sharp and cutting. For who? And we are not there yet.
Not yet, Riven signed. But soon. Get your head around it. He’s a risk. We’ve seen what he can do. He’s in your head, Cale. He took control of you.
Cale could not deny it. Anger boiled up in him and he shouted it into the sky. “Dark!”
Go back, Cale, Magadon said in his mind. Please go back. Do what you promised.
The shadows around Cale boiled.
“Damn it, Mags, I will go back! I will kill Kesson! But we need another way.”
I have no time for another way, Magadon said, the voice more his own. Before Cale could answer, the connection went quiescent. Cale still felt the uncomfortable itch of mental contact deep in his skull, but it was as though the door through which he and Magadon communicated had been left ajar only a sliver. Only Magadon could reopen it. Cale could not.
Riven exhaled a change of subject, shook the fatigue from his arms. He looked around, squinting in the rain. “Kesson will be coming. As long as we’re in the Shadowstorm, he’ll be coming.”
“He will have to find us first,” Cale said. He cast a series of wards to shield them against scrying and divinations, but had his doubts they would work against Kesson. “I can try to get us out, back to Lake Veladon …”
Riven was already shaking his head. “Not with that spell on you. We could end up anywhere—back in Ordulin.”
Riven looked at his right hand, as if pondering the absence of the ring Kesson had slagged with his spell.
“We walk, then,” Cale said, and threw up his hood.
“So we do,” Riven said with a nod. “Bad things in this storm, though.”
Cale remembered the looming, dark creature whose presence they had fled on their way in.
“Nothing for it,” he said, his mind on Magadon. “We have to find another way. I am not putting Magadon down. Get your head around that. The horse got out, yes?”
“Cale, if we have to—”
Cale stopped, turned, and stared at Riven. “We are not giving up on him.”
“I can offer another way,” said a voice to their right, a voice that put Weaveshear in Cale’s hand and Riven’s sabers in his.
Rivalen Tanthul’s golden eyes appeared to float freely in space until the Shadovar disengaged from the darkness. He bore no visible weapon. The shadows hugged his form, blurred his borders.
Cale and Riven fell in side by side, weapons ready. Cale scanned the darkness around them, but saw no one else.
“I am alone,” Rivalen said. He held his hands at his side.
“All the worse for you,” said Riven.
Cale put his free hand on Riven’s shoulder to prevent him from charging. “He could have attacked already,” he said. What Cale did not say was that Rivalen had mentioned another way and Cale was prepared to grasp at anything to save Magadon, even the words of a Shadovar.
Rivalen eyed Cale, inclined his head.
The tension went out of Riven. Somewhat.
“You wonder why I am here,” Rivalen said. He advanced a few steps and stopped, perhaps eight paces from Cale and Riven.
“You are a Sharran dog and Kesson has your leash,” Riven said.
Genuine anger flashed in Rivalen’s eyes before he hid it behind a mask of calm.
“Your words are those of a fool,” the Shadovar said.
Cale held onto Riven as his mind hurried through possibilities. He did not think Rivalen was delaying them for his fellow Sharran. The Shadovar prince could have simply watched them from afar, and brought Kesson whenever he wished. They had not known Rivalen was near. And had the Shadovar wanted to attack, he could have. They would not have seen it coming.
“This makes no sense,” Cale said. Shadows leaked from his body, from his blade.
“That is because you think Kesson Rel and I are allies because we both serve Shar. Not all who serve the same god are allies.”
Cale understood that well. He and Riven had started in service to Mask as rivals.
“Kesson Rel is a heretic,” Rivalen said. “I want him dead, the Shadowstorm stopped.”
In answer to his words, the wind gusted and thunder rumbled.
Riven scoffed. “That’s a dungpile.”
Rivalen’s eyes flared, and the shadows around him whirled.
“Why?” Cale asked.
Rivalen smiled. “He is destroying Sembia, and Sembia is an ally of the Shadovar.”
“Another dungpile,” Riven said, and Cale agreed. If Rivalen was offering even a little truth, there was much more to the matter than he was sharing.
“Stop him, then,” Cale said. “You will find him in Ordulin.” “I know where he