If Magadon did not have a sensory link on Riven, they would have no way to locate him. Cale did not know how he wanted Magadon to answer.
Magadon nodded and replied, 'Since the moment I stepped into the cupola atop the tower. Erevis, if he makes a play for the Sojourner because he expects our help.. '
Cale sighed and nodded. The guide spoke the truth. Riven had trusted him. Cale silently prayed to Mask to protect Varra until he could return to Skullport.
If there still was a Skullport.
Fed up, Jak stepped between Magadon and Cale. He pointed his pipe at Cale, glared, and said, 'I'll ask again. What in the Hells are you two talking about?'
Cale smiled and said, 'Sorry, little man.' He quickly explained to Jak the plan they had developed on the Plane of Shadow: Magadon had implanted a latent mental urging in Riven's mind to betray them at an opportune moment and ally himself with the slaadi. They had hoped that Riven would thereby get close to the Sojourner, where he would serve as a beacon for the rest of them. To avoid discovery by the slaadi, who likely could read minds, Magadon had wiped the scheme from their memories until the triggering event occurred-Riven's putative betrayal. Riven's trigger was different. He would not remember the plan until he saw the Sojourner.
Jak absorbed the story in wide-eyed silence. Finally, he said, 'He's a plant? Burn me! Every time I think I have that blackheart figured.. '
'You are not alone in that,' Magadon said.
Jak popped his pipe in his mouth and looked up at Cale, his expression mildly hurt. 'You could have trusted me with it.'
'I know that, little man,' Cale answered. 'It wasn't trust. I figured the fewer who knew, the better. And I wanted at least one of us to be outside of it, in case something went wrong. If we all started to go mad, I wanted someone who could figure things out and fix it.'
Jak seemed to accept that. He chewed his pipe, thoughtful, and said, 'You three were talking a long while to come up with this little scheme. And you said something in a foreign language, Cale. What about that?'
'We did?' Cale asked.
'You did,' Jak answered.
Cale had no idea what Jak was talking about. He looked to Magadon, whose face showed similar confusion.
'Something else?' Cale asked Magadon. 'Another contingency?'
Magadon shook his head. 'Perhaps. We won't know until we know.'
'Trickster's hairy toes,' Jak softly said.
Cale agreed. The idea that something else might have been placed in his mind but he was ignorant of it.. .
From far down one of the tunnels, whispers sounded, hisses. They trailed back to silence. Still, whatever lived in the Underdark of the Plane of Shadow must have heard their voices or perhaps seen their light.
All three had blades in hand before they drew their next breath. Jak pocketed his pipe and licked his lips.
'We should not stay here overlong,' the little man said.
Weaveshear leaked shadows; so too did Cale's flesh.
'We aren't,' Cale said. 'Mags, show me what Riven sees. We go on my word. We wait for the Sojourner to show, find out what we can, then hit him with everything we have.'
Magadon nodded, closed his eyes, and concentrated. A violet halo surrounded his head and he held up his free hand. Cale took it.
And saw.
For the hundredth time, Riven rebuked himself for leaving Cale bleeding but alive. He still did not understand why he had done it. He never left opponents alive. A simple flick of his blade would have opened Cale's throat and put an end to the First of the Shadowlord. Cale's shade flesh could not have regenerated the damage that Riven could have done.
He could not explain his behavior. When he looked back, it was as though someone else had been controlling him. The events atop the tower were a blur in his memory.
He pushed the recriminations out of his mind as unproductive nonsense. He needed to focus on the present. He stood on a sword's edge and he knew it. He had taken a gamble allying with the slaadi. The creatures were unreliable; they might turn on him at any time.
He did not know where the slaadi had brought him. From the crumbling cavern near Skullport, they had teleported to the surface, mentally communicated with their master, the Sojourner, and from there teleported to….
Here, Riven thought.
The foppish slaad Azriim, in his preferred half-drow form, stood to one side of him, and the dull slaad, Dolgan, stood to the other. Both seemed to have already recovered from the wounds inflicted on them at the Skulls' tower.
'Where are we?' Riven asked.
'Home,' Azriim answered.
They were in the center of a smooth-walled, hemispherical chamber. There were no windows and the stone, while smooth, was not masonry, so Riven assumed they were underground. The dry air smelled faintly of medicines or perhaps alchemical preparations. The smell made his nose tingle.
A thick carpet covered the floor, and a single, dim green glowglobe on the far side of the chamber provided the only light. The globe cast only enough illumination to raise shadows in the room. Riven could see little. Irregularly-shaped mounds dotted the floor and it took Riven a moment's study to recognize them as cushions and furniture. In better light, the place must have looked like a Calishite Caliph's harem room.
Riven saw no means of egress, no doors or archways of any kind. That made him uncomfortable, and he let his hands fall to the hilts of his sabers. It would have been ridiculous for the slaadi to have brought him all the way here only to ambush him, but….
They are unpredictable, he thought. And it's better to be cautious than dead.
He decided to take steps to ensure a means of escape, should he need it.
'Home is dark,' he said. 'How about a light? I can't see past my hands.'
He deliberately stepped on a cushion at his feet and feigned a stumble into Dolgan. Cursing, he intentionally entangled himself in the slaad's cloak and limbs-the slaad's form looked fat but his body was as solid as a tree-and used the short-lived tussle to lift the teleportation rod from the slaad's cloak pocket.
'Watch where you step, human,' the big slaad said, dislodging Riven and shoving him away.
'I can't watch anything, oaf,' Riven answered. 'I said I cannot see.' He feigned a second stumble on another cushion and used the movement to secrete the rod in his cloak. 'There are cushions all over the floor and walking on this ridiculous carpet is like moving through mud.'
'I selected these carpets myself,' Azriim said, his tone mildly hurt.
'I'm not surprised,' Riven answered, putting a sneer in his voice.
Dolgan said to Azriim, 'Why can't I just kill him?'
'I am tempted,' Azriim said lightly, 'given his view of my carpets.'
Riven stared into Dolgan's face, the features indistinguishable in the darkness. 'His permission to try won't make it so, slaad. I'd put you down in less than a tencount, darkness or no.'
Riven kicked away the cushions near him, to clear any trip hazards. Both hands went to saber hilts and he balanced on the balls of his feet. Dolgan took a step forward but Azriim stopped him with an arm across his chest.
'Enough,' Azriim commanded, smiling indulgently. 'You're adding to his tension.'
Riven kept his gaze on Dolgan but said to Azriim, 'You haven't yet seen me tense, slaad.'
'I can smell your sweat at ten paces,' Azriim said.
Dolgan glared at Riven and said, 'I do not understand why we have not killed him. His brood killed Serrin, wounded you, wounded me.'
'Brood?' Riven asked derisively. 'I'm a man, oaf. I don't have a brood. And you're fortunate that it wasn't me
