With an act of will, Cale caused the darkness to make him invisible, visualized the dark spaces between visible space, and stepped across the island, covering a spearcast at a stride. He moved methodically across the terrain, from beach to promontory to hilltop.
He heard the Sojourner before he saw him. Cackling, grotesque laughter carried above the sound of the surf. Cale followed it to its source, blood on his mind.
On a sandy beach below him, ankle deep in the foamy water, a pale, sticklike figure moved feebly along the beach. With effort, the figure held his thin arms out, as if enjoying the fresh air. He stumbled often in the surf, nearly falling several times. He grabbed at his thin chest from time to time, his breath rattling. Gasps of pain escaped his lips but always gave way to another bout of laughter.
He was dying, Cale saw, and the realization made his pulse pound. The Sojourner was going to die in only one way-by Cale's hand.
Watching the small, pathetic creature wade in the surf, Cale realized that there was no grand plan. The Sojourner had not strived for power or immortality. He had schemed and risked the lives of thousands to walk the sand in the darkness he had created. Nothing more. Cale could hardly believe it. Cale thought the Sojourner worse than any power-mad mage he had ever heard of. Jak had died for nothing.
Cale's anger flared, burned hot, but he resisted the impulse to attack. He knew the Sojourner's power. He knew he could not simply cut the wizard down. His defenses would be powerful. Cale needed an opportunity.
He looked to the hole in the sky and knew it would come soon enough.
So he did what all assassins do-he watched and waited for his chance to kill. He pulled on his mask and whispered the words to a series of protective spells, ending with a spell that allowed him to see dweomers.
Unsurprisingly, the Sojourner glowed like the sun in his sight. Layer upon layer of spells cloaked him. Cale studied them for a few moments, trying to discern their purpose. Some he recognized as defensive wards, others he could not identify.
The island brightened. In the sky above, a fingernail of light peeked out from the edge of the eclipse. Toril was turning and the misplaced moon was not keeping pace. A flare of magical energy, some last vestige of the Sojourner's spell, engulfed the moon, caused it to glow silver. Cracks formed in its surface.
The returning light made Cale uncomfortable but it made the Sojourner's skin blister. Cale could not distinguish between the Sojourner's continuing laughter and his hisses of pain. The sun sneaked farther out from behind Selune's tear. The cracks in the moon grew wider. The light grew. The Sojourner stumbled again, looked up. He rubbed his bare arms. Wisps of smoke rose from his skin. He was burning in the sun. Cale saw his lips peeled back in a grimace of pain.
Cale drew Weaveshear and waited.
The Sojourner looked up as if to the great deepstars overhead, then quickly turned away, hissing with pain. The light surely must have burned his eyes. He stumbled, nearly fell.
Cale struck.
He stepped from the shadows near him and into the Sojourner's own shadow. His proximity triggered the Sojourner's defensive wards. Lightning flared, a fan of flame, a cloud of negative energy. Cale held Weaveshear before him and the blade drank what it could. But the power of the spells was too much for the blade to consume and some of the energy reached Cale. His muscles violently contracted and lightning burned a hole in his stomach. He bit down involuntarily on his tongue, so hard he nearly severed the end. Blood filled his mouth. The last of the negative energy ward stole some of his soul and chilled him to the bone.
He endured it all, cast Weaveshear aside-this was not a matter for the weapon of Mask, but for Cale's own hands-and wrapped his arms, still powered by the spells that augmented his size and strength, around the frail body of the Sojourner. The creature did not struggle against his hold, did not even seem surprised.
Cale clamped one huge hand over the Sojourner's mouth and his palm nearly covered the creature's entire face. He would not let the Sojourner utter a magical word, not a sound. He felt the Sojourner's wet respiration against his fingers. The Sojourner stank of medicines.
Cale spit a mouthful of blood and said though his pain, "This is over."
Cale felt a tingling behind his eyes, the Sojourner's mental fingers, and feared that his protective spell had not worked. The creature's voice sounded in his head: You have protected yourself against attack but not communication.
Cale held the Sojourner still and said in his ear, "You killed my friend."
Did I? I would do it again. I've killed many. I suspect you have too.
Cale wanted to kill him then, but he could not. He had to know.
"Why all this? Did you do it for nothing more than a stroll in the godsdamned sand?"
A shudder wracked the Sojourner's body. It took Cale a moment to realize it was laughter and not pain.
Men always ask why, as if there must be some overarching reason for events. Not this time, priest. There is no such reason. Thousands will die to satisfy my whim.
Cale thought of his words to Riven: This is more than personal. He had been wrong; Riven had been right. There was nothing bigger than the personal.
He gritted his teeth and started to squeeze. Calmly, the Sojourner projected: What moments do you remember most fondly from your youth, priest?
Cale did not answer but he hesitated. He remembered nothing from his youth with fondness.
When death comes for you, you will look back to those moments, long for them as you do for nothing else. All that I have done, I have done to satisfy that longing. To walk the surface in my own form, to feel the wind, to see the Crown of Flame, as I did in my youth. Yes. Is that enough of a why for you?
Cale was disgusted, but in a barely acknowledged corner of his mind, admiring. He hung onto the disgust. He looked up to the sky, to the moon, to the growing slice of the sun. He remembered telling Jak and Magadon that the Sojourner would not involve himself in something small. But he had. His methods had been large but his goal was no more ambitious than that of any man.
"You speak of killing as if it were a small thing."
And you speak as though I should be concerned with the deaths of others. What are all those hundreds, even thousands, to me? I have killed entire worlds for less.
Cale struggled for words, found none.
The Sojourner said, I have seen and done what I willed. Nothing matters anymore. I will be dead by the end of the day.
"It's already night," Cale said.
He lifted the Sojourner from his feet and squeezed.
The frail creature gasped as Cale brought his strength to bear on the thin body, the weak bones. A final protective ward on the Sojourner flared green and Cale felt a surge through his body.
The Sojourner's ribs snapped, folded in on themselves, his collarbone cracked. Cale echoed with his lips the mental screams of the creature that he heard in his brain, for the final ward on the Sojourner was some kind of reciprocity spell. Cale experienced the damage that he inflicted on the Sojourner-the shattered bones, the pain, the pierced organs. His shade flesh tried to repair the damage but the pain made him vomit down his shirt, down the back of the Sojourner's cloak.
Cale did not know whether pain prevented the Sojourner from casting a spell, or whether he was even interested in trying. Cale did not care; he squeezed and the Sojourner screamed. Cale took satisfaction in his own agony because he knew it mirrored what was felt by the Sojourner. He smiled at the creature's screams, smiled at his own, feeling soiled but unable to stop himself. He pulled the Sojourner so tight against him that they might as well have been melded. Cale's bones ground against bones; his lungs filled with blood. He forced his shattered chest to draw another breath, another.