Paul Kemp - Twilight Falling

Cale unslung his pack.

"You require an answer within two days," said Sephris, nodding. "Two. Hmm. These formulae are complex. You three present quite the problem. Interesting…."

Cale, wondering how in the Nine Hells Sephris seemed to know what he knew, removed the half-sphere from its burlap blanket. He held it up for the loremaster to see. The gems within the quartz sparkled in the candlelight.

"We need you to tell us what this is," Cale said.

For the first time since they'd entered the library, Sephris seemed to give something his full attention. He stared at the half-sphere-hard. He seemed to have stopped breathing.

"Place it on my desk," he said. "Careful of my papers."

After a moment's hesitation, Cale walked across the library, mindful of the debris on the floor, and placed the half-globe on Sephris's desk. As he did, he looked at the slate on which Sephris had been writing. The numbers and symbols on it were written in half a dozen different languages, at least two of which Cale didn't recognize. Probably Sephris had invented his own branch of mathematics to symbolize his thinking.

"How many languages do you speak?" Cale asked in Chondathan.

Sephris waved a dismissive hand and answered in Turmishan, "There is only one, young man, and it is not written with letters. Now, move away from my desk."

Cale did.

Staring at the half-sphere throughout, the loremaster walked to his desk and sat. He put his chin in his palms and stared at it, transfixed, his eyes drinking it in, whispering to himself all the while. Cale realized as he backed toward the door that the loremaster was actually counting the flecks of gemstones within the half-sphere. Dark and empty! There were hundreds, at least-perhaps thousands.

"Is he counting the gems?" Jak asked in a whisper, when Cale had retreated back to the door.

Cale nodded, watching.

When Sephris looked up some moments later, he seemed surprised to see them there.

"You, still?" the loremaster said. "This changes everything. Everything."

He picked up his slate, wiped it clean with the sleeve of his robe and began to write furiously.

"A dominant variable," he muttered. "Dominant."

Cale, Riven, and Jak could do nothing but stand and wait while Sephris scratched his head and studied what he had written.

"No," Sephris muttered, and again he wiped the slate clean. He started anew to write but stopped and looked up at them. "Return to me in eighteen hours. I will provide you with your answer then."

"No, Sephris," Cale said. "We cannot."

He couldn't leave the half-sphere unprotected.

Sephris looked taken aback; he must not often be refused. He eyed Cale shrewdly.

"It will be safe here with me. Look." Sephris hurriedly scribbled a formula on the slate that filled it only halfway. He held it up for Cale and said, "Do you see? It will be safe until at least the nineteenth day of this month."

The scribblings meant nothing to Cale, but he needed an answer, and that meant abiding by Sephris's rules. They could keep watch from the street.

"Eighteen hours then," he agreed.

"Excellent. You may go."

At that, Riven scoffed. Under his breath he said, "By your leave, milord."

Cale said nothing. They turned, opened the door and exited. The priest-caretaker greeted them in the hall.

"Did you find what you sought?"

Cale deflected the question. "We'll return tomorrow evening."

"Very well," said the priest, content not to press. "I'll expect you then."

And that was that.

When they reached the street, Cale eyed the nearby buildings. One of them, a three story stone tallhouse, had a roof with only a slight pitch.

Cale pointed and said, "There. We'll keep watch in shifts, in case Vraggen makes another grab for the half-sphere."

In truth, Cale didn't think the mage would risk another attack, but he wanted to be certain. The tall-house roof offered a nice vantage of the entire street.

"Good," Jak said.

"I'm in," Riven said, "but there's something I need to tend to first. I'll be back before nightfall."

"Describe the something," Cale said.

"My concern, Cale."

They exchanged glares. Cale knew it would be pointless to press.

"Act as though you're being watched," he said.

Riven sneered and laid a hand on one of his enchanted sabers.

"I always do," the assassin said. "I'lll be back near sunset."

As Riven walked away, Jak said, "I don't trust him, Cale. Not as far as I could throw a troll."

Cale made no comment, just stared into Riven's back. He was not sure if he trusted the assassin either. Obviously Mask did, but that gave Cale no comfort-Mask was a bastard, after all, and always had his own agenda.

"Let's get situated on that roof."

Riven hurried through the streets, his left hand on a saber hilt, heading for the Foreign District. After he'd left the Zhents a few months earlier, he'd purchased a nondescript flat there. It still felt strange to him to have somewhere to go, somewhere he considered his home. While in the Network, he had made a habit of changing the location in which he slept at least twice per tenday, more out of a sense of professional caution than genuine fear. Riven rarely left enemies alive, and the dead didn't often carry grudges.

After he'd left the Zhents, he hadn't seen the point of moving around so often. In truth, after he'd resigned he hadn't seen the point of much at all. He had saved enough coin to keep him in whores and luxury for years, but that kind of life didn't appeal to him. If he'd been a weak man, he might have turned to a weak man's vices-drink and drugs-but those things had never held a draw for him either. So for a time, he'd felt aimless.

To his surprise, that had changed the day he found his girls, and changed still more when he had heard the Lord of Shadows's Call in his dreams.

Riven reached under his tunic to touch the onyx disc that hung from the chain around his neck. He had taken it from the corpse of the last hit he'd performed for the Network: a fat merchant who had run drugs into Cormyr for the Zhents, but had compromised an operative when he was captured by the Purple Dragons. For Riven, the disc symbolized two things: the end of his relationship with the Zhents, and the beginning of his relationship with Mask.

While he wasn't a priest like Cale-Nine Hells, the mere thought of that made him sneer-he also wasn't the man he once was. His mind was opening, he knew; something was happening, though he didn't yet know what. He knew only that he served Mask, and for the time being that knowledge was enough. That his service made Cale uncomfortable only made it more satisfying. Riven respected Cale, but didn't like him.

Still, Riven knew the Lord of Shadows had a purpose for Calling him and Cale almost simultaneously. Mask whispered that purpose in his dreams. Riven understood it when he first awakened, when his skull felt as though it was filled with squirming snakes, but the basis for that understanding fled from memory as the dreams faded out of his consciousness. Still, the understanding remained, the certainty, and Riven didn't question further.

He supposed it was faith, and that thought made him laugh.

For most of his life, Riven had thought that faith made men weak, made them dependent upon the divine rather than their own resources. He had held men of faith in contempt, even those in the Zhents. Especially those. In fact, the return of the Banites to authority in the Network had been the very reason he'd left it. The Zhents under the resurgent Banites would not be the Zhents in which Riven had flourished. The new Church of Bane was too fanatical. But Mask had taught Riven to make distinctions among faiths. Faith didn't have to make a man weak or mad, though it often did-he thought of Gauston, The Righteous Man, Verdrinal, and that fool Sephris. In Riven's case, faith was making him stronger. He could feel it changing him. Mask didn't make demands of Riven. Mask said to him, Here is a way to strength. Take it if you will. Riven had taken it, for he respected strength-those who had it, and those who shared it with him.