by Paul S. Kemp
“Master,” the big slaad croaked, and abased himself on the floor.
Vhostym looked upon his largest son with impatience and replied, “Stand, Dolgan. You are my son, not my slave.”
At those words, Vhostym thought he detected a sneer on Azriim’s lips.
Dolgan clambered to his feet, his hind claws scratching against the stone floor, and said, “Yes, Father.”
Lightly and quickly, so as not to humiliate his sons, Vhostym extended his mental perception into the brains of his slaadi and brushed their surface thoughts. He found impatience and eagerness. Azriim gave it voice.
“You have studied the Weave Tap for days, Sojourner, and now have been in sanctuary still another.”
Had it been so long? Vhostym thought he had been amidst the stars but a few hours. Strange. Still, he did not approve of Azriim’s tone. His sons took liberties with him that few in the multiverse would dare.
“You state the obvious, Azriim. And your tone borders on impertinence.”
To give his point an edge, he entered Azriim’s mind and caressed the pain-receptors of the slaad’s brain. Azriim went rigid and bared his perfect teeth.
Dolgan grinned at his brother’s pain.
Vhostym released his favorite son.
Azriim shot Dolgan a glare, returned his mismatched gaze to Vhostym, and adopted a more respectful tone.
“I meant only to suggest that we stand ready to begin the next phase.”
Dolgan dug his claws into his palms and said, “But first Father must tell us what the next phase is.”
Vhostym said, “That is your brother’s very point, Dolgan.” He looked at Azriim. “You wish to begin the next phase because you desire the transformation? The drive is strong upon you?”
“Now you state the obvious,” Azriim replied, and his eyes—one blue and one brown—narrowed with perturbation.
At that, Vhostym considered causing more severe pain to Azriim, but decided against it. Instead, he opted for magnanimity and smiled benevolently on his son.
“I do, but my intent in doing so is to teach a lesson.”
Azriim took a half step backward, no doubt thinking more pain to be forthcoming, and asked, “A lesson?”
Dolgan too looked puzzled, enough so that he stopped tearing gashes into his own hand.
Vhostym waved his hand in the air, spoke a word of power, and a chalice of two-hundred year old Halruaan wine materialized in his grasp.
“Sit,” he said, in a tone of voice that the slaadi dared not disobey.
Both dropped to the floor. Vhostym floated between them and sat on the cushions of a divan. Their eyes followed him to where he sat. He sipped from the wine and sighed—full bodied, and as magically smooth as the velvet he sat upon.
“I am pleased with your success in recovering the Weave Tap. But oftentimes, we learn more from failure than from success.”
The slaadi looked questions at him.
“The priest of Mask did not thwart your recovery of the Weave Tap. He failed. Not so?”
They nodded, though Azriim scowled, and his hand went to his abdomen, where the Shadowlord’s priest had wounded him.
“His failure has something to teach us,” Vhostym said. “Characterize him.”
Dolgan looked perplexed. The big slaad looked from Azriim to Vhostym to Azriim again. His confusion caused him to scrape still more flesh from his palm.
“What do you mean, ‘characterize him’?” Azriim asked.
Vhostym smiled. He enjoyed these interactions with his sons; they made him feel paternal.
“You, Azriim, are precise. You, Dolgan, are brutal. Serrin is merciless. That is each of your respective characters. Do you understand?”
Azriim nodded.
“Excellent. Now characterize this priest who killed your sister, nearly killed Dolgan, and managed to wound even you.”
That tweaked Azriim’s pride, exactly as Vhostym had intended.
“This is ridiculous,” Azriim said, his tone bitter. “The priest is dead.”
“Drowned,” Dolgan added.
“Perhaps,” Vhostym said. “Characterize him nevertheless.”
With typical stubbornness, Azriim refused to answer. He crossed his arms across his chest and looked away. Vhostym could scarcely contain a smile. His slaadi, each of them a powerful, skillful killer when out of his sight, reverted to childishness when in his presence. He supposed the phenomenon was the same across all sentient species.
“Come, Azriim,” Vhostym chided, “characterize him.”
“Relentless,” Dolgan blurted.
Surprised, Vhostym gave Dolgan an approving smile and the slaad fairly beamed. Perhaps Dolgan was not so dull, after all.
“Excellent, Dolgan,” said Vhostym. “Relentlessness is an admirable characteristic. But it did not serve him, did it? As Azriim observed, he is likely dead.”
“He is dead,” Azriim said.
Dolgan merely stared.
“Now,” Vhostym said, continuing the lesson, “characterize the shadow adept you manipulated into opening the Fane of Shadows.”
Before Dolgan could answer, Azriim stared meaningfully at Vhostym and said, “Arrogant.”
Vhostym decided to ignore Azriim’s implication and said, “Very good. Consider—relentlessness in moderation is dedication. Arrogance in moderation is self-confidence. Learn this lesson. then: All things, when taken too far, become self-destructive and lead to failure.” He fixed a hard gaze on Azriim. “This applies equally to both impatience and pridefulness.”
Azriim understood the lesson then, and his mismatched eyes found the floor. Vhostym had made his point, so he gave his sons what they wished.
“Remember that,” he said, “as the next phase begins.”
Both slaadi looked at him sharply.
“It is beginning?” Azriim breathed. “The Crown of Flame?”
Vhostym smiled softly. Azriim did not understand the nature of the crown, only that his father long had sought it, only that once Vhostym possessed it, Azriim would be transformed into gray and freed.
Vhostym took a sip of wine and said, “It began, Azriim, long ago. Now it is finishing.”
Vhostym had observed the universe through the eyes of his spell for the last time. Having plumbed the mystery of the Weave Tap, he was ready to put the final phases of his plan into motion.
“And afterward?” Azriim asked.
Dolgan leaned forward, eyes wide, digging his fingers into his flesh.
Vhostym looked upon his sons with approval and replied, “Afterward, my sons, you will have what I have promised to give you: transformation to gray and the freedom to pursue your own lives.”
Dolgan, unable to contain his excitement, stood and capered. His dripping hand left a spatter of blood across the carpets. Azriim looked into Vhostym’s eyes, as though trying to discern a lie. There was no lie to discern, of course. Vhostym would keep his word.
Azriim asked, “Yet you still will not tell us what the Crown of Flame is, or describe its appearance?”
“When the time is right,” Vhostym said. He sent his mental consciousness through the various caverns and rooms of his plane until he located Serrin. The slaad was sharpening his weapon skills by slaughtering some of the penned demons Vhostym kept for research and spell component material.
“Serrin is in the barbazu pen. Retrieve him and bring him to the Weave Tap’s nursery. One of its seeds are now ripe. I will explain what you are to do next.”
PERDITION
Dark knowledge churned through Cale’s mind. Fell power coursed through his veins. He could not quite comprehend it, not rationally, but somehow he knew it. His body felt thick and insensate, as though he had been immersed in ice water. He could hear, but only dimly, as though from a great distance. He could see nothing. He felt stupefied; his thoughts ran as thick and as sluggish as tar.
With effort, he fought his way through the mental cobwebs. As he did, memories of the transformation from man to shade rose to th
e forefront of his consciousness. He recalled shadowy tentacles pulsing with power, piercing his skin, filling him with darkness, stealing his humanity. He pushed the memory out of his mind before it made him scream. He took a deep breath and drank in damp air heavy with the smell of organic decay, as fetid as a sewer. He knew he was in a swamp, a swamp that smelled like a charnel house. Many things had died there; many more things would.
Nearby, the buzzing and clicking of insects filled his ears, the sounds vaguely familiar but the rhythm somehow alien.
“What kind of water is this?” said a voice, Jak’s voice, from somewhere near him.
Water splashed.
The sound of the halfling’s voice helped center Cale, helped him climb the last few strides out of the darkness. Things became clearer.
He was not anywhere near the Lightless Lake. He was lying on his back in a bed of cold mud, covered in what he took to be a coarse blanket, or a shroud. He could not see because his eyes were closed, the lids caked shut with, scum, dirt, or blood. For the moment, he didn’t try to open them. He didn’t want to see what he thought they would reveal. He didn’t want to know what his mind insisted he knew.
I’m not human, he thought, and the accusation hit him like a club. The simple truth of it left him empty. He thought of Tazi.
What would she say if she could see me now?
From Cale’s right, Riven responded to Jak. Surprisingly, even the assassin’s voice brought Cale some small comfort.
“It’s the same water as anywhere, Fleet. Just … darker.”
The creak of leather from Cale’s right; Riven changing his stance.
“It’s as thick as my mother’s maple syrup,” Jak said.
More splashing.
How long have we been here? Cale wondered.
“What is this place?” said another voice. “Where are we? The last thing I remember, we were watching an entire lake crash down on us. I thought we were dead.”
It took Cale a moment to place the speaker—Magadon. The mind mage and guide from Starmantle. Cale had no recollection of the Lightless Lake crashing down on them.
“How many times will you ask the same question?” Riven said in a voice edged with tension. “You’re the damned guide, Mags. You tell us where we are.”
To that, Magadon said nothing, though Cale could hear him wading into the water.
Cale knew where they were—at least he thought he did—and he thought he knew how they had gotten there.
Jak spoke in a low voice: “Do you think we are? Dead, I mean?”
Riven scoffed. Cale could imagine his mocking sneer. He could also imagine the indignant glare Jak must have offered in response.
“You stuff that sneer,” barked the halfling as he splashed through the water to get nearer to Riven. Jak’s voice dripped venom. “You’re right, though. Because if we were dead, you and I wouldn’t end up in the same place, now would we?”
Riven chuckled darkly and said, “I wouldn’t hang my sword belt on that, Fleet. You might think differently before this is all said and done.”
Before this was all said and done. Cale did not even know what the this was. Slaadi in human form had murdered their ostensible master, a shadow adept named Vraggen, and taken a magical sapling tree—the Weave Tap—from a mysterious temple called the Fane of Shadows. Just before the slaadi had escaped, one of them, Azriim, had mentioned someone called the Sojourner, presumably their true master. That was all Cale knew, and his mind was too muddled to reason out the meaning of it all.
“The Wall of the Faithless,” Jak said, still dogging the assassin. “That’s the best you can hope for, Zhent. My guess—your afterlife is uglier than that. Much uglier.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Riven responded, and Cale heard the assassin’s leather armor creak.
Jak replied with a harrumph and silence. The tension was as thick as the stink.
“The plants at least look familiar,” Magadon said, in an obvious attempt to diffuse the situation. “But they’re slightly different. Here. Look at this swamp flower … thicker roots, thinner stalks and leaves. The sky’s different too. What in the multiverse is this place?” he asked again.
At that, Cale wiped away the substance caked on his eyelids—mud—opened his eyes, and looked up into a pitch black sky devoid of stars. Clusters of low, ashen clouds dotted the dark canopy, backlit by a dim, sourceless ochre light.
“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 Faerûn. 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-of-factly, 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.