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 Faerûnian 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.
“Listen to me,” Cale said to all of them. “I brought us here and I will get us back. I just need some time to figure out—” to figure out what I am, he thought—“to figure out how.” He looked at each in turn. “Well enough?”
Jak nodded. Riven said nothing, merely stared at Cale appraisingly. Magadon adjusted his pack and said, “Well enough.”
“Now let’s get the Nine Hells out of this bog,” Cale said.
Jak brightened at that. Magadon grinned.
“Which way?” Jak asked, and held his wand above his head as though it would better pierce the twilight. It did not. “I can’t see anything worthwhile in any direction.”
Cale looked to Magadon and said, “You’re our guide.”
Magadon’s pale eyes glowed in the twilight.
“I should have charged you more than three hundred gold,” he said with a chuckle.
Cale could not quite bring himself to smile in response.
“Which way, Magadon?” Cale asked instead.
Magadon concentrated for a moment, and a nimbus of dim light flared around his head.
“That is north,” he said when he opened his eyes, nodding in the direction behind Cale. “As good a direction as any. Follow me, and step where I step until we’re clear of the bog.”
With that, they geared up and Magadon set off. His long strides devoured the distance. Tedium devoured the hours. More than once Magadon steered them away from a path that ended in a sinkhole or bog pit. Without the psionic woodsman to guide them, Cale had little doubt the swamp would have killed them all.
As they journeyed, Cale glimpsed small, furtive creatures at the edge of his vision, apparently drawn to Jak’s light. They always darted away into hidden dens and burrows before Cale could clearly see them. Instead, he caught only flashes of twisted bodies, gangly legs, and malformed heads. He felt their eyes upon him as he passed. Calls like curses, alien screeches, chatters, and howls sounded in the twilight behind them. With Jak’s bluelight wand cutting a dim path through the shadow, Cale imagined they must have stood out like a goblin in a gnome delve.
They walked the hours in silence. Throughout, the darkness was unrelenting. Shadows saturated them, clung to them like oil. Even their clothes seemed to be absorbing the pitch. Once blue cloaks faded to gray, green tunics to black. Moods too went from dark to darker. Cale saw in the transformation of their clothing an uncomfortable metaphor for his soul.
His soul—villendem, in Chondathan. He wondered if the transformation had stripped him of it.
No, he thought, and shook his head. I’m still myself.
But he wasn’t himself, and something deep in his consciousness, some black, secret part of his brain, protested against his obstinate refu
sal to accept the truth. He fought down the feeling and put one foot in front of the other.
Later, Jak slipped beside him and said in a low tone, “I know what you said earlier, Cale, but I think this is worse than anywhere we’ve ever been. Even worse than when we were in the Abyss. That was evil through and through. You could feel it, so it was easy to keep yourself separate from it. This place, it seeps into your skin. I feel awash in it. It’s almost …”
“Seductive,” Cale finished for him.
Jak looked at him sharply, worry in his eyes.
“I was going to say, ‘insidious.’” The halfling touched his arm and added, “Cale—”
“I know.”
“Don’t get comfortable here,” Jak said. “Don’t.”
“I won’t.”
But Cale already was comfortable there, and that frightened him.
Events were proceeding as Vhostym had foreseen. With his slaadi about their appointed task in the Underdark, he would hasten the Weave Tap’s production of a second seed. For that, he would have to feed the artifact, fertilize it—and the Weave Tap benefited from only specialized kinds of fertilizer.
Just as Shar and Syluné embodied the dual aspect of the primordial universe that had spawned them, just as the Weave and Shadow Weave embodied the dual nature of magic on Toril, the Weave Tap embodied a dichotomous duality. Crafted with Shadow Magic, the Tap nevertheless reached its roots and limbs into both the Weave and the Shadow Weave; it existed simultaneously in both the Prime Material Plane and the Plane of Shadow. The Weave Tap, a living artifact, bridged the two sources of Toril’s arcane energy, drawing power from both.
Vhostym found it fascinating, and was mildly chagrined that he had not thought to craft it himself.
To satisfy its dual nature, the Weave Tap required the life-force, the very magical natures, of both fiends and celestials. Vhostym long had kept plenty of the former in his pocket plane as spell component material, and he prepared to procure the first of the latter.
Like many of the chambers that honeycombed the underground realm of his pocket plane, Vhostym’s summoning chamber was a spherical cyst of stone with no apparent ingress or egress. Engraved runes traced in platinum and gold covered the walls. A circular slab of polished granite floated in midair in the center of the chamber. Upon its face was etched a thaumaturgic circle.
The chamber was unlit, though Vhostym could see well enough. In fact, the magical darkness in the chamber was so complete that not even magical light sources could penetrate it—a necessary precaution when summoning celestials. Though not even the strongest of the celestials could approach Vhostym in power, their ability to generate and radiate light could prove painful unless Vhostym took precautions.
He floated around the slab, running his long, pale fingers along the etching, examining the lines for imperfections. As expected, he found none.
Vhostym took a moment to prepare a few defensive spells, warding himself against all but the most powerful magic and rendering his body impervious to physical attack. Ready, he moved his hands in complex gestures. Waves of arcane power gathered, went forth from his fingers, and coalesced above the granite slab. The lines of the thaumaturgic circle began to glow a soft, almost imperceptible, yellow.
When the power reached the necessary level, Vhostym spoke aloud an arcane phrase and felt a hole open in the walls between the planes. He called the name of the celestial being he sought to summon.
“Phaedriel,” he pronounced.
Vhostym felt his magically augmented voice reach through the planes, find the deva, and try to pull the creature back to him. He felt the celestial’s resistance, but it lasted only a moment before being overpowered by the force of Vhostym’s calling.
A muted flash of pure white light flared in the midst of the summoning platform, forcing Vhostym to shield his eyes. Had he not prepared a spell ahead of time to mute it, the flash would have blinded him and charred his skin. When the spots from even that dim light cleared from before his eyes, Vhostym saw that his calling had been successful.
Phaedriel stood on the summoning platform, bound by the lines of power that went up from the floor. The tips of the deva’s feathered wings, white and opalescent even in the darkness, touched the edge of the binding. Pale gold skin covered the celestial’s perfectly proportioned, well-muscled body. A silver mace, powerfully magical, hung from the deva’s belt. Piercing white eyes gazed out from over an aquiline nose and strong jaw. The smell of flowers filled the summoning chamber. The deva surveyed the space.
“What is this plane?” said Phaedriel, in the purest tenor voice that Vhostym had ever heard.
“You are on a plane of my own devising,” Vhostym answered.
The celestial made no response, only fixed his eyes on Vhostym. A lesser being would have recoiled at the force emitted by those orbs, but Vhostym answered the deva’s stare with one of his own.
“What type of creature are you?” the deva asked at last. “Neither Githyanki nor Githzerai, but … similar.”
Vhostym replied, “I am nothing that you have encountered before, celestial. Nor will you encounter my kind again.”
The deva heard the threat in that last and his brow furrowed.
“We are not enemies, creature,” the celestial said.
He closed his eyes briefly and attempted to cast a spell, likely a divination or sending, but the casting failed, as Vhostym had known it would. The deva opened his eyes.
“Your binding prevents me the use of any magic,” the deva observed.
Vhostym did not bother to reply.
“What do you want of me then, creature?” the deva asked.
Vhostym saw no reason to lie.
“I want all of you, celestial,” he answered. “You will not leave this plane.”
Positive energy, a manifestation of the celestial’s anger, flared in a rosy-colored halo around the deva’s bald head. His downy wings fluttered in agitation.
“Your confidence is unwarranted,” the deva said.
Vhostym did not bother to correct the celestial’s misapprehension.
“I will fight you,” said the deva as he took up his mace.
“It will not avail you,” replied Vhostym, waving a hand dismissively. “You could not harm me even if you were free of the binding.”
“Allies will seek me,” Phaedriel said. “They will avenge me should I come to harm.”
“They will not find you,” replied Vhostym. “And even if they could find you, they would dare not come.”
Nothing short of a god would risk confrontation with Vhostym. In his time, he had single-handedly slain flights of dragons, annihilated entire faiths, left worlds in flame behind him. But he had been young then, and rash.
“You belong to me now, Phaedriel,” Vhostym said. “But fear not. Others of your kind will join you. You will not die alone.”
“Why?” the deva asked.
The radiance from his skin dimmed somewhat, and Vhostym almost smiled. He too had asked such questions once. Only after millennia of existence had he finally realized that the question had no meaning. The multiverse was infinite, unforgiving, and random. There was no why, not in the sense that the deva meant.
“Because I will it,” he answered. “Will is the only why in the multiverse.”
The deva’s eyes narrowed and he clutched his mace tightly.
“You are mistaken,” said the celestial.
Vhostym almost laughed, but instead said, “Am I? Where now is the god you serve? Where the planetar to whom you report? You think yourself a being of good, a servant of justice. Yet I tell you that there are no such things as good and justice. What is, is. In the multiverse, there is the will of the powerful and nothing more. Consider: If the multiverse was just, how could you be fated to this end?”
The deva stood up straight and fixed Vhostym with a steady gaze. Its radiance returned.
“You will not cause me to question my faith, creature.”
Vhostym frowned, sad for
the doctrinaire deva, and replied, “Then die a fool, Phaedriel.”
The deva tensed, preparing for a fight, no doubt intent on expending his last breath in noble battle. Vhostym would give him no such chance.
The Sojourner moved his hands in a complex gesture and spoke words of power. His will flowed along those words, penetrated the binding, and entered the deva, attempting to dominate his mind. The celestial gritted his teeth and went rigid. Every sinew in his beautiful form was visible. He resisted admirably, but even the deva’s will was no match for Vhostym’s magic. The spell rooted in the celestial’s mind. Phaedriel could still think for himself, but he could not resist obeying Vhostym’s commands.
“Relax your body and remain still,” Vhostym said.
The deva did just that.
Vhostym lowered the magical binding that encased the celestial and flew to the summoning platform. Gently, so as not to aggravate the pain in his bones, he lowered his feet to the granite slab.
“Shhh,” Vhostym said, though Phaedriel had said nothing.
Vhostym placed his hands around the deva’s head. Concentrating briefly, he made his mind into a knife and entered the celestial’s mind.
The deva attempted to resist him, but his own psionic power was paltry compared to that of Vhostym. Systematically, Vhostym began to destroy the connections between the deva’s mind and his body, allowing the celestial to live but preventing him from moving. It took only moments. Vhostym began to withdraw from Phaedriel’s mind.
Before he got out, the deva asked in a small voice, Will I experience pain?
Vhostym answered truthfully.
Yes, he said.
TREADING THE BLACK
With no sun by which to gauge the passage of time, Cale felt as though they had been splashing through the swamp forever. Time seemed to have frozen. There was no color, only fetid water and gloom. Cale recalled Magadon observing that the terrain actually moved. He wondered if, beyond the limits of their vision, the swamp was rearranging itself around them so they would never get free of it.