Eleven

Cold, wet dirt fouled his mouth.

Aeron gagged and coughed, weakly scraping the back of one sleeve across his face. He was lying with his face pressed into mist-wreathed earth. The lightless dusk of the shadow plane surrounded him still, and he shuddered uncontrollably as his body reminded him of the numbing cold. When he'd first stepped through the silver door, the chill air had sapped the heat from his feet and hands, searing his nose with each breath. Now the center of his chest ached with a dull leaden pain, as if the blood in his heart was starting to freeze. Aeron groaned and tried to push himself upright, his limbs shaking with fatigue.

He was at the bottom of a steep hill, lying in a patch of soft ground where a noisome trickle of dark water carved a bitter rill at the foot of the slope. Dead gray grass grew in wiry tufts, broken by forbidding thickets of black briars and stands of sere, leafless trees. At first his mind was as blank as slate, devoid of any thought except a cognition of his surroundings, but like a candle guttering in the wind, his faculties began to return. Where am I? he wondered. How did I get here? Awkwardly Aeron gained his feet and staggered a few steps, struggling to wring motion from his hollow frame.

I'm still in the shadow land, but the pyramid isn't in sight, he thought. He'd been standing in the chamber of the stone, the last of Oriseus's circle to resist its influence . . . and then he'd worked a spell to escape. He felt he'd traveled a very long way indeed. Apparently his spell had worked, only not in the way he'd intended.

That led to the next obvious question: Where was he now? Aeron frowned, thinking. He was not anywhere near Cimbar's harbor or the place in the shadow plane that corresponded to the city's location. The lay of the land was wrong. But he could be a few miles inland, or hundreds of miles away. Or it might not make any difference, since he stood in the shadow plane. He'd heard that time and distance were distorted here.

"Of course," he muttered to himself. He knew a minor divination that would pinpoint his location. Absently he unlocked the spell's symbol in his mind, reaching for the spark of power within his own heart to give it life. The land and air around him were cold and dead, devoid of the Weave. He touched the merest flicker of his own life and spoke the spell.

A dark, coiling veil seemed to shift and slither in his heart. It was as if a black, hungry worm crawled through his thoughts, rasping against the inside of his skull, pulling at the substance of his mind like a piece of bone dragged through mud. Aeron clapped his hands to his head, reeled, and fell, gabbling in animal terror as the cold, slimy form extended thousands of needlelike bores throughout his body. Light and sanity fled as he shrieked in revulsion.

From a tiny island in the inchoate confusion of his shattered mind, Aeron realized that he'd felt the stone's influence again. In the tower, he'd touched the stone, drawn upon its power, and like a serpent, it had embedded its venom in his heart. Reaching for the Weave to work his divination had awakened the poison.

He became aware of a distant arrhythmic thumping sound and realized that he was listening to his heels drumming on the ground while the dispassionate stars wheeled over his head. After a time, the trembling seizure released him from its grip, but an icy fist remained clenched in the center of his chest.

In blank horror, Aeron stood and moved away with clumsy, jerking steps, a marionette driven by nothing more than a weak desire to flee. No strength or volition remained to him, but after a time, the dark rill and the bracken-covered hill faded into the gloom behind him, and he found himself following a worn and ancient track that cut through the brooding hills.

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."