Dawn of Night

CHAPTER 5 STARMANTLE'S SHADOW

After everyone had awakened, Cale related what he'd learned of the Weave Tap from reading the tome. He didn't mention the silken mask he'd found within its pages, nor did he mention the fact that he'd slept perhaps two hours but no longer felt tired.

"So it's an artifact?" Jak asked, drawing thoughtfully on the pipe he always smoked upon waking.

Cale could only relate what he'd read, and didn't purport to understand it all.

"It is, but it's also a living thing," Cale said. "You saw it, little man. Shar's priesthood made it, or found and nurtured it, after the fall of Netheril as a way to spite Selune and the newly-birthed Mystra. Its roots extend into the Shadow Weave, while its limbs reach into the Weave proper."

"The warp and weft of magic," Jak said from around his pipe stem.

Magadon sat cross-legged in the gloom with his fingers steepled under his chin. His wide-brimmed hat cast his face in darkness.

"What does it do?" asked the guide.

Riven coughed and spat-as much the assassin's morning ritual as Jak's smoking-and asked, "Why do we care?"

Jak blew smoke Riven's way and shook his head in disgust.

Cale chose to ignore Riven and looked at Magadon when he said, "It siphons the magic of the Weave, magnifies it, and makes that power usable by the mage who possesses the Tap."

"How?" Jak asked.

Cale shrugged and answered, "The tome did not specify the method."

"Those slaadi were no mages," Riven observed.

"No," Cale agreed. "But I'll wager their master, this 'Sojourner',

is."

To that, Riven said nothing, merely studied his hands.

"If so, the Sojourner could be scrying us now," Magadon said, looking up into the starless sky.

Jak shook his head.

"I don't think so," the halfling said, and frowned at his pipe, which had apparently gone out. "Divinations do not seem to work in this place. At least mine don't. I'll wager he cannot scry us here. Besides, he may have no interest in us anymore. He might think we're dead at the bottom of the Moonmere. Why scry for the dead?"

The guide acknowledged Jak's point with a tilt of his head then asked, "What do we think this Sojourner wants to do with the power of the Weave Tap?"

Cale shrugged, chewed some trail tack, then said, "No way to know."

" 'Additional variables,'" Jak added, quoting Sephris, the chosen of Oghma and ostensible madman who had prophesied their fate, albeit in mathematical riddles. The halfling tapped the ashes from his pipe and stuffed it back into his belt pouch. "Whatever it is, we can be sure it's not good." He glared at Riven. "And that's why we care, Zhent."

Riven scoffed, stretched, and said, "Speak for yourself, Fleet." He paused for a minute then nodded at the belt pouch into which Jak's pipe had vanished. "You have an extra one of those?"

Jak, eyebrows arched, asked, "What? A pipe?"

Riven nodded.

Jak nodded back, shared a perplexed look with Cale, then took his spare pipe-a plain, wooden-bowled affair-from a belt pouch. He tossed it to Riven along with an extra pipeweed tin and a tindertwig.

"Keep it. And that's good pipeweed from Mistledale," the halfling said. "Don't waste it."

Obviously familiar with the paraphernalia, Riven tamped, lit, and began to smoke without saying a word. Cale's astonishment must have shown on his face.

"You've never seen a man smoke?" Riven asked him.

"I've never seen you smoke," Cale answered.

Riven blew out a series of perfect smoke rings, gave a hard grin, and said, "And I've never seen a man with yellow eyes who can move from shadow to shadow. I guess this place is changing us all, Cale."

To that, Cale could only agree.

"We've got to get back," Jak said, "find those slaadi, and stop the Sojourner. No one else even knows what's happening."

"And no one else needs to know," Riven said from around the pipe. "Understood?"

Jak looked at the assassin as if he had turned green and asked, "What in the Hells are you talking about? Did the pipeweed go to your head that fast? We need help with this."

Riven drew on Jak's pipe, discharged the smoke from his nose, and looked to Cale, who sighed and nodded.

"This is our light, Jak," Cale said. "It's personal; it's been personal right from the start. We end it, no one else."

Jak's mouth hung open.

"Our fight!" the halfling said at last. "Dark and empty! This is big, Cale, bigger than us. That Tap is an artifact. We're talking about the Weave itself. This isn't some guild grudge we're settling. We need help. I know some people who..."

Cale stared at his friend and Jak grew quiet. Cale knew it was big, but he also knew it was his.

"We can do it, Jak."

Riven uttered something between a cough and a laugh.

The halfling turned from Cale, looked to Magadon, and asked, "You too?"

Magadon shrugged and made a show of reorganizing his giant pack while he said, "One of those slaadi killed Nestor, took his place, then nearly killed you. It's personal for me as well."

"You three aren't thinking right," Jak said, then mumbled, "Trickster's toes. Trickster's hairy toes."

At Jak's expression of dismay, Cale struggled to keep a straight face.

"We'll stop them, little man," Cale said. "We'll be enough."

"You better be right," Jak said, and obviously meant it.

Cale's mirth vanished. He had better be right, indeed.

Magadon stood, squirmed into his pack, and adjusted the straps.

"We can't stop anyone sitting here," said the guide. "Gear up. Let's move."

Cale stood and began to gather his gear.

The halfling touched the spot on his back where one of the slaadi, Dolgan, had run him through.

He shouldered his own pack with a grunt and said, "We do owe those damned slaadi some blood, don't we?"

"That we do," Cale answered with a smile.

He could see that the halfling was coming to terms with the decision.

"Now and again you say something that makes sense, Fleet," Riven said.

He put out his borrowed pipe, pocketed it, and pulled on his pack.

"You keep your words behind your teeth, Zhent," Jak replied. "And remember ... that's my pipe."

* * * * *

It took another two days, but at last the forest began to thin. By the time they broke for a midday repast on the second day, they were in the midst of endless plains that rose and fell like ocean swells. The tall grass, with thick, abrasive blades that looked like serrated daggers, reached to Jak's thighs. Only occasional copses of trees broke the flat monotony. Each tree was so gnarled it looked like it had twisted itself into knots trying to escape the soil. In truth, Jak had felt more comfortable in the brooding forest than he did in the plains. He felt exposed under the onyx sky. He could see little farther than a short stone's throw. There was nowhere to hide.

He held his holy symbol in a sweaty fist and his blue-light wand in the other. It seemed he had been sweating since the moment he arrived in that dark plane. He felt small, in a way that had nothing to do with his stature. When he considered the transformations of Riven and Cale, thought of the artifact, and saw in all of it the machinations of gods, he felt as though he were witnessing a myth in-the-making. It frightened him.

The stakes-albeit unknown-also frightened him. In the past, his adventures had been just that: adventures, and generally of interest only to him. But events had grown larger than the stuff of tavern tales. At that moment, Jak was pleased that he was nothing more than an obscure priest of a minor god.

He looked over at Cale, saw the dusky skin, the yellow eyes, the shadows that clung to him, and thought: Heroes have too much weight to carry.

"The correspondence seems to be holding," Magadon observed from his position out in front of them. The even tone of the woodsman's voice helped to relax Jak. Magadon seemed .. . steady somehow, like an old oak tree, like he always knew where he was and where he was going.

He was a seventeen too, Jak thought, recalling old Sephris.

Magadon went on, "If it continues, we should reach the Shadow equivalent of Starmantle in two or three days."

Assuming it's not moving away from us, Jak thought but nodded anyway.

The shifting terrain of the Shadow Deep made him feel like the land under him was a skiff floating on an endless, invisible sea. The thought made him queasy and he pushed it from his mind.

As the trek continued Jak tried several times to engage Cale in conversation, but each time Cale deflected the attempt with an inhospitable grunt. The halfling knew what that meant-Cale was thinking, planning.

Riven, for his part, seemed content to walk in silence, alone with the newfound power in his hands, which he continually examined as they traveled. Jak wondered uneasily what else Riven's hands could do, what else they had already done.

Late in the day it grew windy, then began to rain. Thick dollops of black water, whipped into sheets by a gusting wind, thumped against Jak's face as hard as sling bullets. Vermillion lightning ripped the sky into pieces. Deafening thunder pounded the earth. The storm was gorgeous and terrifying all at once, like the demon lord Cale and Jak had once fought.

Magadon called a halt and they camped under the eaves of a copse of something like elms. Jak made sure to create a beef stew with his spell that evening, to keep Riven's mouth shut. Though Magadon's weathered and oiled tents managed to keep the rain off of him, he struggled through only an hour or two of intermittent sleep.

The storm continued through the next day, but still they made good progress. Magadon refused to stop for the weather and Jak was glad. He wanted out of that plane and, if the theoretical city held the way out, he wanted to get there as soon as possible.

Sometime near the middle of that day, they reached their destination.

They stood atop a low rise, ineffectually shielding themselves against the wind and rain with their hats or the hoods of their sodden cloaks. A gently sloping, shallow valley extended before them. At its bottom, visible to Jak only in the lightning flashes, a ruined city erupted from the plain like a plague boil. The overgrown ruins covered as much acreage as did Selgaunt, perhaps more. Only the low, squat buildings in the city's densely-packed center had remained intact. Jak saw no people in the streets, no movement at all. It was eerie.

They stood looking at the ruins for a long while, as though assuring themselves that they were not looking upon an apparition. A pinpoint of golden light flashed from somewhere in the city's center, from amidst the low buildings, as though someone had briefly uncovered a bulls eye lantern.

Jak's breath caught, and he strained to see. He thought he might have imagined the light but it repeated again quickly. To him, that light, that color, bespoke one thing: a way home.

"Did you see that?" he shouted to Cale and Magadon over the wind.

Both nodded.

Magadon said, "That's the only natural looking light we've seen since we arrived."

"A way back?" Jak asked.

He couldn't keep hope from coloring his voice.

Magadon shrugged and said, "Possibly."

They squinted into the wind. The flash came again.

"A beacon, maybe?" Riven asked.

Cale drew Weaveshear and said, "Or maybe a lure. Either way, there's only one way to find out. Ready?"

Jak nodded and drew his short sword and dagger. Riven too drew his sabers, and Magadon his bow.

"Stay sharp," Cale said, starting down the rain-slicked grass of the valley.

Thunder boomed and another lightning flash illuminated the city. Jak caught a clear glimpse of toppled buildings, crumbling megaliths, and broken statues worn by the weather and pitted into anonymity. It looked as though the city had been destroyed in some unrecorded cataclysm. Sculptures perched atop the roofs of the small, single story buildings in the city's center, the only intact statuary in the ruins.

"The buildings in the center of town look odd," Jak observed. "Too small for a home. What do you make of them?"

Cale's voice was grim when he said, "Those are tombs."

Jak's skin went gooseflesh. There were a lot of them.

* * * * *

Magadon led them into the ruined city, marking the path ahead with his bow. Cale walked beside the guide, coiled, Weaveshear in hand. Jak and Riven followed after, widely spaced, blades at the ready, eyes alert. Butterflies fluttered in Jak's gut. He couldn't keep his hands from shaking, causing the shadows cast by he and his companions in the blue light of his wand to dance on the ruins.

Crumbling, weed-overgrown buildings rose out of the darkness. Even in ruin, the structures managed to imply a sense of architectural majesty. Soaring arches, thick marble columns, and elaborately carved stonework were the rule. The city must have been beautiful to behold once.

Shards of bone stuck from the earth, most human-sized, but some gigantic. Cale simply stared at them and said nothing.

A broad, flagstone-paved avenue stretched before them, extending into darkness toward the crypts in the center of town. Weeds, tall grass, drab wildflowers, and even the occasional tree sprouted from between the cracked stones of the road. The ruins were old.

All but the cemetery, at least.

Jak felt uneasy, the way he did when unfriendly eyes were upon him, but he could not pinpoint a reason. He had an ominous sense of something lurking nearby, something malevolent.

Despite the continuing rain, the air felt clingy and thick, as though they were walking through a mass of invisible cobwebs. Jak could not help but hold his dagger before his face and try to part the air with it.

In silence, they trekked through the dead streets of a dead city. Riven and Magadon took the flanks, spreading out ten paces to the left and right, clearing buildings as they moved. Jak and Cale spaced themselves a few paces apart and walked down the broad road. Having descended into the valley, the ruins blocked their view of the necropolis so they could no longer see the occasionally flashing gold light. It didn't matter. They knew where to go. The road led directly to it.

Within a quarter hour, the rain lessened to something more moderate than a downpour, but lightning still flashed through the sky. Jak kept alert to Riven's side of the street-Jak's responsibility-but now and again stole a look at Cale. His friend's faraway gaze followed Magadon, but sometimes moved dully from here to there. Jak would never get used to those yellow eyes.

The halfling moved near Cale and asked in a sharp whisper, "What is it?"

Cale, who looked startled, said, "I don't know, Jak. I feel like I know this place somehow, like my mind is a palimpsest and the faded writing is now becoming visible."

Jak did not even know what a palimpsest was, but his skin went gooseflesh again.

"How would you know this place?" he asked. "The book from the Fane?"

Jak watched as Riven entered the crumbling entrance of what once might have been a shop. He exited a moment later, signaling that it was clear.

Cale shook his head again and replied, "I'm not cer-"

Riven froze and gave a sharp whistle that cut through the drumbeat of the rain. With rapidity and skill, the assassin climbed atop the building he had just exited. There, he crouched low on the flat roof and looked a block over, to a cluster of tall buildings, the domed tops of which Jak could just make out.

Cale and Jak signaled to Magadon. The guide left off his search of a building and hurried to Cale's and Jak's side.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Look," Jak said, and pointed in Riven's direction.

Beyond Riven's rooftop perch, a faint, icy blue glow rose just above the rooftops. Jak put its source perhaps a street or two away. Not the golden light they had seen in the center of town, but something else.

Riven kept his gaze on the source of the light and waved them over.

Jak, Cale, and Magadon ran to the base of the building-it was littered with decayed tables and broken ceramics-and they began to climb. Cale reached the top first and pulled Jak up the last bit. Magadon followed, struggling more with the climb but managing. All three reached the roof and crouched beside Riven. From there, they could see the cause of the glow.

"Burn me," Jak whispered.

Magadon knocked an arrow and drew it to his ear.

Two hundred paces away, hundreds of spirits, all women and young girls, streamed out of one of the tall, ruined buildings-formerly a temple, to judge from the partially collapsed metallic dome that capped its center.

In loose columns, the spirits advanced in their direction. They appeared to be walking, but their feet remained a fingerbreadth above the ground, and their robes of silvery samite rustled to a much gentler wind than the gusts that pulled at Jak's sodden cloak. Each bore a ghostly candle, and shielded it with her hands as though to protect it from the rain that was, in reality, passing through both candle and bearer. The candle flames were the source of the blue glow. Though they made no sound, their mouths moved in unison and Jak felt as though the ghosts were chanting or singing.

From beside Jak, Cale spoke in a distant voice: "The Summoners of the Sun. The last hope of Elgrin Fau."

Jak heard Cale's words but their import barely registered. He could not take his eyes from the processional of ghosts. Their silent, somber beauty hypnotized him. Though the spirits were walking the road below them, Jak felt no fear; he did not bother to reach for his holy symbol. Instead, he felt a deep sadness that went before the spirits like a wave. They wore the resigned expressions of the condemned, but held fast to their candles as though those flames were the only possibility of salvation.

Magadon's bowstring creaked and he prepared to let fly.

Cale put a hand on the guide's shoulder and whispered, "They can cause no harm, Magadon. Let them pass."

The woodsman hesitated for a moment before relaxing his bow.

The tide of ghosts continued toward the party then turned right exactly below them and headed up the street. They seemed oblivious to the companions. The women were all tall and slender, with light hair and fair skin. Their eyes were wide and slightly upturned at the corners, their earlobes unusually large and bedecked with several earrings. Jak thought them beautiful, surreal, and alien. He watched them as they passed by.

"Where are they going?" he asked, of no one in particular.

"East," Cale said. "To stand in the plains and pray for the sun to rise again. They think they're still in their own world, but they are not. The sun never rises here." Cale's yellow eyes fixed on the women as they moved away. "They are the lingering memories of Elgrin Fau, Jak, once called the City of Silver."

The halfling stared at Cale with his mouth hanging open.

Magadon too looked at Cale with surprise in his white eyes.

Beside Cale, Riven nodded knowingly and said, "When Kesson Rel stole the sky, the inhabitants of Elgrin Fau began to perish. The darkness of this plane consumed thousands before it was sated. The survivors were long ago scattered to the planes."

The assassin's gaze swept the length and breadth of the ruins.

Jak tried to imagine the city, living, filled with people and light, but he could not. The Plane of Shadow had left it a dark husk. He thought of the tragedy represented there and a chill ran up his spine. He shared a look with Magadon, whose knucklebone eyes had grown thoughtful. Jak looked from Cale to Riven, Riven to Cale.

"How do you two know any of that?" he softly asked, and was not sure he wanted to know the answer.

"I saw it," Cale said, then he frowned and cocked his head. "Or perhaps I read it."

Riven looked at Cale curiously before answering, "I dreamed it."

Jak nodded as though he understood, but he did not. He simply could think of nothing to say. Things were too large for comment. When he looked at Cale he still saw his friend, but he saw something else too, something grander, something darker. A hero? For some reason, he thought of Sephris.

The First of Five, he thought, and wondered what that actually meant.

In respectful silence, they all watched the ghosts continue their hopeless trek east through the rain, to pray for a sun they would never again see. Cale gazed upon them wistfully.

When the spirits had vanished from sight, Magadon asked in a quiet voice, "Erevis, do you know if the flashing light we saw earlier is a way home?"

Cale, who had been lost in thought, came back to himself.

He shook his head and said softly, "I don't know, Mags. I wish I did. But. . . things are coming back to me."

"Back to you?" Jak asked. "What does that mean?"

Cale shrugged and said, "That's the only way I can explain it, little man."

Jak resolved in that instant to get Cale away from the Plane of Shadow at all hazards. The darkness there was sinking into Cale, soaking him. Jak didn't want to think about what would happen to his friend if he became saturated with it. He didn't want to think about what would happen to any of them. For the first time, Jak admitted-to himself at least-that he didn't want Cale to be this "First of Five." He didn't even want Cale to be a priest anymore. He wanted Cale to be Cale, his friend and nothing more.

Jak put a hand on Cale's forearm. The shadows that clung to Cale's person coiled defensively around the halfling's fingers.

"Let's keep moving," Jak said. "We need to find the source of that flashing light. It is a way out," he said, hoping that by saying it with certainty he would make it so.

As if in response to Jak's words, from their position atop the roof, they again caught the tantalizing flash of golden light from somewhere near the center of the crypts. They could not see its source, but the color reminded Jak of sunlight.

Lightning flashed, casting the city in vermillion.

"Jak's right," Magadon said, and jumped down from the edifice.

The rest followed, and together they headed through the rain and ruin for the center of town.

As they walked, Jak tried to take Cale's mind off of the ghosts and remind him of something ordinary, of their life before his transformation to shade.

"It was raining just like this last spring when I had a run of Tymora's own luck at the Scarlet Knave. Do you remember that? I must have won ten hands of Scales and Blades in a row. I lived well over the next tenday, my friend. I bought five new hats."

Cale smiled, but his eyes were distant when he replied, "I remember, Jak." After a pause, he softly added, "I remember a lot of things."

To that, Jak could say nothing, but he suddenly missed his hats a great deal. For a time they walked in silence.

At last, Cale looked down at him and said, "Little man, do you remember once, when you were talking about the life, and you said to me, 'This is only what we do, not what we are?'"

"I remember," Jak replied, "That's the truth, Cale."

Cale's mouth was a hard line when he said, "Not anymore."

Before Jak could protest, Riven interrupted them with a saber blade at each of their chests.

"You see?" the assassin said. "You two hens are too busy clucking to-"

With speed and strength that made Jak go wide-eyed, Cale batted Riven's left-hand saber aside, grabbed the assassin by the cloak, and yanked him in close.

The assassin let his blades fall slack and merely stared. Jak detected the beginnings of a smirk at the corners of Riven's mouth, though the assassin's breathing came fast.

Cale answered Riven's stare with one of his own. His yellow eyes flashed. Shadows spiraled around his head.

To his credit, Riven kept his voice level.

"If I was an enemy, Cale, you'd already be dead. It only pays to be fast if you see what's coming. Don't get sloppy. We both know that all of the dead in this city won't be as harmless as those ghosts. Stay sharp, just as you said.

"You too, Fleet. Now-" and his eye narrowed-"put me down."

Cale's expression did not change, but he shoved the assassin away.

Riven kept his feet, chuckled, straightened his cloak, and turned away.

"Whoreson," Jak said to Riven's back.

"No, he's right," Cale said. "I'm losing focus. I feel like I'm in deep water, Jak."

The halfling felt the same way. He took a protective step closer to his friend as they continued on toward the crypts.