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unsteadily toward Jak and Magadon, sabers bare.
    If the Sojourner heard Riven, he showed no sign. He spoke the final word to his spell and a globe of nothingness as big as an ogre’s head formed in the air near Cale. Its edge brushed a stuffed chair and the piece of furniture was reduced to dust instantly. It touched one of Cale’s shadow images and annihilated it, too. Cale dived aside, his images trailing him, mirroring his movements. The sphere followed, ponderously but inexorably, and what it touched, it destroyed.
    For a moment, Cale thought of testing Weaveshear against the annihilating sphere but decided against it. He did not know if the blade could survive it.
    The Sojourner spoke another word, a single word, and Cale’s magical images and all of Jak’s protective spells were annihilated. He was exposed, vulnerable.
    Cale felt the Sojourner’s mental fingers reaching for his mind. He knew what the creature had done to Riven, what he would do to Cale.
    Meanwhile, Riven was three strides away from the little man and Magadon, neither of whom would be able to defend themselves. Still prone, Jak watched Riven approach, a snarl on his face, blades in his hands.
    The Sojourner’s fingers found purchase in Cale’s mind, started to burrow in. He felt as though needles skewered his eyes.
    Cale gritted his teeth against the intrusion and made his decision: the fight was lost. He had to get his friends out of there.
    He shot a final glare at the Sojourner, and thought: This is not over.
    The Sojourner answered, No, but nearly so.
    Cale did not bother pondering the response as he slid between the shadows. He stepped to Jak’s side, grabbed him by the shirt, and stepped in another stride to Magadon.
    At Cale’s appearance, Riven aborted his advance.
    Cale wanted to give Riven an arm’s length of sharp steel but had time only to give him a glare. He pulled the darkness around him.
    “Faithless bastard,” Jak said to Riven. The little man’s leg looked raw and chewed. Puke stained the front of his shirt.
    “There will be another time, Zhent,” Cale promised, as the shadows closed around him.
    “I’m relying on it,” Riven said. “We’re on other sides in this from now on, Cale. Do you remember what I once told you on the street in Selgaunt after I put down that Cyricist?” He paused before saying, “I meant it.”
    Cale was glad that his mask hid the confusion he knew his face must have shown.
    Behind Riven, the Sojourner spoke another word and pointed a long finger at Cale. A black bolt of energy flew from the Sojourner’s finger but Cale already had found the correspondence between the chamber and the first safe place he could think of—the Plane of Shadow.
    Strange, Cale thought to himself as the darkness moved him and his friends between worlds, that he would consider the Plane of Shadow a safe place.
    *****
    Cale, Jak, and Magadon vanished, swallowed by shadows. The black beam from the Sojourner’s spell struck the stone where Cale had crouched with his two comrades, and dissolved a wagonload of floor into nothingness.
    Riven still felt a bit muzzy-headed from the Sojourner’s mental attack, but he knew he had done the right thing.
    He ignored the hollow feeling in his gut. It would pass. It always did.
    He took a deep breath and turned to look on the Sojourner. He had thrown the dice by betraying Cale. Now he would see if they came up asp eyes or full pips.
    The Sojourner gestured with his staff and the circle of lightning sizzling around him dissipated. Despite the frenetic combat, the mage’s wheezing breath came steady and slow. His eyes, as dark as the magical sphere that floated in the air beside him, bored like awls into Riven,
    Riven sheathed his blades and held his ground.
    Not far from him, the big slaad, still groaning with pain from whatever the magical beam had done to him, managed to turn around and sit up.
    “Poison,” Dolgan said, as much to himself as anyone else. He grinned stupidly.