by Paul S. Kemp
“You mouth the Black Speech, child,” the dragon hissed, “but little understand the words. Hear this.”
The creature held the dying Riven before its mouth and hissed into the assassin’s face words so terrible, so awful to hear, that they made Cale dizzy. He staggered and kept his feet only by sheer force of will.
Behind him, Jak and Magadon fell to their knees, clutching their ears. Blood leaked from between their fingers, from their noses, from their eyes. The water around them reddened. They were dying.
Defiant even to the last, Riven answered the dragon with still more of the Black Speech. Somehow, the assassin’s voice remained strong through the blood and pain. His eye still blazed.
Jak and Magadon, nearly senseless, collapsed into the mud.
Stop! Cale projected to Riven. You’re killing them!
But the assassin could not hear, might not have understood, or did not care.
With his friends dying all around him, Cale made the only decision he could. He chose a spot on the dragon’s spine at about the point where the roots of its wings sprouted from its back, took a step forward, and willed himself there.
He felt the momentary sensation of movement and found himself crouched atop a creature larger than a keep, and darker than a moonless midnight. Shadowy figures rose out of the dragon’s dark cloak, reaching for him. Their hands passed through him, leaving him unharmed but afflicted with a feeling of profound sadness. He dropped to his knees to keep his balance.
The dragon must have felt his weight on its back. Still clutching Riven, whose body lay as limp as a rag doll in its claws, the creature snaked its head around. When its eyes fell on Cale, it uttered a low, threatening hiss. Fear almost paralyzed Cale.
Almost.
Able to maintain his position for only a moment as the creature beat its huge pinions, Cale did the only thing possible—took a two-handed reverse grip on his blade and plunged it as deeply into the dragon as it would go. The enchanted steel—Cale noted that the blade was nearly pitch black—split the dark scales and sank half its length into the mighty creature’s flesh.
The dragon roared and lurched backward in a paroxysm of pain, and the shadows around it swirled in agitation. Cale would have oathed that he saw laughter in those dark faces. Shadowstuff streamed from the dragon’s mouth and nostrils, and black blood poured from the slot in its back. The abrupt motion sent Cale careening from its back to fall to the earth, though he managed to pull his blade free and keep his grip on it as he fell. He hit the mud flat on his back. The impact blew the breath from his lungs. Though prone and gasping, he managed to keep his blade held defensively before him. He expected it would do little good.
The dragon flung the barely conscious Riven to the earth and whirled on Cale, sending water everywhere. Riven crashed down in a shallow pool and lay unmoving.
From Cale’s position, the dragon appeared to be nothing more than an infinite wall of black scales, teeth, malevolent eyes, and writhing shadows. Still prone and unable to breathe, he held his sword defiantly before him. The black blade shimmered in the twilight.
The dragon reared back its head, a coiled snake ready to strike, opened its mouth so wide that Cale thought its teeth must go on forever, and—
Stopped.
Its eyes fixed on Cale’s sword and widened. Its head turned to look upon Riven’s form, then turned back to Cale and the sword. The darkness around the creature subsided.
Wisps of shadows twisted around the darkened blade. It had changed still more from what it had been back on Faerûn. The transformation of the weapon that had begun with Cale’s splitting of the starsphere appeared to have advanced along with his own transformation into a shade.
“You bear the token,” the dragon said in its whispery voice. “Weaveshear. After all the centuries … You are the First.”
Cale made no response. What could he say? Instead, he slowly climbed to his feet and tried to regain his breath. As though from far, far away, he heard a hundred voices plead with him in a language he did not know he knew.
Free us, they begged.
Cale shook his head, kept the blade before him, and warily eyed the dragon. The beast’s head swung around to look upon Riven.
“And that,” the creature said, “therefore, can only be the Second.”
The dragon’s heavy gaze returned to Cale. It eyed him for a moment, considering. Cale saw reluctance there. He sensed an inner struggle.
The great beast lowered its head to the surface of the water as though bowing to royalty. The dragon’s horns were longer than he was tall. Cale clearly saw that the wound in its back continued to leak blood.
Flabbergasted, Cale could think of nothing to say, nothing to do.
The huge reptile remained prostrate for only a heartbeat before rearing back its long neck and looking down on Cale.
“You and your companions will be allowed to live, First of the Five,” said the dragon. “Furlinastis keeps his promises.”
With that, the dragon uttered a single arcane word and stomped its left front foot in the mud. The wound on its back closed and a viridian glow illuminated the shadowy mist around its claw. The glow spread outward from the dragon’s foot in all directions, crawling along the ground, water, and fog. Cale recoiled as the mist around his feet began to glow, but the effect caused him no pain. Instead it relieved his fatigue and healed the bruises on his back. It must have healed his companions too. Jak and Magadon each uttered a groan and climbed slowly to their feet, all the while staring, dazed, at the mountain of scales before them.
The glow dissipated and the dragon said, “The debt is paid.”
It crouched, scales creaking, and prepared to take wing. The shadowy forms around the dragon reached desperate arms for Cale.
“Wait!” Cale said. He realized only after the word escaped him how absurd it was that he was making demands of a dragon. But questions were burning holes in his brain. “What promise are you talking about? To whom? What debt? What of the … people who surround you?”
The dragon looked down on Cale with those unforgiving dark eyes and replied, “To answer your questions would be to break another promise. Find your answers elsewhere, First of Five.”
Cale fought down his frustration. He was tired to his bones of being carried along a path that seemed predetermined, and about which he was utterly ignorant.
“At least tell me about this,” he said, and held out the sword—Weaveshear, the dragon had called it.
“I will not, shade,” the dragon replied, and made that last word sound like a curse. “Except to say that it is the weapon of the First in this age.”
Cale thought about asking the dragon how they could escape the Shadow Deep but his pride caused him to reject the impulse. He would ask the creature nothing more, though by doing so he felt he was betraying the shadow creatures apparently bound to the dragon.
“Begone then,” he said.
At that, the dragon’s eyes narrowed and Cale wondered for a moment if he had gone too far. Wisps of shadow snaked from the reptile’s nostrils. When the creature spoke, his voice was heavy with menace.
“Never return to my swamp, First of the Shadowlord. My debt is now paid. I will not forget the wound you gave me, paltry though it was. The next time we meet, an old promise will not protect you.”
“Nor you,” Cale said, and stared defiance into the creature’s face. “Kesson Rel is not the strongest of the Shadowlord’s servants.”
The words came out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying, and even after, he did not know what he meant.
The dragon apparently did. It reared back its head and hissed.
Cale and showed the dragon contempt by turning his back to the reptile and walking over to check on Jak and Magadon.
He could feel the dragon’s gaze on his back, as heavy as a hundredweight. The creature growled low, beat its wings, and leaped into the air over him. It flew so low over Cale’s head that he could have touched its wingtips. The f
orce of its passing nearly blew him over. Water lapped in its wake. Jak and Magadon watched it go, pale and wide-eyed.
“We’re all right,” Jak said when Cale reached them, and Magadon nodded in agreement.
Blood covered both of their faces, and each looked exhausted, but Cale took them at their word.
“I’m glad,” he said.
Without another word, the three of them splashed their way over to Riven, who still lay on his back in the shallow pool. Cale feared the assassin to be dead.
He wasn’t. He was staring vacantly up into the twilight sky with his one good eye, smiling. His grievous wounds appeared to have been healed by the dragon’s spell, though he still visibly winced when he breathed.
Cale and Magadon shared a look.
“Drasek?” the guide asked.
The assassin didn’t respond.
“He’s lost his wits,” Jak said. “Probably from speaking that Black Speech. I’ll try a spell, but….”
Riven smiled, and his expression lost its faraway character.
“Save your spell, Fleet,” he said. “I’ve lost nothing. I’ve found something.”
The assassin sat up and shook his head as though to clear it.
“What do you mean?” Cale asked, but thought he already knew the answer.
Riven smiled and said, “Watch.”
The assassin spoke eldritch words and moved his hands in a complex gesture. As he did, he pulled wisps of shadow from the air and twisted them around his hands. When he touched his charged palms to his flesh, the wounds remaining on his chest closed entirely.
“Trickster’s toes,” Jak softly oathed. “Drasek Riven is a priest?”
“No,” Riven replied cryptically, and left it at that.
Cale tried to keep the dismay from his face. Drasek Riven could heal himself by touch, perhaps he could cast spells. Cale had thought Mask would never favor Riven with spellcasting. That the Shadowlord had done so felt like a betrayal.
But the assassin had denied that he was a priest. Then what?
Riven appraised his hands the way a veteran campaigner might evaluate a new blade. When he looked at Cale, his one good eye fairly shone.
“He’s given you something, First of Five, but now he’s given his Second something too. The Dark Speech. This—” he held up his hands for Cale to see—“and still more.”
Despite himself, Cale could not hold back a frown. He remembered the exhilaration he’d felt when he first had learned to cast spells, and imagined Riven must feel much the same now. But he also thought of a Sembian proverb: “Only a fool thinks a gift is free.” Cale had learned that lesson well. No doubt Riven soon would too.
Cale scabbarded Weaveshear, slow enough so that Riven would get a good look at the transformed blade.
He stared into Riven’s good eye and said, “Everything comes with a cost, Riven. Make certain you know the asking price.”
Riven only sneered.
Cale said to Magadon, “Get him up. Let’s get out of this swamp.”
DISCLOSURE
Gradually, Magadon led them out of the swamp. The muddy ground grew firmer, and the reeds, tall grasses, and cypresses gave way first to thorny undergrowth then to brooding stands of trees akin to willows, but darker-leaved, more ominous. It seemed that one moment they were surrounded by marsh, the next by trees. The transition from bog to forest was sudden enough to be eerie, almost as though the woods had walked to them.
And perhaps they did, Cale thought.
Leaving the bog behind did little to raise their flagging spirits. The trees of the forest seemed to glare down at them as they passed. Limbs reached out to snag clothes, and the rustle of the wind through the leaves seemed to promise violence. High above, bats wheeled in the canopy, feasting on the large, black flies and other insects that plagued the plane. Some other creature that Cale could never quite see, hidden high up in the trees, howled at them as they passed.
After a few hours of travel, Magadon came to a sudden halt, cocked his head, and asked, “Does this terrain seem familiar to any of you?”
To Cale, the whole of the plane seemed familiar—un-comfortably so—but he had assumed the feeling to be a result of his transformation.
“What? The trees?” Jak asked, holding his bluelight wand aloft. “I’ve never seen anything like them—or bats that big.”
“No,” Magadon replied, shaking his head. “I don’t mean the particular trees. I mean the topography.”
“Should it?” asked Cale.
“What are you getting at, Mags?” Riven growled.
Magadon grabbed a tree limb and yanked it downward. For a moment, Cale thought for certain that the tree would attack the guide in response.
“It’s twisted here, dark,” Magadon said, “but think about it. On Toril, the Moonmere was in a dried bog surrounded by a forest. The bog here, albeit larger and wetter than the one on Toril, is surrounded by this forest.”
“And?” Riven prompted.
“A planar correspondence,” Cale said, taking the guide’s meaning right away.
He and Jak had once experienced something similar when they had been in the Abyss hunting the Lord of the Void.
Jak pulled his pipe and chewed the end, thinking.
Riven shifted his stance and took a swig from his waterskin. Above them, the howling creatures continued their harangue.
“All right,” the assassin said after wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “There’s a correspondence. So?”
“So, Drasek,” Magadon said, as though lecturing a student, “if the correspondence holds, it suggests the lay of the land. It may mean that—”
“Starmantle is nearby,” Cale said, finishing for the woodsman. “Or its equivalent here.”
Magadon nodded, smiling.
“Burn me,” Jak oathed, twirling his pipe. “That place was a pit on Toril. Here …” He whistled and trailed off.
Cale eyed Magadon and said, “If you’re right, and if there’s a way out of this plane, a city seems as likely a place as any.”
Before the guide could respond, Riven spat and stared at Cale with his one good eye.
“You’re our way out, Cale. But until you accept that, I’ve got nothing better to do to pass the time. Show the way, Mags.”
Magadon adjusted his pack and said, “Since the swamp was larger than its correspondent on Toril, we should expect the forest to be likewise. Two days and we should reach the plains. From there, three or four more days to reach whatever passes for Starmantle on this plane. Let’s move.”
Having a goal lent them speed, and they made rapid progress through the brooding woods.
That night, they made camp under the enshrouding boughs of a shadow-willow. They started a fire but the night remained chilly, the light still dim. Alien sounds filled the forest—squeals, roars, and the ubiquitous howling. Cale couldn’t sleep. Despite the day’s exertion, despite his fatigue, rest would not come. In his mind’s eye, he kept seeing that dragon—that enormous, majestic, terrifying creature, enshrouded in souls—lowering its head in respect.
Looking up through a break in the leaves, he stared at the featureless black sky.
What have you done to me? he thought to Mask, but immediately answered his own question with: What have I done to myself?
Sephris had named him the First of Five. So too had the caretaker at the Fane of Shadows, and the shadow dragon. He didn’t know what that meant. He felt exhilarated and disquieted all at once.
Riven and Jak slept nearby under one of Magadon’s tents. Moving quietly and slowly so as not to wake them, Cale rolled over on his side and removed the starsphere from his pack. The map of the celestial heavens had started the whole recent chain of events. To his surprise, Cale saw that it had become a featureless orb of gray quartz, where before it had been an image of Toril’s night sky, flecked with diamonds, emeralds, and other gemstones. He wondered if the sphere changed its appearance depending upon the plane in which it found itself. Perhaps it
changed on each plane to show the time at which the Fane of Shadows would next appear there. If true, the blank sphere in his hands told Cale that the Fane never materialized on the Plane of Shadow. The Shadow Deep was the source of its magic, but it never manifested there. The Fane reserved its pollution for the realms of light.
For an instant, he felt a temptation to hurl the sphere into the woods, to leave it there forever, but he resisted. It had done what it was designed to do.
Two and two are four, he thought.
He slid it back into his pack, shaking his head. He could not figure it all out, but he decided then and there that he would keep the sphere for the purpose for which he had first intended: as a memento of his former master and lost friend, Thamalon Uskevren.
Knowledge you seek, said the caretaker in his head.
Find your answers elsewhere, the dragon answered.
He remembered the book.
He sat up from his bedroll, pulled the backpack onto his lap, and took out the large tome given to him by the caretaker. Its covers of black scale shimmered in the dim firelight, reminding him of the skin of the shadow dragon. Its fittings were of a dull gray metal he did not recognize and it felt warm to his touch, as though it was a living thing. He stared at the tome for a time, thinking. He felt the same hesitation about opening the book as he had felt about drawing Weaveshear. To do so felt like he was surrendering his will to events, and he would not—he could not—do that.
But he had already drawn the sword. And he had to know what lay within the book’s covers.
He thought of opening it right there. He could see well enough with his new eyes to read in the dark, but he decided he would read it like the normal man he was, like he used to read Thamalon’s books back in the library of Stormweather Towers.
Those times seemed far removed from him. Pangs of regret stabbed his heart. He missed the Old Owl more than ever, and Shamur, and Tazi….
Shaking off the melancholy, he tucked the book under an armpit, rose, and walked over to the dimly burning fire. They had set the tents several paces away from the flames so as not to risk a stray ember igniting the canvas.