"Recall when we found the bush in the snow, laden with spring berries?" asked Kiril. Another of her treasured moments shared with Nangulis. If she could reconnect with him, perhaps the sundered halves of his spirit would permanently merge. .
"Yes. But other memories are beginning to resolve, of. . being confined, unmoving sometimes, but other times unleashed to wreak retribution?"
"Let's not talk of that-"
"No, Kiril, we must talk of it, and you must help me. A great gulf of darkness stretches back from just prior to this moment. A gulf from which images I do not understand assail me."
"Nangulis. ."
He squeezed her hand. "Please, Kiril. If you spare me whatever truth you're withholding, how can I ever be whole?"
The swordswoman wavered. She looked into Nangulis's eyes. How could she deny him anything? Perhaps, once the truth was revealed, they could leave this place and begin anew together.
"Listen, then. I have not the strength to repeat myself. The darkness that clouds your recollection is a ten-year gap during which a portion of your essence resided in the Blade Cerulean. The blade I wielded to beat back the Traitor whose escape was imminent." New tears seeped from her eyes. With her free hand, she scrubbed at them.
He cocked his head, his eyes narrowing. "Yes. . yes! The soul-forged blade! We had no choice. A purified soul to act as a lens that would focus the Cerulean Sign's duty like nothing else. I volunteered. And. ." His eyes found hers. "Did we succeed?"
"Yes."
"Then why do you cry?"
"Because you were taken from me, and my life disintegrated!"
"Then how is this conversation possible?" wondered Nangulis. His eyes strayed from Kiril, but failed to focus on anything external. He said, "I see nothing but darkness-only you are lit. Where are we?"
"We are in the Throat, and the Blade Cerulean has joined with the unused portion of your soul! From that union, your spirit emerged, or its memory. ." Kiril trailed off, confused. The image of Nangulis before her couldn't sense his surroundings, but she could, if she chose. Even with just her peripheral awareness, she knew the mad Keeper Telarian yet wielded the conjoined blade Angul-Nis. Which meant Nangulis's soul wasn't actually free of its soulblade confinement.
"You said we succeeded in stopping the Traitor."
"Ten years ago, but now-"
"And now. .?" Nangulis prodded.
"Now we are called again to defend Stardeep. The Traitor stirs, and his agent this time is nothing less than a deluded Keeper!"
"Then I must go back into that gulf of unknowing darkness?"
"I. . perhaps if we. ."
Nangulis said nothing, merely looked into her eyes, trusting her. It was her decision. She knew he'd accept whatever course of action she suggested. A hollow bloomed in her heart so vacuous she thought her chest would collapse. Her body knew; if she didn't relinquish Nangulis, ask his higher spirit to retreat to the blade physically housing it, Telarian's scheme would succeed.
"Nangulis, you know I love you, and I always-" Her voice broke, but she continued, "I always will. Know that. Know that if. . when you leave me again. ." She sobbed, unable to verbalize how she imagined her life would cease.
She said instead, "Cynosure's statue in the Throat just fell to Telarian."
"What must I do?"
"Return to the dark gulf. You must return to the sword. Find Angul! Find him, and yourself in him-pull away from all that is dark, undecided, and nihilistic. Be Angul again. ." A sob escaped her, breaking her soliloquy.
The shade before her said, "I don't fear to return-the sacrifice was already made. I merely thank the guardians of Sild?yuir and the Sign that we were given this moment. Remember me, Kiril Duskmourn."
As Nangulis turned away, she murmured, "Until the day I die."
Telarian grasped a font of puissance, wondrous and overwhelming. He couldn't contain his joy as he wielded the conjoined blades. He'd never felt so free, so alive, so compelling. It was intoxicating!
He would have jumped and yelled in triumph if not for Cynosure. It had landed a strong initial blow, but Angul-Nis wiped away the damage before the crumpling pain could propagate through his flesh. His shredded clothing revealed fresh scars twining his forearms. He laughed-emblems of his coming triumph!
His eyes found the construct as it finished healing Delphe. He frowned. It charged him, one hand out as if to embrace him in a grasping palm. The idol moved swiftly for something that should have been slow and ponderous. But Angul-Nis revealed what Telarian must do. He thrust the blade forward cross-body, its tip down, deflecting the fist to the right and scoring it with flame.
The construct pulled its hand back, but not quickly enough to prevent Telarian from whipping Angul-Nis around and delivering a tremendous stroke to its wrist, severing the hand.
"Telarian, you are misled," came Cynosure's voice. "Can't you see it? The Traitor has you in its grip. You do not hinder him; you aid his greatest hope!"
Telarian suspected Stardeep's warden attempted to distract him. It knew it couldn't stand up to the wielder of Angul-Nis. He laughed, advancing. Delphe and Cynosure truly believed he was misled. Their lack of imagination and foresight was the reason he'd been forced to act alone. They were the ones responsible for aiding the Traitor by their opposition to his plan. Through their policies, if left unchecked, Xxiphu would eventually rise. They would never have allowed him to release the Traitor to his death-they would have argued that few alive could stand against him. True. But with Angul-Nis, few things were impossible.
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 form, 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 horror 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 Cerulean 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 power over the blades. Nangulis's return was a surprising new element, certainly, 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 int
o 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 Sild?yuir 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 burst of energy 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 downward, 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 presence of the Traitor.
The High Priest of the Abolethic Sovereignty studied its mortal 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 afterlife to accept it.
Only Telarian remained, now bound as the Traitor 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 reality 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 Traitor extended a nest of writhing, tooth-rimmed appendages.
Failure demanded payment.
He began to extract his due.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
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 blood-stained 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, angry 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 Sild?yuir, 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 Keeper 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 emanated from the empty ceiling.
"The boundary layer is disturbed. 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 another 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 creature, 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 more on the cooling sword plunged in the stone floor.
"Angul looks more peaceful than I ever 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 soul-forged 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 Cerulean 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.
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