Paul Kemp: Shadowstorm

The man's jaw broke from the impact and his charge ended on the spot. He fell to all fours, wobbling, senseless, bleeding from arm and mouth and spitting teeth.

Riven kicked him in the side of the head and he fell flat to the ground. Straddling him, Riven turned him over roughly. The man's eyes tried to focus. Riven punched him in the face, shattering his nose in a spray of blood and snot. The man screamed silently, tried to roll away, but Riven held him fast. He punched him again, again, again, and again. Soon the man's face was a shattered mess of blood and bruises, and Riven's knuckles were sore and nicked.

Riven knelt over him and stared into his eyes, one of which was clouded with blood from broken vessels. He shook the big man's head by the hair until the eyes focused.

"This is what it feels like to be beaten," he said with a snarl, though Cale's spell swallowed the sound.

The man's mouth moved but Riven could not read his bloody, broken lips. He did not care. The man had nothing to say that Riven cared to hear.

Riven normally killed with efficiency, but he had occasionally provided services for a patron who wanted a target to suffer. Riven had never enjoyed it, but he'd done it.

He would enjoy it now.

He stepped away from the stunned man and walked across the tent. He retrieved the metal-tipped spear and returned.

Drooling blood, the man stared up at him and moved his head slowly from side to side.

Riven cuffed him about the face, used another of his knives to cut the straps of the man's breastplate. He tore it off and threw it to the side. He searched the man to ensure he bore no healing potions. He didn't.

Riven stood and put the point of the spear on the man's gut.

The man was senseless. Riven would not have it.

With his free hand he pulled shadows from the dark air, twined them about his fingers, and put his darkness-adorned hand on the man's shoulder. He let healing magic flow through him. He did not need to speak to generate healing energy, so Cale's spell did not thwart him.

Some of the bruises and cuts on the man's face closed, as did the slash in his forearm. Riven waited for the man's eyes to clear. When they did, he stared into the man's face and drove the spear through his gut. The man's mouth opened in a silent scream of agony that continued as Riven leaned on the spear's haft and sank it half an arm's length into the dirt. Blood poured from the wound.

Wailing and squirming, the man pulled at the spear haft but his strength was already failing him. He pawed at the wooden shaft futilely. He glared at Riven through his pain, cursed him, spat at him.

Riven sneered.

Cale's spell would prevent anyone from hearing the man's screams. Riven had seen men die of gut wounds before. The man would be dead within a hundredcount but every moment would be agonizing. The man who beat a witless boy would die swimming in his own blood, in his own shit, in excruciating pain.

He deserved worse.

Staring without sympathy into the pain-wracked eyes of the dying man, Riven pictured the camp at Lake Veladon in his mind, triggered the magic of his ring, and transported himself there.

1 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms

Cale carried the limp boy through the camp. Eyes followed him, then a crowd of men, women, and children. He had two score refugees in his wake by the time he put Elden into Endren's arms. The elder Corrinthal, too shocked to speak, cradled the boy as if he were a babe and cried. Elden stiffened at first.

"Granfah?" the boy said in a tiny voice.

"Yes," Endren said through his tears. "Yes. It's grandfather."

Elden wrapped his arms around his grandfather's neck, buried his face in his beard. Sobs shook his small frame. "He hurt Bowny," the boy said, and sobbed.

"Shh," Endren said, and caressed the boy's back. "Shh. It is all over and you are safe. You are safe." Endren looked past Elden to Cale and said, "I owe you whatever you ask, whenever you ask it."

"No need. It is rare that I get to do something like this."

Endren looked puzzled.

Cale shook his head, "Nevermind."

Endren's eyes showed sympathy, appreciation, concern. Cale could not bear it. He turned to go back to Abelar's tent and found himself facing a crowd. Gratitude filled their eyes. An approving murmur ran through them.

"There is light even in darkness," someone said.

Regg emerged from the crowd, stalked toward Cale with purpose, and wrapped him in an embrace. The shadows around Cale swirled but did not hold Regg at bay. "You stand in the light," Regg said, and released him.

"I hope not," Cale said, but smiled. "And now I have other work."

Regg nodded and backed away.

Cale pulled on the shadows and rode them back to Abelar's tent. For a moment, he wondered after Riven's well-being, but decided the assassin could take care of himself.

Willing the darkness in the tent to deepen, Cale stood in the center of the pitch and repeated the words to his scrying spell. He formed the lens from shadow and reached through it for Malkur Forrin. The power of his spell, of his will, grasped Forrin's name and reached across Faerun.

Unlike the boy, Forrin was warded. Cale could feel resistance. Dark shadows clouded the scrying lens. He focused his mind, his power, and tried to push through.

The lens went dark. Cale cursed, cast the spell anew, failed again. His frustration grew. He recalled the broken boy he had just returned to his grandfather, a boy taken and beaten on Forrin's orders. He thought of the graves at Fairhaven, of the broken look in Abelar's eyes.

Instead of using Forrin's name as the focus of his spell, he used Abelar's hate for Forrin. Again and again he cast the spell and finally he broke through.

The lens cleared and brightened. He saw Forrin, awake, standing alone in a field tent, strapping on his breastplate. Glowballs lit the tent brightly, more than necessary to illuminate the tent. He must have feared an attack by the Shadovar.

Cale gave a hard smile. Glowballs would not save Malkur Forrin.

Cale watched as the mercenary general donned his armor, strapped on his blade, adjusted his tabard. Cale waited, the shadows swirling around him. He needed only a single shadow.

Forrin walked across the tent and as he did, his body blocked the light from one of the glowballs, casting his shadow on the ground.

Cale pounced. He rode the shadows across Faerun to appear directly in Forrin's shadow. The general, perhaps sensing a rush of wind from the air displaced by Cale's arrival, shouted, started to whirl around and draw his blade. "I am attacked!" Forrin called.

Cale grabbed Forrin by the wrist, wrenched his arm behind him, and drove the general into the ground. The dirt muffled Forrin's shout of pain.

Shouts and clinks of armor sounded from outside the tent. Cale willed the glowballs to dim and they answered his command. Shadows cloaked the tent, cloaked Cale. He jerked a dagger from his belt and put it to Forrin's throat. The mercenary snarled but did not move.

"What do you want?" Forrin asked.

"You," Cale answered.

The tent flap flew open and three armored soldiers in green tabards rushed in, blades bare. They seemed surprised to find the tent dark.

"Stop where you stand," Cale said, and they did.

"Release him," one of the men ordered, and another bolted out of the tent and shouted an alarm.

"He is coming with me," Cale said, and gave Forrin's arm another twist. "And if any of you try to find him, I will come for you. Nowhere is safe from me. Do you understand? Nowhere."

The darkness around him churned and the soldiers charged. Cale imagined Fairhaven in his mind and used the darkness to move there.

The shouts of the soldiers faded. The pair materialized in the midst of the ruins. Cale jerked Forrin to his feet, still holding his arm behind him. Forrin struggled but he was no match for Cale, made strong by darkness.