Dawn of Night (3 page)

“The Plane of Shadow,” he announced.

There was a moment’s silence, followed by Jak’s exclamation, “Cale! You’re awake!”

The halfling splashed through a pool of shallow water to reach Cale’s side. He knelt and helped Cale to sit up. Cale’s muscles felt as though they had been beaten with warhammers.

“Trickster’s toes,” Jak said. “You’re as cold as Beshaba’s heart.” Over his shoulder, he shouted to Riven, “Get him another blanket, Zhent.”

When Cale smiled at Jak, the halfling’s eyes went wide and he recoiled so hurriedly that he fell on his backside. His hand went to his mouth.

“Oh… oh, Cale.”

Riven stepped closer to see, the request for the blanket forgotten, his lone eye focused on Cale’s face.

“Dark,” the assassin oathed.

Magadon, standing in ankle deep water and holding a gray flower in his hand, looked at Cale with some curiosity.

“Are you all right, Erevis?” the guide asked.

“I am,” Cale replied, though the stares made Cale uncomfortable.

Still, he had been transformed and he knew how he

must look to them. He held up his arm and looked at the hand that the female slaad had bitten off, at the wrist that should have been a stump. The transformation had somehow regenerated it. He flexed the fingers. They felt normal, but his once pale skin had turned dusky gray, darker still on the regenerated hand. Wisps of shadows snaked at intervals from his fingertips and leaked from his pores. He was sheathed in shadows. Touching the darkness lightly with his normal hand he felt a slight resistance.

“You’re covered in them,” Jak said softly.

Riven kneeled on his haunches and studied Cale’s face. “You’ve changed more in the time since we arrived here,” the assassin said. “What’s happened to you?” That last sounded more like an accusation than a question.

Cale had no ready answer.

“Your eyes,” Magadon said. “The white’s gone black. The pupils are yellow. They glow in this twilight. I can see them from here.”

Cale managed a nod. The change in his eyes explained why he could see perfectly out to a bowshot’s distance, despite the dimness of the plane. In fact, as his head cleared, he realized that each of his senses had grown sharper. He could hear Riven’s breathing at ten paces, taste the subtle organic tang in the air, and smell the otherwise unnoticeable wisps of sulfur leaking from a nearby bubbling pool.

I’m not human.

The words rose unbeckoned from the back of his brain.

I’m a creature of shadow.

He pushed the words away.

“What’s happened is what’s happened,” Cale said, looking meaningfully at Riven. “I’m still me.”

Even to his own ears the words sounded like a lie. He unfolded himself and stood. Jak stood too, still staring at him.

Riven, rising and eyeing Cale doubtfully, said, “Are you?”

Unconsciously, the assassin reached for the onyx disc at his throat. In that gesture, Cale saw what Riven was wondering: Had the Shadowlord, their mutual deity, caused Cale’s transformation? If so, Riven probably would perceive the transformation as a divine boon and be jealous of it.

“This wasn’t him,” Cale said, nodding at Riven’s disc. The assassin dropped his hand from the symbol.

Cale continued, “And you wouldn’t want it even if it

was.”

Riven seemed to consider that before changing the subject.

“You’re a shade, then. And you brought us here?” Cale nodded and said, “I think so.”

“You think so?” Riven asked, his voice edged with tension. “Can you take us back?”

Cale slowly shook his head and all three of his comrades visibly deflated. Even with all the new knowledge swirling in his brain, he didn’t know how, or if he could return them to Faerűn. Whatever he had done back in the Fane to bring them there, he had done it unconsciously, out of an instinct for survival. He could not even remember it.

“The teleportation rods?” Cale asked.

Riven had taken two of the magical transport rods from the slaadi.

Jak perked up. So too did Magadon. But Riven gave a harsh laugh; to Cale, it sounded forced.

“First thing I tried,” the assassin said. “They crumbled to dust in my hands.”

He turned away, eyes hooded. Jak sagged. Magadon, stoic as ever, went back to his study of the flora.

Silence reigned. The realization lay heavy on all of them—they were trapped, at least for a time.

Magadon, with his psionic sensitivity, must have sensed their thoughts.

“Better here than drowned,” he observed matter-offactly, even as he continued studying the bog’s flora.

No one disputed that logic.

Cale’s eyes found Jak. The halfling held his gaze for only a moment before his expression filled with shame. He looked as though he might cry. Cale understood the reason. He knelt before Jak, put a hand on his shoulder and spoke in Lurienal, the halfling’s native language.

“My choice, little man,” Cale said. “I would do it again.”

Jak looked away, eyes welling, but managed a nod. After a moment, he looked back at Cale and said, “I would have done it for you too, Cale. Do you know that?”

Cale smiled softly and replied, “Of course I do. That’s why I did it.”

He patted Jak’s shoulder, eliciting a half smile from his friend, and stood. He turned a circle and looked, really looked around the Plane of Shadow for the first time.

A starless, moonless sky roofed a dreary landscape. Shades of black and gray predominated, as though the entirety of the plane had been coated in ash. Even Jak’s ordinarily bright red hair appeared a dull rust color. The air was gauzy with shadows. Cale knew ten or more synonyms in nine languages for “darkness,” and none of them adequately captured the brooding, oppressive gloom of the place.

The bog in which they stood extended in all directions to the limit of his vision. Steaming pools of stagnant water and mud dotted the lowlands. Stands of reeds and black-leafed trees not unlike Faerűnian cypresses grew in clusters along the edge of the ponds. Flotillas of dull gray flowers floated on the surface of the water. Clouds of birds, or perhaps bats, to judge from their wheeling, jerky motion, fluttered in the air above the trees. Black flies the size of coins teemed in the air.

“It changes over time,” Magadon said.

Cale looked to the guide, met his white eyes with his own dark gaze, and asked, “What does?”

“The landscape,” Magadon said. “It changes.” C.iie could not keep the surprise from his face. “What do you mean?”

“I haven’t noticed that,” Jak said, looking around at the swamp, and even Riven looked taken aback.

Magadon nodded, as though he had expected such a response, and said, “It’s quite subtle.” The guide pointed at a nearby cypress. “That stand of trees was over a stone’s throw away yesterday-or however long ago it was that we arrived here.

“Dark,” Jak oathed, wide-eyed. He stared at the ground under his feet as though it might swallow him at any moment. “What kind of place is this?”

“Why didn’t you tell us this before, Mags?” Riven asked.

The guide shrugged and took a small bite of the plant he held in his hand. He spit it out almost instantly.

“Nothing to tell,” Magadon said finally. “We cannot stop it, and we weren’t moving until Erevis regained consciousness.”

Cale eyed Magadon with new appreciation. The man noticed details. Cale liked that. But Cale noticed details too, and the guide’s last words caused him concern.

“How long was I unconscious?” Cale asked.

Magadon shrugged again and said, “Hours. Days. Who can say in this? I can see only twenty paces. There are no stars, and if this place ever sees a sun, Drasek’s a cloistered priest of Torm.”

“Riven,” Riven corrected absently.

Magadon gave a half-smile and continued, “We’ve seen a few animals, but I don’t recognize any of them. So I cannot determine the passage of time from their activity cycle. We’re in the dark. Literally. We were afraid to move you—you seemed almost catatonic-so we’ve remained here since we arrived.”

Silence sat heavy while Cale digested that.

Jak began to pace a circle, kicking at the mud.

“But you’re up now,” he said, “and we’ve got to get out of here.” He held his holy symbol in his hand flipped it between his fingers. “I tried divinations soon after we arrived, Cale. No answer.”

Cale looked at him and asked, “What do you mean?” Jak held up his holy symbol, a jeweled pendant.

“I mean divinations do not work here. The Trickster

can’t hear me. Or can’t answer me. I’m….”

Cale understood. Jak felt severed from his god. The halfling began again to pace.

“It’s not right here,” he said. “I don’t feel right.” Jak stopped pacing, as though struck by a realization. He looked at Cale and asked, “Do you?”

Cale recognized the question behind the question but answered only with a non-committal grunt. Strange as it seemed, Cale felt better than he had in some time. The feeling brought him little comfort. He wondered again what he had become, that he could feel at home in such a godsforsaken plane. He reached for his own holy symbol before he remembered that the female slaad had devoured it along with his hand. Awkwardly, he rested his palm on his sword pommel. His sword; the sword that bled shadows. He wondered if it too had changed further upon its arrival in the Plane of Shadow. He resisted the urge to draw it.

“It’s just another place,” Riven said, seemingly as calm as the windless air. “Ease down, Fleet.”

Apparently, the assassin too felt at home there. Either that or he hid is discomfort well.

“Ease down, little man,” Cale seconded to Jak, to head off another exchange between the halfling and Riven. “We’ve been in worse places. Haven’t we?”

Jak looked at him curiously and nodded.

“We’ll get out of here too,” Cale said. “It may just take some time.” Cale looked to Magadon and made his voice sound normal. “How about a fire?”

“Tried,” Magadon said, and nodded toward a pile of tinder not far from Cale. “The wood is saturated with this bog. It won’t hold a flame. We tried to keep you warm with blankets, but….”

Cale said, “A light then, at least. Jak, your blue-light wand.”

“It’s no good, Cale,” Jak replied, shaking his head. “We tried it. I might as well have it covered in a sack.”

“This place eats light,” Magadon said.

Cale heard the tone of his comrades, saw their morose expressions, and realized that the gray of the plane had already infected their souls. Strange that it had not affected him. He supposed that made him a creature of the gloom.

“Pull it anyway, little man,” he said to Jak. “It’s better than nothing.”

Jak shrugged and took his wand out of an inner pocket of his shirt. He spoke the command word and the tip glowed blue. The light did little to dispel the darkness.

“Listen to me,” Cale said to all of them. “I brought us here and I will get us back. I just need some time to figure out—” to figure out what I am, he thought-“to figure out how.” He looked at each in turn. “Well enough?”

Jak nodded. Riven said nothing, merely stared at Cale appraisingly. Magadon adjusted his pack and said, “Well enough.”

“Now let’s get the Nine Hells out of this bog,” Cale said. Jak brightened at that. Magadon grinned.

“Which way?” Jak asked, and held his wand above his head as though it would better pierce the twilight. It did not. “I can’t see anything worthwhile in any direction.”

Cale looked to Magadon and said, “You’re our guide.”

Magadon’s pale eyes glowed in the twilight.

“I should have charged you more than three hundred gold,” he said with a chuckle.

Cale could not quite bring himself to smile in response. “Which way, Magadon?” Cale asked instead. Magadon concentrated for a moment, and a nimbus of

dim light flared around his head.

“That is north,” he said when he opened his eyes, nodding in the direction behind Cale. “As good a direction as any. Follow me, and step where I step until we’re clear of the bog.”

With that, they geared up and Magadon set off. His

long strides devoured the distance. Tedium devoured the hours. More than once Magadon steered them away from a path that ended in a sinkhole or bog pit. Without the psionic woodsman to guide them, Cale had little doubt the swamp would have killed them all.

As they journeyed, Cale glimpsed small, furtive creatures at the edge of his vision, apparently drawn to Jak’s light. They always darted away into hidden dens and burrows before Cale could clearly see them. Instead, he caught only flashes of twisted bodies, gangly legs, and malformed heads. He felt their eyes upon him as he passed. Calls like curses, alien screeches, chatters, and howls sounded in the twilight behind them. With Jak’s blue-light wand cutting a dim path through the shadow, Cale imagined they must have stood out like a goblin in a gnome delve.

They walked the hours in silence. Throughout, the darkness was unrelenting. Shadows saturated them, clung to them like oil. Even their clothes seemed to be absorbing the pitch. Once blue cloaks faded to gray, green tunics to black. Moods too went from dark to darker. Cale saw in the transformation of their clothing an uncomfortable metaphor for his soul.

His soul—villendem, in Chondathan. He wondered if the transformation had stripped him of it.

No, he thought, and shook his head. I’m still myself.

But he wasn’t himself, and something deep in his consciousness, some black, secret part of his brain, protested against his obstinate refusal to accept the truth. He fought down the feeling and put one foot in front of the other.

Later, Jak slipped beside him and said in a low tone, “I know what you said earlier, Cale, but I think this is worse than anywhere we’ve ever been. Even worse than when we were in the Abyss. That was evil through and through. You could feel it, so it was easy to keep yourself separate from it. This place, it seeps into your skin. I feel awash in it. It’s almost…”

“Seductive,” Cale finished for him.

Jak looked at him sharply, worry in his eyes.

“I was going to say, ‘insidious.’” The halfling touched his arm and added, “Cale—”

“I know.”

“Don’t get comfortable here,” Jak said. “Don’t.” “I won’t.”