CHAPTER 1
PERDITION
Dark knowledge churned through Cale's mind. Fell power coursed through his veins. He could not quite comprehend it, not rationally, but somehow he knew it. His body felt thick and insensate, as though he had been immersed in ice water. He could hear, but only dimly, as though from a great distance. He could see nothing. He felt stupefied; his thoughts ran as thick and as sluggish as tar.
With effort, he fought his way through the mental cobwebs. As he did, memories of the transformation from man to shade rose to the forefront of his consciousness. He recalled shadowy tentacles pulsing with power, piercing his skin, filling him with darkness, stealing his humanity. He pushed the memory out of his mind before it made him scream. He took a deep breath and drank in damp air heavy with the smell of organic decay, as fetid as a sewer. He knew he was in a swamp, a swamp that smelled like a charnel house. Many things had died there; many more things would.
Nearby, the buzzing and clicking of insects filled his ears, the sounds vaguely familiar but the rhythm somehow alien.
"What kind of water is this?" said a voice, Jak's voice, from somewhere near him.
Water splashed.
The sound of the halfling's voice helped center Cale, helped him climb the last few strides out of the darkness. Things became clearer.
He was not anywhere near the Lightless Lake. He was lying on his back in a bed of cold mud, covered in what he took to be a coarse blanket, or a shroud. He could not see because his eyes were closed, the lids caked shut with, scum, dirt, or blood. For the moment, he didn't try to open them. He didn't want to see what he thought they would reveal. He didn't want to know what his mind insisted he knew.
I'm not human, he thought, and the accusation hit him like a club. The simple truth of it left him empty. He thought of Tazi.
What would she say if she could see me now?
From Cale's right, Riven responded to Jak. Surprisingly, even the assassin's voice brought Cale some small comfort.
"It's the same water as anywhere, Fleet. Just . . . darker."
The creak of leather from Cale's right; Riven changing his stance.
"It's as thick as my mother's maple syrup," Jak said.
More splashing.
How long have we been here? Cale wondered.
"What is this place?" said another voice. "Where are we? The last thing I remember, we were watching an entire lake crash down on us. I thought we were dead."
It took Cale a moment to place the speaker-Magadon. The mind mage and guide from Starmantle. Cale had no recollection of the Lightless Lake crashing down on them.
"How many times will you ask the same question?" Riven said in a voice edged with tension. "You're the damned guide, Mags. You tell us where we are."
To that, Magadon said nothing, though Cale could hear him wading into the water.
Cale knew where they were-at least he thought he did-and he thought he knew how they had gotten there.
Jak spoke in a low voice: "Do you think we are? Dead, I mean?"
Riven scoffed. Cale could imagine his mocking sneer. He could also imagine the indignant glare Jak must have offered in response.
"You stuff that sneer," barked the halfling as he splashed through the water to get nearer to Riven. Jak's voice dripped venom. "You're right, though. Because if we were dead, you and I wouldn't end up in the same place, now would we?"
Riven chuckled darkly and said, "I wouldn't hang my sword belt on that, Fleet. You might think differently before this is all said and done."
Before this was all said and done. Cale did not even know what the this was. Slaadi in human form had murdered their ostensible master, a shadow adept named Vraggen, and taken a magical sapling tree-the Weave Tap-from a mysterious temple called the Fane of Shadows. Just before the slaadi had escaped, one of them, Azriim, had mentioned someone called the Sojourner, presumably their true master. That was all Cale knew, and his mind was too muddled to reason out the meaning of it all.
"The Wall of the Faithless," Jak said, still dogging the assassin. "That's the best you can hope for, Zhent. My guess-your afterlife is uglier than that. Much uglier."
"I wouldn't have it any other way," Riven responded, and Cale heard the assassin's leather armor creak.
Jak replied with a harrumph and silence. The tension was as thick as the stink.
"The plants at least look familiar," Magadon said, in an obvious attempt to diffuse the situation. "But they're slightly different. Here. Look at this swamp flower . .. thicker roots, thinner stalks and leaves. The sky's different too. What in the multiverse is this place?" he asked again.
At that, Cale wiped away the substance caked on his eyelids-mud-opened his eyes, and looked up into a pitch black sky devoid of stars. Clusters of low, ashen clouds dotted the dark canopy, backlit by a dim, sourceless ochre light.
"The Plane of Shadow " he announced.
There was a moment's silence, followed by Jak's exclamation, "Cale! You're awake!"
The halfling splashed through a pool of shallow water to reach Cale's side. He knelt and helped Cale to sit up. Cale's muscles felt as though they had been beaten with warhammers.
"Trickster's toes," Jak said. "You're as cold as Beshaba's heart." Over his shoulder, he shouted to Riven, "Get him another blanket, Zhent."
When Cale smiled at Jak, the halfling's eyes went wide and he recoiled so hurriedly that he fell on his backside. His hand went to his mouth.
"Oh ... oh, Cale."
Riven stepped closer to see, the request for the blanket forgotten, his lone eye focused on Cale's face.
"Dark," the assassin oathed.
Magadon, standing in ankle deep water and holding a gray flower in his hand, looked at Cale with some curiosity.
"Are you all right, Erevis?" the guide asked.
"I am," Cale replied, though the stares made Cale uncomfortable.
Still, he had been transformed and he knew how he must look to them. He held up his arm and looked at the hand that the female slaad had bitten off, at the wrist that should have been a stump. The transformation had somehow regenerated it. He flexed the fingers. They felt normal, but his once pale skin had turned dusky gray, darker still on the regenerated hand. Wisps of shadows snaked at intervals from his fingertips and leaked from his pores. He was sheathed in shadows. Touching the darkness lightly with his normal hand he felt a slight resistance.
"You're covered in them," Jak said softly.
Riven kneeled on his haunches and studied Cale's face. "You've changed more in the time since we arrived here," the assassin said. "What's happened to you?" That last sounded more like an accusation than a question.
Cale had no ready answer.
"Your eyes," Magadon said. "The white's gone black. The pupils are yellow. They glow in this twilight. I can see them from here."
Cale managed a nod. The change in his eyes explained why he could see perfectly out to a bowshot's distance, despite the dimness of the plane. In fact, as his head cleared, he realized that each of his senses had grown sharper. He could hear Riven's breathing at ten paces, taste the subtle organic tang in the air, and smell the otherwise unnoticeable wisps of sulfur leaking from a nearby bubbling pool.
I'm not human.
The words rose unbeckoned from the back of his brain.
I'm a creature of shadow.
He pushed the words away.
"What's happened is what's happened," Cale said, looking meaningfully at Riven. "I'm still me."
Even to his own ears the words sounded like a lie. He unfolded himself and stood. Jak stood too, still staring at him.
Riven, rising and eyeing Cale doubtfully, said, "Are you?"
Unconsciously, the assassin reached for the onyx disc at his throat. In that gesture, Cale saw what Riven was wondering: Had the Shadowlord, their mutual deity, caused Cale's transformation? If so, Riven probably would perceive the transformation as a divine boon and be jealous of it.