"Ugh. I smell corruption – and it isn't you, spirit-eater. It is..." Okku sniffed again, "bloated corpses and twisted spirits."

"The air is thick with evil," Kaelyn added.

"Lovely," Tarva muttered, looking out over Lake Mulsantir, golden in the light of the afternoon sun. "Can any of you hear that? That laughter? Those cries?"

One by one, the others shook their heads. Tarva sighed. "Well, maybe it's just my imagination. I certainly hope so."

Gann couldn't hear them either, but then, he was somewhat distracted. The unpleasant scents, the sounds of the waves, even the way the sand crunched beneath his boots; they were familiar, for he had walked this shore many times in dreams. They were also indisputably of the waking world, and so, strange. The outline of a building was hazily visible; the bodies floating in the water, the waving tentacles of vast sea-monsters and lack of a bridge were all, unfortunately, much clearer.

"Perhaps the fall of night will reveal a bridge," he said, slowly. "But I fear... we will not be the only petitioners at this gate."

Tarva turned to look at him. "Gann... are you all right? You've been uncharacteristically quiet whenever someone brought up Coveya Kurg'annis, and now, you sound rather uneasy. I understand something of what this place must mean to you."

"It is said that one cannot go home again," he said. "But for me, this is the first time." Birthed of a hag, abandoned to the wilds of Rashemen, raised by the telthors, wanderer of the land, and now he came knocking on the door of the city of the hags. He didn't know what answers he would find. He didn't know what answers he wanted. He admitted it to Tarva at the same instant he admitted it to himself – "I am frightened, and nothing else in the waking world has ever caused me such trepidation." He went on before she could say a word; he didn't want sympathy, or pity, or whatever else. "I shall persevere, do not worry. By spell and by arrow, I will back you."

He expected her to try and discuss it, but he had forgotten both her respect for others' privacy and her willingness to trust that others knew what they were doing. She simply nodded.

The voice of Safiya, who'd been studying the tottering ruins near the shore, drifted to them. "No, we're not here for the fishing."

"It is a strange fisherman who plies his trade at the Lake of Dreams," Gann said, and they followed Okku and Kaelyn, to see the person with whom Safiya was speaking. He was human, or apparently so; bald, and wearing an objectionable moustache.

"He does not smell of fish," Okku said, in what the bear probably imagined was a tactful whisper. It was neither. "He reeks of soil, of feldspar – of the earth itself."

"That's because he's a dao," Safiya said, and introduced them. "Everybody, this is Fentomy."

The man did not look like an earth genie. "You are cloaked in illusion, like the city? Surely you do not expect us to believe you a simple fisherman. Perhaps you are a greeter, one who welcomes petitioners such as we?"

"I have no interest in deceiving you," the objectionable moustache twitched as the apparently-dao answered. "When visiting more primitive worlds such as this, I typically adopt a form that will not alarm the indigenous inhabitants."

"That's not quite an answer," Tarva said. "Why are you really here?"

"To pass on a warning," he said. "Do not stay here after dusk. The last man who did... well, his journal reveals his fate." Fentomy waved a hand at a small pile of fishing equipment. Tarva picked up the tattered book and Safiya peered over her shoulder.

"Terrible handwriting," Safiya said. Gann watched Fentomy stroll off down the beach.

"I don't understand why everyone keeps a journal," Tarva murmured absently as she flicked through the pages. "Parchment, quill, and ink aren't that cheap, and really, most of everyday life just isn't that interesting. And people seem to write the strangest details in them at the most inappropriate times. Why would this 'fisherman' write in his journal that he's robbing the corpses washed ashore? – nice man, I wish we could have met him – I mean, surely that's the sort of thing you'd remember without recording it."

Safiya chuckled.

"Unless such an activity is inherently detrimental to the memory," Gann offered.

"Possible. Or look at this bit," Tarva stabbed a finger down. " 'Hiding behind a bush as I write this.' Why bother adding that? I'm actually surprised he didn't name the bush or something. Hm, hm, Fentomy told him not to stay past dusk, and he did... Aha!"

"'Black swirling eye' that sucked things inside," Safiya read over Tarva's shoulder.

"That does sound rather familiar," Gann said.

"A gate to the Shadow Plane," Kaelyn added.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Tarva led them along the bridge to the city of the hags, Okku pacing beside her.

"I am glad you refused the dao's bargain, little one," the bear rumbled.

"No creature should be enslaved," Kaelyn agreed.

"And there is no excuse for wearing such a beard. Or the moustache of his human guise," Gann said.

Tarva nodded, as if to herself. "So Okku and Kaelyn object on moral grounds, and you on aesthetic ones? At least you're consistent."

"Of course. Would you expect less of me?" He dropped back as Tarva approached the two hagspawns at the gate. He avoided conversation with those of his kind wherever possible, and these guards seemed excellent examples of the average hagspawn: brutish and ill-favoured, and unintelligent to boot. One of them seemed to be trying to explain something to Tarva.

"When Mulv was a B-A-B-Y, he was D-R-O-P-P-E-D repeatedly by his M-O-T-H-E-R to see if he would bounce."

Well, that one could at least spell. How unusual.

"Bounce, bounce! Me bouncy!"

Gann doubted the hag had been driven by pure scientific curiosity. As he could testify himself, the maternal instinct of the race was severely underdeveloped.

Tarva talked the guards into letting her in if she could thin the crowd of petitioners a little, and then withdrew to the bridge.

"Thanks for your help, Gann," Safiya said. "Your eloquence was astounding." Tarva threw her a look.

"As astounding as your tact," Gann answered. "I do not enjoy conversing with others of my species."

"Considering how much you differ from them, I can't say I'm surprised," Tarva said. "I thought... well, when we met both Groznek and you in that prison, I thought you were simply two extremes of the same race, but that's not the case, is it?"

Gann would not have been who he was if he had been able to resist such an opportunity. "No, of course not. I am breath-takingly handsome and gifted with words and dreams alike; such an outstanding specimen as myself is as unique among hagspawn as among all other races."

"You set yourself up for that," Safiya said to Tarva.

"I know," she sighed, and turned away to look at the crowd gathered to enter Coveya Kurg'annis. Her eyes caught on the glowing pack of glowing animals, and she turned abruptly away. "Okku, take Gann and get those telthors away from me."

That was... uncharacteristically sharp. Then he saw the set look on her face, felt the seething of her hunger, and wondered how he could have forgotten.

He followed Okku without another word, as Tarva almost bolted in the opposite direction.

The animal spirits did not glow with their characteristic blue light in the unremitting grey of the Shadow Plane; they were grey themselves, translucent, barely there. And they felt... wrong.

"The Bear King has left his burrow. How strange," the largest wolf greeted Okku, ignoring the shaman who stood behind him. "Have you come to gorge on the easy meat here? I won't challenge you. There is more here than even my pack can eat."

The bear sniffed, and growled. "What is this nonsense? Why would you behave as vultures and feed on carrion? Where is your pride, o hunter?"

"We do what comes naturally, cousin bear. Why hunt, when there is already meat here aplenty?" Okku seemed to have everything well in hand here. In paw? Gann glanced back over his shoulder. He could not see Tarva and the others.

"Do not call me kin! You are a disgrace to our kind. Wayward, insolent, pup! I will teach you better, by fear or by fang!" Old Father Bear was, rapidly, almost as furious as he had been when they'd faced him outside the gates of Mulsantir. He stood, a massive spirit-figure of fur and muscle, towering over Gann. The shaman swallowed. Even standing well behind Okku, the bear was profoundly intimidating. He'd grown used to thinking of the bear as a useful, if garish, ally, and the way Tarva leant against him and scratched his fur had made it easy to forget that he was a god, and fully capable of tearing off a human head if he felt like it.

He was clearly in the mood to do something of the sort now. "Worthless, corpse-gnawing maggots! Lower your heads and flee my sight!" The pack was indeed cowering. Okku roared, a deep, primal sound of fury, that reached down to the reflexes and ordered them to run; Gann himself jerked a couple of steps before recovering his head, and the pack bolted. "If I catch you, I will tear off your limbs, and shove your own rotting carrion down your gullets!" The bear god dropped to all fours and chased them, the heavy frame capable of surprising speed, but the terrified wolves beat him to the Shadow gate and disappeared into it. Panting, Okku looked about to follow them through and continue his chastisement there; a little gingerly, Gann spoke up.

"King Bear, perhaps you could curb your wrath, and we could return to our spirit-eater ally?"

The pale eyes looked up at him. "You are right, hagspawn." He shambled back down the bridge, and Gann followed.

Safiya stood sheathed in the golden light of Kaelyn's healing spell; Tarva was wiping her scythe clean of blood, black in the greyness of the Shadow Plane. "You were attacked, little one?" Okku asked.

"Uthraki," Tarva said simply, then turned towards the tall figure nearby. "Get out of my head." A pause. "I am not a slave."

"Illithid," Kaelyn said calmly.

Safiya explained it for a somewhat confused Gann and Okku. "He's talking to her telepathically." The silent mindflayer ignored them.

"Yes, I suppose you have a point there," said Tarva.

"I've faced the githyanki before," said Tarva.

"Actually, I escaped several on the way here," said Tarva.

"The Sword Stalkers follow where the silver swords go, and I wielded one," said Tarva.

"Their hatred for your kind outweighs even that duty, you know," said Tarva.

"Hurry, then. If they have tracked me this far, they will not be far behind," said Tarva.

The illithid scurried away. "You convinced him the githyanki were coming?" Safiya asked. "I wouldn't have thought you could lie mind-to-mind with an illithid."

The half-elf shrugged. "Everything I said to him was entirely true. I'm hardly to blame for the interpretation he chose to put on it."

Safiya grinned. "We'll have you thinking like a Red Wizard yet."