Realms of War

Both homunculi, book ends to his ears, glared and stuck out their tongues.

Despite the seriousness of the moment, Brennus smiled at the audacity of his constructs. He endured their inso shy;lence with a father's patience and pride. While his own father had forced him to take the path of the diviner, his mother had nurtured his fascination with constructs, automata, golems, and clockworks. Some of his fondest memories of his childhood were of showing off to his delighted mother the crude mechanical toys he had fashioned. He still missed her sometimes. She would smile at how far his craft had progressed.

He wondered why he thought of that now, of her.

'Treat,' one of the homunculi said, and the other turned it into a chant. 'Treat. Treat.'

Brennus pulled a sweetmeat from an inner pocket and unwrapped it while the homunculi clapped and smacked their lips. He offered it to them and they devoured it. While they ate, he triggered the magic of the communication ring he wore, felt the connection to Rivalen open.

Rivalen. I have news.

His brother's mental voice, fatigued, answered him. Erevis Cale?

No, Brennus answered, and related to Rivalen all that he had seen and learned. Rivalen answered him with silence.

It will have to be stopped or little of Sembia will remain to occupy, Brennus said.

Still Rivalen said nothing.

Rivalen? Are you unwell? Shall I infirm the Most High?

The tension crackled through the magical connection. No. I will inform our father. Continue to watch the woman. Erevis Cale will come.

Erevis Cale seems hardly to be-

Watch the woman, his brother said. I know the name Volumvax. He is an apostate. He once served Mask before turning to the Lady of Loss.

Mask? Brennus said, and the shadows around him roiled. Erevis Cale serves Mask.

Watch the woman. There is more to this than we yet see.

Brennus did not doubt it.

Varra trudged the game trails, trusting that she was headed west, until at last the forest thinned and finally gave way to the sun-bleached grass of the Sembian plains. Wind stirred the tall grass. Copses of trees dotted the otherwise empty land shy;scape in the distance, lonely sentries bending in the breeze, as if paying obeisance to the coming storm. The ribbon of a packed-earth road split the plains. Pleased to have gotten so far so fast, Varra put the expanding storm to her back and hurried to the road.

Hours passed. The landscape appeared empty, populated only by ghosts and the threats issuing from the rumbling sky. Either the famine or the magical storm had driven most from their homes already. The wind from the south, from the storm, pawed aggressively at her cloak. The darkness weighed on her, dogged her steps, gained on her. She pulled her cloak more tightly around her and hurried on.

Nervousness rooted in her stomach as the sun moved from east to west. She imagined herself asleep on the plain, exposed at nightfall, with the darkness closing the distance. Fighting down the panic, she resolved to walk through the night. She would not stop until she found someone else, anyone else.

The storm growled at her resolve.

An hour later, as the sun shot its final, defiant rays into the darkening sky, she heard the creak of wagons and the low murmur of distant voices from behind her. She turned, hopeful, to see a ragtag group of five wagons winding up the road toward her. Perhaps a dozen men and women walked beside the wagons. Most carried packs stuffed with blankets, pots, tools, the leftovers from a home abandoned.

Almost tearful at the realization that she would not have to face the night alone, she stopped and waited for them to approach.

Tired, fearful eyes looked out of faces creased with anxiety and caked with road dust. A few smiled and nodded greetings. Most simply looked away. All spoke in hushed tones, as if they feared someone would overhear.

'Keep moving, lassie,' said an elderly man. 'They say Ordulin is destroyed. That everyone's dead.'

A woman made a protective sign with her fingers. 'I heard Shar herself stepped out of the sky. It's the Time of Troubles all over again.'

'The darkness is following us,' said a middle-aged man with a pronounced limp. 'It has eyes. The Dales and Elminster are our only hope.'

Mutterings, nods, and muffled tears greeted the pronouncements.

Varra was too tired and afraid to try to make sense of the words.

'We know nothing for certain,' said the heavyset driver of a mule-pulled wagon. Household furnishings were piled high in the wagon: furniture, blankets, buckets, hand tools… A leather hat capped the top of the driver's head, and his belly hung over a wide leather belt. Gray whiskers dotted his unremark shy;able face. 'For now we just keep moving. There'll be safety in the Dales.' He looked around the caravan, holding the eyes of any who looked at him, speaking loud enough for all to hear. 'There'll be safety there.'

His words quieted the murmurings, but fear hung over the group. The man halted the mule and looked down on Varra.

'You alone, little sister?'

The words struck her oddly, and a pit opened in her stomach.

'Yes.'

'Where are you going?'

She gestured vaguely down the road. 'I… I'm not sure.'

'Where are you from?'

She waved vaguely back at the forest.

The man shared a glance with the elderly woman seated beside him in the wagon. She wore a homespun dress over a veined, age-spotted frame that made a scarecrow look hale. Thin gray hair poked unevenly out from under her shawl. A thin, dark-haired man in a black leather jack slept in the seat behind them.

'I am Denthim,' the heavyset driver said. 'This is my mum. That other is another wanderer like you.' He extended a calloused hand to her. 'Up you come, if you will it. You'll be safer with us, I think. And I'd wager a fivestar that there's naught but abandoned villages before us for miles.'

'And darkness behind,' said the old woman.

The sleeping man stirred, mumbling something incomprehensible.

Varra took his hand, smiled in gratitude, and climbed aboard the wagon. 'Thank you, goodsir.'

The elderly woman grinned at her, showing age-blackened teeth, and gestured her to sit. Varra squeezed into the wagon, amid the sleeping man and pans, blankets, and barrels.

She glanced back once at the storm. It was gaining on them.

The sleeping man chuckled in his dream.

Rivalen's room darkened, as did his mood. The shadows around him churned. He sat on a divan, wrapped in shadows, in questions, and turned in his fingers the burned silver and amethyst ring Elyril Hraven had left in his lockbox for him to find, to announce that she had stolen The Leaves of One Night. He took the ring between thumb and forefinger and crushed it.

A rap at his door jarred him.

'Speak,' he called, too harshly.

The voice of the Hulorn's chamberlain, Thriistin, sounded through the wood.

'Prince Rivalen, the Hulorn requests your presence. There is news from Ordulin. Something… strange is afoot.'

Strange, indeed, Rivalen thought. He inhaled deeply and adopted his false face.

'Inform the Hulorn that I will attend him apace. I have only a small matter to consider first.'

'Yes, Prince Rivalen.'

The moment Thriistin walked away, Rivalen snarled and flung Elyril's ring so hard into the door of his