skin. He picked up a stone from Jak’s cairn, balanced it in his palm. He held Aril’s stone in one hand, Jak’s in the other.
“I will see it though. But not for you.”
He felt Mask at his side, felt the god’s breath on his cheek.
“I know. That is why I chose you for this. I want to tell you something, something I have said too rarely to those I’ve … harmed.”
Cale froze, fearful of what would follow. Shadows leaked from him in pulses, an echo of his racing heart. “I’m sorry,” Mask said.
Cale heard sincerity in the words. He tried to turn, but failed.
“You said you were a herald? Of what?” A thought crossed his mind, then, an awful possibility. “Do you … serve her?”
But the moment was lost. Mask was already gone. The sound of the distant surf returned. Cale remembered to breathe. It took him some time to recover and when he did, he put a hand on Jak’s grave.
“I will do what I can, little man.”
When he dissolved the shadows around him, he found the Shadowwalkers no longer on the drawbridge. He stood and rode the shadows into the temple. He turned his form to shadow, invisible to ordinary sight, even that of the Shadowwalkers, and walked the halls seeking Magadon. He found the mind mage alone in a small, stone-walled meditation chamber, balled up in the corner. Faint starlight shot through a high, narrow window and divided the cell in half, light and dark, a line separating Cale from Magadon.
Stress lined the mind mage’s face; his hands were fists. A vein pulsed in his temple, the visible manifestation of the storm raging behind his closed eyes. He murmured to himself. Cale could not understand the words.
Cale shed his shadows, turned visible.
“Mags.”
Magadon shook his head, murmured louder, wrapped his arms more tightly around his legs, as if trying to hold himself together.
“Magadon.”
“Leave me alone!”
“Mags, it’s me. Erevis.”
Magadon opened his eyes, the movement so slow his eyelids could have been made of lead. The whites of the mind mage’s eyes glowed in the darkness.
“Cale.”
The mind mage’s voice sounded far away, and Cale wondered in what far realm his thoughts had been wandering.
Cale stepped into the cell, across the spear of starlight, and kneeled beside his friend. Magadon smelled of old sweat, a sick room. Cale put a hand on Magadon’s shoulder.
“Are you all right?”
The black dots of Magadon’s pupils pinioned Cale. “No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
Cale stood, extended a hand to Magadon. “On your feet.”
Magadon took his hand, rose.
“I’ll fix this, Mags. I’m going now.”
Magadon licked his lips and blinked away sleep. “I want to come with you. I should be part of it.”
“You know you cannot be there. But I want you to link us and keep us linked. Can you? Or is it too much?”
Magadon consulted his will, nodded. “I can do it.”
“If you need me, if anything happens, if you … start slipping, you tell me.”
Magadon held his eyes for a moment then nodded.
“No farther, Mags.”
Magadon smiled, and Cale saw in it the last bit of hope wrung from the husk of his deteriorating mental state.
“There’s not much farther to fall, Cale,” Magadon said.
“Do it,” Cale said.
Magadon closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. He winced as a red glow flared around his head. Cale felt the irritating itch root behind his eyes, the effect of the opening mental connection.
It will need to be latent most of the time, Magadon projected.
Cale noted that Magadon’s mental voice sounded deeper than it had previously, more like his father’s voice.
If you need me, Cale said. Tell me and I’ll come.
Magadon nodded. Cale squeezed his shoulder and left him with his thoughts, with the war in his skull. The moment he left the cell, he felt the connection go latent.
Cale sought Nayan, found him sitting alone in a dining hall lit only by the two thin tapers melting away into their holders. Looking upon him sitting there, Cale decided that the Wayrock Temple had become a mausoleum, where the dead and dying sat alone in dark stone rooms.
The small man wore a loose shirt and trousers and a sense of purpose. He stood as Cale entered. A plate of bread and cheese sat on the table before him. Cale was distantly pleased that Nayan had not heard him approach.
“Sit,” Cale said. “Eat.”
Nayan tilted his head in gratitude. His body sat but his eyes never left Cale’s face.
“The Shadowlord visits you in physical form,” Nayan said.
“Sometimes.”
“You are blessed.”
Cale chucked. “So you say.