Paul Kemp - The Godborn

Vasen shook his head. “But Riven said I have to unlock the divinity in him, Rivalen, and Mephistopheles. I don’t know how to do that.”

“Yes, you do,” Cale said. “Mask had this planned long ago, and you dreamed it, the same as me.”

Cale and Vasen stared at one another a long moment, then both spoke at once.

“Write the story.”

With that, Vasen took the small gem from his pocket, shattered it. A clot of shadows formed before his face. He spoke into them.

“We have him, Riven. We’re with Erevis and he’s alive.”

The shadows he’d spoke into dissipated, presumably carrying their message to Riven in the Shadowfell.

Cale stood and drew the shadows around them.

“We go,” he said.

Vasen’s voice sounded from the shadows shrouding Riven.

We have him .

That was all Riven needed to hear. He charged across the battlefield, stepping through the shadows as he went, cutting down lesser devils each time he appeared. Mephistopheles pursued him from above, shouting. Bolts of energy shot from the archfiend’s palms, narrowly missing Riven and putting huge smoking divots in the earth. Riven dived, rolled, spun, and sprinted, dodging the archfiend’s attacks, playing for time. He ran through everything he knew. He hadn’t missed anything but he didn’t know enough. He’d schemed for decades to arrange for everyone needed to arrive in Ordulin. But after that. .

He wasn’t sure what would come next. Just as Mask had split his divinity up among a few Chosen, so had he split his plan up among many of his servants. Riven might have been the most powerful of them, but he could see only pieces. He’d gambled everything in the hope of some sudden revelation.

His wandering thoughts distracted him. Mephistopheles materialized before him, haloed in dark power, having teleported into Riven’s path. The archfiend stuck Riven with a fist, discharged the power in his hand, and sent Riven tumbling head over heels, momentarily stunned. Dozens of devils swarmed him, glaives and swords and claws and teeth trying to cut through his protective shadows and tear at his flesh.

I’m not leaving, Magadon projected to the Source. I just need to see. The Source’s response was muddled, but grateful. It was fading. Rich with power drawn from his bond with the Source, Magadon reached out for Brennus, who maintained his station at the westernmost point of Sakkors.

I need to see through your eyes for a moment , he projected.

When Brennus did not object, Magadon created a sensory link between them, allowing him to see through the Shadovar’s eyes.

Sakkors flew through Sembia’s shadowed sky at tremendous speed. Far ahead loomed the black wall of the Ordulin Maelstrom. Lines of lightning lit the thick clouds, endless flashes. The dark clouds roiled and churned, as if agitated, as if something within them were angry and waiting.

Rivalen stood over Sayeed, the man’s despair palpable, his skin covered in Shar’s holy words, his mouth stuffed with the pages of The Leaves of One Night . Riven was coming with the son of Erevis Cale to read those words, but they did not say what they hoped. He placed a hand on Sayeed’s back and the man trembled under his touch.

“The death I promised you will come. First the world, then you, then me.”

And then release.

More trembling from Sayeed.

Rivalen took his holy symbol in hand, stared into Shar’s eye, felt the wash of her power over him. She’d taught him what he needed to know. His life had been an incremental crawl toward revelation and truth.

“Nothing endures,” he said, intoning Shar’s Secret Truth. “Nothing.”

Long, many-forked lines of green lightning lit the black clouds. Thunder growled. Shar’s eye pulsed with power, with anticipation. She wished to incarnate, to feed. She would have her wish soon.

He stepped through the darkness to stand atop a large chunk of the ruined tower once occupied by Kesson Rel. There, he waited. His enemies were coming. When they arrived, he would destroy them, free his goddess, and then watch the Lady of Loss devour the world.

Cale, Vasen, Orsin, and Gerak materialized at the edge of the plaza in Ordulin. It looked much as it had when Cale had set foot there long ago to face Kesson Rel. Cracked stone and crumbled buildings littered the area like the tombstones of titans. Green lightning lit the shadowed haze in a ghostly light. The wind gusted. A fog of shadows swirled in the air.

In the center of the plaza hung a slowly turning void, a cold emptiness that stretched back through time and space forever. Shar resided in the eye; Cale could feel her in it, the weight of her malice, the pressure of her regard. Her existence did not fill the emptiness; it defined it. He felt nauseous.

“Dark and empty,” he said.

Prone before the eye, hunched and shirtless, was a man. Words covered the skin of his back, the sight of them unnerving, somehow. His eyes were open but appeared to see nothing. His mouth, too, hung open, but parchment had been stuffed into it. His cheeks bulged with so much of it they looked distended.

“Gods,” Orsin whispered. “That’s Sayeed.”

“It’s grown,” Cale said, nodding at the eye. He’d seen the void long ago, when Kesson Rel had first created it.

A presence manifested, weighty, power radiating from it in waves.

“It’s soon to grow more,” said a deep voice, Rivalen Tanthul’s voice, from right behind them.

They whirled as one to see the nightseer standing right behind them, his golden eyes glowing out of the darkness of his hood. They shouted, brandished their weapons, but too late. Rivalen spoke a single word, and the power contained in it knocked them all to their knees, all but Cale.

Weaveshear absorbed and deflected the power in Rivalen’s spell, but the force of it turned the blade warm and drove Cale backward. He kept his feet and skidded backward across the plaza, toward Shar’s eye. He could feel the Lady of Loss glaring into his back.

Vasen, Gerak, and Orsin lay on the ground, groaning.

Rivalen stared at Cale, his golden eyes narrowed, head cocked in a question.

“Cale?” Rivalen asked.

Cale had faced Rivalen before, when Cale’s god had been alive and Rivalen had been only a man. Now Cale, a man without a god, faced a onetime man who was now a god.

He charged, and Rivalen did not even move. Cale crosscut with Weaveshear, but the blade rang against the shadows swirling around Rivalen as if they were made of steel. Rivalen grabbed Cale by the face with one hand, spoke a word of power, and discharged unholy energy from his palm. Ordinarily the shadowstuff in Cale allowed him to resist the effects of magic, but not when the magic came from the hand of a god.

Pain pulled a muffled scream from Cale. His skin blistered and popped. Bones cracked. Casually Rivalen cast him aside. Cale hit the stone of plaza in a heap, rolling over, groaning while the shadowstuff in his body undid the damage Rivalen’s spell had caused.

“I wasn’t sure I’d see you again, Cale,” Rivalen said. “I didn’t know if your son would succeed. It’s good that he did, though. You’ve arrived here alive only to die.”

Rivalen grabbed Orsin and Gerak by their cloaks and lifted them in one hand, then grabbed Vasen in the other. He carried them all toward Shar’s eye, and Cale feared he would throw them into the eye.

Cale rolled over, gritting his teeth at the pain, and rose to all fours. The shadowstuff in him reknit his bones, closed the blisters on his skin. He watched Rivalen toss the three men on the cobblestones, near the prone man.

Cale rose, stepped through the shadows, and materialized behind Rivalen with Weaveshear raised for a decapitating strike. Rivalen turned, a contemptuous expression on his face, and intercepted the strike with his bare hand. It didn’t even cut his flesh. He tore the weapon from Cale’s grasp and tossed it aside.