Shadow's Witness (28 page)

I Ť? V____

He began to cast, but stumbled over the incantation. His voice sounded strangely muted. The unnatural gloom and ash-laden air strangled his voice the moment he made a sound.

Jak’s life-force leaked through his skin. He felt himself grow weaker with each heartbeat.

He cleared bis throat and began again, louder this time. The vigor in his voice warred with the torpidity of the air. With great effort he forced out each magic-pregnant word, moved his holy symbol through the gray air to trace the appropriate sigils. His lungs heaved and sweat beaded his brow but he stubbornly plodded on.

At last he finished, and when he did, a golden glow took shape around him and sheathed his entire body. It crackled and popped energetically as its positive power held the negative energy of the void at bay.

“Interesting,” he observed, and held his arms before him for examination. Now protected by the goMen aura of the spell, the white vapor no longer seeped from his pores. His flesh had lost its gray pallor and returned to normal. Equally important, he felt himself again. His mind and body once more moved with their habitual deftness. As long as his protective spell stayed in effect he would be safe from the draining effects of the energy maelstrom.

But how long will it last? he wondered nervously. The spell was supposed to protect him from creatures that used negative energy in a single concentrated attack, not from the persistent, slow-draining negative energy of an entire plane. He couldn’t know for certain, but from the way the golden aura sizzled, he did not think the spell would last long. He could cast it again, of course, but sooner or later, he would run out of protection.

“Unless I can find a way out of here.” Within the

protective aura, his voice again sounded normal. He allowed himself a smile and enjoyed his small victory over an impossibly grim situation.

Ill take them where I can get them, he thought, and ran his thumb over his holy symbol. You got anything to say? he thought to the Trickster.

“I didn’t think so,” he muttered irritably. “Have to rely on Lady Luck then.” He tapped the agate luckstone at his belt and scanned the landscape in all directions. Partially buried in the ash nearby, he spotted the short sword he had dropped through the gate back in the guildhouse. Smiling, he hurried over, picked it up, and sheathed it at his belt. Lady Luck had granted him another boon. It heartened him.

“There has to be another gate,” he softly chanted. There has to be,”

Other than his blade, all around he saw nothing but wasteland. Only the jagged black points of basalt that jutted from the ash broke the infinite expanse of gray. Nothing that looked like a gate. Nothing that looked like anything.

His good spirits began to fail him and despair began to threaten. He was alone, had never been more alone, and he could see no way to get out. The maelstrom hung threateningly in the soot sky like the mouth of a beast, twisting, churning, ready to grind bis life into oblivion, waiting for bis spell to expire so it could feed.

Tears began to well but he blinked them away. He struggled to quiet the hopeless voice in his head that told him to curl up in the dirt and accept death. By all the gods, he would not surrender!

“To the pits of the Nine Hells with giving up,” he said aloud, as much to steel his resolve as anything. He clutched the luckstone in his fist like a talisman of hope. “Anything more from you, Lady?”

Nothing.

He nodded, swallowed his despair, and began to walk. The direction didn’t matter.

One way is as good as another, he thought. He had to find a gate back to his plane soon. Otherwise, his soul would feed the beast.

He hadn’t taken five steps before an explosive surge of energy from behind blew him face first into the ground and made his ears ring. Clouds of ash whipped around him like a sandstorm.

Spitting the filth of the void from his mouth, Jak shielded his eyes from the onslaught of ash and looked over his shoulder. A sudden sound like tearing cloth broke the stillness. From a point six feet in the air above where Jak had been standing, the empty air split open. A hole the size of a door formed. Colors poured through.

The gate! his mind registered. He scrambled to his feet and ran for it. Before he could reach it, however, two bodies fell through the rift and hit the earth in an explosion of ash. Instantly, the gate collapsed in on itself and vanished with a soft pop. -v =
j

“No!” .. 4 . , -, ;-..-.;: : ,-:. - V•.:.-.• ‘

Gale stared up into a sky the color of slate. He lay on his back unmoving. The earth beneath him felt coarse, like the sands of the desert kingdom of Cal—

Where am I? he wondered.

He tried to move but his limbs felt like lead, too heavy to lift. His mind seemed muddled. He must have hit his head. A light mist steamed from his face, like that of a lathered steed in winter.

Am I sweating?

His mind was fuzzy. He remembered jumping from a wall and stabbing a shadow—

A distant voice pulled at him. “Gale! Cale!” He tried to lift his head but couldn’t. The voice remained insistent. “Erevis Cale!”

Suddenly, a form bent over him and a red-whiskered face took shape above. Jak! He tried to smite a greeting but his mouth didn’t work.

“Dark,” the little man oathed. He gripped Cale rudely by the face and looked with concern into his eyes.

Cale tried to say, I’m all right, but only managed to say, “Amgahh.” His damned mouth didn’t work right! What was wrong with him?

Piece yourself together, he ordered, but that seemed easier thought than done.

“Hang on, Cale,” said Jak, and let his head fall back to the soft ground. The little man pulled out his holy symbol and moved it over Cale’s body while mouthing a series of magical syllables. Abruptly, Jak jumped back in shock.

“How—”

A golden light took shape before Cale’s eyes. He came back to himself almost immediately. His mind cleared and his body felt lighter. He had killed the demon and fallen through the gate.

He sat up. Jak rushed forward and embraced him, nearly knocking him back down.

“Cale!” the little man happily exclaimed. “Dark, but I’m glad to see you.” A sparkling golden glow surrounded the little man and crackled like sizzling meat. Cale, as pleased to see Jak as Jak was to see him,” returned his embrace.

“Fm glad to see you to, my friend.” He disengaged himself and stood. Only then did he recognize that he too was sheathed in a golden aura.

“What is this?” he asked Jak, and indicated the

s i’ I 11.

aura. While he watched, it sparked and sizzled like a bonfire in the raia.

“Ifa a protective spell,” Jak replied. “Without it, this place would kill you. The whole plane drains souls, just like the shadow demon.”

Cale nodded. “That was quick thinking, little man, thanks.” >

Jak gazed at him solemnly
I didn’t cast it, Cale, I started to but didn’t finish.” He paused a heartbeat before adding, “You must’ve cast it.” His green eyes went to Gate’s right hand.

Gate’s gaze followed Jak’s. There in his hand, he unknowingly held tire felt mask.

His stomach went topsy-turvy. His knees turned so weak he nearly fell down. Cast a spell? He couldn’t! He had made no commitment to Mask, had he? He looked to Jak, astonished.

“I don’t know how to cast spells.”; , iW ^ ^

He sounded unconvincing even to himsel&flec&fctY know how, but he also intuitively knew that Boasehow he had. Or that the Shadowlord had cast it for him. In the end, he wasn’t sure if the difference WAS ofanysig^ nificance, and that thought niade him wry uncomfortable. He would not surrender himself to a god. He was his own man. Defeating Yrsillar was his task. His task

alone… . - ••” ;.-v:. •’••A ‘• : • • ••-• •

Jak stepped forward and placed a small, commiserating hand on his shoulder. “Mask wants you badly, Erevis. You must bevhis Ghampien^It% the calk”

Angry and frightened, Gale stuffed the felt mask back into his pocket. He couldn’t quite bring himself to discard it, though the temptation was strong.

“Feels less like a call and more like an order.” He clenched his fists and looked up into the churning maelstrom of nothingness that dominated the sky. “He’s saved me twice, Jak. Once in the shrine and once

now. But I won’t bow down to him out of some sense of obligation. You understand?”

Jak smiled softly. “I do understand,” he replied. “I do. But in the end it’s not about obligation. You’ll come to realize that. Just… give it some tune.”

Cale lowered bis gaze from the soot sky. 1 feel tike I’m changing despite myself; Jak—” He fell silent when his eyes fell on the grotesque body that lay in the ash nearby. He swallowed down his gorge. Twisted and malformed, the flesh of the thin, winged carcass looked the bluish-gray color of something long. dead. Long, wiry arms ended in a set of terrible, steel-gray claws as long as knife blades. A thin slit in the hairless oval of its head marked a mouth, and its round, milky eyes stared vacantly into the gray sky. A deep, bloodless gash—the wound from Gale’s enchanted long sword—split the corpse nearly in two, from its oval face to the center of its torso. Bloodless entrails hung from the hole like a ship’s rigging.

“The shadow demon,” Cale realized.

Jak gave a start and stared at the corpse in amazement. He poked it with his toe. It didn’t move. “You killed it. Back on our plane?” .

Cafe nodded grimly. “As I fell through the gate. It didn’t look tike this, though. Didn’t feel tike flesh, either.” He knelt and retrieved his enchanted long sword, which lay beside the corpse^

Jak studied the macabre corpse and stroked his whiskers thoughtfully. “This is how its body must appear on this plane. Or at least how it chooses to appear on this plane.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Something from nothing. The shadow form must be how its kind manifests on our plane.” He poked it again with his boot “Dark, but its uglier tike this.”

Cale gave a hard smile. “It is,” he softly agreed. “Looks better dead, though.”

Jak giggled at that, but when his laughter died away he turned serious. His eyes found the ground and he kicked his boot in the ash.

“Cale, back at the guildhouse … I feel bad about…” he trailed off, took a deep breath, and started again. “I thought we were dead, Cale. I mean, I wasn’t trying to abandon you, I just—”

Cale knew what Jak intended to say. He stopped him with an upraised hand and a raised voice. “Dark, Jak, I know why you did it.” He gave the tittle man a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Cale knew full well that Jak, of all people, would never abandon him, at least not out of fear. Cale would not have the little man feeling guilty for doing something that most any man would have done. Cale knew too well the way guilt burdened a man’s soul.

“I’d have done the same thing,” he said, and meant it “I thought we were dead too. I get Jucky

Jak looked up and gave him a grateful, sheepish nod. “But we aren’t,” he said with a smile, “Dead, I mean.” ;|

“No, we aren’t” Cate looked^uwoa&toeltto^the

“Where in the Nine Hells are we?”

“Not the Nine Hells,” Jak replied matter-of-factly. “The Abyss. At least I think.” He nodded at the demon’s corpse. “This is its home plane. Yrsillar’s home plane too, I assume.”

Hearing Yrsillar’s name sent a wave of anger through Cale. He quelled it and tried to absorb what the little man had said:

He knew of the Abyss only through adventurers’ stories. Stories which always portrayed it as a chaotic

place teeming with demons and alive with unspeakable horrors. This place, on the other hand, seemed utterly dead.

Jak pulled out his ivory-bowled pipe and chewed its end, though he didn’t light it.

“This isn’t what I would’ve expected,” Cale said after a moment. “Where are all the demons? The tortured souls writhing in agony? Surely Yrsillar and this thing,” he pointed with his blade at the demon’s corpse, “can’t be the only creatures that live here?”

Jak shruggeTi thoughtfully. “Maybe they are. The Abyss is made up of lots of different planes and this is an unusual one. The energy here seems to drain away life the instant it appears. Most everything that travels here would be dead in minutes, even most demons.” He nodded at the shadow demon’s corpse. “Creatures like that can obviously live here, or like Yrsillar. Certain kinds of undead too, I suppose. Those kinds of creatures don’t live like you and I live. They unlive. We’d be dead long since if not for the protective spells.”

Cale winced, once more reminded of Mask’s seeming beneficence, once more reminded of the call. The felt mask in his pocket weighed like a stone.

Only when and if Fm ready, he thought to the Shadowlord. Stop pushing.

“Can we get out of here?”

Jak took his pipe from his mouth and regarded Cale with raised eyebrows. 1 dont know.”

Cale appreciated the frankness. The gate?”

Jak eyed the empty air above Cale’ a head. “That’s where it materialized, but it must be one-way only. It doesn’t even appear on this side unless someone is passing through from the other side.” Seeing Cale’s frown, he added, “Maybe there’s another one somewhere else.”

Maybe. Frustration and anger rose in Cale like a red tide. That they could have come so far only to die

in this damnable extra-planar desert enraged him. He would not let Yrsillar win, he could not. Not after what had been done to Thazienne and Stonnweather. The demon would pay, by Mask.

By Mask? He gave a slight start, surprised at himself.

“You all right?” Jak asked.

Cale took a deep breath, quelled his frustration and his surprise. Anger would not get them out of here. “Fm all right,” he replied.

Jak nodded, pulled his pipe from between his teeth, and placed it back in his belt pouch. “Cale, whatever we’re going to do, we’ve got to do it soon. I don’t think our protective spells are going to last very long. At least mine won’t.”