move from one plane to the other. At the same time, he consciously dispelled the inertia of their fall.
Sound fell away. Darkness swallowed them. In the span of a heartbeat they moved between worlds.
They found themselves lying face down on the cold, damp stone of the Plane of Shadow. The Skulls were gone; the ruins were gone. They were alone in the dark, but alive.
The breath of his friends came in ragged gasps. The slow drip of water sounded from somewhere. The air smelled dank, pungent with some vague foulness.
Cale remained still for a moment as stabs of pain shot through his body-the regenerative properties of his shade flesh closing the wounds Riven had inflicted on him.
Riven.
Cale sat up, and as he did he remembered it all, or thought he did. Riven's betrayal had been planned, or at least Cale thought it had. Unless he had dreamed it….
Beside him, Magadon rolled over with a groan, still breathing hard.
'Demon's teeth,' the guide swore, and his voice echoed loudly, jarring in the silence.
Beside Magadon, Jak sat up with a groan of his own. He looked around blindly, eyes wide. 'I can't see a thing. Cale?'
Cale had become so accustomed to his ability to see perfectly in darkness that he forgot that others could not. The chamber was as dark as a devil's heart, thick with the black air of the Plane of Shadow.
'Here, little man,' he answered, and reached out a hand to touch Jak's shoulder. The halfling clutched his hand and gave it a brief squeeze.
'I will get a light,' Magadon said. He unstrapped his pack and searched for a sunrod. Cale remembered that Magadon's fiendish heritage allowed him to see in the darkness, probably not as well as a shade, but well enough.
Cale stood, wincing as the last of his wounds closed.
'Can the Skulls track us?' Magadon asked as he searched his pack.
Cale had not considered that. 'I don't see how,' he said after a moment's thought. As far as he knew, his ability to walk the shadows between worlds left no footprints.
The guide nodded, found the sunrod he sought within his pack. He struck it on the chamber floor and the alchemical substance on its tip flared to life. He held it aloft and lit the cavern-dimly. The darkness gave ground only grudgingly.
Jak and Magadon blinked in the sudden illumination, but Cale felt a part of him boil away in the sunrod's light. He refused to cover his eyes despite the sting. His shadow hand, he was pleased to see, had not disappeared. Perhaps only real sunlight could cause that.
'The Plane of Shadow,' Jak observed, eyeing their surroundings. 'But where this time? This is not where we were before.'
A large natural cavern opened around them. Loose stone and stalagmites covered the uneven floor. Irregularly shaped holes in the walls opened onto tunnels that led into darkness. An oily black substance clung in patches to the stone. It shimmered in the sunrod's light like polished basalt. Water dripped from the stalactite- dotted ceiling to fall into a dark pool in the center of the chamber. The pool was as black as jet. The air felt heavy and still, threatening.
'Something akin to the Underdark but on the Plane of Shadow, I would guess,' Magadon offered as he stood. 'Do not use the water to fill your skins and do not touch the walls. That's some kind of lichen, but I've never seen its like before.'
Jak nodded, his eyes thoughtful. He looked up at Cale.
'Are you are all right? The wounds, they're healed?'
When Cale regarded him to answer, Jak recoiled slightly but masked it quickly.
'Dark, but I cannot get used to the way your eyes look here,' the little man said.
Cale felt himself flush.
'I'm all right,' he said. He extended a hand and pulled Jak to his feet. Cale put his fingers through the hole Riven had made in the front of his cloak and armor. He had similar holes in the back. The holes in his flesh were closed. 'What about you two?'
Both Jak and Magadon were pale, exhausted, and obviously wounded. Claw rakes had opened cloaks, rent armor, and torn flesh.
'I'm well enough,' Magadon said, and moved to the edge of the pool. The guide knelt and stared at the water. He dipped his fingers, smelled them, and wiped them clean on his breeches.
Jak said, 'I am all right, too. We killed one of the slaadi, Cale. The small one. The other one. . '
Magadon stood and finished for Jak. 'In our hurry to get to you, we left the other alive but enspelled. He may have died in the cavern's collapse.'
Cale doubted it, but kept his thought to himself.
'We should have killed him,' Jak said, and reached into his belt pouch for his pipe. 'Just to be sure.' He came out with a wooden pipe, the one he had given to Riven, the one Riven had thrown back at him atop the tower. He must have picked it up before they fled. He eyed it for a moment, then threw it past Magadon and into the pool, where it vanished. He withdrew his other pipe-the ivory bowled affair-and popped it into his mouth. He chewed its end in agitation, but did not light up. Around the pipe stem he said, 'I'm personally going to drive an armspan of steel into Drasek Riven's gut for what he did.' For Magadon's benefit, Jak added, 'I've done it before, you know. Treacherous Zhent bastard.'
Cale thought the little man's anger might be misplaced. To Magadon, Cale asked tentatively, 'Do you. . remember what happened between you, me, and Riven, last time we were on the Plane of Shadow?'
Jak looked up, a furrow in his brow.
Magadon started to speak, stopped, finally nodded. 'Erevis, I thought I had dreamed it all, or conceived it in a meditation. Sometimes my mind manifests wishes as reali-' He stopped and smiled. 'Never mind all that. I do remember. It started to come back to me shortly after I saw him atop the tower with the slaad.'
'What came back to you?' Jak asked.
Cale nodded, pleased to have his own hazy memory confirmed. Magadon had set Riven's betrayal-itself the product of a latent psionic compulsion-as the trigger that would allow the guide and Cale to remember the stratagem they had developed.
'So what next, then?' Magadon asked.
Jak took his pipe from his mouth and regarded them with narrowed eyes.
'What are you two talking about?'
Magadon's question sent Cale's mind racing. He thought first of Riven and of Varra. He made up his mind.
'A return to Skullport,' he announced. 'Just me. For only a moment or two.'
He wanted to determine if the city still stood. He needed to see if Varra was all right.
'Skullport?' Jak asked. 'Why would we return there? Again, what in the Seven Heavens are you two-'
Magadon stared into Cale's face and shook his head. 'We cannot go back to Skullport, Erevis. Not right now. Riven is relying on us.'
'Riven!' Jak exclaimed.
'Because of what we did, the cavern could be collapsing,' Cale said. 'We've only been gone moments. I am going back, Mags. I can get her out.'
Magadon did not ask who Cale meant by her. Instead, he shook his head and said, 'I understand what you want to do, Erevis. But if it was going to collapse, then it already has. She's either alive or … not, and you won't be able to affect which it is. But wherever Riven is right now, he will soon remember what happened, too. That makes him vulnerable. The slaadi have displayed telepathy, and we think they can read minds.'
Cale hesitated. Magadon must have seen it. The guide added, 'He trusted you when he agreed to do this. We've got to back him up. We can return to Skullport afterward. I'll go with you. Jak will go with you.'
'I will?' Jak asked, confused. 'Wait a-'
'But not right now,' Magadon said. 'Right now, we do what we intended to do.'
'And what in the Hells is that?' Jak exclaimed.
Cale stared at Magadon, not in anger, but in frustration. He knew Magadon was speaking sense but he felt as though he were abandoning Varra. He made one last play. 'You're sure you have Riven?'
