Shadowbred_ The Twilight War Part 33

Cale bade the house guards at the gate goodeve, strode down the walkway, and stepped out onto the darkness of Rauncel's Ride. Street torches pasted shadows over the cobbles, the sides of buildings. A few wagons rumbled up the streets and dozens of pedestrians walked the avenue. All of them wore worry on their faces. There was barely enough food to prevent starvation through the winter, and spring would bring war.

Cale adjusted his pack. He checked his weapons and his mask, and thanked Mask again for the spells that filled his mind. He walked the street until he found a deserted alley. It stank, of course, as all alleys did these days. Despite his grim mood, he smiled, thinking of Mask's request to him that he cease appearing and disappearing from alleys.

"Old habits are slow to die," he said, and pulled the darkness about him. He imagined the Wayrock in his mind-a rocky, gull-covered isle jutting from the blue expanse of the Inner Sea, with the temple that Mask had stolen from Cyric pointing up from its center.

Cale had not returned to the Wayrock since killing the Sojourner, since Jak had died. He knew he would find Riven there, serving Mask, and he would also find Jak's grave. He had not helped bury his friend-the pain had been too sharp, then-and he regretted it. He had never said good-bye, not really.

Remembering the halfling, how he had felt, cold and lifeless in Cale's arms, sent a swell of emotion through Cale like a fist in his throat. He beat back the tears and reached down to touch the pipe in his belt pouch-Jak's pipe. For a moment, the smell of pipeweed was so powerful that Cale could have sworn Jak was standing beside him.

But it was only a phantom, a memory, and it vanished with the breeze. Cale tried to send his grief with it. He had work to get done.

He reached out to make a connection between the night in Selgaunt and the night at the Wayrock, found it, and moved across the Inner Sea in a moment.

He appeared near the center of the island, just outside the tower. The surf murmured in the distance. The smell of fish and sea salt spiced the air.

The spire, a gray stone cylinder unmarred by windows, looked much the same as the last time he had seen it, when it had channeled enough magical power to pull one of Selune's tears from the Outer Darkness. The drawbridge was lowered and the open archway leered. Torches burned on either side of the entry and the flames danced in the wind. Cale saw no guards. Mask's temple appeared abandoned.

A figure materialized out of the darkness of the archway. Cale recognized Riven from his stature and stance, from the two sabers that hung from his weapon belt. He wore a black cloak rather than his usual crimson.

He did not bother to hail Riven and Riven did not bother to hail him. Cale started up the drawbridge; Riven started down. Cale was Mask's First; Riven was Mask's Second. They met in the middle, cloaked in the night.

"He told me you were coming," Riven said. "I have been waiting."

Like the tower, Riven looked much the same as the last time Cale had seen him-short, muscular, and precise. He wore his long black hair pulled back and tied. The scarred hole of his right eye looked like a pit in the swarthy skin of his face. The signature sneer and stained teeth nested in a black goatee. He wore a black disc on a chain around his throat-a symbol of Mask.

Cale did not waste time with niceties. "I need help, Riven."

Riven c.o.c.ked an eyebrow over his empty socket. "What kind of help?"

"I need to pull a man out of the Hole of Yhaunn."

Riven scoffed until he saw that Cale was serious. "You came here for that? No one comes out of the Hole, Cale."

"He must, and soon."

Riven raised his eyebrows to ask why.

"Long tale," Cale said. "There is much at stake."

"For who?" Riven asked.

"For Mask. For Magadon."

Both struck bone. Riven's eye narrowed. "Magadon's in the Hole?"

"No. Magadon's missing."

"Missing?"

Cale hesitated, then dived in. "Have you ... dreamed of him?"

Riven's eye widened and he nodded slowly. "A blizzard of ice, devils. He's falling. They stopped, though. A while back."

"For me, too," Cale said, nodding, though Cale had dreamed of flames, not ice. "But it's all related somehow: the dreams, the Hole, Mask." He stared into Riven's face. "I need your help, Riven."

"You are the First," Riven said, and the words surprised Cale, for he heard no envy in them. Riven stroked his goatee. "The Hole is dead to magic. Spells do not work there. Magical weapons or toys. Nothing."

Cale had not known. The fact complicated matters. "Nothing works?"

"Nothing," Riven answered. "When I was with the Zhents-just starting out-they considered trying to get a man out of there but called it off. They thought it impossible. It's not the guards. There aren't that many. It's that it's in a city, with only one way in and out, and no way to use magic."

"Nothing is impossible."

"True," Riven said. "But it can't help but be ugly."

"That's why I need you," Cale said.

Riven smiled at that. "We'll need to be fast."

"Speed is critical," Cale said, nodding. "We take a guard and force him to tell us where our man is. We get him and get out."

Riven looked him in the face. "Who's the target?"

"A Sembian n.o.bleman. Endren Corrinthal."

Riven's face showed no recognition.

"Ordulin is making an armed play for all of Sembia. It's all lies, but Selgaunt and Saerb are the falls. Endren would rally some of the neutrals to Selgaunt and Saerb."

"Civil war in Sembia," Riven said, shaking his head. "Coin counters at war. They're in for some hard lessons." He looked at Cale. "I'll do this because you're the First and because you believe it ties back to Magadon. I care nothing for a Sembian civil war."

"Well enough," Cale said. He would get no better from Riven.

"When do we move?" Riven asked.

Cale considered. "Tomorrow night. Do you know the layout from your Zhent days? The number of guards?"

Riven shook his head. "I wasn't part of the Zhents' planning. Just muscle, then."

"Then we go in blind and improvise," Cale said.

"So we do," Riven said. He offered his hand. Cale was surprised, but took it. They had said good-bye with the same gesture after Jak's death.

"Welcome back," Riven said, and the words sounded almost exactly like those Mask had whispered in Cale's ear before the battle with Malkur Forrin's mercenaries.

"Almost there, now," Cale said softly, echoing Mask's words.

"What did you say?" Riven asked.

"Nothing. It's good to be back," Cale said, and meant it. He had come to rely on Riven, his Second, and Riven had not let him down.

Riven gazed into the night, licked his lips. "There are some things you need to see. Things have happened since you were last here."

Riven was rarely cryptic and his words raised Cale's curiosity. "Such as?"

"Follow me," Riven said.

They turned and walked up the drawbridge side by side. Before they reached the tower's archway, two short-haired hounds darted out of the tower and dashed toward them. Both had birder in them, judging from their ears and black and brown spots.

"My girls," Riven said by way of explanation. His voice held a surprising softness.

Cale kneeled as the canines rushed toward them. Riven halfheartedly ordered the dogs to heel and neither even slowed.

Cale held out his shadowhand to the dogs. They sniffed it suspiciously, whined, and backed off, but Cale persisted and the larger came back again to tentatively sniff, and the smaller followed suit. Moving slowly, Cale rubbed the larger one on her muzzle, the smaller on her flanks.

That did it. Tails wagged and they licked his fingers. Cale gave them a final pat.

"They're good dogs," he said, standing.

"Loyal," Riven answered quietly.

"A good quality," Cale said, not necessarily meaning the dogs.

"That's truth," Riven said.

Tongues lolling, the dogs bounced from Cale to Riven, and the a.s.sa.s.sin stroked each of their heads in turn. They licked his hand and both fell over and showed their bellies. Riven scratched each. Cale found the scene entirely incongruous. Until then, he had never seen Riven gentle with anything.

"I never understood your fondness for dogs," Cale said good-naturedly.

"And I never understood your fondness for Jak Fleet," Riven said as he stood.

Anger chased Cale's smile and hot words formed on his lips. He started to speak but Riven shook his head, held up his hand, and cut him off.

"That's a lie. I did understand it. Fleet and I ... reached an understanding before the end. I'm sorry for those words, Cale. Old habits return when I see you."

"Old habits are slow to die," Cale said, echoing the words he had spoken to Mask moments before.

"Go on," Riven said to the dogs, and gestured at the archway. The dogs turned and darted inside, tails wagging. Riven watched them go, then turned to Cale.

"Let's say we end all this, beginning now."

"End what?"

"The posturing," Riven said, making a frustrated gesture. "All of it. We've been through too much, Cale. You are Mask's First and I am his Second, and that's the end of it."

Cale managed a nod through his surprise. They had had been through too much. "Well enough," he said. "We are past it. Starting now." been through too much. "Well enough," he said. "We are past it. Starting now."

Riven stared at him, nodded, and they walked up the drawbridge.

"I presume we'll hit the Hole after midnight?" Riven asked.

Cale nodded. "Well after."

Guards would be not only fewer, but tired in the small hours. Cale had killed many men during the sleepy hours before dawn. He knew Riven had done the same.

They strode through towering iron doors and into the temple's foyer. The dogs were gone. The bare entryway appeared exactly as it had when Cale had last seen it. A pair of wooden double doors stood opposite them, with a wide stairway beyond it leading up into darkness.

"I had thought to fit the place out," Riven said by way of explanation. "Transform it into a temple for Mask. I thought that was what he wanted."

Cale knew that guessing at what Mask wanted was a fool's game. "But it wasn't?"

Riven shook his head. "I don't think stealing this place was about getting a new temple. Or at least it was only partially about that." He looked at Cale sidelong and said, "I think it was about us."

They walked through the double doors and started to climb the wide stone stairway beyond.

"Us? What makes you think that?" Cale asked.

"They do," Riven said, and nodded at the top of the stairs.

Cale stopped in his steps.

At the top of the stairs stood seven men clad in darkness. Long dark hair hung loose around clean-shaven brown faces. At first Cale thought each wore a mask over the top half of his face but he realized it was a tattoo of a mask. The dark eyes looking out of the tattoos featured the eyefolds typical of those from the far east.

All wore gray cloaks, gray breeches, and soft leather shoes. None wore weapons, but all showed battle scars on their hands and forearms. Torchlight from the hall behind them backlit their silhouettes.

"They said a vision brought them here," Riven said.

"A vision?" Cale walked up the rest of the steps, Riven beside him, until he stood face to face with the foremost of the seven men, whom Cale took to be the leader. The man, smaller and less muscular than Riven, gave a nod and the others bowed slightly. All seven regarded Cale with open curiosity, though they said nothing.

"What kind of vision?" Cale asked the leader.

The man said nothing, merely studied Cale's eyes, the shadows that leaked from his skin, the darkness that flowed around him like fog.

"I asked you a question," Cale said.

"They arrived two months after you left," Riven explained. "They almost never speak, but I know they call themselves shadowwalkers. They may not be shades, but I have seen them move and they are d.a.m.ned close."

"What are they doing here?" Cale asked Riven, though he continued to eye the shadowwalkers.

"'Waiting,' is all they would say."

"Waiting?" Cale asked. He stared into the leader's dark eyes. "For what?"

"They won't answer you, Cale. They're just here ... waiting. And they won't help us with Yhaunn. I have tried to enlist them before. Whatever they are waiting for, it hasn't happened yet."

"And you think it has to do with us?"