Stardeep (35 page)

He swung the conjoined blade in a scything whirlwind. Cynosure couldn’t retreat quickly enough, and was caught in the blade-vortex. An explosion of blue-white flames and stone shrapnel heralded the statue’s dissolution. So much for Stardeep’s security.

To Telarian’s right, the monk wielded an amulet of the Sign as if a cestus. With Delphe’s aide, he was successfully staving off a Well-born avatar—a dream of the Traitor’s hope of freedom. By the same token, the avatar, with its evolving fotm, firmly focused Delphe and the Sign-wielding monk away from him. Telarian’s path to the Well was unimpeded. He walked to the edge and peered down.

All the previous times he’d glanced into the Well, he’d seen only empty space, and at the bottom, fire. With the conjoined blade in hand, he saw deeper, heard clearer, and understood more. Tentacular shadows streamed up the well, thick as sea grass. Abolethic melodies brooded and cajoled, swelling into a chaotic babble of sound that clawed at his certainty of purpose. Visibly containing and constraining the hot tor were the chains of Stardeep’s bonds, those which kept the Traitor secure. Bonds that could be severed.

He saw where he must cut to end the Traitor’s confinement. Even as understanding flooded him, Angul-Nis bucked and shuddered in his hand. He fumbled the blade and nearly dropped it down the Well.

Telarian swore, but retained his grasp on the blade. As his heartbeat stuttered in response to the slip that almost cost him everything, he appreciated what had just occurred. Fusing the two blades had also joined the two halves of Nangulis’s spirit. The man, though formless, remained a Keeper of the Cetulean Sign. Somehow, despite having no physical shell in which to observe the world, Nangulis had learned what transpired in the Throat, and sought to oppose him in the only way he was able. Nangulis sought to rupture his own temporary existence by throwing himself back into dissolution. He was trying to break himself in two.

He would fail, decided Telarian. The conjoined blade enjoyed a power fueled by two soul halves, but the consciousness of the conjoined soul had little powet ovet the blades. Nangulis’s return was a surprising new element, cettainly, but one with no ability to affect its physical shell, Angul-Nis. He was merely a ghost without form, a will without the ability to achieve an end.

The diviner laughed. While he wielded Angul-Nis, the blades would remain conjoined. Nis was more than a tool; it was also a trap. “Fight all you want,” he whispered, “it’ll do no

good. I’ll not let you go.” Telarian tightened his grip and once more fixed his gaze into the swirling abyss before him.

The ethereal chains remained visible to him, five in all. The chains secured the Well, and the Traitor’s ultimate prison. With Angul-Nis, he began to cut them. He sawed through the first one, and the swaying shadows choking the shaft increased the pace of their obscene undulation. The babble only his ears apprehended doubled in volume.

He sliced through the second phantom chain and paused. Something shrieked far down in the Well, something that had clawed at the boundary layer far past the limits of sanity.

The diviner smashed the third chain to shrapnel. A stroke like lightning leaped up the Well and shook all Stardeep. The light glared off the faces of Delphe, her mouth open in a hopeless shout, and the Sign-wielding monk, whose efforts were overcoming the avatar. Too late.

Something stirred in the Well’s bowels, a shadow anticipating its release. A shadow that no longer retained elven shape, but instead pulsed with blasphemous abnormality. He was the High Priest of the Elder Ones, first servant of the vanished Abolethic Sovereignty, who had looked up the Well for a thousand years, who had tasted the blood of his betrayed kin, who sought to lead all star elves to extinction, and who was cast out of Sildeyuir for eternity. He sought to awaken the slumbering lords of Xxiphu from their lair in the nethermost craters of the deep earth. He was the Traitor. And in another few moments, Telarian would end the Traitor’s life on the edge of—

“Remember me?” came a half-familiar voice behind Telarian as heart-stopping pain blossomed in the diviner’s kidney. “Your spy returns for his payment!”

Angul-Nis slipped free from his spasming hands. “No!” Telarian lurched forward, windmilling for a grip on the sword spinning free above the Well.

The conjoined sword flared, emitting a butst of enetgy

black on one side, blue on the other. Then two blades fell away from each other. “No!” screamed Telarian, leaning forward.

Angul fell just three feet, tip downwatd, and knifed into the lip, and there remained quivering.

Nis tumbled free past the lip and down the Well. The diviner fell to his chest, extending half his body out over the lip as he made one final try to snare the Blade Umbral. But as he strained forward and down, someone kicked him savagely from behind. A terrible sensation of weightlessness sank into his stomach. Overbalanced, he slipped over the edge.

Nis and Telarian fell, Telarian screaming in dismay and mounting fear, Nis tracing a blur of darkness in its wake. Elf and sword flashed past the flickering shadow, past the burning boundary layer, and into the ptesence of the Traitor.

The High Priest of the Abolethic Sovereignty studied its mottal agent. It had expended so much energy molding and shaping the elf’s mind. But the elf had failed, and with his fall into the Well, was rendered valueless. The sword Nis, whose creation was the culmination of a plan initiated with Angul’s forging, stood embedded blade-first in the floor of the cell, smoldering… fading. Even as the Traitor attempted to bring his shackled hands near enough to the hilt to grasp it, to plunge it into his own heart… it smoked away, its half-soul finally and utterly extinguished. In this prison, there was no aftetlife to accept it.

Only Telarian remained, now bound as the Ttaitor was bound, in chains of eldritch force. Unlike the Traitor, Telarian was subject to the needs of air and nutrition. Given enough pain, his heart would fail.

The Traitor concentrated on the blinking, confused diviner whose mind had proved so ripe for instruction. A mind still open to suggestion, capable of seeing a higher reality, a reality

beyond the physical. Though the Traitor couldn’t touch the diviner, he could influence the diviner’s mind. What the Keeper believed to be real would be real. It was the malleable teality he had hoped to extend to all the world with the Abolethic Sovereignty’s rise. For now, that reality was reserved for one.

The elf screamed as the Ttaitor extended a nest of writhing, tooth-rimmed appendages.

Failure demanded payment.

He began to extract his due.

Stardeep, Throat

Gage was entranced by the fiery depths of the hollow cylinder. Empty but for an explosion of flaring, frustrated prominences. He turned and sheathed a bloodstained dagger. Backstabbing the insane elf and pushing him into the hole earned him a moment’s respite. He removed his borrowed Knight’s helmet. Kiril, apparently roused from whatever stupor had held her, appraised him with obvious surprise.

Her expression was every bit as bewildered and confused as he’d hoped. He grinned—priceless! You couldn’t steal that kind of satisfaction.

“Gage of Laothkund—how?” asked Kiril. “I left you in the Yuirwood.”

“Aye, but I didn’t turn back as you instructed. I followed.” “Why?”

The thief grinned. “I was angry you sent me away, angty you wouldn’t listen or accept my apology. I decided I would show my sincerity by helping you whether you wanted my aid or not.”

“You followed us into Sildeyuir, and then into Stardeep’s

outer tunnels? That must have been difficult.”

“An understatement,” replied Gage. He recalled again the stone spider, and he shuddered.

Kiril nodded, moved closer, and put a comradely hand on his shoulder. “Thank you…” Her attention shifted, and lit on the guttering blade Angul. Her eyes became glassy.

“Kiril Duskmourn!” came a glad hail. Gage and the swordswoman turned. The lone remaining Keeper approached, the monk Raidon at her side holding his lambent Sign.

The Keepet said, “I am Delphe. Thank the Cerulean Sign you listened to my plea.”

Kiril shrugged. “Telarian’s failure of patience revealed him. If he hadn’t attacked me with Nis, I might have appeared in the Throat as his ally, not his enemy. He didn’t know that, though, and your arguments made him doubt the strength of his own lies.”

Delphe replied, “His lies… his subversion by the Traitor is Stardeep’s most significant failure in all our order’s history. And all along, he thought he was the one serving a higher purpose. An unbelievable tragedy.” She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. Light from the Well blossomed orange and green, giving her skin a pallid cast.

Delphe moved closer and looked down. “I wonder what’s going on down there… Cynosure?”

“Yes, Delphe?” The response emanared from the empty ceiling.

“The boundary layer is distutbed. How close did Telarian come to achieving his goal?”

“Too close. We must forge anew the constraints the diviner severed, else we risk the remaining bonds becoming unraveled.”

Delphe looked at her newly healed hand and muttered, “A difficult task without my most potent tool—”

“You may borrow this, if you require its strength,”

interrupted Raidon, holding out his Sign. “It was my mother’s, though now I begin to doubt she was ever a Keeper here. It may be she had it illicitly, and passed it to me without knowledge of your order.”

Delphe smiled. “Whoever she was or is, I hold no grudge— if she hadn’t possessed it to give to you, things would have concluded differently just now.”

Raidon nodded.

“In any event,” continued Delphe, “I am not attuned to it, but I can instruct you how to wield it in the manner required to refortify the Traitor’s prison. You seem adept in its use, even without wizardly training, which is impressive and unusual.”

“Thank you. I would enjoy learning more of the Sign. Perhaps through it, I can learn of my mother’s fate.”

The Keeper led Raidon around the curve of the lip toward the crystal command chair. She began to speak of visualizations, sigils, and interfaces. Gage stopped paying attention. His eyes lit on anothet fallen form.

“Your pet is hurt,” he observed.

Kiril’s head jerked around to scan the Throat. Concern tightened her eyes when she saw Xet’s unmoving shape. She rushed to the dragonet’s side and gently picked up the crystalline cteature, now blackened and pitted.

“Xet?”

No movement.

“Gods damn you, you’re not even really alive, so you can’t die!”

The dragonet’s tail suddenly wrapped about Kiril’s cradling arm. A weak but audible bell tolled. The swordswoman looked up at Gage and let out a relieved breath.

Another bell-like tone sounded, stronger than the first.

“Where did you get the little guy?” wondered Gage, as he moved to rub the creature beneath the chin. The dragonet arched its neck upward like a cat.

“A geomancer employed me as his bodyguard for nearly a decade. When I left his service, Xet was his parting gift.”

Gage nodded and asked, “Thormund, right? Too bad you left his employ. You wouldn’t have had to go through all this…”

He regretted his remark the moment the last word was out of his mouth. Kiril’s animation faded as her eyes riveted once mote on the cooling sword plunged in the stone floor.

“Angul looks more peaceful than I evet recall seeing him,” she murmured.

Cynosure’s voice interrupted. “Angul is now as he was when first forged. Being split from Nis, the two halves of Nangulis’s spirit are again divided. As before, Angul requires a wielder’s touch to kindle his motivation.”

Kiril said softly, “I remember now…”

Cynosure persisted. “Angul’s life is only a half-life. Without a living wielder, the soulforged blade will fail, releasing the soul to its final peace. All that will remain is a dead length of sword-shaped steel.”

The swordswoman gasped, her hands tightening on Xet, who belled a small sound of displeasure. Yet she moved no closer to the grounded blade. The sword darkened further even as they watched. If Kiril didn’t take Angul in hand soon, the Blade Cetulean would pass away.

Which would be a good outcome, Gage decided. Wielding a blade whose aspirations were too pure for real life had ruined the woman’s life, destroyed her sense of self-worth, and driven her from the order to which she had once pledged undying loyalty. The world didn’t work in black and white, and every time Angul forced Kiril down too narrow a moral path, she regretted it the very instant she sheathed the blade. It was a wonder, really, that Kiril hadn’t ended her life long ago. Although such an act would have been judged unrighteous by the blade she bore. Perhaps she had not been allowed such

an option. The thought chilled the thief, and he rubbed his hands together.

“I do not know…” said Kiril.

“Leave it,” urged Gage.

“I should walk away,” agreed the swordswoman. “I should relinquish Angul so Nangulis can discover, at long last, his final rest. With Nis beyond reach, no hope whatever remains that Nangulis can ever be returned to me—half his essence has fallen into the Well. From that separation, there can be no returning.”

Unless the Traitor is finally freed, Gage thought, but didn’t say.

Cynosure’s voice came. “You have borne a burden past enduring for too many years. Let it go now. With Nis gone, the Traitor’s best hope of freeing himself is also past. No one would think ill of you, least of all me, who aided you and Nangulis in forging the blade. Let it be. You deserve a life more urbane than fleeing deeds ill-done in the name of an unattainable standard of good.”

Kiril watched Angul guttering and nodded, now freely but silently crying. She turned to Gage, handing him Xet. “Take him for a bit, won’t you? I’ll say my good-byes to Angul, and Nangulis, as I should have done ten years ago when the Traitor was first contained.”

The thief nodded and accepted the slight burden of the dragonet.

Kiril moved to stand before the blade, her head down. Suddenly cognizant of her mumbled words addressed to the blade, Gage moved to join Delphe and Raidon by the crystal command chair.