Shadowstorm by Paul S. Kemp

Author:Paul S. Kemp [Kemp, Paul S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-7869-5691-3
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2007-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

26 Uktar, the Year of Lightning Storms

Abelar, Regg, and their company—less the four score dead or incapacitated from the battle—raced toward Saerb. Mounts and men fought fatigue with every league they covered, but fear for their friends and families pulled them ever north and west. They had slept little. Roen and the priests kept them all fed on magical fare and they ate in the saddle. They stopped during the day only for Dawnmeet and as the stout Saerbian mounts required. Leagues of whipgrass-covered plains lay behind them. Leagues more still lay before them.

Only the sound of thundering hooves marked their passage. The men did not jest or chat with one another as they rode, as was their habit. Their usual camaraderie had surrendered to quiet purposefulness. The battle with Ordulin’s forces had driven home the hard realization that civil war had started. Matters would soon get much worse, Abelar knew, and much bloodier.

The unoccupied road stretched before them like a ribbon. They passed villages from time to time but slowed only to warn the villagers that war was coming and that they should flee south.

Fear for Elden consumed Abelar’s thoughts. He occupied the hours by reciting in his mind passages from Lathander’s Book of Light. He reminded himself that dawn always chased even the darkest night, that the sun set but always rose anew. The proverbs brought him scant comfort.

The setting sun turned the cloudless western sky into a pool of orange and red. Abelar took it as a good sign. A line of tall ash trees to their left cast long shadows over the plains.

“What do you make of that?” Regg asked, pulling Abelar back to himself. Regg nodded ahead to the top of a rise, perhaps a crossbow shot distant.

Abelar squinted in the fading light. A patch of darkness blotted the rise under a stand of trees, as if a storm cloud had fallen from the sky. The darkness flowed down the rise like fog, filling the low spots with shadows.

Abelar knew it to be magical. He whistled for the attention of his men and called a halt. The men pulled up, all eyes on the hillock. Hands went to hilts. Horses whinnied.

“Roen, put some light on it,” Abelar called.

Roen chanted a prayer to Lathander and pointed his hand at the rise. A globe of light flared into being over the hill but only partially countered the darkness.

Abelar saw forms within the shadows, half a dozen men or more. Darkness concealed all but one and that one stood a head taller than the rest. Something about the man’s stance and stature looked familiar. The man raised a hand in greeting.

“Morning light,” Regg oathed. “Can it be?”

Abelar stared, his mind racing, his heart swelling. “Can it? Can it?”

The men and women pointed at the rise and an excited murmur ran through them.

Regg put a hand on Abelar’s shoulder, though he kept his eyes on the rise. “The Morninglord reunites the sundered before night falls. It is a good sign, Abelar.

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