by Paul S. Kemp
The shadows amalgamated, whirled, and formed into a humanoid shape.
Hold, Cale ordered distantly, feeling strangely unthreatened.
He let his blade drop.
The shadows tightened, took on more definition, and finally assumed the shape of an elderly man in a gray cloak. His eyes were solid black, and in them Cale could see the twinkling of stars. Those eyes reminded him of a dream he had once had. …
“More visitors?” the black-eyed man said.
He looked at Cale, and took a step closer.
Watch him, Jak said.
Riven slid around and behind the old man, sabers bare.
“You,” the old man said. He smiled and his body momentarily dissipated into shadows, instantly reforming with his back to Cale and his eyes on Riven. “Oh, and you.”
Cale started to speak. Before he had completed the first syllable, the old man was again face to face with him.
“Do you know me?” Cale asked.
The old man chuckled.
“As well as you know yourself. And you,” he said to Riven.
“Who are you?” Riven asked, echoing Cale’s thoughts.
“I am the caretaker.”
“What are you?” Cale asked.
To that, the caretaker smiled softly, and answered, “A servant, like you. But perhaps a more willing one.”
He held up a hand as though to touch Cale, but Cale backed off. Fast.
“You do not yet understand what you are,” the caretaker said, then turned to Riven. “Nor you. But you will. Both of you. The darkness called you, and each of you answered. As have I, in my way. Your duty, like mine, will become clear in time.”
Jak stepped protectively in front of Cale and Cale couldn’t help but smile.
“What is this place?” the halfling demanded.
The caretaker stared down at Jak, thoughtful, and replied, “The darkness has called you too, not so? Recently. Ah, but you have not answered.”
Jak said nothing but Cale saw him shiver. He thought of the halfling’s face the day after the slaad had tortured him. It pleased him to hear the caretaker say that Jak had not answered the darkness.
Jak is a seventeen, Cale thought, recalling Sephris’s words.
“Answer my question,” Jak insisted.
The caretaker shrugged and looked up and down the hall.
“This place has many names, in many tongues. The Temple of Night. The Fane of Shadows. The Umbral Shrine. For my part, I consider it a toolbox. It, and I, travel the worlds, offering assistance to the servants of the night.”
Silence settled over the hall until Cale asked, “A toolbox?”
The caretaker replied, “Indeed. You,” he said to Cale, then turned to Riven, “and you, may take from this place one gift. One tool.”
Riven started to spit but stopped himself.
“I’ll take nothing from this place,” he said.
The caretaker nodded, unoffended, and replied, “As you will.”
“A mage entered here before us,” Cale said.
The caretaker nodded, indicating the double doors behind him.
“He is within the sanctum, even now claiming the gift that he came seeking.”
Cale looked down the hall to the double doors but resisted the urge to charge down there.
“We know what he seeks,” said Cale.
Smiling cryptically, the caretaker said, “What he desires is slight compared to what those who are with him seek.”
That took Cale aback. Did Azriim have his own agenda?
“And what is that?” Cale asked.
“The Weave Tap of the Dark Maiden.”
The words meant nothing to Cale. He looked to Magadon and Jak. Both shrugged and shook their heads.
“What is that?” asked Cale.
The caretaker frowned and said, “Knowledge you ask for.” He extended his hands and a tome as large as any wizard’s spellbook took shape there. Black, scaled leather covered gilded vellum pages. “Then knowledge shall be your gift. This is a history, of sorts. The answer to your questions lies within these pages. Take it.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Cale took the tome. Surprisingly, it felt ordinary in his hands. He placed it in his pack, deliberately showing it no reverence.
The caretaker merely smiled.
“May we pass?” Cale asked.
“Of course. I am a caretaker,” he replied, “not a guardian.”
I doubt that, Jak said. Cale nodded.
“Let’s move,” he said to his comrades, and brushed past the caretaker.
Already, the old man was dissipating into his component shadows.
“It was my honor to meet you both, the First and the Second. Farewell.”
With that, he was gone.
Cale put the caretaker’s reference out of his mind as the comrades jogged down the hall for the double doors. Before they reached them, a pulsing sensation, so deep that Cale felt it more than heard it, assaulted their ears. They gritted their teeth and ran on.
Jak, running at Cale’s side, said in a mental voice that Cale knew was directed only at him, Erevis, whatever’s happening here is bigger than that sphere. That statue. Your sword. Calling you the First. Do you see that?
I see it.
This is not just a Calling by Mask, it’s something more…. Don’t lose yourself, Cale.
Cale looked at him sidelong and sent, I won’t. That’s why I’ve got you.
They reached the landing before the double doors of the sanctum. The pulsing had grown in intensity, the intervals between pulses shorter. They originated behind those doors.
Cale gripped one door, Riven gripped the other, and they readied themselves to pull them open.
CHAPTER 19
TRANSFORMATIONS
The pulses accelerated. The sky-ceiling of the sanctum grew blurry and began to swirl around the starless hole above the altar. Slowly at first, then faster. Faster it spun; faster it pulsed. Energy was building to a focused crescendo. Azriim could sense it. Vraggen stood at the altar with his back to Azriim and Serrin. His head was thrown back and he held his arms out from his sides as though he was awaiting the embrace of a lover.
Enjoy it mage, Azriim thought, for it is doomed to be a short love affair.
Dolgan’s voice sounded in Azriim’s mind, I am within the Fane. They are past the caretaker.
Azriim nodded and silently replied, We are locating the Weave Tap. The human has begun his transformation.
Azriim knew that Dolgan had entered the Fane under cover of one of the rings provided to the brood by the Sojourner. Dolgan’s ring rendered him invisible, silent, and undetectable to divinations.
Remain unseen until the moment is right, Azriim ordered. The caretaker cannot observe you.
Dolgan sent a mental acknowledgement.
Azriim returned his attention to the mage and watched, mildly curious, as black, arm-thick tendrils erupted from the hole in the spinning sky-ceiling and squirmed down toward Vraggen. The human tensed as they approached, screamed when they pierced his skin, and sighed in ecstasy as they began to throb, drawing away his mortal lifestuff and replacing it with that of shadow. The process was unstoppable.
Unless the participant was killed.
Here, Serrin’s mental voice said.
Azriim blocked out the sounds of Vraggen’s transformation and turned to see his broodmate standing before the representation of the tree—the Weave Tap. Serrin cautiously traced his fingers along its bark.
Azriim attuned his vision to see magic. Other than Serrin, nothing near the representation glowed in his sight.
Where? the half-drow asked. I do not see it.
Serrin tapped the image of the tree with a finger and sent back, You do see it, but it is masked. Look again, as though you were looking from the corner of your eye.
Azriim did so and—
There. The representation was no representation at all! It was a small alcove aglow with magic, in which stood a sapling tree, in
appearance the same as that of the illusionary representation. Shadow magic, magic that Azriim’s senses could not easily detect, had hidden the Weave Tap in plain sight by disguising it as a representation of itself. Ingenious.
The best lies always contained a hint of truth, he thought with a smile.
The Weave Tap seemed to hover in the air. While it didn’t have roots that Azriim could see, he knew it did in fact have roots of a sort. Those invisible roots could grew anywhere, entwined as they were in the weft of the Weave itself.
It is warded, Serrin said, unnecessarily, for Azriim could see the magic plainly.
The Sojourner had provided Azriim with the tool for that. He pulled from his cloak a straight, finger-thick rod of duskwood. An opalescent pearl capped its tip. Instilled with the power of the Sojourner’s magic, the wand could destroy the spells of virtually any other mage on any world.
He pointed it at the alcove and willed the wand’s power to dispel the wards surrounding the Weave Tap. One after the other, the wards fell. The Weave Tap lay exposed.
Azriim couldn’t help but smile. The Sojourner would be pleased, and might consider his transformation into gray as a reward. Also satisfying, he knew that he no longer needed Vraggen. The seeds sown years before had finally birthed a harvest. Serrin looked a question at Azriim. Azriim nodded, and Serrin took the living artifact in his hands. He held it away from his chest, as though its touch would drain him.
To Dolgan, Azriim projected, We have located the Weave Tap.
Dolgan’s excitement was tangible. He too hoped for a transformation to gray.
I wish to kill one before we return to the Sojourner, Dolgan sent.
Azriim eyed the mage and considered. As of that moment, the shadow adept, whose arrogance Azriim had endured for far too long, had become superfluous. With his magic-sensing vision attuned to shadow magic, Azriim saw that Vraggen was aglow with protective spells.
He pointed the Sojourner’s wand and willed it to destroy the spells on Vraggen’s person. Soundlessly, unnoticed by Vraggen, they winked out.
Well? Dolgan asked.
Azriim grinned. How could he deny Dolgan the same pleasure that he was himself about to take?
Kill one then, he projected, and he and Serrin began to change back to their natural forms.
Vraggen felt the strands of shadow drawing away his mortality and pumping him full of shadowstuff. Immortality; regeneration; agelessness. All of those words danced through his brain. All of those words were made manifest in his rapidly transforming flesh.
In his mind’s eye, he was already planning his next steps. He would take Cyric’s war to the Banites in Selgaunt. After disposing of them, he would do the same in Ordulin. Cyric and his servants would rule the underworld in all of Sembia! He—
Huge, leathery hands took his head between them and lifted him from his feet. Claws as long as a man’s thumb sank into his cheeks, scraped against his skull. He tried to scream but the hands kept his mouth clamped shut.
He uttered a muffled wail of agony. Through the pain, he realized that his protective spells, including his teleportation contingency, had not functioned. He could cast no further spells without the ability to speak. He squirmed and kicked futilely.
A voice sounded in his head—Azriim’s voice, Cease your struggles, fool. Even you must realize that this is at an end.
Terror ran up Vraggen’s spine. Azriim! It dawned on him then.
Azriim was not Azriim.
Incoherent images raced through his brain. Azriim’s grin. His perfect teeth. His wild eyes. His sly comments. His manipulation.
Azriim was a shapeshifter. He had never seen it.
Ah, Azriim’s voice said, and Vraggen could hear the satisfaction in it. You see it now, don’t you?
Vraggen saw it all clearly. He had been a pawn, and the realization hit him that he had failed, both himself and his god. Despair washed through him, soaked him to his soul. He stopped even trying to fight. He felt as though he might cry. He went limp in Azriim’s inhuman grasp. Mindlessly, the strands of shadow continued to fill him with shadowstuff, but Vraggen knew the transformation would never finish.
See me now, before the end, Azriim said, and turned him around.
Vraggen caught a flash of green skin, muscle, teeth, and mismatched eyes. A slaad, his mind registered distantly, Azriim was a slaad.
Why? he thought. Why?
But Azriim provided him with no answers.
Pray that your mad god is merciful to fools, Azriim said, and he opened his mouth wide.
A tremor shook the Fane as Cale and Riven jerked open the double doors. For an instant, the entire temple seemed to waver, to grow as insubstantial as a phantasm. Cale knew then that the Fane would not long remain in Faerûn.
Cale and Riven stepped into the sanctum. Cale took in the scene in only a heartbeat.
In the center of the circular sanctum stood a dark altar. There, a hulking green slaad stood. It clutched Vraggen’s headless corpse in its clawed hands. The slaad shot them a grin and swallowed whatever it held in its jaws: Vraggen’s head, probably. Blood darkened its shark’s teeth. Cale noticed the slaad’s eyes then: one blue and one dark. It was Azriim.
“Dark,” Riven cursed, and Cale knew he was angry because he wouldn’t be able to kill the mage.
In the ceiling directly above Azriim was a circle of darkness about which spun a sky full of stars. The whole reminded Cale of a child’s pinwheel, but its motion nauseated him. Shimmering, pulsing tendrils of shadowstuff reached from the hole, feeling for Vraggen, feeling for anything. Cale felt the pull of those tendrils on his sword.
In a flash of insight, Cale understood it all. Azriim had duped Vraggen into opening the Fane then murdered the mage in the midst of his transformation to a shade. But why?
Near the back of the sanctum stood another slaad. Leaner than Azriim, with eyes of gray, it was the slaad who had tortured Jak. In its hands, it held a tree—a sapling with black bark, gray leaves, and small silver fruit the size of walnuts. Strangely, the tree had no roots, though it somehow suggested roots.
Intuitively, Cale realized that it had all been about that tree—the Weave Tap. The slaad with the tree held in its other hand the brass teleportation rod. Without even looking at Cale and his comrades, he twisted it once, twice, and vanished with the Tap.
“No,” Jak said through clenched teeth
Casually, Azriim tossed aside Vraggen’s corpse, detaching the last of the tendrils.
“You’re too late,” the slaad croaked. “The Sojourner has his prize.”
“We’ll see,” Cale and Riven said in unison. To Jak and Magadon, Cale projected, Use missiles, Jak, and your magic, Magadon. Don’t let him use the teleportation rod.
He and Riven charged.
Before they had taken three strides, Azriim spoke an arcane word and vanished from sight. Cale and Riven arrested their charge and went back to back. Cale couldn’t hope to hear Azriim’s movement above the pulsing in the room.
Again, the Fane wavered.
We’ve got to get out of here, Cale, Riven projected.
Cale made no answer. He couldn’t let it end that way.
Azriim’s voice sounded in Cale’s head, I would love to linger and kill you slowly, Erevis Cale, but time is short and my work completed. It satisfies me that you now understand your failure. I’ll allow that as vengeance for my ruined pants.
Cale could hear the smile in his voice.
Magadon’s voice sounded in Cale’s brain, He is standing near the far wall, directly in front of the alcove. He has the teleportation rod in his hands. Follow me.
Without waiting for Magadon, Cale dropped his blade, drew a throwing dagger, and hurled it at the corner at about the height of the slaad’s chest. Beside him, Riven too fired a dagger. Both sank into flesh with a dull thud.
Azriim’s pained croak could be heard even above the pulsing. Magadon streaked past them, white fire blasting from his hands. The smell of charred flesh fille
d the room. Riven sped for the corner, blades bare. Cale retrieved his own blade and did the same.
Stay away from those tendrils! he “shouted” as he ran.
Jak’s scream stopped them cold. Cale whirled around to see Nestor, halfway through his transformation into a slaad, standing behind Jak with the tip of his blade sticking through Jak’s chest.
Nestor completed his change as he pulled his blade free. Jak collapsed face-down to the floor of the sanctum, a pool of blood expanding from his body. Nestor, fully in slaad form but still holding his blade, again stabbed Jak through back.
Cale … the halfling projected, then fell silent.
Nestor! Magadon’s mental voice screamed.
“Jak!” Without a moment’s hesitation, Cale put Azriim out of his mind and raced for Jak. Nestor—no, Dolgan—grinning, dropped his sword, pulled his teleportation rod, twisted it, and disappeared with a grin.
Cale sank to Jak’s side, soaking his cloak in the halfling’s blood. Cale turned him over. His green eyes were open.
“Jak! Jak!”
“I can’t see, Cale,” the halfling whispered. His eyes were vacant. Cale had seen that look on the faces of corpses.
Cale cradled his head, tried to hold back the tears but failed.
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
Another shudder shook the Fane. Again it wavered, flickered out of reality for a heartbeat. Cale too felt insubstantial. He was losing his best friend.
Riven and Magadon ran up behind him.
“Let me help carry him,” Riven said, and put a hand on Cale’s shoulder. “We’ve got to go, Cale.”
Cale couldn’t even nod.
“The slaad used his rod to flee,” Magadon said. After a pause, he said, “I’m sorry, Jak. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
Cale wanted to tell the guide that it was not his fault, that he could not have known, but no words would come.
The pulsing of the sanctum continued. Cale heard it like a distant heartbeat. Jak’s breathing slowed, slowed. He tried to wipe Jak’s brow with his stump—
