The assassin stared at him, nodded.
Cale turned back. "No one will stop us."
He waited.
Nothing.
He waited longer, growing increasingly angry.
"Have it your way," he said softly, and started to stand. He would start in Sembia, then Cormyr, then the rest of the Heartlands, then-
Knowledge filled his brain, knocked him back to his knees-the words to a prayer that performed the greatest of miracles. It could bring the dead back to life.
He felt a surge, could not contain a fierce grin.
"I can do it," he said to the room. "He's answered."
Cale put his palms on Jak's chest and recited the words to the prayer.
* * * * *
Jak sat at the table of his mother's cottage, listening to the chatter of his family, inhaling the warm smells of his mother's cooking. He could not stop smiling.
"You'll fill your bowl more than that, Jakert Fleet," said his mother, while she buttered a piece of flatbread. "Look at you. You're a bag of bones. Eat. Eat."
"Yes, mother," Jak said. He knew better than to dispute his mother at the table.
As usual, his father offered him a consoling smile but said nothing.
"Pass the honey," Jak said to his brother.
Cob made as though he would throw a dripping honeycomb down to Jak, but his mother said, "Cobdon Fleet, if that comb leaves so much as a drop on my new tablecloth, not even Yolanda Warmhearth will be able to spare you my wrath."
Cob froze in mid throw and said sheepishly, "I was just funning Jak, mother."
"Of course you were, dearheart," his mother said, and took a small bite of her buttered bread. "Now put that comb back on its plate and pass the plate to your brother."
Cob did exactly that and Jak grinned at his brother's discomfiture. Jak dribbled honey from the comb onto a piece of bread and took a bite. It was as sweet as he remembered. Probably his father-a beekeeper-had taken it from one of his hives that morning. When Jak had been a boy, Mai Fleet's apiary and the honey it produced had provided well for his family. Of course, it also had resulted in more stings to the Fleet boys than Jak cared to recall. Still, he had long missed his father's honey at table, and his mother's soup. It was good to be home.
He set to his mother's potato soup, dunking his honeyed bread in the bowl between spoonfuls. His mother sat at the head of the table and looked on with approval.
"The soup is wonderful, moth-"
From outside, somewhere in the distance, he heard someone call his name. He could not quite place the voice-a friend's voice, he knew, but the name escaped him.
"Did you hear that?" he asked his brother, his father.
All of them kept their heads down.
Cob spoke around a mouthful of soup. "I didn't hear anything."
"Nor I," said his father, soaking his bread in honey. His mother always said of his father that if his nature had been as sweet as his sweet tooth, he could have married better. "There is not better," had always been his father's reply, and it had always earned him a smile from his wife.
"Eat your food, Jak," said his mother.
The voice called him again.
Jak pushed back his chair and rose. "There it is again."
* * * * *
Power filled Cale. He had never before cast a spell so demanding. His entire body shook. Sweat poured from him.
But it was working.
A rosy glow suffused Jak's body. The wound in his throat closed to a pink scar, to unmarred skin; the bruises on his arms and face healed. The spell remade his flesh, providing a complete and whole vessel for the returning soul. The spell then created a conduit between Jak's body and whatever plane to which his soul had traveled, opening a door that otherwise always remained closed. Cale put himself in the door, held it open, and called Jak's name.
Cale's voice grew in volume until it boomed, reverberated through the room, carried from the Sojourner's tower into the planes. He called Jak's name, trying to pull his soul back from its rest to re-inhabit his body.
"Jak!"
An unwelcome memory surfaced-Sephris Dwendon, changed after his forced resurrection, filled with bitterness. The memory of Jak's words surged back to Cale. When I'm dead, leave me that way.
Cale's voice faltered.
Was he doing the right thing? Was he acting to help Jak or satisfy his own desire to have Jak back? He did not like what he thought was the answer. But Jak had told him that friends, not places, were home, and Cale needed him.
His doubt caused the spell to start to unravel.
He remembered Sephris's bitter words, his admission that he had returned only out of a sense of duty. Jak would do the same. Cale could not bear to think of an embittered Jak.
Tears of guilt flowed down his face. He controlled the sob that threatened to burst from his throat.
He realized that he could not ask Jak to return. He would not. Wherever Jak was, that was home now.
He ceased the invocation and the power went out of him. He put his hand on Jak's forehead.
"Goodbye, my friend."
He reached into one of Jak's pouches, took his ivory-bowled pipe, and put it in a pouch at his own belt. He would keep the smell of Jak's pipeweed near to him-always.
* * * * *
Jak cocked his head and listened. The call did not repeat. For a reason he could not explain, profound sadness struck him. He had lost something, he knew. But he did not know what.
"Finish your soup, son," said his father. "You're free to stay now."
Jak did not know what that meant and his father did not explain. His father smiled and said, "Cob and I have taken care of the hives for the day. We can all go fishing at dusk, if you'd like. There's pond nearby, stuffed with longfin."
That sounded grand to Jak. The sadness diminished in the glow of his family's love. He sat back down at the table with his family and ate his mother's soup.
* * * * *
Magadon, Cale, and Riven stood looking at one another in a central chamber of the tower.
"What now?" Magadon said at last.
"I will take Jak and you both back," Cale said. "I have some things I need to do."
Magadon nodded.
"I'm staying," Riven said.
"Why?" Magadon asked.
"There are things I need to do also," Riven answered.
Cale looked around the temple, once Cyric's, now Mask's, and understood.
"This has only just begun," Riven said to Cale. "You realize that?"
Cale thought of Sephris, of the Source's call across Faerun. He nodded. He knew that Mask was not through with them yet. But for now, he had his own matters to address.
"You can leave Jak here," Riven said. "With me. You'll have a reason to come back."
Cale looked Riven in the eye. He thought again of Jak's words to him on the streets of Selgaunt-friends are home.
He nodded. "You'll see to him?"
Cale could not put Jak's body in the ground, could not be there when it happened.
"I will," Riven said.
Cale looked Riven in the face. Riven returned the stare.
The moment stretched. As one they stepped forward and embraced, briefly. A warriors' farewell.
Cale stepped back, pulled the shadows around him, and said, "Let's go, Mags."
EPILOGUE
The surf roared far below them. The foam dancing in the shoals was barely visible in the pre-dawn light. A cool breeze rustled Cale's cloak. The glow from a cluster of lights far up the coast could only be Urlamspyr, one of Sembia's largest cities. Cale had never seen it. Perhaps now he would. He had no reason to return to Selgaunt. He had no reason to do anything.