"This wasn't him," Cale said, nodding at Riven's disc.
The assassin dropped his hand from the symbol.
Cale continued, "And you wouldn't want it even if it was."
Riven seemed to consider that before changing the subject.
"You're a shade, then. And you brought us here?"
Cale nodded and said, "I think so."
"You think so?" Riven asked, his voice edged with tension. "Can you take us back?"
Cale slowly shook his head and all three of his comrades visibly deflated. Even with all the new knowledge swirling in his brain, he didn't know how, or if he could return them to Faerun. Whatever he had done back in the Fane to bring them there, he had done it unconsciously, out of an instinct for survival. He could not even remember it.
"The teleportation rods?" Cale asked.
Riven had taken two of the magical transport rods from the slaadi.
Jak perked up. So too did Magadon. But Riven gave a harsh laugh; to Cale, it sounded forced.
"First thing I tried," the assassin said. "They crumbled to dust in my hands."
He turned away, eyes hooded. Jak sagged. Magadon, stoic as ever, went back to his study of the flora.
Silence reigned. The realization lay heavy on all of them-they were trapped, at least for a time.
Magadon, with his psionic sensitivity, must have sensed their thoughts.
"Better here than drowned," he observed matter-of-factly, even as he continued studying the bog's flora.
No one disputed that logic.
Cale's eyes found Jak. The halfling held his gaze for only a moment before his expression filled with shame. He looked as though he might cry. Cale understood the reason. He knelt before Jak, put a hand on his shoulder and spoke in Lurienal, the halfling's native language.
"My choice, little man," Cale said. "I would do it again."
Jak looked away, eyes welling, but managed a nod. After a moment, he looked back at Cale and said, "I would have done it for you too, Cale. Do you know that?"
Cale smiled softly and replied, "Of course I do. That's why I did it."
He patted Jak's shoulder, eliciting a half smile from his friend, and stood. He turned a circle and looked, really looked around the Plane of Shadow for the first time.
A starless, moonless sky roofed a dreary landscape. Shades of black and gray predominated, as though the entirety of the plane had been coated in ash. Even Jak's ordinarily bright red hair appeared a dull rust color. The air was gauzy with shadows. Cale knew ten or more synonyms in nine languages for "darkness," and none of them adequately captured the brooding, oppressive gloom of the place.
The bog in which they stood extended in all directions to the limit of his vision. Steaming pools of stagnant water and mud dotted the lowlands. Stands of reeds and black-leafed trees not unlike Faerunian cypresses grew in clusters along the edge of the ponds. Flotillas of dull gray flowers floated on the surface of the water. Clouds of birds, or perhaps bats, to judge from their wheeling, jerky motion, fluttered in the air above the trees. Black flies the size of coins teemed in the air.
"It changes over time," Magadon said.
Cale looked to the guide, met his white eyes with his own dark gaze, and asked, "What does?"
"The landscape," Magadon said. "It changes."
Cale could not keep the surprise from his face.
"What do you mean?"
"I haven't noticed that," Jak said, looking around at the swamp, and even Riven looked taken aback.
Magadon nodded, as though he had expected such a response, and said, "It's quite subtle." The guide pointed at a nearby cypress. "That stand of trees was over a stone's throw away yesterday-or however long ago it was that we arrived here.
"Dark," Jak oathed, wide-eyed. He stared at the ground under his feet as though it might swallow him at any moment. "What kind of place is this?"
"Why didn't you tell us this before, Mags?" Riven asked.
The guide shrugged and took a small bite of the plant he held in his hand. He spit it out almost instantly.
"Nothing to tell," Magadon said finally. "We cannot stop it, and we weren't moving until Erevis regained consciousness."
Cale eyed Magadon with new appreciation. The man noticed details. Cale liked that. But Cale noticed details too, and the guide's last words caused him concern.
"How long was I unconscious?" Cale asked.
Magadon shrugged again and said, "Hours. Days. Who can say in this? I can see only twenty paces. There are no stars, and if this place ever sees a sun, Drasek's a cloistered priest of Torm."
"Riven," Riven corrected absently.
Magadon gave a half-smile and continued, "We've seen a few animals, but I don't recognize any of them. So I cannot determine the passage of time from their activity cycle. We're in the dark. Literally. We were afraid to move you-you seemed almost catatonic-so we've remained here since we arrived."
Silence sat heavy while Cale digested that.
Jak began to pace a circle, kicking at the mud.
"But you're up now," he said, " and we've got to get out of here." He held his holy symbol in his hand flipped it between his fingers. "I tried divinations soon after we arrived, Cale. No answer."
Cale looked at him and asked, "What do you mean?"
Jak held up his holy symbol, a jeweled pendant.
"I mean divinations do not work here. The Trickster can't hear me. Or can't answer me. I'm...."
Cale understood. Jak felt severed from his god.
The halfling began again to pace.
"It's not right here," he said. "I don't feel right." Jak stopped pacing, as though struck by a realization. He looked at Cale and asked, "Do you?"
Cale recognized the question behind the question but answered only with a non-committal grunt. Strange as it seemed, Cale felt better than he had in some time. The feeling brought him little comfort. He wondered again what he had become, that he could feel at home in such a godsforsaken plane. He reached for his own holy symbol before he remembered that the female slaad had devoured it along with his hand. Awkwardly, he rested his palm on his sword pommel. His sword; the sword that bled shadows. He wondered if it too had changed further upon its arrival in the Plane of Shadow. He resisted the urge to draw it.
"It's just another place," Riven said, seemingly as calm as the windless air. "Ease down, Fleet."
Apparently, the assassin too felt at home there. Either that or he hid is discomfort well.
"Ease down, little man," Cale seconded to Jak, to head off another exchange between the halfling and Riven. "We've been in worse places. Haven't we?"
Jak looked at him curiously and nodded.
"We'll get out of here too," Cale said. "It may just take some time." Cale looked to Magadon and made his voice sound normal. "How about a fire?"
"Tried," Magadon said, and nodded toward a pile of tinder not far from Cale. "The wood is saturated with this bog. It won't hold a flame. We tried to keep you warm with blankets, but...."
Cale said, "A light then, at least. Jak, your bluelight wand."
"It's no good, Cale," Jak replied, shaking his head. "We tried it. I might as well have it covered in a sack."
"This place eats light," Magadon said.
Cale heard the tone of his comrades, saw their morose expressions, and realized that the gray of the plane had already infected their souls. Strange that it had not affected him. He supposed that made him a creature of the gloom.
"Pull it anyway, little man," he said to Jak. "It's better than nothing."
Jak shrugged and took his wand out of an inner pocket of his shirt. He spoke the command word and the tip glowed blue. The light did little to dispel the darkness.