Paul Kemp - The Godborn

Beside Vasen, Gerak groaned and stirred.

Cale moved to assist him, shielding his eyes from the light.

“All right?” Cale asked him.

Gerak nodded, his expression dazed, blinking in the glare.

Behind Cale, Rivalen, Riven, and Mephistopheles all screamed as one. Cale turned and watched Vasen’s light push the divinity from them and cast it as long shadows on the ground behind them. All three stood on their tiptoes, backs arched, mouths open in silent screams.

Magadon’s voice sounded in Cale’s head. What’s happening? What’s that light, Cale? It’s beautiful.

Cale stared at Vasen. It’s my son, Mags. It’s my son .

“Cut them apart,” Vasen said. “With Weaveshear. Cut them, Erevis.”

Cale sprinted across the plaza and picked up his weapon. It bled shadows, but Vasen’s light consumed them as rapidly as the blade could birth them. He went first to Riven.

The shadow of divine power extended behind the assassin, attached to him at the heels. Cale raised Weaveshear high and chopped down, severing the connection between the man and the god. The blade smoked and pitted but did its work. Riven sighed and sagged to his knees.

Free of its connection to Riven, the divine power, the shadow, slid across the plaza, formed an arc, a dark line scribed on ground lit in the blazing light of Cale’s son.

“Are you all right?” Cale asked him.

Riven, pale, breathing hard, could only nod.

“Hurry!” Vasen said.

Cale went next to Mephistopheles, then to Rivalen, severing both from their godhood. Weaveshear was brittle by the time Cale cut Rivalen’s divinity from him.

“No!” Rivalen said.

“Yes,” Cale said, and kicked him hard to the ground. The Shadovar hit the plaza face first and Cale heard teeth scrape stone.

The shadows of divine power Cale had cut from Rivalen and the archfiend slid across the plaza as had Riven’s, elongated into arcs, joined themselves to one another, forming a black circle on the stone-Mask’s symbol.

Shar’s eyes spun and whirled, whined for the power it craved, the power that would allow her to incarnate and feed. All that stood between the eye and the power was the light of Vasen Cale.

“What now?” Cale shouted to his son.

“Someone has to take it!” Vasen shouted. “The Herald has to incarnate! I can’t keep this up, and if the light goes, she’ll devour it all and then. . ”

He didn’t need to say anything more. Cale understood. That was why he’d been brought back, why Mask had seen to it that he lived when he should have died.

Mephistopheles must have understood, too, for he rose to all fours and crawled for the divinity.

Cale bounded toward the archfiend, but before he reached him the wounded, weakened archfiend suddenly sprouted an arrow from his side. The shaft sunk to the fletching and he groaned.

“That’s for Fairelm,” Gerak shouted.

The bowman stood beside Vasen, another arrow already nocked and drawn.

Before Mephistopheles could take another crawling step, Gerak shot him again. Again the devil wailed.

“For Elle,” Gerak said.

Still Mephistopheles did not fall. Spitting blood from between his gritted fangs, he crawled for the divine essence.

“And this one for me,” Gerak said, shooting a third arrow that took the fiend in the throat.

Mephistopheles gagged, got up on his knees, back arched, spattering the plaza with his black ichor.

Cale seized the opportunity. He shadowstepped into the darkness behind the fiend.

“I owe you something, too,” he said, and drove Weaveshear through Mephistopheles’s back and out his chest. Gore poured forth.

“That’s a century overdue,” Cale said and twisted the blade. The weapon snapped in his grasp, leaving a long shard in the archdevil.

Mephistopheles, trying to push his innards back into the holes in his flesh, gagging on his own fluids, tried to speak, managed only to gurgle, then dematerialized, a piece of Weaveshear still stuck in him.

Cale cursed at the archfiend’s escape. He looked across the plaza and shared a nod with Gerak.

Standing in the light of his son’s faith, his own faith gone, Cale stared at the three shadows painting a circle on the stone of the plaza. His own, normal shadow stretched out before him, almost touching them.

“I’m failing, father,” Vasen said, and his light began to dim.

Shar’s eye continued its hungry hum, its rapid rotations, its eager seething.

Cale needed only to take a step forward, let his shadow touch the divine shadows, and. .

A hand on his shoulder pulled him around: Riven.

He stared into the pockmarked face of his friend, now just a man, the scarred, empty eye-socket, the scraggly beard.

“I’ll do it,” Riven said.

“Riven. . ”

“Stay a man, Cale.” Riven looked down, shook his head. “You were in my head. You. . saw. Godhood makes you into a bastard, and I ought to know. It’s too late for me on that score.”

Cale shook his head. “No, I should-”

“Cale, you’ve got your son, your life, go live it.”

Cale stared into Riven’s eye a long while, finally nodded.

They embraced like the long-lost brothers they were.

“Been a long road,” Cale said.

“Truth,” Riven said. “Odd one, yeah?”

“Odd one,” Cale agreed.

Riven thumped Cale on the shoulder and stepped past him. For a moment his shadow stretched out next to Cale’s. Then he stepped forward into the circle scribed in darkness on the stone. Riven’s shadow bisected the arc.

The circle began to spin, to shrink, closing in on Riven. He gasped, threw his head back, and shouted, his voice like thunder. Despite Vasen’s light, shadows leaked from Riven’s skin, swirled around him, embraced him. The spinning circle of power tightened and Riven seemed to grow larger, more present, the shadows swirling around him denser.

And as divinity flooded Riven, enlarged him, Shar’s eye shrank correspondingly. The rotations of the eye slowed as it shrank; the screams more plaintive until fading entirely.

And then it was over.

Vasen’s light faded and Riven, fully divine, stood in the plaza shrouded in a cloud of shadow. He looked out at Cale, the hole of his eye seeming to stretch back through time and place.

“You’re still terrible at making plans,” Cale said, a half smile on his lips. “And I’ll be thrice-damned before I pray to you.”

Riven, or Mask, turned and looked at him. “I’d be disappointed if it were otherwise.”

The darkness drew tight around Riven. He merged with it and was gone, gone to where gods go.

Cale blew out a heavy sigh, turned, and hurried to Vasen’s side. He and Gerak helped Vasen to stand.

“You did it,” Cale said, pulling him close.

Vasen nodded, his face drawn. He leaned on Cale. “We all did it.”

“What exactly did we do?” Gerak asked, looking around.

Vasen shook his head, kneeled beside Orsin, placed his hands on him, and uttered a prayer to Amaunator.

Cale expected to see Vasen’s hands glow with healing energy, but nothing happened. Vasen hung his head.

“What’s wrong?” Cale said, shadows spinning around him.

“That was the price,” Vasen said, his voice cracking. “It burned it out of me.”

“Burned what?”

“The calling, the connection.” Vasen made a helpless gesture with his hands. “I don’t know, but it’s gone.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Cale said. “It’s still there.”

“I don’t feel it,” Vasen said.

“You will,” Cale answered.

Vasen shook his head, looked down at Orsin. He tapped the shadowalker’s cheeks, shook him gently. “Orsin. Orsin.”

The shadowalker opened his eyes.