Midnight's mask

CHAPTER 2

The instant they materialized, Magadon's sunrod went dark, probably extinguished by some ambient magic in the cavern. Only the dim glowglobe provided illumination in the chamber. It was enough for Cale. He hoped it was enough for Jak and Magadon.

They stood on soft carpet on one side of the cavern, perhaps fifteen paces from the slaadi and the Sojourner. On the floor between the slaadi, Riven struggled feebly to draw his weapons.

Azriim and Dolgan went wide-eyed at the sudden appearance of the three comrades.

"Cale," Azriim hissed, and fumbled at his blade hilt.

Dolgan growled and unslung his axe.

The three comrades went straight after the Sojourner.

Jak held his holy symbol before him and shouted the words to a spell. Beams of white fire shot from his hand at the Sojourner. They never reached their target. Instead, one of the gems circling the Sojourner's head attracted and absorbed the beams as if they had never been.

Magadon's bow sang and an arrow flew, its tip glowing red with mental energy. The arrow slammed against some invisible shield before the Sojourner, stopped in mid-flight, and fell to the ground, inert.

Cale felt a twinge behind his eyes and feared a mental attack, but the sensation never grew beyond the initial sensation. Perhaps Jak's spell had shielded him from the Sojourner's attack.

Jak's and Magadon's failed attacks confirmed what Cale had already suspected: A formidable array of defensive spells and wards protected the Sojourner. Cale had to bring them down or weaken them.

Hurriedly, he recited a prayer that pitted the power of his magic against that of the Sojourner. When the spell took effect, the contest proved short-lived and one-sided. The Sojourner's power overwhelmed Cale's spell, which dissipated without effect.

Cale saw then that magic would be of little use against the superior spellcraft of the Sojourner.

"Use steel," he called, and charged, leaping over a couch as he went.

Jak and Magadon brandished their blades and joined his rush.

Before they had taken five strides, the Sojourner responded. Unlike most wizards Cale had encountered, the Sojourner did not speak a complex phrase or manipulate some esoteric ingredient. Instead, he simply raised his left hand-wincing with pain as he did so-and spoke a single word.

An expanding wedge-shaped spray of variously colored beams shot outward from his fingertips. The three companions had no time to dodge.

A yellow beam struck Magadon in the chest and blew him from his feet. Lightning played over his body, leaving him smoking and sparking on the floor.

An orange beam struck Jak in the left leg as he jumped the couch. His trousers, boots, and flesh blackened, bubbled, started to melt. The little man screamed in agony, collapsed to the couch, and rolled onto the floor, clutching his melting thigh and writhing. The stink of burning flesh filled the chamber.

The green and blue beams intended for Cale diverted into Weaveshear. The blade drank them greedily, though the magical impact staggered Cale and stopped his charge. Weaveshear shook in his hands, bleeding shadows. He clutched it in both hands to keep his grip.

The Sojourner eyed the sword with raised eyebrows-as though surprised that it had been able to absorb his spell-and spoke another word of power, this time without a gesture of any kind.

A sphere of lightning took shape around the creature, surrounding him at arm's length. It sizzled and spun, charging the air in the chamber with energy. Bolts arced out to touch the metal of the slaadi's weapons, to burn the cushions and furniture at the Sojourner's feet. Even at a distance, the hairs on Cale's arms rose.

Cale knew that he could not allow the Sojourner the freedom to continue casting, but the slaadi were in his way.

Azriim and Dolgan, seeing Cale alone, seized weapons in their hands and advanced. Dolgan held his huge axe in his ham hands; Azriim held his blade in one hand and one of his many wands in the other.

Cale pointed Weaveshear at them and released the pent up magical energy he had stolen from the Sojourner. The unsuspecting slaadi had no time to avoid the attack, and the green and blue beams intended for Cale struck Azriim and Dolgan.

The blue beam hit Azriim squarely in the chest. His mouth opened to exclaim in surprise, but before a sound could emerge, his body went rigid. In the span of a single heartbeat, starting at his chest but spreading rapidly to the rest of his body, the magic transformed his flesh, clothing, and weapons into gray stone. In an instant, he was no more than a statue.

Dolgan took the green beam in his right arm. The impact spun him around and he groaned, wobbled, and fell over, only a few paces from Riven. Cale did not know what the spell had done to him but the slaad was down, and that was enough.

It was only he and the Sojourner now.

Cale spared a glance at his friends. Jak's face was twisted with pain but he had his holy symbol in hand and already was casting a healing spell on his wounded leg. Magadon, still smoking, was climbing clumsily to his feet, his expression dazed.

The Sojourner started to cast again, this time using gestures and words. His casting with a mere word must be limited, Cale reasoned. That pleased Cale. It made the Sojourner more ordinary.

Before the creature could complete his spell, Cale stepped into the shadowy space that existed in reality's interstices. He moved from one side of the chamber to the other in a single stride. He materialized behind the Sojourner, a little to the right, near Riven and the slaadi.

The Sojourner's sheath of energy spat arcs of lightning that burned Cale's skin. The resistance to magic granted by the shadowstuff in his being was no match for the Sojourner's power. Cale gritted his teeth, endured the pain, and stabbed Weaveshear's point at the Sojourner's spine and kidneys, a killing blow.

The blade cut only empty air.

The Sojourner winked out and reappeared ten paces away.

Some kind of contingency, Cale presumed.

Three bolts of lightning discharged at Cale from the ring of energy around the Sojourner. Weaveshear absorbed two but the third slammed into him. The bolt lifted him from his feet and blew him bodily across the chamber until he slammed into the far wall. His breath left him. His skin smoked and burned. He sagged to the carpeted floor amidst several cushions, gasping, shot through with pain. His shade flesh began to regenerate the injuries.

The Sojourner began to cast another spell, again using elaborate phrasing and gestures.

Cale found his breath and clambered to his feet. He pulled the shadows to him and formed them into five images of himself. They flitted around him, exact duplicates that mirrored his movements. Hopefully they would confuse the Sojourner.

To the left of the creature, Cale saw that Riven had drawn his blades and at last found his feet. The assassin stood on wobbly legs not far from the slaadi, one petrified, the other prone and vulnerable. Riven looked down at Dolgan, back at Magadon and Jak, over at the Sojourner, at Cale.

What in the Nine Hells was he waiting for?

"Do it," Cale shouted, meaning that Riven should kill Dolgan.

Riven's eye narrowed but instead of executing the prone slaad, he stared at Cale and offered his signature sneer. Turning toward Magadon and Jak, Riven shouted a series of words in the foul tongue Mask had taught him in his dreams. The words rang off Cale's ears, sent vomit up his throat. Even Dolgan writhed on the ground. Magadon staggered, fell. Jak vomited, covered his ears.

Cale cursed Riven, cursed Mask, cursed everything. Riven turned back to grin at him. Cale stared hatefully in answer, leveled Weaveshear at him, and discharged the two stored lightning bolts. They ripped the air between Cale and the assassin but Riven anticipated the move and dived aside in an awkward roll. The bolts slammed into the far wall, blackening stone, setting a divan afire, and narrowly missing Jak.

Riven regained his feet, wobbled, stayed upright.

"I told you what I wanted, Sojourner," Riven called. With that, he turned and advanced unsteadily toward Jak and Magadon, sabers bare.

If the Sojourner heard Riven, he showed no sign. He spoke the final word to his spell and a globe of nothingness as big as an ogre's head formed in the air near Cale. Its edge brushed a stuffed chair and the piece of furniture was reduced to dust instantly. It touched one of Cale's shadow images and annihilated it, too. Cale dived aside, his images trailing him, mirroring his movements. The sphere followed, ponderously but inexorably, and what it touched, it destroyed.

For a moment, Cale thought of testing Weaveshear against the annihilating sphere but decided against it. He did not know if the blade could survive it.

The Sojourner spoke another word, a single word, and Cale's magical images and all of Jak's protective spells were annihilated. He was exposed, vulnerable.

Cale felt the Sojourner's mental fingers reaching for his mind. He knew what the creature had done to Riven, what he would do to Cale.

Meanwhile, Riven was three strides away from the little man and Magadon, neither of whom would be able to defend themselves. Still prone, Jak watched Riven approach, a snarl on his face, blades in his hands.

The Sojourner's fingers found purchase in Cale's mind, started to burrow in. He felt as though needles skewered his eyes.

Cale gritted his teeth against the intrusion and made his decision: the fight was lost. He had to get his friends out of there.

He shot a final glare at the Sojourner, and thought: This is not over.

The Sojourner answered, No, but nearly so.

Cale did not bother pondering the response as he slid between the shadows. He stepped to Jak's side, grabbed him by the shirt, and stepped in another stride to Magadon.

At Cale's appearance, Riven aborted his advance.

Cale wanted to give Riven an arm's length of sharp steel but had time only to give him a glare. He pulled the darkness around him.

"Faithless bastard," Jak said to Riven. The little man's leg looked raw and chewed. Puke stained the front of his shirt.

"There will be another time, Zhent," Cale promised, as the shadows closed around him.

"I'm relying on it," Riven said. "We're on other sides in this from now on, Cale. Do you remember what I once told you on the street in Selgaunt after I put down that Cyricist?" He paused before saying, "I meant it."

Cale was glad that his mask hid the confusion he knew his face must have shown.

Behind Riven, the Sojourner spoke another word and pointed a long finger at Cale. A black bolt of energy flew from the Sojourner's finger but Cale already had found the correspondence between the chamber and the first safe place he could think of-the Plane of Shadow.

Strange, Cale thought to himself as the darkness moved him and his friends between worlds, that he would consider the Plane of Shadow a safe place.

Cale, Jak, and Magadon vanished, swallowed by shadows. The black beam from the Sojourner's spell struck the stone where Cale had crouched with his two comrades, and dissolved a wagonload of floor into nothingness.

Riven still felt a bit muzzy-headed from the Sojourner's mental attack, but he knew he had done the right thing.

He ignored the hollow feeling in his gut. It would pass. It always did.

He took a deep breath and turned to look on the Sojourner. He had thrown the dice by betraying Cale. Now he would see if they came up asp eyes or full pips.

The Sojourner gestured with his staff and the circle of lightning sizzling around him dissipated. Despite the frenetic combat, the mage's wheezing breath came steady and slow. His eyes, as dark as the magical sphere that floated in the air beside him, bored like awls into Riven.

Riven sheathed his blades and held his ground.

Not far from him, the big slaad, still groaning with pain from whatever the magical beam had done to him, managed to turn around and sit up.

"Poison," Dolgan said, as much to himself as anyone else. He grinned stupidly. "Stole my strength. Makes me want to. . "

A retch swallowed the big slaad's next words and he sprayed vomit onto the floor and down his shirt. Riven wrinkled his nose at the smell. He did not look closely at the contents of the slaad's stomach; he did not want to know what they might contain.

Dolgan laughed as though the retching amused him. The laughter triggered another round of vomiting.

Riven eyed the Sojourner and said, "I told you that I want Cale dead. I've just proven it." He indicated Dolgan.

"I could have killed him. Him too," he said, indicating Azriim. "I could have knocked him over and broken off his head. Did you see all that?"

"I saw," the Sojourner said, his voice soft. "But even had you killed them, that still would have left me."

Riven kept his face expressionless, though the Sojourner's words hit near to his thinking. Too near.

"Yes," he said, and left unspoken the acknowledgment that he could not have killed the Sojourner. "But I could have fled after putting them down."

He pulled Dolgan's teleportation rod from his cloak and showed it to the Sojourner.

Dolgan got control of his retching and laughing, and patted at his cloak.

The Sojourner gave a soft smile.

"That is mine!" Dolgan said, and climbed to his feet. He wobbled, but managed not to fall.

Riven did not bother to respond. He kept his gaze on the Sojourner.

"I would have found you," the Sojourner said.

Riven shrugged a "maybe."

"Why did you not run?" the Sojourner asked. The black globe-the void-still hovered beside him. Riven understood the implicit threat it represented

"I just told you why," Riven answered, and was reminded by those words of Cale's response to him back on the Plane of Shadow, when they first had put together the plan to get Riven close to the Sojourner.

"You chafe at being Second," said the Sojourner, and floated nearer to him, nearer. The void orb and the stink of medicines drifted at his side.

Riven's jaw tightened. He said nothing but gave a brusque nod.

Holding his axe in both hands, Dolgan advanced and stood beside the Sojourner. Vomit stained the front of his cloak. The stink was abominable. He looked like the idiot he was.

"Kill him, father," the big slaad said to the Sojourner. "Or let me kill him."

Riven put a hand to a saber hilt. "He could do it," he said, pointing his chin at the Sojourner. "You would not have a chance."

Dolgan snarled at him, ran his finger along his axe blade until it bled, but did not advance.

Riven looked to the Sojourner.

"Enemy or ally?" he asked.

"Kill him," Dolgan said again, his voice hard. He sliced open his entire palm on the axe blade.

Riven felt the Sojourner touch his mind. Riven did not resist, even though he did not like the intrusion. There was only mild pain this time. The ordeal ended quickly.

"You believe me now?" Riven asked.

"I do not have to believe," the Sojourner said. "I know."

Riven nodded. "Then that's the last time anyone gets into my head. Agreed?"

The Sojourner answered by letting the void orb wink out.

Dolgan deflated visibly.

The Sojourner eyed him sidelong and said, "Do not let embarrassment color your judgment, Dolgan. As I said before, this one wants transformation as much as you and Azriim. He wishes to be First in the eyes of the Shadowlord. And he cannot be First so long as he is the ally of Erevis Cale. Is that not correct, Drasek Riven?"

Riven acknowledged the point with a tilt of his head. He decided to take the final step-he tossed the teleportation rod back to Dolgan. He now had no way out.

The big slaad caught the rod, looked at it suspiciously, sniffed it, and shoved it back into his vomit-stained cloak.

"Done, then," Riven said.

The Sojourner turned away from him and floated back to Azriim. He touched the slaad with his staff. Magical energy flashed and Azriim reverted at once back to flesh.

The slaad gasped, stumbled, looked around. When he saw Riven, his eyes narrowed and his face burned with embarrassment and anger.

"You," he said, his voice a hiss. He leveled the wand he still held.

Riven held up his hands. "I didn't remember," he explained. "There was no way either of us could have known."

"Do not fret, Azriim," said the Sojourner. "He has won a place here. He is much like you, and is a worthy replacement for Serrin."

Azriim's expression showed confusion, but he did not appear displeased. He sheathed his wand with the others he carried in a thigh case.

"He wants to be transformed," Dolgan said, mimicking the Sojourner's words.

Riven explained, "I want Cale dead. I should be the First of Mask."

Azriim grinned a mouthful of perfect teeth. He clapped his hands together and said, "Well, aren't we all just a joyous family, then?" He turned, noticed Dolgan's vomit-stained cloak, and asked, "What happened to your clothes? You're more disgusting than usual."

"Puke," the big slaad said, and pulled his cloak up to his nose to sniff it. He licked at the cloth.

Azriim wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "Yes, well. . change it, won't you? You stink like a sty." He turned to face the Sojourner. "Meanwhile. . Father, we have spoken of Riven's transformation but not ours. What of that?"

Dolgan quit licking his cloak and looked expectantly at the Sojourner.

"My sons wish to be made new as grays," the Sojourner explained to Riven, though the explanation meant nothing. The Sojourner looked upon his slaadi with a benevolent smile.

"I promised you transformation when our work was done. There are tasks yet unfinished."

Azriim and Dolgan sagged.

"Still," the Sojourner said. "You did accomplish much in Skullport. And for that you deserve something."

Both slaadi looked up.

"A partial transformation to gray," the Sojourner said. "A taste of what is to come."

Without further preamble, he held forth his hand and two small black spheres appeared in his palm. To Riven, they looked like peach pits, except that both glowed with energy and spun in mid-air, each on an invisible axis.

"Assume your natural forms," the Sojourner said. "And eat."

Eagerly, the slaadi began to change. Azriim and Dolgan grunted as their bodies twisted and cracked. The half-drow and human forms stretched, grew, gained bulk. In their eagerness, both had forgotten to remove or loosen their garb. Clothes ripped.

Skin tore and gave way to leathery green hides. Faces and skulls distended to accommodate cavernous mouths filled with fangs. Claws poked from the ends of fingers and toes. In less than a tencount, the slaadi had taken their natural form, that of hulking reptilian bipeds, both as tall as Cale. Dolgan's shoulders were nearly as broad as he was tall.

Riven reminded himself to never forget what they really were, allies or not.

The Sojourner flicked his fingers and one of the magical seeds floated toward each of the slaadi. Both snatched them out of the air and gobbled them greedily.

Instantly a silvery glow suffused them both, leaked from their ears, their eyes.

"It tingles," Dolgan said, and his voice was deeper.

Azriim grinned maniacally. He held his arms out before him and studied his hands as they began to change.

The silver glow intensified, flashed, and the slaadi began again to change. Their hulking green forms diminished. Muscles became leaner, bordered with visible sinew and lined with veins. Heads became sleeker, more angled. Eyes narrowed; eye ridges became more pronounced. Mouths shrank and fangs thinned, lengthened, visibly sharpened. Green leathery hides faded to slate gray.

Then it was over.

Both slaadi were smaller but the strength implied by their former bulk had been replaced by something that suggested … predation. They looked sleeker, faster, more efficient. It was as though they had changed from bears to hunting cats. Dolgan, of course, remained the larger of the two.

Both slaadi smiled a mouthful of new fangs, though Azriim frowned when he realized that he had rent his shirt and breeches. Dolgan smiled at his brother's displeasure.

Azriim disappeared from sight, but his disembodied voice said, "Excellent."

He reappeared. Dolgan grinned and also disappeared and reappeared, disappeared and reappeared, like a child delighted with a new toy.

Riven now knew that the transformation had changed not only the slaadi's bodies, but their magical abilities. At the very least, they could turn themselves invisible merely by willing it. Riven wondered what other new abilities the slaadi could manifest.

"Enough of this," the Sojourner said, and Dolgan's grin vanished. "Time is short. Sakkors awaits."

"Sakkors?" Dolgan asked, stumbling over the word with his new lips and teeth.

"A onetime Netherese city," the Sojourner answered. "Now in ruins."

"Unfortunate," said Azriim, and grinned. "I like to leave cities in ruins, not find them so."

Dolman guffawed.

Riven kept his disdain from his face. He thought the slaadi unprofessional fools. They were as undisciplined as children.

The Sojourner said, "Sakkors was destroyed and lost long ago, when the ambition of the greatest of human mages exceeded his reach. But the city's mantle remains intact."

"We can teleport there," Dolgan said. He held up his teleportation rod, shot Riven a glare, and tucked it back in his pocket. "Then we tap the mantle with another seed and complete our transformation."

"You are not listening, Dolgan," Azriim said, and tsked. "The Sojourner said Sakkors was lost. That means he does not know where it is."

Dolgan stared at Azriim, confusion in his dull eyes and slack mouth. He asked, "How can we go there if he does not know where it is?"

"I am certain he will inform us," Azriim said, and made a flourish at the Sojourner.

The Sojourner frowned at Azriim's flamboyance but said only, "I have been unable to locate Sakkors's exact location, but my research and divinations have revealed its general vicinity."

"You see?" Azriim said to Dolgan.

"Scry it," Riven said, thinking of how Cale used Magadon to see a location before teleporting there. "Then teleport in."

"It resists remote scrying," said the Sojourner. "Even mine. Instead, you will find its exact location with this." The Sojourner tapped his staff on the floor and a device appeared out of the air-in form, it reminded Riven of a ship's compass. A thin needle with a golden point hung suspended in a clear liquid within a transparent sphere chased in gold. The whole rested in a tripod gimbal.

"It looks like a compass," Riven observed. He had seen sailors use such devices for navigation. He understood their use, though he could not use one himself.

The Sojourner smiled at Riven. "That is not far from the truth. But this compass is attuned to the emanations of Sakkors's mantle, rather than to the magnetic sheath that surrounds your world."

"So we need only get in the area of the ruins," Azriim said. "And the compass will guide us to it exactly?"

"Yes," the Sojourner said. "I have determined that Sakkors lies somewhere beneath the waters of the Inner Sea-"

"Underwater?" Riven asked.

"Not to worry," Azriim said, but offered no further explanation.

"Yes," the Sojourner said. "Underwater. Not far off the coast of the realm of Sembia, near the city of Selgaunt."

"Your old haunts," Azriim said, slapping Riven on the shoulder and grinning. "I almost killed you there, not long ago."

"I haven't forgotten," Riven said in a low tone. He let the slaad make of that what he would.

The Sojourner continued. "You will take a ship to sea and the compass will guide you to the ruins. Once there, you will tap Sakkors's mantle, exactly as you did in Skullport."

"And after that?" Azriim asked.

"After that, the Crown of Flame," said the Sojourner, his voice almost wistful.

"I meant for us," Azriim said.

"Of course you did," the Sojourner answered. "For you, completion of your transformation to gray, freedom from service to me, and something else. . "

"What else?" Azriim asked.

The Sojourner shook his head and admonished, "Patience, Azriim."

Riven had never before heard them mention the Crown of Flame. He dared ask, "The Crown of Flame?"

The Sojourner waved a hand casually, though the movement caused him obvious pain. "Something I saw once in my youth, and would see again in my dotage."

"Saw?" Dolgan asked. "I thought you wore it."

"In a manner of speaking, Dolgan," the Sojourner replied. "Now, let me see to our new… broodmate, and you three can be about your tasks, while I am about mine."

Azriim cocked his head. "You have a task?"

"I do," the Sojourner said. "And after I've completed it and you have tapped the mantle in Sakkors, you will not be returning to this plane. Say your farewells."

Azriim's tone was wary. "Where then?"

"I will advise you," the Sojourner said, and offered nothing more.

While Azriim pondered, the Sojourner used another minor summoning spell to provide Riven with his own teleportation rod, similar to that of the slaadi, and instructed him in its use. Then he cast several spells on Riven, ostensibly to ward him from detection by Magadon or Cale. Riven was in no position to protest, though the spells could have been anything.

Afterward, the Sojourner provided Azriim with a silvery seed pod threaded with black veins-a Weave Tap seed-exactly like the one the slaad had used back in Skullport.

After changing back to his preferred half-drow form-now with a prominent gray streak through his otherwise pale hair-Azriim touched the compass and seed with a magical glove he wore and both disappeared, safely stored in some extradimensional space accessible only through the magic of the glove. Finally, Azriim opened a hole in the wall with a command word and disappeared for a time. He returned with new clothes for him, Dolgan, and Riven.

Riven managed not to laugh in Azriim's face. He said, "I'll manage my own wardrobe, slaad."

Azriim looked disappointed but shrugged it off. "If you must," he said, and donned his own finery-a silk shirt, high boots, tailored trousers, and a lace-trimmed cloak. He strapped on his quiver of wands and his weapon belt.

"Now I feel ready," he announced.

Dolgan fumbled into his new clothes-ripping them in the process, of course-and all was prepared.

Without further ado, Riven and the slaadi activated their rods and teleported back to the city where everything had begun-Selgaunt.