Paul Kemp - Shadowbred

Grathan awkwardly signaled his guards to hold their ground.

They did, eyeing Cale coldly.

"I will ask only one more time. Where is my friend?"

The fear in Grathan's wide eyes turned to puzzlement. He looked into Cale's eyes as if looking for a lie. Apparently seeing none, his body went slack.

"Friend? You say you are his friend?"

Cale nodded but did not let the merchant go, though he did loosen his grip a bit.

"Release me," Grathan said. "Let me sit like a gentleman. I will tell you what I saw."

Cale let him slip back into his chair and Grathan waved off his bodyguards. The rest of the patrons went back to their own business.

"My apologies for the rough treatment," Cale said insincerely. He subdued his shadows once more.

Grathan adjusted his jacket, examined it for tears. "Accepted. A man looking after his friend. I can understand that."

"Where is he?" Cale asked.

"I do not know. Something happened on the road."

Cale waited for the merchant to continue.

"We made camp one night as we always did. I'd gone to my wagon for sleep. I left your friend at the fire. I was awakened later by a noise."

"Describe it."

"Like a wind or somesuch, but there was no wind. I sensed something amiss and sneaked from my bed. That's when I saw it."

Cale's fists clenched. "Saw what?"

"Something had happened to the rest of the men. Not one of them stirred. They slept right through the noise. A spell or somesuch, I presume. But this," he touched a silver clasp on his cloak, "protects me from things of that sort, else I probably would have slept through it, too."

Cale gestured impatiently for him to continue.

"Magadon was not affected, either. He rose and shouted challenges into the night. I do not know to whom he was speaking. He could see something that I could not. He fired his bow into the darkness. The arrows glowed red, like they were dripping magic or somesuch. Finally…" Grathan shook his head. "It was like… the night itself opened up to take him. There was a cloud of darkness above the camp. Magadon looked up at it and dropped his weapons. It descended on him and when it lifted, he was gone. I told the men the next day that he had deserted us in the night. They remembered nothing and I did not want to alarm them."

Cale studied Grathan's face, saw no lie there.

"That is everything? Why did you lie to your men? Why didn't you report it to the watch?"

Grathan looked away in shame. "I want you to know that I asked after Magadon, but quietly. I liked him, for the short time I knew him. But I did not want news of the attack to be widely known. Bad for morale. Bad for trade."

"Trade is no excuse for cowardice," Cale said harshly.

Grathan's face contorted with angry denial but Cale's cold expression froze whatever words the fat merchant might have wanted to utter. Grathan looked away.

Cale stood. He did not bother to control the darkness leaking from his skin or the contempt leaking from his tone. "My gratitude for your time, merchant." He tossed two platinum suns on the table.

Grathan ignored the coins, looked up at him, and said, "I was afraid. So was Magadon. Any man would have been. But I hope you find him, and that he is all right."

Cale heard sincerity in Grathan's voice. He nodded, turned, breezed past one of Grathan's bodyguards, and left the inn. When he found an isolated alley, he drew the shadows about him and rode them back to Varra and their cottage in Sembia, more worried than ever for his friend.

1 stand in the doorway and a gentle wind carries the smell of pine to my nostrils. A stream babbles somewhere nearby. I step out of the cell and look about.

I am standing on a hillside, overlooking an unsullied landscape. Conifers blanket the terrain. Ideas, dripping with promise, hang from the branches. A clear stream cascades down the hill into the wooded dale below. Thoughts swim in its current, silver and quick.

I notice the sky and gasp.

A translucent red dome roofs the world and defines its borders. Sharp edges and smooth, flat planes recall the surface of something crystalline. I stand inside a hemisphere-a thought bubble. I recall the words someone said to me once around a campfire: All men keep a coffer of secrets in their soul. I realize that I am standing in my coffer.

Flashes of light intermittently flare within the crystal sky, bathing the whole landscape in red light. Whorls of orange and crimson slowly churn within the sky's depths. Dark, pulsing lines trace jagged paths across the glassy surface; they remind me of veins.

I look away, my head swimming. In the distance, I notice the wall.

On the far side of the hemisphere is a wall of black stone. It rises from the earth to the sky, and curves from one side of the hemisphere to the other. The stream flows toward it.

It is immense, and I am supposed to break through it. How can I? I turn, intending to go back into the cell and tell Courage that I cannot do it.

The cell is gone. So is Courage.

I am alone.

Except for some thoughts. Except for some ideas.

A breeze stirs the pines and carries malevolent laughter from somewhere in the distance. I reach for my blade and remember that I have no weapons. I scan the forest, see nothing.

"Who are you?" I call. "Show yourself."

No response but the laughter.

I have a long road to take to reach the wall. I know I need a weapon, something more useful than a club torn from a tree.

I turn inward, searching my mind for any scrap of psychic power that I can use. I find none. I am only a piece of the whole and the core has given me only what I need to exist separately.

The laughter mocks me. I try to ignore it.

Then I remember the words of Courage: You are a weapon. I consider the words and think I understand.

Reaching deep into my consciousness, I draw on my sense of purpose, the strongest part of me, ordinarily not a reserve of psychic power. But it is now-in this moment, in this place. Power sparks in my mind, sharp and bright. Not much, but enough. I pull it forth, hold out my hand, and focus my concentration. A globe of pale yellow light forms on my palm. I force my mind into the light, bend it to my will, form it to my purpose.

I am a weapon. I am a weapon.

A single ray of light shoots upward from the ball. I give it an edge with my mind, hone it on my will, and shape it into a blade. At the same time, I close my fist over the globe and squeeze until it is a hilt perfectly fitted to my grasp.

Pleased, I smile and feel no fangs on my lips. I test the mind blade with a few practice cuts. It hums when I swing it and it has little weight. The lack of heft will require compensation. I am accustomed to the weight of steel in my hand. I step to a nearby pine tree and swing the blade downward at a wrist-thick branch, severing it cleanly.

I am ready.

The laughter dies and I take that as a good sign. I start down the hillside, following the stream.

Before I have gone twenty paces, a crack sounds from above, so loud I instinctively duck and brandish my blade. I look up for the source of the sound. There is no missing it.

A jagged crack mars the crystal sky. As I watch, it expands halfway across the world's ceiling. A mass of wriggling black shapes throngs the other side of the crack, trying in vain to ooze through. I do not know what they are and I do not want to find out.

I hurry down the hillside at a run, certain with every step that one of the black things would drop from the sky and fall upon me.

I have a long way to go to reach the wall.

As if sensing my burgeoning despair, the laughter returns and a voice speaks.

"Hurry, now. We are waiting for you."

I stop because I recognize the voice.

It is my own.