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, corruption, 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 acces
s 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.
She asked, “Am I speaking to Cynosure Prime, or Cynosure?”
A moment of silence, then, “I am back in the loop, Delphe. Thank you.” The voice emerged from the air next to her as if to prove the point.
“And how are you … finding the landscape now that you’ve returned?” The abjurer clutched her amulet, ready to sever the idol’s connection with Stardeep at the very first sign of anything untoward.
“I find everything a bit … cramped, I suppose is the best way to explain it. But other than some awkwardness, it seems that my access to Stardeep’s functions is reestablished. For instance, I note all conditions are ideal in the Well.”
Delphe nodded, allowed herself a shard of hope. She said, “Cynosure, please transfer me to the Throat now.”
A shiver of discontinuity, and she stood in the mirrored chamber. The glow from up the Well cast her features in flickering orange hues. As usual.
“By the Sign, I’m happy to leave those transfers to you!”
“It is my pleasure, Delphe.”
She walked to her glassy command chair and sat.
“Delphe, I have something I’d like to ask you about.”
Her heart caught in her throat. Apprehension pitched her voice higher than normal as she said, “Ask away, Cynosure. Is something wrong?”
“Perhaps. As we speak, I am reacquainting myself with the nodes that have returned to my control, including the statue in the Throat, and those in the Inner Bastion and the Outer, as well as all those in between and underneath. However, I find myself unable to access certain memories stored in the loop.”
“Memories?”
“I am unable to access records for specific places and times within Stardeep, beginning some two years ago.”
A chill crawled across Delphe’s neck. “Is it a corruption?” Did she need to flush Cynosure from Stardeep’s control functions once more?
“I am unable to access specific memories because of a command lock. A command lock I wasn’t even aware of until you reintroduced me moments ago. Prior to taking me out of the loop, one of the nodes, now inactive, must have been preventing me from noticing. But now the missing records are obvious, and I must admit, unsettling.”
“What is the authorization on the command lock?” she asked. Unless the idol itself had experienced some sort of schizophrenic error localized to one of the nodes she’d dropped from the network—
“Keeper Telarian ordered the lock.”
It seemed that the entire world dropped a foot.
She started breathing again and said, “Cynosure, listen. I am giving you a counter command. As a Keeper of the Cerulean Sign, I command you to erase those locks and integrate those memories. Now.”
Just in case, she keyed her mind, ready to flush Cynosure. Clicking issued from the large statue on the ceiling, then the idol said, “All records are integrated.”
“And?”
“Delphe, we have a problem with Telarian.”
Delphe sat in her chair, watching a landslide of events unfold that she could scarcely acknowledge. She saw Telarian unearthing an ancient test node from the repository with Cynosure’s unsuspecting help, a node that the diviner then used to infiltrate Stardeep’s command functions. One of his first actions was ordering Cynosure to keep part of itself private and secret from its larger cognizance, and what’s more, from her.
“How … why … why would he do that?” she murmured as she watched.
She saw Telarian leaving and returning to Stardeep via the Causeway far more often than she’d ever realized. Creeping dread tingled up her spine.
And Delphe witnessed Telarian accessing an ancient space known to the previous Keepers but which appeared on no map she’d ever seen: the fabled armory.
In that dark space, Telarian found a glass vessel containing a wraithlike essence—a soul, or part of one. In that container was the detritus of a spirit left behind after every hint of nobility was extracted to forge the Blade Cerulean.
Delphe was familiar with the history of Stardeep, especially the momentous events of ten years ago. No one connected to the Cerulean Sign didn’t know Keeper Nangulis’s personal sacrifice, though because it had occurred a decade ago, few recalled the event with any regularity. Nangulis’s body had died, and his fellow Keeper had wielded his soulforged blade to quell the Traitor. The Traitor’s foiled effort severely weakened him, and he had not stirred again within the Well until just recently. The remaining Keeper, unfortunately, had then fled Stardeep with the Blade Cerulean in hand, robbing the Keepers of the Cerulean Sign of a potent weapon.
She watched as Telarian moved around the darkened vault, slowly refurbishing its furnace, reconditioning its forge, and relighting its magical flame. He spent months studying the masterwork tools. He spent an equal amount of time staring into the carved alcove at the chamber’s rear where a crystal vessel was stored. Where the half-soul writhed in anticipation.
Until then, Delphe had never considered the fate of Nangulis’s soul-residue not used in the creation of Angul—she’d assumed it had simply … dissipated. It had been stored in Stardeep all this time. Waiting, half-alive but alone. Wrathful, but impotent. Until Telarian found the armory. How had her fellow Keeper even known where to look? His divinatory talent, most likely—a talent, she now hypothesized, that perhaps left him too open to manipulation.
She watched Telarian decant the inky, deceitful spirit into a cast of molten steel.
She asked Cynosure to compress time. Days of Telarian’s activity flew by in moments. Finally, she saw the diviner grasp the hilt and hold the darkling blade high. But who grasped whom? When his naked hands touched the blade, Telarian’s features seemed to warp and flow, becoming an iron mask calculating the ruin of all fleshy things, all emotion, and all light. Telarian announced in a voice shorn of empathy, “Your name … is Nis.”
“Stop!” Delphe yelled. The mirrors went dark.
Her hands trembled. She had wondered where the diviner acquired his new blade. When she’d asked, he had shrugged, as if it were unimportant, a mere affectation. Now she wished she didn’t know the truth.
“Delphe, he used that blade to strike down Brathtar,” volunteered Cynosure.
“Strike down?”
“Knight Commander Brathtar is dead, slain by Telarian with the blade Nis. His body lies in a refuse pit of the underdungeon, along with those of the Knights who witnessed his death.”
“The Sign preserve us,” she breathed. “He has betrayed us. Betrayed Stardeep … betrayed me!”
She nearly shrieked the last as a sudden blaze of anger briefly scorched mounting fear and dread. Her mouth was dry and a haze seemed to hang in the air. She wiped at her eyes. All the years they had worked together, shoulder t
o shoulder, seeing to Stardeep’s needs, keeping safe their promise to the future—how many of those years had she blithely, unknowingly lived Telarian’s lie?
The images showed a man seemingly in the grip of some sort of possession. But even that couldn’t be true. During her recent conversation with Telarian, his wit, reason, and personality were undeniably that of the man she’d always known. No alien entity spoke through Telarian’s shape. No, the man was responsible for his own actions. Damn him. How had he been corrupted?
“Where is Telarian now?” she demanded, her voice rough.
“I have been querying all nodes, but I cannot locate him.”
“He’s left Stardeep?”
“Possibly,” replied the idol. “Though I note all my perception pools in the Knights’ barracks are blacked out. He could be there.”
Delphe stood, her face flushed with sudden decision. “We must confront him—neutralize him. By his own deeds he has shown himself to be Stardeep’s enemy. Who knows what he’ll do next, or what damage he’s already done? At least now we know why the Traitor has been so active. Cynosure, activate a defender statue near the Knights’ barracks, and transfer me there.”
“I’ve already activated five,” Cynosure said. “But Delphe, you are exhausted. I have tracked your activities, and I know how little rest you’ve taken. Do you think it wise to confront Nis’s wielder now?”
Delphe swept her hand in a dismissive gesture. “We have to catch him before he suspects we know of his betrayal. If we wait, we may miss our best chance to move against him.”
“Very well, Delphe,” said Cynosure as the world blinked.
She then stood in the wide, high Parade Hall outside the Knights’ barracks, where the Empyrean Legion often drilled and perfected its techniques. The many doors of the stables fronted the Parade Hall to the west, and to the south a high archway opened onto the main corridors of the Outer Bastion. To the east was another high archway, opening onto a steep, little-used ramp that led to Stardeep’s underdungeon.
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