"The falls!" Jak shouted from behind.
The fey made a show of thinking.
"You've offended me with words, woodsman. Now you must amuse me with them. Or surprise me. Or astonish me." He waved a watery hand and said, "Begin."
The four comrades shared a look.
Try something! Riven projected.
Cale watched with dread as they neared the Jaws. The river surged, nearly capsizing the boat. They all four uttered a collective shout.
"Magadon!" the halfling called.
"I am born of a devil," the guide blurted.
The fey raised his eyebrows, laughed, and clapped his hands.
"Wonderful! Which one?"
The boat slammed into a rock, nearly sending Cale over the bow. They were taking on water.
"What?" Magadon shouted, doing everything he could to slow their approach to the falls.
"Which devil?" asked the fey. "Name your sire-or mother, as the case may be."
Cale saw Magadon's resistance, felt it in his mind. Cale didn't know if he wanted the woodsman to speak his father's name or keep it behind his teeth. He understood Magadon's struggle. Speaking the name of his demonic father-something Magadon was loathe to do-would have felt to the guide like surrender, like the way Cale had felt back on the Plane of Shadow when he'd drawn Weaveshear for the first time.
"Tell the thing what it wants to hear, Mags!" Riven said. His good eye was wide, eyeing the approaching falls. "It's just a name."
The fey's gaze fixed on Riven and hardened.
"The shadow of the shade speaks at last." It indicated Cale, looked back to Riven, and said, "You are merely his shadow, are you not?"
Riven's eye narrowed. His mouth set into a hard line. Despite the upset of the boat, one of his hands went for a blade. His anger was palpable through the mindlink, overriding the group's collective trepidation at the on-rushing Jaws.
"Mephistopheles!" Magadon shouted, and the word made Cale's stomach churn worse than the river. "Mephistopheles is my blood sire."
The fey seemed unperturbed by the foul name.
"Excellent!" the creature said to Magadon. "A base word but well said!"
"You want to hear words of power, you little pissdrip?" Riven growled from the back of the boat. "Then hear this."
Do not! Cale ordered, but it was too late.
Riven spat a stream of corruption in the tongue he sometimes used as a weapon. Cale, Jak, and Magadon doubled over in pain upon hearing the words, but the fey only squinted as though he was facing the wind in a rainstorm. After Riven had spewed the sentence, he looked surprised to see that the fey had not disintegrated.
The fey, seeing Riven was done, clapped his hands lightly.
"Foully told, but well said." It turned to Jak and said, "Now you, little bedraggled half-man. The pissdrip has yet to hear from you."
Jak, his eyes still watering from the obscenity mouthed by Riven, could not take his gaze from the river.
Say something, Fleet, Riven projected.
You keep your mouth closed, Zhent! Jak shot back with heat, and glared at Riven.
Little man. . . . Cale prompted.
"Come now," said the fey. "Confess."
At that Jak gave the creature a sharp look, then looked to Cale. Cale gave him a reassuring nod and the halfling nodded back and turned to the fey.
Barely audible over the roar of the approaching falls, Jak said, "I'm afraid of what is happening."
The fey grinned.
"Well done, half-a-man! Well done indeed! I'd ask what in particular frightens you, but I know it is everything." The creature spun around to face Cale, and pointing past him to the onrushing falls said, "Time is short, shade. What do you have to say to me?"
The roar of the water was loud in Cale's ears. He struggled to find something to say, something the fey would not have heard before. Nothing. He could not think above the roar of the Jaws.
Hurry, Cale, Riven prompted.
" 'Ware," the fey blithely cautioned.
They all saw it too late. The boat crashed into a jagged rock jutting a handbreadth above the waterline. It split the side of the little craft and sent Cale tumbling into the river. He heard the shouts of his comrades for only an instant before he went under. His single good hand clutched for something, anything, but managed to take hold of only a broken bit of the boat's hull. Not enough to keep him afloat.
He felt as if a giant's hand pressed him to the riverbed and held him submerged. The water was not deep. His back scraped against the rocky bottom and he could still see sunlight cascading through the rough water. But he couldn't gain purchase to push himself to the top. The current rolled him, twisted him, twirled him like a dry leaf in a gale.
And above it all, even underwater, he could hear the dull, foreboding rush of the Dragon's Jaws.
In his head, he heard the fey say, Speak, shade, or all is lost. Already your friends are drowning, though the woodsman swims strong and even now tries to save them.
Cale's breath was failing. He didn't even have the sense to feel much surprise at the fact that the fey could communicate telepathically. He reached for the surface and felt his hand broach the water, feeling the sun's sting on his flesh for only a moment before the current pushed him back down. The falls were near. His breath was gone. A flurry of incoherent images flashed through his mind: Riven leading a religious service, the Fane of Shadows, a twin spire built on an island and reaching for a starry sky, a laughing mask stepping from Shar's shadow to stab at Cyric, the Plane of Shadow, the ruins of Elgrin Fau.
The ruins of Elgrin Fau.. . .
He hoped the fey was still listening.
Over six thousand years ago, he projected to the fey, on a world now forgotten, Kesson Rel the Dark, first Chosen of the Shadowlord, angry at his forced exile from Elgrin Fau, banished the whole of the city into the Plane of Shadow. The inhabitants thought he had stolen the sun, but he had stolen only them. He lingers still in the darkest places of the Shadow Deep, feeding his malice. One day, I will find him and avenge his betrayal.
For a heartbeat, everything fell silent. Cale blew out the last of his breath in a stream of bubbles. A sudden roar filled his ears, impossibly loud. He felt himself falling, going through the Dragon's Jaws and down into oblivion.
Your travels will lead down dark paths, said the fey in his head. Journey well, shade.
CHAPTER 12
PLOTTING
Kexen sat alone at a small table in the Pour House Inn and Tavern. Under his sleeve, Sessa, one of Zstulkk's sets of eyes, coiled tightly around his forearm. The noise and smoke agitated the serpent, and it slithered irritably around Kexen's arm. Kexen stayed still and calm. Zstulkk's familiars had been known, on rare occasions, to bite their bearers.
An image of his body, bloated and purple from cave viper venom, floated through Kexen's mind. He pushed it away with effort. Everyone in Zstulkk Ssarmn's slaving organization knew that the yuan-ti saw through the eyes of his pet serpents. Bites occurred only when Zstulkk was displeased with what he saw through the serpent, or when the operative was captured and in possession of incriminating information. Kexen would give his employer no cause for displeasure, and had no intention of being captured by anyone-ever.
Tallow candles scattered around the common room provided the only light, sending greasy, swirling spires of smoke ceilingward. The stifling air smelled of unbathed sailors, the cheap body-fragrance of whores, and a wretched, dried-fungus incense that Felwer, the one-armed proprietor, insisted on burning in a ceramic incense tray behind the bar. Felwer always told anyone who would listen that the incense attracted whores and repelled cats. The innkeeper had an affinity for the former and an inexplicable phobia for the latter. Felwer even kept a dog to keep the cats at bay: a grizzled old bitch named Retha, who typically did nothing except lay before the hearth and leak piss on the floor.