He screamed, clutched his skull in his palms, and fell to his knees. He felt as if five long fingers had burrowed knuckle-deep into his brain. There, they began to sift through what they found. Riven had never before felt more violated. He resisted the intrusion and fought-futile. The Sojourner's will was inexorable, the pain unbearable. Riven's eye felt as though it would pop out of his skull. He forced his blurry gaze upward and stared into the Sojourner's eyes, fell into them. His body shook, convulsed, but he held the Sojourner's gaze. He bit open his tongue. Screams, spit, and blood poured from his mouth. He felt his consciousness being cracked open like a nut. He could not move; his body would not answer his commands. He could do nothing but suffer and scream.
He forced himself to stay conscious.
Mental fingers peeled away the layers of his brain, baring memories, hopes, fears, ambitions. He screamed again, again.
The Sojourner's expression did not change.
Distantly, he heard Dolgan laughing and Azriim shouting.
He, too, is a servant of Mask the Shadowlord, the Sojourner mentally projected, sorting Riven's life and laying it out for the slaadi. A mistreated boy who became an assassin. He hates his life up to now. Religion has given him purpose. . . .
"Get out," Riven tried to mutter, but the syllables emerged only as an indecipherable mumble.
Ah, the Sojourner projected, and nodded. He is much like you two in that he also desires a transformation, not to gray, but from Second to First. He hates the priest for being First.
Riven tried again to speak, failed. His heart hammered in his chest. He tried to dismiss from his mind the events that had occurred in the Plane of Shadow, tried to tuck them into some distant corner of his consciousness, but the Sojourner burrowed like a gnome through the dirt of his life.
The Sojourner reached the memory. Riven screamed again. Blood leaked from his nose. Surely his skull must explode. Surely.
And here is this, the Sojourner said, his mental voice hard. He came to kill me, to draw others here to kill me. The betrayal of the priest of Mask was a fraud, a ploy. You have brought a would-be murderer into my presence, Azriim.
The full force of the Sojourner's mind and will assaulted Riven's mind, pinioning him, burying him under its weight. He fell flat on the floor. His vision went dark; something warm dripped from his ears. He was falling, falling.
Riven tried to mouth the words, "No. It is real. I want him dead." His lips would not form the words so he thought them instead: I want him dead! I want him dead!
A booted foot slammed into Riven's ribs-Dolgan. Riven's leather armor kept the bones intact but his breath went out in a whoosh.
"Kill him," Dolgan said.
He was going to die prone on the floor, helpless as a babe. Distantly, he wondered if Cale and Magadon were watching, laughing.
They must have a practitioner of the Invisible Art among their number, the Sojourner observed, surprise in his mental voice. He has moderate skill.
The pain in Riven's mind intensified. He was too far gone to scream anymore. He dug his fingers into the carpet so hard that he tore three fingernails from their beds. He felt a peculiar sensation through the pain. A tickle in his consciousness. Something scurried around the edges of his sentience, trying to avoid the Sojourner's mental perception. To no avail. Nothing could avoid the Sojourner.
The Sojourner said, We have a mindmage in our midst.
To someone Riven could not see, the Sojourner projected, I see you.
It must have been Magadon. They had been watching the whole time.
With the Sojourner's attention temporarily diverted, Riven managed to claw his way back to coherence.
"Get . . . out ... of my head!" he shouted, and pulled himself up to all fours.
* * * * *
Magadon lurched back, clutching his temples and groaning with pain. Jak stopped whatever spell he had been casting and leaped to the guide's aid.
"He sensed me," Magadon managed, leaning on Jak. "Such a mind...."
Cale knew. He had felt the Sojourner make contact through Magadon, had felt the residuum of power that had accompanied the contact. Cale had let the mental scrying go on far too long. Riven had suffered unnecessarily. He had hoped to learn the Sojourner's full plans for the Weave Tap, but he had learned only snippets.
He started to draw the darkness around them. The light from Magadon's sunrod dimmed. Shadows intensified.
"Mags?" Cale asked while he summoned shadows.
"I'm all right," the guide said. He took his hand off Jak's shoulder and massaged his brow. He unslung his bow and nocked an arrow, though he did not draw. "I'm ready."
The air around Cale's body crackled with magical energy; the hairs on his arms stood up-the result of Jak's various protective spells. Cale hoped the magic would be enough.
"I did what I could," Jak said by way of explanation, and gripped his holy symbol, shortsword, and dagger.
Magadon concentrated, and a handful of coin-sized spheres of light formed around his head and quickly faded.
"I cannot mindlink us," he said. "Jak's spell is blocking my abilities, at least. Let us hope it does the same to the Sojourner."
Cale nodded and quickly donned his mask. To Jak, he said, "It's a dark cavern, little man. Cluttered with cushions and furniture. The two slaadi-one in human form, one as a half-drow-and the Sojourner. Riven is on the floor."
He hefted Weaveshear, looked each of his comrades in the eye.
Both nodded.
"We go," he said.
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.
CHAPTER 2
SHIFTING ALLIANCES
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 Jak 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.