Paul Kemp: Shadowbred

Drool dripped stupidly and unheeded from her lips as she mouthed the words to the Supplication: "I kneel before Shar's Shadow, who shrouds the world in night. I kneel before Shar's Shadow…"

Elyril knew that the Lord Sciagraph would not speak in her dream. He never did. But she heard him nevertheless; she knew him nevertheless. She waited, her breath like a bellows. As one moment stretched into another, she tried to brace herself. Her fingers gouged grooves into the dreamscape. Her heart bounced in her chest. Her lungs rose and fell, rose and fell.

"I kneel before Shar's Shadow, who shrouds the world in night. I kneel before Shar's Shadow…"

Volumvax touched her, the gentle caress of the demigod who would rule the world in Shar's name.

An instant of excruciating pain wracked her body. She convulsed, and swallowed her scream only by biting down hard on her tongue and pressing her forehead into the ground. Back in her bed, blood from her mouth joined the drool that already dampened her pillow.

The pain passed quickly, replaced by indescribable pleasure. The touch of divine fingers excited such arousal in her already sensitized body that she experienced wave after wave of sexual release, one rapid, agonizing, ecstatic pulse after another. The wail elicited by that ecstasy was uncontainable, even in the dream. She arched her back and groaned her pleasure into the nothingness.

Volumvax's fingers lingered on her flesh as he communicated his intent. His eyes burrowed through her back and into her soul to impress upon her his will, Shar's will: So says Shar, the Lady of Loss, through her instrument and Shadow, the Lord Sciagraph. Follow the Nightseer until the sign is given and the Book is made whole. Then, summon the Storm to free the Divine One. This to be a secret known only to we three.

Elyril sagged, began to weep. She had waited for so long to be Shar's instrument. The time, at last, was at hand.

Now see the Lady's vision for you, secret even from me.

The Lord Sciagraph removed his hand from Elyril, leaving her bereft, and the gray plain instantly fell away. She found herself alone, suspended within the nothingness. Elyril's stomach rushed into her throat. Vertigo made her dizzy. Back in her bedchamber, she felt her body vomit its evening repast.

Mountains, seas, rivers, and plains took shape far below her. Her nausea passed and she recognized the landscape. She was floating as high as the clouds above an image of Faerun's heartland. She could see for leagues in all directions. The landscape stretched from the sandy wastes of Anauroch and the Dalelands in the north to the Dragon Coast in the south, from the jagged Stormpeaks that bordered Cormyr on the west, to Sembia and Ravens Bluff in the east. She recognized the dark lesions on the land as cities: Arabel, Selgaunt, Urmlaspyr, her own home of Ordulin.

She waited.

After a moment a thin, purple-veined tendril of shadow formed in Anauroch, within Shade Enclave, home of the Shar-worshiping Shadovar and their high priest, the Nightseer, Rivalen Tanthul. The tendril expanded southward and east, toward Sembia. At the same time, a second shadowy tendril, thick and blunt but also lined with veins of purple, burst out of Ordulin and made its way west across Sembia.

Elyril smiled to see Sembia caught in the vise of her goddess's will. She smiled even more to see one side of that vise originate in Ordulin, presumably with her.

Summon the storm, the Lord Sciagraph had commanded.

The two fronts moved inexorably toward one another, swallowing the light, shrouding the land. Darkness devoured Sembia, and all of Faerun cowered. Elyril watched it all, satisfied that she would live to see Shar's final victory in Faerun, until…

A third tendril of darkness, narrower but deeper than the other two, arose in central Sembia and expanded rapidly outward in both directions to meet the onrushing shadows of Shar. This tendril bore no trace of Shar's holy purple.

The competing fronts of shadow met and did battle. Elyril shouted in rage as darkness warred against darkness. Who would dare stand in the path of the Shadowstorm? How would-

Without warning, the vision ceased and Elyril was alone in the nether. She screamed her frustration into the void.

Some time later she awakened in her bed, sweat-soaked, exhausted, and staring up at the beamed ceiling of her bedchamber in her aunt's mansion east of Ordulin.

"No!" she said, and sat up, disturbing the vomit, blood, and drool that stained her silk sheets and pillow. Her tongue ached from where she had bitten it in her dream. She ignored the pain and the sloppy mess on the bed.

Volumvax's will throbbed at the forefront of her consciousness and she whispered it aloud: "Summon the storm to free the Divine One."

She wanted to know more, needed to know more, but she knew she would learn nothing else. The Lord Sciagraph and the Lady of Loss kept their secrets. Such was the nature of the faith. As a priestess of Shar, Elyril often had to act while ignorant of Shar's plans.

Near the foot of her bed, she heard Kefil stir. The black mastiff climbed to his feet, stretched, and uttered a contented rumble from deep in his huge chest. The dog's shoulder stood even with the top Elyril's bed and his bloodshot brown eyes fixed on her.

You thrashed about in your sleep, Kefil projected. Gray hairs dotted his massive jaws, and his bleary eyes showed their age.

Elyril smiled in spite of her concerns. The dog spoke to no one but Elyril-it was their secret. Kefil had first spoken to her the night after she had murdered her parents. He had been a pup then, and his name had been Mors. Elyril had renamed him after her dead brother. She assumed his intelligence to be a gift granted by Shar. Over the intervening years, he had become a trusted confidante. Her aunt hated the dog, but allowed Elyril to keep him in her room anyway.

Kefil whirled around to nibble at an itch in his hindquarters.

"The Lord Sciagraph spoke to me," she said to him, and offered no further explanation. She would not share even with Kefil the intimacies of her relationship with Volumvax.

Kefil continued biting his itch, and respectfully asked no further questions.

Mindful of her soiled sheets, Elyril carefully pushed the silk from her legs and swung them off the huge bed. Her head felt as if it were stuffed with rags; her temples pounded. She cradled her brow in her hands.

"Thank you, my lord," she said to Volumvax, wincing at the pain in her tongue and head. "It is my humble pleasure to serve."

Kefil abandoned his itch and devoured some of the darkness in the room.

Elyril smiled. Kefil always hungered for shadows. The mastiff sank back to the floor with a grunt.

A tingle under her scalp told her that the Nightseer was trying to contact her through the magical silver and amethyst ring she wore. She looked down, saw the amethyst set into her ring sparkle as its magic linked into the Shadow Weave. The connection opened.

You have received a sign, dark sister, Rivalen said, and it was not a question.

Elyril's breath caught. Volumvax had commanded her to keep the sign a secret. How could Rivalen have known? He could not know of Elyril's relationship with Volumvax, could he?

Elyril could not answer the Nightseer for a moment. Finally, she responded. Yes, Prince Rivalen. I have received a sign. I believe the Cycle of Shadows is beginning.

A long pause passed before Rivalen answered. No, dark sister. The Cycle was begun long ago, thousands of years before your birth. Know that the Overmaster is dead.

Elyril gave a start. Dead? When?

This night. He appears to have died in his sleep.

Elyril giggled. She had never fancied her aunt's cousin.

All will suspect murder, she projected. And most would suspect her aunt.