Key of Stars

by Bruce R Cordell

  Taal gave a cautious nod.

  “So, the Eldest won’t object if I siphon a bit of its strength so I can open the way,” the eladrin continued.

  Malyanna made a fist, and waved her other hand over it in a circular motion. She opened her fingers. A dark, circular object appeared, nestled in her grip.

  The Dreamheart!

  Anusha’s breathing hitched. She should do something! Summon her sword and knock the vile thing from Malyanna’s hand, or strike the woman’s head from her neck!

  Yet the sight of the stone paralyzed her. If she got too close to it, it might snag her mind, wizard charm or no, and seal her fate for good. She should have acted sooner!

  The eladrin noble stared at the sphere as if it were a scrying ball. She crooned a high-pitched chant laden with barbed consonants and keening vowels.

  Splintering white light accompanied a raucous crack of thunder so close the balcony shuddered. Anusha tried but couldn’t tear her gaze from Malyanna and the piece of poison heavy in her hands.

  A seam on the stone parted, an eyelid shuttering open. Malyanna’s gaze met the Eldest’s eternal stare.

  “Storm’s worsening, Captain,” said Mharsan. A sudden, stiff breeze pulled the woman’s silver braid nearly straight out from her head.

  Thoster peered up through the rigging. The thunderheads swaddling Xxiphu’s bulk flashed and rumbled with accelerating rage. The black clouds smeared and elongated, reaching out windblown arms, as if to encircle the floating obelisk. It almost looked like a whirlpool trying to form, but in the air instead of the sea.

  “What in Umberlee’s name is going on up there?” he said.

  He grabbed Mharsan’s arm. “Go to the sleeping woman’s cabin. Tell Yeva to wake Anusha!”

  Mharsan nodded and dashed away. Thoster kept his eyes on the sky.

  A series of jolts shook Green Siren. He ripped his gaze away from the spectacle above.

  Waves tore at what had been a calm sea moments earlier. Water frothed into a foaming ridge, forming a vast circle centered on the floating city far above. And his ship was caught inside the circumference!

  Thoster opened his mouth to scream orders at his crew. A shrieking gust of noisome air rent the words from his mouth, and tried to liberate his hat in the bargain.

  He clamped a hand to his head and grabbed a mainstay with the other. The blast caught the ship from the stern, which was lucky. Instead of just pushing her over in the water and drowning everyone, it propelled the ship forward. The wind didn’t blow straight though; it coiled, round and round. Green Siren plowed through the ocean, following the curved line of the foaming water, tracing the edge of a bounded region of boiling sea.

  Thoster assumed a maelstrom was forming, and was about to suck his ship into the depths. And without the benefit of a school of gleamtail jacks. His crew and his ship would be lost. His own abilities, however, would probably see him through, assuming the current didn’t dash his head against the hull of his splintering ship—

  Wait.

  He stared hard out into the center of disturbance, though seaspray stung his eyes. Instead of dimpling down at the hub as he’d expected, the water bulged upward. In the very center, the bulge birthed a waterspout of madly spinning water that reached still higher.

  “What the …?” Thoster said.

  Above, the racing clouds completed their weave around the impassive aboleth city. A funnel of vapor and sparking lightning formed directly beneath Xxiphu. The spinning structure dropped away toward the surface of the Sea of Fallen Stars. The funnel was like to the one beneath it on the water. The thinning, twining finger stretched down from the sky, and another one reached down from the surface of the sea.

  Thoster felt the ship buckle and scream. Spars snapped, and masts broke and tumbled away, even as the hull was pulled higher and higher, up the narrowing path of the swirling cone of water.

  When the two funnel tips finally touched, a soundless explosion of purple light raced away in every direction. Thoster blinked several times, trying to clear an afterimage of gnashing teeth. When he could see again, he saw a hole lay behind the expanding wave of light. It was like a yawning mouth in the air, inhaling reality.

  The spinning funnels of cloud and water tattered and ripped apart, sending scudding fragments of vapor every which way. Xxiphu, completely exposed, was pulled into the maw like a fly on a frog’s tongue.

  The cavity’s growth slowed, then ceased. A heartbeat later, it began to collapse back on itself.

  Green Siren hung midway between the crumpling fissure in the sky and the unforgiving face of the Sea of Fallen Stars below.

  It might have gone either way, but with a sudden jerk, the ship was pulled into the fissure the instant before it closed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

  Feywild

  Long before he had been old enough, Raidon had yearned to join Xiang Temple. He’d been certain he’d love fighting. His mother had let him observe the choreographed but nonetheless spectacular fights the monks demonstrated on festival days. Watching all the ways someone could move and evade, and manipulate a foe with a subtle twist or hip rotation was all the magic Raidon had ever craved.

  When he was eight years of age, he enrolled. His expectations were fulfilled, and more. He loved the forms, the conditioning, and the camaraderie. The first years numbered among his most cherished memories. And after all those years, he still relished the complexities of striking, despite where his vocation had ultimately led him.

  Remembrances of his training came to Raidon as he moved through the fey forest. A towering tree reminded him of the pillars that graced Xiang. Firefly gleams flaring in the shadows to either side recalled the fantastic lanterns that hung over the main dojo. Above, the sun glimmered through a ragged cloak of green and gold leaves, which was in color like the silk belt he was given upon achieving his first rank.

  Then Japheth stepped out of the black cavity of his cloak. The warlock didn’t shake loose any pleasant associations.

  Their trip through the woods of Faerie was rapid, at least. Raidon could move much faster than his companion, but Japheth could take shortcuts and leap ahead. Raidon would then make up the distance with a quick burst of reaching strides.

  The monk tried to recall the contented glow of his early training again, then allowed the image to fade. The moment was past.

  The memory of the petrified Traitor returned front and center. Seeing the statue, as it slipped down the hound’s path of shadow, had shaken Raidon.

  Something terrible was loose, and he didn’t know if anyone had the knowledge or the power to stop it. The thought actually worried him. He’d imagined he had gone beyond the ability to feel concern. And so, paradoxically, Raidon was also grateful.

  Of course, he wished he could have made the return to human feeling via some other route. Each time he concentrated on the gnarled, twisted shape of Stardeep’s “escaped” prisoner, the Cerulean Sign became as ice across his chest.

  The half-elf shook his head. Worry was an old friend, much preferred to the desolate winds howling across his soul since the … incident … in Xxiphu. He’d believed his mind was shattered for good.

  Yet here he was. Pushed past the breaking point, he’d located the grit to keep trying. And in that resilience, in the uncomplicated striving, he’d found a simple peace. It was the peace he’d once taken for granted, but forgotten.

  Achieving one’s goals was not what brought lasting satisfaction—it was the journey itself that gave peace. When one stopped trying for what was new or what was right, finally satisfied in one’s past achievements, or maybe too tired to continue trying to make or find something new, then life was finally over.

  It was entirely possible his current mood was an aberration, and doomed to go the way of all his earlier hopeful thoughts, but he was determined to enjoy the calm it brought while it lasted.

  Ahead, Japheth translated across a chasm, and Raidon leaped it.
A press of wide trunks lay on the chasm’s opposite side, obscuring the view ahead. He sprinted through the trees, leaning into each course correction, laying a hand on warm bark when necessary to make particularly sharp turns.

  When the monk regained sight of the warlock, the man stood at the edge of a clearing amid the towering trees. It was the clearing holding the stone dais on which they’d arrived in the Feywild.

  A figure stood on the platform, the suggestion of a smug smile tugging the corners of his mouth.

  Raidon felt as if someone had just punched him in the stomach.

  “You!” said Japheth, his tone incredulous.

  The Lord of Bats’s smile widened. The green glyph slithered on his forehead like a leech looking for blood. Its influence woke a cool resonance in Raidon’s spellscar.

  An iron spear appeared in Japheth’s right hand. It glowed cherry red from infernal heat. The warlock hurled it. Before it could find its mark, the archfey opened his mouth, releasing a torrent of screaming bats that instantly filled the hollow. Flapping darkness hid the spear’s trajectory.

  A voice issued from the obscured clearing. “I’ve taken possession of this exit,” the archfey said. “To go through, you must defeat me.”

  “We beat you before, Neifion!” Japheth yelled over the sound of flapping bat wings.

  “You’re in the land of my power, fool,” the archfey called. “You chased me out of your dreary catacombs with the aid of all your friends, but in the Feywild, I command the very earth and air.”

  Raidon came up beside the warlock and yelled, “Neifion, forget your revenge. Your hate blinds you to the true nature of your ally. Malyanna may be eladrin, distant kin to you perhaps. But she serves creatures of abomination, who would wreak ruin not only on Faerûn, but Faerie too, and beyond. Is your revenge so important that you’d destroy your home?”

  Silence met the monk’s entreaty for several heartbeats.

  “She is an ally of convenience,” Neifion said. “Once Japheth is blooded and rendered, and serves as one of my homunculi, she can rot. Until then, I find her gifts useful.”

  “He’s insane,” Japheth said to Raidon, shaking his head. “Reason isn’t going to work on the Lord of Bats.”

  “Insanity is something I’ve come to understand,” Raidon said. “Sometimes, even the crazed can come to see reality.”

  The swarm of bats obscuring the hollow expanded. Suddenly, scratching, chittering darkness tore at Raidon’s face, the back of his hands and forearms, and his chest.

  He slapped his palm onto his Cerulean Sign. A blaze of blue light swept from him. Where it touched, the press of bats faded like shadows fleeing a sunrise.

  Raidon allowed the influence of his Sign to wax, until its boundary washed away the last bit of darkness in the hollow, revealing the platform and its occupant.

  Neifion’s smile soured. “I suppose I’ll have to kill you too, monk,” he said.

  Raidon charged the archfey. His initial front kick knocked the Lord of Bats to the edge of the platform, but didn’t push him off the dais as Raidon had expected.

  The monk closed with his foe again, his hands ready to block or strike.

  Neifion’s cape flared outward, transforming into great wings. His limbs lengthened, and his pale skin sprouted ratty fur. His body expanded in size fourfold. His horrid leathery wings stretched from one end of the hollow to the other.

  The hybrid creature swept one enormous wing at the monk. Raidon ducked beneath the edge, and came up on its trailing side. Something blurred in the corner of his vision, and Raidon dived sideways off the platform. A gargantuan fist wound with holly vines smashed down where he’d been standing.

  With groans of straining roots, the trees surrounding the hollow woke to animation. They raised clenched fists of branch and bark. Each was kin to the creature that had almost killed Raidon below the Marhana mansion—and that had only appeared for the space of a single attack.

  The skyline surrounding the clearing was transformed into a jagged, closing circle of leaning treants. Raidon was surrounded. Again, worry threaded his mind.

  The Lord of Bats laughed. Another gnarled fist the size of a boulder crashed down, but Raidon evaded it on light feet. The impact sent the ground cover of leaves swirling away. Several earth-shaking booms told the tale of a series of narrow escapes.

  Angul vibrated in its sheath, humming with impatience to be pulled. Thankfully, it didn’t jump around so violently it threw off Raidon’s dance of evasion. How long would the blade behave itself?

  Points of light flared into existence around Japheth’s head. The warlock gestured, and one blue-white orb leapt upward in a halo of choking smoke. It transfixed a treant and burst with a miniature detonation of blinding illumination. The creature straightened and clapped twiggy hands to its eyes.

  Three more points of light sped away from Japheth, each dazzling another of the awakened trees. Only two treants continued to lean over the hollow, scrabbling after the darting monk with hands the size of bazaar carts.

  “You are ever my nemesis,” Neifion said, and gestured at Japheth with a winged claw. A whirlwind of writhing vines attempted to wrap around the warlock, but Japheth vanished into his cloak before the verdant strands could tighten.

  Raidon dodged a treant fist, feinting as if to dash out of the hollow. Instead he threw himself into a backward roll, covering the distance to the still chuckling Lord of Bats in half a heartbeat. He flipped out of the roll and channeled his backward momentum to twist his body around, clenching his fists tight even as it took fire from his cerulean spellscar.

  The spinning backfist caught the Lord of Bats beneath his pointy, ratlike chin. The sound of the contact boomed across the fey forest. Neifion’s winged body arced through the air, off the platform, and across the clearing. It smashed into the knee of a blind treant.

  Raidon leaped after his foe. The monk realized his error even as he committed himself to the attack—the awakened tree that had inadvertantly stopped the Lord of Bats’s progress through the air was no longer blind.

  The monk twisted his body, trying to alter his trajectory in the air. A treant fist the size of a boulder clipped him, and broke Raidon’s course toward Neifion with a sharp correction directly down.

  Raidon managed to twist one final time, orienting himself so he could slap his arms out on either side to break his fall. But the tree creature’s fist continued downward too, and like a hammer, pounded him into the anvil that was the ground.

  Japheth stepped from his cloak. The thunder of massive fists flailing the ground shuddered through the earth, nearly making him stumble, even though the clearing lay several dozen paces away through a screen of obscuring trees. The warlock saw Raidon darting about, avoiding one bone-crushing blow after another. Each dodge seemed a minor miracle.

  Why hadn’t Raidon drawn Angul? Raidon was exceptional, but the blade in the monk’s hand made him nearly unbeatable, at least against most foes.

  But Neifion was in a different category. Their chances against the archfey, even with Angul in play, were poor. The Lord of Bats was simply too powerful on his home turf, as the creature had rightly boasted.

  The only way he and Raidon were going to escape was to convince Neifion to give up his vengeance. Which meant Raidon’s earlier diplomatic tack was correct. Japheth either had to try that again, or just turn and run away into the forest …

  Japheth stepped around the bole of a tree into the clearing, just in time to see Raidon’s string of successes end beneath a treant fist. The sound of the impact was awful.

  But Neifion was on his back, and had reverted to his humanoid form. By the way the archfey was shaking his head and groaning, it was obvious the monk had landed a telling blow before his fall.

  Perfect!

  Japheth called on his pact, incanting the apocalypses over which a star named Khirad had burned over the ages. Akin to the light of the star itself, a pale blue flame sprang from the warlock’s brow. The light washed over the su
pine Lord of Bats. Though still adjusting to the lore of his new pact, Japheth knew that Khirad’s radiance sometimes revealed secrets and gruesome insights. With its gleam in his eyes, perhaps the Lord of Bats would forget his vengeance for a time.

  “Neifion, listen!” called Japheth. “Recall what the half-elf said; what do you really know about Malyanna’s ultimate intentions?”

  The bald head of his old master wavered around to look at Japheth. The creature’s pupils were huge, and glowed pale blue.

  “She serves ancient powers,” Neifion said. “She’s no different than any fervent cleric of forgotten gods. She’s dangerous, but all her actions are ultimately futile. Whatever entities she serves, their time is over. It is the way of the worlds.”

  “Lord of Bats, search your heart, and your memories,” said Japheth. “Do you really, truly believe Malyanna’s actions are futile? She has found her ‘Key of Stars’ and even now likely presents it to the Eldest aboleth in Xxiphu. Trust me when I tell you this: she could unlock an age of horror, one so overwhelming that it could completely wipe away Toril and its echoes. If the world dies, so dies the Feywild.”

  “The world is hardier than you suspect, mortal,” replied Neifion.

  “Is it?” asked Japheth. “The Spellplague hit us only eleven years ago. Toril and its echoes yet shift and shudder from that onslaught. It is now, perhaps more than at any previous time in Faerûn’s history, that the entire dimensional edifice could be kicked over and shattered by a determined assault from outside.”

  The light of Khirad sparkled in the Lord of Bats’ eyes as he stood. He blinked, and the light failed.

  But Neifion didn’t move. His eyes slowly narrowed. “Outside?” he said.

  “From beyond all the worlds where people, gods and demons dwell, beyond our concept of time itself,” said Japheth.

  “You’re awfully knowledgeable of such esoteric matters for someone so recently pledged to a Lord of Faerie.”

  “My pact is with the stars now, Neifion. The association we shared is through. You may hate me, and rightly so—”