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 into 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 Sildëyuir 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 Sildëyuir, 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 ne
wly 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.
“I do not know …” said Kiril.
“Leave it,” urged Gage.
“I should walk away,” agreed the swordswoman. “I should relinquish Angul so Nangulis can discover, at long last, his final rest. With Nis beyond reach, no hope whatever remains that Nangulis can ever be returned to me—half his essence has fallen into the Well. From that separation, there can be no returning.”
Unless the Traitor is finally freed, Gage thought, but didn’t say.
Cynosure’s voice came. “You have borne a burden past enduring for too many years. Let it go now. With Nis gone, the Traitor’s best hope of freeing himself is also past. No one would think ill of you, least of all me, who aided you and Nangulis in forging the blade. Let it be. You deserve a life more urbane than fleeing deeds ill-done in the name of an unattainable standard of good.”
Kiril watched Angul guttering and nodded, now freely but silently crying. She turned to Gage, handing him Xet. “Take him for a bit, won’t you? I’ll say my good-byes to Angul, and Nangulis, as I should have done ten years ago when the Traitor was first contained.”
The thief nodded and accepted the slight burden of the dragonet.
Kiril moved to stand before the blade, her head down. Suddenly cognizant of her mumbled words addressed to the blade, Gage moved to join Delphe and Raidon by the crystal command chair.
Raidon listened as the star elf told him how to use his mother’s forget-me-not, and was astounded. It possessed abilities deeper than he had imagined. Yet as she spoke, the larger part of him was more interested in Delphe than in her message.
For she was a star elf, and unlike Kiril, not hardened and molded by a decade of self-effacing hate. He imagined she might be something like his mother …
He imagined her then, someone not unlike Delphe, but with darker hair and moonlight shining on it, standing in a grove of sighing trees in Sildëyuir. From musicians unseen came elven songs, and wafting on the warm air the scent of sweet elven wine. She who the Edgewarden had named Erunyauvë. What was her story?
Delphe paused, said, “Are you listening, Raidon? To strengthen the boundary layer at the Well’s bottom requires concentration and focus.”
Raidon gave a slight smile, saying, “I was distracted, but please proceed. I have understood all you have so far explained. You were describing how, when imagining the three-dimensional likeness of the Sign, your mind can call forth the amulet’s full powers.”
“Yes, that’s right,” replied Delphe, somewhat mollified.
The image he’d constructed of Erunyauvë returned. On her chest lay the amulet she’d given Raidon. She smiled, and in that expression he saw a promise. She would explain her departure when their joyful reunion occurred, soon now. Having visited Sildëyuir, he wanted to return to where starry skies glistened and day’s harsh light never burned. A place where he could discover the truth of his origin.
In Sildëyuir, he would learn Erunyauvë’s true reason for leaving him, and her supernatural percipience in gifting him with the one object required to stem a primeval threat. To see so far into the future, she must command a considerable talent. But what a lonely power, too. If one saw the future so clearly, would destiny seem too rigid a road, a fate so certain that neither luck nor intervention could hope to alter fortune or misfortune alike? Perhaps such a choice faced Telarian …
Raidon swept speculation about Erunyauvë from his mind, and concentrated exclusively on Delphe’s lilting voice.
Kiril watched Angul flickering, dimming with each heartbeat. Without her touch to enliven the half-soul, the Blade Cerulean’s fires would fail. All her personal angst and troubles, tied directly to the blade, would cease, or at least no longer continue to grow. She could finally get on with her life. An image of her enchanted whisky flask appeared in her mind’s eye. “No, I wouldn’t …” She hoped she wouldn’t.
Was Angul so much to give up? He was not Nangulis, after all—he was only a distorted image of Nangulis’s overriding conviction, purpose, and duty as a Keeper. Angul, for all his power to destroy aberrations, was also a self-proclaimed justicar of all that was right, rather than a solver of problems. As Kiril had learned early in her career as Angul’s wielder, such certitude can quickly lend itself to right�
��s opposite. She’d cursed the blade enough, blaming Angul for her long exile from Stardeep and her lapse as a Keeper of the Cerulean Sign. The blade was anathema to her. Her chance to forget required only that she turn away.
The memory of Nangulis kneeling before her, his palm on her face, flashed before her. The warmth of his hand still haunted her cheek, he had touched her so recently; or his shade had. Did it matter? More importantly, could she truly live without him? Could she gainsay Angul, the last remnant of the love of someone who meant more to her than her own miserable life?
Leave him, she commanded herself. If she touched the guttering blade, she would be lost—the only opportunity she’d ever have to be shut of Angul’s temerity was now before her. Who knows what future pain she might inflict upon herself and others as a thrall to the blade’s righteousness?
No, better to walk away from the lip, bid him …
Good-bye.
“Farewell, Nangulis …” Her head fell as she imagined the rest of the day, the rest of the month, and the remainder of the year. She attempted to picture the rest of her life, however long it might stretch into the gray, lonely future.
A desolate cry broke from Kiril Duskmourn. She sprang forward, reaching for the Blade Cerulean’s hilt. With a tug, the blade was free from the stone. Fire bloomed, sky blue and joyous. Angul burned anew and gladly in her loving grip. Angul’s clarity of reason fell across her like a warm blanket. It was like … coming home.
“Angul,” she whispered, her face transfigured. “I missed you.”
About the Author
BRUCE R. CORDELL’s fourth novel is Stardeep. His previous novels include Oath of Nerull, Lady of Poison, and Darkvision. By day, Bruce is a game designer, and in that role he has written over forty game titles, a few of which have garnered awards. Bruce lives in Washington State with his wife and a menagerie of gentle house pets.
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