Paul S. Kemp - The Erevis Cale 1 Twilight Falling

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TWILIGHT FALLING
Book I
THE
EREVIS CALE
TRILOGY
PAUL S. KEMP
A ProofPack Release
Scanned by binkbonk
Proofed and formatted by BW-SciFi
Ebook version 1.0
Release Date: May, 24th, 2005
The Erevis Cale Trilogy, Book I
TWILIGHT FALLING
©2003 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized
use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the
Coast, Inc.
Distributed in the United States by Holtzbrinck Publishing. Distributed in Canada by Fenn Ltd.
Distributed to the hobby, toy, and comic trade in the United States and Canada by regional distributors.
Distributed worldwide by Wizards of the Coast, Inc. and regional distributors.
Forgotten Realms and the Wizards of the Coast logo are registered trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a
subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc.
All Wizards of the Coast characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of Wizards
of the Coast, Inc.
Printed in the USA.
The sale of this book without its cover has not been authorized by the publisher. If you purchased this book without a
cover, you should be aware that neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for this "stripped book."
Cover art by Terese Nielsen
Map by Dennis Kauth
First Printing: July 2003
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:
9876S4321
US ISBN: 0-7869-2998-7
UK ISBN: 0-7869-2999-5
620-17980-001-EN
US., CANADA, EUROPEAN HEADQUARTERS
ASIA, PACIFIC, & LATIN AMERICA Wizards of the Coast, Belgium
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Visit our web site at www.wizards.com
For Jennifer,
the love of my life,
whose light holds twilight at bay.
Save for some whisper of the seething seas,
A dead hush fell; but when the dolorous day
Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came
A bitter wind ...
—the bard Tennyson
PROLOGUE
Fact-finding
The young Tymoran priest lay unconscious on his side, bound hand and foot with thick hemp rope. A
purple bruise was already beginning to form around his left eye. Vraggen eyed him coldly.
"Get him up," Vraggen ordered his agents.
Dolgan, the big Cormyrean, slung his axe and kneeled at the captive's side. He took the priest's face in
his ham hand and squeezed.
"Awaken," Dolgan said.
The priest groaned, but did not open his eyes.
"Well done," taunted Azriim. He stood beside Vraggen with a smirk on his dusky-skinned face. "Very
creative."
Dolgan looked at the half-drow with his typically thick expression and grunted, "Huh?"
Azriim, dressed in the green finery and high boots that he favored, flashed a smile at Vraggen.
"He never gets the joke, does he?"
Vraggen made no reply. To Azriim, everything was a joke.
"I don't?" Dolgan asked, still dumbfounded.
"Wake him up," Vraggen said to the Cormyrean warrior.
"And try not break him," Azriim added. "We need him capable of speech."
Dolgan nodded, turned back to the captive, shook him by the shoulders, and said, "Wake up! Wake up!"
The young priest groaned again. Dolgan lightly tapped his cheeks, and after a moment, the priest's eyes
fluttered open.
"There," Dolgan said. He stood and backed away a few steps to stand beside Azriim and Vraggen.
The priest's bleary eyes cleared the moment his situation registered. He struggled against his bonds, but
only for a moment. Vraggen waited until he saw resignation in the Tymoran's eyes before he spoke.
"What is the last thing you remember?"
The captive tried to speak, but found his mouth too dry. He swallowed, and said, "You abducted me
from the streets of Ordulin." He looked around the cell. "Where am I?"
"Far from Ordulin," Vraggen replied.
Azriim chuckled, and the sight of a laughing half-drow must have unnerved the Tymoran further. His
face went pale.
"What do you want?"
Vraggen stepped forward, kneeled at the priest's side, and said, "Information."
For the first time, the priest's eyes went to Vraggen's broach pin—a jawless skull in a purple
sunburst—the symbol of Cyric the Dark Sun. Fear flashed in his brown eyes. He uttered a prayer under his
breath.
"Is it reasonable for me to assume that you understand your situation?" Vraggen asked.
"I don't know anything," the Tymoran blurted. "I swear! Nothing."
Vraggen nodded and stood. "We shall see."
He beckoned Dolgan and Azriim forward. His agents stepped up to the priest, grabbed him by the arms,
and lifted him to his feet.
"Don't! Please don't!" the priest pleaded.
Vraggen stared into the captive's fear-filled face. For effect, he let shadows leak from his hands and
dance around his head. The Tymoran's breath audibly caught.
"You are a shadow adept," the priest whispered.
Vraggen didn't bother to answer; the shadows were answer enough.
"I'll tell you everything I know."
"Of course you will," Vraggen said. "The only issue is whether or not I feel I can trust you to tell me the
truth without my having to resort to more forceful means. The resolution of that issue will determine
whether or not your last moments are spent in pain."
The priest's lips trembled. He looked into Vraggen's eyes.
"I have a family," he said.
Vraggen was unmoved.
"No doubt they will miss you," Azriim said, smiling.
Dolgan too grinned and shifted from foot to foot, fairly giddy at the thought of bloodshed. The
Cormyrean had a fetish for pain—administering it, and receiving it.
The priest's whole body began to shake. Tears began to leak from his eyes.
"Why are you doing this? I don't even know you. I don't know any of you."
Azriim scoffed, "What does that have to do with it?"
Vraggen patted the priest's cheek, as close as he would come to offering comfort, and said, "I am going
to cast a spell that will subject your will to me. Do not resist it. I know that you will speak the truth under
the effect of this spell. That is the only way I can be certain. Otherwise...."
He left the threat unspoken, but the priest took the point. He nodded in resignation.
Vraggen smiled and said, "You've made the right decision."
Beside the captive, Dolgan sighed in disappointment.
Vraggen ignored the Cormyrean, drew on the Shadow Weave, and pronounced the arcane words to a
spell that would make the Tymoran his thrall. When he finished, the captive priest's eyes went vacant. Ever
careful, Vraggen verified that his spell had taken hold of the priest by casting a second spell that allowed
him to see dweomers.
The priest glowed a soft red in his sight, indicating that he was under the effect of a spell. Surprisingly,
so too did Dolgan and Azriim. Vraggen looked a question at his lieutenants.
Azriim took the sense of that look immediately. He held up one long fingered hand, upon which hung a
platinum band.
"Our rings, Vraggen."
Vraggen nodded. He had forgotten that each of his lieutenants wore a ring that warded them against
scrying. He turned his attention back to the captive priest.
"About one year ago, your adventuring company looted a ruined temple in the Sunset Mountains. Do you
remember?"
"Yes," the priest answered in a monotone.
The priest and his comrades, calling themselves the Band of the Broken Bow, had happened upon an
abandoned temple of Shar that Vraggen had been seeking for months.
"Among the treasures you took from those ruins was a crystal globe of gray quartz, about fist-sized and
inset with chips of gemstones." Vraggen tried to keep his voice level when he asked the next question. "Do
you remember this globe?"
"Yes."
Vraggen shared a glance with Azriim. The half-drow smiled and winked.
"Where is the globe now?"
The priest's brow furrowed and he said, "After we left the temple, we disputed how to divide the
plunder. The globe was a curiosity but not very valuable. Solin took it as a throwaway part of his share."
Vraggen kept his eagerness under control. The fools had no idea what they had taken from that temple.
"Solin?"
"Solin Dar," the priest replied. "A warrior out of Sembia."
"Where in Sembia?"
"Selgaunt," the priest answered.
Vraggen would have laughed if he'd had a sense of humor. He hailed from Selgaunt himself, had served
with the Zhentarim there. It was almost as though the globe had been trying to find him. He decided to take
the news as a sign of Cyric's favor.
"Thank you, priest," he said to the Tymoran. He looked to Dolgan. "Throttle him."
Dolgan grinned, grabbed the priest around the throat, and choked him. While the bound priest gagged
and died, Azriim moved to Vraggen's side.
"At least we have a name now. Selgaunt?"
Vraggen nodded. They would use their teleportation rods to move quickly to Selgaunt, find Solin Dar,
and subject him to the same technique as they had used on the Tymoran priest.
Soon, Vraggen would have his globe.
CHAPTER 1
Midnight of the Soul
Cale sat alone in the darkness of Stormweather Towers's parlor. He had not bothered to light one of the
wrist-thick wax tapers that stood on candelabrum around the room. The darkness enshrouded him, which
was well. It suited his mood. He felt... black. Heavy. The Elvish language had a word that perfectly
expressed his feeling: Vaendin-thiil, which meant "fatigued by life's dark trials." Of course, in elven
philosophy the concept of Vaendin-thiil never appeared alone, but was paired always with a balancing
concept which the elves, in their wisdom or folly, deemed a necessary corollary: Vaendaan-naes, "reborn
in life's bright struggles." For the elves, dark trials necessarily gave rise to bright rebirths. Cale was not so
sure. At that moment, he could see only the darkness. The brightness of rebirth seemed impossibly distant.
Selune, trailed by her tears, peered gibbous through the parlor's high windows, casting the room in a faint
luminescence. Artwork from the four corners of Faerun decorated the dim parlor: paintings from the
sun-baked lands of the far south, sculpture from Mulhorand, elven woodcarvings from the distant High
Forest. Suits of archaic armor, ghostly in the silver moonlight, stood in each corner of the large room: a suit
of fine elven mail taken from the ruins of Myth Drannor, a set of thick dwarven plate mail from the Great
Rift, and two suits of ornate Sembian ceremonial armor, both centuries old. That armor was the pride of
Thamalon's collection.
Reflexively, Cale corrected his thought—the armor had been the pride of Thamalon's collection. His
lord was dead. And the Halls of Stormweather felt dead too, a great stone and wood corpse whose soul
had been extinguished.
Cale settled deeper into his favorite leather chair and brooded. How many evenings had he spent in that
parlor with his nose in a tome, feeding his appetite for literature and languages, finding respite in the lore
and poetry of lost ages? Hundreds, certainly. The parlor had been as much his room as were his own
quarters.
But not anymore.
The books and scrolls lining the recessed walnut shelves held for him no comfort, the paintings and
sculptures no solace. In everything Cale saw the ghost of his lord, his friend. Thamalon had been as much a
father to Cale as an employer, and his lord's absence from the manse felt somehow . . . obscene. The heart
had been ripped from the family.
Cale's eyes welled, but he shook his head and blinked back the tears. His blurry gaze fell on one of the
last acquisitions Thamalon had made before his death. It sat on a small three-legged pedestal on an upper
shelf, a solid orb of smooth, translucent, smoky-gray quartz the size of an ogre's fist, with pinpoints of
diamond and other tiny gemstones embedded within it. The chaos of the piece was striking, a virtual
embodiment of madness. Thamalon had taken a liking to it at once. He had purchased it only a month
before, along with a variety of other oddities, from Alkenen, a wild-eyed, eccentric street peddler.
Cale had been at Thamalon's side that day, one of the last days of his lord's life. They had played chess
in the afternoon, and in the evening shared an ale and discussed the clumsy plots of the Talendar family.
Cale smiled at the memory. He resolved then and there to take the orb with him when he left
Stormweather, as a memento of his master.
He didn't realize the full import of his thought until a few moments later. When he left Stormweather.
When had he decided to leave? Had he decided to leave?
The question sat heavy in his mind, fat and pregnant.
He leaned forward in the chair and rested his forearms on his knees. He was surprised to see that he
held between his fingers a velvet mask—his holy symbol of Mask the Lord of Shadows. Odd. While Cale
always kept it on his person, he didn't remember taking it from his vest pocket.
He stuffed the mask back into his vest, interlaced his fingers, and stared at the hardwood floor. Perhaps
it was time to leave. Thamalon was gone and Tamlin was head of the family. And Tamlin had little use for
Cale. What else was there for him?
The answer leaped into his consciousness the moment he asked the question: Thazienne. Thazienne was
there for him.
He crushed the thought, frowning. Thazienne was not there, at least not for him. Her heart belonged to
another. Her arms embraced another. Another shared her—
He snarled and shook his head, struggling to control his anger. Anger did him no good, and he knew it.
He had spent years loving her, though he had always feared it to be futile. She was the daughter of a
merchant noble, he but an assassin playing servant. But the rational understanding that she could never
return his love had not quelled the secret hope—he could finally admit that to himself, that he had
hoped—that somehow, somehow, they would end up together. Of course, his rationality had done nothing
to stop the knife stab of pain he had felt when she had returned from abroad, smiling on the arm of Steorf.
Merely thinking the man's name shot him full of rage.
The Cale of fifteen years past would have killed Steorf out of spite. The thought of that still tempted
some tiny part of him.
But Cale no longer heeded that part of himself. And he owed that change to Thazienne.
It had been nearly two years since he'd left her a note containing the sum total of his feelings for her: Ai
armiel telere maenen hir, he had written in Elvish. You hold my heart forever.
She had never even acknowledged the note. Not a word, not even a knowing glance. They had stopped
meeting in the butler's pantry late at night for drinks and conversation. She had turned away from him in
some indefinable way. When he looked her in the eyes, it was as though she didn't see him, not the way she
once had.
She was not there for him, and it was time to leave. Stormweather Towers was suffocating him.
Once made, the decision lifted some of the weight that sat heavily on his soul. He did not yet know
where he would go, but he would leave. Perhaps he could convince Jak to accompany him.
As always, the thought of the halfling rounded the corners of Cale's anger and brought a smile to his
face. Jak had stood by him through much, through everything. They had faced Zhents, ghouls, and demons
together. Perhaps most importantly, Jak had helped Cale understand Mask's Calling. Jak had taught him
how to cast his first spells.
Of course Jak would accompany him. Jak was his best friend, his only friend, his conscience. A
man—even a killer—couldn't go anywhere without his conscience. He and Jak seemed linked, seemed to
share a common fate.
Cale smiled and reminded himself that he did not believe in fate. At least he hadn't. But maybe he had
come to. Or at least maybe he should. How could he not? He had been called to the priesthood by his god
and had defeated a demon through that Calling.
But I chose to accept the Calling, he reminded himself.
Korvikoum. That word—his favorite concept from dwarven philosophy—elbowed its way to the front
of his mind. Dwarves did not believe much in fate. They believed in Korvikoum: choices and
consequences. In a sense, fate and Korvikoum stood in opposition to one another, as much as did
Vaendin-thiil and Vaendaan-naes, as much as did being a killer and being a good man who killed.
Cale reached for the wine chalice on the table beside his chair and took a sip. The five-year-old vintage
of Thamalon's Best, a heavy red wine, reminded him of the nights in the library he and his lord had played
chess over a glass. Thamalon had believed in fate, strongly so. The Old Owl had once told Cale that a man
could either embrace fate and walk beside it, or reject it and get pulled along nevertheless. That evening,
Cale had merely nodded at the words and said nothing, but ultimately he wondered if Thamalon had gotten
it right.
Still, Cale was convinced that the choices a man made could not be meaningless. If there was fate, then
perhaps a man's future was not fixed. Perhaps a man could shape his fate through the choices he made.
Fate delineated boundaries; choice established details. So fate might make a man a farmer, but the farmer
chose what crops to plant. Fate might make a man a soldier, but the soldier chose which battles to fight.
Cale liked that. Fate may have made him a killer, but he would decide if, who, why, and when he killed.
He raised his glass to the darkness, silently toasting the memory of Thamalon Uskevren.
I'll miss you, my lord, he thought.
He would miss the rest of the Uskevren too, and Stormweather Towers, but he would leave
nevertheless. From then on, he would serve only one lord.
He reached back into his vest and again withdrew his holy symbol. The velvet of the mask felt smooth in
his hands. He held it before his face and stared at it, thoughtful. The empty eye holes stared back.
Fate or choice? they seemed to ask.
Cale considered that, and after a moment, he gave his answer.
"Both," he whispered, "and neither."
With that, he turned the mask around and put it on, the first time he had ever done so in Stormweather
Towers. It did not bring the expected comfort. Instead, it felt wrong, as obscene as Thamalon's absence
from the manse. He pulled it off and crumpled it in his fist.
"What do you want from me?" he whispered to Mask.
As usual, his god provided him no answers, no signs. Mask never provided answers, only more
questions, only more choices.
Months before, in an effort to better understand his Calling, Cale had scoured Thamalon's personal
library for information about Mask and the Lord of Shadows' faithful. Unsurprisingly, for Mask was the god
of shadows and thieves, after all, there was little to be found. He had finally concluded that serving Mask
was different than serving other gods. The priests of Faerun's other faiths proselytized, ministered,
preached, and in that way won converts and served their gods. Mask's priests did no such thing. There
were no Maskarran preachers, no street ministers, no pilgrims. Mask did not require his priests to win
converts. Either the darkness spoke to you or it didn't. If it did, you were already Mask's. If it didn't, you
never would be.
The darkness had spoken to Cale, had whispered his name and wrapped him in shadow. And now it
was telling him to leave Stormweather Towers.
He sighed, finished his wine, and stood. If he was to be reborn in life's bright struggles, he would have to
do it elsewhere. It was time to go.
CHAPTER 2
The Dead of Night
"Well met, mage," said Norel, as he slid into the chair across the table from Vraggen.
"Norel," Vraggen acknowledged with a nod. He unfolded his hands to indicate the tin tankards on the
table, each foaming with ale. "I purchased ales for us."
Suspicion narrowed Norel's eyes to slits. Obviously, he thought the ale might be poisoned. The thought
amused Vraggen. As if he could be so ... banal.
As quick as the snake that he was, Norel reached across the table and snatched the tankard from in
front of Vraggen, rather than the one set before him.
"Appreciated," Norel said, "but I'll have this one, if you please."
From the smug smile on his face, he seemed to think he had made a point.
Vraggen shrugged, took the ale in front of Norel, and said, "Well enough. This one will be mine then."
Vraggen immediately took a draw, grimacing at the watery taste of the indifferent brew. It reminded
him of the swill he had endured as a mage's apprentice in Tilverton, before that city's destruction by agents
of Shade Enclave.
Seeing Vraggen drink and not fall over dead, Norel grinned and gave an almost sheepish nod—the
closest he would come to apologizing for his mistrust, Vraggen supposed—and took a long pull on his ale.
Vraggen watched him while he drank, smiling with an easy disingenuousness, but wondering if he would
need to kill him later in the evening. Not with anything as vulgar as poison of course, but dead was still
dead.
Time would tell, he supposed.
The two sat at a small table in a back corner of the Silver Lion, a mediocre taproom at the intersection
of Vesey Street and Colls Way, a boisterous corner deep in Selgaunt's Foreign District. It was spring, and
near the tenth hour. As usual for the Lion, a thick crowd of merchants, drovers, and caravan guards filled
the tables and slammed back drink. The heavy aroma of the Lion's infamous beef stew—a thick, wretched
concoction inexplicably favored by caravanners—hung in the air. When mixed with the ubiquitous smell of
pipeweed smoke and sweat, it made Vraggen's stomach turn. Tankards clanged, plates clattered, and
conversation buzzed. Everyone wore steel; everyone drank; and no one paid any attention to Vraggen and
Norel.
Exactly as Vraggen required.
He had chosen the Lion as the location to meet Norel for two reasons: first, it was in the Foreign
District. Zhent operatives like Norel considered the area a "hot zone," a high-trade area well patrolled by
Selgaunt's Scepters, the city's watchmen. Norel would therefore consider himself safe, and not fear the
meeting to be a pretense for a hit. Second, the noise of the crowd made eavesdropping difficult by all but
the most skilled and determined spy. That was well, for Vraggen wanted no premature disclosure of his
plans. Many Zhents thought him dead already, and he wanted them to continue to think as much until he
was ready to move.
Vraggen took another draw on his ale. When he placed the tin tankard, engraved with the crude crest of
a rearing lion, back on the table, he glanced casually into the crowd behind Norel, looking for his lieutenants.
There they were.
Azriim sat three tables away, his dusky skin gray in the light of the oil lamps, his long pale hair held off
his face with a jeweled fillet. Only in Selgaunt's Foreign District could a half-drow like Azriim go
unremarked. Sembians were notoriously prejudiced against elves of any type, but in Selgaunt coin spoke
before race. And Azriim's taste in finery suggested great wealth. Had they been in the Dalelands, Azriim
would have been arrested on sight, probably hanged.
Dolgan shared Azriim's table. The weight of the large Cormyrean, heavy-laden with axes, ring mail, and
a round gut, bowed the thick legs of the wooden chair.
Vraggen brought his gaze back to Norel, though the Zhent made only occasional eye contact. "I thought
you were dead," Norel said.
Vraggen smiled and replied, "You can see that I am not. I was merely away from the city for a time."
Norel gave a quick nod, and took a long pull on his ale. The Zhent operative was struggling to look calm,
but Vraggen saw through the facade: the furrowed brow, the white-knuckled grip on his tankard. Norel was
nervous.
Norel put back another long gulp of his ale, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and set the
摘要：

TWILIGHTFALLINGBookITHEEREVISCALETRILOGYPAULS.KEMPAProofPackReleaseScannedbybinkbonkProofedandformattedbyBW-SciFiEbookversion1.0ReleaseDate:May,24th,2005TheErevisCaleTrilogy,BookITWILIGHTFALLING©2003WizardsoftheCoast,Inc.Allcharactersinthisbookarefictitious.Anyresemblancetoactualpersons,livingordead...

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