Paul Kemp - The Godborn

A shadow fell over the plain-the huge, flying devil looming over them. It bellowed as it flew over and past them, the sound like a thousand war drums. The three companions gagged on the stink of the creature. It swooped low and they all three dived onto their bellies to avoid getting hit, sliding along the ice.

The enormous creature could’ve flattened them by simply landing atop them, but it did not touch down for some reason. Perhaps its physiology prevented it from touching the ground. Vasen hoped so.

They rode their momentum back to their feet and sprinted onward.

The devils were closer. Vasen could almost feel their breath on his back.

“Keep going!” he said. “Keep going!”

As they closed on the cairn, Vasen could see a dome-shaped distortion in the air around it.

The wards.

Weaveshear would have to cut through them or the three of them would die on Cania’s plains, torn apart by devils.

He did not slow as he approached the wall of the wards. Instead he raised Weaveshear high, shouted at the sky, and slashed at the translucent wall with the blade of his father.

The wards of an archdevil audibly and visibly split. Glowing veins of power flared all over the dome. Weaveshear opened a gash in the dome about the size of a door, leaving the rest of the ward structure intact. The three piled through.

Immediately Orsin turned and dragged his staff across the ice, scribing a line across the opening.

“Gerak and I will hold them here!” he said to Vasen. “Go get your father!”

Vasen nodded, sprinted for the mound, the shadows from his sword and flesh mingling with those of the mound.

Behind him, Gerak’s bow sang. Devils roared and cursed. He looked back to see Orsin standing in the open gash in the wards, his staff humming and leaking shadows as it spun. The devils could try the opening only one at a time, and Orsin’s staff, elbows, fists, and knees cracked against devilish hide and armor. Behind him, Gerak fired an arrow every time Orsin afforded him an opening.

Vasen turned to the mound. Shadows swirled around him, a tangible thing, kith to him. The mound was cracked in many places. He slammed his shield into the ice but it did not even mar its surface.

He cursed, glanced back at his comrades to see a claw tear into Orsin and drive him back a step, bleeding. Before the devil could follow up, Gerak loosed an arrow that struck the devil in the throat and sent it staggering back into its fellow fiends. Orsin lunged forward and slammed the butt of his staff into the devil’s face, shattering fangs and sending the fiend careening backward.

“Hurry, Vasen!” Gerak called, without looking back. “There’s too many!”

The huge flying creature hovered over them, and another of the big creatures, perhaps having heard the bellow of the first, was coming toward them from their left, its bulk filling the sky. Two score more of the bearded devils rode its back.

Shadows poured from Vasen’s flesh. He stared down at the cairn, under which his father lay. He’d free him with his father’s weapon.

He raised Weaveshear, the blade shedding shadows the way a pitch torch shed smoke. He hoped its power could cut through the ice that entombed his father as well as it had cut through the wards of an archdevil. He whispered a prayer to Amaunator and stabbed downward, driving the blade into the ice all the way to the hilt.

A crack spread from where he’d struck. Beneath him the mound rumbled. The crack expanded into another, and then another, each crack spawning yet another until an entire network of lines crisscrossed the cairn. Shadows poured from them, like black steam escaping a heated kettle. The mound continued to vibrate, the shaking becoming more violent. Shadows churned around the mound, spinning and whirling. A hum filled the air as power gathered.

“Watch out!” Vasen shouted.

He grabbed Weaveshear and slid off the side just as the mound exploded in a cloud of shadows and ice and snow. The force of it knocked him backward, and for a moment, the shadows and snow and ice swirled so thickly that he couldn’t see.

He glanced back to see that the explosion had knocked Orsin and Gerak and all of the devils to the ice. Already they were climbing back to their feet, their expressions dazed.

“Hold them off!” he shouted, his voice dull and distant to his still ringing ears.

The mound was gone. A crater marred the plain where it had stood. Shadows poured out of it. Vasen staggered up to the side of the crater and at the bottom of it, saw his father.

Erevis Cale lay stretched out in the ice, eyes closed, hands crossed over his chest, as if he were a corpse someone had arranged for burial. He was bald, clean-shaven, taller than Vasen, with a prominent nose and strong jaw. He wore fitted leathers and a dark cloak. Shadows spun around his dusky flesh. He looked much as Vasen might have guessed.

“Erevis! Father!”

His father didn’t move.

Vasen cursed, slid over the edge of the crater, heaved his father’s body over his shoulder, and clambered out.

“I have him!” he called to Gerak and Orsin.

Orsin unleashed a furious onslaught of blows with his staff, driving back a pair of devils who tried to get through the hole in the wards. He bounded back, dragged his shadow-tipped staff across the ground, and snapped it over his knee. Instantly a curtain of darkness rose up from the line Orsin had scribed, crackling with energy, filling the gap.

Orsin ran toward Vasen. Gerak backed toward him, firing arrow after arrow as he moved.

Vasen laid Erevis on the ground, the shadows around father and son intermingling in a blended darkness.

Vasen slapped him on the cheeks. “Erevis! Father!”

No response.

Gerak and Orsin reached him. Gerak continued to fire. Orsin was dripping blood from deep scratches in his face and arms.

“Hurry, Vasen,” the deva said, his eyes on the curtain of force he’d raised.

Vasen nodded, put a hand on his father’s brow, whispered a prayer, and channeled healing energy into Erevis. Vasen’s hand glowed with a warm, rosy light, the energy of the god of the sun healing the First of Mask’s Chosen in Faerun.

They all exhaled with relief when Cale’s eyes opened, glowing yellow in the shadowed gloom. His gaze narrowed and he grabbed Vasen by the wrist, his strength shocking.

“I dreamed of you,” Cale said. “You’re my. . son.”

Shadows swirled around father and son. Vasen swallowed.

“I am, and I dreamed of you,” Vasen managed, for a moment nearly overcome. For years he’d heard his father’s voice only in dreams.

Behind them, the devils cursed and growled, poked at the curtain of power Orsin had raised.

“That wall won’t last,” Orsin said.

“We have to go,” Cale said, sitting up.

“Riven said we need to go to Ordulin,” Orsin said.

Cale’s gaze grew distant for a moment, perhaps as he consulted the content of the dreams he’d had while entombed. When his focus returned, he nodded. “ The Leaves of One Night are in Ordulin. That’s where the Shadowstorm started, so that’s where Shar’s little book is. Good. We go, then.”

“And when we get there?” Orsin asked.

Cale took in the holy symbol Orsin bore, his absence of weapons. “You’re a shadowalker? One of Nayan’s?”

“Nayan. . has been dead a long time. But I am one of his, yes. I can’t walk the shadows as they did, but they answer me in other ways. My name is Orsin.”

“Gerak,” said Gerak to Cale. The woodsman drew and fired, and a devil squealed.

“When we get there,” Cale said. “We read the Leaves. They’re said to contain Shar’s moment of greatest triumph but also her moment of greatest weakness. Her moment of weakness has to be the return of Mask, her herald. Has to be. If that happens, the Cycle of Night gets frozen forever.”