back to being a man after being a god? How can you go back?” Riven stared at Orsin a long time. “I never did like you shadowalkers much.” Orsin stared at him, but said nothing.

Riven eyed each of them in turn. “When I open those doors, you just wait here, no matter what happens out there. When the time is right, I’ll send you to Cania. Move fast, free your father, and get out. He’s trapped under a cairn of ice and shadow.”

The three men nodded. Shadows swirled rapidly around Vasen. His heart hammered his ribs.

“After you free him,” Riven said. “Tell him to take you to the plaza in Ordulin where he and I faced Kesson Rel. He’ll know where I mean.” Gerak said, “Ordulin’s in ruins, haunted.”

“What’s that to you now?” Riven said. “You’re standing in the Shadowfell.

Soon you’ll stand in the Eighth Hell. How’s that for a daytrip, woodsman?” He thumped Gerak on the shoulder and the bowman, despite himself, grinned. Riven said, “Ordulin is where this ends. One way or another.” Shadows leaked from Vasen’s flesh. He thought of the Oracle, his father, Derreg, his mother. “What’ll happen in Ordulin?”

“The end happens in Ordulin,” Riven said. Then, to Vasen, “Use Weaveshear to cut through Mephistopheles’s wards around your father’s cairn. You tell Cale. . it all comes down to him.”

“I will,” Vasen said.

“I’ll send you to Cania when the time is right. Be ready.”

“When will the time be right?” Orsin asked.

“When I get Mephistopheles to show,” Riven said. He winked. “Shouldn’t take long.”

He touched the double doors and they swung open and the blast of sound from the army almost knocked them over. The stink of brimstone flowed in, filled the air.

Riven had his sabers in hand. “Good luck,” he said to the three companions, then darted out the doors in the cloud of shadow. He shouted as he went, his voice a match for the drums of Cania’s legions.

“To me, dead of Elgrin Fau! Once more to me!”

A great moan went up. It seemed to come from everywhere, from below Vasen’s feet, from the walls of the Citadel of Shadow, from the air itself. The three men stared, awestruck, and thousands upon thousands of living shadows, human-shaped but dark and cold, emerged from the earth, from the walls of the Citadel, from the shadowed air. Their red eyes glowed in the darkness, a constellation of coals and hate, as they swarmed forth behind Riven. “Those are the guardians of the pass,” Vasen breathed, his flesh growing goose pimples. “The Oracle knew all along. He must have sent them.” A keening and more moans sounded from the left and right, from above.

Out of the mountains from which the Citadel was carved swooped a black tide of more undead-towering nightwalkers, clouds of shadows, keening banshees, wraiths, specters, and ghosts. It was as though the entire Shadowfell had vomited forth its denizens, tens of thousands of them to face the legions of Mephistopheles. The air was black with undead, and leading them all, swathed in shadows, bounding across the plains, was Drasek Riven, the God of Shadows.

“Gods,” Gerak said, wide-eyed, his bow slack in his hands. Orsin had his holy symbol in hand and he prayed softly over it, watching his god in the flesh.

Vasen looked away from the battle, took his tarnished silver holy symbol in hand, the rose given him by the Oracle, and intoned his own prayer. “Light, wisdom, and strength, Dawnfather,” he said. “Light, wisdom, and much strength.”

Riven sprinted out to face thousands of devils, the dead of Elgrin Fau flew behind him like a black fog, rose out of the earth in the thousands. Riven picked up the mind link left in his consciousness by Magadon. Meet me in Ordulin, Mags , he projected. The plaza in the center of the maelstrom. I don’t know how this is going to end. Cale will be there. Just be ready.

Riven’s mental voice reverberated through Magadon’s consciousness like a gong. His adrenaline spiked. He stood.

“Cale,” Magadon said, and grinned.

I need you now , Magadon projected to the Source. Will you help me?

From the cold embers where the last flickers of the Source’s consciousness still glowed, he received an affirmative answer.

I’m coming to you , Magadon said.

He pictured the huge chamber in the center of the inverted mountain in which the Source floated. He’d been there before, when he’d lost himself. Now he’d go there again, now that he’d found himself. He pictured it in his mind, as clearly as if he were looking right at it. He drew on his mental energy, orange light haloed his head, and he moved himself there.

The Source, a huge, perfectly symmetrical red crystal, hung unsupported in the air, perpendicular to the smooth stone floor. Its facets hummed with power, power that kept an entire city afloat.

The hemispherical chamber in which the Source had lived and dreamed and felt and hoped for thousands of years had no doors. The Source’s home was a cyst in the core of the mountain on which Sakkors floated, an abscess, with no means of non-magical ingress or egress. The Source glowed red, bathing the large chamber in light the color of blood. The fading but still regular waves of its mental emanations struck Magadon with the regularity of a heartbeat.

The semicircular ceiling of Source’s chamber was crafted into polished rectangular plates that reflected the image of the Source over and over again, reflected Magadon’s image over and over again, a reminder of the thousand lives they’d lived together in the Source’s dreams.

Magadon did not draw on the Source’s power, not yet, but the air was so rich with it that some diffused into him without his intent. His mind expanded. His thoughts sharpened. His power doubled, tripled. He smiled at the rush, but held onto himself, held onto his purpose.

Please take Sakkors toward Ordulin. As fast as you can.

The Source did not respond. Its consciousness was floating deep in its dying dreams.

Magadon drew on some of the power suffusing the air around him, used it to burrow his thoughts deep into the Source’s mindscape.

Can you hear me, my lovely? There’s nothing to fear. Can you take Sakkors toward Ordulin? As fast as you can? Can you do that?

He smiled with relief when the Source answered him.

The entire city lurched as it suddenly slowed, stopped, changed direction, and flew toward the Ordulin maelstrom at speed.

He hoped Sakkors’s citizens would realize that something had gone wrong and start leaving the city. If he had to, he could use the Source’s power to augment his own and send everyone on Sakkors a powerful mental compulsion to leave. Whether they would be able to get off a floating city zooming through the sky was, of course, another matter.