Paul Kemp - Midnight's mask

"Fleet," Riven said, nodding. Cale was surprised to see Riven's expression soften as he spoke Jak's name.

"Yes," Cale said.

"He won't do it," Riven said.

The assassin did not need to say whom he meant by "he," or what he meant by "it."

"He will," Cale said. "I'll make him."

Together, Cale, Riven, and Magadon entered the Sojourner's tower. As they walked the halls, Cale noticed for the first time the images on the defaced murals. He noticed too the jawless skull motif that appeared on some of the door handles.

"This was a temple to Cyric," he said. "Or at least part of a temple."

Riven nodded and rubbed the black disc he wore on a chain around his neck. "That was why he did it, Cale. He arranged all of this to spite Cyric. To steal one of the Dark Sun's temples for his own."

Cale did not credit Mask as being that skillful a schemer. He said, "Or maybe he just got lucky. Either way, he did not do it-we did. He owes us."

To that, Riven said nothing.

They made a pilgrimage to Jak through the curving corridor. Riven and Magadon had placed Jak's body on the floor in a small, unused chamber off the central corridor on the second floor. The room bore no sign of having been used in Cyric's rites.

A wool blanket covered Jak up to his chin. He looked as if he were sleeping. Seeing his friend's body reopened the scab of Cale's grief. He donned his mask to cover his tears.

He sat on the floor next to his friend but did not touch him. After a moment, he reached under the blanket and took Jak's hand in his. The little man's hand was cold, rigid. Emotion flooded Cale.

"You owe me this," he said to the vaulted ceiling, to Mask. He raised his voice. "You owe me this!"

The Shadowlord had asked him again and again to sacrifice, and again and again he had-his family, his blood, his humanity, and his best friend. It was too much. He wanted repayment.

"Do you hear me?" His voice rang off the ceiling. "You owe me. And now you are going to pay."

It was not midnight but Cale nevertheless bowed his head, closed his eyes, and began to pray. Not for multiple spells, as was typical, but for a single spell. A spell that would bring Jak back from the dead. He knew it was possible. He had heard tales.

He sent his thoughts, his need to save his friend, flying through the planes to Mask. He knew the god heard him. He had to have heard him.

No response.

Cale's anger grew. He demanded that Mask listen, demanded that he answer.

Nothing came. Jak lay beside him, limp and cold.

A hand on his shoulder-Magadon's.

"Erevis …" the guide began.

Cale shook the guide's hand free. "No. No, dammit, Mags. He's going to answer me." He looked up and shouted, "You will give me this or I walk away from you forever. And if I do that, I swear on the soul of my best friend that I will hunt down and kill every one of your priests that I can find. Every godsdamned one! And I'll be able to find a lot. You've given me too much. Trained me too well. No one will be able to stop me. No one." He looked back over his shoulder to Riven.

The assassin stared at him, nodded.

Cale turned back. "No one will stop us."

He waited.

Nothing.

He waited longer, growing increasingly angry.

"Have it your way," he said softly, and started to stand. He would start in Sembia, then Cormyr, then the rest of the Heartlands, then-

Knowledge filled his brain, knocked him back to his knees-the words to a prayer that performed the greatest of miracles. It could bring the dead back to life.

He felt a surge, could not contain a fierce grin.

"I can do it," he said to the room. "He's answered."

Cale put his palms on Jak's chest and recited the words to the prayer.

Jak sat at the table of his mother's cottage, listening to the chatter of his family, inhaling the warm smells of his mother's cooking. He could not stop smiling.

"You'll fill your bowl more than that, Jakert Fleet," said his mother, while she buttered a piece of flatbread. "Look at you. You're a bag of bones. Eat. Eat."

"Yes, mother," Jak said. He knew better than to dispute his mother at the table.

As usual, his father offered him a consoling smile but said nothing.

"Pass the honey," Jak said to his brother.

Cob made as though he would throw a dripping honeycomb down to Jak, but his mother said, "Cobdon Fleet, if that comb leaves so much as a drop on my new tablecloth, not even Yolanda Warmhearth will be able to spare you my wrath."

Cob froze in mid throw and said sheepishly, "I was just funning Jak, mother."

"Of course you were, dearheart," his mother said, and took a small bite of her buttered bread. "Now put that comb back on its plate and pass the plate to your brother."

Cob did exactly that and Jak grinned at his brother's discomfiture. Jak dribbled honey from the comb onto a piece of bread and took a bite. It was as sweet as he remembered. Probably his father-a beekeeper-had taken it from one of his hives that morning. When Jak had been a boy, Mai Fleet's apiary and the honey it produced had provided well for his family. Of course, it also had resulted in more stings to the Fleet boys than Jak cared to recall. Still, he had long missed his father's honey at table, and his mother's soup. It was good to be home.

He set to his mother's potato soup, dunking his honeyed bread in the bowl between spoonfuls. His mother sat at the head of the table and looked on with approval.

"The soup is wonderful, moth-"

From outside, somewhere in the distance, he heard someone call his name. He could not quite place the voice-a friend's voice, he knew, but the name escaped him.

"Did you hear that?" he asked his brother, his father.

All of them kept their heads down.

Cob spoke around a mouthful of soup. "I didn't hear anything."

"Nor I," said his father, soaking his bread in honey. His mother always said of his father that if his nature had been as sweet as his sweet tooth, he could have married better. "There is not better," had always been his father's reply, and it had always earned him a smile from his wife.

"Eat your food, Jak," said his mother.

The voice called him again.

Jak pushed back his chair and rose. "There it is again."

Power filled Cale. He had never before cast a spell so demanding. His entire body shook. Sweat poured from him.

But it was working.

A rosy glow suffused Jak's body. The wound in his throat closed to a pink scar, to unmarred skin; the bruises on his arms and face healed. The spell remade his flesh, providing a complete and whole vessel for the returning soul. The spell then created a conduit between Jak's body and whatever plane to which his soul had traveled, opening a door that otherwise always remained closed. Cale put himself in the door, held it open, and called Jak's name.

Cale's voice grew in volume until it boomed, reverberated through the room, carried from the Sojourner's tower into the planes. He called Jak's name, trying to pull his soul back from its rest to re-inhabit his body.

"Jak!"

An unwelcome memory surfaced-Sephris Dwendon, changed after his forced resurrection, filled with bitterness. The memory of Jak's words surged back to Cale. When I'm dead, leave me that way.

Cale's voice faltered.

Was he doing the right thing? Was he acting to help Jak or satisfy his own desire to have Jak back? He did not like what he thought was the answer. But Jak had told him that friends, not places, were home, and Cale needed him.

His doubt caused the spell to start to unravel.

He remembered Sephris's bitter words, his admission that he had returned only out of a sense of duty. Jak would do the same. Cale could not bear to think of an embittered Jak.

Tears of guilt flowed down his face. He controlled the sob that threatened to burst from his throat.