Raidon repressed a shudder. He was suddenly and simultaneously cognizant that, with the scope of the situation before him, he hadn't thought about Ailyn for a great span of daylight…
The monk sighed, clenched his fists, and lost his focus. Of what real purpose was his life? He'd failed the one person who needed him. He'd outlived his own time and survived now only through a fluke of magic and circumstance. He didn't deserve or much care if his own existence continued. He yearned for an end to his struggles, an end to his shame. On the heels of that insight, an idea followed.
He said, "Once your capacity to move me is rejuvenated, transfer me directly into the kraken's presence. It will be caught off guard. I will strike with all the art of Xiang Temple in my fist, and kill the kraken before it knows it is threatened. Its death convulsion will kill me, and if not, I will drown before I reach the surface. I do not fear such an outcome. I would welcome it."
Silence was Raidon's response.
"Did you hear, Cynosure?" demanded the man of the air, his voice infused with uncharacteristic volume. "Send me along now. Let me slay this kraken and be done with it all."
The sun was sinking into the west, and a coolness grew on the plain. Raidon spied a wolf in the valley below, sniffing along the track of some hoped-for twilight meal.
Finally the voice replied, "I appreciate your fervor, Raidon Kane. Were I able to transfer you thus, assuming I could place you so close to the great kraken within its wards, which I cannot, perhaps you could kill Gethshemeth. But in killing it, and yourself, you would alert Xxiphu."
"Surely, I can slay Gethshemeth quickly enough," returned the monk, though with less certitude. "I would have a few moments to catch it by surprise-"
"It has held the relic too long. Even if I could put you in the right place at the right time, which I have just explained I cannot, killing the great kraken is not enough. We need to kill Gethshemeth and simultaneously sever its connection with the relic, and therefore, its connection to the Abolethic Sovereignty. Your Sign alone is insufficient to that task."
Raidon pulled his fingers across his close-cropped black hair, massaging away a germ of annoyance. The construct was becoming more long-winded and circumspect by the moment.
"Then what, Cynosure? What can I do?"
"You must discover the fate of the sentient sword, Angul. It alone, in your hands, can accomplish what must be done."
"Angul. Yes, a powerful blade. But was it not an item infused with its power by the Weave? With Mystra's fall, how could it still function?"
"You ask a penetrating question. A complex answer exists; the simple answer is that it simply does. Will that satisfy?"
Raidon frowned. His emotions were as out of control as they'd ever been. If Cynosure were standing next to him just then, he would have struck the golem.
Cynosure must have sensed something of the monk's mood. It said, "I apologize. Listen, then. Many magical items such as swords, cloaks, boots, and especially relics and artifacts survived the Spellplague and still operate, though sometimes with altered abilities. A magical item's abilities were scribed into these devices when they were created, so even though the Weave was used in their making, the Weave no longer plays any part in their continuing operation. Likewise, though a forge flame is used in the making of a sword, if that forge flame later goes out for good, the sword is no less sharp. Does that answer you fairly?"
Raidon thought on Cynosure's words. He recalled the effects of the Spellplague on a person. The caravan chief, who'd died in its hungry grip, for instance.
The monk grunted. He asked, "Why not tell Kiril all this? She's Angul's wielder. And a swordswoman. While I am proficient with blades, I prefer not to rely on them. You would be better enlisting her than me."
Cynosure replied, "As I said before, I lost track of Kiril after the Year of Blue Fire. She bears no Sign, yet in a dim way I was able to discern her condition. After she left the ruins of Ormpetarr, she and her dwarf employer plunged into something local survivors call the Plague-wrought Land. I have not detected her or Angul's presence since. And, moreover, you are the only person with whom I can converse."
"How do you know Angul lies within the Plague-wrought Land?"
"I do not. But it is the only lead we have. Perhaps you will learn more when you visit. A small settlement lies on its outskirts-you could get yourself a meal when you arrive."
Raidon's stomach spoke up of its own accord. He was still ravenous. His grief-inspired fast had sapped his strength. A sit-down meal… perhaps that was what he needed. With a pot of steaming tea on the side.
"Then send me on to Ormpetarr, when your strength is recovered. I will eat. After that, perhaps I will discover Kiril's fate, and if I decide you are not dealing with me falsely, take up the sword, Angul, as my own."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Green Siren on the Sea of Fallen Stars
You can't stop yourself, can you?"
Japheth looked up, his hand half out of a fold of his cloak, his fingers clutching a dull tin.
He frowned at Anusha. The girl perched on the edge of her travel case, nearly knee to knee with him as he sat on his cot. The porthole illuminated the cabin's cramped expanse, though poorly. Her face was half shadowed, but he could read her expression well enough. She was concerned. Constant proximity to her over the last days had worn away much of the distance he preferred to maintain between himself and others.
He had been lulled into a growing camaraderie. At first, she had done all the talking, relating to him the vivid details of her fight on deck against the sea hag. Japheth enjoyed her enthusiastic rendition of the events. In another person, he might have judged the story overlong, but somehow he hadn't minded as the account poured from her lips. She'd never successfully stood off a determined attack by foes eager for her blood before-why shouldn't she be flushed with success? More than that, he was interested to hear more of her peculiar sleepwalking ability.
Her question about his traveler's dust made him wish he'd maintained his customary reserve. The girl was becoming too familiar. Who was she to question his habits? Annoyance flared as a biting reply rose like acid in his throat. But he didn't voice it. Why?
Why did he not speak his mind with her? Why did he treat her so… delicately? Perhaps it was the fine cut of her jaw, her smooth-faced youthfulness. Her presence, in some way, recalled to him when he'd related to the world as she did, when he was still unscarred and saw limitless potential in everything. He had been like her not so long ago. Listening to her, watching her, he realized just how many dark events had got behind him. She radiated youth's naivety and energy, unconsciously and without regard to its scarcity.
If he allowed his guard to crumble further, he might make the mistake of dwelling overlong on her feminine attributes. It was better to think of her as a child, as when he'd first met her, rather than what she really was.
He imagined cradling Anusha's head in his hands and kissing her until they were both out of breath.
Lord of Bats forefend! Where had that come from? He shook his head, attempting to dislodge his thoughts from that track. He didn't need the complication of a relationship, however fleeting or innocent.
He tried to think of something else, anything else. An image of his tin filled with roseate crystals popped into his head. His palms itched in immediate response. His concentration shivered, and he growled.
"Are you all right?" Anusha asked, leaning toward him.
"My business is my own," he finally replied. He tried to make his voice cold, but it came out cracked.
Wait! He remembered what his mind kept trying to forget. Despite her protestations to the contrary, she could still be an agent of Behroun.
But once all was said and done, his hand seemed to spasm open of its own accord. The tin dropped back into his cloak.
Anusha watched him a moment more, then asked, "Do you suffer? I don't understand. You said your Lord of Bats keeps you from succumbing to the effe
cts of traveler's dust."
"True, but the craving never leaves me."
"Maybe you're not getting the full benefit of your arrangement."
Japheth considered, and then said, "I have taken more than the Lord of Bats was willing to offer. I may not negotiate further without risking all I have already gained."
Anusha digested that, and then she asked, "What is a 'pact stone'? In my half brother's office, Behroun said he'd break your pact stone if you didn't do as he said, and something about how that would make the Lord of Bats so mad he'd come for you."
The girl looked at him, waiting for a reply. Confident she'd get one. Was this unearned confidence a product of her youth or her privileged upbringing? Or, it dawned on him, perhaps it was merely her personality.
"It is a complicated story."
Anusha stretched back. "We have days before we get to the atoll, you said. Tell me."
Japheth rubbed together the thumb and forefinger of the hand that had so recently held the dust tin. Why shouldn't he tell her?
The warlock said, "All right. This is the story. Before it became widely recognized that traveler's dust was ultimately lethal, I traveled too far down the crimson road. I knew I was to die, so I decided to perish in dramatic fashion, at a time of my own choosing. I took all the dust I had at one time. A lethal dose."
Anusha put a hand to her mouth.
"The crimson road leads directly into what may be the literal Abyss. Demons wait, hunger chasing across their glassy eyes. Victims of the dust walk, screaming, into demonic embrace. The road ends in a precipice, and in its tooth-lined gullet the drug-addled are consumed, mind and soul."
The girl's eyes were wide. The high color in her cheeks drained to parchment white. She believed him.
"Terrified, I regretted my decision and called out for succor, promising anything, if someone would save me from my self-inflicted fate. And thus, when a great bat sailed down from the burning sky, I thought it was my savior. It grasped me up before I could plunge to the road's terminus. Its claws held me tight, but they also cut me."
Japheth's words quickened. "It winged up through a tempest of fire, ice, and lightning, until we emerged into an enchanted reflection of the world. I saw streams of crystal water, vivid forests of living green, and mountains so high their beauty and majesty stopped my breath. I recognized it as the same landscape described in a tome I had been reading, Fey Pacts of Ancient Days. I realized the great winged creature was an entity also named in that tome, and I knew fear again. For the creature that held me could be none other than the Lord of Bats."
Into the silence that followed, Anusha asked, "Who is the Lord of Bats? A god?"
Japheth shook his head. "No god, but a powerful and potent creature, if called up in just the proper fashion. More by luck than wit, I had done so in dabbling with the ancient tome that named him, and my subsequent promise to enter into a bargain with any that saved me. The Lord of Bats had the strength to find me, save me, and seal a pact between us."
"A mutually beneficial pact?"
"It might have been, but in the urgency of my need, I promised everything and all; I pledged my soul, though I needn't have done so, had I known better. The Lord of Bats took advantage of my desperation. He sealed my pledge to him in a physical object-a small emerald pendant. The pact stone. It is the pact stone Behroun threatened to break, if I didn't do as I was told."
Anusha's brows tightened with incomprehension.
"My pact stone is, for all its small size, laden with consequence. Because it exists, I can call upon fell powers and feats of magic that are known to the Lord of Bats. Moreover, I can command the Lord of Bats's lesser minions, use his implements of power as my own, and even travel to his shadowed fortress. The stone is a potent tool, and it binds me to him, and him to me."
"Why would he cede you so much of his power? That seems like a mistake."
"The pact stone has one more function. The Lord of Bats pledged to take back my pact-born powers, then to drink my blood and eat my body, should the stone ever be destroyed. He invested the stone with such consequence so he could hold it to ensure my good behavior. If the pact stone is broken, I lose my powers and the Lord of Bats comes for me to collect his due."
"Oh!" Anusha gripped his shoulder as if to comfort him. He didn't shrink from the contact.
"The Lord of Bats showed me the pact stone. He told me he would destroy it if I did not do as he commanded in all things. He said I would be his puppet in the world that had banned his entry. He said that through me, the Lord of Bats would hunt the world again, as he had done in the days when humans were still 'beasts without language' and Faerie hadn't receded from the world."
The warlock clenched both fists and said in a louder voice, "Snatched so recently from the crimson road, I had little to Ipse. Without pondering the danger, I called swiftly and without full understanding on the power the Lord of Bats bequeathed me. I wrested the pact stone from him even as he brandished it!" "He let the stone go?"
"His ego was his undoing, I suppose. He couldn't conceive I'd have the effrontery or wit to immediately act. Perhaps he was used to dealing with primeval men of duller wit. Perhaps his fey nature prevented him from recognizing my mortal desperation. After he realized his error, it was too late. With stone in hand, I commanded a portion of his power, and I held the implement through which he'd planned to leash me. We fought, but I imprisoned him in the highest spire of his own fortress. I claimed the castle as my own and returned to the world. I was my own agent, and the world seemed alight with possibility and promise. Until your half brother stole the stone."
"Behroun is a criminal and a bastard," agreed the girl. "I can't believe I share even half his blood. But he is no wizard or sage. How did he discover the significance of the stone?"
"That question has long troubled me. I suspect the Lord of Bats sent out messages on bat wings far and wide. The Lord of shadow-mantled Darroch Castle schemes always to break the stone, whereupon he would free himself and find me. He must have made contact with Behroun and showed Lord Marhana the significance of the stone. Not long after, I received a cordial invitation to visit New Sarshel."
The girl sniffed. "He has a way with words, when he tries."
"Yes, and my guard was down. I had no reason to suspect a trap. Moreover, I didn't expect anyone in the world to recognize the pact stone's significance, and I was lax in its safekeeping. Once I arrived in New Sarshel, your half brother employed master thieves to bring him the stone. His instruction from the Lord of Bats was to smash it. But upon gaining my pact stone, Behroun was too savvy to break it. Instead, he uses it to compel my service even as the Lord of Bats meant to." "I am so sorry, Japheth."
He made no reply. He merely looked into her eyes. They were dark pools of mystery hinting at unphimbed depths.
She leaned forward, her lips slightly parted. It would be so easy to bend to meet her halfway and touch his lips to hers.
His heart tried to escape his chest, beating with two coequal emotions: confusion and desire.
The warlock stood abruptly and said the first thing that came into his head. "Would you like to see Darroch Castle? I can show you. We can use my cloak as a bridge."
The moment was broken, as he'd intended. And now half regretted.
The girl sighed. Then she cocked her head and smiled. She nodded up at him. "I'm on a ship bound for who knows where because I wanted to see wonders beyond Sarshel. Now you say you want to show me the castle you keep in your cloak? Of course… but is it safe?"
Japheth already wished he'd come up with some other way to derail the moment. He didn't want to rescind his offer, though. He replied, "Safe enough, as long as you stay close to me."
"Now?" The girl rose from the edge of her travel case. He smelled her warm scent.
Exhilaration made him incautious. He knew it, but didn't give himself more time to think it through. "Why not?"
Japheth swirled his cloak off his shoulders. He turned toward the cabin's doo
r and held the fabric with his arms outstretched before him and slightly raised, so that the hem just touched the floor. He took one quick pace to the door and pressed the narrow rectangle of darkness he held into the door frame. When he released his grip and stepped back, the cloak remained in place, obscuring the wooden door behind it.
"It looks like a door of darkness," Anusha breathed.
He nodded. "It is. It leads to my castle."
They stepped forward. Anusha flinched as if expecting to bump her head, but instead, shadows grabbed them. Cold hands pulled them along a tunnel whose floor, walls, and ceiling were composed of leathery, undulating wings. With a flurry of flapping and a whiff of ammonia, the darkness released them.
They stood in a subterranean vault whose dimensions were lost to cobwebbed corners. Behind them along a rocky wall wavered a door-shaped opening. Japheth's cabin was blurrily visible within the rectangle.
Piercing gold and silver light from their right made them both squint. The light poured inward from an irregular, natural-looking cave mouth. Through it Japheth saw a verdant mountain meadow whose vivid colors stole his breath, as always, and whose piercing scents brought tears to his eyes. He'd never ventured in that direction, for Darroch Castle was the other way.
The gold and silver light from the cave mouth slowly fell to purples, blues, and shadow black. Over the span of a few hundred feet, the dim illumination was transformed to a dreary radiance of hopelessness. The last glimmers of light were enough to reveal a vast castle, one whose mortar was black and whose bricks were immense blocks of void. A central spire rose above the walls, so high it brushed the vault's stalactite-toothed ceiling. Immense wings stretched out from each side of the spire, rapacious and dragon-like in their span, like hunger itself made manifest.
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