Then there was his forget-me-not. Not merely a reminder of maternal affection, but apparently an object whose power could prove useful against monsters. Was it fate, serendipity, or cruel chance that pulled him into an age-old conflict? A conflict in which the enemy was shrouded in an evil so cruel it eclipsed the Nine Golden Swords as a mountain overwhelms a pebble.
They'd spent a bitterly cold night sheltering from another snowfall beneath the downward branches of a mighty conifer. Adrik had gathered several cones and exclaimed over their novelty. Only Xet seemed to care.
Today they'd walked only a few miles when Kiril said something in a language he didn't know.
The swordswoman stood at the base of a snowy slope crowned with evergreens and massive boulders. The confluence of boulders and boles created, from a particular perspective, an inviting cavity.
"This is an entrance to Sild?yuir," said Kiril.
"I thought all the gates were magically scribed menhirs," pondered Adrik.
The woman shrugged, "Stab me if I know. This one isn't." Raidon and Adrik followed as she headed up the slope. She paused when she stood between two of the veined, snow-dusted boulders.
"How does this damn thing function again?" Kiril muttered. With uncertainty writ plainly across her features, she traced a series of geometrical signs in the air as she spoke several words unfamiliar to Raidon.
"Something's happening," reported Adrik, his hands out before him. "A magical charge comes into alignment. ."
Kiril finished speaking and a silvery light flared in the cavity between the boulders. "The gate is open. Welcome to the realm of the star elves." She walked into the gap, Xet sitting quietly on her shoulder. As she moved, whirling shadows leaped and spun from the boulders. As the shadows proliferated, she became harder to discern, while her tracks in the snow became shallower by the step. When Kiril reached the center of the hollow, she was nothing but a fading shadow, and a moment later, completely absent.
Raidon and Adrik looked at each other. Adrik yelled, in fear or exultation, Raidon could not determine, and plunged into the hollow. Gone.
The monk, surprised to note a faint tinge of nausea, walked forward.
A handful of heartbeats passed in silence. Of those who had walked ahead and disappeared from the Yuirwood, no sign remained. A two-legged shadow slid from behind a boulder and dashed into the hollow, one hand bare, the other gloved with a bound demon.
To Raidon, it seemed day plunged into night's darkling gates. In the extravagant sky revealed, cloudless and crystal clear, all the stars of the cosmos seemed crowded. Heaven's span glittered with a million points of sparkling light, diamond white, ruby red, emerald, sapphire, and citrine. He saw circular clusters and bands of light that, when he focused on them, revealed themselves as millions of yet tinier brilliant points. Streamers of glowing nebulae poured and frothed across the firmament, mingling within them all the colors of existence.
The monk gasped, realizing he hadn't drawn breath for many heartbeats as he stood transfixed, staring upward.
The dragonet darted above them, diving and soaring, chirping bell-like tones of wonder. When it occluded a star, its crystalline body flashed sapphire, green, or red. Xet's antics broke the spell, and Raidon dropped his gaze from the entrancing heights.
Raidon stood in a half-forested valley whose opposing ridges spread away from each other as if the land itself had thrown wide arms to embrace the glorious sky. A pearl gray glow clung to the horizons, as if promising the first hints of dawn. A promise that would never be met, according to Kiril. The valley, glimmering and dreamy in the brilliant starlight, had left winter behind, or perhaps had never known it. A stream burbled through the valley, sparkling.
He breathed and smelled an odor not unlike dawn's promise, rich with growing things. It was cool, but not cold.
"Incredible!" repeated Adrik every few heartbeats. The sorcerer was turning in a slow circle, his head bobbing up and down as he sought to absorb it all.
Kiril said, "Enough sightseeing. Take it all in as we walk. We have a fair march ahead of us."
The sorcerer asked, "Will we see a glass castle? And meet any star elves? I mean, besides you?"
The swordswoman merely grunted, "Could be. There're fewer of us than there used to be." She walked toward a far ridge, paralleling the stream.
The monk yearned to demand an answer to Adrik's question. Instead he concentrated on finding his focus. The shock of bodily traveling to this alien place, coupled with the thought that his mother might be close.. well, truth to tell he was too much in the grip of the moment, not apart from it. He wrapped the lessons of Xiang around himself and followed. Adrik skipped along behind, stopping every ten heartbeats to marvel at some newly revealed celestial phenomena, then running to catch up, jabbering with a child's unrestrained wonder.
As he walked, Raidon was mostly successful in keeping his gaze below the trees' crowns, away from the captivating sky. The otherworldly landscape was somehow bound to the Yuirwood; he could see the connection in the way the starry realm's forests and hills matched the landscape he recalled from the snow-speckled forest they'd left behind. The congruence was not perfect. Here the trees were taller and wider, and more majestic, silver-trunked with little undergrowth. Their smooth boles stretched in elegant lines, supporting a silvery green canopy.
Adrik's voice rang out, calling more questions after the swordswoman who stalked ahead. "How wide a realm is Sild?yuir?" The sorcerer seemed oblivious of the dangerous mood that enveloped their new-met companion since they'd arrived.
Raidon saw the woman's hands clench, then loosen. She threw back over her shoulder, "As large as the Yuirwood, no bigger."
The sorcerer's brows knitted as he muttered something under his breath. Then, "Nearly three hundred miles?"
Kiril made no reply. Instead she raised her hand and pointed at a stone bridge silvered with moss, and a partly paved path. Here and there, silver-green grass burst up through the loose paving stones, indicating the road's infrequent use, Raidon supposed.
"Ah ha!" Adrik exclaimed, gazing raptly at the bridge and path.
Kiril walked across the bridge; monk and sorcerer followed. When he reached the top of the span, Raidon gazed down into water. It reflected the stars above, rippling and shimmering with the moving water. Of the bridge, or himself and his companions, he saw no reflection.
They walked the broad path into the forest depths, passing fully beneath the canopy. It was cooler beneath the eaves, and darker without the direct radiance of the starlight. Despite the relative gloom, the dearth of undergrowth provided Raidon long, open views to either side. As they walked, he heard the rustlings of forest creatures, and the occasional cry of a night owl, the lonely howl of a distant wolf. A few times he saw silver-gray deer flashing in the distance. Another time he saw a wheeling, darting flight of gemlike dragonflies whose slender forms burned emerald and sapphire. Because he couldn't accurately judge their distance, he was unable to measure their size, but he guessed they were large. Once, a dark, furred beast shuffled parallel to their track for a mile or more. Raidon strained his eyes to discover the creature's shape, but soon enough it turned and was gone.
"What was that?" inquired the sorcerer.
Raidon replied, "A bear, perhaps?"
"No, something bigger," said Adrik, looking forward for some confirmation from the elf.
Kiril paused and frowned back to where the sorcerer pointed. She squinted and shook her head.
"It ran off, I guess," Adrik explained, peering into the gloom.
"Sild?yuir is not entirely free of threat. You can die here from a wild creature's attack as easily as you could in the sunlit world."
"I don't think it was a bear," maintained the sorcerer.
"Did I say bear? Far worse than bears hunt my homeland, especially of late." The elf began walking. The ridge was only dozens of yards ahead, clear of trees and promising a wide view beyond.
"What? What's worse?" persisted the sorcerer
, running to keep up. Raidon continued to quietly stride as the rear guard.
"Before I took up my post in Stardeep, a couple of communities went dark-a glass citadel here, a tower there-and they were found vacant. The inhabitants were gone with no explanation or sign of violence. Later it was learned that invaders were responsible, awful creatures called nilshai."
Adrik interrupted, "Invaders from where? I haven't heard that name before."
"Nilshai invade from outside Sild?yuir-not Faer?n, but from the gray misty expanse that borders all worlds."
"Does this 'gray misty expanse' have a name?"
Kiril shrugged. "Who cares? Our time in Sild?yuir is short. We go to the closest edge, and from there, we'll bridge the distance to Stardeep's underdungeon via little-used paths."
Kiril topped the rise and stopped, her head swiveling to the left, then to the right. She muttered, "What the Hells? That isn't right.."
Adrik and Raidon joined her and looked across a wide, fey plain beneath an even broader and more breathtaking swath of sky than was visible back in the valley.
Below them, a slumping glass citadel burned.
Gage moved from shadow to shadow in the gloom beneath the canopy. The great silver trees were wider than any in his experience and offered an ideal breadth from which to hide along the whitestone path. However, he was exposed to anything that hunted the deeper forest lanes behind him. His back itched at the thought.
When he'd seen Kiril and the strangers disappear without a trace between two massive boulders, he'd dashed forward hoping to take advantage of the portal before it slammed shut. His gamble paid off. A moment of sickness, and he'd opened his eyes elsewhere.
The splendid stars! How long had he stood rapt? He shook his head. It seemed like moments, but could have been longer. It was difficult to measure time in this realm that seemed always and forever a summer night. Once his wits returned, his quarry was gone.
Gage followed, or so he hoped. At least two figures had gone by foot from where he'd appeared, through the grass and trees until they found a path of overgrown stones. He was fairly certain he'd chosen the same direction as Kiril, though doubts pestered him.
Wait. Did the branch on the tree ahead just move? He stopped dead, squinting into the gloom.
It wasn't a branch, it was..
A monster.
Its shape was like a large worm with glistening, blue-black flesh. Small tendrils or limbs branched from its body. It dropped from the tree, but stopped before striking the earth. Buzzing insectile wings beat at the dusky gloom, sickeningly small but large enough to hold the creature aloft. Three golden orbs projected from a blunt, bulbous thickening that served as the creature's body, or perhaps its head.
Another appeared, and Gage caught his breath. This one squirmed along the forest floor, with a rolling corkscrew gait reminiscent of a serpent. This one was closer, and Gage perceived its alien body in all its awful asymmetry. The horrid creature possessed three clawed legs, a ropy body, and three long whiplike tentacles, each divided at the end into stubby, strong fingers. Its head was a bulbous case atop its trunk, crowned by three stalked eyes. This one's three membranous wings folded tightly into its torso as it ambled along the ground. Its hide was slick and slimy, and mottled blue and black in color.
The monster slithered straight toward Gage.
The thief drew a dagger and hurled it. The blade plunged into the creature's flesh right between the stalked eyeballs. It screamed and reversed direction.
Gage drew another dagger, holding it ready. The hovering monster's tentacles writhed, and a searing blast of lightning leaped from its stubby fingers to ground itself in the space where the thief had stood a heartbeat earlier. How many more daggers did he have ready? Only three, he realized.
As Gage ducked out of his instinctual evasive leap, his brain realized what his body already knew; the damned things could wield sorcery! He raced around the wide bole of the closest silvery tree, eluding another blast of electricity that scattered wood chips in a dozen trajectories, followed by smoking trails.
He stood, his back to the trunk, breathing hard. He yelled, "Any chance you've made a mistake? I'm no threat. What say you go your way, I go mine. No harm-"
A blast of electricity shuddered into the tree, this time penetrating all the way through. Agony seared his upper back and shoulders.
Gage darted away from the thing, to duck behind the next tree he reached. He placed a dagger in his mouth and rummaged through the pockets on his belt. Lucky his maneuvers hadn't broken any of the vials. With practiced fingers he undid a clasp and pulled forth a glass vial labeled Inhalant. Dark yellow liquid sloshed within. He whispered a prayer to Akadi, crouched, and tossed the vial onto the path he'd taken.
He heard the vial smash and the hiss of the contents as they volatilized in the air. He waited a moment then leaned to peer back.
A yellow haze hung in the forest, and at its edge lay one of the creatures. As monstrously odd as it was, it still required breath. Its inert bulk showed it was as susceptible to alchemical poisons as he was. But where was the flying one?
Perhaps it fled when its companion succumbed to the gas. Or did it merely hide, lying in wait to ambush him should he reveal himself? No way to predict the psychology of a creature so alien; it only barely possessed something resembling a body.
He had to risk it. The longer he huddled unmoving, the colder the trail of his quarry. He glanced around the tree.
He looked again at the body of the fallen creature and shuddered. The elf hadn't mentioned such dangerous predators roamed her homeland-the creature was unlike anything he'd ever seen. He sniffed. At least it didn't have the stench of the Abyss.
Nothing swooped from the canopy; nothing rose from the forest floor.
He continued on, setting a comfortable pace-not so quick as to miss the trail, nor so slow that his quarry eluded him.
Nor did Gage forget about the monster that had peppered him with sorcerous bolts. As he advanced, a conviction grew that the creature hadn't fled. No, it had merely hidden, perhaps by magic. Perhaps it followed him, waiting for him to grow tired or drop his guard.
Something creaked above him and he rolled to the left as if evading another bolt of lightning. As he pulled out of his roll he drew daggers and glared upward. Nothing but a break in the canopy, through which a scattering of stars gleamed and winked.
His gauntlet chuckled.
He resisted the urge to smash it against a nearby tree. Instead, he sheathed his dagger and curled his hand into a fist, squeezing the foul-breathed mouth as tightly as he could. "Quiet, while I try to find all my blades," he told his gauntlet.
The demonic titter was muffled, but the unholy mirth could not be stilled.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Stardeep, Cynosure Prime's Chamber
Delphe rested, her back against a wide stone slab written with cramped, writhing script that glowed as if by starlight. A moment earlier, she'd been in the Throat staring anxiously down into the Well. All was well in the Well. .
She grimaced. So much for silly little superstitions. Activity in the boundary layer had seemed within normal tolerances, but how long would that last? How long could she continue to personally monitor the Well without Cynosure's never-sleeping cognizance? Cynosure was designed to be the first line of defense against the Traitor's escape; mortal Keepers were merely meant as fail-safes.
She had only spent a short time in reverie in the last couple days, and her brain fizzed with fatigue. Manually triggering Stardeep's useful but complex transfer function was exhausting. Add to that the stress of worrying about the Traitor while at the same time attempting to evaluate Cynosure's nodes for possible contamination, and the result was a Keeper a hand's span away from collapse.
Delphe mentally tallied her success. She'd checked twenty of the thirty-some partial and complete nodes through which Cynosure's mind normally resonated while he was in Stardeep's command loop. All seemed clean, with no sign of decay, corr
uption, or tampering. Likewise, Prime itself was a paragon of health. Good progress, but. .
It would take at least another day to finish checking the rest of the nodes.
She dropped her head into her hands.
"Are you well, Delphe?" Cynosure Prime's deep voice boomed from the darkness.
She lifted her head, tracking slowly up the immense, streaked, and stained form of the sentient idol, and looked into its dimly shining scarlet eyes.
"I fear I'm about to discover the limits of my competence," she admitted.
"Have you finished your trace?"
"No, I am two-thirds complete," she replied.
"Then our progress is positive-why so forlorn?"
"I don't have the strength to finish," said Delphe, slumping further.
"I have been monitoring your progress, and I agree," rumbled the idol. "I have a solution, if you wish to hear it."
She blinked. "Please, share."
"It is not necessary to bring me completely back into the loop in order for me to gain access to a majority of my previous functions. Many of my nodes are redundant. You could drop from the loop the nodes you are uncertain about, then reroute and reintroduce my consciousness to what remains."
Delphe blinked again.
"That… is not a bad idea." She considered Cynosure's words. It was true, now that she allowed her tired mind a moment's contemplation-every one of the focus points serving as nodes were not strictly necessary. She had checked out and passed more than enough nodes to do exactly what the idol suggested. Enough nodes were clean.
At least, clean as far as her abilities could trace. Which was the real worry-what if some insidious error or malign influence lay hidden from her yet, like a cyst in a piece of meat about to be eaten? What if she brought Cynosure back into the loop only to trigger that influence once again?
"Dark the stars, what choice do I have? Cynosure, prepare yourself to be reinvested into Stardeep's control functions."
Delphe pushed herself up and walked to stand directly beneath the towering figure. She grasped her amulet containing the Cerulean Sign and invoked one of its abilities, one of the few still recalled. The same symbol on Cynosure Prime's chest blazed the color of heaven, and the red glow in its eyes flashed once, then faded.
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