Twilight Falling (36 page)

Candelabrum stood about the sanctum, though the wrist-thick tapers set therein did not burn. The diffuse, sourceless green light provided the only illumination.

Black velvet curtains lined the entirety of the walls except for the wall directly behind the altar. There, a lifelike depiction of a sapling tree decorated the wall. With smooth black bark, a few gray leaves, and three oval fruit of glistening silver, it was unlike any tree Vraggen had ever before seen. Azriim and Serrin seemed taken with the representation. They stared at it, unblinking.

Vraggen put a hand on each of their shoulders and said, “The altar.”

He moved into the room. They followed.

Unlike the rest of the floor of the sanctum, a black crystalline substance covered the floor within the horseshoe of the altar’s pulpit. A charge raced through Vraggen as he stepped upon it. Azriim stood near him. Serrin stood before the mosaic of the tree, lightly tracing the wall with his fingertips. In a generous mood, Vraggen allowed the easterner his fascination. He looked back to Azriim.

“Let us begin,” he said, and began the ritual that would grant him the greatest of gifts offered by the Shadow Weave.

Cale pulled open the doors to the Fane. A long, wide hallway beckoned. Shadows played in the green light along its entire length. Paintings and mosaics covered the walls, each shifting and melding when Cale tried to focus on them. He thought them a representation of chaos, or reified deception.

Alcoves lined the hall at intervals. In each stood a small table or pedestal, and upon each of those sat an item, displayed as though the Fane were a merchant’s shop: here a staff of power, there a sword; here a cloak, there a ring. Cale could feel the magic in the room— shadow magic. The hall terminated in a pair of black double doors.

“Don’t touch anything,” Cale said, and he stepped into the Fane.

The moment he broached the archway, a husky female voice spoke aloud, in perfect Chondathan, “Take one thing of what you would, servant of the secret, leave what you can, and extend the darkness thereby.”

Cale turned to his comrades with raised eyebrows.

“Strange that she would speak in the tongue of Luiren,” Jak said.

“Amnian, you mean,” said Riven.

Cale realized then that the voice was nothing more than a phantasm. The magic must have let each listener hear it in a familiar tongue.

Ignore it, Cale sent. Keep moving.

When they had all stepped into the foyer, the doors of the Fane slowly closed behind them. They shared a look, readied their weapons, and advanced down the hallway. Cale steadfastly kept his eyes from the tempting items in the alcoves.

Before they’d taken ten strides, the shadows before them swirled threateningly. Cale leaped backward, dragging Jak with him. White fire took shape in Magadon’s hands. Riven circled out wide.

The shadows amalgamated, whirled, and formed into a humanoid shape.

Hold, Cale ordered distantly, feeling strangely unthreatened.

He let his blade drop.

The shadows tightened, took on more definition, and finally assumed the shape of an elderly man in a gray cloak. His eyes were solid black, and in them Cale could see the twinkling of stars. Those eyes reminded him of a dream he had once had….

“More visitors?” the black-eyed man said.

He looked at Cale, and took a step closer.

Watch him, Jak said.

Riven slid around and behind the old man, sabers bare.

“You,” the old man said. He smiled and his body momentarily dissipated into shadows, instantly reforming with his back to Cale and his eyes on Riven. “Oh, and you.”

Cale started to speak. Before he had completed the first syllable, the old man was again face to face with him.

“Do you know me?” Cale asked.

The old man chuckled.

“As well as you know yourself. And you,” he said to Riven.

“Who are you?” Riven asked, echoing Cale’s thoughts.

“I am the caretaker.”

“What are you?” Cale asked.

To that, the caretaker smiled softly, and answered, “A servant, like you. But perhaps a more willing one.”

He held up a hand as though to touch Cale, but Cale backed off. Fast.

“You do not yet understand what you are,” the caretaker said, then turned to Riven. “Nor you. But you will. Both of you. The darkness called you, and each of you answered. As have I, in my way. Your duty, like mine, will become clear in time.”

Jak stepped protectively in front of Cale and Cale couldn’t help but smile.

“What is this place?” the halfling demanded.

The caretaker stared down at Jak, thoughtful, and replied, “The darkness has called you too, not so? Recently. Ah, but you have not answered.”

Jak said nothing but Cale saw him shiver. He thought of the halfling’s face the day after the slaad had tortured him. It pleased him to hear the caretaker say that Jak had not answered the darkness.

Jak is a seventeen, Cale thought, recalling Sephris’s words.

“Answer my question,” Jak insisted.

The caretaker shrugged and looked up and down the hall.

“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.

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.

In his mind’s eye, he was already planning his next steps. He would take Cyric’s war to the Banites in Selgaunt. After disposing of them, he would do the same in Ordulin. Cyric and his servants would rule the underworld in all of Sembia! He—

Huge, leathery hands took his head between them and lifted him from his feet. Claws as long as a man’s thumb sank into his cheeks, scraped against his skull. He tried to scream but the hands kept his mouth clamped shut.

He uttered a muffled wail of agony. Through the pain, he realized that his protective spells, including his teleportation contingency, had not functioned. He could cast no further spells without the ability to speak. He squirmed and kicked futilely.

A voice sounded in his head—Azriim’s voice, Cease your struggles, fool. Even you must realize that this is at an end.

Terror ran up Vraggen’s spine. Azriim! It dawned on him then.

Azriim was not Azriim.

Incoherent images raced through his brain. Azriim’s grin. His perfect teeth. His wild eyes. His sly comments. His manipulation.