The eidolon had him. Japheth blinked away the tears and saw the thing had raised him high above its head. Preparatory to smashing him down, most likely. He heaved against the stone pincer holding him in place. He succeeded merely in goading it to squeeze all the harder. He couldn’t draw in a new breath.
Japheth called on his cloak to transfer him back to the ground. It whipped and strained, but failed. He was caught in a grip more than merely physical.
Below his flailing feet, Thoster darted in with his golemwork blade. The clang of metal on stone reverberated up the effigy’s form. Farther off, Japheth saw Seren ready her wand for another strike, then pause, a frown of indecision on her face. He wondered if she considered striking the statue with another bolt of lighting even though he remained in its grasp. It surprised him she even paused to deliberate.
Japheth finally managed to get his free hand on the animate statue. With the last breath that remained in his contracted lungs, he uttered the Blight of Writhing Shadow.
The swarming witchlights dimmed as tissue-thin streamers of black fog issued from the ground. The darkness wrapped the effigy’s legs in semisolid bands of sinuous force.
The creature tried to step out of the shadow that clutched at it, but found itself caught in slicing, cold darkness. Shuddering, it redoubled its effort to escape. Simultaneously, the pressure the thing exerted on him noticeably eased. Japheth gasped, drawing new air into his aching lungs. In another few moments he would have blacked out.
Thoster yelled, “Can you wriggle free, warlock? I don’t want to strike again what might be an idol to she to whom I pray for calm seas!”
At the sound of his voice, the eidolon stopped struggling. Its empty rune face seemed to ascertain Thoster’s position despite its lack of eyes, ears, and nose. Simultaneously, Japheth smelled a rank odor of rotting fish and something far worse, like the smell of shadows decaying.
Thoster blanched but shook his head. He said, “Begad!
That ain’t the Sea Mother!”
The rune on the idol’s face sprayed red water. The fluid arced through the air, curving up and over the captain’s retreating form. Even as the wave’s leading edge was about to strike the damp ground, it solidified. The captain was gone. What remained was a compact coral dome, on which runes were scribed. Japheth could read these runes, for they were in Common. The words read, “Captain Aulruick Thoster. Preserved for sacrifice 1396.”
The captain’s shocking entombment jolted the warlock into a frenzy. He writhed without regard to how he might hurt himself against the hard stone—
Before he quite realized he was free, he struck the ground, turning his ankle. He didn’t pause to examine it; as soon as he hit the floor he called on his cloak to transfer him as far as it could …
Japheth was spit from the discontinuity of his cloak some fifteen paces behind the animate statue. For the moment, it couldn’t see him.
Its non-gaze swept to the left, stopping at Seren. She screamed, “You’ll not have me, stoneborn!” and released a torrent of electricity. The jagged white gout carved great smoking craters in the idol’s rock carapace.
The light of the wizard’s electrical attack was brighter than the floating witchlights. So bright that Japheth glimpsed something moving up and behind them. Something vast. In the shadows of the great cavern, many sinuous arms fluttered and coiled, each longer than the Green Siren’s deck. One clutched a head-sized orb of stone. The long arms all emerged from a fleshy cylindrical mantle, from which two white eyes burned with hate. Each time the great arms moved, the animate statue rocked and shifted.
Nausea roiled Japheth’s guts and his breath caught. Gethshemeth.
“Seren! The eidolon is not the true threat! The great kraken is in here with us! The statue is its puppet!”
The wizard glanced away from the idol, and saw in the fading light of her final blast what Japheth described.
Even as her mouth opened, in dawning surprise, the eidolon sprayed another gout of seawater. Seren tried to evade and failed. Where the wizard had stood was a small obelisk labeled, “Seren Juramot. Preserved for sacrifice 1396.”
Japheth mentally reviewed his options, even as he sidled away from the idol and from the darkness behind it that hid Gethshemeth.
He could channel arcane might wrested from primeval entities. He could commune with infernal intelligences and fey spirits, scour enemies with potent blasts of eldritch power, and bedevil them with compelling curses. While he wore the Lord of Bats’s cloak, all his abilities were redoubled, at least. But even with all his advantages, he knew he could not defeat a great kraken and its eidolon ally alone. Especially a great kraken whose own power was magnified in some unholy way by the enigmatic relic the ex-whip had called the Dreamheart.
On the other hand, he would certainly die if he put his back to the threat. He stopped. Japheth squared his shoulders and turned to fully face the idol, and yes, the hints of swift movement just visible behind and above the animate statue. His hands came up, and from his lips leaped words that were transformed into a golden mist. A great cloud of shining, yellow haze billowed forward, bypassing the unthinking eidolon, expanding in size even as its interior light began to more fully illuminate the great kraken beyond. For the first time, Japheth realized how strange it was that the creature seemed completely at ease in open air. Was that ability to transcend water an effect of the Dreamheart, as Nogah had suggested?
The haze enveloped the massive squid. Japheth continued uttering the syllables that fed the spell, giving it the power to plunge Gethshemeth into a waking dream of eldritch beauty and illusion.
The haze was having an effect! Or, was it? Wait—
The idol’s rune flashed like a star. Water sprayed through air toward the warlock. Drops of the transformative moisture speckled Japheth’s upturned face and unprotected hands.
His spell was ripped from him. A cold tide overtook him, and his body was locked in a vault of stone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Plaguewrought Land, Vilhon Wilds
Blue, green, and gold streaked the ground beneath Raidon’s feet, as if some god had knocked over creation’s easel, spilling change over the world. The paint still ran, congealing and mixing to form ever stranger colors and textures.
The air was a haze of wavering orange and sapphire, thick with the scent of jasmine and licorice. He could hardly make out his hand before his face. It was as though he walked through the base of a heatless, if pleasant-smelling, flame. Raidon wondered if the dancing color was the spellplague itself, or merely a telltale by-product of the infection that writhed below the earth. Thankfully, he showed no signs of illness or dissolution … unlike Hadyn.
The avatar of Grandmother Ash guided him forward through the brilliant murk by song. Her voice was a wind whistling through a forest of pines, leading him. His feet found solid ground with each step. The womanlike being of bark, leaves, and root disdained walking. Instead, she grew into each new point on the landscape she desired to visit.
Her latest incarnation came clear from the burning haze as he approached. With each new manifestation, her precise configuration of flowers, thorns, roots, and bark differed slightly.
As her eyes found his, she ceased her guiding song. This time, her eyes appeared as two blooming irises.
Raidon asked, “Do you send rootlets burrowing ahead each time you rise up?”
The avatar craned her head to one side. She said, “Why send new shoots if my root system already lies beneath all in the Plaguewrought Land?”
“Ah.” Raidon wondered if Grandmother Ash was being truthful about the extent of her growth. If so, her real size, including all the woody growth below the earth, was something he couldn’t quite imagine.
The avatar continued to stare at him. She said, “That is strange.”
“What?” Had he become infected and didn’t realize it? He quickly checked his hands, arms, and legs.
“I sense
two entities inhabiting your fleshy form, where before I detected only one. I am concerned.”
“Well met,” came a voice. Cynosure’s voice. Raidon breathed easier.
“Worry not, avatar,” explained Raidon. “You sense the presence of my friend, Cynosure. I mentioned him when we first met. Cynosure, where have you been?”
The voice came again, “Recuperating from my last effort that saw you to Ormpetarr’s gates.”
“Are you well?”
“Yes, Raidon. For now. I used more strength than I expected, but I have a last bit to give. Which is lucky, because once you retrieve Angul, I can send you on to destroy the Dreamheart directly.”
The leafy form of the avatar rustled as if to draw attention to itself. It said, “Cynosure … I’ve heard that name before. An extraplanar meeting ground for the gods.”
“A coincidence of names, nothing more,” came the sentient golem’s voice, amusement clear in his tone. “But what are you? I detect you are far more extensive than the humanoid shape Raidon sees with his eyes.”
“I am an avatar of Grandmother Ash,” explained the woman, as if that were sufficient.
“Ah,” returned Cynosure.
Raidon said into a growing silence, “She guides me to the Chalk Destrier, a creature Kiril and her dwarf companion sought when they entered this changeland. The avatar believes Kiril and Thormud were slain.”
“Sad news,” mused Cynosure. Then, “Lead on. Now that I have renewed contact with Raidon, I’ll provide no further distraction until my services are next required.”
Grandmother Ash’s form dissolved. A few moments later, her voice came from ahead, raised once again in a song of guidance.
The monk continued his trek through the burning miasma, following the temporary, living guideposts the avatar provided.
Some large fraction of a day passed in such manner. The sameness of the surrounding bluish fog made it difficult to estimate time. Finally, Raidon broke through the haze into a new region.
He stood near the opening cut of a mighty canyon, steep-sided and long. The canyon sides revealed hundreds of varicolored bands in the stone, as if an account of some vast track of time. The sedimentary layers alternated between dozens of shades of brown, though a few layers seemed more crystalline than rocky. One exposed layer looked suspiciously like flesh. The canyon walls rose hundreds of feet on both sides.
The avatar retained her position at the very edge of the haze, declining to fully step forth. She pointed down the canyon. “Continue down this ravine, bearing neither right nor left down lesser clefts, and you’ll find the Chalk Destrier at its end.”
“You will go no farther?” asked Raidon. He was surprised to find himself wistful at the prospect of losing his one companion who was more than a mere voice.
“I told you my roots extended below all the Plaguewrought Land. That is true, save for this mass in the Plaguewrought Land’s heart. I sense it is a misplaced fragment of another world, though its nature was obviously affected just as thoroughly by the Spellplague as Toril. I am not able to send my roots farther than its edges.”
Raidon wondered if he should remind the avatar of her promise to distract the destrier long enough for him to find the sword. He decided against it. If she was having second thoughts, well, his words wouldn’t sway her.
“Thank you for guiding me as far as you have, Grandmother Ash.”
The woman gave a fair imitation of a bow. “As I said, you are my first hero. Perhaps, if the Chalk Destrier does not slay you, you will return and tell me of your exploits and what drives you with such determination.”
“I look forward to it,” responded Raidon, returning the gesture.
With a rustle of shifting earth, the avatar’s many branches, vines, and stems blurred out of a female shape, then pulled into the earth.
“Cynosure?”
“I am here, Raidon.”
The monk frowned, nodded, and strode into the ravine.
The walls leaped up on both sides, but the way widened so that he walked along a flat expanse a hundred yards from either wall. A track meandered back and forth along the floor of the canyon. Murky liquid sluggishly flowed through the track. It might have been muddy water, though Raidon half expected it to burst into blue burning fire at any moment. The canyon seemed far too mundane to lie at the heart of the Plaguewrought Land.
The farther he walked, the higher the cliff walls grew on each side. Soon he was walking in deep shadow, and he had to carefully watch his footing amid the muddy track. He wondered how high the walls must be. They towered into the gloom, each cliff like a mighty sea wall built by giants.
Now and then, dry tributaries split from the main canyon, but Raidon followed the avatar’s advice and continued straight along the way.
At one such juncture, a trio of great beasts grazed, as large as dragons but slightly less fierce in demeanor. They went on four feet and sported long, serpentine necks, but their eyes were dull like cattle, and they had no wings. Raidon slipped past the great creatures without drawing attention. The monk privately thanked providence that Cynosure hadn’t taken it upon itself to make some observation, although perhaps he was being unfair to the sentient effigy.
The canyon found its conclusion ahead. A great white cliff filled the vast cleft from wall to wall. Was it snow? It didn’t shine and twinkle in the setting sun like snow or ice would. Limestone? No, of course not.
It was probably chalk.
Raidon continued forward.
He walked another couple of miles toward the white wall, during which time full darkness grew. Stars came out above, brighter and more colorful than Raidon had ever noticed. He wasn’t a sage of the skies, however, and didn’t know enough to hazard a guess on whether they were familiar constellations, here in the heart of the Plaguewrought Land. He didn’t ask Cynosure.
One other light source offered itself besides the stars. As twilight deepened, the great white cliff ahead glimmered, taking on a glow not unlike moonlight. As its glow brightened, indeed it seemed that the far cliff face was a full phase of Selune herself, brought to earth and captured between the two canyon walls. Or perhaps not captured, but merely resting, waiting to spring up once more into the heavens.
Finally, Raidon asked the air, “Is that the Chalk Destrier? A moon fallen to earth?”
“If a moon, not one native to Toril.”
“How close should I approach?”
“My senses are blunted here. I can barely retain my connection with you. Something interferes.”
The monk nodded. He was on his own, despite the construct’s voice and predilection to instruct Raidon. He found he was happy to find the construct’s limits. On the whole, he’d had enough of all-knowing entities who surpassed his own knowledge. Then again, it could well be he was about to face something more potent than Cynosure at his most powerful.
Raidon walked until he stood some hundred or so paces from the pocked cliff face that glowed with its own celestial light. He put his hands to each side of his mouth and yelled, “Hail! I am seeking the Chalk Destrier! Let us parley and find mutual benefit in so doing!”
The stars above seemed to darken as the great white cliff face slowly waxed, becoming brighter, then brighter still, until Raidon was forced to squint into the glare.
A sound as of a massive river rushing over stones resounded down the canyon, so loud the earth shook. Within that overwhelming noise, Raidon detected patterns. Words. He missed the first few, but finally understood, “… come to ask a question, I demand a gift. What gift do you offer, pilgrim?”
Raidon cocked his head, unsure. He asked, “Are you the Chalk Destrier?”
“What else?” came the breathtaking voice. “If you have come to ask a question, you must first provide your gift. Do you offer your life or the life of another in payment? A relic? A secret?”
He wasn’t here to tap whatever oracular power the entity implied it possessed, but he did have a question about Kiril, and her sword. He sai
d, “I do not seek hidden knowledge, sage advice, or visions of the future. I seek only to know the whereabouts of one of your previous visitors, a swordswoman named Kiril and her dwarf companion.”
“What gift do you pledge to secure my aid?” replied the earthshaking voice.
The monk stopped short of indicating he had no gift. Instead, he began to run through his store of lore, trying to think of something interesting that might satisfy the inanimate cliff’s desire.
Cynosure suddenly said, “I know several secrets. Here is one: The elf realm of Sildëyuir, hidden behind the forest of Yuirwood, is not destroyed, as most assume. Many parts of it were pulled into Faerie, called the Feywild. Many star elves are now reunited with their kin, the eladrin.”
The monk started, recalling his earlier conversation with the construct about Sildëyuir. Cynosure had then implied the starry realm was “fallen,” not partially transferred to a fey dimension. If it was true that some of that realm yet lived, why had the construct allowed the monk to think otherwise?
He shook his head, realizing now wasn’t the time to quiz the construct. Instead, he waited for the Chalk Destrier’s response.
The cliff’s brightness dimmed over many heartbeats, then waxed once more. The voice came, “You have given me a gift of knowledge previously unknown. I respond in kind: When the swordswoman Kiril, the geomancer Thormud, and the dragonet Xet came before me, a passage to the new lands fused to the world that lie across the western seas was requested of me. I provided that portal. They left this continent years ago for Returned Abeir.”
The monk’s stomach lurched. He had no idea what or where Returned Abeir was, whether a land across the sea or another plane entirely. Regardless, it seemed clear the quarry he’d thought he was on the brink of discovering was gone. Kiril and her blade could be anywhere by now. A black feeling of defeat and anger threatened to shred his calm focus.
Cynosure said, “A mighty gift must have been given for you to open such a far-reaching portal.”
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