Shadow witness

CHAPTER TEN

Jak regained consciousness. Apart from the soft rush of an uncomfortably warm wind, Jak heard only silence. He lay on his back and remained perfectly still, afraid to move* afraid, to dispel the illusion that he was still ah've.

Still alive? How can that be? he wondered;

He had expected to awaken in whatever happy afterlife awaited servants of the Trickster. Brandobaris's teachings were frustrat-ingly, and Jak suspected, deliberately, vague on this point-but he knew from the aches in his body that he was still composed of flesh and bone, not spirit.

Surprising, he thought. He knew the gates in the guildhouse to be voids, empty pits in reality that ate away at his home plane like pools of acid. He had assumed that flesh-and-blood beings could not withstand contact with them, and had figured physical death in the gate a better fate than the death of his soul at the hands of the shadow demon. But he hadn't died, and here he was.

Wherever here was.

He dared not open his eyes, at least not yet. He knew from the smell in the air and the coarse earth beneath his body that here had to be some demonic wasteland of the sort he had heard of in adventurers' tales. He was not yet ready to face that.

He took mental stock of his body and realized with alarm that breathing came only with difficulty. His muscles, his body, and his very soul felt dulled, like a once-colorful painting faded by time and sunlight to drabness. His brain felt sluggish, his thoughts thick and muddy. A side effect of passing through the gate, he assumed. Yet he was alive! His hand fumbled ineptly for the luckstone at his waist.

The Lady still favors us, CaleHis happiness at finding himself alive vanished. Jak had left Cale back in the guildhouse, left him alone with the shadow demon helpless on the wall, left him alone to feed the demon with his soul.

I'm sorry, Erevis, he thought, and tears trickled out from under his closed eyelids. I couldn't die like the Soargyls. I couldn't be drained by the demon into dried hunks of soulless flesh. I just couldn't.

But I left Cale to die that way, he accused. He hadn't planned it that way, he just hadn't wanted to die that way himself. He realized now what he had done and the realization pained him beyond measure. Cale could not have survived on that wall.

More tears leaked out, ran along his hairline, and pooled in his ears. They did nothing to quiet the accusatory voice he heard in his head. He didn't try to fight the grief and the guilt. He couldn't fight it. He had abandoned his best friend to an ugly death.

I'm sorry, Erevis.

He had known Cale for over ten years, and had never met a man more loyal to his friends, or more fearless in the face of danger. Cale had lived for so long on the fine line that separated life from death that he walked it with the practiced ease of a festival acrobat on a tightrope. Jak had loved him like a brother and abandoned him like a coward.

I'm sorry, my friend.

He lay still and let the tears flow until the pangs of guilt began to dull. He had to get up, to try to find a way back. If their situations had been reversed, Cale would have carried on. Jak would, too. He would take up Gale's cause as his own. Yrsillar had one more death to account for.

He forced his sluggish lungs to draw in a deep breath. The acrid air left a foul grit on his tongue that tasted sulfurous and smoky. He cleared his throat to fight off a fit of coughing. Ready, he sat up with a slight grunt and snapped his eyes open.

I should've kept them closed, he immediately reprimanded himself.

As he had suspected and feared, a wasteland of coarse gray ash surrounded him in all directions. It rolled in dunes in the ceaseless breeze like sand in a great desert. Jagged slabs of basalt as sharp as spear tips occasionally jutted through the ash, tombstones in a graveyard that extended for infinity. No plants and no life. A wasteland of emptiness. There was no sign anywhere of the gate he had traveled through. The trip here was one-way. He was trapped.

I'm in the Abyss, he thought. Yrsillar's home plane. The realization hit him hard and made him weak.

He looked skyward to see an unbroken blanket of soot-colored clouds as lifeless and gray as the sea of ash under his feet. Occasionally, flashes of sickly blue-the color of ghoul flesh-backlit the sky. Rather than enlivening the sky, the sudden, silent bursts of color served only to accent the drab desolation of the gloom.

Low on the horizon hung a gigantic vortex of swirling nothingness. A maelstrom that was a mirror image of the gates in the guildhouse but magnified in size a thousandfold. Streaks of ochre and viridian mixed with the-gray and churned toward the empty center of oblivion. No sun or moon hung in the slate sky. Jak felt certain that this hellish realm had never seen the light of a sun, that it stood forever illumined in only perpetual twilight. He clambered to his feet and brushed a stray hair out of his eyes. When he did, he saw- "What in the…"

Wisps of white vapor steamed from his exposed skin like smoke from a leaf fire. Dumbfounded for a moment, he merely stared. Contrary to the direction of the wind, the vapor rose from his flesh and floated inexorably toward the vortex in the sky as though drawn by a lodestone. Then the realization dawned on him. My soul is slipping away.

Small wonder he felt so torpid. The negative energy of the maelstrom would eat his life just as surely as the demons that dwelled here. Thankfully, he had prepared for something similar back at Brilla's place.

Hurriedly, he pulled forth his holy symbol. The green tourmaline in the eagle's talon looked so dull as to appear nearly black. He began to incant the syllables to a spell that would protect him from negative energy. He had memorized the spell several times to protect himself and Cale when they fought the demon, but he thought it would work equally well against the pull of the maelstrom.

He began to cast, but stumbled over the incantation. His voice sounded strangely muted. The unnatural gloom and ash-laden air strangled his voice the moment he made a sound.

Jak's life-force leaked through his skin. He felt himself grow weaker with each heartbeat.

He cleared his throat and began again, louder this time. The vigor in his voice warred with the torpidity of the air. With great effort he forced out each magic-pregnant word, moved his holy symbol through the gray air to trace the appropriate sigils. His lungs heaved and sweat beaded his brow but he stubbornly plodded on.

At last he finished, and when he did, a golden glow took shape around him and sheathed his entire body. It crackled and popped energetically as its positive power held the negative energy of the void at bay.

"Interesting," he observed, and held his arms before him for examination. Now protected by the goMen aura of the spell, the white vapor no longer seeped from his pores. His flesh had lost its gray pallor and returned to normal. Equally important, he felt himself again. His mind and body once more moved with their habitual deftness. As long as his protective spell stayed in effect he would be safe from the draining effects of the energy maelstrom.

But how long will it last? he wondered nervously. The spell was supposed to protect him from creatures that used negative energy in a single concentrated attack, not from the persistent, slow-draining negative energy of an entire plane. He couldn't know for certain, but from the way the golden aura sizzled, he did not think the spell would last long. He could cast it again, of course, but sooner or later, he would run out of protection.

"Unless I can find a way out of here." Within the protective aura, his voice again sounded normal. He allowed himself a smile and enjoyed his small victory over an impossibly grim situation.

Ill take them where I can get them, he thought, and ran his thumb over his holy symbol. You got anything to say? he thought to the Trickster.

"I didn't think so," he muttered irritably. "Have to rely on Lady Luck then." He tapped the agate luck-stone at his belt and scanned the landscape in all directions. Partially buried in the ash nearby, he spotted the short sword he had dropped through the gate back in the guildhouse. Smiling, he hurried over, picked it up, and sheathed it at his belt. Lady Luck had granted him another boon. It heartened him.

"There has to be another gate," he softly chanted. There has to be."

Other than his blade, all around he saw nothing but wasteland. Only the jagged black points of basalt that jutted from the ash broke the infinite expanse of gray. Nothing that looked like a gate. Nothing that looked like anything.

His good spirits began to fail him and despair began to threaten. He was alone, had never been more alone, and he could see no way to get out. The maelstrom hung threateningly in the soot sky like the mouth of a beast, twisting, churning, ready to grind his life into oblivion, waiting for his spell to expire so it could feed.

Tears began to well but he blinked them away. He struggled to quiet the hopeless voice in his head that told him to curl up in the dirt and accept death. By all the gods, he would not surrender!

"To the pits of the Nine Hells with giving up," he said aloud, as much to steel his resolve as anything. He clutched the luckstone in his fist like a talisman of hope. "Anything more from you, Lady?"

Nothing.

He nodded, swallowed his despair, and began to walk. The direction didn't matter.

One way is as good as another, he thought. He had to find a gate back to his plane soon. Otherwise, his soul would feed the beast.

He hadn't taken five steps before an explosive surge of energy from behind blew him face first into the ground and made his ears ring. Clouds of ash whipped around him like a sandstorm.

Spitting the filth of the void from his mouth, Jak shielded his eyes from the onslaught of ash and looked over his shoulder. A sudden sound like tearing cloth broke the stillness. From a point six feet in the air above where Jak had been standing, the empty air split open. A hole the size of a door formed. Colors poured through.

The gate! his mind registered. He scrambled to his feet and ran for it. Before he could reach it, however, two bodies fell through the rift and hit the earth in an explosion of ash. Instantly, the gate collapsed in on itself and vanished with a soft pop .

"No

Gale stared up into a sky the color of slate. He lay on his back unmoving. The earth beneath him felt coarse, like the sands of the desert kingdom of CalWhere am I? he wondered.

He tried to move but his limbs felt like lead, too heavy to lift. His mind seemed muddled. He must have hit his head. A light mist steamed from his face, like that of a lathered steed in winter.

Am I sweating?

His mind was fuzzy. He remembered jumping from a wall and stabbing a shadowA distant voice pulled at him. "Gale! Cale!" He tried to lift his head but couldn't. The voice remained insistent. "Erevis Cale!"

Suddenly, a form bent over him and a red-whiskered face took shape above. Jak! He tried to smite a greeting but his mouth didn't work.

"Dark," the little man oathed. He gripped Cale rudely by the face and looked with concern into his eyes.

Cale tried to say, I'm all right, but only managed to say, "Amgahh." His damned mouth didn't work right! What was wrong with him?

Piece yourself together, he ordered, but that seemed easier thought than done.

"Hang on, Cale," said Jak, and let his head fall back to the soft ground. The little man pulled out his holy symbol and moved it over Cale's body while mouthing a series of magical syllables. Abruptly, Jak jumped back in shock.

"How-"

A golden light took shape before Cale's eyes. He came back to himself almost immediately. His mind cleared and his body felt lighter. He had killed the demon and fallen through the gate.

He sat up. Jak rushed forward and embraced him, nearly knocking him back down.

"Cale!" the little man happily exclaimed. "Dark, but I'm glad to see you." A sparkling golden glow surrounded the little man and crackled like sizzling meat. Cale, as pleased to see Jak as Jak was to see him," returned his embrace.

"I'm glad to see you to*, my friend." He disengaged himself and stood. Only then did he recognize that he too was sheathed in a golden aura.

"What is this?" he asked Jak, and indicated the'si' I11.

aura. While he watched, it sparked and sizzled like a bonfire in the raia.

"Ifa a protective spell," Jak replied. "Without it, this place would kill you. The whole plane drains souls, just like the shadow demon."

Cale nodded. "That was quick thinking, little man, thanks." ›

Jak gazed at him solemnly*I didn't cast it, Cale, I started to but didn't finish." He paused a heartbeat before adding, "You must've cast it." His green eyes went to Gate's right hand.

Gate's gaze followed Jak's. There in his hand, he unknowingly held tire felt mask.

His stomach went topsy-turvy. His knees turned so weak he nearly fell down. Cast a spell? He couldn't! He had made no commitment to Mask, had he? He looked to Jak, astonished.~

"I don't know how to cast spells."

He sounded unconvincing even to himsel amp;flec amp;fctY know how, but he also intuitively knew that Boasehow he had. Or that the Shadowlord had cast it for him. In the end, he wasn't sure if the difference WAS ofanysig^ nificance, and that thought niade him wry uncomfortable. He would not surrender himself to a god. He was his own man. Defeating Yrsillar was his task. His task alone

Jak stepped forward and placed a small, commiserating hand on his shoulder. "Mask wants you badly, Erevis. You must bevhis Ghampien^It% the calk"

Angry and frightened, Gale stuffed the felt mask back into his pocket. He couldn't quite bring himself to discard it, though the temptation was strong.

"Feels less like a call and more like an order." He clenched his fists and looked up into the churning maelstrom of nothingness that dominated the sky. "He's saved me twice, Jak. Once in the shrine and once now. But I won't bow down to him out of some sense of obligation. You understand?"

Jak smiled softly. "I do understand," he replied. "I do. But in the end it's not about obligation. You'll come to realize that. Just… give it some tune."

Cale lowered his gaze from the soot sky. 1 feel tike I'm changing despite myself; Jak-" He fell silent when his eyes fell on the grotesque body that lay in the ash nearby. He swallowed down his gorge. Twisted and malformed, the flesh of the thin, winged carcass looked the bluish-gray color of something long. dead. Long, wiry arms ended in a set of terrible, steel-gray claws as long as knife blades. A thin slit in the hairless oval of its head marked a mouth, and its round, milky eyes stared vacantly into the gray sky. A deep, bloodless gash-the wound from Gale's enchanted long sword-split the corpse nearly in two, from its oval face to the center of its torso. Bloodless entrails hung from the hole like a ship's rigging.

"The shadow demon," Cale realized.

Jak gave a start and stared at the corpse in amazement. He poked it with his toe. It didn't move. "You killed it. Back on our plane?".

Cafe nodded grimly. "As I fell through the gate. It didn't look tike this, though. Didn't feel tike flesh, either." He knelt and retrieved his enchanted long sword, which lay beside the corpse^

Jak studied the macabre corpse and stroked his whiskers thoughtfully. "This is how its body must appear on this plane. Or at least how it chooses to appear on this plane." He shook his head in bewilderment. "Something from nothing. The shadow form must be how its kind manifests on our plane." He poked it again with his boot "Dark, but its uglier tike this."

Cale gave a hard smile. "It is," he softly agreed. "Looks better dead, though."

Jak giggled at that, but when his laughter died away he turned serious. His eyes found the ground and he kicked his boot in the ash.

"Cale, back at the guildhouse… I feel bad about…" he trailed off, took a deep breath, and started again. "I thought we were dead, Cale. I mean, I wasn't trying to abandon you, I just-"

Cale knew what Jak intended to say. He stopped him with an upraised hand and a raised voice. "Dark, Jak, I know why you did it." He gave the tittle man a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Cale knew full well that Jak, of all people, would never abandon him, at least not out of fear. Cale would not have the little man feeling guilty for doing something that most any man would have done. Cale knew too well the way guilt burdened a man's soul.

"I'd have done the same thing," he said, and meant it "I thought we were dead too. I get Jucky*

Jak looked up and gave him a grateful, sheepish nod. "But we aren't," he said with a smile, "Dead, I mean.";|

"No, we aren't" Cate looked^uwoa amp;toeltto^the ‹i first time the desolation that sunwunded them. On all 4fj sides, a wasteland of gray extended for as far as he J could see in the gloom. A whirlpool of emptiness hung I in the gray sky just over the horizon tine. A giant gate,'t he realized.!*

"Where in the Nine Hells are we?"

"Not the Nine Hells," Jak replied matter-of-factly. "The Abyss. At least I think." He nodded at the demon's corpse. "This is its home plane. Yrsillar's home plane too, I assume."

Hearing Yrsillar's name sent a wave of anger through Cale. He quelled it and tried to absorb what the little man had said:

He knew of the Abyss only through adventurers' stories. Stories which always portrayed it as a chaotic place teeming with demons and alive with unspeakable horrors. This place, on the other hand, seemed utterly dead.

Jak pulled out his ivory-bowled pipe and chewed its end, though he didn't light it.

"This isn't what I would've expected," Cale said after a moment. "Where are all the demons? The tortured souls writhing in agony? Surely Yrsillar and this thing," he pointed with his blade at the demon's corpse, "can't be the only creatures that live here?"

Jak shruggeTi thoughtfully. "Maybe they are. The Abyss is made up of lots of different planes and this is an unusual one. The energy here seems to drain away life the instant it appears. Most everything that travels here would be dead in minutes, even most demons." He nodded at the shadow demon's corpse. "Creatures like that can obviously live here, or like Yrsillar. Certain kinds of undead too, I suppose. Those kinds of creatures don't live like you and I live. They unlive. We'd be dead long since if not for the protective spells."

Cale winced, once more reminded of Mask's seeming beneficence, once more reminded of the call. The felt mask in his pocket weighed like a stone.

Only when and if I'm ready, he thought to the Shadowlord. Stop pushing.

"Can we get out of here?"

Jak took his pipe from his mouth and regarded Cale with raised eyebrows. 1 dont know."

Cale appreciated the frankness. The gate?"

Jak eyed the empty air above Cale' a head. "That's where it materialized, but it must be one-way only. It doesn't even appear on this side unless someone is passing through from the other side." Seeing Cale's frown, he added, "Maybe there's another one somewhere else."

Maybe. Frustration and anger rose in Cale like a red tide. That they could have come so far only to die in this damnable extra-planar desert enraged him. He would not let Yrsillar win, he could not. Not after what had been done to Thazienne and Stonnweather. The demon would pay, by Mask.

By Mask? He gave a slight start, surprised at himself.

"You all right?" Jak asked.

Cale took a deep breath, quelled his frustration and his surprise. Anger would not get them out of here. "I'm all right," he replied.

Jak nodded, pulled his pipe from between his teeth, and placed it back in his belt pouch. "Cale, whatever we're going to do, we've got to do it soon. I don't think our protective spells are going to last very long. At least mine won't."

Cale ignored the implication in Jak's last statement. "Let's get moving then," he said. "We've got to find a way back to the guildhouse-"

Without warning, the "arth buckled and roiled like the storm-tossed whitecaps of Selgaunt Bay. Cale's vision blurred. The world spuau^Otee Ia"S^pe dissolved into a gray haze. Unbalanced, his stomach churned and his knees buckled. He struggled to stay upright. He felt himself streanuag forw"Ed^t?R^gh space, out of control. The blurry landscape whipped past, a continuous sheet of indistinguishable gray. He felt sure that at any moment he would be slammed into the side of a basalt slab and pulverized. He tried to speak but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

"Jaaalllkk!"

As though through a howling wind, he heard Jak's poorly articulated reply. "Caaee!!" The little man was still with him.

He couldn't turn his head to look at Jak, could hardly keep his feet under him.

Without warning, the sensation of motion ceased.

Cale bent over double from the abrupt stop, gasping, but managed to keep his feet by catching himself with a palm on the ground. Beside him, Jak stumbled willy-nilly across the planked floor and slammed against the wall. He recovered himself quickly and looked around, wide-eyed and gasping. Only then did their location hit Cale.

Ploor?Wall?

Floor and wall indeed. He looked around in disbelief. -What in the Hells?"

"Burn me," Jak oathed.

They stood in the guildhouse. Or at least, they stood in something that looked very much like the guildhouse. Planked floors, rough-hewn stone walls and stairs leading down to a basement. The whole building was composed of the drab, gray color of the void, as though the guildhouse had been remade with the stuff of the Abyss. Reeling, Cale struggled to comprehend what had happened. He turned circles and gawked.

"Dark," Jak breathed. "What happened?"

Cale placed his hands on his hips and shook his head, dumbfounded. "I don't know. Where are we, Jak?

"How should I kn-"

Jak's abrupt stop pulled Cale around in alarm. He turned to see Jak's eyes glued to the demon's corpse on the floor. The same demon's corpse. Relative to Cale and Jak, the twisted body lay exactly where it had been previous to the motion.

"How-"

Jak waved Cale silent, eyes still on the demon. "Let me think a minute."

Cale watched his face and waited, and wondered. How did the demon's corpse move with us? What was going on?

So far as he could tell, the abyssal guildhouse seemed an exact copy of the real guildhouse. To be safe, he drew his long sword and kept his eyes on the stairway above and below.

"Gods, Cale," Jak said. "I don't think we've moved!"

Cale turned around to face him. "What?"

"We haven't moved," Jak said again, nodding. "I'm certain of it."

Cale didn't get it. They had been in a desert, and now they were in the guildhouse-of course they had moved.

"How can we not have moved? I felt us move."

"That wasn't motion," Jak replied. "It was… reality changing."

Involuntarily, Cale's eyes fell to the demon's corpse- exactly the same distance and direction from him as it had been before. He pulled his waterskin from his belt and had a gulp, glad now that he had thought to bring water. "What do you mean?" He offered the skin to Jak but the little man declined.

"This plane is nothingness, Cale," Jak explained. "Literally, nothingness. The gray wasteland from before-that was me. I expected the Abyss to be a wasteland and it was. The plane shaped itself to my expectations. Or my expectations shaped the plane. You see? Just before the guildhouse appeared-"

Cale nodded in sudden understanding. "I said, "we've got to get to the guildhouse.'" He looked over at Jak, still not quite believing. "You're saying that I made this, then?"

"You made it," Jak affirmed with a nod. "Your desire made it. Your expectations, your will, whatever. You made it."

Cale tried to make sense of that. His mind rebelled, but he slowly got his intellectual hands around the idea.

In the end, it really didn't matter whether they had physically moved or had themselves moved reality. Here they were, and they still needed to find a gate back, fast. The golden auras still sparked and sizzled, at war with the energy of the void. There was no telling how long they would last.

"So what now?" Jak asked. He reached for his pipe out of habit but stopped himself before reaching the drawstring on his pouch.

After a moment, Gale made the only decision he could. "Let's move," he announced.

"Where to?" Jak asked.

"To the basement," Gale said grimly. "Just like we had planned before. Let's see if anyone's home in this guildhouse."

Gale led as they warily descended the stairs, blades held ready before them. Silence reigned-the silence of the dead. Their breathing, sharp and tense, sounded to Gale as loud as a scream. The stairs evidenced no warping on this side of reality. Like the gates, the warping seemed to be only one way. He kept his back pressed to the inner wall as he spiraled down the stairs.

As with everything on this plane, a dim light with no apparent source illuminated the interior of the abyssal guildhouse. Through the gray, Gale could see clearly for only a short span, beyond he could only make out blurred shapes and movement.

"Light spell?" Jak whispered from behind him.

"No," Gale softly replied over his shoulder. If there were anything at home here, a light spell would only draw its attention. Gripping his enchanted long sword in a sweaty hand, he advanced. Ahead and below, the

• Paul S Kcmn archway that opened onto the long hallway hi the basement beckoned.

He turned to Jak and spoke in a hushed whisper. "That archway opens onto the main hall. The shrine is to the left. To the right, the hall ends with the storeroom. I'm thinking left."

"Left," Jak agreed with a nod. "But remember Gale, you're looking for a gate back to our plane, not the demon."

Without reply, Gale briskly turned to go-if he saw Yrsillar, he intended to put the bastard down-but Jak grabbed him by the arm and pulled him around.

"Listen, Gale, godsdammit," the little man whispered sharply. "Demons are stronger on their own planes. We don't want to face Yrsillar here. We don't Burn me, but we don't want to face anything here. We need to get back to our own plane first;"

Gale stared expressionlessly into the little man's eyes. Again he made no reply. He could make no promises. If an opportunity to fight Yrsillar presented itself- here or back on their plane-he would not pass it up, not unless it meant putting Jak in unnecessary danger.

Seeing his expression, the little man apparently understood his resolve. He released Gale's arm. "I'm with you either way, though," he said with a sigh.

Gale tried to reassure him. "I want to find a way back too, little man. I also want Yrsillar dead. Ill try not to let the one get in the way of the other."

Jak seemed to accept that. "I want him dead too, Gale." He hesitated a moment before adding, "If we kill him on his own plane, he's dead forever."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that if we kill him on our plane, we only kill his manifestation there. That doesn't really kill him. It just prevents.him from returning to our plane for a century or so. But if we kill him here…"

"We kill him for real and forever," Gale finished.

Jak nodded. "But it's harder, Gale, much harder. Like I said, he'd be more powerful here, not as easy as that shadow demon you killed before going through the gate."

Gale leaned against the wall while he digested the information. It probably did not matter much. He had no reason to think that Yrsillar moved back and forth between this plane and their home plane. This guild-house was probably empty. They had to find a gate back. •;.

"What will a gate back look like?"

Jak shook his head. "I don't know for sure. But I think well know it when we see it"

Gate gave a nod, and with that, they descended the rest of the stairway. When they reached the archway to the main hall, Gale stopped short and peeked around the corner. Jak squirmed between his body and the wall and did the same. Their simultaneous intake of breath was as sharp as a blade, but neither could look away.

As would have been the case with'lhe main hallway in the real guildhouse, the hallway here stretched left to the shrine and right to the storeroom. Doors dotted the walls, some open, but most were closed. No garbage littered the floor here, and the smooth, unwarped floor was bare except for some twenty or so indistinct gray forms.

Positioned at intervals along the hallway, they crouched low to the ground as though hiding behind something Gale couldn't see. If not for their occasional movement, he would have thought them an illusion, a trick of his eyes in the twilight. Bat they did move, and they were real.

Composed of swirling gray vapor, Gale could distinguish no facial features, could barely make out the rudiments of a man-sized bipedal form. The beings waited in absolute silence. Though Gale and Jak stared in amazement, the beings showed no signs of having seen them.

Abruptly one stood and loped back down the hall toward another pair that flanked the shrine doors.

It loped.

Gate recognized the movement. His eyes narrowed.

Jak must have sensed his sudden tension, for he asked in a whisper, "What are they?"

Afraid one of the creatures would hear, Gale grabbed Jak by the collar and ducked back behind the archway.

"Ghouls," Gale replied in a whisper. He held his blade ready and kept his ears attuned for the sounds of the approaching pack.

Rather than fear, Jak looked at him with a furrowed brow. "Ghouls? Those aren't ghouls." He peeked iwwk around the corner. Gale did too.

"Wait until one moves," Gale said.There."One of the figures rose andosssed the halL Though indistinct and vaporous, Gale couldn't mistake its low crouch, hunched back, and loping stride. Neither did Jak. The little man gave a start and both again retreated into the archway.

"Trickster's toes," Jaksoftly oathed.

"What kind of ghouls are those?" Gale hissed. "What is going on here?"

Jak looked as dumbfounded as Gale. "Let me think," he replied softly, and stroked his whiskers. "Let me think."

While Jak considered, Gale looked into the hall and kept his eyes on the misty forms of the ghouls. He did a headcount, twenty-six, all of them crouching low, all of them trying to hide in plain sight. Gale began to work through the rudiments of an attack. Though he could not distinguish features, he felt certain that some of the ghostly ghouls looked right at him. Yet none moved to attack. Their unnatural silence sent a chill up his spine. He ducked back. There was nothing to do but to attack head-on.

"It's like they're waiting to ambush us," he said to Jak, and readied himself for a charge.

Gale had anticipated an ambush in the guildhouse basement-in the real guildhouse basement-but he hadn't expected so many ghouls. Between the battle at Stormweather and Gale's necklace of missiles, Gale figured over thirty already had been killed. The Night Knives had numbered no more than forty men all told. Yrsillar must have transformed more Selgauntans into ghouls than just the Night Knives. He shuddered to think of what might have happened at Storm-weather if the attack had succeeded, if he had not driven off the shadow demon.

They are waiting for us," Jak suddenly exclaimed, and snapped his fingers.

"Quiet," Gale hissed, and looked in alarm around the corner. Except for an occasional shift of position, the ghouls hadn't moved.

They can't hear us," Jak said aloud. "And they can't see us either."

Before Gale could stop him, the little man stepped brazenly out into the hallway. Cursing, Gale leaped out beside him, blade ready for the swarming pack.

The ghouls showed no sign of noticing anything amiss. Though Gale and Jak stood in plain sight, they continued to crouch and wait.

With one eye still on the misty ghouls, Gale looked to the little man.

They're like the shadow demon, Gale, but in reverse. This vapor shape is their manifestation on this plane. Like the shadowy form of the demon is its manifestation on our plane." He stated it as though it were obvious, but Cab's confusion must have shown on his face.

"The transformation from man to ghoul must result in some sort of dual existence, part of them here, close to the Abyss, but most of them-their corporeal form- on our plane." Jak tapped his chin and went on, "But they aren't powerful like a demon, are they? No, they have a dual existence, but must not have a dual consciousness. They can't see into this plane, which means that they can't see us." He looked up, smiling. "Gale, this guildhouse must correspond to the real guildhouse. Back on our plane, these ghouls are waiting for us in the real basement, but they can't see us here in this basement." His hand went from his chin to the luckstone at his belt and he smiled broadly. "Mask isn't the only one with us tonight, Erevis. The Lady's decided to come along as well."

Gale couldn't argue. He looked around at the ghouls crouching, lurking, ignorant of their presence mere feet away. The little man's theory fit the facts. Gale could picture the ghouls' fleshy forms back on then-plane with their stinking, rotted skin, filthy claws, and vicious fangs. He realized that the ghouls crouched like this because they were hiding in the real basement, behind toppled chairs and debris that didn't manifest in the abyssal guildhouse.

They couldn't see or hear him, but he could see them. He had only one question.

"Can we kill them?"

Jak's pleased expression grew more serious at the thought of killing. "I don't know."

Gale advanced a few steps down the hallway, vengeance for Stormweather on his mind. "Only one way to find out."

Jak grabbed him around the wrist. "Wait, Gale."

Gale stopped, looked into his friend's green eyes.

The little man looked uncertain. His gaze looked past Cale to the misty ghouls. "Erevis. How can we do this? I can't fight a creature that can't defend itself."

Cale placed a hand on Jak's shoulder, "They're evil, Jak. Well do it quick and clean."

Jak still looked unsure so Cale gave him a slight shake, knelt down, and looked hard into his eyes. "I know they were men once, Jak. But what they wen doesn't matter now, only what they are. They're evil, and we have to do it."

Jak looked feck at the ghouls, then at Cale. He gave a slow nod.

Cale patted him on the shoulder and rose. "You wait here, little man. Leave this to me."

With that, he walked past Jak and into the hall. The ghouls did nothing as he closed, merely waited in an ambush that would never occur. After a moment, Jak fell into step beside him, short sword and dagger bared.

"I said I'm with you, Cale."

Cale gave a hard nod and together they advanced on the nearest ghoul. Still no sign of alarm: Cale stood over the crouching creature with enchanted blade held high. It looked right at where he stood, unseeing, ignorant of the threat.

Gritting his teeth, Cale cut through its throat with a powerful forward slash. He needn't have swung so hard. The feel of the blow reminded him of the way it had felt to wound the shadow demon back on their home plane, slight resistance, then sudden give. Like slashing a pudding.

No flood of purple spilled to the floor, and no scream of pain resounded in the hall. The ghostly ghoul clutched its throat, writhed silently on the ground, and suddenly disappeared. Cale wondered if back in the real guildhouse, purple blood had pooled about the nearly beheaded corpse of a ghoul.

Must have, he thought, because the hallway erupted into motion.

Misty ghouls lurched from their hiding places and charged to the point where the body would lay. There they stopped, confused. Seeking an unseen foe, they turned about and clawed at the air. So many surrounded Cale and Jak that they seemed engulfed in the morning fog that rolled off the Elzhimmer River-located off the far shore of Selgaunt Bay-most autumn mornings.

Cale gave Jak a reassuring glance, then the two friends set to work.

Grim-faced, Jak ran one through with his enchanted short sword. It buckled, clutched its gut, collapsed to the floor, and disappeared. He stabbed another one through the face with his dagger, to no effect.

"The dagger won't bite," he announced, unnecessarily loud in the otherwise silent hallway. "Only magical weapons will work." He sheathed the dagger and gripped the short sword with both hands.

* Mercilessly, Cale sliced the head from a ghoul, then another, then another.

Confused and falling dead without explanation, the pack milled about in the hall. They jumped at one another, clawed and bit at the empty air. In the chaos, individual creatures became difficult to distinguish. Cale now saw only a swirling fog. He knew the hallway back on their home plane must be awash in purple Mood, gray bodies, snarls, and guildhouse debris. Here, there was only silence.

v sliced indiscriminately at the mist and killed ghoul within reach. Unable to defend themselves, unable even to see their attackers, the ghouls died one after another. Without mercy or remorse, Cale

; them down. He felt no guilt, only grim satisfaction, ghouls that had attacked Stormweather, had preyed on the defenseless, had cut down men armed with dinner utensils and women armed only with screams. They deserved what they got.

For Stormweather, he thought with each slash, for Thazienne.

The survivors swirled around him, confused, close to panic. He raised his blade highA sudden realization hit him like a bolt of lightning. He stopped in mid-stroke and looked beside him to Jak. "Yrsillar doesn't know we're here;" he said, certain. "He thinks we're still in the real guildhouse."

"What?" With his short sword, the little man ran through the gfcoul Cale had spared. It collapsed, writhed, and dissipated into nothingness. "How do you know that?"

Cale took no time to explain. The panicked ghouls started to mill down the hall toward the shrine. "Don't let any get away!"

He ran down the hall and ripped one of them in two with an overhand slash. The misty body split neatly down the middle and dissolved into nothingness. He cut down another, and another. Jak leaped into their midst and did the same. None escaped.

Afterward, he and Jak took in the spotless hallway, their unbloodied clothes. Back on their own plane, the hallway must be littered with carnage. He and Jak had administered a slaughter and yet remained clean. He found that thought unsettling.

"YrsiDar must not know we're here. He knows his ghouls are vulnerable to attack from this plane. If he had known we were here, he would have been waiting for us himself, not allowed his ghouls to be slaughtered this way."

Jak winced at his choice of words. Pretending not to notice, Cale waved his blade around the hall to indicate the implied carnage. '"They were waiting to ambush us in the real guildhouse. They didn't have any idea we were here. Neither does Yrsillar."

Thoughtful, Jak scratched his head and finally nodded agreement. "Makes sense. We've only been here a quarter-hour or so. That's not very long. He must not yet have learned that we passed through the gate and survived, much less stumbled onto the planar correspondence."

Breathing hard, flush with their success and eager for more, Gale nodded, "We need to find a way back home quickly. He's vulnerable now. We killed the shadow demon and we killed the ghouls. Yraillar will have to face us alone." Cale felt confident about the result of that confrontation.

"Agreed," Jak said, rallying himself. "We find a way back and hand that bastard his guts." The little man shot Cale a grim smile, but his confidence gave way to nervousness when he eyeballed the golden aura that protected him from the Abyss. "Let's move fast, though. I don't know how much longer this spell is going to last."

Cale held out his arms and checked his own protective spell. The golden light seemed to have faded somewhat, and the soft sparks and pops sounded less frequently than before. If the unrelenting energy of this plane fully drained their spells, he and Jak were dead.

His hand went to Ms pocket, and he ran his fingertips over the felt mask. Just a while longer, he hoped, just a while longer.

"Let's move." Cale strode for the closed shrine doors. The shrine to Mask seemed the center of this whole affair. The worship hall of the Righteous Man, the place Cale had first encountered Yrsillar, the home of the god for whom Cale seemed called as a Champion.

It was as likely a place as any for a gate back home.

Before they reached the doors, the telltale ripping sound of sundered reality stopped them cold. Without words, they fell into a wary crouch. Back to back, Cale watched the shrine doors while Jak watched the hall behind them.

A thin red line appeared in die air three paces before Cale, a bloody slash that hung unsupported five feet up in the nothingness of the Abyss's air. A gate.

"There," Cale. said excitedly.

Jak turned and stood beside him. Both watched as the glowing line expanded to the size of a small window. Colors! Colors poured from the hole like a waterfall and overwhelmed the drab gray of the Abyss. The colors of their own plane. The colors of home. Cale had never seen anything so beautiful.

"That's a gate back!" Jak exclaimed.

"I know!"

"They must open and close randomly," Jak said,'as both stepped toward it. Because it sat so high in the air, Cale knew he would have to lift Jak through and then jumpA shadow blotted out the cascade of hues. A head appeared in the midst of the gate and moved toward them, corrupting the colors with its emptiness. Nause-atingly, the scene called to Gale's mind a giant womb giving birth to a horror. Involuntarily, he and Jak stepped back. The head of a shadow demon crowned. As it did, the shadowstuff solidified into a bluish-gray oval of flesh, featureless but for two malice filled, milky-white eyes and a slit that might have been a mouth. Two powerfully clawed hands appeared to either side and gripped the edges of the gate as though to rip open the birth canal fully.

A shadow demon, Cale realized, another shadow demon.

• It saw them, and the baleful look in its pupilless eyes pierced Cale like a stiletto. The milky-while orbs narrowed to slits and it hissed through the slash of its mouth-the first actual sound Cale had ever heard one of the creatures make.

"Another shadow demon," Jak said, and sounded tired. "Gods." Cale could hear the fear in his friend's voice. The little man began to ease backward.

The demon eyed them evilly, hissed again, and began to squirm through the opening. Its twisted,

•winged form took shape and fully eclipsed the rainbow colors of home pouring through the gate.

"Feed on you," it whispered through the lipless hole in its face. Its voice grated like fingernails on slate. "Eat your soul. Feed on you as I fed on the others." It was through the gate up to the shoulders. A wave of supernatural fear went before it.

The others. Was this the demon that had attacked Stormweather, and not the other that Cale had already killed? Remembering the slaughter in the feasthall, recalling Thazienne's wounded spirit that might never heal, Gale's anger flared white-hot and chased away his fear.

It doesn't matter which one did it, he thought. For that sin, they would all pay. Ill wipe out every gods-damned one of them. He had already killed one, and he could damn well kill another. He would kill another. Without another thought, he charged. "Feed on this!" he shouted, and raised his enchanted sword high to strike.

With only half of its body clear of the narrow gate, the demon raised its claws defensively, hissed in alarm, and lurched backward. With all his anger, Cale slashed downward into the creature's shoulder and chest. The long sword struck with a satisfying thunk and went a bandwidth deep, opening a bloodless, meaty gash in the demon's gray flesh. The demon screamed and writhed in pain. Though in the throes of agony, it nevertheless swiped a retaliatory daw rake toward Gale.

Gale dodged a heartbeat too late. The claw struck him along the arm. Golden light exploded in his eyes, knocked him backward a step, and nearly blinded him. The demon shrieked louder still and jerked back its clawed hand, now blackened by contact with the protective spell. Gale* stood unscathed, body and soul, by the attack, though the protective aura that surrounded him had dimmed to a soft yellow.

"Gale, the gate!" Jak yelled from behind.

Screaming in pain, the demon pulled itself fully back into the gate. As it retreated, its flesh grew increasingly opaque, its body grew smaller as though the gate was a tunnel over a bowshot long. One of its claws-the unwounded one, Gale noticed-still clutched the edge of the shrinking portal. The demon's arm seemed to stretch for miles, half shadow, half blue flesh. The gate shrank as the demon shrank, diminished with each heartbeat. The demon was pulling the gate closed behind it.

Desperate, Gale slashed crosswise at the demon's exposed hand. The enchanted blade bit through the demonic flesh and severed two long, daw-tipped fingers. They fell to the floor of the abyssal guildhouse and for a nauseating moment squirmed and flopped like thick worms. Gale sensed in his soul rather than heard with his ears the demon shriek as it released the edge of the gate and retreated farther within. Its screams grew more and more distant until they finally tapered off to nothingness and it vanished from sight. The portal stayed open, albeit smaller now, and the demon was gone.

Alive with the colors of home, the swirling gate hung in the drab air. Only as wide as a man's forearm, Gale realized that he and Jak would have to go through one at a time. He turned to the little manJak's wide-eyed gaze went from the demon's fingers to Gale's face. Trickster's hairy toes, Gale! You're not afraid of anything!"

Gale ignored the compliment and indicated the gate. "You first," he said. "Ill lift you through." Jak began to protest, but C"ue cut him off. "Ill be right behind you, little man. I can make the jump up by myself. You can't." He looked into Jak's eyes. "This could be our only chance out of here. You saw, the demons open and close the gates themselves. It's not a random event. We need to go now."

After a moment's consideration, Jak nodded and stepped beside him. "All right. Let's do it."

Gale gripped him under the armpits and lifted him halfway toward the gate. In one hand Jak held his short sword, with the other he clutched his luckstone.

"Wait, Gale, Yrsillar must know we're here now. What if he and the other shadow demon are waiting on the other side?"

"Then we kill them right there," Gale grimly averred. "Don't worry. HI be right behind you." In truth, Gale hoped the demons were waiting for them. He would welcome the chance to put an end to this.

"All right* Jak said, but didn't sound convinced. Gale lifted the little man toward the portal home. Jak led with his sword.

Before he got Jak fully into the gate, a sudden pressure assaulted his eardrums, like the thickening of the air that occurred before a heavy storm. The sensation affected his equilibrium and he nearly lost his balance.

"Gale?" The tip of Jak's blade already stuck through the gate.

"I feel it," Gale acknowledged with a grimace..

"Put me down. Hurry," Jak ordered.

Nodding, Gale set the little man down and tried to get his bearings.

A charge ran through his body. The hair of his arms rose and stood on end. His breath left him. A wave of nausea washed over him and he retched.

"Gale…"

Abruptly and without warning, the sensation vanished.

Jak bent over and held his stomach. His breath came hard. "What was that?" he asked.

"Don't know," Gale replied. Intuitively though, he did know. Another gate had been opened, opened by something more powerful than the shadow demon.

He felt a presence manifest. A palpable wave of malice radiated out from behind the closed shrine doors. Hate rained down on him like a sleet storm.

"Gal-" The sheer power of the presence lurking behind the shrine doors choked off Jak's words. Breathing hard, the little man turned to face the shrine. Gale placed a hand on Jak's shoulder and did the same. The doors began to pulse like a heart.

"YrsiUar," Gale hissed through gritted teeth. The demon's hate seemed so substantial as to be a physical thing, the only physical thing on this plane of emptiness. Gale answered the demon's hate with a rage equally substantial. Here was the cause. Vengeance was at hand. He took a step toward the doors.

Jak clutched his hand, pulled him to a stop, and fairly jumped into his arms. "Lift me through, Gale," he said urgently. "Lift me through!"'

Eyes on the pulsing doors of the shrine, Gale made no response. Anger consumed him. He felt no fear. Yrsillar was waiting for him.

Jak gripped Gale's hand in both of his own, "Erevis!

Gale! Dammit, you can't fight him here. He's strongest here." Jak shook his arm as though to bring him to his senses. "Let's go through the gate and fight him on our own plane. Erevis! Don't."

"You go, little man," he said, and lifted Jak toward the gate. Gale wanted to fight Yrsillar here.

"What? Waitvwait." Jak squirmed in his grip like a fish. Gale turned the little man around so they could look into each other's eyes. Gale's resolve must have been evident from his expression, for Jak's protests fell silent. The little man visibly wilted.

"Why, Gale?" he softly asked.

"Because when I kill him here, he's dead for good." Nothing less could satisfy him now.

Jak said nothing for a moment, merely hung in the air between Gale and the gate home.

"Put me down," he said at last.

"You don't need to-"

"Put me down, godsdammit," Jak ordered. "This is our fight, Gale, not just yours. Those bastards hurt me too." Jak looked at him meaningfully. Fear had given way to resolve, or resignation. "I said I'm with you and I am. Put me down."

Gale did. Both drew blades and turned to the pulsing doors of the shrine.

"He's waiting for us," Jak observed. "He thinks it'll make us more afraid."

Gale started for the doors.