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.

To his surprise, he was neither hungry nor thirsty. He felt only a leaden exhaustion and a bone-deep chill that ached in his limbs, although he was too tired to shiver. One of the spells in his mind would serve to revitalize him somewhat, restoring some of his energy and dispelling his fatigue, and Aeron thought long and hard about attempting it. Another cold night could leave him a very bad way, and he desperately wanted to feel warm again.

Should I try it? he thought over and over. Sooner or later he would have to know what the Shadow Stone had done to his magical abilities. For better or worse, Aeron was a wizard. He'd wielded magic for years now; it was his life. He did not think he could ever go back to being the simple forester he was once, and that meant that he would have to learn whether or not he could still work magic. And there was only one way to do that.

"I'd better try this with a spell I don't mind wasting," he muttered, staring into the fire. He considered the spells that lay ready in his head, eventually settling on mage light. It was useful, but Aeron could see better in the dark than most, and he could always light a torch or lantern if he really needed to see.

He steeled himself with a grimace and whispered the words to the spell. He brought the symbol to his mind and unlocked it, shaping the magic. And he reached for the living energy to power his spell, grasping at the dancing fire in front of him.

He couldn't feel anything. His rational mind told him that the bright currents of the Weave had to be dancing in the fire, ready for his touch, but he could not perceive the magic with any of his senses. He floundered, grasping desperately.

His outstretched senses brushed against something cold and dark. The campfire guttered, died, and blazed back to life in sick, black flame. Aeron jolted backward, sealing himself from the power he'd found, but it was too late. A streamer of darkness burst from his chest, and he screamed as vile black corruption oozed from his skin, cloaking him in a mantle of shadow. The floating sphere of light took form, but it was pale and sickly, casting a greenish glow through the room. Flailing his arms in disgust, Aeron slashed the spell to pieces.

The darkness retreated, leaving the stone walls slick with black frost. Aeron scrambled to his feet, digging his nails into his flesh as if to drag the ordure from his veins. He tripped over a low stone in the floor and stumbled into the wall. There was a moment of cold, dark pressure as he slid through the old rock, and then Aeron tumbled to the ground outside. He retched weakly on the grass until finally his thought and reason returned. He rose on unsteady feet and wiped his hand across his mouth.

He could see the ground through his arm.

In dull amazement, Aeron held up his hands. His clothes and flesh seemed translucent, indistinct. He could see the umber hillside and the rich red glow of the sunset right through his arms. He whirled, looking around, only to see a second landscape shimmering into view, overlying the world around him. It was a landscape of dead brown grass and leafless trees, roofed by a lightless sky.

To the west, the last sliver of the sun's orb was vanishing behind the gray hilltops. A cold wind began to blow contrary to the brisk salt breeze from the sea, making his cloak flutter and twist against the wind as bit by bit he discorporated on the border of night. "Help me!" he screamed, his thin voice wailing on the shadow wind. No one answered.