The Godborn Read online

  Erdan looked at the door, at the man, back at the door, his rapid breathing audible.

  “You won’t need your blade, knight of Lathander,” the man said to Derreg. “Or is it Amaunator these days? I haven’t kept up.”

  Erdan intoned the words to a prayer and the pipe flared again, showing the man’s face twisted in a frown.

  “Close your mouth,” the man said to Erdan, his voice as sharp-edged as a blade. “Your words are empty.”

  Erdan’s mouth audibly shut. His eyes widened and he doubled over and pawed at his face, moaning behind his lips as if they were sealed shut.

  “Priests,” the man said contemptuously, shaking his head as the light from the pipe died and the darkness engulfed him.

  “Release him,” Derreg said, nodding at Erdan, and advancing a step toward the man. The baby went still in the cradle of Derreg’s arm.

  The man took a long drag on his pipe, and the light showed him smiling. “Well enough. He’s released.”

  Erdan opened his mouth, gasped. “By the light!”

  “Hardly by the light,” the man said. “But you needn’t fear. I’m not here for either of you.” He nodded at Vasen. “I’m here for him.”

  Derreg cradled Vasen more tightly to his chest. The boy remained eerily still, his yellow eyes like embers. Derreg recalled Varra’s words to him about a dark man who had changed the boy. He tightened his grip on his blade’s hilt.

  “You’re the child’s father?”

  The man exhaled smoke and stepped closer to them, shedding some of the darkness that clung to him. He moved with the precision of a skilled combatant. Twin sabers hung from his belt and the hilt of a larger sword—sheathed on his back—peeked over his shoulder. His one good eye fixed not on Derreg but on Vasen, then on Varra. Derreg could read nothing in his expression.

  “Are you the father?” Derreg repeated. “The dark man?”

  “Oh, I am a dark man,” the man said, smiling softly. “But I’m not the father. And I’m not the dark man you mean, at least not exactly.”

  He was suddenly standing directly before Derreg. Had he crossed the room?

  The man extended a finger toward Vasen—the baby still did not move—but stopped before touching him. A stream of shadow stretched from the man’s fingertip and touched Vasen, for a moment connecting man and child, an umbilical of another sort, perhaps.

  “How peculiar,” the man said, and withdrew his finger.

  “How so?” Derreg asked, and turned his body to shield the child from the man’s touch.

  “His father was Erevis Cale,” the man said, still staring at the child. “And I’ve been searching for this child for some . . . time.”

  Derreg heard the echo of some distant pain in the man’s utterance of Cale’s name. He knew the name, of course. His father, Regg, had spoken of Cale often, had watched Cale destroy a godling at the battle of Sakkors.

  “Erevis Cale? Abelar’s traveling companion?”

  Shadows spun about the man. His lips curled with contempt.

  “Traveling companion? Is that how he’s remembered?” He shook his head. “You’ve lost much more than half this world to the Spellplague. And you’ll lose more of it yet if the cycle runs it course.”

  “The cycle?” Derreg asked.

  “You’re Drasek Riven,” said Erdan, his voice rapid, excited. “By the light, you are!”

  The man inclined his head. “Partly.”

  Derreg did not understand the cryptic comment. He’d heard Riven’s name in tales, too. “You can’t take the child, Drasek Riven. I gave my word.”

  “Do you think you could stop me?” Riven asked.

  Derreg blinked and licked his lips, but held his ground. “No. But I’d try.”

  Riven leaned in close, studied Derreg’s face. His breath smelled of smoke. “I believe you. That’s good.”

  “You haven’t aged,” blurted Erdan, stepping closer to Riven, curiosity pinching his wrinkled face into a question. “You’re not Shadovar?”

  Riven turned to face Erdan and the priest blanched, retreated. “My kinship with darkness runs deeper than that of the Shadovar, priest. And I won’t tell you again to keep your mouth closed. You’re a witness to this, nothing more.”

  Erdan’s eyes widened even as his mouth closed.

  “You knew my father,” Derreg said. “He spoke of you sometimes.”

  “Just sometimes, eh?” Riven drew on his pipe, a faint smile on his face, a distant memory in his eye. “I confess I’m not surprised.”

  “When he talked about those days he spoke mostly of Dawnlord Abelar.”

  “Dawnlord?” Riven looked up and past Derreg. His brow furrowed as he wrestled down some memory. “What is that? Some kind of holy title?”

  “Of course it’s holy,” said Erdan, his tone as defiant as he dared. “His tomb is in this abbey. Pilgrims come from across Faerûn to lay eyes on it.”

  “You . . . question his holiness?” Derreg said.

  Riven chuckled. “He was a man to me, and men are never holy.”

  “You blaspheme!” Erdan said.

  Riven sneered. “Priest, I saw Dawnlord Abelar run his blade through an unarmed man trying to surrender. How does that square with your understanding of the man?”

  “You lie!” Erdan exclaimed, then, realizing what he had said, backed up a step.

  “Often,” Riven acknowledged, “But not about that. Maybe you think killing Malkur Forrin made him less holy? You might be right. But it made him more of a man. And that murder is why you have an Oracle.”

  Derreg shook his head. “I don’t understand. The Oracle is Abelar’s son.”

  “You miss my meaning,” Riven said and shook his head. “No matter. Myths sometimes outrun the man.”

  Riven took a draw on his pipe, blew out a cloud of fragrant smoke. He looked at Derreg, his eye focused on a memory. “I once promised your father that we would share a smoke but . . . other things got in the way. How did Regg die? Well, I hope?”

  A fist formed in Derreg’s throat, old grief blossoming into new pain. He pulled Vasen tighter against his chest. For a moment, he considered refusing to answer, but changed his mind. “He died an old man, in his sleep. The light was in him.”

  Riven’s face did not change expression, although his eye seemed to see something Derreg could not. “It pleases me to hear it.”

  Voices and shouts carried into the room from the hall outside. Riven drew on his pipe, unconcerned.

  “What do you want?” Derreg asked. “Why are you here?”

  Riven jerked the large blade from the sheath on his back. Derreg lurched backward, his own blade held before him. Vasen began to cry. Erdan froze, rooted to the spot.

  “To see the boy. And to give him his father’s weapon.” Riven flipped the weapon, took it by the blade, and offered Derreg the hilt. “This is Weaveshear.”

  The weapon was as black as a starless night. Shadows curled about its length, extended outward from the blade toward Vasen. The child extended a hand, cooed.

  “That’s a weapon of darkness,” Erdan said, and made the sign of the rising sun, the three interior fingers raised like sunbeams.

  “That it is,” answered Riven.

  Derreg stared at the blade. “The boy won’t need it.”

  “No?”

  “No. He has me.”

  Riven scowled, shadows swirling around him. He lowered the weapon and advanced. Although short of stature, Riven nevertheless seemed to reach to the ceiling.

  Derreg knew he had overstepped and his mouth went dry, his heart pounded.

  “You’ll take this blade and you’ll keep it safe and when that boy is of age, you’ll tell him who his father was and you’ll give him that weapon. I owe Cale that much. And so do you. All of you.”

  “I—”

  “Nod your godsdamned stubborn head, son of Regg, or I swear I’ll remove it from your neck.”

  Derreg did not care to test whether the threat was earnest. He fought dow
n a prideful impulse and nodded. Riven offered him the blade once more, and Derreg took it. Shadows curled around his wrist. He felt as if the weapon was coated in oil. It seemed to squirm in his grip.

  “Well enough,” Riven said, and the shadows about him slowed. He took a step back. “We’re done here now.”

  Riven turned and shadows started to gather around his form. Derreg could barely see him.

  “Why don’t you take him?” Erdan blurted.

  “Shut up, Erdan,” Derreg said.

  Riven did not turn. Shadows curled around him, slow, languid. “Because I’m hunted, and my only safe haven is no place for a child. He’ll be safe here for a time and he should have what peace this life can afford.” He paused, staring at the child. “I fear it won’t be much. I’ll return if I can, but I’m doubtful that will be possible. Meanwhile you keep him. And you prepare him.”

  “Prepare him for what?”

  “For what’s coming.”

  “What do you mean? What’s coming?”

  Riven shook his head. “I don’t know for certain. Others will be looking for him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of who his father was, because grudges die harder than gods. And because the Cycle of Night is trying to find its end. He’s the key.”

  “I . . . don’t understand.”

  “Nor I, not fully. Not yet. Someone’s scribbling new words in the book of the world, and I was never much of a reader.” He smiled, and it reached his good eye. “Two and two, it seems, still sum to four, even in this ruined world. He got that right, at least.”

  “What?” Derreg’s head was spinning. “He?”

  “Someone I once knew.” Riven shook his head, as if to clear it of an old memory. “I can’t stay any longer. My presence compromises the child’s safety.” He looked around. “Your Oracle has done good work here. This valley is . . . peaceful. I especially like the lakes. Tell the Oracle I was here. Tell him to do his part. And ask him if he still enjoys jugglers.”

  “What?”

  “He’ll know what I mean.”

  The darkness gathered, but before it obscured Riven entirely, he turned and looked at Derreg, at Vasen.

  “What’s his name? The boy.”

  “Vasen,” Derreg said, and felt Vasen’s yellow eyes fix on him when he spoke the word.

  “Vasen,” Riven said, testing out the word. “A good name. Well met, Vasen. Welcome to the world. When we meet again, I think you’ll not be pleased to see me.”

  Derreg blinked and Riven was gone. The room lightened. Vasen began to cry.

  Erdan let out a long breath. “What just happened?”

  “I’m not certain.”

  “That wasn’t a man.”

  “No,” Derreg said. “That was not.”

  Chapter One

  Eleint, the Year of the Awakened Sleepers (1484 DR)

  Glaciers as old as creation collided, vied, and splintered—the crack of ancient ice like the snap of dry bones. The smell of brimstone and burning souls wafted up from rivers of fire that veined the terrain. Cania’s freezing gusts bore the innumerable screams of the damned, spicing the air with their pain. Towering, insectoid gelugons, their white carapaces hard to distinguish from the ice, patrolled the banks of the rivers. Their appetite for agony was insatiable, and with their hooked polearms they ripped and tore at the immolated damned who flailed and shrieked in the flames.

  Mephistopheles perched atop an ice-capped crag a quarter-league high and stared down at his realm of ice and fire and pain. Plains of jagged ice stretched away in all directions. Black mountains hazed with smoke scraped a glowing red sky lit by a distant, pale sun.

  And he ruled it all. Or almost all.

  His gaze fixed on the mound of shadow-shrouded ice that had defied his will for a century, and his eyes narrowed. His anger stirred the embers of his power, and the air crackled around him, baleful emanations of the divinity he’d stolen from the god, Mask.

  Staring at the shadowy cairn, he sensed that events were picking up speed, fates being decided, events determined, but he couldn’t see them. Matters were fouled and he suspected the shadowy cairn had something to do with it.

  “Permutations,” he said, his voice as deep and dark as a chasm. “Endless permutations.”

  He had schemed for decades to obtain a fraction of the divine power he now held, intending to use the power he’d gained in a coup against Asmodeus, the Lord of Nessus, a coup that would have resulted in Mephistopheles ruling the Nine Hells. But events on one of the worlds of the Prime had made a joke of his plans.

  The Spellplague had ripped through the world of Toril, recombining it with its sister world, Abeir, and causing chaos among gods and godlings. A half-murdered god had literally fallen through the Astral Sea and into the Ninth Hell. Asmodeus had finished the murder and absorbed the divinity.

  Mephistopheles, who had plotted for decades to become divine, had managed to take only a fraction of a fraction of a lesser god’s power, while the Lord of the Ninth had become a full god through luck. By chance. And Mephistopheles was, once more, second in Hell.

  Worst of all, he feared that Asmodeus had recently learned of his plans. Mephistopheles’s spies in Nessus’s court spoke of mustering legions, of Asmodeus’s growing ire. A summons had reached Mephistar, Mephistopheles’s iron keep. Asmodeus’s words had been carried on the vile, forked tongue of the Lord of Nessus’s sometime-messenger, the she-bitch succubus, Malcanthet.

  “His Majesty, the Supreme Overlord of the Hells, Asmodeus the Terrible, requires His Grace’s presence before his throne in Nessus.”

  “Supreme, you said?”

  “Shall I tell His Majesty that you take issue with his title?”

  Mephistopheles bit back his retort. “He sends me Hell’s harlot to convey a summons? To what end is my presence required?”

  Malcanthet had ignored the question, offering only, “His Majesty wished me to inform you that time is of the essence.”

  “And my time is limited. I will attend when I’m able.”

  “You will attend within a fortnight or His Majesty will be forced to assume that you are in rebellion. Those are the words of His Majesty.”

  Mephistopheles had glared at her while his court had muttered and tittered. “Get out! Now!”

  Malcanthet had bowed, smirking, and exited the court, leaving Mephistopheles to stew in uncertainties, his court to gossip in possibilities.

  Mephistopheles had managed to put off a reckoning with Asmodeus for decades. He’d made excuse after excuse, but the Lord of the Ninth’s patience had finally worn thin. Mephistopheles had little time and few options. He wasn’t ready. Far below, the cairn of ice mocked him. Shadows leaked from it, dribbled out of its cracks in languid streams. Often he’d tried to burn his way to the bottom of the cairn, but the ice would not yield. He’d had hundreds of whip-driven devils tear into the mound with weapons and tools, all to no avail. He’d attempted to magically transport himself within the hill and failed. He could not even scry what lay at its bottom.

  And yet he had his suspicions about what lay under the shadow-polluted ice. “Erevis Cale.”

  Saying the name kindled his anger to flame.

  Mephistopheles had torn out Cale’s throat on Cania’s ice and taken the divine spark of Mask then possessed by Cale. Then, while Mephistopheles had been distracted by his triumph, Cale’s ally, Drasek Riven, himself possessed of another divine spark, had materialized and nearly decapitated Mephistopheles.

  The pain remained fresh in Mephistopheles’s mind. His regeneration had taken hours, and by then, Cale’s body had been covered by the cairn that vexed him so.

  Unable to destroy the cairn, finally Mephistopheles had simply forbade anyone from approaching it. Intricate, powerful wards allowed no one to go near it but Mephistopheles himself.

  Staring at the cairn, his anger overflowed his control. He leaped from his perch and spread his wings—power and rage shrouding him. Millions of damned souls a
nd lesser devils looked up and then down, cowering, sinking into their pain rather than look upon the Lord of Cania enraged.

  He tucked his wings and plummeted toward the cairn, Erevis Cale’s tomb. He slammed into it with enough velocity and force to send a shock wave of power radiating outward in all directions. Snow and ice shards exploded into the air. The damned of Cania uttered a collective groan.

  He looked down, his breathing like a bellows, his rage unabated. The hill remained unmarred—a mound of opaque ice veined with lines of shadow. He aimed his palms at the cairn’s surface and blasted the ice with hellfire. Flame and smoke poured from his hands, engulfing the cairn, the back blast cloaking him in fire and heat. He stood in its midst, unaffected, pouring forth power at the object of his hate. Around him, ice hissed, fogging the air as it melted. Shadows poured from the hill in answer, a dark churn that coated him in night.

  The ice renewed itself as fast as his fires could melt it. The shadows swirled amid the storm of power and snow and ice—mocked him, defied him. He channeled fire and power at the hill, relenting only long enough to let the shadows disperse, the spray of ice and snow to settle. And when it did, he saw what he always saw: the unmarred cairn.

  It was protected somehow and he did not understand it. Something was happening, something he could not see. Mask was in the center of it, the cairn was in the center of it, and he could not so much as melt its ice.

  And now—and now—Asmodeus was coming for him.

  Ropes of shadow leaked from thin cracks in the cairn’s ice and spiraled around Mephistopheles’s body. He threw back his head, stretched his wings, flexed his claws, and roared his frustration at the cloud-shrouded red sky. The sound boomed across his realm, the thunder of his rage. Distant glaciers cracked in answer. Volcanoes spat ash into the sky.

  When at last he was spent, he fell into a crouch atop the cairn, put his chin in his hand, and considered his options.

  He saw only two courses: He could ask forgiveness of Asmodeus and abase himself before the Lord of Nessus, foreswearing rebellion, or he could obtain more power, enough to equal Asmodeus’s, and so empowered, pursue his planned coup.