Paul Kemp: Shadowrealm

Abelar nodded, though his face fell and colored. He brushed past her, sat on the bed with his back to them. For a time he simply looked upon Elden. He started to touch him twice, recoiled, finally brushed the boy's brow. Elden murmured in his sleep.

For a time no one spoke. The moment was too pure for the pollution of words. Thunder rumbled, rain pattered on the tent, and Elden's hands emerged from the blankets to cradle his father's hand, the hand that had killed Malkur Forrin.

Jiiris daubed her eyes.

In handcant, Riven signaled to Cale, See.

Not a question, but a demand.

Cale did not understand.

Father and son held each other in the bubble of the tent, each the satisfaction of the other's need. After a time, Abelar's body shook and it took Cale a moment to understand that he was sobbing. His tears were a confession.

Jiiris looked to Cale, a question in her own tear-streaked face.

Cale did not answer. He did not want to tell her that they had saved the son but lost the father. She would learn that soon enough. Instead, he whispered, "We must go. Help him as you can. We are his friends. Tell him so."

She nodded, pushed through the shadows to touch Cale's hand in gratitude.

Cale and Riven exited the tent, entered the night, the rain. Cale grabbed Riven by the arm, angry for no reason.

"What did you mean in there? When you signed 'see'?"

Riven faced him, eyed Cale's hold on his arm. "I wanted you to see what was happening. Understand it."

Cale released the assassins arm. "I understood it."

"Did you?" the rain pressed Riven's hair to his skull. "We saved that boy, Cale, but you've been wearing a look on your face like we didn't. Why?"

The shadows around Cale coiled, spun in wide ribbons.

"Don't deny it," Riven said. "I've been killing men for most of my life. So have you. Reading a man's face comes with the work. And I can read you as well as any."

Cale could not articulate his thoughts, the strange detachment he felt, even after saving Elden. He was not himself. Or he was himself and did not like what he was.

"I don't know," he said. "I'm not…"

He let the thought die, shook his head.

Riven stepped closer to him. The shadows wrapped them both.

"You lied to Abelar about turning around."

Cale had no answer. He had lied.

"There ain't no turning around, Cale. You know that."

Cale did know it, but he wanted there to be, and he knew that he would tell Abelar the same lie again. He looked into Riven's face and said, "Sometimes we need lies."

Riven stared at him, stepped back, his expression as fixed as that of a golem. Green lightning lined the eastern sky, cast Riven's face in alternating fields of light and shadow. Thunder boomed, once, twice, again, again. He and Riven both turned and the moment was lost.

The distant clouds, cast in streaks of vermilion, blackened the sky, turned it to a void. They stretched fully across the eastern horizon, not mere clouds but a wall of pitch, an absence of light.

Refugees emerged from their tents in ones and twos, looking east to the tenebrous sky, shielding themselves from the rain. Jiiris stepped from the tent behind them.

She looked east as lightning flashed and the refugees gasped. Thunder rolled anew.

"That is not a storm born of nature," she said.

Cale agreed, and the shadows around him swirled in answer to the churning sky.

Abelar emerged, too. He held Elden tightly against him and put his other arm around Jiiris. She leaned into him and Cale thought that some wall between them had fallen. Faith had been supplanted by something more earthly.

Cale thought of Varra, the last woman he had held in his arms. A similar wall had stood between them and he'd never been able to breach it. Faith, or fate, seemed to leave little room for ordinary needs.

"Wizardry out of Ordulin," Abelar said. "Battle will be on its heels."

"Look at it," Jiiris said. "All of eastern Sembia will be caught in it."

Jiiris was right, and the import of her words caused Cale to curse.

"What is it?" Riven asked.

Cale drew the darkness about him. "Varra."

Riven looked puzzled for a moment, then recognition lit his face. "Varra? The woman from Skullport?"

"Wait for me here," Cale said, and the shadows surrounding him deepened. He pictured in his mind the cottage where he and Varra had spent a year, the cottage in which he'd left her behind, the cottage that was or soon would be within the magical storm.

"Cale, we stay together," Riven said. "I will come with you. Cale!"

Cale hesitated for a moment, nodded, and extended the darkness to Riven.

Abelar stared at Cale, at the darkness, his expression thoughtful.

"Return if you can," Jiiris said. "We will need you here."

Cale nodded as the shadows whisked them across Sembia.

Rain drizzled from the dark sky. The low rumble of thunder from the east promised a still heavier downpour. The smell of Saerb, reduced to damp ash, still hung in the air, or perhaps simply lingered in Reht's memory. The smell of Saerb's dead, thankfully, did not.

Reht pulled up the hood of his cloak and sloshed through the camp. A few stubborn bonfires tended by equally stubborn soldiers smoked and sizzled in the wet. Eyes watched him pass and he left murmured questions in his wake.

The men had already heard. Reht should have known. Stories went through camp faster than a plague of the trots, even in the dead of night.

He reached the center of the camp where a crowd of soldiers stood around Forrin's large tent. The pennons on the center pole snapped in the breeze. Lantern light poured out of the tent's open flap. Reht saw Enken and two others within. He pushed through the press, nearly slipping in the mud.

"They got the general, Reht," one of the men said as he passed.

"What are we doing about it?" said another.

Reht decided to take a moment to remind the men that they were and remained soldiers, whatever the fate of their general. He stopped, pulled back his hood, and stared into one face after another.

"What will be done about it is what your commanders order you to do. And that will be in due time. Meanwhile, if any man loitering here is supposed to be standing a post, I will personally string him by the balls for dereliction of duty. Saerbian forces are in the field and they could be mustering for a counterattack. Rain and darkness are not armor. Am I understood?"

A chorus of "Aye, sirs" and averted gazes answered his words.

Enken stood with Strend and Hess inside the tent. The rain beat staccato off the canvas. Enken nodded a greeting and Strend and Hess saluted. Hess's moustache drooped as much as the man's shoulders. Strend, as barrel-chested as a dwarf, shifted uncomfortably on his feet.

At a glance, everything within the tent seemed in order. There was no blood, no items tossed about. It appeared as though General Forrin had simply stepped out to the privy.

"What exactly happened here?" Reht asked.

Hess and Strend hesitated, looked one to the other.

"Tell him what you told me," Enken said to Hess. "Neither of you is at fault here."

Hess eyed Reht and shook his head. "We heard a shout, Commander, and rushed in. We saw a man-"

"Wasn't a man," Strend said, shaking his head and crossing his arms over his chest.

"The Hells," Hess said. "It was a man, but not normal. He was dark, with shadows all around him. He saw us, the tent went dark, then he was gone with the general."

"Shadovar," Reht said. They had heard that forces out of Shade Enclave had allied with the Selgauntans and Saerbians.

Enken grunted agreement, pulled one of his many knives and ran his thumb across its edge. "My thoughts as well."

Strend looked nervous, eyed the dark pockets in the corners of the tent. "Shadovar… I've heard things."