EPILOGUE
9 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)
The ghosts of the past haunt my mind, specters of memory that manifest in sadness. I run an alehouse in Daerlun, now. It is a small thing but small things are all I find myself suited to now. My appearance startles no one in these days; most have seen creatures more exotic than me. I fill cups, tell jokes, hire bards, and try to brighten a few spirits in otherwise dark times. I call my place The Tenth Hell and the caravaneers and hireswords who stream through Daerlun seem to like the name.
The Tenth is my personal Hell, I tell them, and they think I am making a joke, given my horns and obvious fiendish lineage. But I do not mean it as a joke.
One hundred years have passed since Erevis Cale died. There have been other landmarks in my life since then, other tragedies, but his loss remains the most painful, the point that defines the “after” in my life. He sacrificed himself to save me when I did not merit saving. For that, I owe him what I am. And I owe it to him to be worthy of what he did.
There are still days when I tap a keg and convince myself that he is not gone, not forever. How can he be? I saw him do too much, survive too much, to be gone. I stare into the shadowy corners of my place, eye the dark alleys of Daerlun, looking for him, expecting him to step from the darkness, serious as usual, and call to me:
“Mags,” he will say.
But he never does.
He is gone, forever I suppose, and no one has called me Mags in over ninety years. I do not allow it to anyone but Riven, and we have not spoken since two years after the Shadowstorm retreated.
He looked different when I saw him, darker, more there. Over a tankard of stout in the alehouse that I would buy seventy years later (it was called The Red Hen, then), he told me what he had become.
I believed him. I could see it in the depths of his eye, in the way the darkness hugged his form. He sat in the alehouse for several hours and I’d wager that only one or two patrons other than me even noticed him. He had become the shadows.
“Faerûn thinks Mask is dead,” I said.
He took his pipe out of his mouth and exhaled a cloud of exotic smelling smoke. Shadows bled from his flesh, as they once had from Cale. He looked at me with an expression that did not belong to a mere man. His voice was a whisper, the rush of the wind through night shrouded trees.
“He is, but not forever. Let’s keep that our secret, Mags.”
I detected a threat in the statement, in the way the darkness around me deepened. I nodded, changed the subject.
Our conversation started with recent events and moved back through time. We spoke of Cale, Kesson Rel, Rivalen Tanthul, the Sojourner, Azriim the slaad, even our days in Westgate. I asked after his dogs, the temple. He did not touch his stout and when we parted it had the feeling of permanence.
“Take care, Mags,” he had said.
I almost touched his arm but lost my nerve at the last moment. “Are we friends, Drasek?”
“Always, Mags.”
I turned for a moment at the crash of a breaking tankard and the string of curses that accompanied it. When I turned back, he was gone. We spoke again only once more.
A few years later, in the Year of Blue Fire, the Spellplague ravaged Faerûn. Many people measure time from that point onward. Me, I still measure it from the day Erevis Cale died.
I was making my living as a caravan guide and roadman for the wagons streaming in and out of Sembia, working with the kind of men and women I now serve in The Hell. I did not learn the full scope of the changes wrought by the Spellplague until much later but I saw its effects in the Hen, when a wizard sitting at the table next to me looked up from his tea, wild-eyed.
“What is it?” I asked.
He opened his mouth to speak, managed only to utter the word, “Something …” then froze in his chair. His blood and flesh had turned to ice. I learned later that the Spellplague had turned the Weave to poison and caused havoc with practitioners of the Art. The magical surges and vacuums changed Faerûn forever.
I continued to work as a guide. Travelers from abroad told alarming tales around the campfires—some areas of Faerûn had sunk into the ground, replaced by chasms and lakes filled with dire, loathsome creatures from below. Seas had drained. Whole chunks of the world had simply disappeared, effaced from history and memory, replaced by parts of some other world that had bled in to fill the void. Thousands died, millions perhaps, including gods, and the world was transformed.
I found the tales hard to believe, and wanted to see for myself. Journeying across central Faerûn, I saw chunks of the world floating free in the air, eerie echoes of the Shadovar’s floating cities. I saw twisted creatures rise from steaming pits to pollute nature with their presence.
And everywhere I saw fear and uncertainty in the eyes of Faerûn’s people. Men and women of every profession and station gathered together in alehouses and taverns after night fell and shared whatever dark news they had heard that day. I saw the comfort they took in one another’s presence, the importance of a common meeting place, and decided then that I would run an alehouse one day.
Wherever I went, no one seemed to know what caused the plague, though rumors abounded. My suspicions turned to the Shadovar and Shar, since Sembia, which had traded the darkness of the Shadowstorm for the darkness of Shadovar rule, went largely unaffected. To this day Tamlin Uskevren still rules Sembia, at least in name, though he answers to Rivalen Tanthul.
We all answer to someone or something.
Me, I answer to the past. Always will.
When I reached the dark shores of the Abolethic Sovereignty, with the hypnotic rhythm of its lapping waters, I turned back. Faerûn was different and I had seen enough. For the first time in my life I wanted to settle in somewhere, make a home, find another way of life. But I had one thing to do first.
I sought out Riven.
I hired a small ship out of shadow-shrouded Selgaunt and took it to the Wayrock. I told myself that I wanted to ensure that Riven was all right, that he had survived the Spellplague, but I think what I really wanted was to ensure that I was not the only one still living who carried the weight of our past.
I left the crew aboard ship and rowed a dinghy to the island. Mask’s temple remained intact, the drawbridge lowered. I entered, walked its dark, empty halls, but found no one. Tears fell as I walked. I remembered the days I had spent in the temple, lost in fiend-spawned dreams, planning evil, harming my friends.
I hurried from that place, chased by self-loathing, and walked the island. Shadows filled the hollows and low spaces. The surf crashed; the birds squawked. I climbed the hill and visited Jak’s cairn. It was well-tended still.
I thought at the time that Riven must have returned to the temple from time to time, but no longer resided there. Perhaps too many memories stalked its halls for him, too. I was wrong.
As I rowed back out to the ship, shadows coagulated around me. The boat pulled a deeper draft as additional weight settled on it. I tried to turn, but the darkness held me fast.
“Riven?”
Riven’s voice sounded in my ear, as if he were sitting right behind me. His tone was one of surprise.
“Cale has a son, Mags.”
“A son? How? Where? He lived through the Spellplague?”
“He was born afterward. He will be born afterward, rather.”
“Will? What are you saying?” I set the oars and tried to turn on my bench, but failed. “How? Cale died in—”
“Mask pushed her forward through time to save her from the Shadowstorm, and from the Spellplague. I haven’t yet located her.”
“Why would he do that?” I asked.
“Why indeed,” Riven said.
That was not the answer I had expected. “But … aren’t you him? Don’t you know?”
“I am not him, Mags. I just have some of his power.”
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“Men have sons. Maybe nothing. Maybe it was just something he did for Cale.”
I thought not, but held my tongue.
“He told me I would be back for him,” Riven said.
“Who?”
“Your father.”
I tried again to turn, failed. “Back for whom? Cale?”
But the darkness lifted and Riven was gone. I have not seen him since.
I returned to the ship, used my power to cause the crew to forget that they had brought me to the Wayrock, and returned to Daerlun. Years later I bought my place, my Hell, and here I reside.
My mind still bears the scars of my time with Riven and Cale. But they are healed. Mostly. The Source floats in Sakkors’ core, one of the two floating enclaves that hover over the reborn Empire of Netheril, but I no longer feel its pull. I rarely use my powers at all. My father’s voice no longer troubles my sleep. Only memories trouble my mind now, not addictions and archfiends. I hope my life is worthy of the sacrifice Erevis made to save it.
I still check the dark corners of the Hell, the shadowy alleys of Daerlun, but not just for Erevis. Also for his son. When I recall Riven’s words to me aboard the dinghy, I think that Erevis’s story may not yet have unfolded fully. Perhaps it can be completed only through his son. Perhaps that is why Mask spared him.
Time will tell.