Key of Stars

by Bruce R Cordell

  “Careful,” came Raidon’s voice.

  The chariot had landed. Japheth didn’t take the breath to answer. If Anusha was inside …

  The monk continued. “The keel is broken,” he said. “I doubt that deck will support your weight for long.”

  “Help me!” Japheth yelled. “She might still be in her travel case in her cabin!”

  The warlock scrabbled at the loose boards, until he found one that didn’t want to budge. Voices penetrated his single-minded intensity. They mumbled in conversation, and were produced by more throats than just the people on his own chariot could account for.

  He looked up. Several knights on griffons had all righted next to the ship. “Why won’t you help me?” he yelled.

  Suddenly Raidon was beside him on the deck. “I’ll help,” the monk said.

  He grabbed the other side of a beam Japheth was struggling with. Together, they lifted it away.

  “Thank you, Raidon,” the warlock said.

  A few more knights climbed up onto the uncertain deck to lend their aid. It didn’t take long to unbury the cabin with so many hands. Japheth’s heart leaped when he identified the shattered travel chest.

  “Oh, gods,” he whispered.

  With shaking hands, he pried open the crumpled top.

  Nothing was inside but splinters and extra clothes.

  “She’s not here,” he said dumbly.

  “Come,” Raidon said, and pulled him. “We need to get off Green Siren before it collapses. The ship has been abandoned.”

  Japheth’s brain felt numb. How many highs and lows could he withstand? Anusha was here, somewhere. She had survived the crash. But where in this alien wasteland was she? Worry pricked at his mind like needles.

  He followed the monk to the deck’s edge. Raidon flipped off and landed on the ground ten feet below as lightly as a grasshopper. The other eladrin who had climbed up to offer their aid descended hand over hand.

  Japheth surveyed the scene. Three dozen or so knights remained, some mounted on their griffons. Many had suffered wounds and residual slime, dried and crusted on their armor, from their passage through the void. A few had lost their crystal lances. Their expressions varied between leaden incomprehension and wild amazement.

  Not far enough behind them towered Xxiphu, mutely promising defeat to all their plans by its mere existence. The mist mostly hid the rippling runes that cascaded across its face, but the movement still managed to dig furrows in his mind.

  The warlock dropped his eyes, fighting the growing hollow in his chest. What were they going to do next?

  His wandering eyes noticed something scratched across the ground.

  A faint double line creased in the soil not far from the chariot. It was out of place—too regular and artificial in its simple straightness for the chaotic, unworldly realm.

  Japheth stepped through his cloak, a single pace, so he stood directly over the grooves. They were harder to see there—he wouldn’t have seen them without the vantage offered by Green Siren’s half-collapsed structure.

  “What do you make of these?” he said.

  Raidon came over and squatted. He traced the line for several feet. “Something heavy was dragged along the ground here,” he said. “In that direction.” He pointed off into the mist.

  “Someone survived the crash!” Japheth said, the hollow in his chest fading before the birth of riotous hope.

  “Yes,” agreed Raidon.

  “Anusha might still be alive!”

  Raidon nodded. “I hope so,” he said.

  “Then this is the way we need to go.”

  The monk stood. He placed a hand upon his sign and lowered his head. A pulse of blue fire leaped from the sign to his eyes, which blazed cerulean for a moment.

  “In that direction lies the greatest wrong,” Raidon said. “But, can you sense, as you did earlier, in what direction we can find Malyanna? She is the one whom we must stop.”

  Anger wrinkled Japheth’s brow. What did it matter where the damned crazy eladrin noble was when Anusha could be lying out there in the mist somewhere, dying?

  “Japheth?” Raidon said.

  The warlock shook his head to clear it. The smell of the place was affecting him, making him irrational, making him forget his earlier resolution. He drew in a steadying breath. He’d have to watch his gut reaction to events. In such a place, they were not reliable feelings.

  “Sorry,” Japheth said. “Hold on a moment and allow me to concentrate.”

  He called on his pact, and rested mental hands on the celestial lines of power that connected him to it. The few times he’d done it before, he’d sensed a hidden complexity behind the shifting lines. Though subtle, he’d teased out meaning in their interaction.

  When the pattern resolved itself, he gasped. The intricacy of the design, so much clearer, struck him like a blow to the head.

  Undulating globes pulsed in elaborate synchrony, breaking apart and forming together again. Other fragments of other spheres and shimmering lines did the same, flowing out beyond the edges of his perspective and back, spawning a chorus of lesser glimmers. He discerned flutelike notes echoing in a harmony of incredible texture. The fluctuating, iridescent, monstrous design danced before him, a rapture of chaos and order in one indefinable whole, straining to open.

  The next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground. The left side of his face tingled and felt slightly warm. Raidon stood over him, his expression concerned.

  “What was that all about?” asked the monk.

  “Um … I don’t know,” said Japheth. “Did you hit me?”

  “Only to get your attention,” replied Raidon.

  Japheth reached to his belt for the implement given him by Erunyauvë. It was not there.

  “Where’s my rod?” he said.

  Raidon bent and picked up two pieces of wood. “You broke it over your knee,” he said. “Right after you started screaming something about the ‘Maw of Acamar.’ That’s when I slapped you.”

  Oh, no. “That’s not good,” the warlock said.

  “No, it didn’t seem that way to me either,” agreed Raidon.

  “Or me!” said Dayereth, who had remained in the chariot. “I’m the one who told Raidon to break you free of your trance.”

  Japheth got to his feet, rubbing his jaw. He frowned at the wizard, but swallowed the retort that rested on his lips.

  “I’m sorry about that display,” he said instead. “Apparently, it’s dangerous for me here. Without the Rod of Silvanus, I …” Without the item he’d earlier called his anchor, he was probably doomed.

  The monk allowed the two halves of the broken implement to fall to the ground. He chewed his lip a moment, then removed the gloves his mother had given him. “Take these—they are eladrin-made, like the rod,” he said. “Maybe they can remind you of your sanity when dark powers attempt to overwhelm you.”

  “I can’t take your gloves!” said Japheth.

  “Why not? I still have my mother’s first, most important gift,” Raidon said, indicating his spellscar. “I don’t need these gloves. You do. And we need you too.”

  Japheth accepted the gauntlets and drew them on. A balm of stillness immediately came over him, stifling the distant music, and rendering the scents less familiar and enticing.

  The doom he’d foreseen for himself receded slightly.

  “You’ve been awful kind to me, Raidon,” the warlock said. “I remember not too long ago you coming after me with your Blade Cerulean.”

  The monk cocked his head. “I have … found some peace since then,” he said. “I’m seeing things differently. I understand why you did what you did when you took off with the Dreamheart. All that’s important now is that you, like I, and all these knights, are pledged to stop Malyanna.”

  “Speaking of which,” Japheth said, “Based on what I just experienced, I think she’s that way, in the direction of the furrows. I don’t know where else she would go. Something very powerful lies that way. Some
thing so awful that it dwarfs even the significance of the Eldest.”

  “Then we should tarry no longer,” Raidon said.

  Japheth bit his lip. If Anusha had gone that way, she was walking into terrible danger.

  “Dayereth,” Raidon said, “I want you and the knights to remain here.”

  “Here?” replied the wizard. “That sounds like the safer choice, but—”

  “Listen!” said Raidon. “Time is no longer on our side. And I’m not asking you to stay behind out of concern for your safety, as if you were children or cowards. I recognize your worth, and your willingness to sacrifice yourself to the cause.”

  Japheth saw Raidon was speaking now to all the assembled knights, not merely the eladrin wizard.

  The monk continued, “That’s why I need you to stay here. As the largest concentration of newcomers from the natural world, you’ll draw the largest response of defenders to yourself, here. You will give Japheth and I the diversion we need to race after Malyanna without being harassed by aberrations. We need that time to stop her from using the Key.”

  Dayereth wiped his brow. “That does make sense,” he said. “We’ll guard your flank. You two knights, there—give these men your griffons!”

  “No,” said Raidon, “we won’t deprive you of your mounts—we can go swiftly on our own.”

  “Then Madwing shall go with you, at least,” said Dayereth, gesturing to the giant white griffon. The beast so named loosed a hunting cry.

  “So be it. Fight well, Knights of the Watch,” said Raidon.

  Japheth wanted to say something to lighten the mood, but his own heart was too heavy with anxiety.

  And they were off. Raidon and Japheth dashed across the plain, and the hoarfrost griffon paced them overhead.

  Just as when they had traveled across the Feywild after visiting Stardeep, native agility and speed propelled Raidon with an amazing swiftness. Japheth couldn’t hope to keep up with the monk, but his cloak made all the difference, allowing him to move a dozen or more feet with each stride.

  To his right, the mottled stone gave way to a series of receding sand dunes. As they passed, something stirred beneath the sands: a seaweedlike mass of fibers, a tangle of rotting stalks and bladders, and a swarm of small objects too far away for Japheth to identify with certainty. Whatever they were, they had far too many legs.

  Their speed was such that they passed the dunes and its rousing denizens in just a half a dozen heartbeats, and soon left them far behind in the all-enveloping mists.

  At one point, they discovered the furrows they followed intersected another trail, that one also formed by something being dragged, something heavier and less regular in shape. Slick, phosphorescent goo covered the second trail, implying it was formed in some fashion by aboleths.

  All they could do was continue onward, though Japheth’s anxiety ramped up another notch. He was almost sick with worry.

  He flexed his hands within the gloves Raidon had given him. They were woven of fabric so fine, they almost seemed like leather. What did that remind him of?

  Leather … leathery … bat wings! He’d seen a giant bat in the void winging after the armada, just before they’d fallen through the discontinuity to the hapless plain.

  Another complication to worry about. Neifion would find him once more before all was played out, he was certain.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

  Citadel of the Outer Void

  Taal gazed up at the structure. It rose, block upon block like a primordial’s dais, forming a gargantuan ziggurat. It was the Citadel of the Outer Void.

  A set of stairs small enough for mortal creatures crisscrossed its way up the side of the ziggurat, changing directions each time they reached a new landing. Cascading falls of clear liquid trailed off the sides of several landings, but the stairs appeared dry.

  The thousands of Xxiphu-sized “columns” surrounding the citadel formed a kind of porch, similar to temple floor plans Taal recalled from his youth. Of course, the scale was wildly at odds with those merely human-sized structures, and they’d had roofs. No roof could ever hope to be massive enough to encompass all the columns on the plain, which spread away in all directions for miles. He supposed the colorless sky that overlay the fog-shrouded land of horror served that purpose well enough.

  Each “step” of the great pyramid rose … a hundred yards at least, or maybe triple that. Distances were so hard to judge. But the entire structure seemed to shimmer. At first Taal thought it was the ubiquitous mist interfering with his vision. But no. As they approached, he saw the walls themselves were responsible for the effect.

  From one instant to the next, the structure’s substance shifted. First granite, then maybe ebony, or crystalline mineral, or amorphous slime, then lava. Each new manifestation never lasted long enough for him to fully grasp the actual composition, just the barest hint.

  “Why does it keep changing?” he said.

  “This close to the Far Manifold, reality is uncertain,” Malyanna replied. “The Citadel fluctuates. It makes one wonder if the stories in Carnis’s cache of Far Lore were true.”

  “I can’t imagine anything more unbelievable than the Citadel itself. What could be more hard to believe than the truth before us?”

  “Ah, Taal, are you so eager for the burden of even more knowledge?”

  “I learned my lesson of leaping before I look, long ago, when I met you.”

  Malyanna laughed. “Perhaps the Eldest knows the truth, but its mind remains half petrified stone.”

  “Never mind.”

  “Too late, you asked. Carnis believed the Citadel was built by ancient self-appointed guardians of reality, beings so powerful they defeated the primeval aboleths. So despite appearances, this place is not a place of worship. All the aberrant leakage occurring here was a foreseen side effect, which the Watch of Forever’s Edge was formed to stem. The Citadel is a place of containment; a patch designed to cover up a massive tear in existence.”

  “And so?”

  “So, despite that there is only one Far Realm, a crumbling tome in Carnis’s library claimed many cosmologies exist side by side, each completely isolated from the next. But the Far Realm threatens them all. So the Far Manifold and the Citadel of the Outer Void that supports it might well exist in them all too, protecting them as it does ours. The flickering we see in this construction are glimpses of all the many forms the Citadel takes in realities other than our own.”.

  Taal considered the possibility. It was hard to grasp. But …

  “If you open the Far Manifold here, assuming what you’re saying isn’t merely some loremaster’s daydream, would it open in all these parallel worlds too?” he asked.

  Malyanna grinned like a wolf peering into a chicken coop. The totem on Taal’s shoulder loosed a deep warning growl.

  Taal wondered—if he leaped for the woman, could he immobilize and permanently slay her before the strictures of his oath burnt him to a cinder?

  Pain seared his vision red.

  She put a hand to his shoulder, and the agony dissipated.

  “Come, Taal, quit your daydreaming,” she said. “All your questions will be answered after I complete my task.”

  Though she’d nullified the pain, his limbs trembled with residual agony. He’d nearly blacked out. Nearly, but yet he remained. Had his oath lost something of its original unfathomable strength after so many centuries? Or, in such a place meant to contain aberrations, as Malyanna explained it, had the Oath lost something of its vigor?

  If so, then perhaps he could finally try to stop the crazed woman. Another tsunami of agony gathered as he considered the unthinkable, but the hand she continued to rest on his shoulder kept it in abeyance.

  How strange that she didn’t know what turned in his head. Of course, he’d never given her any reason to doubt him. He’d always been a man of his word.

  He tried not to think about that. No, what he needed to do was find just the
right opportunity to cross her, when she was distracted. Otherwise, with the Dreamheart in hand, she would slay him with a thought.

  She squeezed his shoulder, overly hard, then let go. Her eyes returned to the ziggurat, and the smaller set of stairs meant for mortal creatures.

  “We must reach the top of the Citadel,” decreed Malyanna. “But the going won’t be easy.”

  “Why doesn’t the hound translate us, or the aboleths fly us to the top?” Taal asked.

  “That wouldn’t be advisable. Observe,” the eladrin replied.

  Malyanna waved her hand up at the aboleths circling above them.

  One broke formation and squirmed closer to the flickering structure.

  A bolt of sky blue fire ravened from the top of the tower. Its width was easily five times that of the flying aberration. The creature was completely swallowed in the glare. Taal blinked away the afterimage of the stroke. Nothing remained.

  “Such a stroke would even give the Eldest pause, had it been roused as foretold,” said the eladrin noble.

  “Then how are we to approach?” Taal asked.

  “A mortal creature of the natural world, untouched by aberration, must open the way.”

  “What? Who?”

  She fixed him with her lambent eyes and lifted a single eyebrow.

  “Are you suggesting that would be me?” Taal said. “But I am sworn to the Far Realm, just like you.”

  “No, you are sworn to me, the Lady of Winter’s Peace.”

  “But I serve the cause—”

  “No. You serve your oath. As I planned from the beginning. Don’t think I haven’t known all along your true feelings, your distaste for me and what I propose. You’ve done my bidding, and buried your head in duty so you could ignore what you found detestable. You never accepted my tutelage. And I’m glad! Because had you become a full-fledged believer, I would have disposed of you.” She laughed.

  “I don’t understand,” Taal said.

  Her laughter was beginning to grate on him. “Your servitude is how I’ve planned, all along, to gain entry to the Citadel,” she said. “Its defenses are keyed to obliterate any aberration or entity touched by aberration. Though the structure will still defend itself from intruders no matter their origin, a being who approaches, if he be mortal and born of the natural world, is presumed to be a descendent of the original guardians who created the Citadel. Only lesser defenses stand in such a one’s way.”