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full force of the Sojourner’s mind and will assaulted Riven’s mind, pinioning him, burying him under its weight. He fell flat on the floor. His vision went dark; something warm dripped from his ears. He was falling, falling.
    Riven tried to mouth the words, “No. It is real. I want him dead.” His lips would not form the words so he thought them instead: I want him dead! I want him dead!
    A booted foot slammed into Riven’s ribs—Dolgan. Riven’s leather armor kept the bones intact but his breath went out in a whoosh.
    “Kill him,” Dolgan said.
    He was going to die prone on the floor, helpless as a babe. Distantly, he wondered if Cale and Magadon were watching, laughing.
    They must have a practitioner of the Invisible Art among their number, the Sojourner observed, surprise in his mental voice. He has moderate skill.
    The pain in Riven’s mind intensified. He was too far gone to scream anymore. He dug his fingers into the carpet so hard that he tore three fingernails from their beds. He felt a peculiar sensation through the pain. A tickle in his consciousness. Something scurried around the edges of his sentience, trying to avoid the Sojourner’s mental perception. To no avail. Nothing could avoid the Sojourner.
    The Sojourner said, We have a mindmage in our midst. To someone Riven could not see, the Sojourner projected, I see you.
    It must have been Magadon. They had been watching the whole time.
    With the Sojourner’s attention temporarily diverted, Riven managed to claw his way back to coherence.
    “Get… out… of my head!” he shouted, and pulled himself up to all fours.
    *****
    Magadon lurched back, clutching his temples and groaning with pain. Jak stopped whatever spell he had been casting and leaped to the guide’s aid.
    “He sensed me,” Magadon managed, leaning on Jak. “Such a mind….”
    Cale knew. He had felt the Sojourner make contact through Magadon, had felt the residuum of power that had accompanied the contact. Cale had let the mental scrying go on far too long. Riven had suffered unnecessarily. He had hoped to learn the Sojourner’s full plans for the Weave Tap, but he had learned only snippets.
    He started to draw the darkness around them. The light from Magadon’s sunrod dimmed. Shadows intensified.
    “Mags?” Cale asked while he summoned shadows.
    “I’m all right,” the guide said. He took his hand off Jak’s shoulder and massaged his brow. He unslung his bow and nocked an arrow, though he did not draw. “I’m ready.”
    The air around Cale’s body crackled with magical energy; the hairs on his arms stood up-the result of Jak’s various protective spells. Cale hoped the magic would be enough.
    “I did what I could,” Jak said by way of explanation, and gripped his holy symbol, shortsword, and dagger.
    Magadon concentrated, and a handful of coin-sized spheres of light formed around his head and quickly faded.
    “I cannot mindlink us,” he said. “Jak’s spell is blocking my abilities, at least. Let us hope it does the same to the Sojourner.”
    Cale nodded and quickly donned his mask. To Jak, he said, “It’s a dark cavern, little man. Cluttered with cushions and furniture. The two slaadi-one in human form, one as a half-drow-and the Sojourner. Riven is on the floor. “
    He hefted Weaveshear, looked each of his comrades in the eye.
    Both nodded.
    “We go,” he said.
    Cale let himself sink into the darkness around them, let it seep into him. He understood that the shadows anywhere were the shadows everywhere. He pictured the
    Sojourner’s cavern in his mind, the shadows that filled its corners.
    Pulling his comrades into his personal night, he moved them through the black, from a cavern on the Plane of Shadow to a distant cavern elsewhere.

CHAPTER 2: SHIFTING ALLIANCES
    The instant they materialized, Magadon’s sunrod went dark, probably extinguished by some ambient magic in the cavern. Only the dim glowglobe provided illumination in the chamber. It was enough