Dawn of Night

CHAPTER 2 TREADING THE BLACK

With no sun by which to gauge the passage of time, Cale felt as though they had been splashing through the swamp forever. Time seemed to have frozen. There was no color, only fetid water and gloom. Cale recalled Magadon observing that the terrain actually moved. He wondered if, beyond the limits of their vision, the swamp was rearranging itself around them so they would never get free of it.

The guide stayed a full ten paces ahead, to ensure they'd avoid any pitfalls or other mundane hazards. His knucklebone eyes looked ghostly in Jak's bluelight. Mud caked all their cloaks and boots. Cale marveled at Magadon's pack, which was so large it looked as though he was carrying another person on his back. The guide must have been stronger than he appeared.

"We'll need food soon," Magadon called back.

Riven and Jak didn't even raise their heads in response, merely grunted in the affirmative. Cale too signaled his agreement, though he wasn't hungry. He simply wanted to engage in something ordinary, to take his mind off the plane, to take his mind off himself.

"It's taking longer than I had hoped to clear the bog," the guide continued. "So we must start rationing our supplies as of now. No one is to eat or drink anything native to this place unless it becomes absolutely necessary." He waited for them to catch up. "Let's inventory our stock. What do each of you have for food and water?"

"A few days of rations," Cale said. He squeezed the waterskins at his belt and added, "A skin-and-a-half of water."

He'd carried out of Starmantle only enough rations to get him to the Gulthmere and back. The starsphere and the book he had taken from the Fane of Shadows were the heaviest things in his pack.

"About the same," Riven said.

Magadon frowned, obviously troubled, and said, "I've got more than that, but not much more. We'll need-"

"Rations are not an issue," Jak interrupted. "I can conjure food and water with a spell. Anything I want, whenever we're hungry."

Magadon's raised eyebrows indicated both his surprise and pleasure.

"Jak, that's more useful than you know. I feared we'd have to drink the water here. Even after boiling . . ." He looked to Cale then continued, "Let's find a dry spot, make camp, and eat something conjured by our chef." He grinned at Jak. "With luck, we'll get out of the bog sometime tomorrow."

Cale agreed and they did exactly that.

"What do you need for your spell?" Magadon asked Jak, after setting up the two canvas tents he carried in his pack. The guide seemed to carry more in his backpack than would fit in the extradimensional space of a magical bag of holding.

"Just put that pot on the ground," Jak replied, indicating the large, beaten-metal cooking pot that Magadon carried with his gear. "And our waterskins too."

They piled the pot and their waterskins on the ground before Jak. The halfling held his holy symbol pendant over the pile and intoned a prayer to the Trickster. The pot filled with a thick, steaming stew. The waterskins swelled to capacity.

Magadon gave an appreciative whistle and said, "There's many times I could have used you in the bush, Jak." The guide knelt, dipped a finger into the stew, and tasted it. "Potato," he said with a smile. "And tasty."

Riven snorted irritably and glared at the halfling.

"Potato?" he grumbled. "Nine Hells, Fleet. You can make anything you want and you settle on potato stew? What about some meat?"

Jak bristled and pointed his pendant at Riven's chest.

"My mother made potato stew, Zhent," said the halfling. "Hot soup warms the soul, she used to say. Probably little help to you, seeing as how you're a soulless bastard. You're welcome to your rations, if you'd rather."

That last statement caused Riven to keep behind his teeth whatever retort he might have been considering. Cale grinned.

Smiling himself, Magadon removed several small, wooden bowls from his pack and used them to start serving the stew.

"Your mother was a wise woman, Jak," the guide said through his mirth, and gave the halfling the first steaming bowl of stew. "And you'll have to forgive Drasek for his words." He winked at the halfling and said, "He had no real mother, of course, being the spawn of ice and molasses. Which explains why he grew up to be cold and thick."

Cale laughed aloud.

Jak chuckled, eyed Riven with distrust, and said, "Slippery and dark, more like."

Riven scowled at the halfling, but nevertheless held out his hand for a stew bowl.

"That was a poor jest when you first made it years ago, Mags," the assassin said.

"Poor?" Magadon asked, and ignored Riven's outstretched hand in favor of Cale.

Cale sipped the thick soup. It was tasty.

Magadon continued, "That half-orc and his fellows would have pummeled you to gruel. That jest saved your life."

"Theirs, more likely," Riven said, and Magadon cocked his head to concede the point.

Jak, continuing to chuckle, said, "Cold and thick. That's good. Very good."

"That's enough, Fleet," Riven barked, but Cale heard the smile behind the words. "Now give me some of that godsdamned stew, Mags, before I pummel you to gruel."

The woodsman did, and for a time the camaraderie of the road and the warm food chased the shadows. But only for a time. After the meal, the weight of the plane and the chill of the swamp once again descended.

They huddled around Jak's bluelight wand saying nothing, suddenly exhausted. Magadon had selected a campsite within a stand of the brooding, cypresslike trees common to the swamp. To Cale, it felt like the trees were watching them, the leaves whispering evil words.

After a time, he said, "I'll take first watch. All of you, get some sleep."

* * * * *

The next "day" seemed much like the one before-chilly, wet, and gloomy. They slogged alternately through knee deep, black water, soggy vegetation, and mud that stank like the worst of Selgaunt's sewers. Wisps of shadowy fog hovered over the land like dark tendrils squeezed from the saturated earth. Uncomfortably, they reminded Cale of the squirming tentacles from the Fane that had effected his transformation into a shade.

A few hours into the day's trek, Magadon said to them,

"The ground is rising and less saturated. We'll clear the swamp before this day is over. I'd wager on it."

"You never were a good gambler," Riven grumbled.

Magadon grinned.

For his part, Cale could see so no end to the bog in sight and felt no change in the ground. It just felt like the same mud. Still, he felt comfortable trusting Magadon's expertise and he continued to trek on.

Without warning, a wave of terror washed over Cale. His breath caught and he could hear his heart thumping in his ears. Sweat formed on his brow. To judge from the look of wide-eyed alarm on his comrade's faces, they all felt something similar.

The swamp fell silent around them. Even the ubiquitous flies had vanished.

Cale put his hand to his blade hilt and looked around, his gaze darting from pool, to reeds, to trees. He saw nothing amiss, except that each of his comrades had gone ashen. The feeling of terror lingered.

"What is this?" Magadon asked softly, his voice tense.

The guide unslung his ashwood bow, drew an arrow from his quiver, and scanned the swamp. Pools of black water stood to either side of them, steaming in the humidity. The dark trees of the swamp loomed like watchtowers.

Jak and Riven went back to back and drew their blades. Jak let out a sharp breath that sounded like a hiss. Magadon and Cale too closed ranks. Cale's hand stayed on his sword hilt but he did not draw. He looked around, but still saw nothing. He listened, but heard only the rapid respiration of his companions. The water around them remained still; too still. A blanket of shadowy mist pooled around their knees.

"There!" said Magadon, pointing his bow to the sky. "Above us."

Gazes followed the point of the woodsman's knocked arrow.

Against the backlit sky, one of the clouds, smaller than the others and darker, slowly wheeled a circle. Even as they watched, it veered in their general direction.

"Trickster's toes," Jak oathed, squinting. "What is that?"

With his enhanced vision, Cale could see that what they were looking at was not a cloud at all. It was a pool of writhing shadows-semi transparent to his transformed eyes. Within it, he saw the source of their magically induced terror.

"Kill the light!" he hissed. "Now."

Jak could not have missed the urgency in Cale's voice. Asking no questions, the halfling spoke a word in his own tongue and the wand's glow ceased.

"We can't see more than fifteen paces, Cale," Riven growled, still eyeing the sky.

Cale knew, but their only hope was that the creature in the sky had not noticed them.

"Quiet," he ordered.

Nearby stood a cluster of thin-leafed, droopy-limbed trees-not the cypresses, but they would be enough to hide them.

"Those trees directly to our right," Cale said. "Go now. As fast and as quiet as you can."

They must have heard the alarm in his tone, for they sheathed their weapons and darted off without comment. The splashing water rang like a gong in Cale's ears. Twice Jak fell in the water, and each time Magadon and Cale pulled him back to his feet. Somehow, Cale seemed faster than usual. He actually had to slow down to not outpace his comrades. As he ran, he prayed to Mask that the huge creature soaring overhead would not notice them. He imagined its dark eyes boring into his back. He looked ahead to the trees, willed them all to run faster, sensed a space between the shadows, and-

-he felt a moment's disorientation, a transitory rush of air, and-

-he was there!

Cale stood in the copse, well ahead of his comrades.

Somehow, he had stepped instantly from one shadow to another, seemingly without passing through the intervening space.

Dark and empty! he thought.

He had no time to consider his newfound ability. He stepped out from under the cover of the tree's low boughs and beckoned his comrades on.

"Faster," he hissed.

They had stopped, dumbfounded at his sudden disappearance and reappearance so far in front of them. They again began to run in earnest.

The cloud circled above them, a giant, scaled vulture swathed in shadows. The creature began to descend.

Cale reached for his holy symbol, but realized that he didn't have one. Instead he put his hand to his blade hilt. He drew it a fingerwidth and hesitated. He had not yet drawn it in on the Plane of Shadow and he felt that to do so somehow would be to surrender something that he could not quite articulate. Reluctantly, he removed his hand.

His comrades, wet and winded, streamed into the copse and ducked under the sheltering boughs. There they waited, ankle deep in the soft earth, stink, and water. The leaves and darkness enshrouded them.

"Quiet," Cale whispered, then he listened and watched.

He willed the shadows around them to darken slightly and much to his surprise, they did.

Riven, standing beside him, whispered, "Bad?"

Cale nodded. It could not be worse. He looked out of the copse and saw nothing. The tree limbs obscured his vision, but he could not miss the creature should it come near.

Magadon touched the tip of his arrow to his head and it began to hum lightly. He re-knocked it.

"What is it?" the guide asked Cale.

The beat of huge pinions, like the wind that presaged a thunderstorm, drowned out anything Cale might have said in answer. The force of the wings rattled the trees under which they hid, and threw up a blinding mist of swamp water and clots of mud. A huge, sinuous form, still streaming the remnants of the shadows that previously had cloaked it, alit in the water forty paces from the copse and filled Cale's field of vision. Its body displaced so much water that the copse was flooded up to their knees.

Terror went before it.

Cale held his breath, heart racing. So too did his comrades. All of them stood perfectly still, both awed and terrified.

Jak finally managed a whisper: "Trickster's hairy toes."

Cale knew that his comrades probably could barely see the creature through the darkness and the trees. For his part, Cale caught only glimpses of it through the curtain of limbs, but....

Dark and empty, its size!

Its wingspan could have shaded the whole of the Uskevren manse. Lustrous black scales as large as great shields covered its muscled form. When it moved, shadows played along its hide. The edges of its form appeared to merge with the darkness, melding with the shadows of the plane and making it difficult to determine where the actual body of the creature began and ended. In those shadows, Cale thought he saw the dark, shifting images of struggling bodies, of faces contorted in screams, of eyes agog with terror. His skin went gooseflesh. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he heard moans and wails. He pushed them back and focused on the creature. Cale caught a flash of ebon horns, of teeth longer than Jak was tall, and of merciless eyes that reflected no light.

Dragon, his mind registered. A dragon of shadows.

The creature beat its wings once, spraying water in all directions, and sniffed the air. Cale knew that if it caught their scent, they could never outrun it. They could only fight; fight and die.

It lowered its great horned head to the level of the water and moved it from side to side, sniffing, searching. Its respiration sounded louder than a forge bellows. The shadows around it formed writhing bodies and contorted shapes before melding to sheathe the creature in gloom once again.

Cale expected the dragon to roar loud enough to deafen them all, but instead of a roar it spoke, and its sinister voice was the threatening whisper of a drawn sword.

"Lightbringers in my swamp," it said, still sniffing. Its eyes narrowed. "I smell your sweat. Human sweat."

Magadon's mental voice suddenly sounded in Cale's head, giving him a start.

We're linked, the guide projected.

Cale nodded. The link was a good idea, but it caused him to feel the fear pulsing along the telepathic channels that joined him to his friends. He tried to keep his own anxiety under control. Panic would not serve them.

It knows we're nearby, Riven projected softly, crouching silently to peer through the foliage. I can barely see it.

What is in the shadows around it? Jak asked.

Cale did not bother to answer. The dragon itself was terrifying enough.

Jak asked, If it comes, then what?

The halfling held his holy symbol in both hands. He hadn't bothered to bare his short sword. It was too paltry a weapon against a creature the size of the dragon.

Then we fight, Cale answered, with as much steel in his mental voice as he could muster. There's nowhere to run.

His comrades said nothing, but each of them shifted slightly. Magadon drew his arrow back another few fingers' breadth and took aim through the boughs.

The dragon continued to chuff after their scent, peering suspiciously at this or that copse of trees or stand of reeds.

Ready yourselves, Cale projected, though he did not know what any of them could do.

As quiet as a wraith, Riven drew his magical sabers. Cale closed his fist over his sword hilt. Jak edged closer to Cale.

The dragon, incredibly graceful for a creature so enormous, slid through the swamp toward them, sniffing, searching, its swinging tail and powerful forelegs propelling it through the muck. It reared back its long neck and looked in the direction of their copse. The pupils of its deep, violet eyes visibly dilated.

"I can hear your hearts beating," it said.

The dragon opened its mouth wide. Its inhalation sucked the air from the vicinity of the copse.

Cover! Cale mentally shouted.

But before any of them could move, the dragon expelled from its jaws a cloud of viscous shadows that washed over the copse, and soaked them for a moment in impenetrable darkness. Cale felt its effect immediately-the chill of the void, the pull of negative energy on his soul. Strangely, it seemed to have little effect on him. Jak and Magadon groaned as the dragon's breath stole some of their essence.

The cloud began to dissipate into greasy streamers, and Cale saw that Riven too seemed largely unaffected. Jak and Magadon, though ashen, remained on their feet and seemed still to have their wits. A rain of shriveled leaves and dry twigs fell from the trees around them.

Magadon's bow sang.

Jak's weakened voice rang out with the words of a spellcasting.

Riven lurched from the copse toward the dragon, wading through the water, blades bare and whirling.

The guide's psionically enhanced arrow hit the dragon in the throat below the hole of its mouth, but shattered harmlessly on its scales. A beam of white light streaked from Jak's outstretched palm, but the shadows surrounding the creature swallowed whatever effect the beam otherwise would have had.

Surrendering to the inevitable, Cale at last drew his blade and followed after Riven. He almost laughed, so absurd must they have looked, like fleas charging a dog.

From behind him, he heard Jak and Magadon following hard after, splashing through the mud and water. Jak began again to cast.

As Riven plowed through the muck, mud, and vegetation, he began to shout in the foul tongue he sometimes uttered in his sleep. Somehow his voice seemed more powerful, deeper, darker, as though amplified by the shadows. Cale could not fight down the nausea caused by the vile words. He coughed his midday meal into the waters of the swamp. Behind him, Jak and Magadon cried out in pain.

The shadows sheathing the dragon swirled into recognizable human forms, all of them covering their ears, though the dragon itself seemed unaffected by the utterance. As fast as a lightning strike, it lunged forward and clutched Riven in its foreclaw before the assassin could bring his blades to bear. Pinning the human's arms to his sides, the dragon picked Riven up out of the water and began to squeeze. Forms lurched forward from the shadows around the creature, arms outstretched, as though to embrace the assassin.

Cale could imagine the cracking ribs, the crushed organs. A bloody froth exploded from Riven's mouth but he continued to struggle to free his blades, all the while shouting in the vile tongue.

"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 Faerun. 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 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 force 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."