who gave you the wound. If it had, you wouldn't be standing here to annoy me.'
Azriim ignored Riven and said to Dolgan, 'You enjoy being wounded, Dolgan, so no harm done. And besides, I like him.' He looked at Riven and smiled broadly. 'Even though he has poor taste in clothes, friends. . and carpets.'
Dolgan started to speak but Azriim cut him off, saying, 'Silence, now. The Sojourner comes.'
Riven felt something … a presence. . join them, fill the space. He could find no other way to characterize it.
The slaadi looked past him, their eyes wide.
Riven could not help himself, though it meant turning his back to the slaadi. He turned around to see a circular hole in the wall where none had been before. Floating a hand's-breadth off the floor before it was a humanoid creature that could only be the Sojourner. The instant Riven laid eyes on the creature, memories from the Plane of Shadow flooded him.
'Father,' said Dolgan, awe in his tone, and Riven heard the big slaad abase himself.
Azriim stepped forward and put a hand on Riven's shoulder. The sudden contact gave Riven a start but he managed not to gut the slaad.
Azriim said, 'Sojourner, I've brought you a present.'
'What in all the Hells is that?' Cale breathed. Wisps of shadow snaked from his flesh.
'The Sojourner,' Magadon answered softly. 'It must be.'
'Dark,' Cale swore. He knew that at that moment Riven's memory was filling in.
Beside them, Jak asked, 'What does he look like? What is he?'
Cale only shook his head. 'I don't know, Jak.' He had never seen a creature like the Sojourner.
The Sojourner was neither slaad nor human, though he was humanoid in shape. With his pale flesh and skeletal frame, Cale might have thought him undead had it not been for the thready black veins pulsing beneath his skin. He bore a staff, and several magical gemstones orbited his head.
Magadon said, 'Gods. I can detect his mental energies even through the link with Riven. He has a presence, Erevis. Do you feel it? I think he's not only a wizard but also a mindmage.'
'A mindmage? Like you?' Cale asked.
'Not like me,' Magadon corrected. 'More powerful, Erevis. Much more. Riven is in very real danger.'
Cale nodded. To Jak, he said, 'Little man, cast every defensive spell on us that you can. Hurry. Do whatever you can to shield us from spells and mental attacks.'
'Done,' Jak said. He pulled out his holy symbol, a jeweled pendant, and recited the words to a spell, then another.
Still watching through Riven's eyes, Cale said, 'Speed and surprise are all we have. When we get there, we concentrate everything on the Sojourner. He's the target. The slaadi are incidental. Mags, can you tell Riven that we're coming?'
'Not without risk of detection by the Sojourner,' Magadon answered. 'He will be sensitive to mental emanations. I'm surprised he hasn't yet detected the visual leech.'
'Then we'll surprise Riven, too,' Cale said. 'Get ready. We go when I say.'
Cale held off because he wanted to give Riven a moment to gather himself. The rush of memories was intense. Besides, he also wanted to learn as much as he could before attacking. He could not hear through the mind leech but he could see enough to read the Sojourner's thin lips.
Meanwhile, Jak continued to cast.
In a rush, Riven remembered why he had betrayed Cale, why he had left the First of the Shadowlord bleeding but not dead. The torrent of memories made his temples burn.
He was a plant.
Only long practice allowed him to keep his face expressionless. He suddenly became painfully conscious that a mind-reading slaad stood beside him and another behind him, and that the Sojourner-a creature of obvious but unknown power-hovered across the chamber.
Riven, Magadon, and Cale had devised a plot back on the Plane of Shadow to get Riven close to the Sojourner. Riven's betrayal of Cale was designed to gain the slaadi's trust, which it had. Magadon and Cale would then use Riven as a beacon to bring them to the Sojourner.
Snippets of the exchange played in his mind.
Why me? Riven had asked, when Cale had related his idea.
You already know why, Cale had answered, and Riven had known why: because a betrayal by a former Zhent and assassin was believable; because the Second of the Shadowlord would surely covet the position of the First; because Riven was a better killer than Cale.
It was believable enough that it was almost true. Hells, perhaps it was true.
Riven's mind raced; he pored through his memories. What had he really intended? He could not remember many of the details. But he did remember that he'd wanted to keep other options available. And at that moment other options were looking more and more appealing.
When Riven had told Azriim in Skullport that he always sided with the winner, he had meant it. And while he deplored being second to Cale in Mask's eyes, he also had thought back then that they would succeed. Mask was blessing him with more powers every tenday. He'd had no intention of remaining the Shadowlord's Second forever.
But he could see now that his calculus had been off. He had stood face to face with high-ranking members of the Zhentarim, powerful priests, skilled warriors, all of them powerful men and women, but he had never before stood in the presence of anything like the Sojourner. The creature's thin body fairly sparked with pent-up power; his presence implied might. There would be no defeating him.
If Riven wanted to side with the winner, he had to side with the Sojourner and the slaadi.
He reconsidered the plan, reconsidered everything. He may or may not have planned a betrayal of the betrayal back on the Plane of Shadow, but now…
Don't come, he thought to Cale and Magadon, in case Magadon was somehow connected to him. Don't bother.
The Sojourner looked past Riven and Azriim to Dolgan and said, 'Stand, Dolgan.' His soft voice leaked so much power that it seemed to squeeze everything else out of the room.
Over his shoulder, Riven watched the big slaad lurch to his feet, as obedient as a well-trained dog. Dolgan was gnawing excitedly at his lower lip, so hard it was bleeding. Riven wanted to sneer at the oaf's obsequiousness but could not quite manage it. Obsequiousness seemed appropriate, somehow.
Dolgan caught his gaze, made a bloody grin, and said, 'Maybe you're tense now, eh?'
Riven resisted the urge to slit the bastard's throat and turned back to face the Sojourner.
The creature held a smooth duskwood staff in his pale, long-fingered hands. A tracery of gold or electrum spiraled around the shaft from base to top. He inclined the staff slightly and the hole in the wall behind him vanished, replaced again by smooth stone.
No wonder Riven had seen no exits. The Sojourner created them as needed. Riven was doubly pleased that he had lifted Dolgan's teleportation rod. He would need to figure out its operation quickly, should an emergency arise.
Riven considered the Sojourner. He looked vaguely human, but unlike any race of humans with which the assassin was familiar. Standing a head taller than even Cale, the Sojourner's thin body looked as though it had been stretched overlong by pulling him at the ankles and head. Sunken black eyes in cavernous sockets stared out of a similarly elongated face. His nose was little more than a bump with two vertical slits, his lips as thin as blades. The points of his backswept ears reached nearly to the top of his bald, spotted pate. A handful of magical gemstones whirred around his head in different orbits. Seeing them, Riven was reminded somehow of Cale's celestial sphere, the magical artifact that had started everything.
'A present, Azriim?' the Sojourner asked, letting his gaze fall on Riven as he floated forward across the room. Outside the light of the glow globe, the Sojourner was reduced to a shadow in Riven's sight.
With great effort, Riven kept his face a mask-no fear, no wonder, no dread-even while his mind moved through possibilities.
