Twilight Falling

CHAPTER 1

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.