Lizz Baldwin - Realms of Shadow

Cy looked down at the dead body of Captain Lume and nodded, then he turned around and headed back up the stairs, dodging a pretty blonde golem on his way out.

Too Long In The Dark

Paul S. Kemp

Netheril Year 3520

(The Year of the Sundered Webs, -339 DR)

Zossimus watched with appreciation as a vight hawk broke off its predatory circling and dived silently earthward through the perpetually twilit sky of Shade. A squirrel scampering across the lush lawn of the villa's interior courtyard sensed its danger a heartbeat too late. The unfortunate rodent gave an agonized squeak as the raptor's claws impaled its small body. Death was quick but no doubt painful.

Zossimus, seated on his favorite bench beside the courtyard's reflecting pool, nodded appreciatively as the hawk began to feed.

"Well done, little hunter."

Death to prey-and to enemies-should always come unexpectedly to the victim. Zossimus had learned that lesson well over the years. So too had the other leading arcanists of Shade. Indeed, the city's rivalry with its floating Netherese sister-cities had led Shade's arcanists to seek ever more obscure sources of magical power and ever more unexpected magical weapons. Recently, after long study of the writings of the arch-arcanist Shadow, they had learned of and begun to tap a new source of magic, a source that derived its power not from the Weave, but from a heretofore unknown source of power that the arcanists had named the Shadow Weave. None of Shade's arcanists yet knew the full potential of this alternate energy source. They knew only that it drew on the often unpredictable energies of Plane of Shadow.

To better tap those energies, and to further their research into the Shadow Weave, Shade's Twelve Princes had caused the city to straddle the border between Faerun and the Plane of Shadow, between light and twilight. Now cloaked always in muted grays, the city had not seen the unadulterated light of Faerun's sun in years. It bothered Zossimus little to live always in the dark; he deemed it a small price to pay in exchange for the city's magical preeminence. Jennah, of course, thought otherwise.

His love hated the city's darkness and would have left long ago but for Zossimus. At every opportunity, she begged him to transport them magically from the city to the sun-drenched plains below, where she ran through the waving grass and fragrant purplesnaps, laughing. He smiled at the thought of her long hair shining in the sun Without warning, the familiar presence of the Weave was obliterated. The vight hawk gave a shriek, alit, and left its bloody meal unfinished in the grass.

A void opened in Zossimus's being. Though a distant part of him sensed still the presence of the Shadow Weave, the absence of the Weave-his original mistress-tore a hole in half of his being. Spells prepared that morning went absent from his mind, erased clean. He opened his mouth to scream but managed only a strangled gasp. A roar filled his ears. His temples throbbed as if a red-hot coal burned in his brain. He fell to his knees, gripped his head in his hands and tried to jerk it from his shoulders, to stop the pain with death, to fill the emptiness with oblivion.

The minor cantras that preserved the flora in his courtyard began to fail with audible pops. The ornate gargoyle fountain ceased its magically-driven perpetual flow. The ruby and emerald dragonfly constructs he had so painstakingly crafted as a gift for Jennah fell inert to the lawn. The artificial illumination from glass lightglobes fell dark. In a flash of insight, he realized that all magic in Faerun dependent on the Weave-which meant all magic other than the experimental shadow magic practiced in Shade-was failing.

How? he wanted to shout, but he could manage nothing but a low moan.

Beneath his feet, the floating mountaintop upon which Shade had been built began to fall earthward. Zossimus's stomach lurched. His afternoon meal raced up his throat, but he swallowed it down, tasting bile. Birds of every color exploded from the trees and ferns of his courtyard and took wing, avian rats abandoning the sinking ship of Shade. Screams and shouts erupted from around the city, audible even in Zossimus's secluded inner courtyard. It sounded as though the whole city were screaming as one. Shade was falling…

Zossimus, paralyzed with pain and terror, waited for the impact that would kill them all.

After a few terrifying heartbeats, the city's descent slowed, slowed more, then stopped all together. It took another heartbeat for Zossimus, still disconcerted, to deduce what had happened.

Shadow magic. The disappearance of the Weave had not affected the Shadow Weave. The Twelve Princes must have been drawing on it to save Shade, to keep it from crashing to earth. Even as that thought hit him, Zossimus could see in his mind's eye the other floating cities of Netheril plunging earthward as the magic that held them aloft failed. Their apocalypse would happen in the bright light of the sun, while Shade's salvation would occur in eternal twilight, because of the eternal twilight. Netheril's other floating cities, once testimony to the awesome power of Netherese arcanists, would be nothing more than grandiose tombs for tens of thousands.

The city began again to descend, slower this time. Zossimus's sense of satisfaction vanished. The Shadow Weave must have been inadequate by itself to keep the city aloft. Zossimus guessed that in the Palace of the Most High, the Twelve Princes were even now struggling to tap enough shadow magic to keep Shade airborne. They were failing.

Zossimus bit back his frustration. He would have joined them if he could, would have shaken the cobwebs from his head, endured the loss of the Weave, and added his considerable magical skill to theirs, but his teleportation spell had been lost when the Weave had been destroyed. It would take half an hour to traverse the city by foot. By the time he reached them, the issue would already be decided.

The city continued to descend, picking up speed incrementally. Another thousand feet maybe, and all would be over. When it hit the earth, it would kill every citizen, if not the impact, then the aftermath. The partial mountaintop upon which Shade floated had an irregular base, so it would not settle peacefully to earth even if it were somehow slowed to walking speed. It would topple over on its side, and everyone would be crushed under an incalculably massive avalanche of buildings and walls.

Zossimus wanted Jennah, desperately. If he were to die, he would die with his love.

"Jennah-"

A sudden shout-a roar of ecstatic triumph as loud as ten of Kozah's cyclones-carried from the south to drown out his voice. The force of the shout hit Shade like a maul and sent it lurching sideways, a bit of flotsam in the ocean of the sky. Zossimus fell facedown in the grass and cursed through his fear. He knew that voice-Karsus.

"Mystryl! I'll have your power!" boomed Karsus, his voice reverberating through the heavens.

Shade steadied itself, though it continued to descend. Zossimus rose to all fours.

"Karsus, you arrogant ass," he cursed.

Surely this was the end of the world, and Karsus had somehow brought it about.

Again the sound of Karsus's voice thundered through the sky, but this time Zossimus heard only sobs. Bottomless despair.

The crying fell silent, cut off as sharp as a razor. The world seemed to hold its breath, silently waiting. Nothing more.

Shade continued to slip earthward.

Zossimus wanted to hold Jennah in his arms. He had maybe a hundred heartbeats. He leaped to his feet and raced for the villa.

A small winged figure alit from an upper window, frantically flapping-Pleeancis. Zossimus's familiar streaked for him as though shot from a bow, a blur of green scales and membranous wings.

Unable to stop in time, the terrified little quasit crashed into Zossimus's stomach and got tangled in his voluminous violet robes. Man and demon went down in a heap.