Key of Stars

by Bruce R Cordell

  So close to the great lens, Raidon saw that more than colors shifted behind it. Muzzily visible through the crystal facets he saw eyes, tentacles, flashing green lights, and nesting maws of rotating teeth. A universe of horror was pressed against the crystal, as if straining to burst through and wash away all it encountered. But the Far Manifold, the plug of crystal in space time, held it back.

  He dropped his eyes to what occurred directly in front of the disk.

  The eladrin noble was either oblivious to their arrival or didn’t count their appearance as important enough to react to. Instead she was pointing at the Traitor’s enlarged hand of black stone. The man in the black robe stepped forward, eyed the limb, then executed a perfect ki strike. Raidon would have been hard pressed to improve upon it.

  The Traitor’s stony extremity exploded. An amulet flashed blue and spun through the air.

  Malyanna snatched it before it could fall with the rest of the debris. He could guess what it was she had just liberated from the Traitor’s remains. They’d arrived just in time.

  “Lady of Winter’s Peace,” he called. “Your time is over.”

  She and her servitors turned to regard him across the wide expanse of inconstant flooring. The man’s eyes widened, and even Malyanna seemed surprised.

  “You’re too late,” she called back. She dangled the amulet the man had broken free of the Traitor’s petrified grip.

  Despite how far away they were, he recognized it, and gasped.

  It was exactly the same as the forget-me-not his mother had given him as a child.

  “I have the Key of Stars!” screamed Malyanna. “The very last one. All the others have been destroyed in the Ages since they were used to lock the Far Manifold. How sad that those who thought themselves aberration slayers and watchers never realized the true significance of their ‘Cerulean Signs.’ Instead of treasured heirlooms to be kept safe from harm, they were used like brute weapons, and so were lost, one by one, in insignificant conflicts.”

  Raidon eyed the distance that separated him and the boasting eladrin—about a hundred strides. But she stood only an arms-breadth from the crystal disc. For all his speed, he knew he could not reach her before she pressed it to the Far Manifold.

  “Can you get us closer with your cloak, Japheth?” Raidon whispered.

  The warlock’s cloak fluttered, but nothing happened.

  “Something’s not … no, better not,” he said. “Some kind of tide flows near the gate. I fear it would pull us into the Far Manifold if we use my cloak any closer than this.”

  “Then try to keep her attention a moment,” said the monk.

  Japheth gave an almost imperceptible nod. “What lunatic aim do you hope to accomplish?” he called.

  The man at Malyanna’s side started at those words. His eyes focused on the warlock. The aboleths rasped their bony tongues across the ground, but held their positions.

  “Japheth. How interesting,” Malyanna said. “You’ve shifted allegiances from the pathetic bat who stupidly granted you the bulk of his powers. You finally see the light of the stars?”

  “Not at all, you insane witch,” the warlock replied. “I merely choose to fight fire with fire.”

  “Fire burns its wielder, scars him. Why don’t you call on your power here, warlock, and we can all see whose allegiance you truly serve.”

  Japheth said, “Why don’t I?”

  The warlock began to incant.

  Raidon dashed forward, drawing Angul. It bloomed like a blue sunrise. Flame ran its length, warming him and suffusing him with strength.

  An aboleth lashed its tentacle at him, but he dived over it. Another whipped him across the back, but the pain was transient. A third tried to smother him under its squalid bulk, but he brought Angul down in a vicious vertical cut that severed the monster into two oozing halves.

  But they slowed him. And then the man in the black robe interposed himself.

  “Raidon, I am Taal,” he said. “For my oath, you must die.”

  Raidon lunged with Angul, which blazed as brightly as it ever had with the power to incinerate aberrations and those who served them.

  Taal deflected the blade with the flat of his palm, pushing it off true. The man was not touched by aberration in the least!

  Surprise made Raidon hesitate an instant too long. He saw the man’s other hand rise like a surfacing shark, but he couldn’t avoid it. The uppercut caught him below the chin and rocked his head back.

  For a moment, he saw only white.

  Japheth incanted a spell, one he’d learned before he pledged himself to the stars. An iron spear appeared in his right hand. It glowed cherry red from infernal heat. He hurled it at Malyanna.

  The eladrin gestured with the Dreamheart. The conjured spear shattered in midflight, becoming so much sulfurous steam.

  “Sad,” she said. “You’re all too late. You lost before you started.” She raised the amulet as she turned to stare into the crystal facets of the Far Manifold. She cocked her arm, as if to smash the amulet into the side of the disk.

  “Gods damn it,” said Japheth. He fumbled for his old green rod, despite already knowing he wouldn’t be able to get off another spell before the eladrin touched the amulet to the disk.

  Malyanna’s hair whipped in a sudden wind. She spoke in a voice that boomed like thunder. “Let the Far Realm wash away this world in a tide of unmaking,” she said. “That which was begun so long ago, I bid—”

  A swarm of bats descended on Malyanna. The creatures were so many, and their flapping wings so dense, that they instantly concealed her, smothering her words and her limbs. Japheth stood agape as the woman toppled backward under the unexpected assault.

  “What the—?” he said. His spell hadn’t conjured the bats.

  A shadow swirled down and alit next to the warlock.

  “Greetings, Japheth. Almost too late to the party, it seems,” said a voice.

  “So I did see you flying after us, through the void,” said the warlock.

  The Lord of Bats smirked. “Do you recall when we spoke last?” he said. “You were most convincing. Let it not be said that Neifion was too single-minded to realize when his priorities were compromised. Let’s put this demented eladrin out of the picture, shall we? Then you and I can discuss our differences without interference.”

  “Gladly,” said Japheth.

  A muffled scream of fury burst from beneath the shroud of flapping bats. Then Malyanna shouted, her singsong tone conveying words charged with power. They boomed across the Citadel and beyond, roiling the mist with their strength. “Come to me, my pets,” she said. “Peel back the barriers at long last. The strictures of the ancient ones are done! See my foes. Eat them, subsume them, and wear their skins as your own!”

  Japheth really, really did not like the sound of that. Dread plucked at his composure. He glanced at Neifion, who wore a concerned frown.

  The fog began to thin. The warlock’s dread sharpened like incipient nausea as the mist rolled away in all directions, pulling back like the tide going out, far enough to reveal not only the air above but a stark vista that stretched away on all sides of the citadel.

  The pale “sun” wavering across the sky was exposed overhead. Also revealed were perhaps thousands of nightmares that fluttered and shrieked above what had been a barrier they could not cross.

  Japheth realized he’d been incorrect in assuming the fog was the manifestation of the Far Manifold’s leakage into the world. It had been a blockade.

  The fog continued receding in an ever widening circle, uncovering a wide swathe of obelisks that surrounded the ziggurat. It seemed to Japheth that the runes that had lain frozen upon their walls stirred to life.

  In the distance, a sustained roar thundered briefly but faded over long heartbeats. The sound faded even as the screams from countless aberrant throats swirled together into a single virulent blare.

  Malyanna’s “pets” were coming.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE


  The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

  Citadel of the Outer Void

  The eladrin noble’s utterance distracted Taal long enough for Raidon to shake off the man’s blow. It’d been some time since Raidon had been caught off guard by a foe’s speed. He’d become reliant on things other than his own skill. In the Citadel of the Outer Void, of all places, it had seemed reasonable to assume all their foes were aberrant to one degree or another.

  But Angul hadn’t reacted to Taal’s attack in the least, nor did his Sign burn cold with the man’s proximity. Somehow, the servant of Malyanna was not affected by the woman’s servitude to the Far Realm.

  Raidon drove the Blade Cerulean point first into the ground. “Stay here,” he said. Better to divest himself completely, if temporarily, of a weapon not interested in fighting someone as proficient as Taal had revealed himself to be.

  He charged Taal, feinted with an eye-jab, feinted with a throat-poke, then put his hips behind a roundhouse kick. Taal took the kick but turned away from it too, so that most of the force was wasted. The human grabbed for Raidon’s leg, but Raidon managed to disengage and hop back.

  Taal pressed him, attempting to take advantage of Raidon’s hop.

  But Raidon was not off balance; he planted the raised leg and spun around low, lashing out with his other leg to deliver a vicious, hooking kick with his heel just beneath Taal’s ribs.

  The human grunted with surprise, but didn’t otherwise waver; he grabbed for Raidon’s foot as swiftly as a striking snake.

  The monk managed to dance away from the man’s grasp a second time, but somehow Taal’s thumb found his eye in the process. It wasn’t serious, but it made Raidon pause.

  He blinked at Taal from a distance of only a few strides. All around them, the mist fell away. From the corner of his watering eye, Raidon saw all the monsters of the upper air as the fog receded. And it seemed they saw him.

  “Do you understand now?” said Taal. “It’s hopeless. You can’t defeat such a multitude. At least I have my oath to sustain me.”

  What was the man going on about? Raidon thought.

  Then Taal darted inside Raidon’s range. Somehow he threaded a hand past his guard and grabbed the back of Raidon’s neck.

  Raidon was able to twist out of Taal’s grip only to find himself launched in the air as his legs were kicked out beneath him.

  He knew how to fall. Taal would have had more success if he’d merely dashed Raidon to the ground instead of sending him arcing over it. Raidon tucked his head and rolled into the impact, and used the momentum to spin around and end up standing, facing his antagonist.

  The man was a bare-hands fighter, but obviously preferred a style the Xiang temple had neglected. Raidon knew some grappling-reliant techniques, but his school preferred the art of striking with fist, foot, elbow, knee, and even sword. As a stopgap, the Xiang temple taught never to allow one proficient in grappling to get a good hold on you.

  A distraction was in order.

  “What kind of oath can sustain you in service to this?” said Raidon.

  “A magical binding,” said Taal. “Its strictures allow me to endure what you can hardly imagine.”

  Raidon snorted. “I’ve also endured a few hard things, Taal,” he said. “The death of my daughter, Ailyn, whom I failed to protect despite her utter reliance on me as her guardian. The destruction of the world and the deaths of all whom I once held dear. I’ve had to cut down, without mercy, innocents whose only crime was to have had the misfortune of coming into the bondage of the Sovereignty and the Eldest. Moreover, I failed to destroy the Dreamheart when it lay within my ability to do so—all these things I’ve endured, and paid for. But neither oath nor duty is why I stand here now, trying one last time to put right all my failures. Oaths have no give—attempting to live by unbreakable strictures breaks the spirit instead. I’ve endured much to stand here, and I do not call on oath or duty to use as a crutch to explain my actions.”

  Taal frowned, then advanced by circling in. Raidon kept the man at bay with a push kick that cracked into Taal’s sternum too swiftly for the man to capture.

  Taal paused. He said, as if talking while exchanging deadly blows was something he did daily, “You think duty is an excuse, or that an oath is a crutch? What, you don’t believe a person’s word is their bond?”

  “Not especially,” replied Raidon. “Circumstances change. What one vows to do may no longer make any sense in light of new information. Bulling ahead anyway is lunacy.”

  “Sticking to your word shows conviction!”

  “No. It merely shows stubborn inability to change. What’s important is how someone copes with a difficult or impossible situation.”

  “And how did you cope?”

  Raidon feinted with a side kick, a rising knee, then put his hips behind his next cross, which caught Taal directly on his chin.

  Taal stumbled back several steps and blinked.

  “My mind broke. I mentally fell to pieces,” said Raidon. He stepped forward to follow his cross with a series of elbows. Taal deflected the first, dodged the second, but took the third across the temple.

  Instead of dropping, Taal got hold of the back of Raidon’s arm. Raidon tried to disengage, but somehow Taal positioned his legs beneath the half-elf. That time, instead of throwing him in a wide arc, Taal did smash Raidon straight into the earth.

  His breath whooshed out in a single exhalation. But when Taal tried to drop onto him, Raidon kicked out with all his own considerable strength. He caught the man right in the stomach, which was enough to make Taal hesitate.

  Raidon snapped to his feet and regarded his foe. “As I was saying,” he continued, “I lost all sense of myself. Life, which had become one hard fall after another, finally left me in a place where I could fall no more.”

  “And yet here you are, fighting with a half smile on your face against impossible odds,” Taal said as he gestured around him. “You, who talk of madness, are the one who must be insane to see what gathers around you. Yet you continue to fight against such an overwhelming force, knowing you have no chance for victory?”

  Aboleths, foulborn creatures only slightly humanoid in shape, tentacled masses, bogs of animate, translucent ooze, shifting miasmas of gas, and things that defied description spiraled down from the sky. So far, none seemed interested in going after Raidon while he faced off against Taal.

  Raidon couldn’t see Malyanna, but the disk of the Far Manifold remained intact—Japheth must still be keeping her busy. Which meant the warlock would likely appreciate it if Raidon continued to keep the deadly human engaged too.

  “I’ve found serenity,” Raidon said. “For the first time in my adult life. Before now, I had a focus I could cling to, one that provided a façade of tranquility. But I’ve finally found something even better. I’ve made peace with all I’ve done. All that is left is to strive for what’s right. Can you say the same, oath-keeper?”

  Even as the words dropped from his mouth, the monk realized that by saying them aloud, they crystallized something he had subconsciously come to believe. His words were all true. He breathed out and smiled at his enemy.

  Taal stared at him with the surprised intensity of a man who’s just been told he was suffering from a terminal curse.

  He said, “I’d give much to accomplish even one thing that was ‘good’ after serving the twisted will of the Lady of Winter’s Peace for so long. But it’s too late for me, monk.”

  Taal advanced, his face falling into an expression of resignation. Raidon dropped into his ready stance. “Then you—”

  Something grabbed Raidon from behind—a skinless arm as wide as Raidon’s waist. Blood seeped from the raw muscles, and he smelled the breath of something unutterably foul. The thing lifted him from the ground.

  It occurred to him, as he twisted in the grip of the aberration, that he probably should have sheathed Angul in its scabbard instead of leaving it burning point down in the ground. In the course of his fight with Taal,
they’d moved a dozen or more feet from the Blade Cerulean.

  Raidon called on his Sign, which the arm that held him draped partly across. Blue light spouted from the spellscar, illuminating the bones and vessels of the creature; the brief image of bones showing through the thing’s flesh revealed odd spurs. The creature loosened its grip and screamed. Raidon kicked out, using the chest of the monster to launch himself directly away.

  Straight for Taal.

  Instead of capitalizing on Raidon’s discomfiture, the man sidestepped, allowing Raidon to tumble past and find his legs.

  The horrific odor was back, and the half-elf saw why—the creature had chased him down. The thing was a hulking, blood-soaked aberration twice as tall as a man. Its mouth was a horror of mismatched teeth, and its eyes were zombie white orbs. Saliva the color of jade bubbled from the corners of its mouth.

  Then Taal was on its back. One of the man’s arms went around the creature’s neck so that his elbow was directly under its chin. Taal squeezed down, using his whole body’s weight and strength to collapse the thing’s head forward.

  Something snapped. The creature flopped forward like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Taal jumped away to land on his feet. “Stop wasting your time with me, Raidon, or any of these monsters,” he yelled. “Only one thing matters—stop Malyanna!”

  As if his pronouncement was the trigger for a death spell, the man’s eyes went wide with agony. Taal clapped his hands to his temples, screamed, and fell facedown to sprawl beside the aberration he’d just killed.

  “Zai zi!” swore Raidon. Apparently the man’s oath had involved more than mere words. It had contained an element of magical enforcement that Taal had failed to mention. Despite that doom, here at the last, Taal had broken his oath anyway, knowing full well the lethal consequence of doing so. It said a lot about him. Not many had the inner will to do what was right if death was their immediate reward.

  “You won, Taal. You were not defeated by your oath,” Raidon called.

  Shrill screeches of creatures as horrible as the skinless spawn Taal had killed ended Raidon’s musing. If they succeeded, Raidon would tell everyone of Taal’s final sacrifice. If they failed, well, then nothing mattered anymore anyway.