"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.