Midnights Mask (4 page)

Cale let himself sink into the darkness around them, let it seep into him. He understood that the shadows anywhere were the shadows everywhere. He pictured the

Sojourner’s cavern in his mind, the shadows that filled its corners.

Pulling his comrades into his personal night, he moved them through the black, from a cavern on the Plane of Shadow to a distant cavern elsewhere.

The instant they materialized, Magadon’s sunrod went dark, probably extinguished by some ambient magic in the cavern. Only the dim glowglobe provided illumination in the chamber. It was enough for Cale. He hoped it was enough for Jail and Magadon.

They stood on soft carpet on one side of the cavern, perhaps fifteen paces from the slaadi and the Sojourner. On the floor between the slaadi, Riven struggled feebly to draw his weapons.

Azriim and Dolgan went wide-eyed at the sudden appearance of the three comrades.

“Cale,” Azriim hissed, and fumbled at his blade hilt.

Dolgan growled and unslung his axe.

The three comrades went straight after the Sojourner.

Jak held his holy symbol before him and shouted the words to a spell. Beams of white fire shot from his hand at the Sojourner. They never reached their target. Instead, one of the gems circling the Sojourner’s head attracted and absorbed the beams as if they had never been.

Magadon’s bow sang and an arrow flew, its tip glowing red with mental energy. The arrow slammed against some invisible shield before the Sojourner, stopped in mid-flight, and fell to the ground, inert.

Cale felt a twinge behind his eyes and feared a mental attack, but the sensation never grew beyond the initial sensation. Perhaps Jak’s spell had shielded him from the Sojourner’s attack.

Jak’s and Magadon’s failed attacks confirmed what Cale had already suspected: A formidable array of defensive spells and wards protected the Sojourner. Cale had to bring them down or weaken them.

Hurriedly, he recited a prayer that pitted the power of his magic against that of the Sojourner. When the spell took effect, the contest proved short-lived and one-sided. The Sojourner’s power overwhelmed Cale’s spell, which dissipated without effect.

Cale saw then that magic would be of little use against the superior spellcraft of the Sojourner.

Use steel,” he called, and charged, leaping over a couch as he went.

Jak and Magadon brandished their blades and joined his rush.

Before they had taken five strides, the Sojourner responded. Unlike most wizards Cale had encountered, the Sojourner did not speak a complex phrase or manipulate some esoteric ingredient. Instead, he simply raised his left hand-wincing with pain as he did so-and spoke a single word.

An expanding wedge-shaped spray of variously colored beams shot outward from his fingertips. The three companions had no time to dodge.

A yellow beam struck Magadon in the chest and blew him from his feet. Lightning played over his body, leaving him smoking and sparking on the floor.

An orange beam struck Jak in the left leg as he jumped the couch. His trousers, boots, and flesh blackened, bubbled, started to melt. The little man screamed in agony, collapsed to the couch, and rolled onto the floor, clutching his melting thigh and writhing. The stink of burning flesh filled the chamber.

The green and blue beams intended for Cale diverted into Weaveshear. The blade drank them greedily, though the magical impact staggered Cale and stopped his charge. Weaveshear shook in his hands, bleeding shadows. He clutched it in both hands to keep his grip.

The Sojourner eyed the sword with raised eyebrows-as though surprised that it had been able to absorb his spell-and spoke another word of power, this time without a gesture of any kind.

A sphere of lightning took shape around the creature, surrounding him at arm’s length. It sizzled and spun, charging the air in the chamber with energy. Bolts arced out to touch the metal of the slaadi’s weapons, to burn the cushions and furniture at the Sojourner’s feet. Even at a distance, the hairs on Cale’s arms rose.

Cale knew that he could not allow the Sojourner the freedom to continue casting, but the slaadi were in his way.

Azriim and Dolgan, seeing Cale alone, seized weapons in their hands and advanced. Dolgan held his huge axe in his ham hands; Azriim held his blade in one hand and one of his many wands in the other.

Cale pointed Weaveshear at them and released the pent up magical energy he had stolen from the Sojourner. The unsuspecting slaadi had no time to avoid the attack, and the green and blue beams intended for Cale struck Azriim and Dolgan.

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.

“Poison,” Dolgan said, as much to himself as anyone else. He grinned stupidly. “Stole my strength. Makes me want to….”

A retch swallowed the big slaad’s next words and he sprayed vomit onto the floor and down his shirt. Riven wrinkled his nose at the smell. He did not look closely at the contents of the slaad’s stomach; he did not want to know what they might contain.

Dolgan laughed as though the retching amused him. The laughter triggered another round of vomiting.

Riven eyed the Sojourner and said, “I told you that I want Cale dead. I’ve just proven it.” He indicated Dolgan.

“I could have killed him. Him too,” he said, indicating Azriim. “I could have knocked him over and broken off his head. Did you see all that?”

“I saw,” the Sojourner said, his voice soft. “But even had you killed them, that still would have left me.”

Riven kept his face expressionless, though the Sojourner’s words hit near to his thinking. Too near.

“Yes,” he said, and left unspoken the acknowledgement that he could not have killed the Sojourner. “But I could have fled after putting them down.”

He pulled Dolgan’s teleportation rod from his cloak and showed it to the Sojourner.

Dolgan got control of his retching and laughing, and patted at his cloak.

The Sojourner gave a soft smile.

“That is mine!” Dolgan said, and climbed to his feet. He wobbled, but managed not to fall.

Riven did not bother to respond. He kept his gaze on the Sojourner.

“I would have found you,” the Sojourner said.

Riven shrugged a “maybe.”

“Why did you not run?” the Sojourner asked. The black globe-the void—still hovered beside him. Riven understood the implicit threat it represented

“I just told you why,” Riven answered, and was reminded by those words of Cale’s response to him back on the Plane of Shadow, when they first had put together the plan to get Riven close to the Sojourner.