Twilight Falling (22 page)

“I know what it is, Erevis Cale,” Sephris cut in, smiling broadly. “I simply do not know its fate. Except that it is entangled, infinitely entangled, with you two.”

Cale stared at him hard and asked, “How do you know my name?”

“Because I solved you, First of Five.”

“What—”

Only then did Sephris’s words register.

He knew what the sphere was!

Cale held up the half-sphere and managed to keep the emotion out of his voice when he said, “Tell us.”

“Yes, tell us,” Jak echoed.

Unlike Cale, Jak’s voice betrayed the excitement he felt.

Sephris held out his hands for the half-sphere and asked, “May I?”

“Of course,” Cale answered and handed it to him. Cale was surprised to see that his own hands were shaking.

“Imagine the sphere intact,” Sephris said, and he pointed to the green gem—cut in half—set in the exact center of the half-sphere, “and note the emerald set in its center.”

“All right,” Jak said, smiling, eager. “Go on. Go on.”

Cale nodded.

“Imagine that the emerald is—” Sephris tapped one of the planets represented by his orrery, the one third from the sun—”Abeir-Toril. Our world.”

Cale’s arms went gooseflesh.

“What?” Jak asked. “What?”

Cale cleared his throat as the implications of Sephris’s statement hit him. “Then the other gems are … ?”

“Stars,” Sephris said. “And planets … other celestial bodies. Including some that are visible in our sky only once every few centuries.”

Jak reached out a hand for the half-sphere though he did not touch it.

“How can you be sure, Sephris?” the halfling asked. “It doesn’t look like anything.”

The loremaster—Cale thought that Sephris had earned the title—chuckled at that.

“Jak Fleet, the motion of the heavens can be represented by a mathematical model as easily as… the volume of a sphere. I’m certain. Observe.”

Sephris turned the small crank on the orrery. The bronze gears of the mechanism turned and the eight planets began to circle the sun.

“You see? Their motion is predictable, understandable, solvable.” Sephris’s voice turned wistful as he continued, “The movement of the heavens is applied mathematics in its purist form.” He looked down at Jak, who stared wide-eyed at the orrery. “And so I am certain. I suspected that the sphere might be a representation of the heavens when first you showed it to me, but some of the unusual heavenly bodies represented by gems in the sphere caused me to doubt, but I resolved those.”

“Unusual?” Cale asked, intrigued.

Sephris nodded and said, “Indeed. As I mentioned, some of the celestial bodies represented in the sphere appear in our sky to the unaided eye only rarely.”

Cale thought he understood. If he imagined himself standing on the emerald, the gems in the sphere represented the celestial heavens surrounding Toril.

“So it’s a map,” Cale concluded.

“Trickster’s toes,” Jak oathed, and snapped his fingers. “A map. Of course. But a map to where?”

Cale’s mind raced. Why would Vraggen and Azriim risk so much for a map of the stars? They could simply look up at the night sky with a spyglass and obtain the same information. The sphere would tell them little more than Sephris’s orrery.

“It is a map, at least of sorts,” Sephris acknowledged, but gave a secretive smile. “The most elaborate, complete representation of the heavens that I have ever seen. It must have taken months to craft.” He indicated his orrery and added, “This is paltry in comparison. But the sphere is more than a mere map.”

In a rush, it all came together in Cale’s mind. Sephris had described the motion of the heavens as predictable, but he had also said that some of the celestial bodies represented in the sphere appeared only rarely. In that instant Cale knew what the sphere was: It was a picture of the sky at a particular point in time.

“It’s a timepiece,” he breathed.

Sephris looked at Cale with raised eyebrows, obviously surprised that he had made the connection.

“Indeed,” said the loremaster. “It could be nothing else.”

Jak frowned and asked, “A timepiece? Like a Neverwinter clock? How?” Before Cale could explain, realization dawned on the halfling’s face. “Because then-movement is predictable, because some of the gems—some of the celestial bodies, I mean—appear only rarely.” He looked at Cale, smiling. “So it’s not a map to a where …”

“It’s a map to a when,” Cale finished, and could not keep the excitement from his voice. He looked to Sephris. “When?” he asked, but knew the answer the moment the words came out of his mouth.

Sephris shook his head, frowned, and said, “I cannot tell with only half of the sphere.”

Cale should have realized that, of course.

Sephris sank into his desk chair with an audible sigh. Exhaustion showed on his face. Cale realized that the loremaster had hardly mentioned numbers at all since they’d entered the library. Fatigue must have quelled his mania.

“Can you determine anything, Sephris?” Jak asked. “Does it show a time in the past?”

Sephris shook his head and answered, “The future, I believe, Jak Fleet. The future.”

The halfling looked at Cale with raised eyebrows. Now they knew that Vraggen wanted the sphere to tell him when something would occur … but what? Cale looked at Sephris.

“If we had the other half of the sphere,” he asked, “you could tell us the time?”

“Easily.”

Cale nodded. That was something.

“Cale …” Jak began.

“Let’s discuss it outside,” said Cale.

He picked up the half-sphere and put it in his pack. Sephris watched it vanish into the pack the way a man might watch his lover’s back fade into the distance.

Cale looked at Sephris, then looked at the halfling and said, “Jak, let me have a moment.”

Surprised, Jak looked a question at him but nodded. Without a backward glance, he exited the library.

Before Cale could say anything, Sephris said, “You are a priest, aren’t you, Erevis? I could calculate the answer but I’m very tired and it would be easier if you would simply tell me.”

Cale nodded and asked, “How did you know?”

Sephris chuckled, “I can see the abhorrence on your face.”

Cale started to protest but Sephris held up his hand and shook his head.

“I’m all too familiar with it,” Sephris said. “You see in me what you fear you may become. Only another priest has that fear. Only priests are wise enough to fear, rather than covet, the gifts the gods may give.”

“The little man—Jak—is also a priest,” said Cale. “You didn’t see the same fear in him?”

Sephris waved his hand dismissively. “He is a seventeen. A seventeen is prime, evenly divisible by only itself and one, at least among whole numbers. Do you see? A seventeen is not divided in his soul. He is at peace because he already knows what he is. He is not becoming. He is what he is supposed to be. Do you want to know what number you are?”

Cale knew that whatever he was, he was not a prime number, but some number divisible by two. Cale’s soul and his loyalties were divided, and he knew it. Light and darkness warred in him, man and god, faith and independence.

“No,” he said, a bit more harshly than he had intended.

Sephris accepted that without a word.

Cale had planned to ask Sephris what he meant when he had called him the “First of Five,” but he decided then and there that he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to plumb any deeper into Sephris’s thought processes. He did not want to plumb any deeper into his own nature. Except….

“Was it worth it?” Cale asked. “Oghma’s gift?”

Had Mask granted Cale a “gift” of the sort that Oghma had bestowed on Sephris, Cale would have hated him for it.

Sephris nodded. He took Cale’s meaning.

“That is a fundamentally flawed question, Erevis. Do you know why?”

Cale shook his head.

“Because it implies a choice.”

Mentally, Cale rejected Sephris’s statement. He insisted on believing that at some point choice entered into the equation.

Cale said, “I’m not a determinist, Sephris.”

Sephris smiled softly. “Then let me answer you this way. Serving a god brings many rewards, but it also demands a price, always a price. The price I paid—” he sighed, a sound both contented and fatigued—”is simply more apparent to you than the price you have paid … and will pay.”

To that, Cale could think of nothing to say. He found that his hand was in his pocket, clutching his mask. He released it as if it was white hot.

Sephris leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and said nothing further. Cale took that as an invitation to leave.

“Thank you for your help, loremaster. If we get the other half of the sphere …”

Sephris smiled, though he still kept his eyes closed, and said, “Then we will speak again.”

Cale turned to go. The library didn’t appear as disorganized before.

When he laid his hand on the door handle, Sephris called to him, “One last piece of advice, Erevis. Listen carefully, for here is the key to understanding Fate.” He paused before he said, “Two and two are four.”

Cale gave a smile. If only it was that simple.

“I don’t believe in Fate, loremaster.”

Sephris opened his eyes then and said, “That is only because you cannot yet do the math.”

Outside, Jak didn’t ask Cale what transpired between he and Sephris. Instead, the halfling and Cale filled Riven in on events. The assassin took it in without a word.

Afterward, he said, “So the sphere tells the time that something will occur. But we don’t know what the something is and we don’t know where it will happen.”

Cale nodded. Almost involuntarily, all three glanced skyward, though no stars were visible in the daytime sky.

Jak took out his pipe and tamped it.

“But we can be sure it’s not good,” the halfling said.

At that, Riven scoffed. Cale suspected that the assassin didn’t care if what Vraggen sought from the sphere was good or otherwise. He only wanted to kill the wizard whose spell had made him afraid. Cale would just have to use that.

Jak struck a tindertwig and puffed on his pipe. The pipeweed’s aroma filled the overgrown yard.

“Cale,” Jak said, “we can’t give them the sphere.”

“Still thinking like a Harper, Fleet?” Riven asked with a sneer. “What do we care what this sphere signals? Worried about the innocent?”

Jak blew smoke in Riven’s direction. He started to frame a reply, but Cale’s hand on his shoulder cut him off.

“Little man, he’s just goading you,” Cale said. “It’s his way. Just leave it alone.”

Cale shot Riven a contemptuous glance.

“We can’t turn over the sphere,” Jak repeated. “They aren’t human, at least some of them aren’t, and we don’t know what they plan to do.” He shot a heated glare at Riven and added, “And burn him if he won’t think about innocents. Wearing a pin didn’t make me what I was, Drasek Riven, and resigning from the Network doesn’t change what you are.”

Riven only sneered.

Cale found that he too was concerned about innocent lives, and that realization pleased him. But there were more selfish reasons at work. He wanted to stop Azriim and Vraggen—kill them—for personal reasons. They had invaded Stormweather Towers, murdered guards, kidnapped Ren, and tried to incinerate he and Riven at the Stag. They had earned his wrath. For that, they would all die.

Cale patted Jak’s shoulder and said, “We’re not giving them the sphere, little man, or at least we’re not letting them keep it. We get Ren back safely and kill them all, under the leaves of the Elm. That solve your problem?”

“Solves mine,” Riven said, and he winked at Fleet.

Jak blew smoke rings at him and said, “You couldn’t solve two and two with an abacus, Zhent.”

Jak’s choice of words gave Cale gooseflesh.

“We’ve got a day,” Cale said. “Let’s get ready.”

Cale sat in the chair in their room at the Lizard, preparing for communion with his god. Jak and Riven were already asleep in their cots. Cale was to wake Riven before dawn, but doubted he would. He knew he would not be able to sleep that night.

No candle lit the room but Selune’s light through the shutter slats cast silver lines on the floor. Cale waited. Though Selgaunt’s churches stopped tolling after the tenth hour, Cale knew intuitively when the midnight hour began. A benefit of serving the Lord of Shadows, he supposed.

He calmed himself, and cleared his mind. Time passed. When midnight arrived, a cloud passed before Selune and cast the room in utter darkness. A sign from Mask.

The darkness mirrored Cale’s mood. Dark thoughts filled in his mind, violent, bloody thoughts. He reached out his consciousness to his god and requested spells that would harm his enemies. Mask answered. Cale’s mind filled with power, the power granted him by the Lord of Shadows.

At that moment, Riven began to toss in his sleep, muttering in the strange tongue Cale had heard him speak previously. For a fleeting instant, Cale thought he understood the words—an ancient tongue once used by worshipers of the Lord of Shadows in the deep of night—but the meaning danced just out of reach of his understanding before dispersing like smoke.

Jak’s voice, jarring in the dark, gave Cale a start.

“You all right, Cale?”

Riven’s muttering must have awakened the halfling. Jak was sitting up in his cot, looking at Riven.

“I’m fine, Jak,” Cale replied. “Go back to sleep.”

The halfling nodded at Riven and said through a yawn, “What in the Nine Hells is he dreaming about?”

Cale didn’t answer.

“Probably don’t want to know anyway,” Jak said, chuckled, and lay back down to sleep.

Cale didn’t bother to wake Riven for his watch. Instead, he spent the night murdering the last of the butler in his soul. From then on, he wanted nothing in him but the killer.

A steady rain fell, soaking Cale’s cloak. The gray clouds turned the dusk of evening into the darkness of night. The surface of the Elzimmer churned in the downpour. Before them rose the High Bridge. Wide enough to accommodate three wagons abreast, the great span had stood for hundreds of years, withstanding countless battles and mage duels. The thick oak footings of the span rose from the river’s waters like the legs of giants. It looked as immovable as a mountain, but Cale knew better. The Uskevren had fought a battle there months before against the summoned horrors of Marance Talendar. The magic released during that combat had set the bridge to shaking and nearly brought it down.