Free Dawn of Night by Kemp Paul S

and said, “Two fathers, Erevis. One a rapist arch-devil, one a cripple with a noble spirit. Life is sometimes strange, is it not?”
    Cale nodded and looked away into the distance. He could think of nothing to say, though he understood well what it was to serve two fathers. The silence stretched on.
    At last, Cale said, “You were going to tell me why you were confiding in me. You had a purpose?”
    “So I was and so I do,” Magadon said, and adjusted his posture on the log. “Here it is: For years I struggled with what I was. Devilspawn, Erevis. How could I move past that?”
    Cale looked at him from under his brows, genuinely curious, and asked, “How did you?”
    “That’s the question,” Magadon whispered. He shook his head and smiled softly, as if amused by a private jest. “I pitied myself. You saw the scars on my birthmark. When I learned what it was, I tried to cut that mark from my flesh a dozen times, but always it returned.”
    He extended his arm and held his hand fully in the flames. Cale gave a start but Magadon’s skin didn’t char and the guide did not wince.
    He looked into Cale’s face and said, “Another gift From me rapist. He pulled his hand from the flames and looked at the unmarred skin. looked at the unmarred skin. “Everywhere I turned, I was faced with my heritage. With each passing year, my flesh
    changed to show more and more of my devil sire. I fear how I may appear in my dotage.”
    He smiled, but Cale saw it was forced.
    “So I couldn’t move past it, Erevis,” the guide said. “Not really.” He flexed his unburned fingers. “It’s part of me. It’s part of what I am. When I accepted that, things became bearable. But—” and here he made a cutting gesture with his hand—”accepting the fact of my blood does not mean that I let it dictate the course of my life. The blood of an arch-devil determines what I am in body; it does not determine the nature of my soul. And it’s a soul that makes a man, Erevis. Do you see? Your transformation changed your skin, your eyes, but not your soul. You remain who you always were.”
    Cale heard Magadon’s words, heard the echoes of his own protestations in them, but smiled in response only out of politeness. It was what Cale always had been-before the transformation as much as after-that gave him concern. Accepting his nature would not free him from what he feared; it would free what he feared, that part of himself that he kept closely tethered. Unlike Magadon, Cale had no good side to turn to.
    He thought of Tazi; her smile, the smell of her skin….
    “Well?” Magadon pressed.
    “I’ll think about what you’ve said,” Cale replied, to placate the guide.
    Magadon nodded and said, “Fair enough.”
    They said nothing for a time. When the silence at last grew uncomfortable, Cale filled it by changing the subject.
    “How did you come to know him?” he asked, and indicated Riven. You seem hardly the type of man who would befriend a Zhentarim assassin.”
    Magadon’s reply came quickly: “How did you?”
    Cale took the point. Strange times made for strange alliances.
    “Does he know?” Cale asked. “About your… heritage?”
    Magadon shrugged and said, “I’ve never told him, but he may have learned of it. He has a way of doing that. Why do you ask?”
    In truth, Cale did not know.
    “Curiosity,” he said, and left it at that.
    The fire crackled, its smoke lost in the gloom of the forest.
    “It’s affecting him too,” Magadon said at last. “Riven, I mean.”
    “What?”
    “This place; what he’s becoming.”
    Cale looked at Magadon sharply and asked, “What is he becoming?”
    “I don’t know,” Magadon answered. “Neither does he. That’s what makes him afraid.”
    Cale’s doubt must have shown in his expression. To Cale, Riven seemed as calm and in control as ever. Magadon must have read his eyes-or his mind.
    The guide said, “I know him better than you, Erevis. He has been your enemy, hasn’t