Paul Kemp - Shadowbred

"Yes, I can still cast spells. Though I went a long while without praying."

Riven's face showed first relief, then a question. "Why a long while?"

Cale could hardly believe Riven was asking the question. "Why? Because Jak is dead. Because I'm… this." He held out his arm and let the shadows spiral around his flesh. "Because he did it all so he could steal a thrice-damned temple."

Riven's face remained calm.

"I told you this was not about the temple. There's more to it."

Riven's calmness only stoked Cale's anger. "What if there isn't, Riven? Hells, why don't you question? What kind of faith doesn't doubt? Look what he took from us!"

Riven shook his head. "What kind of faith always doubts, Cale? And look what he gave us."

Cale blew out a breath and looked away. Riven said, "No Cyricists have come to take vengeance for the theft of the temple."

Cale said nothing and Riven repeated himself, as if he thought his words significant.

"Did you hear me? No Cyricists have tried to take back the temple, Cale. Not one, not ever. They're either ignorant of what happened or occupied with something bigger. I think it's the latter. Something is coming, Cale. You feel it. I know you do. I feel it, too. So do the shadowwalkers. That's why they're here."

"A storm," Cale said absently, and rubbed the back of his neck. For some reason, his mind turned to the book in his pack. "Sephris called it a storm."

"Sephris? The old prophet?"

Cale nodded.

"Cale, that's why Mask is withdrawing from his servants. All but us. This temple, the Sojourner, all of it was designed to prepare us. Don't you see that?"

Shadows leaked from Cale's fingers. He watched them dissipate into the darkness. "Prepare us for what?"

"For the storm," Riven said. "For whatever is coming."

Cale shook his head. "No. Not even gods plan that well. Besides, he's preparing himself, not us."

"It's the same thing," Riven said. "Let me show you something else. Come."

Cale took Riven by the shoulder. "I don't need any more surprises."

Riven looked him in the eye, his expression… soft? "One more," he said.

Riven led Cale through the darkened temple. Although the structure lacked any formal accoutrements of Mask's faith, Cale figured the Shadowlord found the darkness and shadows of the windowless temple pleasing. Torches lit their way through bare stone corridors and rooms.

Riven led Cale up a flight of stairs to a closed wooden door. Cale recognized the room and his throat caught. They had laid Jak's body there. He looked a question at Riven.

"Open it. You'll see."

Cale studied Riven's face.

"Open it," Riven insisted.

Slowly, reluctantly, Cale pushed open the door. When he saw what was within, his heart rattled in his ribcage and words stuck in his throat.

I sprint through the grass, my legs burning, my breath rattling. The stone cell is just ahead.

I hear a fear just behind me and lash out blindly backward with the mind blade. I feel it bite flesh and the fear wails with pain and anger.

Twenty paces to the door. Ten. Five. I lose my footing, fall to all fours, and scramble frantically the final few paces. 1 slam into the door, praying it is not locked.

It opens.

I fall in, throw the door shut behind me, and brace my back against it.

It's freezing inside.

The fears throw themselves against the door and drive it ajar. Grunting, I press my body against it, shut it again, and feel around desperately for some kind of lock, anything. My fingers close on a rusty frigid iron bar on the floor near the door. I find the bracket on the door by touch and slide the bar in.

The fears again throw themselves against the door. It shudders under the impact but the bar holds and they howl their frustration. Thumps on the roof and walls tell me they are looking for another way in.

Breathing heavily and sweating, I hold up my mind blade and look around the interior of the cell. Thankfully, I do not see any other means of ingress.

The wall opposite me is the wall and a crack runs through it from floor to ceiling. It is lined with smoke-blackened ice. Otherwise, the cell is a mirror of the one in which I had first awakened. Empty, with a bare stone floor.

The fears hit the door with such impact that it rattles on its hinges. Others beat at the roof, at the walls.

"Magadon," says a voice, the voice at the wall, coming from behind the crack. "Come here. To the crack."

I do not move. I stare across the cell at the crack in the wall while the fears try to beat their way inside.

"Terrifying, are they not?" the voice asks, and chuckles. "Come here, Magadon."

Clutching the mind blade, I cross the cell and stand before the wall. The crack cuts a jagged, irregular path down its face. Stink and cold leaks through-brimstone mixed with the fetid, rotting odor of a charnel house. I put my hand on the stone and find it icy to the touch.

"The wall is weakest here," says the voice eagerly. "You can break through it. Use your weapon."

The fears beat against the cell in a frenzy. The walls vibrate; the door rattles; the roof shakes. I am concerned that the whole structure may soon collapse. In my mind's eye, I imagine the black forms of the fears coating the cell like a layer of oil, encapsulating it in terror.

"You must hurry," says the voice. "Time is short."

I will the mind blade into the form of a large pickaxe and start chipping away at the wall, expanding the crack.

Jak lay on the same bed that they had placed him on soon after his death.

"This is not possible," Cale said, and shadows spiraled out of his skin. His legs felt weak. Jak should have been buried, decomposed. It had been over a year.

Despite his better sense, he allowed himself to hope and called, "Jak?"

The little man did not move.

"Go in, Cale," said Riven.

Cale entered the room in a daze and walked cautiously to the bed. His friend looked exactly as he had in life. His small frame barely put a dent in the bed. A mop of red hair framed a face that could have been sleeping. He looked at peace.

Cale fought back tears, and kneeled on his haunches at the head of the bed.

"Jak?"

The scab peeled away from his grief and the hole in his gut yawned. The tears came then. He could not stop them. He reached out a hand, tentatively, and touched Jak's cheek. He recoiled with a gasp.

Riven's voice sounded behind him and gave him another start.

"He is still warm," Riven said. "I could not bury him like that. So I left him there. I check him every day. Nothing has changed."

Cale nodded but did not turn. Shadows bled from his skin, swirled around him. He stared at Jak, hoping, fearing, wondering. What did it mean? He thought Jak's eyes could open at any moment. Did it mean that Jak wanted to come back?

"This is not possible," was all he could manage.

Riven stepped beside him and stared down at Jak. "And yet, there he is."

Cale shook his head. "Why? How?"

Riven eyed him sidelong. "Cale, I think… that he is waiting, too. Like the shadowwalkers."

"For what?" Cale started to say, but could not find his voice at first. "For what?"

"For you to let him go." Riven gestured at Jak. "He is as you left him when you stopped your resurrection spell in the middle of casting it. Let him go now."

Cale's eyes welled. He reached into his pocket and put his hand on Jak's wooden pipe. He had said good-bye to his friend but he knew he had never let go, not fully. That's why he had attacked Mask in the alley. That is why he burned a pipe at midnight every night. And it was the reason that he carried the dead weight of regret around in his gut. He had asked Riven to bury Jak. He had never even returned to visit the grave, or what he thought was a grave.