Japheth narrowed his eyes, obviously unable to see the speaker. But he nodded, as if remembering something he already knew.
"Look, there," Yeva continued, pointing… a gesture Japheth also missed. Anusha followed Yeva's finger to another patch of ice like those she had misidentified in the orrery chamber. Even Xxiphu's nursery walls contained the cast-off recollections of the oldest aboleth.
The warlock continued to look around until he saw the ragged ice face on his own. His brow furrowed, but he didn't approach it.
"Where exactly are we in Xxiphu? The last thing I remember is falling through my cloak when the Lord of Bats burst the trek bell…" "We're in the spawning chambers," said Anusha, "safe for now from roving aboleths."
The warlock sighed. He turned back to Anusha. His eyes were just as scarlet as when she'd first seen them. She didn't remember his traveler's dust lasting so long.
He said, "If I'd known what we risked when I first gave you the elixir, I-"
"Hush," she murmured.
"We can make good our escape now. Though… your conveyance is destroyed, and I think your fiery-winged friend carrying it may be no more."
"An angel of exploration. Summoned by Neifion to pierce the distance between us. Yes… Gethshemeth caught the angel."
"Gethshemeth!" Anusha said. "The kraken is here?" "Apparently so."
"Well, it doesn't matter, I hope. Free us and we can all escape this monstrous city."
Japheth's stained gaze was his only response.
Anusha said, "Are you well? Doesn't your dust allow you to see the unseen? I've consciously rendered myself visible so you can see me. Yeva remains a dream figment. But why can't you see her? Your eyes are as red as I've ever seen them."
"I haven't taken a grain in several hours. My eyes are red with the symptoms of too much dust taken too long."
"But doesn't your pact protect you?"
"My pact is shattered. My powers are gone. Soon enough, I'll reach the end of the crimson road with no hope of return."
"What? I don't understand…"
"Behroun finally shattered my pact stone. All the extra strength I had from the Lord of Bats, as well as all the abilities granted by our pact, returned to him. I've got nothing left except for this cloak. My spells and rituals… they're gone. And with them the protection the Lord of Bats granted me from my addiction to the dust."
Anusha put a hand to her mouth. Japheth's claims seemed like some cruel joke, not the truth.
Yeva said, "So… you can't free us or yourself from Xxiphu, and you're succumbing to some lethal drug. Is that right?"
"Yes," replied Japheth. "But… I have some time before that happens."
"There must be something you can do," Anusha pleaded. "You swore a pact to the Lord of Bats for power.
What about those other creatures you learned about in that old Candlekeep tome? Swear a pact to one of them!"
Japheth began to shake his head, then paused. His pose grew thoughtful, even as a minor tremor in his hands gave the lie to his exterior calm.
"What? Is that possible?" Anusha asked. She hated the desperate sound in her voice.
Anusha noticed a low hum growing louder. She realized she'd been hearing it for some time. Now it swelled, a thunderous noise like subterranean waters rushing just beneath their feet.
The ice sheet crusting the wall behind them cracked. Splinters, of ice calved off but turned to glowing steam before they struck the floor. Several entombed dreams dropped free.
Two were filthy humanoids wearing uncured animal skins for clothing. They lay gasping on the tunnel floor, their eyes rolling in terror. Another creature slid down the wall near them, its shape at first hidden by a billow of steam. When the mist of the evaporating ice swirled away up the tunnel, the creature was revealed as a dark — skinned female elf with hair the color of bleached bone. Her lower body was like a huge spider. The woman-
some sort of drow? — loosed a full-throated bellow of rage.
"What is it?" said Japheth, looking around in bewilderment. "I can't see what made that sound."
"Some sort of drow… thing!" said Anusha. "And two savages."
Japheth's cloak flared and enveloped her.
She found herself and Japheth standing several yards farther from the disintegrating ice. Seeing the rictus of hate on the drow's face, she swallowed her protest. Instead, she raised her sword.
The two grimy humanoids tried to scramble away from the drow thing's stamping spider legs, but an arachnid foot, tipped with an ebony spike, skewered one through the chest. He was pinned to the floor. His confused, forlorn cry faded with his life.
Japheth extended his arms as if trying to find a wall in the dark. His head swiveled as he tried to locate the source of the sounds. "The drow monster killed a savage, and now it's going after the other one," whispered Anusha. "Let's go this way-"
Then the drow and the remaining humanoid screamed. The sound conveyed horror that outstripped the earlier cry of the one the drow had stabbed. They screamed for their eternal souls.
Both melted into so much swirling steam, just as the ice that had entombed them had. The mist spun away up the tunnel as if being drawn by a mighty vortex.
Yeva's eyes widened. She stumbled away from the swirling steam and stood so her shoulder touched Anusha's.
She was breathing heavily.
"Now what?" Japheth said.
"It's over-the creatures were never real. They unraveled and were drawn away."
They stood silently a moment, eyes riveted to the remaining ice that still looked solid. Anusha wondered how long it would remain so.
"The Eldest's awakening continues, I think," said Yeva. "Its memories and the dreams captured in them are being drawn back to it as its consciousness reassembles."
"Bane's bloody boots," said Japheth. His arm had found its way around Anusha in a protective embrace. Anusha was surprised-she'd subconsciously willed her pauldrons solid enough to give Japheth's arm purchase. It was only an illusion that he could offer physical security, but leaning into him, she realized it was an illusion she appreciated.
"That would be my fate, if not for Anusha," Yeva said, pointing to where the released memories had screamed and dissipated. "And it may still be."
A shiver vibrated through Japheth and into Anusha.
"Are you all right?" she asked, not knowing what else to say.
"At this very moment? Yes, I am," he said. "I can feel you shaking."
He let his arm drop and said, "It's a symptom of my withdrawal. Without my pact to hold it in check, the consequences of too much traveler's dust are coming to a head."
"How long until you succumb?" said Yeva.
"A few days, maybe a tenday…"
Anusha wondered which would happen first, Japheth falling to his addiction or she and Yeva to the Eldest's unremitting wakening.
The thundering, echoing thrum of rushing water fell away to a whisper, still present only because they now recognized it. In the stillness, a different noise became audible-a sucking, sliding sound issuing from the passage below. All turned to see. The faintest glimmer of purple light reflected on the slick sides of a cluster of aboleth eggs down where the tunnel bowed out of sight.
"A lamplighter's coming," Yeva hissed.
A bluish aboleth rounded the corner, sliding forward on a thin layer of slime. It moved until it reached a stubby obelisk. It touched a tentacle-fin to the obelisk's top, and another purple flame blossomed.
The creature slid around the protuberance and advanced toward them. Everyone took a step back.
Anusha had made herself visible so Japheth could see her, so she knew the creature could see her too. She called her sword and set it aglow with golden light. She raised it, imagining its blaze as bright as the sun.
The aboleth stopped dead in the tunnel. Its three eyes blinked in unsynchronized rhythm. Two eyes swiveled to fix on her, and one stared at Japheth.
Japheth spoke three syllables and thrust his hands for
ward. Except for the way his fingers shook like the gnarled digits of an old man, nothing happened.
The aboleth's T-shaped mouth opened and it made noises like the sound boots make when walking through mud. Yeva stiffened on hearing the sloshing, sucking noises as if she understand their meaning.
Japheth dropped his hands and shook his head, confused and miserable. "I… I must find-"
The warlock's foot caught a ridge in the floor and he fell over backward.
The monster rushed forward. Its tentacles lashed across the width of the corridor. Its tri-slit mouth gaped wider, and the sucking sounds transformed into a high-pitched keening. The air around the charging monster churned with a fine mist of slime. Anusha interposed herself between the creature and Japheth. Seizing every advantage, she let go her visibility to waking creatures. She recalled how she'd used her sword against the water-wrinkled hag back on Green Siren and against the black wyrm Scathrys on the kraken's island.
Yeva lurched ahead of the advancing creature until she came even with Anusha. It was obvious the aboleth couldn't see the woman. Anusha whispered, "Remember, it can't hurt us with a merely physical attack."
"The tentacles aren't our concern. What worries me is whether we can kill it before its birthing scream quickens too many of these eggs!"
Then the monster was before them. The mucous haze surrounding it whispered around the women with no apparent effect. Anusha brought her dream sword down at an angle. The creature charged full into the intangible blade, forehead first, oblivious to the weapon's presence.
A burst of blue flame limned the creature. Its highpitched utterance paused briefly before resuming. One of the creature's tentacles fell limp, and one of its eyes dulled and closed. But it kept moving toward Japheth.
Anusha instinctively stepped out of its path to its left, Yeva to its right.
As it swept past, Yeva glared at the monster, her eyes achieving a lethal focus. A barrage of rainbow colors swept across the aboleth. It shuddered and twisted as tears and cuts spontaneously appeared on its skin in a dozen places. Dark blood oozed forth to mix with the aboleth's coat of slime.
The aboleth shuddered to a halt mere paces from where the warlock struggled to regain his feet. It began to flail the space around it with its still-functioning tentacles. The few times one swept through where either she or Yeva stood, the creature shuddered. Its keening continued unabated.
Anusha slashed and hewed at the slick bulk with abandon.
"Be quiet!" she yelled, and cut the beast again. Its maddening scream finally began to gutter. "Anusha!" came Japheth's yell.
She followed the direction of his pointing finger with her gaze, back down the corridor where the aboleth had emerged.
A jelly sac of eggs on the ceiling containing three or four particularly large white orbs was quivering and swinging like a pendulum.
One of the eggs in the mass deflated. A flaccid abolethic bulk slid forth and slumped to the tunnel floor. Then another. And another. Two were nearly as large as the aboleth she and Yeva had just dispatched, and one was only half that big. But the smaller eggs also gave up their progeny, producing toy-size aboleths that plopped directly onto their larger siblings or slid down the walls on either side.
The creatures jerked and shuddered, slowly blinking their newborn eyes. They righted themselves within the corridor, flexing their slug bodies and grabbing with their questing tentacles. They looked like nothing so much as a writhing swarm of worms.
Then each and every one cried out, keening like the first one they'd just slain. The sound nearly dashed Anusha from her dream body. Up and down the corridor, the egg sacks that hadn't reacted to the first aboleth's scream twitched and shuddered.
"Run!" she shrieked. She needn't have said it. Yeva and Japheth were already dashing away up the corridor.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Green Siren, Beneath the Sea of Fallen Stars
Seren entered her cabin, closed the door behind her, and slid the latch. She was alone again. Finally.
Her cabin didn't rate a porthole. Part of the compensation she'd received when Thoster retained her services was a space to call her own. On a ship packed with cargo and crew, privacy was a luxury. She'd argued that if anyone needed time by herself, it was a wizard. Thoster had relented but given her the smallest, meanest cabin on Green Siren. Truth was, she was glad to be without a porthole. A window, even on the sea, would have been one more place the world could spy on her. Even though she no longer did Thoster's bidding, she held on to her room.
With a wave of her hand, she illuminated the confined space, revealing a table and stool, a bunk, and a narrow wardrobe crammed into the far end of the cabin. Scrolls, tomes, charts, and diagrams were heaped on the table. Chalk marked the walls, and dried ink dribbled the floor.
Seren settled on the stool and closed her eyes. She could only stand the company of others so long before she needed to get away. Her basic dislike of people was something she previously hid, but on a ship filled with pirates, no one really cared that she kept to herself. Concealing her distaste for company hadn't been necessary since she'd left the Red Wizards.
She snorted. She hadn't left willingly. She'd been the victim of circumstances beyond her control. How could anyone have predicted the Spellplague would sweep across Faerun when it did? No one could have. But she was being held to account for it regardless.
Seren seemed to have a knack for collecting ungodly powerful enemies. First Szass Tam, then Gethshemeth… and soon enough, probably this Eldest monstrosity Raidon described.
From his place in the circle on deck, the monk had claimed a couple hours of descent lay ahead of Green Siren.
Time enough for her to sneak a nap, she'd thought.
Of course, now she was too keyed up to sleep.
Seren sighed and rose. She turned to the wardrobe and opened it. Her assortment of personal effects hung from the wooden rod or lay folded on the standing closet's single lower shelf. Everything was white, including her spare sari, a long leather coat, a robe, and extra sandals and boots. Everything-except for one heavy crimson robe.
Seren ran her hand along the red robe's dramatically flaring collar. She recalled how much she'd enjoyed wearing the colors of Thay's elite wizard body. People made way for her based solely on her association with the dark mesa. Even other Red Wizards!
The memory of the day she lost everything ambushed her.
They'd been at the zenith of a mountain pass in the Earthfasts, making for Impiltur. The caravan she hired stretched out behind her own wagon, horse-drawn boxes growing progressively smaller down the switchback trail. Each was filled with a portion of the gold taken from the disbanded Red Wizard enclave of Raven's Bluff.
The day was clear but cold. At the top of the pass, she could see for what seemed forever. She imagined the shadowed ridges to the east might be the ramparts of Thay, calling her to a new phase of service.
She was uneasy with her decision, despite her bold pledge and subsequent vicious actions commandeering the treasury. She'd betrayed more than a few acquaintances. Some of them saw Seren's actions as treachery and swore vengeance. All that, and Szass Tam was her new master. He had been Seren's least favor ite zulkir, as she was repulsed by necromancy. But when he seized power in Thay, what choice had she? Become a fugitive like so many others? Give up all she had worked for and achieved?
No.
She had pledged herself to the new order. It was onward, to Thay and hopefully to- The sky flashed.
Seren shaded her eyes and looked up. The sun's normally yellow face was frosted behind a steely sheen. Flares of blue fire ringed it, growing longer every moment Seren watched. The filaments of fire reached toward Faerun, as if eager to embrace the world at long last.
Something slipped effortlessly into Seren's mind and squeezed. She uttered a curse and fell from the seat of her wagon. The impact with the ground wasn't as bad as the pain in her mind.
The Earthfasts sho
ok and the horses reared. Seren rolled into a gully to escape the flashing hooves. But she couldn't escape seeing the wagons lower on the trail pitch over the edge of the trembling precipice.
She blacked out.
When awareness returned, the pain was gone, but so was the treasury-and her magic.
Seren blinked, and she was back in her cabin on Green Siren. The red robe she hadn't worn in eleven years hung before her. She ran her hand down its side, feeling its wellmade weave.
Her past had found her. Red Wizard rebels and probably Thay knew she lived. Morgenthel or other bounty hunters would try to pick up her trail once more. Red Wizards who had a bone to pick with Seren would keep an eye out for her, desiring some measure of payback.
Her plan of remaining beneath her enemies' notice while she recovered a treasure equal to what she'd lost was compromised. At least she'd regained her spells, and then some, in the decade since the catastrophe. And she'd accumulated a tidy sum during that time too. If Raidon was true to his word, the remainder of what she required might finally be hers.
Which meant it was in her interest to see to it the monk's crazy quest was completed successfully. Seren closed her wardrobe door.
She'd done all she could for the time being to assure the success of their voyage. By anyone's standards, that was a lot. But worry wormed through her gut anyway. Something wasn't right with Thoster.
She didn't trust the pirate. Raidon was a fool if he believed anything that fell from that man's lips.
It wasn't merely that the captain was criminal, out only for his own gain. Far more worrisome was the captain's strange behavior under Gethshemeth's isle. The man was unstable. Who knew when he'd crack next?
Seren quit her cabin and stalked across the deck toward the captain's cabin at the opposite end.
Green Siren was lit by the lantern light reflecting off the gleamtail jacks swarming around the craft. Beyond their protective embrace, the solid rock fell away on both sides, allowing the ship to sail seams of mineral and stone into the depths.
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