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.