Free Midnights Mask by Kemp Paul S

through the changes with us, who grow with us.”
    “Truly said,” Magadon offered.
    Cale took Jak’s meaning, and it helped him get perspective. He had changed, perhaps grown beyond the Uskevrens. Perhaps he was nostalgic for Stormweather and his old family because they represented the simpler life he’d once known, the smaller stakes. It had not always seemed so then, but he had been an ordinary man when he had served Thamalon the Elder– not a shade, not the First of Five-and events had not felt quite so big as now.
    “I hear your words,” he said to his friends. “And thank you.”
    His friends said nothing, merely walked beside him in silence.
    Cale knew that he had to adjust—to what he had become and to the scale of events in which he was participating. His days as an ordinary man were long over. He had only a short time to ponder the realization. They rounded a corner and walked through the large granite arch that signified the western end of Temple Avenue.
    The wide street stretched before them, teeming as always. Pilgrims, petitioners, and priests crowded the stone-flagged avenue, praying, preaching, and proselytizing. Chants and songs filled the air, with the ring of gongs and chimes. The multitudinous colors and styles of robes, vestments, and cloaks created a swirling sea of colors that ran the length of the street.
    The brisk wind and nearness of the bay did not efface the aroma of incense, perfume, and unwashed bodies. The air was syrupy with the smell. Cale inhaled deeply, cleansing his nostrils of the last of Skullport’s fetor.
    Five temples dominated Temple Avenue-fanes dedicated to Milil, Sune, Deneir, Oghma, and Lliira-though another dozen or so shrines stood in their shadows. Midway down the avenue, the construction on a new temple to Siamorphe, the goddess of hereditary nobility, was progressing apace. Cale knew that the cornerstone had been hallowed and the foundation laid three months earlier. In another month or three, the structure would be complete. The Talendar family, a rival to the Uskevren, was financing the construction. The second son of the Talendar, Vees, had returned from Waterdeep as a priest and vocal advocate of Siamorphe. By financing the building of the Noble Lady’s temple, the Talendars hoped to curry favor with the church hierarchy, expand the worship of Siamorphe to the most cosmopolitan city in the Heartlands, and ensconce their son as a high-ranking priest.
    Cale smiled. As always, rank was not necessarily earned in Selgaunt. Sometimes it was bought. But from what little Cale knew of Siamorphe’s faith, he imagined that things might not go as the Talendar hoped. Bloodline meant everything to the faithful of Siamorphe, but Selgauntans little understood that. Wealth mattered in Selgaunt, not lineage.
    Sitting areas for public contemplation dotted the street—stone and wood benches situated under the red and yellow autumn canopies of dwarf maples. Each bench generally shared the shade with one or two monstrous sculptures, the legacy of the late Hulorn’s fetish for peculiar statuary. All of the works depicted this or that hybrid monster; manticores, chimerae, owlbears, and the like. Starlings perched in the nooks of the statues and their droppings painted the stone and marble with splashes of white.
    Cale, Magadon, and Jak weaved their way into the crowd and moved toward the Hallowed House of Higher Achievement, Deneir’s temple, which stood near the eastern end of the avenue, where the street curled back into the city proper.
    A robed trio of Ilmatari priests sprinkling flower petals into a fountain and praying to their god for an end to a pox afflicting an outlying village. Dancers in red gossamer and adorned with finger gongs swayed through the crowd, lay worshipers of Sune who promised with the swing of their hips the pleasures of the Firehair’s worship. The tallest of the dancers ran her fingertips over Cale’s shoulder as she passed. When her painted fingernails