Stardeep

by Bruce Cordell

  “I can try, Delphe.”

  “Telarian, ask the Knights to pause. An idea occured to me,” said the former Keeper who rode at his side.

  Telarian called a halt and warned the vanguard, “Do not advance until I give the word!” The Knights prepared themselves for a charge up the slope and into Stardeep proper via the Parade Hall.

  “What idea?”

  For answer, Kiril turned in her saddle and called back along the narrowing tunnel, “Raidon Kane, can we speak?”

  The odd-looking half-elf who’d displayed amazing martial skill walked forward, his face the picture of calm acceptance, as always. Telarian frowned.

  “Raidon, we’re close enough to Stardeep’s heart that you might be able to use your mother’s forget-me-not to bypass its defenses.”

  Raidon nodded, gave Telarian an appraising glance, and withdrew an amulet from beneath the collar of his silk jacket.

  “A Cerulean Sign!” gasped Telarian. Alarm skittered through his mind. How had he missed that?

  “Yes,” agreed Kiril, “Raidon keeps a Sign, for him a family heirloom. In any case”—she waved away the questions forming on Telarian’s lips—“with a Sign, we can wrench Stardeep’s point-to-point transfer system from Cynosure long enough to deliver ourselves directly to Delphe.”

  “An excellent idea,” exclaimed Telarian. “Let me see, and I shall attempt to do as you suggest.” He held his hand out to the half-elf. Raidon looked askance at him, making no move to comply.

  Kiril shook her head, said, “Raidon has held the Sign for years—it is firmly attuned to him, and him alone. You’d have no chance of using it without a lengthy bonding period, and we don’t have time for that.”

  True, of course. He just wanted the Sign out of the hands of someone over whom he had no leverage. And the appearance of such a potent bane against the Traitor was, again, not something he had foreseen. Anxiety, his old friend, took his cold palm in its own unsettling grip.

  Kiril continued. “Even without training, Raidon should be able to use it now that we’re so close. Try it,” she bid the half-elf. “Try to visualize the seams of arcane energy that infuse Stardeep. Try to … mentally pluck one and bring it to you.”

  Raidon’s eyes unfocused slightly, and he said, “I sense something of what you say. And”—he looked up, pointing with his free hand—“a questing shaft of light even now reaches out to us. It … is here!”

  Telarian choked.

  A voice rang out—Delphe’s voice. It said, “Kiril Duskmourn, gone from Stardeep these long years. Why have you thrown in with this deserter of the Cerulean Sign’s ideals, he who even now plots to overthrow centuries of captivity and release the Traitor?”

  Kiril started on hearing the voice. Delphe’s voice, she supposed. So this was the woman who had defiled the oath and sought to aid the Traitor? She didn’t sound insane. Of course, the truly mad rarely did, until you drew them out and exposed the foundations of their reasoning.

  “Muddle-minded witch,” declared Kiril, a sneer coming to her face, “don’t insult me with your lunatic imprecations. What promise did the Traitor make that you’d join him in his defilement?” As she spoke, the swordswoman looked Raidon in the eyes and gestured sidewise with her head. She asked a question with her movement; could the monk figure out how to trigger a transfer? Perhaps she could keep Delphe distracted with meaningless babble. The demented enjoyed describing their aims, perhaps to justify a guilty conscience, or so stories suggested.

  Raidon’s brows furrowed in concentration as he gazed into the symbol on his amulet.

  A disbelieving gasp came from thin air. Then Delphe said, “You believe I’ve thrown in with the Traitor while you stand with Telarian, whose mind is poison and whose hands are stained with the blood of Empyrean Knights?”

  “Yes, I stand with him, but don’t waste your breath with falsehoods and ravings. I know your mind has cracked. Your lies stain my ears, and the weak, craven cowardice I hear in your voice is near to making me vomit!”

  Despite actual rancor, Kiril was more concerned with the monk’s progress. She watched as Raidon continued to stare into the Sign. A faint, bluish glow woke within the potent trinket. Raidon was accomplishing something!

  Delphe’s voice came back, heated but under control. “Has it occurred to you that perhaps—just perhaps—Telarian is the one who has become the agent of the Traitor? Perhaps he ‘stains your ears.’ What do you say to that?”

  “Unlikely.” Kiril snorted as she glanced at Telarian. The diviner rolled his eyes. Kiril continued. “Because he carries half of Nangulis’s soul in a blade all his own. It was Nangulis, if you remember, whose sacrifice is the reason the Traitor doesn’t already walk free.” Kiril wanted to urge Raidon to hurry, but she didn’t want to make Delphe suspicious. If Delphe knew what Raidon attempted, she could ask Cynosure to deactivate point-to-point transfers.

  “Kiril,” came the response, incredulity clear in the tone, “recall to mind the reason not all of Nangulis’s soul was incorporated into Angul. Only those parts aligned with duty, purity, and self-sacrifice for a higher ideal were capable of empowering the Blade Cerulean—as you must remember. Think! It is not simply the ‘unused’ parts of Nangulis’s soul that embodies Nis. Nis is composed of all the hidden, repressed, nihilistic portions of Nangulis, urges and neuroses all mortals share. When Telarian forged Nis, he drew from all those negative aspects and created a blade fit for a sociopath.”

  Kiril frowned and looked again at Telarian. The man shrugged at the ridiculousness of Delphe’s claim. He whispered, “She merely seeks to sow uncertainty. We should advance.” Despite his words, Kiril saw a tightening about the man’s eyes.

  “Think, Kiril—what would such a blade actually want?” exhorted the disembodied Keeper’s voice. “Nis is Angul’s opposite. Just as the Blade Cerulean seeks to destroy all abominations, the Blade Umbral seeks to release them!”

  Kiril, ignoring Raidon to focus solely on Telarian, said, “The woman makes a point. When Nangulis and I discussed his—”

  As the skin falls from a shedding snake, so did all expression slough from Telarian’s face as he grasped Nis’s hilt. He dragged forth its length and swept the blade around to decapitate Kiril. As he attacked, he said in an emotionless voice, “Delphe knows nothing.”

  Raidon watched with wonder as color returned to his amulet, filling in the gap so dark it seemed to encroach on the symbol of the white tree at its center. This was the color the forget-me-not possessed almost the whole time it had been in his possession. How many times had he pulled it out and thought of his missing parent? He rubbed his fingers across the tiny overlapping inscriptions, briefly wondering if his mother had known their meaning.

  To his eyes, a wisp of luminous blue-white light flowed down the ramp, a languid rivulet that terminated in the air above him, Kiril, and Telarian. The strand was a connection!

  Voices passed up and down the slender stream of radiance, but the Sign lent him certainty that far more than mere sound could be transferred via the magical circuit, if only it was properly tapped.

  Kiril’s voice and the voice of the female Keeper contended back and forth, but Raidon paid their meanings no heed. His focus obscured everything but the strand. The longer he stared into its light, the more he understood. Yes, he thought, I see …

  Raidon grasped the end of the strand and mentally pulled.

  The rearguard Knight fell into unconsciousness without alerting his compatriots who rode ahead. Gage guided the man’s body down from his mount with one hand, holding the steed’s reigns with his other so it wouldn’t bolt.

  In remarkably few breaths, Gage exchanged his dun-colored garments for the Knight’s heavier, shiny raiment. He was frankly surprised at how light and flexible the armor was. As he mounted the huffing steed, he wondered if all elven chain was of such quality. Or, maybe the armor he’d just pilfered possessed a special quality known only to star elves. Perhaps he would keep the improvised disguise, if he surv
ived. He mounted up.

  He pushed forward through the trailing star elf ranks without difficulty—these Knights had lost too many of their company to adhere to usual protocol. They rode, but were barely cognizant of anything other than what they feared lay ahead. He smiled within his reflective helm. He was imagining the look on Kiril’s face when he pushed up the visor and revealed his identity.

  Ahead, the tunnel widened. A tangle of Knights gathered above on a sloping ramp, their gazes distracted by something behind them … it was Kiril! She was engrossed in an argument, perhaps with Raidon Kane, who stood to one side of Kiril’s steed, or with the scowling elf who rode on her opposite side. Gage was close enough to hear passion in Kiril’s voice, but not the words spoken.

  Gage moved closer until he was only a few paces behind she who he’d tracked so far. Kiril turned to address the mounted elf. The man, apparently not liking what he heard, pulled forth a length of sword-shaped night. Gage thought he yelled, but all sound was eclipsed by a sudden, ear-piercing rumble that pulsed forth from the amulet the monk held high. Another heartbeat, and on the heels of the tumult came a flash that erased Gage’s vision.

  Gage yelled as his steed and saddle fell away beneath him. He fell into swirling, sky blue incandescence.

  Kiril ducked under Telarian’s treacherous attack, groping for Angul’s hilt …

  Empyreal dawn blossomed, brilliant and all-encompassing. She couldn’t see a thing in the ubiquitous blaze. She felt herself pulled up and into a maw of light.

  Despite being blind and off balance, her questing hand found and drew the Blade Cerulean. With Angul in hand, her eyes cleared. Her steel-shod feet found purchase on steady ground. The sweet kiss of Angul lent Kiril magnificent conviction.

  She recognized that Raidon had successfully transferred her, himself, and all who had been near her directly into Stardeep’s heart. Despite his lack of practice, the monk had managed to exclude steeds from the trip.

  Kiril stood in the Inner Bastion, in the very Throat of the Well, where the Traitor’s constricting fires reflected up the central shaft.

  And not five paces from her stood Telarian, recovering from the rough transit as quickly as she, wielding Angul’s dark echo. Telarian, whose surprise attack with Nis revealed him as the true agent of the hoary aboleths. She had unwittingly brought him into the dungeon’s most protected chamber. Kiril realized Delphe had secured the inmost cell against entry not because Delphe was the Traitor’s pawn, but to prevent Telarian from attempting whatever devious scheme he obviously intended. And like a bumbling fool, she’d asked Raidon to puncture those defenses.

  Other figures blurred the edges of Kiril’s perception, but her awareness, and Angul’s, was reserved for the diviner. Likewise, Telarian ignored the scrabbling forms of Knights who’d been pulled along with them into the Throat. Anyone not wielding a soul relic wasn’t worth any attention at the moment.

  Kiril yelled, “Prepare to be sundered from your sins!”

  Telarian said nothing, nor did he move. The diviner stood with Nis drawn and held out before him in a relaxed, casual guard. His face was absent of the least hint of emotion. His posture was half-turned toward the Well. Indeed, the tip of his right boot overhung the shaft by a finger’s length.

  Kiril closed the five paces separating her from her target. She brought Angul around high and hard, intending to beat away the dark blade in a shearing swipe whose trajectory would ultimately end in Telarian’s heart.

  At the instant of contact, when Angul’s fiery length struck Nis’s sooty edge, Kiril lost her grip on the hilt.

  She gasped, flailing after the blade that suddenly moved under its own power. Unexpectedly bereft of Angul’s physical and mental scaffolding, she tumbled headlong across the floor, her body knocking Telarian down at the knees; he’d also lost hold of Nis.

  Turning, Kiril saw the two blades hanging unsupported in the air, still crossed as they’d struck. Fire leached from Angul into Nis’s lightless expanse, while darkness bled from the Blade Umber back to Angul. The crossed blades were like the wings of a hybrid angel, half-fallen from some celestial sphere, uncertain whether it would leap back up into the starry firmament, or dive down into the depths of the beckoning elemental chaos.

  With a deliberate inevitability, the two blades scissored to form a single shaft of steel. Where there had been two, now one sword hung unsupported in the air, burning with a black-tinged fire, both darker than night and brighter than day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Stardeep, Throat

  As Delphe blinked away the afterglow of the cerulean flash, half a dozen figures dropped out of the fading light.

  Most of the intruders collapsed prone onto the hard floor of the Throat. Two retained their feet. Delphe recognized both. One was Telarian. The other, slim hipped and broad shouldered, was Kiril. Each bore a dire weapon, and each seemed eager to engage the other.

  “Delphe,” rang Cynosure’s gravelly voice. “Containment breach in progress! Deploying physical safeguard.”

  The stone and crystal statue poised above the Well, unmoving in all the time Delphe had served Stardeep as a Keeper, suddenly fell free, plunging from the ceiling like a dropped anchor, flashing past the lip, its arms outstretched and its eyes trailing the light of Cynosure’s focused consciousness.

  From deep in the Well boiled a fount of racing purple fire. A sure sign the containment layer had collapsed, or was on the verge of doing so. The falling construct and rising plane of fire met in an explosion of white light.

  Delphe leaped from her control chair, one hand grasping her Cerulean Sign, the other already essaying gestures that opened hidden arcane geometries. With a sick feeling clawing at her gut, she dropped a slab of invisible force flat across the lip of the Well, hoping it would buy Cynosure time to stem the breach below while she dealt with the situation above. How had Telarian and so many others penetrated Stardeep’s very heart? Obviously, it was some sort of back door set up by Telarian—one more betrayal of his trust. However, this was not the time to contemplate failed security.

  She returned her attention to the interlopers. Of the six or so intruders, many were Knights caught up in the transfer. Some few of these were groaning and blinking, beginning to rise.

  “Oh, by the Sign,” breathed Delphe as her eyes tracked back to Kiril, Angul blazing in her fists, and across from her Telarian, Nis darkening the chamber with only his presence. Kiril yelled a challenge; Telarian sneered. They were going to fight! In all Stardeep’s history, had two Keepers ever come to blows?

  Telarian and Kiril crossed swords.

  The explosion of noise and light that followed knocked both wielders to the floor with the insensate Knights. Upon touching, the blades recognized the missing portions of the other. They merged, creating a new entity: a union of the soul-forged swords Angul and Nis. The new-minted weapon pulsed with fell energy, far outstripping its shape and mortal origins.

  The Keeper of the Outer Bastion regained his feet. Next to him, Kiril raised herself to her knees. When her eyes found the linked weapons, she ceased all action except to stare at Angul-Nis as if entranced. Telarian moved past her, paying the swordswoman not the least bit of concern. Kiril’s hands remained passively at her sides—she made no move to stop the diviner.

  Delphe called out, “No!” as Telarian grasped for Angul-Nis’s hilt.

  A winged creature the size of a small dog dived at Telarian from somewhere behind Delphe’s left shoulder. It must have arrived in the Throat with Kiril, Telarian, and the Knights. It screeched a strangely musical call and raked Telarian’s hands with crystalline claws. The diviner snatched his hands back from the hilt. The tiny opalescent dragon took the opportunity to scratch at Telarian’s eyes. He fell back from the hovering dragonet and the dangling blade, swatting and cursing.

  The crystal beast belled a tiny cry of triumph as it stooped on the retreating diviner again. Then a thread of black flame extended from Angul-Nis, wavering and winding through t
he air like a worm in its hole. The dragonet didn’t see the thread, so intent was it on Telarian. When the thread touched the tiny flying creature’s shoulder, the dragonet squawked, then clattered to the ground, trailing dark smoke as it rolled.

  The diviner laughed and advanced once more to stand before the free-hanging sword. Unimpeded, Telarian gripped Angul-Nis’s hilt.

  His eyes dissolved in night and his hair stood on end, each shaft seeming to project black-tinged fire. Telarian raised Angul-Nis above his head in a gesture of triumph. He began to laugh.

  Delphe launched a silver mote trailing white sparks at the diviner, an enchantment of bone-binding. Telarian turned, still laughing, and deflected the spell right back at her on the flat of his blade!

  She thrust her Sign amulet forward, intercepting the turned spell in a burst of crimson sparks. She blinked away the afterglow in time to see the diviner charging across the twenty paces that separated them.

  Delphe screamed, still holding forth her Cerulean Sign, hoping to ward the diviner away with its potent symbology. If he was the Traitor’s cat’s-paw, the Sign should—

  Telarian swept Angul-Nis through her hand. Color leached suddenly from the world as Delphe saw three fingers and half the Sign spin away from her palm.

  Dawning shock replaced her strength, and she fell. Telarian chuckled and moved toward the lip of the Well, holding Angul-Nis high. Delphe tried to chant a spell, call on Cynosure to engage Telarian, or beseech one of the reeling Knights for aid. Desire collapsed to reality, and instead she clutched desperately at her maimed hand with the other, attempting to apply a tourniquet before her life bled out completely. Just a pace away, the light in her severed amulet dimmed and flickered out.

  Telarian began to hack at the slab of force choking the Well, his laughter mounting in manic peals.

  When she’d last seen Nangulis, tears rendered the world blurry and uncertain. As she perceived the human form stepping forward, as if out of the shadow of the conjoined blades, tears spilled anew from her wondering eyes, painting her surroundings in foggy striations of white, black, and red. Flashes of apocalyptic light, screams of pain, and a diabolical mirth echoing through the Throat faded from Kiril’s perception. The concerns of the corporeal world were gone. She saw only the man to whom she’d once pledged her undying love. He who had just emerged from the conjoined sword.