up.
'This is probably as near the lake as they've ever been,' Jak whispered.
Cale only nodded.
Dreeve led them forward through the undergrowth. He signaled a halt near a line of stones. Intuitively, Cale knew it to be a border.
'Look,' Dreeve said, and he gestured beyond the line of stones. 'Once, a large lake covered much of this area. Humans regarded it as holy. A great temple-city stood near here at the edge of the water.' He kicked the nearest stone with his foot. 'Worked stone. This was a wall.'
Cale kneeled down and examined the stone. Age had left it pitted and cracked, but its sharp corners and smooth face did suggest worked stone. Perhaps a wall, perhaps something else. The area beyond the stones, while otherwise similar to the rest of the forest, looked dimmer, as though the darkness was thicker there. Jak's bluelight seemed to be shining through fog.
'You see that?' Cale asked Jak.
The halfling nodded and kneeled beside him to run his hands over the stones. Cale withdrew his holy symbol and whispered the words to a spell that allowed him to see dweomers. The stones glowed a faint blue in his sight, as did the air beyond them.
'Magical,' he said to Jak. 'The whole area. Only slightly, but it's there.'
'Old, probably,' Jak said.
The drumbeats stopped. A cold breeze stirred the trees. Cale and Jak shared a look; they both sensed it. They were nearly out of time.
Cale leaped to his feet and said, 'Dreeve, lead us to the lake. Now!'
Dreeve snarled, backed up a step, and held up his hands.
'We go no farther, human,' said the gnoll. 'None of mine cross those stones. The lake is a few miles ahead, through the trees. I've done what you asked. Now, pay as agreed.'
The rest of the pack snarled agreement, while they eyed the forest nervously.
Cale didn't want to waste time arguing. He figured that he, Riven, and Jak should be able to locate the Lightless Lake from there.
'Very well,' he said to Dreeve.
He reached for his belt pouch-and froze in mid-gesture.
Seven or eight paces behind Dreeve stood Gez, and the gnoll's entire body glowed blue in Cale's magically augmented eyes.
Their gazes locked, and in the eyes of the gnoll, in the eyes of whichever one of Vraggen's agents had taken Gez's form, Cale saw understanding dawn. The gnoll realized that Cale knew. Gez grinned, made a little half- curtsey, and that feminine gesture told Cale all he needed to know: it was the woman who had first invaded Stormweather Towers and taken Almor's form.
Cale whipped free his blade and holy symbol.
Dreeve, understanding nothing, and seeing only that Cale had drawn, snarled, leaped backward, and unslung his axe.
'Cale,' Jak began.
'Treachery!' shouted Gez in Common, and he howled.
'You'll die for this, human,' barked Dreeve, who brandished his axe.
He barked orders in his own tongue.
Behind Cale, Jak and Riven pulled their steel.
The rest of the pack, hackles up, pelted forward, goaded on by Gez.
Cale saw immediately that the situation could only go from bad to worse. Clutching his holy symbol, he whispered a hurried prayer to Mask. Impenetrable darkness cloaked the area, darkness through which only Cale could see.
The gnolls arrested their charge, but Dreeve, undeterred despite his blindness, lunged forward and swept his axe in a semicircle. Cale dodged out of reach, got behind Riven and Jak, and grabbed both by the cloaks.
'It's me,' Cale said above the growling gnolls, to stop Riven from slicing open his chest.
He pulled both of them beyond the border stones and out of the darkness.
Rapidly, Cale said, 'Gez is one of Vraggen's shapeshifters; the female from Stormweather. Jak, stay back and counter any spell she attempts to cast. She shows that teleportation rod, incapacitate it.'
Jak shook his head and replied, 'No, Cale! I-'
'This isn't the one that hurt you, Jak,' Cale told him. 'I need you to do this.'
Jak held his gaze for a moment before nodding and taking his holy symbol in his hand.
Cale turned to Riven and said, 'This one doesn't get away. Understood?'
Riven gave a hard smile and readied his sabers.
'I've no problem with that,' the assassin said. 'Get rid of that darkness and let's work.'
Within the globe of darkness, the gnolls, too stupid or untrained to stop moving and listen, instead snarled and hacked about with their axes. It was pure luck that they hadn't yet killed each other. Dreeve alone maintained his calm. He stood in a defensive crouch, sniffing, and barking for quiet, but his pack did not heed. The Gez imitator edged away from the rest of the gnolls toward the left of Cale's sphere of darkness.
'To our right,' Cale said to Riven.
Riven crouched, whirled his blades once, and said, 'Do it.'
With a mental command, Cale dispelled the darkness. For a fraction of a heartbeat, the gnoll pack stood confused. Cale and Riven leaped the stones and sped past them at Gez.
The woman in Gez's form saw them coming and her lips curled back from her teeth. Surreptitiously, she made a pass with her hand and began an incantation.
From behind, Jak's voice rose in answer, chanting a counter spell, and when the impostor finished whatever spell she intended to cast, nothing happened.
Just a pace or two away from Gez, Riven's voice rose and he shouted a word of power in the dire tongue Cale sometimes heard him utter in his sleep. The pronouncement caused vomit to rush up Cale's throat, slowing him, but he swallowed it down. Gez recoiled as though struck, grimacing.
Following up on the opening, Riven bounded forward. Sabers whirled, stabbing and slashing. Gez, still partially stunned, could not parry them all and the assassin opened a gash in the false gnoll's side and forearm. Cale lunged forward to attack from the other side, a low stab, a reverse slash, and an overhand chop. The impostor took wounds in her thigh, chest, and shoulder. She careened backward.
'Show yourself, bitch,' Cale taunted.
The wounds they had inflicted began to close. The false Gez recovered herself, grinned, and winked.
From behind them, Jak shouted, 'Look at his wounds, Dreeve! See how they heal? Look! That's not one of yours, but a shapeshifting demon from the lake!'
With surprising quickness, the impostor pounced forward and went on the attack. Spinning and ducking, she slammed her axe haft into Riven's ribs and forced Cale backward with a flurry of vicious swings. When the false gnoll had a moment to catch her breath, she shouted something in the gnoll tongue and gestured at Cale and Riven, no doubt an attempt to convince her packmates to assist her.
The rest of the gnolls hesitated, pointed, muttered. Cale didn't need to understand their tongue to know what they said. Gez didn't fight like a gnoll, and his wounds healed too fast.
More muttering. Still the gnolls did nothing. Cale could sense their fear.
Seeing the hesitation in the eyes of his packmates, the false Gez no longer tried to hide her true nature. She held up a hand, pointed it at Cale, and began to mouth arcane words.
Again Jak's voice rose in answer, a counter to whatever the creature had intended. The shapeshifter's spell fizzled in a stream of impotent black energy that leaked from her fingertips.
That was enough for the gnolls. Seeing one of their own casting spells told them all they needed to know. They backed farther away from the combat, looking to Dreeve for guidance. The gnoll leader seemed too surprised to act.
Hoping to catch the impostor off-guard, Cale lunged forward, blade low. Preternaturally quick, the shapeshifter danced backward, knocked Cale's long sword out of position with her axe, and punched Cale in the nose. Warm blood washed down his face. Eyes watering, he stumbled backward, keeping his long sword in a
