"An accident of birth?" Magadon's expression grew distant for a moment, thoughtful, and Cale saw a hardness in the line of his mouth. The guide stoked the fire with a length of wood while he spoke. Sparks flew into the twilight. "No, my birth was no accident." He looked up at Cale. "I am planetouched. Have you heard the word?"
Taken aback, Cale still managed a nod. He was familiar with the term. "Planetouched" was a word used to describe those who had the blood of an outer planar being in their ancestry. Those with celestial blood were aasimar, a word for which Cale had never been able to determine a linguistic origin. Those tainted with the blood of demons or devils were tieflings or fey'ri, both Elvish words. Those with elemental lords as ancestors were genasi, a word from ancient Calishite that literally meant "scion of the djinn."
"Few know this about me," Magadon continued. "With only a few precautions, I can pass for a normal man, though with unusual eyes. A normal... human."
Cale didn't try to respond.
"You wonder why I'm telling you this, don't you?" Magadon asked.
Cale's eyes narrowed and he asked, "Are you reading my mind, woodsman?"
"Just your face," Magadon replied with a chuckle. "And before I answer that question, you should hear everything. Well enough? There's a purpose to it."
"Well enough," Cale answered, intrigued.
"There are different types of planetouched," Magadon said.
Cale nodded. "I know. Which are you?"
"I am-well, here."
Magadon rose and came around the fire to Cale's side. He sat on his haunches, removed his wide-brimmed hat, and pulled his long, black hair back from his forehead.
"There," asked the guide, "do you see?"
Cale leaned in close. Just within Magadon's hairline, two protuberances of bone budded. Horns.
"You're a tiefling," Cale said softly.
Magadon nodded, let his hair fall back and donned his hat. He sat on a log nearer to Cale.
"I am, but..."
When the guide looked into Cale's eyes, Cale saw pain in his face, writ clear.
"It's worse than even that," Magadon continued.
The guide pushed back the left sleeve of his shirt, nearly to his shoulder. Cale saw that a tattoo adorned his bicep. No, not a tattoo-a birthmark unlike any Cale had seen before. It was in the form of a red hand with black nails, swathed in flames or mist. Pale, jagged scars crisscrossed the mark. Old scars.
Magadon was staring at him, reading his expression. He seemed relieved that Cale was not appalled.
"You do not recognize this symbol?" the guide asked.
"No," Cale replied, though the mark did somehow make him uneasy, a feeling reminiscent of the way Riven's use of the Black Speech made him feel. "But it's ..."
"Disquieting," Magadon said, and lowered his sleeve. "It would be worse if you knew whose symbol it was." He stared into the fire and spoke in a quiet voice. "I will not speak here the name of that creature. But I will tell you that he is a diabolical, dark being of great power. Evil incarnate. Not a god, but.. . nearly so."
Cale felt the hair on his neck rise. The shadows around them seemed to grow deeper. The night sounds of the forest's animals went quiet, even the howlers. A cool wind sent the flames of the campfire flickering. The breeze seemed to whisper a name, a sinister, sibilant name, but it danced away before Cale could recognize it.
Magadon threw some more dried limbs onto the blaze and the flames picked up.
"You're descended from this being?" Cale asked.
Magadon gave a short, hard laugh and answered, "It is not a lineage of which I am proud."
"That is not what I meant."
"I know," Magadon said, nodding. "Forgive me. Speaking of him is difficult for me." The guide shook his head, as though to dispel thoughts best left undisturbed. "For his amusement, this creature took human form and raped my mother. I was the result. The descendant of a devil. I suspect he has many. By all the accounts that I've heard, his lust is matched only by his evil."
Magadon looked into Cale's face, which Cale kept free of judgment. Cale would judge no one, not then.
"Immediately after my birth," Magadon continued, "when my mother saw what she had brought forth, she exposed me, abandoned me to die in the forest. Afterward, she drowned herself in the Shining River."
Cale heard the bitterness in the guide's voice, bitterness softened only by regret at the mention of his mother's death.
"Is your mother alive, Erevis?" Magadon asked softly. "Your father?"
Cale shook his head. He had never known his mother, the man who had come closest to being his father had died a year past, and the god who had come to serve as a father of sorts seemed to have adopted a second son.
"Forgive me for asking," Magadon said, seemingly sensing Cale's pain.
"It's all right," Cale said, waving away the sting. "Continue."
Magadon cleared his throat and said, "I was abandoned. Before the cold could take me, a lame woodsman heard my wails and took me in. It was he who explained my origin to me, when I was old enough to understand it. It was he who taught me wood lore."
Cale struggled to imagine the burden Magadon carried-rejected by his mother, sired by a fiend. Cale's own past seemed ordinary by comparison.
"He always told me the truth," Magadon said absently. "I loved him for that."
"The woodsman?"
Magadon nodded.
"What was his name?"
Magadon smiled warmly.
"Father," he said, and Cale could see the guide's welling eyes reflecting the firelight.
Cale understood. He left Magadon alone with his memories for a time.
When the guide seemed ready again to speak, Cale asked, "Did your father also teach you how to ... to use your mental powers?"
Magadon shook his head and stared into the fire.
"No," he said. "Psionics cannot be taught, Erevis. They are inborn, and I've developed them as I've aged. My mental powers I attribute to the bloodline of the rapist whose seed conceived me, as much as I do these horns. And like my horns, they've become more pronounced as I've aged. I'm changing too, you see."