Stardeep d-3

by Bruce R Cordell

  Stardeep, Underdungeon

  Bolts of consumptive fire leaped from the ancient one's immaterial staff. Telarian caught each blast on Nis's length, turning ravening flame to puffs of harmless ash.

  More troubling was the Keeper's footing. Telarian's stance was a constant dance upon the biting heads and grasping hands of an imbecilic army of fossil zombies. Nis lent him an agility beyond the limits of mortal flesh, yet still he gasped and trembled on the cusp of failure. Cold calculation, another gift of his dark blade, revealed it was only a matter of time before a fatal blast or stony claw broke his defense. Then he would be pulled down by so many grasping hands his enhanced strength and blade-given healing would fail.

  He attempted to close with the bolt-flinging lich, the creature both he and Nis agreed was responsible for the fossil uprising. Again, the undead creature was whisked away on its followers hands, while the elf's passage was thwarted by a frenzy of activity.

  Had Telarian stood upon solid ground that wouldn't suck him down at its first opportunity, his own arsenal of prepared spells waiting patiently for release might have made the difference. Waste no time on fantasies, chastened Nis, only on what is achievable.

  And so the unnamed lich and Telarian continued their erratic orbit around the throne, one vainly attempting to catch the other. And all the while, his insurance, the Empyrean Knights, died in the undead tide that surged around the central mound. He could hear their yells, their calls to each other, and their death screams.

  His opponent suddenly darted its caved-in face away from Telarian. The diviner followed its gaze-and saw a blue flame outlining a sword twin in shape to his own. Angul! Wielded by Kiril, the blade flashed with an energy it had withheld when last Telarian beheld it, when he'd ordered a small troop of Knights to retrieve it.

  Its power in Kiril's hands was nothing short of awe inspiring. She didn't attempt to bypass the massed petrified undead. She swept through them, reducing the creatures to so much dust within the vortex of Angul's flashing influence. He knew Nis could not equal what he now witnessed. Could it be, he wondered, that in Kiril's hands, lost love urges the soul fragment to greater heights?

  Nis's failure to respond was answer enough.

  The lich, too, recognized the greater threat that now approached. It redirected its bedeviling bolts toward Kiril. Telarian was tempted to yell out a warning, but was quelled by Nis: Kill this creature while it is distracted.

  Telarian scrambled up onto the throne, and unlike his expectation, wasn't struck with some nameless curse. With a solid foundation underfoot, he was finally able to bring Nis to bear. Even as the lich realized its lapse, Nis's black length fell full upon its head.

  The undead's crown of fire flared then failed beneath the stroke. But the fading crown provided Telarian's foe one last moment of salvation from Nis's penetrating blade. The lich countered with its staff, catching the diviner on the shoulder. Pain, quickly damped down by Nis, couldn't hide the smell of cooked meat.

  The rending noise of stone being pulverized announced Kiril's arrival at the base of the pyramid of squirming bodies. She abandoned her sweep-and-smash technique in favor of agility. She ascended the active pile almost as nimbly as Telarian. He noted with interest that Angul's gifts to his wielder didn't include dexterity to the same degree that Nis did.

  Kiril reached the summit and her eyes flitted across him, then Nis, but she turned her attention fully on the lich. She bellowed, "Suffer not abominations!" Her accompanying strike sheared the lich's staff into so many disintegrating tongues of flame. Even as it raised its fiery cape into great wings, as if to bear itself away, Kiril and Telarian simultaneously struck at it.

  Angul stabbed low, into its abdomen, Nis swept high, at its head. The flaming wings collapsed and winked out. The unnamed king of fossils who'd sat alone beneath the violet flame for years uncounted tumbled down the mound, unsupported by its subjects. It struck the hard cobbles at the pile's base and shattered with a sound high and pure.

  A wave of stillness was born in that instant, an expanding circle whose circumference quickly raced away in all directions, leaving in its wake hundreds of unmoving, eroded, cracked, broken, and blood-stained statues. Above, the violet flame guttered and winked out.

  Here and there across the vast city, lantern light flickered to life as surviving Knights sought to coalesce back into a unified force.

  Telarian wondered how many remained to service his greater scheme, but pushed such distractions from his head for the moment. Kiril demanded all his attention and wit as she stared coolly at him, her features highlighted by Angul's blue fire. He yet held Nis, whose length remained night's own domain.

  Sheathe me, instructed Nis. As always, Telarian obeyed.

  The diviner blinked, and sudden fear clawed at his guts. She'd cut him down! She-

  Kiril sheathed Angul in one easy motion, plunging them into darkness. Into that absence of light, Kiril spoke, her tone strangely even. "What news of the Traitor, Keeper of Stardeep?"

  Telarian called up a quick spell of radiance and set it to dance on the throne top. In that glow, he lowered himself from the throne to stand on equal, if uneven, footing with the swordswoman.

  He replied, "The Traitor strains at its chains in a fashion never foreseen. It has assumed mental domination over my fellow Stardeep Keeper! Things have nearly fallen completely apart in Stardeep's Inner Bastion."

  "The compromised Keeper," said Kiril, "that would be Telarian? I've heard his name from the lips of the blood-flecked spy he hired to steal Angul! Telarian, the one who tried to lure me to Stardeep with his promise that.. " She gulped, and sudden moisture welled in Kiril's eyes.

  The diviner frowned, swallowed his fear, and said, "You've been partly misled-it is Keeper Delphe, still ensconced in Stardeep, who has fallen wholly into the Traitor's grasp."

  Kiril's eyes narrowed as she said, "Which means you are Telarian?"

  He raised conciliatory hands. "I am-but forget what you think you know, and listen-"

  The woman stepped forward and jabbed him in the chest with a pointing finger, asking, "And what of Nangulis? Was that your lie?"

  "Hear me out, and you'll learn the truth."

  "Out with it, then!"

  He licked his lips. "Delphe, once under the Traitor's control, knew the one implement that could end her new master's escape was Angul. Thus she sought to steal him away from his wielder, and failing that, kill you and take Angul. To further confuse the matter, she used my name to shield her identity should her scheme ever fall apart. As it has!"

  "So Nangulis. ."

  "Has not returned. I am so sorry," said Telarian. Though he couldn't produce Nangulis, he could offer her the next best thing.

  "However, what was once Nangulis has stirred."

  She looked back, hope and suspicion battling for control of her features.

  "Just as Angul holds one half of Nangulis's fractured soul, Nis holds the remainder!" He drew forth Nis once more, the blade's cool touch returning his confidence threefold and quashing his fear beneath its black weight.

  Kiril's eyes grew round. She murmured, "But how is that possible? When we forged Angul, we pulled from Nangulis all purity and zeal, discarding the rest. ."

  "Not discarded. Cynosure encapsulated all that remained of Nangulis, and preserved it against future need. A need that materialized when I realized Delphe had fallen into shadow."

  "How?"

  "I worked in secret, forging the blade beneath Delphe's very nose, until Nis was complete. At the last, she discovered my intent. I'm afraid that with Cynosure under her control, I was forced to flee Stardeep. But even with Stardeep's sentient construct set against me, with Nis in hand, I was able to escape. She'd closed the Causeway after sending out those few Knights she suborned to ravage the countryside. The only place I could flee with the remaining Knights still uncorrupted and loyal to the Cerulean Seal was down, into Stardeep's underdungeons."

  Kiril gave a slow nod, her eyes still fixed
to Nis's darkling span. She believes, imparted the blade to Telarian.

  The diviner continued. "But Delphe's reach has grown long. With the Traitor's help, she roused the relic consciousness entombed here." Telarian made a wide gesture across the chamber. "If you hadn't come when you did, it is possible that I and the last of the Knights would have died, thus ensuring the Traitor's escape."

  The swordswoman looked down at Angul, still sheathed at her side, then back up to Nis, and asked, "Can the two halves. . ever be reunited? Can Nangulis live again?"

  "It is more than mere possibility. In order to see Delphe destroyed and the Traitor's escape quashed, I believe that we must combine the blades at the edge of the Well-combine the two halves of Nangulis's sundered soul. The combined blade will possess the soul-forged traits of both weapons, and I suspect, possess more power than the sum of its parts."

  Kiril smiled through sudden tears. Telarian returned her smile, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Like the Knights he'd already slain, and Delphe, whose death was now assured with Angul wielded against her. Kiril, too, would find herself a corpse, kicking out her last strength on Nis's cruel length. Only such sacrifices could avert the far greater disaster his vision foretold.

  He gave a small sigh. Being the unacknowledged savior of Faer?n's mortal races was soul-trying work.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Stardeep, Underdungeon

  Gage's third and last alchemical light was nearly exhausted. The thief gave the glass another shake anyway. A sickly yellow radiance seeped from the cold, egg-shaped vessel, less than a candle's glow. Light or dark, he was well and truly lost. He wandered caverns whose hollow ways didn't even run through the stones of the earth, but instead, through a metaphysical realm Gage did not and probably could not fully comprehend. Friendless, too, and likely hunted.

  "Pity your poor adherent, Akadi." He grunted. Could the Lady of the Winds even hear his prayer? He doubted she who ruled the high places of Faer?n listened to the pleas of those who scurried through its subterranean tunnels, let alone through tunnels of an echo plane.

  After another hundred or so steps down the smooth, white passage, the bulb's light noticeably weakened. Hardly bright enough for him to see more than a few paces ahead, but likely a perfect waypoint for giant stone spiders or demons nurturing a grudge..

  When the radiance failed utterly, Gage returned the bulb to its pouch. He sighed, and hoped his anxiety over the light failing was worse than the reality.

  He extended his left hand until his fingers brushed the cold, silky passage wall. In his right he clutched a dagger, ready to plunge it into whatever beast emerged from the unrelieved darkness that smothered his eyes. He could almost imagine the lightlessness was a whisper-thin blanket, covering him but not hindering his movement. If he could just rend it or wipe its sense-depriving swaddling from his eyes. .

  He shuffled along the tunnel, perhaps covering miles, perhaps far less. He chuckled, recalling how difficult it was to estimate time and space in the starry realm. He hadn't known how easy he'd had it then.

  Ahead, a gleam not unlike a star's sparkle arrested his progress. He paused only a moment, then with his heart in his mouth, he doubled his pace, one hand yet sliding along the wall for guidance. The tiny light was moving. Throwing caution to the winds, he began to sprint. Perhaps the Lady of Winds was with him after all-despite his speed, he managed to catch himself when the tunnel ended suddenly in the side wall of a vast abyss.

  He'd seen the reflected light of lanterns moving along the floor of the huge space. Lanterns! People moved far below on the floor of the cavern, wending between collapsed and disintegrating structures. He'd discovered a buried city. More importantly, he'd found people! A dozen of them, at least, by the number of lanterns.

  Humanoids in shining armor, a few on horses … he sucked in his breath. A contingent of Knights, like those that attacked from across that misty Causeway!

  Gage allowed himself a tight-lipped smile of satisfaction as he prepared to descend the slick walls to the level of the Knights. It was clear he'd nearly reached the edge of Stardeep proper, or at least those who could lead him to it. And ultimately, back to Kiril.

  Perhaps she numbered among the milling figures below, who picked their way across a debris field composed of. . broken and blood-stained statues?

  Raidon Kane buried Adrik Commorand in the common grave the surviving Knights prepared for their fallen brethren.

  Brief words of remembrance were uttered by the shocked and confused survivors, abrupt and unceremonious; Stardeep had fallen to the mad Keeper Delphe, and little time could be spared for ritual. Better to take vengeance against Delphe for her crimes than speak empty words at the edge of a grave. Time for proper grieving could wait until the dungeon stronghold was retaken.

  The monk appreciated the sentiment. He placed his store of Long Jing, tea so fine it would be suitable for an emperor, upon the pale but peaceful chest of Adrik. Raidon murmured, "You were a friend to me, and I. ." His throat constricted suddenly, but he continued, "I shall miss you. I. . apologize for not being able to defend you. Your memory will follow me all the rest of my days." As he spoke, he wondered, for his sentiment rang with the force of prophecy.

  Then white stones were placed to cover the shallow grave. More and more stones were positioned, one atop the next, until a high mound was formed marking the final resting place of star elves sworn to protect Stardeep, and one human sorcerer who had strayed into a realm fey and lethal.

  Telarian intoned, "I christen this mound 'Callambea.' " The attending Knights murmured their appreciation.

  Raidon whispered to Kiril, "Does that name have special meaning?"

  She replied, "It could be translated as 'place of heroes' in a Sild?yuir dialect."

  Finally the Knights quit the chamber of the buried city. Kiril rode behind the vanguard in the company of Keeper Telarian, on a steed that had lost its rider to the undead aggression. Raidon followed behind, on foot.

  The monk observed the conversation between the estranged Keeper and the current. Both shared features Raidon realized must be common to star elves. He possessed similar features, diluted as those traits were by his Shou humanity. Mighty blades, too, each wore securely sheathed at their belts. Raidon mistrusted the darkness that blurred out from Telarian's sword, but Kiril seemed to accept it.

  In fact, the swordswoman seemed overly eager to hear all Telarian had to say, so long as they touched on the possibility of Nis's and Angul's dissolution. This would somehow lead to Nangulis's miraculous return. Nangulis, the man whose soul had been wrenched into two pieces to forge a modern artifact. Raidon wasn't clear how Nangulis's dead body might be conjured up and revived in order to contain and stitch together the two sundered halves of his soul. Nor was Raidon confident of the sanity Nangulis might possess if such a thing came to pass-his experience with Angul didn't speak to mental stability.

  Telarian glossed over such details, and Kiril allowed him to do so, aglow as she was in the possibility. The monk supposed she knew more of the metaphysics behind reversing the transformation than he did. After all, as his master used to mutter in Xiang, "From form to formless and from finite to infinite." He'd taken that mantra to mean that expectations should not be confined by the limitations of imagination.

  Raidon was put off by Telarian's cold, emotionless tone and manner, especially when speaking of Nis, Angul, or Nangulis. Was the man devoid of emotion, or did he control his inner self so thoroughly? His voice wasn't that of a master of focus, whose timbre implied calm confidence. No, it was a voice devoid of the least hint of empathy.

  The monk endeavored to watch Telarian with an especially sharp eye, despite the man wearing a uniform whose symbol was the duplicate of his forget-me-not. Kiril hadn't thought to mention it to the Keeper in her enthusiasm over Nangulis's imminent return, and Raidon decided to let the issue lie for the moment. If the man proved his worth, the time would come to reveal his mother's amulet.

  The returni
ng Knights traveled without incident. When they had almost reached the cusp of the Outer Bastion, Delphe unleashed her counterattack.

  An elf of the vanguard, who Telarian had sent ahead, returned. He reported that free-running defender statues blocked further progress. The scout said the statues were willing to parley and would withhold their strength for the moment.

  Kiril began, "Free running? Does that mean-"

  "We're too far from Stardeep for Cynosure's intelligence to inhabit them. Free-running statues have only the intelligence of children, though apparently these bear a message from Delphe. Lies to slow us down," concluded Telarian.

  "Still, I'd hear them, if only to gauge the deceit of the crazed Keeper."

  Telarian frowned but nodded. He urged his mount forward. Kiril followed.

  They passed the Knights of the vanguard and saw ahead a meeting of several tunnels, which created a space wide enough for five figures to stand shoulder to shoulder.

  Iridescent sparks danced across the rigid forms of five humanoid constructs. Wearing thick metal plates bolted over their stone-sculpted bodies, their granite strength was obvious to any onlooker. Eight or nine feet tall, each of the defender's hands were curled into gargantuan mauls.

  "Say your piece," instructed Kiril. She was ready to draw Angul at any hint of betrayal. She murmured to her blade, "Remember, these constructs are under the thumb of a Keeper who's betrayed her oath. Don't hold back like you did at the Causeway, or the aberrations win."

  The central golem took a pace forward and spoke. "Telarian, I know what you seek. Rethink your choice and your life can be spared. Let us resolve this as the friends we've been for so long. Continue on the path you've set, and you'll find death your only reward."

  Telarian glanced at Kiril and said, "Delphe is truly mad if she believes that such simple threats of bodily harm will persuade me to throw in with her and the Traitor!"

  Kiril nodded. It seemed a sad ploy. Did some hidden ambush wait in the wings? Best not wait for it. She stood in her stirrups, but before she could draw Angul, she was distracted by Telarian.