Gritting his teeth at the pain caused him by the light, Cale threw the hood of his cloak over his face. Only then did he notice that his regenerated hand was gone. He stared at the stump of his wrist, not quite shocked, but simply uncomprehending. He felt the memory of his hand as though it still sprouted from the end of his wrist, but it was not there.
Surreptitiously, so as not to draw attention from his comrades, he moved his hand into the darkness cast by the bole of an elm. He felt a tingling in his forearm and within those shadows, his hand re-materialized. He flexed the fingers, twisted the wrist, and it felt normal. He moved his arm back into the light, felt a sharp stab of pain in his wrist, and his hand again disappeared. He moved it back and forth for a moment, enduring the dichotomous sensation, and marveling at the appearance and disappearance of flesh and bone on the end of his wrist.
Was it flesh and bone? he wondered.
He realized in that instant that he was half-a-man whether he stood in light or shadow. The transformation into a shade had taken something of his soul but given him back his flesh; when the sun re-lit his soul it took a tithe of flesh as recompense.
Fitting, he thought, and immediately chided himself.
He recognized in his thoughts the beginnings of self-pity. Words floated to the front of his mind, something his favorite language teacher once had said to him back in Westgate, when Cale had thought his life a hard one: "Self-pity is an indulgence for artists and noblemen. Don't spend any more time with it than you must. Hear what it says, learn from it if you can, then move on."
Cale prepared himself to do just that. He was both shade and man. And a man could not stand forever in the shadows.
With that, he braced himself, threw back his hood, and endured the pain caused him by the sun. He welcomed it the way an Ilmaterite welcomed suffering-a way of purifying the soul through the pains of the body. The sun would be the instrument of Cale's agony, and the instrument of his purification.
"Cale! We're home!" Jak said. "You did it." The halfling fairly capered about the undergrowth. He stopped and stared at Cale, apparently noticing his discomfort for the first time. His smile faded. "Are you all right?"
Cale, keeping his stump hidden by the sleeve of his cloak, nodded and said, "I'm all right, little man."
Jak recaptured his smile.
"Good," he said, then he let himself fall backward onto the grass. He spread his arms and legs out wide and soaked up the sun. He inhaled deeply the fragrance of the air. "Smell that? The air here reminds me of my family's farm in Mistledale. Have you ever been to the Dalelands, Cale? I'll take you sometime. You can try my mother's cooking."
Cale nodded, though he could imagine Jak's mother's expression upon seeing a yellow-eyed, shadow-wrapped creature walk through her door.
Magadon stood ten or so paces away with his eyes closed and the palm of one hand pressed against the bole of an elm. He looked as though he was drawing strength from it. He held his bow in his other hand. The guide must have felt Cale's gaze. He opened his eyes, looked over to Cale, and smiled softly.
"This elm is over ninety winters old. It has seen much in that time." He studied Cale closely, cocked his head to the side, and said, "Your eyes appear normal now."
Cale was surprised and pleased, but knew that the man behind those eyes was far from normal.
"Nothing has changed," he said, "at least not really."
Cale knew that the moment he stepped back into darkness or shadow, he would again look like the creature he was.
"No?" Magadon asked, looking at Cale's sleeve, at his wrist.
Jak sat up and followed Magadon's gaze. Riven looked on with interest as well.
Cale stared at Magadon for a moment before blowing out a sigh. The woodsman missed nothing. As though unveiling a shameful secret, Cale held up his arm and pulled back his sleeve to reveal the stump.
"Your hand!" Jak exclaimed and leaped to his feet.
Cale debated with himself for a moment before saying, "Yes, but watch." He put his stump into shadow. His hand, with its slightly duskier skin, reappeared. Streams of shadows took shape around it. "It's there in darkness or shadow, gone in the light."
"Like bad dreams," Jak whispered, before blushing in embarrassment at his words. "Sorry," he said.
Riven wore a hard expression that Cale couldn't quite read. Before Cale could figure it out, the assassin looked away, pulled his borrowed pipe, tamped, and lit.
"There's an idea," Jak said softly. Still eyeing Cale's wrist, he pulled out his own pipe. To Riven, Jak said, "You, Zhent, cannot come with us to Mistledale, since you're an ungrateful bastard who insulted my mother's potato soup."
"I insulted your potato soup," Riven answered, smiling around the stem of his pipe.
While his friends were thus engaged, Cale let his sleeve fall back over his stump. He looked out of the copse and into the sun. His eyes stung and began to tear up.
He turned back and asked Magadon, "Where are we, Mags?"
"We're home, Cale," Jak said as he struck a tindertwig and lit. From around his pipe stem he said, "And burn me if I ever want to go back to that place. No offense, Cale."
Cale caught Riven's sidelong glance. This isn't home anymore, the assassin's eye said, and we'll be going back to the Plane of Shadow soon enough.
Cale offered Jak a half smile and said, "No offense taken, little man."
"I might be able to offer a bit more specificity than Jak," Magadon said with a grin.
The guide patted the elm near him as though it was a pet, and walked past Cale out of the shade of the copse and into the full light of the sun. He took off his hat, shaded his eyes, and looked across the plains.
"We are on the southern plains between the Gulthmere and Starmantle," Magadon said. "We're two days away from the city."
"How long were we gone?" Cale asked.
Magadon shrugged and answered, "No way to know that."
To Jak and Riven, both smoking away like chimneys, Cale said, "Take a few moments, then gear up. We need to move."
He knew that Azriim and the rest of the slaadi would not have been idle. Cale would spend the travel time back to Starmantle thinking of a way to track them down.
* * * * *
Within hours they had reached the southern road out of Starmantle. A day and a half later and they had arrived at the city itself. By then, Cale had become almost inured to the pricks of pain caused him by the sun. Almost.
As always, the gates of Starmantle were thrown open and the spear-armed guards hardly noted them as they passed inside, except to smirk at their filth. Glares from Cale and Riven wiped the guards' smiles away.
The city's wide streets appeared much as Cale and his companions had left them-crowded with men, horses, humanoids, wagons, and stink-a stark contrast from the dark, desolate ruins of Elgrin Fau. The row of temples still loomed over the cityscape, supervising the sin with a knowing wink. Starmantle had not changed.
But they had. The Plane of Shadow had changed them all. Cale looked at their clothes, all faded to shades of gray and black, and knew that each of them had left more than the color of their clothes behind in the darkness.
Riven peeled off his dirt-caked cloak and tucked it under his arm.
"Where and when are we meeting?" asked the assassin.
Jak stuck a finger in his chest.
"Where do you think you're going, Zhent?" the halfling asked. "We ought to stick together."