City of Torment

by Bruce R Cordell

  Half-elf and kraken met below Green Siren. Angul struck some kind of invisible ward surrounding Gethshemeth, producing a clap of thunder. The creature’s ward shattered, deflecting Raidon’s trajectory. Instead of plunging the Blade Cerulean directly into the base of the writhing tentacles, the monk tumbled off course.

  A spiral of tentacle wide as house caught him across the back. Pain clutched him only for a heartbeat before Angul sucked it away. But in the moment of disorientation, he lost his hold on his lifeline to Green Siren.

  He and the end of the rope continued to fall past the kraken’s bulk. Raidon kicked backward desperately, trying to flail his open hand toward the rope’s end before its length played out. The braided hemp of the rope slapped across his palm. Not an instant too soon—

  The slack in the rope gave out. Raidon’s plunge jerked to an arm-wrenching stop. White fire blossomed in his shoulder, forearm, and fingers, pulling a scream from him. But he didn’t let go. Angul wouldn’t allow him that luxury.

  The monk dangled at the cord’s end like a cat toy displayed for the kraken’s play. Angul whispered in his mind, Draw the beast in. I will end its aberrant life.

  Gethshemeth hovered in the dank air, midway between Raidon, who now hung below it, and the barnacled keel of Green Siren above. The tiny heads of several crew appeared over the railing, their eyes wide with fear.

  Lure it down to us, Angul urged.

  Raidon complied. He concentrated on his spellscar. The Sign of his adopted order pulsed. Shafts of cerulean light lanced the kraken’s bulk. Where the light touched Gethshemeth, its skin seared and smoked.

  The creature pirouetted in the air, a motion made obscene by the creature’s unnatural bulk moving so delicately. It turned its full attention to Raidon.

  Angul fed more energy to the monk. New strength rippled through the half-elf’s muscles, starting in his hand and spreading quickly through the rest of his body. When it reached his chest, his Sign responded with another pulse of radiance that needled the tentacled hulk anew.

  Gethshemeth roared. Like branches in a tornado, its arms lashed wildly as it dropped on Raidon.

  The monk’s eyes were riveted on the tentacle bearing the grotesque blinking tumor. Even as he was caught up and squeezed, he focused past the sound of bones breaking in his chest and legs.

  He called on his Sign and the sword and surged forward, struggling through the battering, squeezing arms. A swing of the Blade Cerulean, and the misshapen nodule spurted free. Greenish purple ichor geysered, and all the eyes pocking the growth rotated in their sockets as one, attempting to fix Raidon with their mismatched gaze. Some kind of fell influence lived in those eyes … but gravity pulled the severed pod down and away too quickly.

  Gethshemeth’s tentacles spasmed and released Raidon. The monk clung to the supporting rope.

  The creature’s mouth opened wide. It was horribly akin to a human’s but much larger. A noise like a baby’s wail issued from it, sending prickles up Raidon’s scalp.

  Even as Angul’s influence began to reknit Raidon’s damaged bones and sinews, Gethshemeth shrugged its colossal tentacles. It coughed out three arcane syllables. The great kraken’s outline turned fuzzy and uncertain, and then it was gone. Air fell into the space the kraken’s bulk had occupied, creating a final thunderclap.

  Raidon hung alone beneath the floating hull of Green Siren.

  Monk and sword voiced a simultaneous shout of fury. Gethshemeth had fled. You were not fast enough again, Angul chided. Had I made contact, I would have prevented it from displacing.

  Instead of arguing, the monk meditated on his Sign. Both the sword and the Sign were tools created by the ancient order of Keepers. But the Sign was pure; Angul was tainted. With the Sign’s strength, he carefully disentangled the sword’s wants and desires from his own.

  He finally gathered the will to sheathe Angul. It burned and shook, but was rendered powerless.

  Raidon wound an arm and his upper body into the hawser so that he no longer had to support all his weight with just one or even two hands.

  He rested, swaying gently in empty space. He was content for the moment to be alone in the dark air and to study the vast facade of Xxiphu. The runes and relief sculpture slowly crept across the primeval structure’s face. The many openings remained empty of activity, though some glowed with the faintest hint of purplish light. Other than the slithering inscriptions, he detected no movement or sound. The half-elf was grateful the city appeared to be, at least on its exterior, asleep.

  Appearances could be deceiving, he knew. His Sign, born of an ancient Seal, tingled with constant feedback. Aberrations were moving inside Xxiphu.

  The rope jerked. He glanced up. Even more heads craned over the railing where his lifeline connected. He heard Thoster shout something, then many hands began to haul on the rope.

  When Raidon was back on deck, the captain clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re crazy. But you saved my ship.”

  “Yes. But Gethshemeth escaped again.”

  “Ho! But you put the fear in it! It won’t cow us again with its size and power. That’s the last we’ll see of that beast, I warrant.” An unnatural glee possessed Thoster. His smile seemed too bright to Raidon. A sheen of sweat glistened on the captain’s forehead.

  “Are you fevered?” Raidon asked.

  The captain said, “Aren’t we all?” The man turned to see to his crew.

  Worry wrinkled the monk’s brow, but other concerns pressed far harder.

  “Seren, how goes the navigation?” he called.

  The wizard had stopped Green Siren’s rotation sometime during his brief exchange with Gethshemeth. Raidon saw the blank look of concentration on the woman’s face—probably a mirror of his expression as he’d guided the ship’s descent through the earth.

  After a few moments, Seren replied, “We’re moving. It took me awhile to figure out how to get the gleamtails to rise; they’d rather sink. But I’ve got it now.”

  Raidon realized the ship was indeed increasing its altitude, albeit slowly. Moreover, the gallery he’d earlier pointed out to Seren was noticeably closer.

  “You’ve done well,” he said.

  He moved to the ship’s bow. The city’s horrid face loomed larger. The writhing inscriptions didn’t bear looking on for too long, so he found himself constantly flicking his eyes away. He couldn’t discern if the shapes were actually moving, or if their convoluted shapes merely suggested animation.

  Finally they reached the gallery.

  The massive cavity engulfed the ship. A shelf along the interior side was hollowed with several secondary tunnels—some so small a human would have a hard time crawling into them, and one so large the ship could have almost fit down it. The light of the gleamtails threw golden and reddish highlights off the dark stone. A smell akin to rotting fish enfolded them. The odor was mixed with other spices Raidon couldn’t identify.

  “Tie up!” yelled Thoster. Several crew members grabbed up coiled ropes, but only stared nervously at the dark stone platform that had to serve as their pier. None moved to comply.

  Seren said, “The gleamtail jacks will maintain Green Siren in this position, even if I leave the ritual circle.”

  “I’m sure,” said the captain, implying by his tone that he was anything but confident. “I wager it’ll do no harm to tie up as well, eh?”

  Seren shrugged.

  Raidon leaped over the side onto the platform. The air was moist and suffused with tiny particles of light. He walked the shelf from one end to the other, avoiding stone columns that speckled the floor. When it was apparent that monstrous creatures were not beating a path from the tunnels to swarm him, the crew clambered over the ship’s side to join him. They tied up Green Siren using some of the larger columns as bollards.

  “What now?” said the captain, his eyes almost eager.

  “We move into the city and discover its heart,” said Raidon. “We need to find the creature from which the Dreamheart was carved.
If fate is kind, we’ll find it before its progeny wake it. Somewhere in this massive structure, aboleths are singing to rouse their father. We must find that chamber and kill the children before the parent can open the rest of its eyes. If destiny is on our side, perhaps we may even hope Angul can slay the Eldest as it sleeps defenseless.”

  Everyone just looked at the monk. Finally the captain asked, “What odds do you give on the warlock showing up down here and interfering with us?”

  Raidon blinked. “Why would he do that?”

  Thoster said, “He’s connected to this place as much as you—he carries the Dreamheart.”

  “His presence here seems unlikely. You experienced how difficult a time we had finding and reaching Xxiphu—and I had the Cerulean Sign to guide me. Yes, he has the Dreamheart, though it won’t do him any good if we slay the Eldest before all its eyes are open.”

  The captain said, “I think you’re wrong, Raidon.”

  “What’s this about, Thoster?”

  The captain clapped Raidon on the shoulder. “I like to be prepared for contingencies. Think about it—why’d the warlock take off with the Dreamheart to begin with? Because of the girl. If Japheth had got her free from the stone, she’d have woken up by now. She hasn’t. Which I think means—”

  “That her mind isn’t in the Dreamheart,” finished Seren, her tone incredulous. “Otherwise, someone with Japheth’s arcane connections would have freed her.”

  “Exactly,” said Thoster. “My guess is her mind was sucked down here!”

  Raidon shrugged. “Could be. It doesn’t change our plans.”

  “Well, perhaps we should we pack her up so we can carry her easily?”

  “Anusha? No, of course not. Bringing an unconscious person into the city would be a nuisance at best, and a danger to all of us trying to keep her safe in a fight. We’ll put your dog in her cabin to watch over her.”

  Thoster rubbed his chin. “Well, I suppose that’s fine.”

  “Are you worried about facing Japheth?” Seren asked the captain.

  “No,” said Thoster. “At least, not since your ritual.” He put his hand on the amulet cord. “Still, how often does a fellow walk into a primeval relic filled with half-petrified monsters older than gods?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

  Xxiphu, Hall of Spawning

  The man dreamed.

  A many-columned structure stood on a mountain at the edge of a void. Vast scale was implied by the misted clouds that wreathed the peak and edifice alike. The columns surrounded an inner citadel of solid stone—solid but for a gigantic gate of star iron. The enormous valve was pitted and ancient. Sometimes it rattled and shook with the slow cadence of mighty waves, as if something inside strove to throw it open with steady, unrelenting strength.

  The man knew with dreamy conviction that on the other side of the gate stretched forgotten dimensions that lay beyond the stars. Through its sealed gap, whispered this unearned certainty, infinities stretched outside mortal and divine conception alike.

  A woman in golden armor stood before the gate, in the shadow of the towering columns. Her lips moved, but the man couldn’t hear her. Her words were important, that was clear. Something he needed to understand immediately. If he failed to put meaning to her increasingly desperate attempts to communicate, he realized something catastrophic would shudder to its world-breaking culmination …

  Japheth came awake with a cry.

  He lay curled like a newborn within a hollow niche coated with residual slime. His cloak was draped around his body like a shroud.

  The warlock levered himself up onto his elbows and saw a narrow phosphorescent tunnel snaking up and away. He was alone and glad for it. The dream was similar to ones he’d had before, but unlike them too. Anusha was in the dream mouthing the same incomprehensible warnings as always, but her surroundings seemed more dire than the crazed visions his sleeping mind had earlier painted.

  Japheth shivered, but not from the dream or the cold. It was his body betraying him.

  He couldn’t predict when the shakes would surface in his flesh. The trembling in his hands and the flinching tic in his expression appeared without warning and stayed overlong. Sometimes when he concentrated, the quavering subsided. A few times, the shuddering intensified so much he feared a seizure was imminent.

  And what of his abilities? His mind probed for his missing spells like a tongue unable to ignore an empty tooth socket.

  The fabric of his cloak was wound with subtle power and abilities that far eclipsed a normal cape, that was true. But the powers of transposition and protection it provided were hardly compensation for the arcane might Japheth had wielded just hours earlier.

  Without his arcane tools, he was little more than a man far out of his depth. Without the patronage of his sworn pact, he was succumbing to the end stages of a lethal addiction to traveler’s dust.

  He was in a bad way. If he didn’t take a crystal every hour or so, he would slide right off the end of the putative road and die, his soul claimed by demons. But every time he took a crystal, he also moved farther down that demon-built avenue and closer to the precipice, although at a less breakneck pace.

  But fast or slow, he would soon be dragged into the Abyss.

  He lashed out with a curled fist at the sticky niche wall. His knuckle split open, but the pain was a welcome, if brief, diversion.

  Japheth put his knuckle to his lips and glanced around. Neither Anusha nor Yeva had returned. They sought a way through the spawning hall that avoided newly birthed abo-leths. The creatures couldn’t see the women, but they were all too aware of him.

  “It was supposed to be different,” he murmured. “When I imagined us together, we were going to be so happy. I imagined us attending Midsummer Festival, sharing candied apples, and laughing in the sun. And as the sun westered, our embraces would grow more urgent …” He sighed and shook his head to dislodge such distracting thoughts.

  “Now all we have is horror.”

  He would be dead in a day, perhaps two. And the one who had captured his heart would be left to fend for herself in an impossible situation. She would likely perish not long after he succumbed to the dust. Her soul would become food for the Eldest.

  It was intolerable.

  Everything had taken on a shade of crimson through the lenses of his permanently dust-hued eyes.

  “By the Fangs of Neifion,” Japheth swore. He was near to the precipice. If he closed his eyes, the scarlet plain was already waiting. A road slashed across the plain, and he could feel the bone cobbles through his boots. From where he stood along its length, he could just glimpse the road’s awful terminus.

  The scene had blotted out his senses years earlier. That time, he’d seen the road even when his eyes were wide open.

  That time, he’d been pushed to the crimson road’s precipitous end. He’d witnessed the space beyond: a tooth-lined gullet where all dust users were finally consumed, mind and soul. Demons winged through that hungry hole, culling souls at their leisure.

  A desperate addict will shout all manner of promises to the empty air when all his debts are finally called due. No one was more surprised than Japheth when his desperate pleas were answered by a great bat that sailed down from the burning sky. Neifion, the Lord of Bats, had heard his promises and responded.

  In the urgency of his need, Japheth pledged his soul to the Lord of Bats if only the creature would save him. Only later did he learn he’d offered Neifion far too much—but the Lord of Bats took him at his word. And so Japheth was saved from his lethal addiction to crimson dust by swearing a pact to an archfey.

  He’d lived several years since then, his dust-promised death sentence stayed by the pact. But now the agreement was shattered. Japheth’s powers were fled, and Neifion no longer shielded him from the poor choices of his youth.

  “I doubt,” he whispered, “my old patron will take me back. I need a new one. Ha! Down in this hellhole, that�
�s so likely.”

  In that moment, a scheme slithered into his mind.

  It was an awful idea, and dangerous in equal measure. But he already knew it was his only option.

  “Wait,” he protested.

  The logic was inescapable.

  He needed a new patron. He needed a new pact. Death was certain for him and Anusha otherwise.

  “It’s nonsense; it’s insane!” he whispered.

  But was it really? He had pledged a pact to Neifion, a creature of bloodlust and dubious ethics. If he hadn’t gone overboard in what he’d initially sworn, things would have been far different, he rationalized. He could have gone about his own purposes, and the Lord of Bats wouldn’t have taken such an overweening interest in Japheth’s activities.

  Probably.

  Of course he wasn’t sure, but what was certain in his life? His own gruesome death and Anusha’s soon thereafter if he didn’t try to save them, that was what.

  He’d worked at cross-purposes to Neifion’s goals. He could do the same to a new entity to whom he swore the pacts of a warlock, right?

  Uncertainty coiled in his stomach.

  Another thought occurred to him, this one almost comforting. He was an old hand at swearing pacts. He’d learned in the school of hard knocks how not to craft one. He had a pretty good idea, now, how to go about devising a pact that would not only grant him power but also avoid promising his soul away to a new master.

  He took an unsteady breath.

  The decision was already made the moment he thought of it. All the rest was just delay.

  He reached into the folds of his cloak and produced the Dreamheart.

  The eye in the stone was half lidded. Sitting with his legs folded and his cloak spread behind him, Japheth placed the Dreamheart so its gaze faced the damp cavity’s far wall. He wasn’t ready to look into that awful pupil quite yet. Touching the stone calmed his shaking hands, but its slick warmth wound his nerves more tightly.

  The warlock glanced around one last time. Still no sign of Anusha. Good. He took a deep breath and then placed both hands back on the object. Its mere presence was an affront to the natural order of Toril, and touching it felt like touching a dragon’s oily scales.