He walked until his legs gave out. After a time, his strength returned and he walked again. The road wandered, tunneling through dark woods filled with whispers and rustling sounds, though no wind blew. From time to time, he crossed ivy-grown bridges of cracked stone that spanned sluggish dark brooks, or passed watchful old ruins that slumbered on barren hilltops. The twilight never brightened or faded; it was impossible to say whether it was day or night.
He walked for a long time, determined to find something familiar, some sign of shelter or a way back to his own world, but the road wound through mile after mile of gray, barren hills and black thickets. The chill slowly permeated every portion of his body, knifing into his chest with each breath, deadening his face and limbs with the cold. He staggered and fell, picked himself up, then collapsed again. The dim twilight sapped his will with each step.
Can't give up, he told himself. There must be other doors, another way back. Aeron fixed his eyes on the distant hills, limned by the cold glimmer that served as the only source of illumination in this gray land. I'll find something there if I can just push on a little farther, he thought.
After an endless struggle, he looked up and saw that the hills were no closer. But there was something peculiar in the way the light danced and brightened in front of him. Streaks of rose and orange were appearing over the hilltops. His breath caught in his throat as a sliver of crimson sunlight slid over the hill. The fields, the trees, the road, shone with a faint red blush as they caught the sunrise and sparked to life.
As the sun appeared, the shadows fled. The cold grip on Aeron's heart wavered and dissipated as the daylight drove back the borders of gloom. The racing edge of dawn swept over him, and the dead gray hills and twisted black forests seemed to come alive, the gloom fading away to reveal fresh green slopes and lush young buds gracing the trees and shrubs. The sunrise brought me back, Aeron realized. I must have been right on the borderline between the shadow and the real world.
But where am I?
Groaning, Aeron pushed himself to his hands and knees, then tried to stand. His legs wouldn't bear his weight. He collapsed and surrendered to a deathlike sleep.
"Hey, there! You dead or alive?"
A harsh voice dragged Aeron back to consciousness, accompanied by an ungentle toe in his ribs. He blinked, stirred, and found himself staring up at a large, dark-skinned man who towered over him. The fellow was dressed in a colorful dyed jacket and pantaloons, and he scowled as he looked down at Aeron. "Oh, you're alive," he muttered. "Well, you shouldn't be. It was bitter cold last night. You're damned lucky you didn't freeze to death, lying out in the road like that."
Aeron shook his head and climbed to his feet. He was weak, trembling with cold, completely disoriented, but the supernatural chill that had nearly extinguished the fires of his life was gone. He turned slowly, studying his surroundings. The long, low valley and crossroads matched the last place he'd seen in the plane of shadow, but the empty fields now seemed to be furrowed with an early spring planting. "Where am I?" he said to himself.
The big man beside him took Aeron's question literally. "You're near Markelmen, lad. It's maybe five miles down that road there." He looked at Aeron's dress and added, "You certainly don't look like you're from around here."
Now that Aeron was standing, the man didn't seem quite so tall, although he topped six feet. He was a heavyset fellow with a round gut and thick, powerful arms. A draft horse and a cart full of small barrels waited a few yards away. The mage considered the carter's words and shook his head again. "Markelmen doesn't mean anything to me. Where's that?"
"Did some highwayman give you a knock on the head, lad?" the carter asked. Aeron met his eyes with a clear and level look, and the fellow shrugged. "Well, this is the county of Orsraun. The Ors Valley is just over that rise; the river empties into the Reach about twenty miles farther south."
Orsraun? Reach? They still didn't make much sense. Aeron struggled to fit the names into his mind. Finally he made some sense of it. "You mean we're in Turmish?"
"Tyr's blind eyes, lad! Of course we're in Turmish! Where in Faerun did you think you were?"
I wasn't certain I was in Faerun at all, Aeron thought, but he chose not to give voice to that remark. He'd read about Turmish and seen its shape on a map during his studies of the lands about Chessenta. It lay west of Cimbar, on the other side of the Akanapeaks, along the northern shore of the Vilhon Reach. He was hundreds of miles from the college. "What day is it?" he asked the westerner.
"Today? It's the eighth day of Ches. Are you certain you haven't been rapped on the skull?"
Ches? But last night was the fifteenth of Marpenoth. Could I have been in the shadow plane for five months? Aeron stared at the man in amazement until the fellow shifted his feet nervously and took a half-step back. "Well, you seem to be up and about. I'll be on my way, then."
Aeron shook himself out of his astonishment. "Wait! Which way is it to Hlondeth?" If his memory served him right, that was the major port in this part of Turmish.
"Take the western way from the crossroads," the trader said, pointing. "The road leads straight to Hlondeth, but it's forty miles or more."
"Thanks," Aeron said. He left the Turmishite shaking his head as the fellow drove his cart off in the other direction. He began walking north, slowly warming up as the morning sun brightened and his exertions worked some of the ice out of his limbs.
At first he kept his mind on the road and the wind-scoured hillsides, deliberately avoiding any serious thought. As the morning wore on, he eventually found himself considering his situation. He had nothing more than the clothes on his back, a handful of coins in his pouch, and a dozen or so spells locked in his mind, ready to use … if he dared. Each spell he expended would be gone, and without his spellbook-presumably resting on his desk in the college, five hundred miles away-he could not refresh his memory of any spells he cast. More to the point, what would happen if I did work a spell? he thought. Will the stone's influence reach me, now that I've left the plane of shadow? Or am I safe now?
There was one certain way to find out, but Aeron was hesitant to experiment. In the first place, he would waste an irreplaceable spell, and secondly, what if the experiment demonstrated that he was still within the stone's grasp? He shuddered, recalling the abominable sensation of cold foulness boring through his body, mind, and spirit. He quickly turned his thoughts elsewhere. "Well, where to now?" he asked of the empty road. "Back to the college?"
He frowned, weighing his words. Oriseus waited back at the college. And the stone was much closer there, even if it lay across the threshold of night. The Shadow Stone's power would certainly not be diminished the closer Aeron came, and it might even increase. That thought frightened him. His spellbooks, his studies, everything he needed remained in Cimbar, but Aeron did not dare return. Well, where then? he asked himself irritably.
From a still place deep in his aching heart, the answer welled up into his mind: home. It had been more than a year-no, almost a year and a half now, if Ches was already upon the land-since Aeron had left Kestrel and Eriale to study at the college. Suddenly he missed them terribly, longing for the shelter and simplicity of his former life with a fierce pain that brought tears to his eyes.
He gazed east for a long time, until his homesickness faded into a quiet despair. It would take weeks, maybe months, to round the Vilhon Reach, cross Chondath on the southern shore, and then find his way across Chessenta. "It won't get done until I begin," he said softly, and he started on his way again.
Late in the afternoon, Aeron began to flag. He'd been walking all day after a harrowing ordeal, and his strength was giving out. The biting wind and dropping temperatures served as an additional discouragement to pressing on. He looked for an inhabited house or a roadside tavern, but the land nearby was desolate, and he eventually settled for a ruined cottage, its roof open to the sky.