The angel turned back to his companions. "We have to go on our gut feelings," he said. "If we envision what we need to learn and open ourselves to the subtleties of our subconscious, the veil may be lifted, and we may find what we seek."
"Sounds like a game that's hard to win," Kaanyr said, frowning. "Lots of opportunities to get lost."
"Some that pass through here do not return," the archon said. "Perhaps they never find what they seek, or perhaps they find… something else. Something unintended. Whatever the outcome, you are the guide, you must steer the course."
"Are you certain this is what we want to do?" Kaanyr asked. "Is it worth the risk of vanishing in this maze?"
As Aliisza stared out over the water at the distant twinkling lights, she found herself agreeing with Kaanyr's caution. I've never been afraid of the dark before, she thought. What's different about this place?
Tauran gazed levelly at the cambion. "I have surrendered everything I hold dear to right this wrong. What do you think?"
"Well, good for you, angel," Kaanyr said. "I've given up quite a bit, too, and may yet give up more. I still want to think about this before we just plunge into the darkness forever."
"I know of no other way to get ahead of Zasian," Tauran said. "So long as we keep following his breadcrumb trail, we play his game. If we succeed at this, we may have the means to stop him. I'm committed to that possibility. And you are, too."
Kaanyr glared at Tauran, but he said nothing more.
Aliisza watched the cambion and imagined his mind working, trying to figure out a way to bypass the angel's control over him. She was still furious with him for his boorish attack earlier, but at that moment, when she so feared passing deeper into those caverns, she actually felt a bit sorry for him. I have a choice; he has to go in there whether he likes it or not. Still, he might actually learn something about himself…
But that's what you're afraid of, isn't it? she asked herself. Seeing too deeply into your own heart.
"Quit fighting it," she said softly to Kaanyr, so no one else could hear. "Trust me; I know of what I speak."
"How could you stand it?" Kaanyr whispered. "How could you put up with his sneering, condescending arrogance?"
So, he begins to understand at last, she thought, trying not to smirk. He finally sees how much he betrayed me. "You'd be surprised," she said, staring pointedly at her lover. "I've had lots of practice."
Kaanyr caught her look and snorted, but she saw his faint smile nonetheless. He inclined his head at her, acknowledging her point. "Let's go," he said, following Tauran.
The angel walked along the dock, studying the different boats. He paused a couple of times, examining a particular craft more closely, but he would move on again after a short time. When he'd traversed the entire row of boats, he shrugged.
"I'm no closer to picking than I was before," he said. "This may take a while."
Aliisza thought for a moment. Then inspiration struck. "What are you thinking about?" she asked.
Tauran frowned. "Which boat feels right."
The alu shook her head. "No," she said, "not like that. Look at me. Now, what do you want to do more than anything?"
Tauran bit his lip. "To catch Zasian."
"How?"
"By knowing what he's planning."
"Exactly," Aliisza said. "Feel that. What is Zasian planning?" She looked at her other two companions. "Fix that in your mind."
The alu followed her own advice. She closed her eyes and imagined the priest, pictured his face. She watched him, studied him, waited for him to act. Then, she imagined which boat would carry her to Zasian, to his next step.
The choice came to her suddenly and clearly.
Aliisza opened her eyes just as Kael said, "It's that one." He was pointing to her own choice.
"Yes," Kaanyr agreed, and Tauran nodded beside him.
"Let's go," the angel said, and they boarded the boat together.
The boatman untied the moorings and pushed the craft away from the dock. The boat moved into the open water and began to pick up speed on its own. The archon stood silently at the stern, occasionally dipping a single paddle into the water to adjust the heading slightly, but he did not row or pole the craft forward.
"Where are we going?" Kaanyr asked. "Or must we choose that, too?"
"I think we do," Kael said.
Aliisza filled her mind with images of Zasian again. She pictured him planning, plotting, scheming. As she did so, subtle hints came to her about the way to follow. The course the boat set seemed to acknowledge her thoughts.
Or maybe Tauran's, or all of us, she thought.
Whatever the circumstances, whenever she glanced at her companions, they all were just as keenly observant of where the craft was taking them, and they all seemed equally as content.
The boat glided along the black water, leaving the docks far behind, until Aliisza could not remember which set of torch lights indicated its location. She peered all around, studying the various points of light. Most seemed to lie along the shores of the subterranean lake, but many more sat up high, perhaps on shelves of cave wall or hanging from the ceiling. She was never certain, for they didn't illuminate much. They simply hovered, distant pinpricks of light against a tapestry of night.
The alu stared down into the water. It was as black as the very depths of the earth, and she could see nothing there-until without warning, they passed over a point where faint light shone up from far, far, below. At first she thought it was just a trick of her mind, a reflection from overhead, but when she looked up and saw dozens of other pinpoints of light there, she knew the water somehow did not mirror them.
Whatever was down there was real, and deep.
"That way," Tauran blurted after they had been traveling for some time. "We need to go over there." He pointed to a set of lights slightly up from the water level.
Aliisza frowned. It did not feel right to her. "Are you sure?" she asked, sensing that they should keep going straight.
"No," Kael said, "I don't think that's right."
Tauran looked at them. "Concentrate," he said. "I know that's where we ought to go."
Aliisza focused her attention once more on Zasian and his impending actions, but the sense that they should continue straight grew stronger. Before she could express her disagreement, though, Kaanyr spoke up.
"No, you're leading us astray, angel," he said. "We need to visit those lights over there."
Aliisza opened her eyes to look where the cambion pointed and felt just as confused. "Both of you are wrong," she said. "We need to keep going forward."
"I agree with Aliisza," Kael said. "It's somewhere ahead, not to either side."
"No," Tauran argued, adamant. "I can feel this. It's right."
"And I say you're all wrong," Kaanyr countered. "I am certain we must go this way over here."
Aliisza frowned. "Boatman," she said, "what are we doing wrong?"
The archon bowed his head slightly at being addressed. "It is said that sometimes, different beings seeking the same knowledge must visit different points of the same path. Perhaps each of you is right, in his or her own way."
The four companions looked at one another.
"I know that what I seek is over there," Tauran said, pointing in the direction he had desired before. "I don't know what each of you is imagining, but if we want to stop Zasian, we will find the answers there."
Aliisza knew she felt just as strongly that she would only find what she was looking for if she headed the way she wanted to go. "Boatman," she said, "must we travel within your craft to reach our goals?"
The archon frowned. "I know of no one who has left a boat before," he said, "but then, I have only been serving as a guide for eleven hundred years; not long at all. I am not aware that it is forbidden or impossible."
"Then I propose we each take our own way," Aliisza said. "We each believe we will find Truth where our imaginations are taking us. Let's go our separate ways and find what we
seek. We can meet back at the dock when we're finished."
"I don't like it," Tauran said. "It could prove disastrous."
"Or," Kaanyr countered, "it could give us four times as much information."
"The cambion is right," Kael said. "If we each seek our own way and return with a more complete picture, won't that improve our chances of finding and stopping the priest?"
Tauran thought for a few moments more then nodded. "If each of you is even half as certain of your paths as I am of this one, then I can't see preventing you from chasing it. Go." He motioned to them. "Find what we seek, and I will see you on the dock."
Aliisza smiled and stood. "I will be the first one back." She took to the air.
As she left the boat behind, she got an even greater sense of the vastness of the cavern. It grew absolutely quiet around her, without the gentle lapping of the water against the sides of the craft. All she could hear was the faint beating of her wings. It reminded her a great deal of her time back in Amarindar, when she and Kaanyr ruled over the armies of tanarruks in that fallen dwarven city. There were quiet places in the abandoned halls there, places where she could almost hear time creeping forward.
The Eye felt like that, but there was something more there, within those caverns. A buzz pervaded everything. It was no physical sound, but rather a soft undercurrent of… something. An expectation, perhaps. Aliisza came to realize it was the connection between her own expectations and the knowledge the vast cavern had to offer.
As she flew, that buzz grew stronger.
The alu let that sensation guide her. She followed it like a trail, somehow sensing that she needed to travel to a small set of lights ahead and slightly above herself. It did not take her long to reach them, and when she did, she hesitated.
A great stalagmite jutted forth from the water, a towering edifice of natural stone larger than any wizard's tower. Caves riddled its surface, some very natural in shape, others looking freshly dug. A pair of torches flanked each entrance. The flames flickered and danced, but none had burned out, as far as she could tell. An idle thought swept through her about the insanity of trying to keep so many lit.
They must be magical, she decided. Perhaps they burn forever.
Shrugging off the nonsensical notion, Aliisza focused her mind once more on the quarry of knowledge. Her sense guided her to a particular cavern-one up high, near the tip of the stalagmite. She landed upon the small shelf jutting out from the cave entrance and stood there, listening.
Her wariness increased as her innate sense of danger tickled the back of her mind.
Unlike before, when she had known something threatening would be coming through the door, her sense was different, more vague. It also wasn't quite so imminent. Something about it told her that the threat came from within, a weakness of herself, rather than from some external source.
I have too many questions, she realized. About Tauran, and Kaanyr, and Kael, and how I fit into each of their lives. Put them out of your mind, Aliisza, she told herself. Don't let them distract you from finding Zasian. If you don't, you might never get out of here.
Heeding that warning, she stepped forward cautiously, still trying to detect some noise or other evidence of something beyond. When she failed to discern anything, Aliisza took a steadying breath and stepped across the threshold.
A bombardment of thoughts assaulted her mind. She spun out of control, lost in a haze of spinning, whirling notions. Ideas cascaded one atop another, making her dizzy. She lost track of her own physical existence while caught up in the mental cacophony of concepts, images, and realizations.
Stop it! she wanted to scream, and she pressed her hands against her own ears, trying in vain to block out the crashing, relentless thoughts. Get out of my head!
But the assault did not waver, and she fell to her knees, buffeted into a stupor.
The boat rocked a bit as the others pushed off and flew into the darkness. Tauran watched them go until he could no longer see any of them. Each one winged in a different direction. None was the path he would follow.
No truer, more prophetic words, he thought.
For a moment, weariness overwhelmed the angel. He couldn't fathom how he had managed to keep the disparate pieces of the group together as long as he had. Every moment, something cropped up-an argument, a scowl or brusque word, a battle of wills-that threatened all he worked for.
The world balances upon the tip of a high, steep pinnacle, in danger of tipping and falling, he thought, and Tyr cannot see it. The High Council and Micus cannot see it. Only I try to hold it in place, and my mighty army consists of three half-fiends who cannot get along. He rubbed his hands across his eyes. How did it come to this?
Each of his companions-his tools, if he was bluntly honest with himself-presented a different challenge.
Kael, he could trust. Though the champion could be headstrong and volatile at times, Tauran knew the half-drow's heart, knew that he was as dedicated to their success as the deva himself. But he was young and naive, and Tauran had to be wary of coming to rely overly much on him for sound judgment.
He'd lay down his life defending me, but there will come a point where he might need to sacrifice me, instead. Will he know when that is? Will he understand the necessity of it? Will he do it, even if I command him to?
Vhok was precisely the opposite; he would never be trustworthy. In some ways, that made it easier. So long as the angel kept firmly in mind that the cambion served only his own interests and tried in every way imaginable to circumvent his authority, Tauran could be ready for his tricks. But it still made him dangerous. The deva had nearly slipped a few times, letting his emotions get the better of him, or he had been caught off guard, like with that sword. Must force him to get rid of that vile thing, he reminded himself. But each time, he had recovered. No, the danger lay not in what Vhok could do to him, but in what he could do to the other two. His actions threatened to rip the cohesion of the group apart. He required the greatest amount of attention and care.
And then there was Aliisza. She was the enigma. He had expected her to flee long before, but she had not. He wasn't certain what possessed her to continue. She showed inklings of dedication, hints of coming to understand the value of loyalty and self-sacrifice, but she was no angel, hadn't been among them nearly long enough.
Kael sees himself as one of us, even if he has no celestial blood, but Aliisza… I cannot see into her heart, he realized. And because of that, she is the one most likely to be my undoing.
Tauran blinked and came out of his lamentations. He remembered where he was and what he was striving to stop. Guilt forced the weariness from his thoughts and made him renew his determination. The boat sat still in the black waters of the cavern. The boatman stood just as still, waiting for him.
With a deep breath, the angel refocused. What is Zasian planning? Where will he try to lead us? How can we stop him?
The boat began to glide forward in the water.
Aliisza stood in a great rotunda that was dim with the light of a few faint candles. The large, circular room echoed with the sounds of voices, but those voices were indistinct, illogical. She stood away from the center, behind a thick, ornate column.
No. I am hiding, she heard herself think.
It was not the alu's own inner voice that spoke, though. She was also someone else.
She looked through the other's eyes, peered carefully around the side of the column toward the center. She glanced down at herself and gasped.
She was a thing of shadow, midnight black and indistinguishable from all the other shadows that filled the room. Cloaked.
In the center of the room, three figures stood, deep in conversation. She could see them only indistinctly, as though they were blurred, not solid. But somehow, she knew they were gods.
They argued.
One was a woman, coldly beautiful and tall. Black flowing hair. Pale radiant skin. Imbued with magic.
Aliisza felt jealousy. She desired the end of th
at one.
The pale, magic-infused woman stood beside a man, elderly, wizened. His flowing white hair joined with his thick, full beard and moustache, a mantle of authority upon his shoulders. He, too, seemed the embodiment of all that was arcane.
Together, they faced the third. A thin man, emaciated, craven. His chalk white skin stood in stark contrast to his fierce black eyes. He cringed before the pair, listening as they seemed to berate him, a wisp of a secret smile on his face.
Aliisza felt drawn to him, thought him handsome.
Another figure appeared, also on the periphery of the chamber. She, too, was indistinct, a thing of shimmering light. Nearly naked, her jet black skin covered the curves and litheness of a streetwalker, a night dancer. She was beautiful.
Aliisza wanted to fall on her knees, worship the dancer, bathe in her beauty, serve her forever.
But she must not.
There was work to do. She would do her job, perform her task, and curry favor from both the dark dancer and the craven one.
Yes.
The wizened man turned to the dark dancer, seemed startled that she had appeared. The pale woman with the dark hair and radiant skin also turned, and she seemed more angry than before. She and the dark dancer confronted one another as the wizened man looked on.
It was time.
Aliisza crept out from the shadows. She glided, step by step, behind the wizened man. She was nearly within reach, standing just behind him.
No one seemed to notice.
She waited.
The dark, beautiful one danced. She moved to some unheard rhythm, gyrated to a beat that did not reverberate within the rotunda. She was awesome to behold, undulating before the wizened man and the radiant woman.
The old one's posture changed. He seemed to lose his focus, becoming enamored of the dark dancer. He leaned forward, drawn to her.
In his enthrallment, he let his staff slip from his hands.
Aliisza knew it was her moment.
She reached out, prevented the wizened one's staff from falling, kept it upright so no one would see.
She grasped it in her hands, felt its power.
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