“Incredible.”
“And so I took up this new weapon, untested, its essence vibrating with he who I couldn’t yet believe was gone. I took up Nangulis, renamed Angul, and with him, battled the Traitor to a standstill, though his vile tricks nearly killed me. We beat him, battered him, schooled him in the ways of Righteousness … and returned the dung-eating bastard to the nadir of the Well, Stardeep’s most secure prison.”
“If you overcame the Traitor, why didn’t you just kill him? Seems like a lot of trouble to keep him alive.”
“If it were only that simple, Stardeep wouldn’t have been built in the first place.”
“Oh? Some sort of elf law against killing your own?”
Kiril snorted and shook her head. She said, “His death would be a clarion call to the very creatures we do not wish disturbed. Left to his own devices, he would have induced them to rise. Killed, his flaring, dissipating essence would signal the first day of a renewed colonization. The Traitor is more abomination than man; he’s their highest high priest. So we keep him safe.”
“He doesn’t try to starve himself to death down there?”
“When he signed his soul over to the Abolethic Sovereignty, his mortal needs were erased. He cannot die merely through neglect.”
Gage blinked. “I need a drink.” He stood, walked to the door, and yelled into the hubbub of the common room, “Two ales!”
A drink sounded like a first-class idea to Kiril, too. She remained silent until the flagons were delivered, and Gage refrained from plying her with more questions until they’d both had a chance to sample the brew. Not especially good. She took another swallow. She needed it if she was going to tell Gage the whole story to its awful conclusion.
Gage said, “You must really miss him. Nangulis, as he was, I mean.” He waved at the sword on the table.
“You still don’t know it all,” Kiril declared, then she fell silent again.
Gage waited her out.
Finally, the elf continued. “You’ve held Angul. So you know the overwhelming nature of his personality. When you wield the Blade Cerulean, remaining in possession of your own thoughts is difficult. Everything seems decided already, and Angul believes himself the final arbiter. Frankly, I can’t believe you resisted running through everyone in that bar. Angul would see them all as dissolute wastrels crying out for his special loving attention.”
“Only because I made a deal with it—him—before I picked him up. The second time, anyway. The first time, he ignited one of my gauntlets.” Gage raised his left hand, red and blistered, and flexed it. Pain flitted across his face.
“He’s that way, now,” sighed Kiril. “Punishing. He doesn’t like that I’ve discovered ways to temper his influence. He wants total control—he believes such is his right. But I wasn’t always so resourceful. Nor did I see a need to be. Angul seduced me to his will by being in some ways identical to Nangulis.”
Gage nodded. “I sensed he was trying to take over my mind.”
“After the Traitor was remanded back to Stardeep’s most secure dungeon cell, I stayed as the Keeper as I had been, now wielding Angul. I spent most days in constant contact with the blade, so I could mingle with his sense of certainty, what I thought was his glorious revealed knowledge. His absolute distinction between good and evil. While I was out on patrol one day, that distinction fell on the wrong side of the dividing line.”
When Kiril’s pause threatened to become a full stop, the thief asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean Angul decided that a group of unruly children who had wandered too near Stardeep, when they should have known better, were no longer worth tolerating. Before that day was over, while wielding Angul, I …”
An oft-thumbed memory swept up from the abyss of Kiril’s soul, as it sometimes did when her defenses were most fragile. In her mind’s eye, she saw she was dressed as a Keeper of Stardeep; her mail was black, trimmed with silver thread. In her hands, Angul burned, shedding the warm certainty of the truth. A promise soon to be shattered forever. She began to tell Gage about the worst day of her life.
“I was patrolling beyond Stardeep, in the daylight world, looking for spies on the perimeter …”
The swordswoman walked beneath a dark pine canopy. The burning sword she held aloft illuminated her path, as if she were an avenging angel. And wasn’t she? Her cause was just and good. Her blood was fired with Angul’s conviction, her mind focused with his clarity, and her heart hardened with his faith. Nothing could stand in their way, and while she gripped the burning blade, fear was an emotion unknown to her, and more; an emotion reviled.
Prowlers camped near the Causeway Gate. Too near. If the Causeway emerged from the interstitial mists that cloaked it, the intruders would see Stardeep’s main entrance. Considering the recent escape attempt by the prisoner, the encampment’s sudden appearance was too suspicious to let pass. After the sacrifices made to ensure the Traitor’s continued captivity, Kiril was determined not to take any chances. Angul, new to her hands, agreed emphatically.
Sneaks and cutpurses coddled fear, and used it to inform their bloodless deceits, retreats, and ambushes. Worry was fear’s watchword, and it nudged and pushed the timid into the grave just as surely, if not as quickly, as a fearless attack that failed to win the day. At worst, the eulogy of the warrior who bravely fell in conflict would be remembered for centuries, whereas those whose fear preserved them would die unremembered in cold beds, alone.
Not that death was likely with a magical blade of Angul’s strength in her keeping. Joined, hilt to hand, she and Angul would be together forever. After all, the blade’s power made certain little could permanently harm her flesh.
Kiril spied the camp. Two hide tents, finely cured, with subtle sigils cut into the surface. The interlopers were apparently not orcs or the other coarse peoples. No, these must be wood elves who ranged yet in Aglarond. They should know better than to camp so close to the megaliths! It was part of the compact established when the Yuir elves first moved out of Aglarond and into their artificial realm. Had the remnant elves forgotten?
Ignorance is no excuse, Angul imparted to her conscious mind, their presence is in violation of the compact of Yuireshanyaar.
“Yes,” she breathed, “of course.” The intruders must be induced to leave. Immediately.
Kiril moved to within five or so paces of the tents. She saw no movement, despite the warning her blade’s light provided.
“Come out and be judged!” she bawled in Elvish.
Whispers broke from the tents, and a moment later, four or five lithe forms emerged. As she’d guessed, wood elves, or half-elves most likely, members of the degraded fey race that remained behind after the Yuir departed. She hadn’t guessed these would be children, or nearly so.
The oldest, a youth of no more than fourteen or fifteen suns, stepped forward. His hair was strung with garlands, his torso inked with patterns of leaves and acorns. He responded in the same language. “We are on a quest, and mean no harm. We—”
“You have broken the compact,” interrupted Kiril. “Why?”
“We …” the youth’s initial confidence began to collapse in the face of her asperity. “… We seek to discover a truth. Our seer spoke of a prophecy.”
“What prophecy?”
“About the megaliths. She said the Yuirwood’s ‘salvation or destruction lies beyond stony bounds of the ancient rings.’ ”
Kiril frowned. She’d never liked prophets. The riddles they spoke were too easily decoded in a manner convenient to the interpreter. And true prophets irked her more; she had a visceral distaste for the concept of predestination.
“Who is this prophetess?” demanded Kiril. If some hoary old tribal shaman was able to determine which among the hundreds of stone circles in the Yuirwood opened onto Stardeep, well, that was a real security hazard.
Instead of answering directly, the boy said, “We came here to see if the words she spoke were true. Who are you?” The last was asked w
ith a tremulous waver, as Kiril’s stony expression hardened into a scowl.
“Your judge,” she responded. “And I judge you’ve overstayed your welcome. Be gone.”
They have disregarded the treaty upon which the realm of Sildëyuir was born, and on which the security of Stardeep depends.
Kiril’s sword spoke the truth. It saw past all distractions to the heart of the matter, she was learning. She lowered the tip of the sword to point at the interlopers. The boy’s companions shrank away.
Not the boy. He held his ground, screwed up his courage once more, and said, “You are not of the tribes, are you? I see you are a full-blood elf, but not of these woods, or even those far to the north. Have you come from behind the menhir circle? Is it true star elves roam there, in a realm apart?”
These children guess too much. Stardeep’s defense is imperiled.
“Yes!” she agreed aloud with her blade, not the child. The sword lent her a focus completely new to her experience. It was almost like having Nangulis himself at her side. When he was alive, he had called her his Bright Star …
“You are? But that’s wonderful!” exclaimed the boy, misunderstanding her response. He had no inkling of the death sentence silently handed down by the Blade Cerulean.
She closed the distance between them with five quick steps and brought the sword around. When the blade swept through the space beneath the boy’s jaw, she hardly felt a tug on the hilt. The youth’s head rolled into the underbrush. Fluids sprayed. She blinked blood from her eyes.
The murdered elf’s companions stood frozen in soul-stopped horror. She continued moving, making one harvestlike motion after another, taking advantage of the interlopers’ shock. Sword in hand, she moved to eliminate Stardeep’s liability.
Her lips moved, too, but Angul’s words were in her mouth. “We do not suffer abominations.”
She learned that day that Angul impelled where dry reason faltered. Angul excited where debate and philosophy failed to motivate. With Angul in hand came purpose, exaltation, and the ultimate high of being part of a spectacular moment. A moment in which Angul delivered triumph in the face of insurmountable odds …
The screams of the children, as she cut them down, penetrated her blade-given conviction. She paused, wiping blood from her face with the back of one gauntleted hand, her eyes blinking. Abominations …? What in the name of the Well was she doing? These were children! And she had … she was …
An arrow bloomed in her abdomen. She shrieked, went down on one knee. A girl had run when the others had remained within Kiril’s fatal reach. She’d escaped the swordswoman’s initial onslaught. But she stopped to loose an arrow, despite the fear trembling her limbs. The half-elf girl pulled another arrow to her bowstring.
Kiril struggled onto both feet, her breath ragged. Angul flared and the ache in her stomach melted. Like moral distractions, pain was a diversion to the glorious certitude Angul burned to dispense. With the pain, her moment of confusion, too, was swept away in cerulean light.
She raised the sword and his blue-white light doubled, then redoubled. Sunrise came early under the branches of Aglarond. Or was it sunset?
Kiril swatted the girl’s second arrow out of the air with a twitch of her wrist. The half-elf turned to run. The swordswoman launched Angul through the air as if he were a spear.
Her aim was true.
When all was quiet again, she gathered the bodies and burned them on a pyre. To do so, she sheathed Angul.
Later, she retrieved from the heaped ashes the fire-cleaned skull of the girl, the elf archer, the only one who’d put up any kind of fight. She decided she would bring it back to Stardeep as a trophy, a sign of her vigilance in keeping the hidden dungeon stronghold safe.
As the fire burned down, she resisted drawing her blade again. Instead, she fingered the skull, looking at it, worrying it between her hands. Something was hideously significant about the object she held so tightly. It indicated something portentous, but like a puzzle box, she couldn’t solve its significance. She stood, thinking to return down the Causeway before the access failed. But …
The longer she avoided contact with the blade, the more the blade’s influence waned.
Finally, her captive conscience burst through the final, benumbed layers of Angul’s influence.
Kiril screamed, long and loud. She collapsed to her knees, clutching the skull in front of her, her eyes bulging in disbelief. It couldn’t be! She hadn’t! But the warm, fire-blackened skull in her blood-stained grasp refused to retreat to the phantasmal state she needed it to be.
Then Kiril went insane.
Kiril’s voice broke, but she managed to croak, “I slaughtered them.”
The elf looked down, tears streaking her cheeks.
Gage whispered, “Damn.”
“It broke me. I’ve been running since then, running from what I did. But I …”
“… you kept the thing. Why?” interjected Gage.
Why hadn’t she gotten rid of the sword? At first, she was crazed, incoherent; she couldn’t quite recollect what she’d done in the year after she’d slain the children. One thing was certain; she had not returned to Stardeep. By fleeing, she renounced her position as Keeper and her identity as a star elf. She’d thrown it all away. But Angul, she kept.
Even mad, she couldn’t bring herself to cast him away. And now, ten more years, at least, had got behind her.
Aloud, she said, “I couldn’t leave Angul behind! He’s all I had left of Nangulis! But he’s a curse, too, don’t I flecking know? And now you tell me Sathra dealt with someone called Nangulis. Impossible! Isn’t it? Where is she? I must talk to her.” Kiril made to rise, determination firing her eyes.
“Hold on!” Gage reached across the table and put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “After I got hold of the sword and got clear of her vault, she attacked me again. With the blade in hand, I killed her. So, uh … sorry. She can’t tell you anything because she’s out of the picture. But …”
“But?”
“She indicated the fellow she was working for hailed from someplace called Stardeep.”
Kiril shook her head, tears again tracing tracks on her face. She said, “Stardeep. After all these years, it reaches out to me.”
Slowly mastering herself, the elf considered. The name, the theft, the possibility, however minute, that Nangulis might somehow be among the living again. She couldn’t ignore that chance.
“Stardeep has called, and I must answer,” she decreed, tears breaking around a sudden unexpected smile.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Stardeep, Epoch Chamber
Cynosure?” Telarian asked the empty air of the Epoch Chamber.
“Yes?” said the disembodied golem’s cultured voice.
“I’m done for now. Connect me to my quarters.”
“Very well. Hold still …”
Telarian waited for the idol to set up the transfer. Cynosure always required a span of moments to process each new point-to-point teleportation in the Outer Bastion. Of course, such tricks were not allowed at all in the Inner Bastion, which contained the Well. That is, they were not normally allowed, but Telarian had been working on contingencies …
Just one more thing he’d failed to inform Delphe about. As with everything else, he justified keeping her in the dark on some of his activities because her role in Stardeep was so time consuming. Yet her dedication was futile. Her vigil at the edge of the Well was doomed to failure. He now understood, thanks to his visions, Xxiphu would one day rise whether or not the Traitor gained his freedom.
A blue flash and piercing odor, a moment of disorientation, and Telarian was back in his private room, a few levels above where he’d secreted the doorless Epoch Chamber. His room opened off a common hall in the Inner Bastion.
His unsteady hands found the neck of a wine bottle, then a glass. Not even the finest vintage could withstand neglect, and the wine in the bottle had turned vinegary and rancid. He should have finished it sooner af
ter opening it a few tendays past, but he drank alone these days, and in moderation. Hard to finish a bottle before it turned sour. But his own cussed fastidiousness wouldn’t permit him to throw it out and uncork a new one. Waste not, want not.
His thoughts remained on Delphe. For the thousandth time he wondered if perhaps he shouldn’t bring her up to date on his preparations. Would she understand the risk they must undertake to avoid the disastrous certainty he had foreseen?
No, he didn’t think she would. In fact, she would likely declare him mad with one breath, and disown him with the next.
Madness. In the lonely passage of time between shifts, he sometimes wondered. There might be a tinge of madness to his actions. Then again, madness is what those with limited imaginations called inspiration, imagination, and even revelation.
He knew first hand of places where doctrine had taken firm hold, where free thinkers and visionaries were abhorred. But without revelation, civilization’s zenith would yet hunker in caves, drawing stick figures by firelight.
True, some prophets walked too close to the line separating inspiration from crazed imprecation. But the ones remembered as paradigm-changers and world-savers far after the fact were derided by their contemporaries. And though they sometimes faltered and fell, others in their wake benefited from the sacrifice.
Telarian’s problem was he couldn’t wait for the historians of later ages to acclaim his actions as heroic and necessary. What he had to do in the present, without the context the future would bring, was hard to explain to someone who doubted the effectiveness of divination magic to begin with.
Like Delphe. If he told her the truth, her apprehension concerning the predictive arts would lead to questions, accusations. Action. He couldn’t afford strife. It was the same conclusion as ever before: he would proceed as he had been.
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