Key of Stars

by Bruce R Cordell

  The thing had nearly torn out his throat! Raidon thought.

  We have no time to deal with this beast, said Angul. The blade sent a jolt of energy through its hilt, and Raidon’s pain and weakness lessened. He assumed the rent in his neck was closing.

  Tamur didn’t wait—it advanced on Raidon with its hackles up and its teeth bared. Its growl was distant thunder. It had no fear of the aberration-burning fire; it was a creature of Shadow.

  The shadow mastiff yelped in surprise as blood, red as the monk’s own, burst from its side. The dog tried to bite the empty air, but found no purchase for its teeth.

  Another slash opened on the dog’s flank. It proved too much. Tamur bolted, its tail between its legs, blood pooling behind it.

  Raidon was as surprised as Tamur. “Who—?” he started to call.

  “It’s me, Raidon!” came a disembodied voice. Anusha!

  “Where’s Japheth?” she said. He didn’t waste time trying to locate her exact position—his regard returned to Malyanna and Neifion’s conflict.

  “Answer me!” came the woman’s voice from directly in front of him.

  “He’s here,” Raidon said, “He’s alive. He’s somewhere off that way.” He waved to where he and the warlock had been set down on the ziggurat’s top by the griffon.

  “Oh gods, thank you,” she murmured.

  “Malyanna used the Key of Stars to unlock the Far Manifold,” said Raidon. “The crack is the precursor of the portal giving way completely. I don’t know why it hasn’t. Maybe the warlock is using his powers to hold it in check?”

  “He is?” asked Anusha.

  “Something is slowing it,” said Raidon. “Which may give us a chance!”

  He took a step, but weakness made his legs tremble. His focus kept frustration at bay.

  “Heal me, Angul,” he urged the sword. “Completely!”

  Your head was nearly off, the sword returned. Bide a moment longer.

  Raidon saw that Neifion had regained the air. The archfey folded his wings and dived at Malyanna. The woman scrambled to the side, but one massive wing cracked across her sternum. The blow knocked her head over heels across the dais. The Dreamheart went flying from her grasp. She landed in a heap, but her smile never left her face.

  She rose, her limbs coming down to her sides as her head rose up, as if she were being drawn up by an invisible string. For some reason, the sight clawed at Raidon’s focus.

  The Lord of Bats stood where Malyanna had before he’d sent her sprawling. “Close the gate, bitch of Winter’s Peace, or I will take every last drop of your blood,” he said.

  The archfey advanced.

  “Blood is overrated,” Malyanna said.

  She glanced down. Raidon thought she’d look for the Dreamheart, but she seemed fascinated by the oily sludge seeping through the Far Manifold’s crack. It was glossy black, but within it, Raidon saw winking stars, nebula, and the hint of space without end.

  The eladrin extended a toe as if testing the water.

  “Acamar, corpse star and eater of your kin; lend me your all-devouring regard!” she yelled.

  Rivulets of darkness poured up her leg. In a twinkling, Malyanna was covered head to foot in a shroud of night. She had become an eladrin-shaped puncture in the air. A cold wind howled, as the very air around Malyanna was drawn in.

  Neifion halted. “What blasphemy from the Hells’ nethermost crater have you called upon yourself?” he said, his tone incredulous.

  The thing that was Malyanna had no mouth but darkness. Her eyes were twin celestial whirlpools, one red, one blue. Her elaborate gown, which she’d somehow managed to keep pristine up to that moment, began to shred and tatter, as if mere contact with the midnight flesh was anathema to normal matter.

  Malyanna’s voice rang in the air, sourceless. “You should have stayed true to our alliance, Neifion,” she said.

  The avatar in Malyanna’s shape raised a hand, its palm facing Neifion. The howling wind increased tenfold, and the Lord of Bats was drawn across the intervening space.

  Raidon felt the same tug of attraction, but the dais’s solid edge against his shins allowed him to resist the pull.

  Neifion was not so lucky. The Lord of Bats scrabbled and tried to dig his claws into the metallic surface beneath him, but to no avail. He collided with the smaller figure.

  When Malyanna’s hand touched Neifion, his wings melted to nothing and his great size withered away. He was, once again, a pale bald man, immaculately dressed, but gripped around the neck by a creature of devouring night.

  “Good-bye, Neifion,” said Malyanna.

  “Japheth, I bequeath thee my strength—,” the Lord of Bats yelled.

  Raidon flinched as Neifion was ripped apart, then dragged down to disappear in the unending darkness of Malyanna’s empty form.

  “Oh,” came Anusha’s voice from somewhere close.

  Oh, indeed. Raidon hadn’t expected the Lord of Bats to fall so suddenly. He shouldn’t have taken the moment to rest, but should have joined Neifion while the archfey kept her partly distracted.

  The monk jumped up onto the dais. His strength wasn’t yet completely returned, but the pain in his neck was a memory suppressed by Angul.

  The eladrin’s blank regard turned on him. The wind howled, and he slid toward her wide-armed embrace.

  Raidon concentrated on the Cerulean Sign. Clear light burst from his chest and washed forward, enveloping Malyanna.

  The moment the sapphire illumination touched her, the wind ceased. Raidon came to rest mere paces from the woman, who had raised a hand as if to shade her empty face from his spellscar’s brightness.

  Angul blazed too, its own intensity nearly equaling that of the Sign. Malyanna retreated half a step.

  “Lock the gate, Malyanna, or I will strike you down,” Raidon said. “Then whatever happens, you will not be around to savor in your victory, or plan a future treachery.”

  “Impossible,” Malyanna replied. “Only a handful of Keys were forged when the Far Manifold was created. With each one’s destruction, the Far Manifold’s integrity weakened. The leakage from across the dimensions increased. Mortals forgot what the Keys were for. But the Eldest remembered! A Key’s ultimate function can only be called on once—to lock, or unlock the gate. And I just used the last surviving Key to unlock it. Nothing can close it again! It’s only a matter of time before the worlds collapse beneath the return of the dominion that predates the cosmos!”

  “If you unlocked it, why hasn’t the gate opened completely?” said Raidon.

  “Because … some meddler is interfering!” Malyanna said. One of her arms came up and pointed to a spot in the air behind Raidon. He risked a quick glance and saw only a patch of empty sky.

  Lightning made of midnight traced from her pointing finger. When it reached the empty spot, Japheth was revealed in an explosion of bruised light.

  The warlock shuddered with the impact of the dark beam, and fell.

  He hit the ground in an area clear of aberrations. The monsters that weren’t standing enthralled by Malyanna’s transformation or the Far Manifold itself were clustered around a crazed, green scaled monstrosity. And, farther away … Was that Yeva?

  “I can’t hold it anymore,” yelled Japheth. “The gate’s opening!”

  The sound of splintering crystal confirmed the warlock’s claim.

  Raidon knew that they were finally out of time. He charged Malyanna, moving with all the speed of his training.

  He slashed and drew Angul completely through one of the woman’s wrists even as she extended her arm in a warding gesture.

  The hand came away from her arm and flew into the air, but didn’t drop to the ground.

  Instead, it buzzed around his head like a giant horsefly and slapped onto Raidon’s shoulder. It squeezed.

  The severed hand might as well have been liquid acid. The moment it touched him, it seared through his shirt and found his flesh. The hand began to dissolve away his skin.

&
nbsp; Raidon gritted his teeth but a grunt of pain escaped him anyhow.

  Angul blazed, and the pain dulled. But the hand remained, sinking into his arm.

  Slice it off, instructed his sword.

  Raidon backed away from Malyanna, and brought the sword around like a massive razor. He used it to scrape the devouring hand away, along with a great strip of skin and not a little muscle. Angul flared with true heat, cauterizing the wound even as its blade made it.

  The moment the loose hand lost contact, it took to the air once again. It went to Malyanna and fitted itself back to the stump of her wrist.

  The sound of breaking crystal grew louder. The distorted visages and vistas visible through the crystal facets pressed closer. Something akin to the Eldest crouched just across the barrier, though it was at least five times the Eldest’s size. It, and everything else, was about to break through en masse.

  Even louder than the failing Far Manifold was the sound of the eladrin noble’s triumphant laughter.

  Taal jumped up on the dais next to Raidon. He had the Dreamheart clutched in one hand. Raidon raised Angul to strike the man down, but Anusha appeared suddenly between him and Taal. “Wait,” she urged.

  “Malyanna!” Taal yelled, raising the Dreamheart. “I’m done with you!”

  “Taal,” the eladrin said. “You were ever my favorite. So easy to manipulate, my most loyal pawn for all these years. Only now do you find your independence, when I’ve already won. Even that trinket you hold, as if it made a difference any longer, is meaningless. The Far Realm is here!”

  Taal wound up, then hurled the Dreamheart at Malyanna. Instead of being absorbed as Raidon had expected, the orb smashed her backward with the force of a stone sphere shot from a catapult.

  “No!” she screamed.

  The nightmare-clad woman struck the crystal disk. Despite its appearance of solidity, it parted like smoke around her convulsing body and closed behind her again with an eye-watering ripple.

  Malyanna was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

  Citadel of the Outer Void

  Taal threw the Dreamheart and knocked Malyanna through the portal.

  Anusha was too surprised to do anything but gape.

  “She’s gone,” said Taal. A vicious growl emerged from the tattoo of a hunting cat on his shoulder. He looked up at the disk. “But the fracture lines have started to breed again. I don’t know how to stop it.”

  “When I bound the Eldest to Xxiphu, I hoped a greater tragedy would be averted,” said Raidon. “I never foresaw how much worse things could get.”

  Anusha swallowed. Did no one else see it but her? It seemed too obvious.

  When Malyanna had produced the Key of Stars, the design on it was too similar for coincidence.

  “Raidon,” she said. “Your spellscar—its pattern matches exactly the symbol on the amulet Malyanna used to unlock the Far Manifold.” She made herself visible for all to see.

  The monk looked at her. “Yes,” he said. “What my mother gave me was probably one of the last surviving Keys. But it was destroyed in the Year of Blue Fire. The Spellplague stitched its remnants to my flesh. The amulet is no more.”

  Anusha shook her head. Couldn’t he see? The Sign existed independent to what it was scribed upon. The monk contained all the power of the amulet. It was plain! If he called upon the power, he could lock the Far Manifold one last time! Just as when Malyanna had opened it …

  An image of the amulet in the eladrin noble’s hands disintegrating after she had used it danced before Anusha. The memory of Malyanna herself, being pulled through the instant she brushed against the disk followed. She put her hands to her mouth.

  If she convinced Raidon he had the power to lock the gate, she’d essentially be telling the man to sacrifice his life. Could she do that?

  She wanted Raidon to make the connection himself.

  But the monk stood, staring at the growing nest of fracture lines as if entranced. As if he making peace with the inevitability of the moment.

  Oh gods.

  “Raidon, you are the Key of Stars!” Anusha said. “And the Key must turn, one last time!”

  The half-elf cocked his head to regard her, puzzlement narrowing his eyes.

  A tear traced down her cheek. She could hardly say it, but forced it out. “I’m sorry, it’s your death if you try it and succeed, or fail,” she said. “But you must try! Don’t you see? Your … choice … could save everything.”

  Her throat threatened to close with sorrow. She wished it hadn’t fallen to her to say those hardest of words.

  Raidon’s eyes widened, than he gave a slow nod. “Anusha, I will try,” he said. “Taal thought he would die for turning against Malyanna at long last, but he did anyway. Can I do any less? I ask only this: If anything of me remains, please lay me beside my daughter in Nathlekh.”

  Anusha felt something inside her break.

  Raidon placed a hand on Anusha’s shoulder. Fresh tears streaked her face. Her golden armor felt as solid to him as the genuine article. Funny, how a dream could seem so real.

  Was Anusha right? Did his spellscar contain enough essence of his mother’s “forget-me-not” to lock the gate?

  He considered Erunyauvë as he’d seen her last, held to her soothsayer’s throne for years at a time. A throne from which she saw the future laid out in days and years.

  It came to him then. Erunyauvë had foreseen that moment, though not until after she had met his father, or given him the Cerulean Sign. But afterward, when she had taken up her seat. She had known when she talked to him in the Spire of the Moon; she had foreseen the possibility of this very moment. He understood her grief and final parting words. She’d known what he would have to do.

  What an awful burden for her to bear.

  “No need for sorrow,” he said to Anusha. “You’re not the author of this catastrophe. You have only my gratitude for putting all the pieces together when I was slow to do so.”

  Japheth approached. The warlock was haggard and drawn, and blood oozed from several small cuts. Behind him came Yeva, dented so much her joints were partly seized. And following all of them trudged the green scaled demon.

  Raidon tensed at the sight of the monster. “Hold, demon!” he said.

  The creature paused, then raised a huge finger as if asking for a moment. It reached its other hand into a crevice in its demonic flesh. Raidon blanched, but what came out was merely a jumble of loose clothing. The creature plucked a much-battered hat from the clutter and mashed it onto its misshapen head.

  “Thoster?” said the monk.

  “Yes,” replied a voice an octave deeper than Thoster’s. “I hope I can figure out how to change back, eh?”

  Raidon blinked.

  Anusha and Japheth embraced.

  “We failed,” the warlock said.

  “No,” said Yeva. “There’s one more thing to try.”

  Anusha stepped from the warlock’s arms. “Raidon’s going to try his Cerulean Sign on the Far Manifold to relock it,” she said. “It is the essence of a Key of Stars. But it means he’ll probably …” She couldn’t finish.

  Realization dawned on Japheth’s face. “Oh,” he said.

  Shards of broken crystal rained down on them, slick with unearthly goo.

  “If you’ve got something to try, better do it now, Raidon,” Thoster said. “The Far Manifold ain’t going to last much longer. It’s been an honor knowing you. And who knows? Could be, you’ll survive!”

  The aberrations remaining atop the Citadel of the Outer Void ignored the mortals; they were mesmerized by the multiplying lens fractures, the oozes and slimes forcing their way through those cracks, and the brightening colors behind the disk.

  Anusha laid her head against Japheth’s shoulder, but she continued to regard Raidon with tear-bright eyes.

  “Go, Raidon, before it’s too late,” she said, the last word fading to a sob.

  He nodded,
and gazed at each of them in turn. Japheth nodded gravely. The warlock’s eyes were as damp as Anusha’s.

  Raidon proffered Angul to Taal, but the blade said, Do not give me up. This shall also be my final task.

  “Very well,” the monk said.

  Raidon turned to face his destiny.

  The lens’s appalling façade was crisscrossed by a thousand tiny lines, like the splintered pane of a window moments before the shards fall out of the frame. The shattering sound of breaking glass was reaching a crescendo.

  He saw a girl’s small body dancing across a sandy courtyard, a painted doll clutched to her, her footprints like tiny promises of the adult she should have one day grown to be.

  He saw his mother as she’d been when he’d been only a child himself, when she’d kissed him on the head and given him the amulet.

  He saw the advent of the Plague of Spells, where that amulet had been seared in blue fire and dissolved, leaving behind only a symbol and a roil of insubstantial glyphs. A symbol that had stitched itself to his flesh.

  A symbol that burned on his chest like a cerulean sunrise.

  He placed one hand on the Sign … on the Key, and stepped to the crystal face.

  With his other hand tight on the hilt, he extended Angul until the blade’s tip rested against the Far Manifold. At the moment of contact, his vision expanded many times, becoming as farseeing as a god’s regard.

  Raidon saw the gaping wound in the side of reality, and how the Far Manifold plugged that horrifying puncture. He saw its age, and the manner of its construction. He saw that the barrier’s nearly implausible endurance had been unsecured from its foundation, thanks to Malyanna’s use of her Key.

  He understood only one Key remained as part of him, and so was his to use.

  Raidon willed the Cerulean Sign to lock the Far Manifold.

  A wheel made of a million stars turned, revealing other wheels, both vaster and far smaller, wheels within wheels all turning, part of a cosmic gearworks beyond his ability to grasp. A scream of celestial negation blossomed on the far side of gate, its violence exceeding that of a thousand exploding suns.