Key of Stars
Author: Bruce R. Cordell
Date: 2010-09-04 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Forgotten Realms
Description: Lovecraftian horror from award-winning Forgotten Realms® game designer Bruce R. Cordell.Raidon Kane survived his clash against the eldest aboleth, but came away with his mind shattered. Destiny hands Raidon one last chance to avert the Abolethic Sovereignty's agenda, but only if he can find within himself the strength to care. Raidon, the warlock Japheth, and Anusha, a young woman whose dreams are made real, must find Key of Stars before it is used to open the Far Manifold, and all reality drowns in a tide of horrific insanity.
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Rights: Copyright © 2010 by Wizards of the Coast LLC

AN ANCIENT, ALIEN CITY
OF UNSPEAKABLE HORROR

Thoster glanced up. Xxiphu was rising farther into the sky. As it moved, it pulled the storm with it.

“Thank the Sea Mother,” murmured the captain. He let one hand fall across his amulet. The music yet played, still calling to Thoster. But what Seren had fashioned for him retained its charm. Thoster was free to ignore the call.

The question was, who was the caller? The crazy half-elf had prevented the aboleths from waking their progenitor. Could the Eldest yet reach out with such strength despite not being entirely conscious? Perhaps. Thoster could count all the things he knew about half-divine legendary beings on one finger: stay clear of them. Still, the music, growing dimmer as the awful city continued to recede, had a grasping, intelligent nature to it that Thoster didn’t ascribe to the Eldest. Xxiphu sought something. An object. It was … right on the tip of Thoster’s tongue.

The captain blinked.

The memory swirled away as the present intruded. He was standing on a busy New Sarshell walk outside the shipbuilder’s office. People jostled him as they went about their day.

“Damn me, I thought I drank enough rum last night to erase that memory,” the captain said.

A man gave him an odd look as he passed.

Thoster chuckled. He said, louder, “Guess I’ll try again tonight. The key is to not accept half-measures! The key …”

The key. Why was that word familiar? It put him in mind of a song.

The music from his memory battered Thoster, as loud and as demanding as when Xxiphu had frowned down upon Green Siren days earlier.

“The Key of Stars is what Xxiphu seeks,” he whispered.

The captain clutched his hat to his head and dashed down the walk in the direction of Marhana Manor.

WAITING TO BE UNLEASHED.

ABOLETHIC SOVEREIGNTY

Join Raidon Kane as he fights the rise of a horrific, alien nation bent on enslaving all of the Forgotten Realms world.

Book I
Plague of Spells

Book II
City of Torment

Book III
Key of Stars

ALSO BY BRUCE R. CORDELL

The Priests

The Rotting Man, a servant of the goddess of pain, is spreading discord, disease, and corruption. It is up to Marrec to protect his latest prey: a young girl of disturbing power and mental isolation.

Lady of Poison

The Wizards

A weapon forged to blackmail the gods has awoken, and is bent upon the destruction of its creators. An exile of the hidden city which created the weapon may be the only chance the city has for survival.

Darkvision

The Dungeons

Too dangerous to kill, the Traitor has long been imprisoned in Stardeep—long enough to corrupt one of his jailors. Kiril must fight all the protections of Stardeep to save it from its worst prisoner’s escape.

Stardeep

Abolethic Sovereignty
Book III
KEY OF STARS

©2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. FORGOTTEN REALMS, WIZARDS OF THE COAST, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries.

All Wizards of the Coast characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

eISBN: 978-0-7869-5764-4

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v3.1

Dedication

For Sharon Cordell Mac and Leroy R. Cordell

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven

Dramatis Personae

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Phil Athans, for believing the Abolethic Sovereignty was a tale that needed telling. Thank you to Dee, for your tireless support, inspiration, and putting up with all the hours I spent closeted in my office, especially on this last book. Thank you to Susan Morris, for being a fabulous editor, sounding board, and friend through three books worth of thorny plot and character development. Thank you to John Staab and Todd Dail, for your martial arts instruction that give Raidon’s and Taal’s fights a flair of authenticity. And thank you, reader; your interest in this story has propelled it through to the end.

Welcome to Faerûn, a land of magic and intrigue, brutal violence and divine compassion, where gods have ascended and died, and mighty heroes have risen to fight terrifying monsters. Here, millennia of warfare and conquest have shaped dozens of unique cultures, raised and leveled shining kingdoms and tyrannical empires alike, and left long forgotten, horror-infested ruins in their wake.

A LAND OF MAGIC

When the goddess of magic was murdered, a magical plague of blue fire—the Spellplague—swept across the face of Faerûn, killing some, mutilating many, and imbuing a rare few with amazing supernatural abilities. The Spellplague forever changed the nature of magic itself, and seeded the land with hidden wonders and bloodcurdling monstrosities.

A LAND OF DARKNESS

The threats Faerûn faces are legion. Armies of undead mass in Thay under the brilliant but mad lich king Szass Tam. Treacherous dark elves plot in the Underdark in the service of their cruel and fickle goddess, Lolth. The Abolethic Sovereignty, a terrifying hive of inhuman slave masters, floats above the Sea of Fallen Stars, spreading chaos and destruction. And the Empire of Netheril, armed with magic of unimaginable power, prowls Faerûn in flying fortresses, sowing discord to their own incalculable ends.

A LAND OF HEROES

But Faerûn is not without hope. Heroes have emerged to fight the growing tide of darkness. Battle-scarred rangers bring their notched blades to bear against marauding hordes of orcs. Lowly street rats match wits with demons for the fate of cities. Inscrutable tiefling warlocks unite with fierce elf warriors to rain fire and steel upon monstrous enemies. And valiant servants of merciful gods forever struggle against the darkness.

A LAND OF
UNTOLD ADVENTURE

CHAPTER ONE

Eleven Years after the Spellplague
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Candlekeep

The door shuddered in its frame.

The scribe’s hand jerked, flicking a blob of ink from his quill. The ink splattered on the parchment stretched across the composition table.

“Mystra’s corpse!” the scribe said.

Several heavy bumps thudded down the hallway outside the door, followed by laughter.

“What the hell is going on out there?” the scribe yelled.

He waited a few heartbeats for a response. Nothing but silence.

“Damn apprentices, playing when they should be reshelving,” he muttered.

The scribe sighed and returned to his work. The splatter hadn’t ruined the report, but the tiny spills made the page appear untidy and common—not up to his standards. At least it was salvageable. He dipped his quill in the pot once more.

The door shattered in a blast of expanding white vapor.

The scribe, bent-backed and stiff from a lifetime of copying, fell off his stool. Bits of broken door rained down on him. The inkpot shattered, painting jagged black lines on the floor.

Memories of the disaster more than a decade before spidered through him—the Year of Blue Fire. Was it happening again? A jolt of panic lent him strength. He pulled himself up and leaned unsteadily on the writing table.

A woman wearing a dark gown and cape stalked through the empty doorway. Her skin glowed like moonlight, and her eyes like coal. Was she some kind of eladrin?

A bald man followed her into the room. Blood flecked his otherwise impeccably black formalwear. When he smiled at the scribe, canines protruded. He also had something of the fey to him, but he was certainly no eladrin.

Behind them strolled a massive black hound that seemed more shadow than flesh; but its barred teeth were as white as snow.

“Who are … What’s going on?” said the scribe. “Where are the apprentices? They should have …” He realized the distracting noises probably hadn’t been the librarian trainees roughhousing, as he’d assumed.

“The apprentices?” said the woman. “Hmm, is this one?” She pointed to something outside the door.

The scribe leaned to the left and looked into the hallway.

What was left of a youthful librarian was embedded in the wall, his blood rayed like ejecta from a falling star.

Nausea bent the scribe over the writing table. His last meal came up. A useless voice in his head noted his report was almost certainly ruined.

“They did not accord me the proper respect,” the eladrin said. “Don’t make the same mistake.”

The scribe coughed and wiped his mouth. “No, um … my lady,” he forced out.

“I require your aid,” she said.

“Uh, yes!” the scribe replied. “But I doubt I, a simple scribe, can assist you. It is—”

The man laughed. The sound was high-pitched, its piercing note somehow horrifying. “If you aim to avoid ending up like your friends, try again, mortal,” he said.

“Wh … What do you want?” the scribe asked.

“We require access to a collection here in your wonderful fortress of lore,” said the woman. “Surely you can aid us with that.”

The scribe wondered why Candlekeep’s defenses hadn’t already converged on the invaders. He wished, not for the first time, that the defensive spellmantle of old hadn’t unraveled. It would have provided instant warning to everyone in the keep, and … He suddenly understood the invaders might have slipped into the heart of Candlekeep without the Castellan or the Keeper of Tomes being the wiser. Perhaps only he knew Candlekeep hosted uninvited guests. He had to get word out!

Should he send a message immediately? That would risk the invaders’ ire if they noticed his arcane twiddling. It might be better to go along with whatever they wanted for the moment, and survive long enough to try later. Sweat broke on his forehead.

“Have we scared you dumb?” said the man.

“Ah, no!” the scribe said. “I mean, what can I help you with? I only have access to certain specialty collections. Lore of ancient fey groups that died out long ago …”

“Perfect,” said the woman. “Show us to the Democene Reading Room.”

The scribe swallowed. “How … How did you know about that collection?” he said.

“Stop wasting time, human,” the woman replied. “I wonder, if I remove your hand, will it serve as the reading room key without your body attached?”

Slick dread churned the scribe’s guts. He pushed away from his table, toward the back wall. “This way!” he said.

Shelves heavy with books framed a door of dull iron. The door lacked a handle, but a plate set flush to the wall next to the door would serve.

The scribe placed one trembling hand to the plate and muttered the pass phrase. A spark was born, bit his palm, and died in an instant. He rubbed his hand as a series of knocks, bangs, and whines issued from the wall.

“A clunky sort of magery,” said the bald man.

“Access to the reading room the lady named is coming into alignment,” said the scribe. “Some collections are too dangerous to reside in the general stacks.”

With a final muffled clunk, the iron door scraped aside. A narrow track of descending stairs was revealed.

The scribe motioned the two invaders to enter.

“No, after you, my friend,” said the man. “Prudence and all that.”

The scribe nodded and preceded the invaders into the stairwell.

A similar iron door sealed the landing at the stairwell’s foot. The scribe opened it as he had the first. Beyond lay the Democene Reading Room.

Painted stars glowed on the ceiling, providing just enough light to read by. Crumbling tomes, scrolls, knickknacks, and drawings littered a single leaning shelf. A basalt table and seat nestled in one corner. A few unshelved books lay open upon it from the scribe’s last visit.

The woman breezed into the room. The glowing stars brightened, and a haze of dancing light enshrouded her. It hurt the scribe’s eyes to look at the eladrin.

“Something recognizes you, Malyanna,” said the man.

“Give the bat a sweet,” she replied. “He’s so perceptive.”

A dangerous expression briefly touched the man’s pale features. Then he chuckled and entered the reading room to stand at Malyanna’s side.

Malyanna extended a finger and began to trace the titles on the shelf.

“What you’ve still failed to adequately explain, my lovely,” the man said, “is why this side trek is necessary in the first place?”

The woman, apparently called Malyanna, sniffed. “You saw me attempt the ritual again, and fail, Neifion,” she said. “The Eldest is caught between waking and sleeping. Your pet warlock skimmed just enough power from the Dreamheart to prevent it from reaching full awareness.”

She said something else, but the scribe had stopped paying attention—the man and the woman stood in the room, ignoring him completely! The Democene Reading Room could confine more than dangerous tomes …

The scribe’s stomach dropped, and his limbs shook, but he placed his hand on the ceramic locking plate. He whispered the pass phrase.

The door clanked. Malyanna and Neifion glanced back, alarm clear in their expressions.

The door slammed shut, sealing them inside.

The scribe grinned in triumph. Time to warn the Keeper of—

He gasped as something sharp and wet grabbed his neck and pulled him into the air.

He’d forgotten about the shadow hound! The scribe shrieked, and the beast dropped him. It unleashed a growl that strained the scribe’s ability to maintain bladder control.

He whimpered, and tried to crawl away, but the hound stepped on his leg, pinning him with an unholy weight. Its button-black eyes bored into his.

Why wasn’t he already dead? The hound growled, shifted its gaze to the locking plate, then back to the scribe. It was clear the hound wanted him to open the door.

It howled again, its volume twice as loud as before. The beast would rend the scribe limb from limb if he did not comply. Fear filled his belly like rancid wine, and despite the scribe’s resolve, fear won.

With another touch, the reading room door swung open.

His eyes found the eladrin’s.

“That was stupid,” the woman said.

She gestured. Cold air blew his hair straight back before a flurry of white engulfed him. Icy pinpricks multiplied across his skin like hundreds of tiny mouths. He screamed, and the cold found entry.

Tamur the shadow hound licked at the twisted remains of the Candlekeep scribe. The icy death stroke had left a sour taste on the corpse. Tamur was used to the flavor. It was a taste it had learned to relish.

“I was hoping to sup a little on that one,” said the Lord of Bats. He glanced at the dead body, and his nose crinkled. “Now you’ve ruined him.”

“Too bad,” said Malyanna as she pulled a crumbling codex from the shelf. “Ah, yes,” she continued. “This looks promising.”

“Is it a way to reinvigorate the Dreamheart, so you can try the ritual yet a third time?” asked Neifion.

“No,” she replied.

The bald man waited with arched eyebrows. His frown grew thunderous before the woman finally added, “Despite Xxiphu’s rise, I doubt waking the Eldest is possible while the warlock breathes.”

“Perfect!” Neifion said. “Let us go after Japheth immediately! You can reclaim the energy he stole, while I claim his soul for past debts.” The Lord of Bats smacked his lips.

“In good time,” replied Malyanna. “He is linked to the Dreamheart now; I can find your unwilling prodigal whenever I wish. But my study here takes precedence.”

Neifion watched the hound at its messy repast for several heartbeats. Then he said, “What takes precedence, if not waking the Eldest, as you’ve been so intent on doing since you approached me? The time has come for you to explain yourself.”

Malyanna looked up from her tome. “Do you think so?”

The Lord of Bats narrowed his eyes. “Yes.”

Tamur’s hackles rose.

“Then pay attention,” said Malyanna. “I’ve dropped enough hints. But since you seem too thick to put things together …”

The man motioned for her to continue.

“I thought I had to rouse the Eldest so he could take up the Key of Stars,” she continued. “You remember?”

“I believe you said it was something the Sovereignty made,” Neifion replied.

“The Key of Stars was a relic forged when the Abolethic Sovereignty fell into the world. When the Eldest finds and takes up the Key, it can travel to the Temple of the Outer Void. There, with Key in hand, the Eldest can usher in an age of wonder and glory unlike Toril has ever seen.” Her eyes sparkled like the light of a dying star.

“But you can’t rouse the Eldest—,” said Neifion.

“And I may not need to,” replied Malyanna. “I’ve had an insight. I aim to bypass the craggy old aboleth. Let it sleep. I shall find the Key of Stars myself!”

“I see,” said Neifion. “I hope you’re not playing me for a fool. Because I get the impression there is much you’re still not telling me. For instance, what’s all this with temples and outer voids, and ages of wonder? You’ve never mentioned that before.”

“All I have said is true,” the woman said. She closed the book and smiled.

The hound judged its owner and Neifion would not immediately go for each other’s throats, and returned to its snacking. It kept one ear cocked just in case.

The room shuddered. A distant call of horns, high and pure, sounded somewhere overhead. Despite the stone and iron that encased the secluded reading room, the notes clearly penetrated.

“Better hurry,” said the Lord of Bats. “Something gathers against us above. I sense a force more potent than scribes and children in librarian’s garb.”

“I’m done,” Malyanna replied. “This tome has the answers I sought. Already it’s given me something to go on. The Key of Stars is in Faerûn! Or at least it lies in a splintered echo … And I know where.”

“Splintered echo?” the Lord of Bats said. He shook his head. “Never mind, because I just had a grand idea, if you’ll indulge me?”

Malyanna waited.

“Since you know where to find your Key,” continued Neifion, “let’s visit the warlock on the way. No, let me finish—If it turns out this crumbling book is out of date, and you can’t actually locate the Key of Stars, your original plan will return to the fore; with the Dreamheart rejuvenated, you’ll be able to rouse the Eldest with no time wasted.”

“You don’t care about the Sovereignty or the Key,” accused Malyanna.

“No. Why would I? You’ve kept too many secrets, my lovely. I suspect you hold close even more, none of which I’m likely to find comforting when they come to light.”

“You should show more reverence for what the Sovereignty offers,” the eladrin said.

“I am your ally; that’ll have to suffice,” Neifion replied. “Let us find Japheth, end his life, and we’ll both be the better for it. I’ll have a favorite new homunculus to play with, and you’ll be able to give the Sovereignty its lord, if necessary.”

Malyanna frowned. “Perhaps my pride has obscured my oaths,” she said. “If I, rather than the Eldest, open the Far Manifold, the benefits I shall reap would be unthinkable, compared to what I could expect as a simple intermediary. But … I am pledged to the Sovereignty. Your logic may be correct.”

“Of course it is.”

The eladrin tucked the codex into the crook of one arm. Her other arm shot up. A fingtertip brushed Neifion’s forehead.

A smell of flash-cooked meat drew an instinctual growl of yearning from Tamur. The Lord of Bats also growled as claws ripped through the ends of his fingers. His voice dropped an octave as he said, “You dare!?”

“Your argument has convinced me,” said Malyanna. “I have given you the means to track Japheth. The mark will lead you to him. Now we can split our efforts. Better yet, you’ll no longer be underfoot. Your presence annoys me.”

Tamur edged closer, readying himself to spring between the half-transformed Lord of Bats and his mistress.

A greenish symbol writhed on Neifion’s forehead. He raised a clawed hand and rubbed at the mark. It squirmed away from direct contact.

“I’ll forgive this insult, Malyanna,” said Neifion. “Because … I can smell Japheth.”

CHAPTER TWO

The Year of the Secret (1396DR)
New Sarshell, Impiltur

Raidon Kane’s sandals crunched on gravel and dried dung. Tables, gaping doors, and overhanging balconies pressed in on either side of the cobblestone way. The morning sun lent the stone walls an eye watering clarity. Wine churned in Raidon’s stomach, trying to find its own equilibrium.

How had it come to wine? Tea was the drink that used to bring him comfort. But last night even West Lake Dragon Well had left him hollow. Despite Angul’s punishing sparks, he’d ordered a bottle, and hit the city streets. How long ago had that been?

A gale of music issued from a two-story inn to Raidon’s left. It was a simple drinking song, ridiculous on its face, yet scores of voices contributed.

The sound of effortless happiness scraped at his ears. He frowned. He’d been wandering the “bad side” of town to avoid such reminders of normal life. With the bottle of red in his hand, he’d been trying to besot himself all the previous evening. For a while, the road had threatened to spin beneath his feet, and he thought he’d achieved his goal.

But it had failed to blunt his despair.

He’d been a fool to think it would help.

As the tavern song meandered on, Raidon realized how far he’d really fallen. Was he to become a town drunk, suited for nothing better than staggering the streets of New Sarshell, chasing a chimera of equanimity?

“No,” he whispered. With his free hand, he touched the hilt of the sword sheathed at his belt. With a snap of searing cerulean fire, Angul burned the confusion from him.

Raidon’s mind cloud faded, but a headache smote him like a thunderclap.

Angul did not care for wielders too far in their cups; the blade couldn’t apply its influence through a haze of alcohol. Which could have been why the blade’s previous owner was driven to drink … Raidon let go of the hilt.

He dashed the wine bottle to the cobbles. The sound of its shattering glass went through his achy head like a spike. As if in a chain reaction, the first tendrils of nausea brushed the half-elf’s stomach.

Raidon plunged down the nearest alley, seeking shadow and escape from the tavern song.

In the narrow way, the street cobbles were broken and buckled from lack of maintenance. Blank walls frowned down on either side, so close that the sun failed to find any purchase. The monk paused, reaching for some semblance of his focus, but the sounds of conversation distracted him.

A gang of humans and dwarves lingered at the alley’s far end.

“This is a dead end, Shou,” said one. “You shouldn’t’ve come this way.”

Raidon focused on the speaker, a dwarf in brown leather, bedecked with angular tattoos. The threat implicit in the speech wiped away Raidon’s nausea. He took a deep breath, feeling anger take the place of despair.

“Did you hear me?” yelled the dwarf.

“Yes,” Raidon said. “But here I am nonetheless.”

“Then you got a death wish,” the dwarf replied. “Everyone knows this alley is ours.”

“If I had a death wish, I’d seek foes instead of pimple-faced children like you,” Raidon said. The words spilled from his mouth like bitter dregs.

The dwarf’s eyes widened ever so slightly. Raidon expected he’d roar, “Get him,” or utter some other ridiculous call to action.

Instead, the dwarf drew two medium-length blades in a single elegant motion and stamped forward, while his sword tips executed a technically perfect figure eight through the air, each arc designed to end in the monk’s neck.

Raidon was adept at countering a single blade, even in the hands of an accomplished swordsperson. But overcoming a dual-wielding blademaster required greater delicacy. He backpedaled to give himself a chance to study his opponent’s style.

The dwarf chuckled. He continued forward as his blades carried on their hypnotic dance. Instead of joining in, the thugs behind the dwarf were more interested in jeering and describing how they would divide up the Shou’s belongings once the dwarf dispatched the monk.

Angul muttered in its sheath, drawing attention to itself. As if Raidon needed the relic’s help to dispatch a mundane threat! He faced a dwarf, though obviously one especially skilled with weapons.

As his opponent shuffled closer, the half-elf dropped low and spun. His leg lashed out, his arcing heel crashing into the dwarf’s exposed calf.

The dwarf stumbled to the side, his swords crossing. It was the distraction Raidon wanted.

The monk spun out of his low crouch, stepped in, and elbowed the back of the dwarf’s hand. One of the dwarf’s swords clattered to the street.

Raidon shifted his hips so that his other shoulder angled toward his enemy’s chest. When the dwarf swung his remaining weapon, Raidon countered by chopping at the bearded man’s neck and the forearm simultaneously. He slid one hand down and captured the dwarf’s thumb where it gripped the sword’s hilt. He stamped down one foot on the dwarf’s toe, and simultaneously pushed and wrenched. Raidon’s foe finally toppled, and Raidon held his blade.

The tattooed observers shouted in surprise. “Hemet?” said one.

“This Shou knows his forms,” said the dwarf. He made to stand, but Raidon shook his head.

The dwarf continued, “He probably studied in one of those fancy monasteries in Telflamm or Phsant. Thinks he’s better than me.”

“No way, Hemet!” called another in the gang.

“Damn straight!” said Hemet. “He just caught me by surprise. But there’s no way he’s better than all of us!”

The gang roared and rushed the monk.

Raidon spun his borrowed weapon to a new grip, then hurled it end over end. The blade spun through the air into the press. It drew no blood, but it did make the group pause for a heartbeat, giving Raidon time to leap straight up.

His hands caught an overhanging lantern pole. He jerked his body up and around, managing to catch one of his attackers under the jaw as he did so. He lingered for a moment, standing on his hands on the bar, his feet high in the air overhead.

Then he spun down and around, once, twice, the air shrieking in his ears; he released just after the third revolution. His momentum propelled him through the air in a curving arc that deposited him several dozen feet back up the alley, only a few steps from its entrance, leaving the gang far behind.

His headache complained, as did Angul. The sword didn’t want Raidon to abandon the fight. It sensed how easy it would be to take out the entire group of ne’er-do-wells, probably even the dwarf Hemet.

Raidon didn’t disagree. Rushing back down the alley was what he most craved. Because … For the duration of the much-too-short conflict, he hadn’t given a single thought to what he’d done.

He hadn’t thought about how he’d killed the memory of a little girl named Opal in the nightmare city of Xxiphu.

Raidon growled, a noise uncommon on the lips of half-elves and Xiang temple initiates alike. Hot needles seemed to prick his brain. His hands clenched so tightly his nails drew blood from his palms.

A red fury trembled in his limbs—Anger at his own childishness. The damned alley gang had drawn Raidon’s attention away from his brooding, yes. But in doing so, they had laid bare Raidon’s own unconscious deficits. The meaningless fight showed the half-elf for what he was—a hollow man who couldn’t order his own thoughts without violence to distract him.

Then … What was that odd smell? It wasn’t from anything present in the alley.

Something sweet. Something familiar …

The street ceased spinning. A scent like honey drew Raidon’s mind into the past in a twinkling. He was a child again, a boy of seven or eight years. His mother stood before him, kneeling down with one hand on his forehead. Tears were wetting his cheeks.

His mother?

Raidon tried to shake off the unbidden vision. But his ruined mind conspired with the aftereffects of the wine to blind him. The memory was too strong.

His mother stood before him. Erunyauvë—the enigmatic star elf he’d sought for years but had never found, who had left him the Cerulean Seal that blazoned his chest like a tattoo.

Her soft voice assailed him. “Poor Raidon,” she said. “You suffer so much. Give me your hand.”

Warm, firm hands took his own.

Then the memory dissipated. With it went the rage that had billowed him like a sail, and the headache too.

Instead of charging back into the alleyway and murdering the lot of his accidental foes, Raidon turned and entered the main street. In place of the odd vision remained a twinge of conscious: regardless of the nature of the men in the alley, an initiate of Xiang Temple would not seek them out merely as an excuse to exercise his own failings.

With his breath coming a little easier, Raidon turned his feet toward Marhana Manor.

Anusha Marhana walked around fragments of broken mirror. The silvery shards littered the hallway, the thickest concentration near the open doorway at the end. Inside the doorway was an office, or the remnants of one. The desk lay on its side, papers spilling out of its drawers. The stuffed osprey she remembered from countless visits was no longer attached to its mount, and its feathers were everywhere. A thin stratum of dust covered everything.

Another mess, she thought, left behind by her half brother for her to clean up. “Behroun, you couldn’t just leave peacefully, could you?” she asked the air.

The black dog at her heels leaned its head against the side of her leg. She idly patted it.

Behroun had been living in Marhana Manor, up to his old schemes. The man had somehow learned that Green Siren was back in port, and had fled the manor before Japheth and Anusha had arrived. He’d ransacked his own office before leaving, apparently gathering up the most important contracts and who knew what else. Japheth wanted to go after Behroun, but Anusha had asked him to wait. The warlock had complied, though he said Behroun still owed a debt.

She hoped her instinct for mercy had been the correct one.

Yes, it had to be, she thought. Let Behroun go. Surely the man couldn’t do any more harm. Let it be punishment enough for someone on his way to becoming a powerful member of New Sarshell’s Grand Council to be rendered powerless, with no hope of regaining his former stature.

She remembered when she’d accidentally spied Behroun while dreamwalking. He’d muttered something about wishing he could have her slain. The memory made the hair on her neck prickle.

“I’m done thinking about my brother,” said Anusha.

The dog’s tail wagged all the harder. “Don’t worry, Lucky,” she said. “I’m not talking about you, boy. You’re good, yes, you are!”

She gave the dog a couple more pets, then righted the desk chair. She relished the smooth, hardwood feel of it. She’d spent so long in her dreamform, where her every interaction with the world required concentration. It was a pleasure simply to grab something and hold it without fear it would slip between her imaginary fingers.

“Madam?”

The manor’s steward stood in the office doorway.

“Yes?” Anusha said.

“Wouldn’t you rather let staff finish with this, madam?” asked the man. “You’ve made a great start. You must be tired by now.”

“I just got here, actually,” said Anusha.

“Ah, yes,” said the steward. “Well, in point of fact, tea is served in the salon, as you requested.”

“Oh! Thank you for reminding me.”

Anusha and the steward left Behroun’s office. Lucky gave a couple of sniffs to the stuffed osprey lying on the floor, then followed. They made their way through a long hall back to the main manor, through the entrance hall, and finally to the salon.

The manor’s sitting room, built into the base of a corner tower, was decorated in themes of silver and cream. A table and several comfy chairs were arranged in the room’s center. High windows allowed pleasant views out into the garden surrounding the home.

Anusha took her place at the tea service and called the dog over to curl up on the floor behind her.

A total of five settings were arranged around the table. Steam puffed from the spout of a silver kettle next to a silver plate heaped with nuts, fried dumplings, and plums.

“Where is everyone?” Anusha asked.

“Captain Thoster and Mistress Seren are seeing to private business in the city,” the steward said. “Master Raidon never returned from his evening constitutional, I’m afraid. And Master Japheth continues working on his project down in the catacombs.”

“I see,” Anusha said, hiding her annoyance. She’d invited everyone to stay in the manor when Green Siren returned to dock. She knew, intellectually, that her generosity didn’t give her the right to dictate their schedules—but everyone’s blatant absence rankled.

Didn’t anyone but her care that a hoary old city of aboleths had breached the Sea of Fallen Stars?

Like the others, she had been eager to rest in New Sarshell after they had escaped Xxiphu. More eager, probably; no one else had been drawn into the city against their will, as she had. What a relief to think only about day-to-day concerns for a while, and common pleasures. For her, food had come near the top of that list. And real sleep, uninterrupted by out-of-body adventures. Even simply walking down a hallway constructed of wood and stone was pleasing, as opposed to rough corridors coated in slime and patches of mind-stealing ice.

Anusha relished being home and having a semblance of her life again. But the memory of a black splinter hovering over storm-lashed water was an intruder in nearly everything she did. As the days passed, the image became harder and harder to ignore.

She had waited for Raidon or Japheth to broach the topic, or even Captain Thoster or the war wizard, Seren.

No one did.

Anusha had finally decided that, as Lady Marhana and their host, she would. So she called the tea to discuss the threat. Doubtless she had usurped Raidon’s duty, with his aboleth-slaying sword and spellscar. So be it! The time had come to decide what, if anything, could be done about Xxiphu.

Taking charge was part of Anusha’s mercantile blood; the fire of Marhana lived in her as it had in her parents. In business, loose ends were something that couldn’t be ignored. Even if the Eldest continued to slumber, its children were obviously wide awake, and their home hovered over Faerûn! She couldn’t think of a larger, more significant “loose end” than the Abolethic Sovereignty.

Yet the chairs in the sitting room remained stubbornly vacant as the moments slipped by.

“Do they think it will just go away?” she murmured.

The steward coughed. “Shall I send someone to see about Master Japheth?” he said. “And perhaps to look for Master Raidon?”

“No, no. I’m sure they have their reasons for missing tea,” Anusha replied. The man had misidentified the source of her concern. She decided not to set him straight. No need for him to suffer the nightmares.

Like the one she’d had again last night.

Anusha shuddered, remembering herself standing in a misted void interrupted by pillars as tall as mountains. The pocked ground was slicked with phosphorescent aboleth trails. She saw herself speaking, but as usual, the dream didn’t come with sound. And why was the image of herself crying? Anusha could almost make out what the image of herself was saying. Something about … a key?

She dispersed the memory with a shake of her head.

Anusha decided to give everyone one more day of rest. Tomorrow, she would gather everyone, no matter what.

She grabbed the kettle and poured a cup of its fragrant auburn liquid. The steward stiffened, but didn’t speak. Anusha had become Lady Marhana, and the steward had shown himself amazingly graceful in accommodating her desires. If she wanted to pour her own tea, then by the gods, she would.

She took a sip. It was hot, but she avoided scalding her tongue.

As she took a second drink, the steward quickly prepared a smaller plate from the silver food tray and set it before her.

The Marhana staff was cooperative and friendly. At least Behroun hadn’t skimped when it came to paying for competent housekeeping. When Anusha had asked the staff to prepare suites for Raidon, Seren, Japheth, and Thoster, they had done so without so much as a raised eyebrow. She ruminated on the situation; how close her bedchamber was to the warlock’s suite …

Recalling his warm lips on her neck brought blood to her face.

“Shall I prepare a plate for Master Japheth and have it delivered?”

Anusha started. “Yes,” she said. “That’s a nice thought.”

After she’d awakened, jubilation had rippled through her body. She’d been flush with renewed life. And there he’d been: the object of her earlier infatuation and a symbol of the wider world denied her before he’d come into it.

But following their assignation in the cramped ship’s cabin, an odd shyness had fallen between them. Of course, he had his project since they’d come back to the mansion, which he’d taken on at her request. Its execution kept him busy day and night.

But it was more than that. He seemed reluctant to intrude, as if he was uncertain or having second thoughts.

No, she didn’t truly think Japheth was having second thoughts; the man had proved he would go to the Hells and back for her, that he would barter the world itself for her safety.

He wasn’t having second thoughts; he was waiting for her to make the next move. If so, then so far he had awaited to no avail, because she had not sought him out. She could not deny it—she was uncertain about the wisdom of forming an enduring relationship with the warlock.

For all Japheth’s allure and his proven dedication to her, Anusha’s basic quandary with him remained. Could she really allow herself to fall for a man who was addicted to demon drugs, and drew his power from pacts with nightmares?

Thoster slapped a handful of coins onto the board. “That enough for a down payment?”

“Aye, Captain. For starters,” said the short woman standing opposite him. “More’ll be needed for what we’ve already done to restore Green Siren to sailing trim, but this’ll pay for the canvas and lumber.”

Thoster nodded. He’d worked with the dwarf before. Karna Stonekeel was one of Impiltur’s most sought-after shipwrights. Her services didn’t come cheap because her dwarven crew worked quickly and efficiently. Ironic, he thought, that few of them ever sailed on the ships they built and renovated.

“Let me know the tally when you know it, Stonekeel,” he said.

“I’ll send a courier, special delivery,” she replied with a smile. “What in Umberlee’s name happened to her anyhow? Almost looks like Green Siren spent a few days ’neath the waves.”

Thoster grinned. “Something like that,” he said.

The moment he turned to depart, his easy smile slipped. The image of the beastly city hanging in the sky was never far from him.

Xxiphu had followed Green Siren to the surface.

Its wrongful presence had clawed at the air, pulling a cloak of storm around it.

He remembered how the surge around Green Siren intensified, so quickly the ship nearly capsized. More worrying was the strange music. A brassy, fluting, echoing melody glimmered just on the edge of hearing. In that sound, Thoster felt yearning. Something in him wanted to reveal itself to the music maker, but … that would have been crazy!

A many-armed mass broke the surface off Green Siren’s starboard. A kraken. Perhaps Gethshemeth itself. It leapt from the water, but failed to fall back. The kraken heard Xxiphu’s call too. Some sorcery held it aloft while its will remained bent on the city of aboleths. The undulating sea monster took up station around the storm-wrapped city, circling it with erratic loops.

Thoster screamed orders over the tempest, commanding the crew to bring Green Siren around. If they hadn’t got her prow turned into the surge when they did, the ship probably would have capsized. He’d ignored the music. None of his crew had heard it, nor apparently had the half-elf. Raidon had retained his place on the pitching deck, standing at the center of a half-obscured magic circle, his features slack.

The ship shuddered into its new facing as a wave burst across the bowsprit. The wave lacked the energy the captain had feared would swamp Green Siren.

Thoster remembered it as if he were on the pitching deck again …

Thoster glanced up. Xxiphu was rising farther into the sky. As it moved, it pulled the storm with it.

“Thank the Sea Mother,” murmured the captain. He let one hand fall across his amulet. The music yet played, still calling to Thoster. But what Seren had fashioned for him retained its charm. Thoster was free to ignore the call.

The question was, who was the caller? The crazy half-elf had prevented the aboleths from waking their progenitor. Could the Eldest yet reach out with such strength despite not being entirely conscious? Perhaps. Thoster could count all the things he knew about half-divine legendary beings on one finger: stay clear of them. Still, the music, growing dimmer as the awful city continued to recede, had a grasping, intelligent nature to it that Thoster didn’t ascribe to the Eldest. Xxiphu sought something. An object. It was … right on the tip of Thoster’s tongue.

The captain blinked.

The memory swirled away as the present intruded. He was standing on a busy New Sarshell walk outside the shipbuilder’s office. People jostled him as they went about their day.

“Damn me, I thought I drank enough rum last night to erase that memory,” the captain said.

A man gave him an odd look as he passed.

Thoster chuckled. He said, louder, “Guess I’ll try again tonight. The key is to not accept half-measures! The key …”

The key. Why was that word familiar? It put him in mind of a song.

The music from his memory battered Thoster, as loud and as demanding as when Xxiphu had frowned down upon Green Siren days earlier.

“The Key of Stars is what Xxiphu seeks,” he whispered.

The captain clutched his hat to his head and dashed down the walk in the direction of Marhana Manor.

CHAPTER THREE

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
New Sarshell, Impiltur

Seren narrowed her eyes at the man sitting across the table from her. He blanched.

“I’m not sure I believe you,” Seren said. “Surely, a few maps of Mulhorand survive. The Spellplague didn’t reach all the way to New Sarshell and erase them as it did the landscape!”

She made a show of flicking away an imaginary piece of lint from her red robes.

The man’s eyes followed her movements. His pale face and dry lips indicated that her robe’s color had not escaped him. If he believed Seren was a member of Thay’s mageocracy, she judged fear would make him more pliable.

“Well?” she said.

“Uh, my lady, the world changed …,” the man replied. “Of what use to me were such maps? It’s been over a decade since Mulhorand was wiped away. The old cartography is useless.”

“I will pay you triple your going rate for a map of Skuld that details the old temples,” said Seren.

“My lady,” the man’s voice said, quavering, “I just don’t have them! Skuld is no more!”

Seren pounded a fist on the table and stood. “We’re done,” she said. “Maybe one of the cartographers across town will prove more helpful.”

She pushed out of the shop crammed with star charts, maps of coastlines, and castle floorplans from Waterdeep to Telflamm.

“Useless,” she muttered.

The air in the street was cooler. She paused a moment to savor it. Passersby glanced at her, then away. Like the worthless map seller, they assumed her Red Wizard garb was sanctioned by Thay. Why wouldn’t they? No one would be foolish enough to wear the red robe who wasn’t an actual Red Wizard.

Unless one’s name was Seren. She’d lived in the shadows for ten years, hardly showing her face, let alone hints of her old affiliation. By doing so, she’d managed to avoid Thay’s notice.

But a wizard taker named Morgenthel had found her in Veltalar anyway!

So she was done with hiding. Thay would accept her back, Seren believed, once she paid the price Szass Tam or one of his subordinates had placed on her head. Until then, she’d wear the colors of her lost affiliation, confident it was only a matter of time before the garments represented more than hope.

She just had to come up with the requisite amount of coin.

Speaking of which … Seren turned south, toward the mercantile quarter of New Sarshell. Her thoughts drifted to the treasures that had been promised her by the spellscarred monk.

Raidon Kane had sworn to make a rich woman of her if she lent him her aid. Which she had done. She’d held up her end of the bargain, and then some! Traveling into the bowels of the world and entering a city of aboleths was far and above most people’s notion of “aid.”

It was time for Raidon to deliver on his end. By rights, she and the monk should have already departed Impiltur for the southern lands most afflicted by the Year of Blue Fire, where the foundations of cities lay crushed beneath altered landscapes or drowned under rising seas. The lost vaults of kings, merchant princes, and temples called to her.

But the half-elf monk dithered. He was changed since they’d escaped the damned city of aboleths. His eyes were unfocused, and his hands seemed uncertain. The last time she’d seen Raidon, Seren was certain she’d smelled the stink of wine on his breath.

Wine! A damn odd sign for someone who’d once impressed her with his casual temperance.

So odd, in fact, Seren had decided the half-elf was broken. He had experienced something dreadful in sanity-shredding Xxiphu, something he wouldn’t or couldn’t describe. Since they’d returned, he’d only become more tight-lipped and erratic in his behavior, and had taken to wandering the streets.

Even if Raidon finally accompanied her, she worried his mind would last only long enough to completely buckle at the worst possible moment.

So she’d begun making arrangements of her own.

Seren had in hand several detailed maps of Cimbar, a city on the southern coast of the Sea of Fallen Stars that had failed to weather the Spellplague. But she was more interested in Mulhorand, or rather, what was being called “High Imaskar.”

The land once known as Mulhorand was apparently being colonized by remnants of the ancient Imaskar empire, which was a surprise because everyone had assumed the Imaskar had been stamped out long before. But either they, or remarkably adept imposters, were laying claim to the lands west of the Plains of Purple Dust. From what Seren could gather, the newly renamed High Imaskar was mostly a blasted, twisted landscape empty of its new putative masters; the Imaskarans were pretty much restricted to a single towering city called Skyclave.

Seren was certain riches abounded in those lost Mulhorand cities, and she aimed to travel there first, before others with similar notions could arrive.

The wizard spied the building she sought—a three-story stone structure that bristled with defensive stonework like a keep. Letters carved above the lintel read, “Heltharn Depository.” Those with more coin than they could personally carry on their person could sign contracts with the depository to keep their holdings safe. Several years before, she had rented a vault in Heltharn Depository in order to save toward her goal.

She paused just before crossing the street to the structure. That was strange—Where were the two ogre guards the depository normally stationed outside the building’s entrance?

Seren’s brows furrowed. The one thing the depository stressed to its clientele over everything else was its impeccable security. Every previous time she had visited the building, the brutish guards had glared suspiciously at her as she approached.

So why were they not there?

Ogres were, of course, the least of the depository’s security. However, their stolid presence represented all the deeper, magical layers of protection the coin keepers relied upon. If the ogres were gone, did that mean other protections had also been laid bare?

Fear for the safety of her coin urged Seren to dash across the street with her wand drawn. But fear for her skin proved stronger.

Seren stepped beneath the awning of an apple seller’s booth and whispered an invocation of obscurity.

The apple vendor, who’d caught her arrival from the corner of his eye, swiveled his head left and right, searching for her. Her minor spell of concealment was working.

Seren fixed her eyes on the depository door and waited. She had all day.

Over the next hour, she saw several different people walk up to the depository, enter, then leave not long after, looking angry or confused. Something was definitely going on in there—no one who’d entered had spent nearly enough time to access the contents of their individual vaults.

She might have all day, but boredom was a foe she’d rarely bested. So when the next two customers entered and emerged hardly a few moments later, she slipped from beneath the awning and trailed them. Her spell of concealment shuddered as she approached the two, then finally shattered as she moved too quickly for the minor enchantment’s limited capacity. Neither noticed her appearance as if from nowhere.

“Excuse me, could I ask you two a question?” said Seren.

The depository’s customers glanced back. Expressions of annoyance changed to curiosity and a little concern upon seeing Seren in her red robes hurrying to catch up.

“What is it?” said one, a human woman wearing a sea green smock.

“I had a problem accessing my vault this morning,” said Seren. “I was just returning to try again when I saw both of you emerge. Before I waste my time going in and dealing with all that bother again, I thought you could just tell me if the trouble has been cleared up?”

The woman frowned. “No, they’re still dealing with it,” she said. “Some kind of security threat.”

“Security threat?”

“Yeah,” said the other customer, a man in a greasy, oil-smeared coat. “The Depository’s brought in a new master of coins. He says they got to close down the vaults for a few days while they upgrade all the wards.”

“Hmm,” replied Seren. That didn’t sound too bad. “Did he say anything else?”

“Well, sure,” said the woman. “He said they had to upgrade the wards ’cause a mad wizard had been spotted north of the city. Mad with spellplague, he said, rampaging this way. Anyone with any sense is taking precautions. He said she may try to break into the depository, so they want to be ready.”

Seren hadn’t heard anything about a rampaging wizard, but then again, her network of informants was long gone.

“That seems sensible,” Seren said. “Say … Did you find out the name of the new master of coins?”

“Uhm—,” the man said.

“Sure,” said the woman. “Morgenthel was his name.”

Japheth stared into the blank, malachite eyes of the detached iron head.

The craftsmanship was tolerable. The metal was polished, and the articulation of the jaws and lids was smooth. The lines of the iron bust even suggested a feminine subject, which was appropriate. Not that he could claim credit—he’d employed a nearby forge to craft the head, and several other pieces too. In all, he’d kept five forges busy for three solid days in order to produce all the parts he required. He didn’t have the equipment to do it himself nor the time to gather it, especially here beneath Marhana Manor.

Too bad the pseudo-golem he’d fashioned to watch over the Razorhides was in Veltalar. He could have leapfrogged all the time he’d spent assembling the new metallic body. Of course, the “driftwood golem” he’d used to frighten a gang of killers into submission was probably too sinister-looking. The driftwood scarecrow’s crown of smashed shells, body of dirt, fish teeth, and cloak of sea mist made it a terrifying presence. Plus, he’d put it together in just under a day from lakeshore detritus. Though seemingly dreadful, it had been a fragile façade.

If everything came together as he had planned, the iron one would be much less frightening to look on, and far more sturdy.

Japheth carefully lowered the head onto a metallic torso. He pressed, but the head failed to attach. The warlock held the head in place with one hand and grabbed a padded mallet from a clutter of tools laid out on the stone block next to the body.

He pounded the metallic head into place with the mallet. The clamor echoed off the stone walls of the niche-lined catacomb. Instead of moldering bones, wine bottles lay in some of the carved shelves, heavy with the dust of decades. Other shelves had been swept free of wine and dust, and now held alembics, scrolls, open tomes, and a litter of needful things useful for conducting rituals.

With another blow of the mallet, the head clicked into place. It was the portion of the creation that defined the rest. The metallic body, propped up on the block of cracked stone at the chamber’s center, was primed. It was an empty vessel, waiting only for an inhabiting spell with enough strength to animate it.

“Sir?”

Japheth jumped.

The steward stood in the chamber’s doorway, one hand holding a lantern, the other bearing a tray heaped with food and a cup of tea. The steward’s shadow flared down the narrow catacomb hallway behind him.

“Oh, damn me for an idiot,” said Japheth, as the plate in the man’s hands reminded him of Anusha’s gathering. He instantly realized he’d missed it.

“Lady Marhana asked that I bring this down to you,” said the steward. “Shall I just leave it here by the doorway?”

Japheth cleared his throat, then nodded. “Yes, that will be fine,” he replied. “Please convey my regrets to A—Lady Marhana. Tell her I’ll be up in just a moment.”

“No need,” said the steward. “All the other guests apparently forgot the engagement too. I’m afraid the tea is off until tomorrow.”

Regret on Anusha’s behalf swept through Japheth. It was bad enough he’d lost track of time, but everyone else as well? Anusha wanted to discuss the Sovereignty. Apparently, she was the only one.

The steward bowed and departed, leaving the chamber to the dozens of flickering candles, plus the single lantern Japheth had set on the balcony railing overlooking the chamber.

It was odd, Japheth mused. Of them all, Anusha was the one who’d come closest to being destroyed during her time trapped inside Xxiphu. She was the one he’d assumed would want the least to do with the aboleths.

But instead, she was the one most eager to discuss the repercussions of the Sovereignty’s appearance. Seren and Captain Thoster seemed willing to forget the matter entirely given that they were safely away from the aboleth city. And Raidon … Well, the warlock wondered if anything really mattered to the monk anymore.

What about himself?

Of course he was interested in Xxiphu. He owed his renewed ability to wield arcane power to the Dreamheart, and the Eldest’s bond to the eternal stars. Though his pact was better negotiated than the one he’d sworn to the Lord of Bats, he understood far less about the entities that looked out from behind the tiny points in the sky.

Then again, here he was down in the catacombs working on his project, allowing it to drive all other thoughts from his head, including worrying about the Sovereignty.

More importantly, his undertaking also did a great job distracting him from fruitless speculation about Anusha.

Because if he thought about it, he’d have to admit … that he loved her.

That was all.

Anusha made him feel real and alive, maybe for the first time ever. Just thinking about their last few hours together on the Green Siren made his breath come quicker. He would do nearly anything for her; for them. Nothing else should matter.

Anusha had feelings for him, obviously. But she also had reservations. His addiction to traveler’s dust, not to mention his star pact, was a shadow between them, as was how he’d risked everything—the world and his own sanity—for just one life, even though it was hers.

Since they’d come to stay at Marhana Manor, Anusha had been reserved. Or perhaps he was projecting his own insecurity onto her? Either way, neither she nor he had moved to initiate repeating those wondrous few hours.

He knew that part of what attracted him to her was her core of purity—her essential goodness. She wouldn’t be the person he loved if she could long tolerate his addiction to hellborn drugs. If he and Anusha were to have anything other than a dalliance, he needed to make changes.

Her feelings for him gave him the confidence to believe that perhaps he could. If someone as good and as decent as Anusha could care for him, there must be something in him worth loving, something uncorrupted by his drugs and pacts. He needed to hold on to that no matter what else happened.

Japheth had to prove himself and show her the drugs, no matter how deadly, were nothing compared to her.

He could find a way to give up traveler’s dust. He just needed time to find the right ritual—willpower alone wouldn’t be enough. A soul was irretrievably hooked after only a few trips on the crimson road. Japheth shuddered and dismissed the thoughts of the road before images of its lethal terminus could form.

Once he had kicked traveler’s dust, he would look into giving up his new pact, especially if the power ultimately flowed from an entity as awful as the Eldest. That monstrosity had nearly consumed Anusha’s soul.

But first, before any of that, he had to complete his project. It was a gift for Anusha—something sure to put a smile on her face.

He was just about done.

Japheth wrestled the iron mannequin off the stone block, gritting his teeth and grunting as he heaved it upright. If not for its hollow core, it would have been unmovable, at least by him.

Japheth released the body. He waited a moment to be sure it wouldn’t topple off its feet, then selected a piece of red chalk from the surface of the stone block. He bent and carefully drew a ritual circle on the catacomb floor around his creation. The circle was small, but that shouldn’t matter. It would focus the arcane energies just as well as something more elaborate.

He reached for the tiny pouch on the far side of the block, but his finger grazed the tin compact containing his supply of traveler’s dust.

A tremor assailed him.

The ritual he was about to attempt didn’t require an enhanced ability to see the unseen, but he supposed it couldn’t hurt. A quarter grain, just enough to get the sight, but not too much. He picked up the compact … then threw it across the room.

“No. Not yet,” said, closing his eyes. He drew several breaths, each slower than the last. The tremor in his limbs subsided.

He opened his eyes when his pulse was back to normal, then continued on without the tin lying on the block to distract him.

Japheth selected the felt bag of crushed crystal he’d originally intended. He removed a pinch of emerald dust from it and scattered it in the circle. Next he picked up a jade rod. Fracture lines ran through the rod, and the top was missing completely, but the essence held within it remained secure.

It contained the other soul he’d bargained from the Eldest’s psychic hunger: Anusha’s friend Yeva.

He hoped.

He positioned the lifeless hands of the iron mannequin so they gripped the rod.

Last, he shook out a rolled parchment from an ebony scroll-case. It was titled “Soul Dance,” and its intended use presumably involved the transfer of minds between one willing and one unwilling subject. Though his two “subjects” were a jade rod and a soulless creation of artifice, Japheth was hopeful the spell would work for what he had in mind.

He walked widdershins around the circle containing his creation, and began incanting the parchment’s scribed words. He had to keep a close count of the number of syllables uttered. The ritual required that he mentally intone a harmonizing syllable for some, but not all, of the syllables he spoke aloud. The mental syllable occurred once before he said anything, then twice on the first vocal syllable, once on the second and third vocal syllable, once on the fifth vocal syllable, and so on. There was a trick to it; each mental syllable after the first two occurred on the sum of the preceding two.

Concentration was important.

The ritual concluded on the nine hundred and eighty-seventh syllable.

Japheth ceased moving and speaking. The echoes of the last syllables fell soft and dead, like birds shot out of a tree.

Nothing happened.

He leaned into the circle and tapped the mannequin’s metal forehead.

“Blast.”

He reached to remove the jade rod from the construct’s hand when a sound of cloth on stone drew the warlock’s attention upward.

A pale man stood on the balcony overlooking the chamber. He was dressed in black, and a small green symbol wriggled on his forehead. The warlock recognized his former patron instantly. The outline of a great dog lurked in the shadows behind the intruder.

The warlock couldn’t quite believe the evidence of his eyes. Was it really Neifion? Was he actually seeing a fragmentary vision left behind from the last time he’d sampled traveler’s dust? He blinked and shook his head to clear the phantom. There was just no way—

“Japheth,” said the Lord of Bats. “I hoped I’d find you here. How lovely. It’s been too long since I’ve enjoyed the pleasure of your company. You never visit anymore. Such a shame.”

“How did you …?”

“How did I find you?” Neifion asked, pointing to the symbol on his forehead. “I’ve got allies whose powers overwrite the rules of the world.”

Dread churned in Japheth’s stomach. The pale man was no phantom.

“Allies,” said Japheth. “Malyanna, you mean?”

“Yes,” replied Neifion. “The eladrin ‘noble.’ She consolidates her power of Xxiphu, and only grows stronger in the bargain. No, don’t worry—we haven’t woken the Eldest. Yet.”

“You would be insane to do so,” said Japheth.

The Lord of Bats waved his hand as if fending off a comment about the weather. Then he narrowed his eyes and said, “You’re still wearing my lesser skin. Return it, and perhaps your death can be merciful.”

Japheth’s cloak rustled as if stroked by a light breeze.

“If it’s death either way, I think I’ll just keep it,” he said. His words belied the chill that raced across his skin.

“Good,” said Neifion. “You don’t deserve an easy end. I cursed your name with every sugared plum and toasted pecan I choked down during the Feast Neverending. You tricked me once, mortal. Time to pay for your betrayal.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
New Sarshell, Impiltur

Raidon passed the open iron gates that separated the manor from the street. He trudged up the wide steps and let himself in. The grand entry door was unlocked. Wasn’t there usually a doorman?

The front hall contained a scattering of uncomfortable looking chairs and expensive pieces of art staged on elegant stands. Over the fireplace hung a slender long sword inscribed with an elaborate crest.

The monk sat down on one of the large chairs and leaned back. Angul’s sheath pressed into his back, but he ignored it. He closed his eyes. He wore exhaustion like a cloak. Once, his inner discipline had wiped away such minor physical discomfort with barely a thought. But he couldn’t be bothered to summon the control. Besides, if he slipped off into slumber, finally, perhaps he’d be graced with another vision like he’d received in the alleyway.

A distant bang sounded through the front hall.

Raidon opened his eyes. A faint shout followed, but it was too muffled for him to make out the words. A man’s voice, though.

He put his head back and contemplated the insides of his eyelids once more. Images and sound fragments darted at the edge of his attention. Colored lanterns, songs, and scenes of New Sarshell by night danced in his mind’s eye. His mother’s voice too, telling him something of vital importance—

The bark of shattering glass drew Raidon to his feet. He recalled the missing doorman as he’d entered the mansion. It seemed the doorman’s absence wasn’t merely a coincidence.

A servant stumbled into the chamber from a side hall. “Run!” she gasped. “Vermin, everywhere, flapping—”

Raidon flashed past her. He hurried down the corridor until he came to a dank chamber alive with a plague of writhing bats.

Three house servants with brooms swatted at the swarm. Each had dozens of tiny bites on their arms and faces. Shelves and furniture in the chamber were overturned and broken.

“Where did these come from?” Raidon shouted.

“From below!” gasped a servant. “From the catacombs!” The flurry of bats was like a blizzard of coal fragments, forcing the monk to raise his hand to shield his eyes.

Raidon knew Japheth was down below, working on something. The half-elf’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. The warlock’s dark allegiances had finally driven him mad. He’d unleashed the contents of his unholy cloak, probably as a precursor to a far more insidious curse. The man had touched the Dreamheart, and come away with something of its power.

Japheth called it a star pact. Raidon called it a deal with evil incarnate. He touched the Cerulean Sign tattooed on his chest … and discerned not the least drop in temperature. The swirling bat swarm, it seemed, was not conjured with Japheth’s new affiliation.

It didn’t matter. The sword on his back shifted slightly up and down, as if nodding.

The monk charged down the narrow stairs, taking them three at a time. The swarming bats grew thicker. They battered him with soft bodies and damp, bitter-smelling wings, and scratched him with tiny claws and needle teeth. Tiny lines of blood mazed his bare skin.

By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, the press of creatures was so thick that the light from above was blotted out. Even his sensitive eyes could hardly discern anything but swirling motes of hungry black.

He concentrated on his Cerulean Sign. The stylized tree pulsed into wakefulness. Sky blue light illuminated the narrow stone corridor, bewildering the bats with its sudden radiance. Raidon took advantage of their disorientation to sprint down the corridor.

Raidon had never ventured into the winding corridors beneath the manor before. The narrow way was thick with branching off corridors and sealed doors, but the monk just followed the press of bats.

Five heartbeats later, he burst into a wide chamber with a ceiling that arched high over the floor.

Raidon saw Japheth through the flurry of wings. The warlock was sheltering behind a metallic sculpture. Scratches crisscrossed Japheth’s face, just like those covering the monk’s face and forearms.

A pale man in oddly formal dress stood on the overlooking balcony, his arms wide. An aberrant glyph hovered on the man’s brow. Raidon sensed terrific power in him. He was also the source of the swarming bats; they issued from his open coat. He was obviously the Lord of Bats, Japheth’s old patron.

Raidon was disappointed that the warlock wasn’t his foe after all. At least, not immediately.

The Lord of Bats shifted his gaze to Raidon. The man’s features were human with a fey cast, but his eyes were like pools of stagnant black water. The wriggling mark above his eyes evoked chill alarm in Raidon’s Cerulean Sign. Whatever questionable moral path Japheth was on, the man on the balcony had already arrived.

“Allies will avail you not, Japheth,” said Neifion.

“We’re not allies,” said Raidon. Then he charged, vaulting onto the chamber’s central stone block. Candles, rods, glass vials, and other bits crunched beneath his feet. He used the block to propel himself into a high, arcing trajectory toward the balcony. He pulled his arm back, preparing a devastating blow to coincide with the termination of his arc.

The Lord of Bats raised his hands and pronounced a word of power even as Raidon’s foot left the block. As the monk arced up through midair, vines studded with poisonous thorns burst from the balcony’s railing.

Raidon plunged into the newborn thicket. The vines instantly wrapped around him. He grunted with surprise as the venomous thorns pierced his skin and held him fast.

“Pathetic,” said Neifion. He looked at the immobilized monk and said, “A hundred curses take you, Shou.”

A sharp pain pierced Raidon’s left temple.

The Lord of Bats stepped closer to Raidon, with one hand up. Claws the size of small daggers burst from the end of each of his fingers.

Raidon tensed every one of his muscles, then relaxed. The vines responded with a moment of slack. In that moment the monk forced one arm up across his body until his hand rested on Angul’s hilt.

His exhaustion puffed away. Numbness from the spreading poison receded. Even the jagged fractures of his mind smoothed out into a glow of calm conviction.

Neifion’s claws bit and dragged across Raidon’s ribs. Skin and muscle peeled away, revealing white bone. Pain seared, then Angul’s cerulean strength numbed Raidon’s mind to the awful trauma.

The Lord of Bats reared back for another blow. It promised to rip out the half-elf’s spine, Angul or no.

A vortex of starry energy swirled up between Neifion and the half-elf. Streamers of glowing gas engulfed the Lord of Bats. The archfey screamed in rage as his second claw swipe went wild.

Raidon hauled Angul from his sheath and ripped through the entangling vines with the extra strength the blade lent him. He swept it down, slicing through the remaining poisonous thicket in a single scything cut. Healing energy continued pouring from the hilt through his bloody body. The grievous wound on his side began to knit.

“Strike Neifion down, Raidon! Before he recovers!” came Japheth’s shout.

Raidon spared a glance over the railing. The warlock had emerged from behind the iron sculpture. One hand pointed up at the balcony; it was sheathed in the same starry mist that had slapped Neifion away from Raidon. The warlock’s other hand held open his cloak. Bats flowed out of the catacombs and into the black folds as swiftly as a river during spring melt.

A clawed fist slammed Raidon’s head so hard he saw white. He smashed through the balcony railing and fell. His trained instincts tucked him into a spin. He fell into a roll, and transferred the momentum of the fall so that he was on his feet in an eyeblink. A bloody imprint from his wound marked the floor.

“What in the Bitch Goddess’s name is going on?” came a voice.

Captain Thoster stood in the chamber entrance. Behind him was Seren. And the faintest outline of a woman in articulated gold armor.

“Wait your turn, mortals,” growled the Lord of Bats. One clawed hand gestured at the doorway. A wall of surging water appeared beneath the entrance arch. It roared like a mile-high waterfall, sealing Raidon and Japheth into the chamber with the archfey.

Neifion’s other hand formed a strange crooked configuration. The room shuddered.

“Come, my allies of the Old Woods,” said the Lord of Bats.

The domed ceiling seemed to peel away, revealing a twilight forest of towering trees. A moon many times bigger than normal peered down through the lofty canopy. One tree bent, and before Raidon quite recognized the threat, it smashed him into the floor with a gnarled fist the size of boulder.

Cerulean fire lit the dark path back from unconsciousness.

He was sprawled at the center of a crater in the stone floor. Pain stitched him to the shattered stone even as he saw his limbs straightening. His hand had maintained a death grip on his blade. Raidon sensed Angul was hard pressed to return him from oblivion’s edge. But the blade couldn’t spare him the bone-deep ache as his body was forcibly reknit into a functioning whole.

The monk rolled onto his side, gasping. The torrent of water still blocked the doorway. The Lord of Bats remained on the balcony. Thankfully the tree creature that had flattened the half-elf, along with the odd moonscape that had accompanied the thing’s appearance, was gone.

Japheth stood only a pace from where Raidon lay, his back turned to the monk as he whispered another spell to engage his foe.

The sword pulled Raidon’s hand toward the warlock’s unprotected back.

“No,” whispered Raidon, as he struggled to his knees. “The archfey first. The thing on his brow is an abomination that must be extinguished.”

Japheth had retrieved a green rod with a shattered end. A bolt of emerald energy lanced from it and struck the Lord of Bats. Neifion grunted and stepped back half a pace, but a smile remained firmly on his lips.

A woman’s voice said, “Lord of Bats, you’ve got your power back. Japheth has renounced your pact and your castle; why don’t you leave us alone?” The monk recognized the voice as Anusha’s, but he saw no hint of her presence.

“Because I swore revenge,” replied the archfey, glancing around. “When I said I’d quench my anger by eating Japheth’s liver, I wasn’t making idle threats.”

The Lord of Bats laughed.

Then he screamed. A flash of golden light briefly revealed Anusha’s new location. For the barest instant Raidon saw her standing behind Neifion. Her dreamsword was plunged straight into the archfey’s broad back.

The outline of a great dog burst from the shadows. It grabbed the flickering image of Anusha and bore her to the balcony’s floor, out of Raidon’s sight. The dreamsword protruding from the Naifion’s back blew away like smoke.

Japheth yelled, “No!” and released another crackling beam. The emerald energy played across Neifion’s body, pocking his clothing and flesh with miniature smoking craters.

The healing torrent continued surging from the Cerulean Blade. Under its impetus, Raidon stood.

The Lord of Bats glared down at the warlock and monk, smoothing his garments. Where his hands passed, some of the rents in the fabric and his flesh were made whole, though others still gaped and bled.

“Do your worst—I surpass you in every way,” Neifion said. “Besides, Malyanna and I are allied. See?” He pointed to the rune on his forehead. “She’s no simple eladrin, nor even an eladrin noble. The strength lent her by the Sovereignty makes her equal to me … if not stronger! And that’s just a splinter of the strength she and I will soon claim. Shall I call her to my side now, or will you relinquish Japheth?”

“You’re weakening; all your talk is a ploy to gain time,” Raidon said. He turned to Japheth. “Can you put me next to him?” he asked.

The warlock blinked to see Raidon standing, but nodded. Without any audible command, the folds of the warlock’s cape billowed toward the half-elf.

Night enfolded him, then Raidon stood on the narrow balcony, Japheth at his back.

A shadow hound crouched in front of him, between Raidon and the Lord of Bats. Of Anusha there was no sign.

Raidon charged, leaping over the black mastiff’s head before it realized a threat had appeared on its flank. But the dog was quick. It loosed a low-pitched bay of warning. Neifion spun around. Angul’s sweeping blow failed to lop the archfey’s head from his shoulders. Instead, the vicious cut removed half the creature’s left hand raised in unconscious defense. The fingers dropped to the balcony’s stone floor and flexed in a mindless parody of life.

The Lord of Bats screamed. The overwhelming sound buffeted Raidon and shook the catacombs’ walls. The monk nearly lost his grip on Angul when his body insisted he clap both hands over his ears.

He ignored his body. He feinted with Angul but put all his power into a front kick that blasted into Neifion’s solar plexus. A nearly comical expression of surprise crossed the archfey’s face as he launched backward off the balcony. The Lord of Bats followed a trajectory similar to Raidon’s own earlier fall. However, Neifion didn’t fall half as gracefully.

When the archfey struck the ground, his body broke into a hundred tiny pieces of winged blackness.

The motes swirled around the stone block. All were dark as night save one that shimmered green. It was the sigil that had earlier graced the Lord of Bats’s brow.

A slobbering mouth caught the back of Raidon’s right arm, the one holding Angul. The shadow hound clamped down and shook its head with frenzied strength.

When the blade finally slipped from his grip, Raidon’s surprise was nearly as great as the sword’s. A wave of agony blindsided the half-elf. The sword had been insulating him from the aftereffects of the tree creature’s lethal bludgeoning after all. The sword spun and clattered on the floor below.

“Let him go, you damned beast!” cried Japheth.

Raidon saw the warlock release a torrent of red fire. The flames licked the shadow hound. It growled, but did not release its jaws. Instead, it leapt from the balcony with Raidon’s arm still clamped in its mouth.

Neither monk nor hound managed an elegant landing. Raidon’s elbow smashed straight down on the stone with a sickening jolt, but at least his arm jerked free of the dog’s clenched teeth.

Everything was spinning. His body felt like a bundle of twigs whose tie was pulled loose. Part of him wondered at his flailing ineffectualness. What had become of the Raidon of old? He mentally groped for his focus.

Instead, his hand found Angul.

What a stupid dog, thought Raidon, to disarm him, only to drag him back within reach of his weapon. The Blade Cerulean’s influence blasted through him like a forge furnace. It lifted him to his feet as a mother might right a fallen child.

Raidon whirled, searching for his quarry.

He saw Neifion’s swarm of flickering motes follow the hound down a lane of shadow exiting the chamber in a direction that didn’t exist in the world.

The half-elf sprinted to close the gap, but the darkness fled in a candle’s flicker.

Rage burned suddenly from the sword, following the conduit of his arm. The emotion pulsed through the buffer of his Cerulean Sign. It was rage, white-hot and righteous in its certainty. Raidon shifted his grip, so that he wielded the blade like an axe, and began to hack at the catacomb’s stone wall where the Lord of Bats, the hound, and the aberrant rune had seemed to flee.

When a minor avalanche of loose masonry rained across him, Raidon continued to swing Angul. With each blow, he liberated a sizeable chunk of raw stone.

“In the name of Nine,” Japheth said. “Have you lost your mind?”

Raidon glanced back. The warlock had come down from the balcony. He stood only a few paces from him. The monk was also peripherally aware that Thoster and Seren stood in an entranceway free of water. And there was Anusha too, visible as a faintly translucent figure in a sun-bright panoply.

But Japheth captured his attention.

The warlock had thieved the Dreamheart. He had sworn a star pact. Both Angul and his Sign could discern the thread of aberration in the man like an apple hiding a worm; fell energies trickled through him. Japheth stood near his enigmatic iron sculpture, glaring at Raidon as if the monk were the one who had transgressed the laws of the natural world. As if …

The blade lashed out.

The metallic sculpture lurched into Angul’s path. The Blade Cerulean glanced off the suddenly animate shape in a shower of blue sparks.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Watch on Forever’s Edge, Feywild

The watchtower shuddered. Taal swayed with the quaking structure, unconsciously canceling out the motion of the rolling flagstones with well-honed reflexes. He’d become used to the relentless tremors during the centuries of his servitude.

Taal reached into a pocket of his shirt and carefully pulled out a tiny bird. It fluttered its wings, releasing a splendid rush of iridescent purple and green. The colors were too vivid for the watchtower. It was a creature of Faerie, and the watchtower lay beyond Faerie’s edge.

How it had found its way into the tower with one hurt wing, Taal couldn’t guess. But the innocent beating heart had brought him a bit of joy when he’d looked at its dazzling plumage. Taal had spent part of the last month tending to the wing and feeding the bird from his rations.

Taal judged the creature was fit to fly once more.

He lifted it in one hand. Its tiny feet clamped tight around his forefinger.

“You’ve got your strength back,” he said. “Now, fly away toward the light. Return to Faerie, and never again look into this dark corner.”

The bird cocked its head at him, but made no move to take wing.

He gave his finger a little shake. “Go!” he said. But the creature clung.

Then the tower quaked again, and with that unsettling jolt, the bird took to the air.

Taal walked to the tower’s edge and followed the creature’s progress as long as he could make it out. The bird winged above the darkling landscape. Boulders, bare rock, and the occasional stunted tree poked up below it. Light glowed along the far horizon, and the flash of color flittered toward that promise.

Even after he lost the bird in the glow, Taal continued to stare at the distant light. The illumination waxed and waned over a period of hours that were several shy of twenty-four, as if time moved slightly more quickly there.

Or, as was actually the case, slightly more slowly at the tower along the void.

The light was the Feywild border, and beyond that, the world, and all the other planes of existence too. All those landscapes, mundane and fantastic alike, were peopled with creatures of every description, creed, and philosophy.

Taal reflected that among those billions, perhaps only a handful were aware of the watchtowers erected thousands of years before by ancient eladrin nobles. Those ancients had determined that reality required defending against a madness that lay beyond all things.

He would miss the tiny bird. He buried the pang of regret beneath his oath, as he buried so many other feelings.

Finally, the bout of shaking subsided. Another would take its place, all too soon; the tower shivered more often than ever.

Taal turned away from the side of the tower that looked toward the light, and shuffled to the other side.

His gaze traced the watchtower’s silvery span, all the way down to the raw stone on which the sentinel tower was built. Beyond the structure’s imposing foundation, a cliff dropped away into a void of darkness. Dim specks of light glimmered out in that nothingness, like lonely stars.

They might have been stars in truth, but if so, they were weak, old, and nearly spent. They were nothing like what Taal recalled from his youth. He could sometimes still summon the memory of true stars when he meditated.

The cliff top stretched away to the north and the south. The pale stone ridge marked the border between substance and inchoate madness.

Beacon fires glittered from the tops of all the other eladrin watchtowers built along existence’s raw edge. A long time before, the forces of creation had made a terrible mistake. They had left an imperfection in reality, rendering a forgotten corner of the Feywild vulnerable to the emptiness that stretched away forever beyond it.

If only the void were truly mere nothingness.

The tower trembled again.

A mote of raw earth peeled away from the cliff face directly beneath the tower and sailed out into the void. Along the cliff, similar motes disengaged from the stone face and dispersed out into the dark, like seedlings blowing from tree branches in a slight breeze.

He’d seen the launch of countless such impromptu “armadas.”

The darkness engulfed each free-floating earthmote in turn. He waited patiently, until he saw distant flashes of green, red, and sky blue flower in the darkness. He presumed the light bursts heralded the moment a mote found a squirming monstrosity gliding inward from the discontinuity. When mote found horror, one annihilated the other. He fancied he could hear the detonations, though he knew the watchtowers were too far from the zone of engagement for sound to make the return trip.

The earthmotes were the natural world’s defense against the aberrations.

Taal peered into the abyss, past the flashes of light, into the eye-searing darkness. Despite never having seen it from the watchtower, Taal knew the name of the malign beachhead that existence defended itself from: the Citadel of the Outer Void.

A wild cat’s growl jerked him from his reverie.

The growl came from a tattoo on Taal’s upper right arm. The image, a tiger with a scorpion’s tail, was his personal totem, one he’d paid handsomely to have magically inked on his flesh.

He’d only enjoyed its power a few tendays before he was plucked from Faerûn to swear his oath. But even in the stark realm where he served as castellan for one of the Twelve Towers, his totem warned him when potential enemies were drawing near.

He retreated from Forever’s Edge and cast his eyes back down to the darkling plain.

Two riders rode from the direction of the nearest neighbor tower, the Spire of Summer Mist.

Taal called on the spirit resident in his totem, asking for sharpness of eyesight. His vision instantly pierced the relentless twilight. He saw the riders were not mere couriers, as he’d hoped, but eladrin nobles.

Worry drew down the corners of his mouth. Why, despite all his assurances sent via beacon fire signals, were the Master and Mistress of Summer Mist personally venturing across the plain separating the towers for a visit?

Taal hurried down the stairs that looped all the way down to the watchtower’s foundation. He passed many sealed doors. Behind these lay fell weapons, occult lore, collected omens, arcane ritual rooms, and other artifacts potentially useful in reality’s defense. Dust lay heavy on nearly every lintel.

He left the stairs at ground level. The spiraling steps continued their lonely descent into the bedrock, where many more lightless chambers lurked.

A larger keep surrounded the watchtower that stabbed the sky above it. Taal entered the keep’s great hall. He worked the wheel mechanism that unbarred the gate into the ward.

The visitors had already been admitted through the outer wall into the ward by tower guards. The ward and outer wall, unlike the watchtower and inner keep, bustled with eladrin warriors and servants pledged to the spire’s upkeep and defense.

Taal waited in the entranceway with folded arms as the two visitors approached.

The woman wore elaborately styled black leather armor. A rapier rode her hip, and an impious smile curled across her face when she saw Taal.

The man’s platinum blond hair was bound in a knot, and matched the colors of his impeccably cut clothes. A glimmering bow was strapped, unstrung, to his back.

“Welcome to the Spire of Winter’s Peace,” said Taal as they entered the great hall. “To what do we owe this unexpected visit?”

“Taal, always a pleasure to see you,” the man replied. “You don’t come around anymore, as you used to when you first took service. Have we become so tiresome?”

“My duties keep me busy, Lord Dramvar,” said Taal.

“No one works harder than you,” Dramvar assured him. “Nor are hardly any of our warriors a match for your unique, um, martial skills. Our warriors still speak fondly of the weaponless techniques you used to demonstrate. Who knew a human could achieve such proficiency? Oh. I mean …”

Dramvar’s pale skin colored slightly.

Taal bowed his head to acknowledge the compliment, and the backhanded insult. “In my youth, even among humans, I achieved some notoriety,” he replied. “In any event, as I’ve explained, I’m consumed in my tasks. If you’ve come to invite me to the next revelry, I—”

“Of course not,” said the woman. “Lord Dramvar is merely trying, in his inexpert fashion, to put you at your ease. But we have no time for pleasantries. We need to confer with your mistress immediately. Please inform Winter’s Peace that Summer Mist has important news that can’t wait.”

Taal nodded, his face drawn in thought. “Lady Eloar,” he finally said, “as I communicated via beaconfire on more than one occasion, the Lady of Winter’s Peace is temporarily unavailable.”

“Still?” said Lady Eloar. “Where did she go? The nearest kingdom of Faerie isn’t so far.”

“The lady’s research regarding the growing instabilities in the void required she travel into the world,” replied Taal.

“Without the approval of all the Towers?” Lord Dramvar exclaimed.

“She believed the threat was too great to wait on permission,” said Taal.

The woman narrowed her eyes. “She knows when a warden abandons the Watch too long, the power in the void senses it!” she said. “For what stupidity would she risk drawing attention from the Citadel?”

Taal chewed his lip. “If I could tell you the nature of the threat she perceived, I would,” he said. “But she did not provide me with any details. She left suddenly, with instructions that I stay on my guard and oversee the watchtower, its armory, and the company of warriors installed here as I always have.”

The man sighed. “Lady Eloar, it seems we have come all this way for nothing,” he said.

“Not for nothing, Dramvar,” Lady Eloar replied.

The woman fixed Taal with her sly smile and said, “I’m sorry it has to come to this, Taal, but the circumstances leave me no choice. I must invoke the Articles of the Compact. Please show us to your mistress’s study.”

Taal nodded again. The Articles of the Compact allowed any lord of the Watch on Forever’s Edge to examine another’s hold, lest corruption secretly take root. Those who stared overlong into the void were most vulnerable to its fell fingers of corruption.

“Of course. Please, this way?” said the castellan of Winter’s Peace.

Taal motioned to the stairs.

“Please do not take offense, Taal,” said Lord Dramvar. “After this, I hope you’ll still consider visiting us for the next revel. But even you must admit that Lady Malyanna’s eccentricities require some sort of censure.”

“Of course,” replied Taal. “All of us must answer to our oaths. After you?” Taal motioned for a second time.

The lord and lady preceded Taal across the great hall. The arch that opened onto the stairs was carved with stars and comets, swords and shields. As Lord Dramvar walked beneath the carvings, one finger absently touched one of the shields. It was a tradition, meant to invoke luck.

Lady Eloar passed through the arch without a glance.

Taal followed, and touched the same shield as Dramvar had. If superstition had even the least efficacy, it seemed prudent to cancel out any of Dramvar’s advantage.

As Taal’s finger slid off the smoothed edge of the carving, his other arm shot forward. His palm slid along the side of Eloar’s neck as he captured her head in the crook of his arm. His forearm sawed across her trachea a moment before his elbow settled below her chin. He squeezed.

She tried to scream a warning to Dramvar. The other eladrin continued blithely up the stairs, his back to the struggle. She clawed at Taal’s arms, raking her nails down his skin. His ambush had caught her so off guard she was panicking. Another heartbeat, and—

His arms collapsed on nothing. Lady Eloar appeared several steps above Dramvar on the curving staircase, gasping and rubbing at her throat with one hand. With the other, she pointed past Dramvar. “Betrayal!” she rasped. She drew her rapier.

Lord Dramvar spun in place, the easy lines of his face hardening. He pulled his silver bow from his back. The moment his hands touched the wood, a chatoyant line flared into light between the endpoints. His hands retrieved an arrow from his quiver with the swiftness of an eagle snatching a fish from a lake. The bow was drawn back, an arrow nocked.

But for all the eladrin’s amazing speed, Taal was faster. He was already inside the man’s guard. As Dramvar tried to shift a pace up the stairs and release his arrow, Taal slapped the beautiful weapon from the archer’s hands. Disbelief pinched the eladrin’s expression.

Taal stepped in closer, sweeping his other arm around. He caught Dramvar’s head on his bicep and continued twisting. As the man overbalanced, Taal braced himself on one leg and raised the other, pulling Dramvar over it. Taal threw the man up the stairs, and the eladrin flipped end over end, right onto Lady Eloar’s naked rapier.

The man’s flailing bulk bowled into Lady Eloar. They both went down hard on the stairs. Dramvar splattered blood on the marble and on his ally.

Taal took three quick steps to where they lay. He reached down to snap Dramvar’s neck. Calling on reserves of fortitude, the eladrin archer pulled another arrow from his quiver. He lunged as Taal’s fingers brushed his neck, and stabbed the sharp head into the meat of Taal’s calf.

Taal gritted his teeth at the unexpected sting, but his hands found their way to either side of Dramvar’s head—the eladrin had left himself open with his wild attack.

The castellan of Winter’s Peace sat back into gravity’s pull, and rolled over his left shoulder. As he did so, he held Dramvar’s head close like a starvling might hold a loaf of fresh bread to his breast. He rolled, and Dramvar came with him, but the eladrin’s neck snapped.

Taal released the suddenly flopping body as he rolled. The arrow still protruding from his leg snagged on a stair. Moreover, rolling backwards down stairs is hard, no matter how skilled one is. Even though he knew his aim was compromised, Taal was surprised when his head struck the arch at the base of the stairs.

He lost several heartbeats to the white flash that seared across his vision. He struggled to rise as if through a buffeting gale, and face the remaining eladrin on the stair.

During the moments he had blinked at the pain, Eloar had vanished.

Dramvar remained sprawled limply and at an awkward angle across five steps. The eladrin’s head was bent so far from true that it alone told the tale of the archer’s demise.

“What mischief are you up to?” Taal said.

Had she escaped upward, around the tower’s curve? Or had she flashed by him and out of the watchtower altogether?

He doubted she’d fled. Eloar was equal to Malyanna in power, or at least had been before the Lady of Winter’s Peace had made her alliance with the things in the void. For all his overwhelming skill, Taal knew that his best advantage against Eloar had been surprise.

Now she was ready for him. He wondered if he’d unconsciously allowed her to escape his ambush.

Taal took two strides to Dramvar’s body. He bent and checked to be sure. No pulse. He steeled himself against the wave of regret that slipped out from beneath his oath.

He rose and ascended, wary for the least hint of movement or sound.

His totem issued a low, hunting snarl. Taal whirled, not quite fast enough to avoid Eloar’s rapier. She’d been standing on the stairs the whole time, cloaked in a shroud of fey invisibility.

The rapier opened a line of blood on his right forearm. A spark of yellowish light jumped from the blade and dazzled Taal’s eyes. He retreated a step, sideways on the broad stair.

“Taal, surrender,” came Eloar’s sad voice. “You have foresworn your oath. You are a servant of the void, the very influence you swore to guard against.”

The eladrin was visible again, but the magic of the woman’s strike raced through his blood, confusing his vision and his senses. Everything blurred, and the room seemed to cant to one side. His stomach lurched in protest.

Taal raised his hands in a defensive posture and closed his eyes. The inked orbs of his tiger totem blinked.

He saw Eloar plainly, if without color. The eladrin advanced on him, her rapier ready to skewer his stomach. Her playful smile was gone, replaced by a frown of concern.

“You’re wrong,” said Taal, sorrow trembling in his voice. “I have not foresworn my oath.”

“No?” Eloar paused, watching him with skeptical eyes.

“My oath was to Malyanna, the Lady of Winter’s Peace,” he said as he darted forward.

The eladrin, apparently believing Taal overcome by her influence, was unprepared when he knocked her blade out of line and jabbed a finger as stiff as an iron nail into her throat.

CHAPTER SIX

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
New Sarshell, Impiltur

Anusha tumbled off the divan in the salon. Lucky raised his head and wagged his tail from where he still lay curled nearby.

She rubbed her eyes, looking around the empty, quiet room. The tea service was still laid out as she’d left it.

“I can wake up!”

Giddy relief engulfed her. The curse of her tie to Xxiphu was truly severed, as Japheth had promised. The fear she wasn’t actually liberated of the Dreamheart and the aboleth city hadn’t died until that moment.

That didn’t change the fact that a very angry Lord of Bats was in her cellar. She’d swept her dreamblade through the archfey. It had hurt Neifion, but not dispatched him.

She had to get back to the fight!

Anusha gave Lucky a quick pet on the head, then composed herself where she lay at the foot of the divan. The image of an elixir phial filled with purplish fluid—No! Don’t be stupid! she thought. She hadn’t required Japheth’s “sleeping potion” the first time she had ventured into the catacombs, and she didn’t need it for a second attempt.

Another deep breath. She strained for the feeling she’d achieved just moments before: a feeling of lofting away, of turning a key in the lock that opened her mind … She stepped into a construct of dream. She glanced down at her body. It seemed to be enjoying a contented slumber. She was glad she’d chosen to remain on the floor.

Anusha retraced her route from the salon to the catacombs, flashing through the mansion almost as quickly as thought itself.

She reached the entrance to Japheth’s work chamber. There stood the war wizard and Captain Thoster. Seren was just finishing a spell.

The occluding plug of water and a good portion of the wall on either side of the entrance disintegrated in a spray of pale fire. Seren and the captain flinched back slightly at the violence of the breach.

Anusha let out her breath on seeing Japheth still on his feet. Of the Lord of Bats, there was no sign.

Raidon seemed intent on hacking his way through one wall of the catacomb with his sword. Everyone, including Japheth, watched the monk’s crazed efforts for several heartbeats as if entranced.

Japheth finally yelled, “In the name of Nine, have you lost your mind?”

Raidon looked away from his task. His gaze skittered across the room, briefly touched on the captain and Seren, then turned to focus on Japheth, who stood closest. The monk’s eyes narrowed, and the fire of his blade burned the color of the sea’s darkest depths.

The sword leaped for Japheth’s head, almost of its own accord, though Raidon retained his hold on the hilt.

“Look out!” Anusha cried too late.

But the blade bit into an iron statue instead of Japheth. It almost seemed as if the sculpture had moved to interpose itself just so, but Anusha hadn’t seen it shift.

The bell-like clap of Angul on steel shook Raidon from his fury. He blinked and let the blade drop so its tip stuck in the floor.

Japheth’s hands were raised in a warding gesture, one yet gripping his greenish rod. He cautiously lowered his hands. “Are you through attacking me?” he said.

Raidon snatched up Angul and shoved the blade into its sheath as if the hilt was too hot to hold.

“Sorry,” said the half-elf.

Anusha was halfway across the catacomb chamber before she remembered no one could see her.

The moment she rendered herself visible, the iron statue turned its head to look at her.

Words issued from it. “Anusha, is that you?” a familiar voice said.

Anusha recalled the image of a woman whose skin was mottled brown and yellow. “Yeva?” she said.

The statue looked down at its polished, metallic body, then raised its arms. “I’m not dead!” it said.

“Well, you ain’t alive, either,” interjected Thoster. “This is what you’ve been up to, warlock? Forging some kind of talking golem?”

“Yes,” Japheth said. “Well, after a fashion.”

Anusha and Yeva embraced, as well as was possible under the circumstances.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” Anusha said. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.”

“I was sure you wouldn’t,” the figure replied, laughing. “But how are you? I see you’re still in your dream form …”

“Yes, but I’m all right,” Anusha said. “I’m sleeping not far from here, up in my salon. But how do you feel?” She tapped Yeva’s iron body. The form shrugged its … no, her, shoulders.

“I feel alive,” Yeva said. “More than that, I can sense my body, and the world around me. What more could I ask for right now? All the possibilities the future holds remain open to me.”

Yeva turned to Japheth. “Thank you,” she said.

Japheth smiled and bowed.

“Is someone going to explain what’s going on down here?” said the captain.

“This is Yeva,” Anusha said. “She was a captive in the aboleth city like me.”

Yeva took a step toward Thoster. Her motion was entirely fluid. “Japheth salvaged my mind from Xxiphu along with Anusha’s,” she said. “But my body died a long time ago. I had no vessel to return to. Your warlock friend crafted me a new one!”

Yeva’s face was a mask of silver, but Anusha imagined she could almost see the woman smile. Words flavored by a smile sounded brighter.

“How odd,” said Seren.

“Very well,” Thoster said. “Japheth put the mind of Anusha’s acquaintance in this iron shell. Seems extravagant, but who’m I to say? By the look of it, he managed the transfer none too soon.” The captain cast his gaze at Raidon.

The monk scowled.

“But that doesn’t explain what Japheth’s old friend was doing down here,” the captain continued.

The warlock’s smile dropped. “The Lord of Bats has an overdeveloped sense of vengeance,” he said.

“How’d he find you?” Anusha said. “Your pact with him is broken, right?”

“Malyanna helped him,” said Japheth. “The eladrin noble remains Neifion’s ally, apparently. The sigil on Neifion’s brow reeked of Dreamheart influence.”

“The Dreamheart you gave her,” said Raidon.

Japheth shook his head. “We’ve been over this,” he said. “Anusha, and Yeva too, would be dead and consumed if I had done any less!”

Silence descended. Glares were traded around the room.

“I’m calling another tea—early this time,” Anusha finally said, “just two bells after sunrise tomorrow. Please, everyone attend. We must talk about Xxiphu, and the responsibility each of us bears for its appearance over Faerûn.”

“Hey!” said Seren. “I—”

“We’ll discuss what we can do to sink it once more,” Anusha said.

Without waiting to gauge the response of her statement, she allowed her dream to lapse.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Watch on Forever’s Edge, Feywild

Taal pulled the sack beneath an empty sky. The two bodies weighed the bag down. The fabric whispered as he hauled it along the uneven stones that flagged the tower’s zenith.

He hauled the bundle to the parapet’s edge. The void’s sprinkle of stars only accentuated its emptiness. He squatted, lifted the body bag, then heaved it over the edge.

Instead of plummeting down, the burlap mass fell outward, directly away from the tower. No matter how many times he’d launched objects off the edge, Taal was always fascinated by the way the void pulled all things to itself.

The slowly rotating sack, illuminated by the watchtower’s lights, receded at a steady rate. Its shape grew smaller with distance. Finally the encroaching darkness consumed it.

“Good-bye, Lady Eloar. Farewell, Lord Dramvar. I’m sorry—”

A low growl from his totem tattoo warned Taal he was no longer alone.

He turned.

A torch flared. In the wavering shadow of a merlon, Malyanna and her hound were revealed.

“Taal, I return,” she said. Her skin glimmered like a sheet of glacier ice.

He bowed. “Welcome back to the Spire of Winter’s Peace, my lady,” he said. “Where is your new friend?”

“Neifion and I are allied only so long as our interests intersect,” Malyanna replied. “The warlock Japheth, who I described to you, is someone both of us want dead. I set the Lord of Bats on Japheth’s scent.”

“I hope he enjoys success,” Taal said.

Malyanna shrugged. “What did you just discard?” she asked. “Looked bulky.”

Taal filled his lungs with the frigid air. “Lord Dramvar and Lady Eloar came calling,” he said. “When they discovered you gone, they invoked the Articles of the Compact.”

Malyanna frowned. “Were you able to …,” she said, trailing off as Taal shook his head no.

“I couldn’t dissuade them,” he said. “Only one way remained to defend your secrets.”

“The Master and Mistress of Summer Mist were in the bag you just launched?” Malyanna asked.

Taal bowed assent.

“Are you trying to undermine me?” said Malyanna, her voice quiet but sharp as a razor.

“I remain true to my oath,” replied Taal. “If you think I’ve done anything other than preserve your interests, remove me from your service.”

The shadow hound slunk from behind Malyanna and stared at Taal. Its eyes were avid with hunger.

Malyanna snorted. “I’m sure you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she said. “No. I’ll dispatch messengers to Summer Mist. I can replicate Eloar’s handwriting. Apparently, she and Dramvar have decided to enjoy Winter’s Peace for an extended visit.”

“No need,” Taal said. “I’ve already dispatched messengers. They plan on enjoying our company for a full tenday.”

A smile stretched the eladrin noble’s face. “I can always count on you, can’t I?”

“It seems so.”

Taal regarded the warden of Winter’s Peace. Like Eloar and Dramvar, Erunyauvë of the Spire of the Moon, Karsalvan of Spring Bloom, and the others, Malyanna shouldered a terrible responsibility at Forever’s Edge.

A responsibility she had abnegated so utterly she was a cancer in reality’s bulwark. It didn’t bear thinking on too long.

“What did you learn?” Taal asked. “What is the disposition of the … risen city?”

The woman nearly danced with glee. “Xxiphu is a new moon over Toril, an omen of what will come,” she said. “Even now, it begins to harvest Faerûn’s dreams.”

“The Eldest is waking?” Taal said, alarm nearly making his voice quaver.

“No. It is caught in the transition; I told you that,” Malyanna replied. “The Eldest’s mind is trapped on the edge of consciousness.”

“Then why are you so ebullient?”

“Because I know where to find the Key of Stars!”

Taal rubbed his chin. “Without the Eldest, what good will that do?” he said. “Your prophecy indicates—”

Malyanna waved away his protest. “If Neifion kills the warlock, the Eldest might throw off slumber,” she replied. “Japheth thieved some essential essence from the Dreamheart before he left it behind. If that essence is released, it could well enliven Xxiphu’s lord. So, if I can find the Key of Stars in the meantime, I’ll have saved the Eldest time dredging up the Key itself.”

“What if the warlock’s death doesn’t wake the Eldest?” asked Taal. “You said a surviving Keeper of the Cerulean Sign managed to perform a ritual in Xxiphu’s crown chamber.”

The eladrin noble’s lips thinned. “Yes, Raidon Kane,” she said. “I don’t know from whence he came, or how he came by his Keeper lore. Somehow, he proved capable of scribing a Rune of Binding, using a sentient sword only Keepers could have forged as his quill, no less. He reminded me of someone. I can’t quite put my finger on whom …”

“This Rune of Binding; won’t that prevent all the Eldest’s eyes from opening?” asked Taal.

“I’ll not wait for failure, Taal!” Malyanna said. “I’d rather plan for success. However, if the worst befalls us, and the Eldest remains unresponsive, I’ll still have the Key of Stars in hand. I’ll use it in the Eldest’s place to unlock the Far Manifold.”

Taal’s eyes widened. “You would promote yourself above the Eldest?”

“I must be prepared for all contingencies,” Malyanna replied. “So gather your things. I’ll need your help in retrieving the Key. You’re coming with me.”

An odd feeling bloomed in the pit of his stomach. Surprise? Hope? It had been so long since he’d felt the latter, he couldn’t identify the sensation.

Malyanna said, “We must find the one who was lord in Winter’s Peace before I. My poor, long departed mentor, whose schemes were discovered by ancient Keepers.”

“You mean the Traitor,” Taal said. It wasn’t a question.

Taal had heard, several times, about the eladrin who had commanded the spire before Malyanna. It had been centuries earlier in the world—but not nearly so long out at Forever’s Edge, where time ran differently—when Malyanna, fresh to the tower herself, once served as castellan to an eladrin noble named Carnis.

Carnis had been as committed to the Watch as any. But the eladrin had been incautious. He had stared too long into the void. The things that stirred in utter emptiness had lost their horror for the Lord of Winter’s Peace. They had become objects of curiosity.

Or maybe his call to service had been a charade all along. He might have joined the Watch already compromised.

Regardless, he eventually showed Malyanna “the truth and the glory” that lay beyond the void, in the fearfully whispered Citadel of the Outer Void.

Instead of striking Carnis down or reporting his treachery to the other watchtowers, Malyanna had joined his cause.

The two plotted long together, and dreamt of a future twisted and wrecked, wherein they were elevated by their association with the creatures who would become the new lords of reality. Taal had never been sure how that was supposed to have worked. Then Carnis departed Winter’s Peace, intent on achieving the first awful piece of their plan.

But the Lord of Winter’s Peace was found out. He was caught and imprisoned in a splinter realm of Faerie called Stardeep. His name and station were stripped from him. Ever after, he was known simply as the Traitor.

And in Stardeep he had rotted until the changing of the world.

Malyanna did not betray herself to the other wardens of the Twelve Towers. She remained in Winter’s Peace, and showed all the proper surprise, distress, and outrage a pupil would be expected to display if her lord was unveiled as a monster. She helped the other wardens root out all the strange books, secret chambers, and miscellaneous ilk Carnis had stockpiled in the watchtower under the noses of his fellow watchers. It was after that event the Compact had been modified to allow wardens to request to see the content of neighboring towers.

Malyanna had been a consummate actor. She destroyed lore with full knowledge that doing so would delay her own plans for a century or more. In the end, the other wardens of the Watch on Forever’s Edge were convinced of Malyanna’s purity.

In only a few short years, she had been promoted. She became the Lady of Winter’s Peace, and was given full dispensation over its functions, armory, and the watchtower’s armed eladrin forces.

“Yes, I am talking about the Traitor,” Malyanna finally answered, breaking Taal from his reverie. “How astute of you to remember.”

“The Traitor and his prison are gone,” said Taal. “You said so yourself.”

Malyanna nodded. “I assumed so,” she replied. “But I never bothered to discover exactly where it was located; at first, it would have seemed suspicious to the other wardens had I shown too much interest in what our sibling Keepers did with the Traitor. Afterward, I was angry with Carnis for being such a fool and rushing in too soon. Eventually, I determined I would be the better instrument for the Sovereignty. I figured, let him rot.”

“So Stardeep was not destroyed?”

“I don’t know,” Malyanna replied. “That’s what we’re going to discover, my pet. I suspect it might be ashes, but even if all I can find are a few of the Traitor’s bones, I can interrogate the memory of his spirit. Before he was caught, he learned where the Key of Stars was located.”

Taal remained quiet, studying his mistress. He wondered if she were finally giving in to wishful thinking. By her description, despite Xxiphu’s rise, the lone abolethic city seemed crippled. With its nigh omnipotent lord asleep, it hardly seemed a Sovereignty.

Was Malyanna grasping at straws out of desperation?

A flutter of hope was born in Taal’s heart. Perhaps her entire purpose was in danger of collapsing.

“If Carnis knew where the Key of Stars was all along, why didn’t he find and use it?” Taal asked.

Some of Malyanna’s exhilaration faded from her face. “Though he was a failure in many ways, Carnis said it was the Eldest’s place to take up the Key,” she said. “Even if he had it, he would not have tried it himself.”

“But you will.”

“If circumstances leave me no choice,” she replied.

“Even if using it burns you to a cinder?” Taal said. “Maybe the Eldest is supposed to turn the Key because only a near-deity like it could handle the relic capable of opening the Far Manifold.”

Malyanna frowned. “I appreciate your concern, Taal, false as it is,” she said. “Perhaps I will give the matter a little more thought—It’s not my intention to miss out on the era of the Sovereignty’s reign when I’ve sacrificed so much to ensure its birth.”

Taal nodded. “Don’t think overlong on it,” he said. “We have only the grace of a tenday, at most, before the other watchtowers become suspicious of Eloar and Dramvar’s absence.”

Malyanna sniffed, as if in disdain. Torchlight played on her skin as she gestured to her hound. “Tamur, to my study,” she said.

The shadows swallowed eladrin and mastiff, leaving Taal alone again with the void.

The castellan descended from Winter Peace’s zenith, taking each step one at a time, until he reached his own chambers.

They were empty of everything save what was needful for him to survive and perform his duties. Despite Malyanna’s urging that he allow himself the luxuries his station could command, Taal preferred blank walls. He was determined that, despite his oddly privileged servitude, he would not give in to enticements that might make his position seem comfortable, or even enviable. Malyanna had become a willing acolyte of Carnis; Taal preferred the daily reminder that he served the Lady of Winter’s Peace under protest.

He went to his writing desk, where he drafted his daily directives to the staff and stewards, captains and commanders of the tower. On it lay a silver pin, in the shape of a snowflake. It was the badge Malyanna had given him after she’d recruited him to the Watch.

Following her promotion, she required a castellan of her own.

With a deviousness born of long centuries, she had spun a rumor built to snare would-be heroes, and whispered it into the world. The rumor painted the tale of a monstrous evil that required constant watching in a lonely waste, lest some sliver of it escape and infect Faerûn.

The best lies wrap themselves in truth like a second skin. Taal had numbered among those who heard the lies, and believed them. He and the others who heard and believed gathered together and followed the threads, and indeed, discovered actual aberrant cults, ghastly items that fostered nightmares, and eventually a mind flayer cyst, which proved great evil was afoot. From there, Taal and his company of heroes found paths into the Feywild and beyond.

They found Malyanna waiting. In aspect she seemed a queen, wise and dangerous, yet beautiful too. She described the Watch on Forever’s Edge, the void that lay beyond, and the sacrifice all who joined the Watch must endure. She said she was in need of an ally, to help her in her duties.

Malyanna asked which one among Taal’s company would join her, and serve as castellan of the Spire of Winter’s Peace.

Of all his company who quested through the meandering, dangerous route to appear on the doorstep of Winter’s Peace, Taal had proved the most capable.

He was the one given the reward. His prize was to become a watcher himself, to learn the lore of the void and how to fight what seeped from it, and the opportunity to pledge himself to reality’s defense.

His friends, perhaps jealous, or maybe relieved to be able to remain carefree adventurers and righters of lesser wrongs, had wished him well. They returned to the world, leaving Taal to take up his new duties and instruction.

How foolish, how intemperate he’d been to voice the pledge. He’d wondered, even as he spoke the words of binding, why the language seemed so light on defense of the helpless and heavy on the unquestioning service he would provide to the eladrin noble.

But Taal was a man of his word, and with just a few short breaths, he had foresworn himself, believing he was on his way to a glorious career as a warden-in-training.

In that assessment, he’d been appallingly, catastrophically wrong.

Taal blinked away the recollection. He picked up the silver pin and rubbed it between his fingers. His totem cat growled. It recognized the threat to Taal’s equanimity that the symbol of office represented.

Taal replaced the pin on the desk, sat, and drafted instructions that would see to the disposition of Winter’s Peace in his absence. The spire could run itself for long periods, assuming nothing happened to break normal routine. But his thoughts skipped away from the boring details of duty rotation and resupply as he scribbled on the parchment.

Despite himself, Taal found he was looking forward to the trip.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
New Sarshell, Impiltur

Japheth paced the guest room. The bottle green rug ate the sound of his footfalls. The wide mirror reflected the back and forth sway of his midnight cloak. He had only to pull the cord by the entrance, and someone from the Marhana mansion staff would soon be knocking respectfully at the door, wondering what he required.

But a meal, no matter how well prepared, or a bath, regardless how hot the water—or any number of other distractions he might ask for—were hollow substitutes for what he really wanted.

He’d worked a true wonder, creating a vessel to house the mind of Anusha’s friend Yeva. Then Neifion had ruined his surprise.

“By the Nine, I wish I had killed that bastard when I had the chance,” muttered Japheth.

He doubted Anusha or Yeva were any less grateful for what he’d accomplished. But he’d imagined the moment he would reintroduce the two friends. The scene hadn’t included a vengeful archfey. He’d hoped his gift would, in its reception, break through the unwelcome formality that had sprung up between him and Anusha after they’d returned to the mansion.

It was unnerving how much Anusha had changed since he’d met her. Or, at least, changed in his perception. She’d been a cipher, the younger half sister of his employer, and of little importance. He could still remember being vaguely aware of her watching him as he’d made his way to talk to Berhoun about some bit of business.

Later, she’d followed him out onto the Sea of Fallen Stars, a stowaway fleeing her brother and the responsibility of her name.

But now, she was the one trying to create a plan. It was Anusha who wouldn’t let him or the rest forget the threat they’d helped create. Anusha, in the absence of leadership from Raidon, Seren, or himself, was taking charge.

She was wonderful.

Should he seek her out? It was getting late …

It wasn’t like him to be so indecisive. Maybe it was because his normal routine was a shambles. He’d managed, despite the thought of it constantly hovering just below his awareness, to avoid taking a single grain of traveler’s dust for several days. Without it as a crutch, maybe an irresolute nature he hadn’t realized he possessed was coming to the fore.

The thought galled him.

“Don’t be such a child,” he said, and left his room.

He walked the hall to its end, where the door to Anusha’s chamber stood closed. A yellow glow spilled from beneath it.

He knocked.

“Yes?” came Anusha’s voice, faint through the wood.

“It’s Japheth.”

A moment of silence, and the door opened.

Lantern light shimmered on Anusha’s skin, and seemed to spark in her eyes. Her hair was mussed, having come partly free of the leather strap holding it in place, as if she’d been lying down. The wild strands enhanced and accented her beauty; he wanted to reach out and carefully unlace the leather strap restraining the rest of her hair.

Her nightdress was green, and her feet were bare. Japheth caught her familiar scent—a delicate musk he’d always presumed must be some sort of perfume, though he didn’t know for sure. He associated the odor only with her.

Suddenly his surety of purpose wavered.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her smile encouraging him.

“I thought we could, I don’t know, talk,” he said. “Take a walk. Read a book together.”

“Seriously?”

He grinned. “Sure.”

One of her eyebrows went up in question.

“You know how to read, don’t you?”

“I’m a fabulous reader,” she said, and looked directly into his eyes.

Japheth’s heart suddenly kicked into a louder tempo. “And I love a good book,” he said.

Anusha stepped back from the door, motioning him to enter.

Her room was warm. Or maybe it was him. He removed his cloak and hung it on the stand.

When he turned, she stepped into his embrace.

The smell of her redoubled, making his head whirl. He felt her arms go around his waist.

“You feel good,” she said.

“I’ve missed you,” Japheth replied.

She looked up at him with her head cocked to one side. “How are you doing?” she asked. “I mean, after Neifion showing up here today?”

The Lord of Bats was the last thing on his mind. But he said, “That old poser? He caught us by surprise is all. Anyway, I’m great, now that I’m here with you.” He winked.

Anusha chuckled. “Good,” she said. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you for helping Yeva. It’s amazing. You saved her, you know. Not many could have pulled that off.”

He shrugged, affecting nonchalance. “I’m just glad it worked,” he said.

She pulled back, but kept a light hold on his wrists. He allowed her to lead him to the edge of her bed. Then she sat, crossing her legs beneath her. Her nightdress rode up to just above her knees, showing shapely calves over slim ankles.

Anusha patted the coverlet next to her in invitation. Her nails were painted the color of the sea.

Japheth sat.

“Anusha,” he began, just as she said his name.

They laughed.

“You first,” he said.

She nodded. Then, “Japheth, we need to talk. About many things. Important things. About us, and about what we face.”

“All right. Of course,” Jepheth replied. “So …”

“The thing is, now that you’ve entered my lair … I don’t know. The world is a burden that will always be there. Our troubles too. Maybe both can wait, just a bit. What do you think?”

Her lair?

“I think I like the sound of that.”

His arm went around her shoulders, but before he could pull her closer, she crushed herself to him. The pressure of her body through their clothing warmed him like a fireplace hearth.

He cupped Anusha’s face in his palms and found her lips with his. Her skin was smooth and soft, and the first feathery touch of her lips jolted through him like a rogue spell. The touch became a kiss. She leaned against him with a delicious softness. The kiss slowed, becoming more intense, more sensual. Time seemed to stop.

Breathless, he was only able to whisper her name.

When she pulled her nightdress over her head, Japheth’s heart thundered so violently he felt dizzy.

Her feminine curves and lines were burnished with lantern light, as a painter might lovingly depict on canvas. Her silhouette branded his mind, setting his entire body on fire. Her touches were like the rolling sea surf, pushing him back and pulling him forward.

It seemed to Japheth they measured their heartbeats together, twining their sighs and caresses, moving in concert with the power of mutual need, tenderness, and a sweet intimacy that finally left him without words or thoughts.

For a few moments after she woke up, Anusha couldn’t recall where she was. Early morning light filtered into the room under the drawn shade, casting a pale glow on the wall.

She saw Japheth. He lay next to her, his limbs half-tangled in the coverlet. Then she remembered.

The man’s breath buzzed softly, and his eyes were closed. An old scar puckered a line up his thigh onto his hip. She reached out and lightly traced it.

Japheth’s eyes opened. He smiled, and his hand enveloped hers with a firm grip.

“ ’Morning,” he said.

“I’m glad you came by last night,” she replied.

He chuckled, “I wanted to come by ever since we returned,” he said. “I would have earlier if …”

She nodded, then sat up, drawing a portion of the coverlet around her.

“Japheth, now it’s time to talk,” she said. “Do you mind?”

“Of course not,” he said. But his smile faded as a line of worry creased his brow.

Anusha pressed on. “I like you,” she said. “A lot; that’s obvious. Problem is, I just don’t know if I can allow myself to fall for you. Anyhow, I’d like to—”

“I understand,” Japheth said. “It’s my traveler’s dust; you’d be crazy not to be worried about that. And my new pact. You’re wondering if you can really be with someone who …”

He trailed off when she touched a finger lightly to his lips.

“Yes,” she said. “But, let me finish—that’s something we absolutely need to discuss. Before that, though, we’ve got something even more important to attend to.”

Japheth’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Xxiphu,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied. “Because of what you did to save me, not allowing Raidon to destroy the Dreamheart when he first had the chance—”

His face hardened.

“I’m not saying you should have acted differently,” she continued. “Thank Torm you didn’t! But, because of that, we have a responsibility, both of us, to take care of the problem.”

“You said we should try to sink it,” Japheth said,

She nodded. “If possible,” she said.

He cupped her face with one palm, leaned forward, and kissed her. “I agree. It is our responsibility.”

Anusha smiled. If Japheth was with her, convincing the others would be easier.

“Maybe there’s hope for you after all, warlock,” she said.

“I’d like to think so,” Japheth replied.

Anusha glanced around the salon. How different it looked with everyone assembled. The table was so full that Raidon and Yeva deigned to stand. The scent of smoke stung the air; it curled up from the bowl of Captain Thoster’s pipe.

Anusha cleared her throat. “Thank you, everyone, for being here,” she said. “I’d like to discuss our next move.”

“Our next move?” said Seren.

“Yes,” said Anusha. “What are we going to do about the fact a petrified aboleth city followed us to the surface?”

“Bah. What can we do?” replied the wizard. “You know what lives in Xxiphu—we barely got out alive, and that was before Raidon decided there wasn’t a vintage or spirit in the city he didn’t like.”

Anusha glanced at the monk. The half-elf scowled at a spot on the floor only he could see.

Anusha began again. “If we decide—,” she said.

The captain interrupted. “The city is looking for something,” he said. The swagger was gone from his voice, replaced by a nervous conviction.

“It is?” said Seren.

“Yes,” Thoster replied. “I remembered yesterday. When it came up out of the Sea of Fallen Stars, it sent out a call. We all heard it, that terrible music …”

“I don’t remember any music,” said Seren.

“Well, that ain’t important,” said Thoster. “I heard it. And I finally figured out the command woven into the tune. The city, or whatever controls it, wants something called the Key of Stars.” The captain inhaled smoke from his pipe.

“Key of Stars?” said Japheth.

“Yes,” said Thoster. “And as awful as Xxiphu is all on its lonesome, I get the impression that if this Key of Stars is found, a whole new meaning for awful would have to be invented.”

“How so?” said Anusha.

“I can’t say; just a feeling I get,” said the captain.

Seren rolled her eyes.

“Why does that name sound familiar?” Japheth said. “Sounds like something I heard in a dream … Something about a Key anyway. Anusha was in it.”

Anusha clapped a hand over her mouth. “I had a dream like that!” she said.

“You know, I think I did once too,” said the captain.

Raidon stepped forward. “And I,” he said. He pointed to Anusha. “You stood in a realm of twilight mist. You were trying to tell me something about a key, though I couldn’t understand what you wanted of me. Something that made you sad.”

Everyone looked at Anusha. She felt her face grow warm. The reactions of her body were much harder to control when she wasn’t in her dreamform.

“The fact all of us have shared a similar dream is incredible,” she said. “I don’t know what it means. But I’ve had variations on it too, from the same perspective as you described; I saw myself. I just thought it was a recurring nightmare.”

Japheth rubbed his chin. “I’ve dreamed it on at least three occasions, maybe more,” he said.

Raidon nodded in agreement.

“I’ve only had it once that I can remember,” said Thoster.

“Well, I’ve never dreamed anything like that,” Seren exclaimed.

Raidon frowned at the wizard. Then he turned to the faux golem. “How about you?” he asked.

“Actually—yes,” Yeva replied. “Just before I came awake and saw you trying to stab Japheth … I recall fragments of seeing Anusha standing in a many pillared temple, crying …”

“What does it mean?” said Anusha.

“That Seren didn’t have the dream?” said Thoster. He blew a smoke circle at the wizard.

“No—well, maybe,” Anusha said. “But that most of us did share the same dream? I don’t recall seeing that misty expanse beneath Gethshemeth’s island or anywhere inside Xxiphu.”

“Maybe because what all of us saw in our dreams hasn’t happened yet,” said Japheth.

Seren snorted. “That’s a leap,” she said.

Raidon addressed the warlock. “How could we see the future without some sort of ritual of divination?” he said.

“If a future event is significant enough, who’s to say rumor of its approach wouldn’t echo into the past ahead of its occurrence?” Japheth replied. “Such things have happened before. And besides, Anusha seems to be at the heart of this—her connection to the realm of dreams is obviously important.”

Seren affected a dubious expression, though Anusha noted she didn’t gainsay Japheth’s theory.

“What event?” Anusha said.

Japheth shrugged. “I can’t really tell what’s going on in the dream; it’s just fragments.”

“To be so significant, it’d have to be pretty terrible, I’m guessing,” said Thoster.

“Very likely,” replied Japheth.

“I have some experience with psychic phenomena,” Yeva said. “I agree with the warlock. We are sharing the same dream because we are all entwined in what may happen. We all have some stake in the outcome, more so than others, anyhow. Anusha especially, since we’ve all seen her in the vision. She at least will survive to transmit her dream warning from the odd location we all saw.”

“I wonder where that is?” said Thoster.

Anusha shrugged. “Nowhere I’ve ever visited,” she said.

“By what you all describe, it doesn’t sound like any place on Toril,” said Seren. “More like one of the echo planes; either in Shadow or even a remote corner of Faerie, where things become wild.”

“I thought you didn’t believe any of this,” said Thoster.

“I didn’t say that, you cantankerous pirate!” Seren said. “I—”

“Stop it,” said Anusha, raising her voice. “Let’s not fight, please, not in my house.”

Seren raised a hand in acquiescence.

“Well, regardless of anything else, Xxiphu is looking for something—this Key of Stars,” said Thoster. “I’m fairly certain we don’t want to let Xxiphu find it. If we’re going to do anything, it might do to find this Key before Xxiphu or Malyanna.”

“Wait,” said Seren. “Why us? Saving Faerûn from these aboleths isn’t just our problem. We should ask for help!”

“From who?” said Japheth.

“The old Sage of Shadowdale, who else!” Seren replied.

“He’s missing,” said Anusha.

“Come on!” Seren said. “I doubt—”

“My old tutor told me,” Anusha continued. “Elminster dropped out of sight after the Spellplague. People say they’ve seen him here and there since then, but my tutor didn’t think those reports were reliable.”

“Great,” Seren said. “I guess that explains why he hasn’t already blasted the damned thing out of the sky.”

“How about one of the Chosen?” said Thoster.

Anusha could only shake her head.

Japheth said, “If Elminster is out of the picture, the other Chosen might be too. Besides, aren’t the Chosen empowered by Mystra? If she’s dead, I doubt the Chosen are up and at ’em.”

“It’s true,” Seren said. “I got my magic back early, but those with years more invested in the Weave had it harder. Some still can’t cast a spell reliably. It’s possible the Chosen … are all dead.”

Silence chilled the salon.

“We’re the ones who’re already involved, and partly responsible,” said Anusha. “We should clean up our own mess. We can’t turn our backs on it and hope it goes away.”

“Yeah,” Thoster said. “Only children would do that.”

“And we’ve got Raidon, with his Sign and sword,” Anusha said. “Right, Raidon?”

Everyone looked at the monk.

Raidon’s face was a pallid mask. “I … want to find the inspiration to care,” he said. “I know I should.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Anusha. Her stomach clenched. “You’re the one who warned us we had to destroy the Dreamheart in the first place, and kill the Eldest—”

“Neither of which we managed to do,” observed Seren.

Anusha ignored the interruption, “And now you don’t care?” she said. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I can try. That’s all I can offer,” said Raidon. His expression didn’t betray the least hint of shame.

Anusha blew out her cheeks as she regarded the man. He was as unreadable as ever. At least he was drinking tea that morning, not wine. But could she count on him the next time aboleths threatened?

Aloud she said, “Well, good!”

“I’m in,” said Japheth. “As I said this morning …”

Was he blushing?

The warlock continued, “I accept some blame in this. Moreover, Neifion’s made it clear he’s never going to stop hunting me. He’s working with Malyanna, who’s behind Xxiphu’s emergence and search for this Key, I have little doubt. We saw her with the Dreamheart as we disembarked from the city. Little good it’ll do her.”

“Well, count me out,” said Seren. “I’ve got my own troubles to deal with.”

“What? You can’t leave! You’re part of this,” Anusha said.

“Thay knows I’m alive,” Seren explained. “Morgenthel is hunting me. He’s traced me here to New Sarshell.”

“The wizard taker—the one from Valtelar?” asked Thoster.

“Yes. He set an ambush for me,” Seren said. “Fortunately, I discovered it before falling prey. His presence means he’s not going to give up. I need to deal with him before he takes me by surprise.”

Anusha didn’t much like Seren. Truth be told, she thought the woman was a little too familiar with Japheth. But aloud she said, “We could use your help.”

“If I end up dead or carted off to Thay, I’ll be little use to you,” replied Seren.

“But—,” Anusha started.

“And you’ve already got enough trouble with enemies popping up out of nowhere trying to kill you,” Seren added, gesturing to Japheth with her chin. “If I’m with you, Morgenthel is one more idiot on the list looking for us. Think of me leaving this way—I’ll be the distraction that keeps a powerful enemy off your flank. The displeasure of Thay is not something you want to contend with.”

“When you say it like that,” said Thoster, “it almost sounds noble.”

“You know me better than that, Captain,” Seren said. She and Thoster chuckled.

Yeva clapped her hands together. The sound rang through the chamber like a gong. “Very well,” she said. “What is our next move?”

Japheth cleared his throat. “We have to find Malyanna,” he said. “She’s got the Dreamheart. As I said before, it doesn’t have the power to wake the Eldest. But she must have used what strength remains in it to trigger Xxiphu’s breach.”

“I suppose she’s in Xxiphu—although, maybe not, if she’s out looking for this Key of Stars,” said Thoster.

“I can find her,” said Japheth. “With the power of my new pact, which she and I share, I can find her.”

Anusha smiled at him. He returned a wink.

“Well, where is she?” said Thoster. “Probably in some nightmare realm, eh? Or, is it Xxiphu after all?”

“Not in Xxiphu, it turns out, but in the world,” Japheth replied. “I need to conduct a rite, perhaps with Seren’s aid before she leaves, to nail her location down exactly. But from what I was able to discern this morning, she seems to be somewhere in Aglarond.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment, processing, wondering what the eladrin noble could possibly want there.

“That does not bode well,” Raidon said, his voice quiet.

The monk watched the others debate. It seemed he stood in a room separate from them. Their voices were muffled, and their expressions hard to read, as if they moved through shadowy cobwebs only he could see.

The image made him apprehensive, even slightly angry, though he couldn’t say why.

Raidon wanted to stalk from the room, the mansion, New Sarshell, and out of Impiltur altogether. He’d head north, perhaps all the way to the empty white expanses of the Great Glacier, where a man could be alone with his thoughts, and not be dragged down by the travails of the world.

And yet …

When Anusha had reminded him of the dream, the one they had apparently all shared, his resolve to leave crumbled. A fleeting familiarity with the odd scene depicted in the dream touched a chord in him. For some reason, it brought to mind the image of his mother, Erunyauvë.

It was the second time in two days that he’d thought of her.

Raidon’s hand went to the spellscar on his chest. He recalled how the image had once been contained on an amulet. The amulet had been his mother’s forget-me-not, the only thing she’d left him before she vanished when he was still a child. At that time, he hadn’t known any name for her other than Mother. And until he was older, he hadn’t appreciated the oddity of a Shou man, his father, and an eladrin woman bringing a child into the world together.

When his prospects in the city of his childhood had soured, he’d tried to find her. He had used the amulet to trace her. Eventually, he’d discovered her name, and more—

Raidon was startled from his reverie when he heard Japheth say “Aglarond.” He quickly reviewed the conversation he’d been mostly ignoring. Malyanna was in Aglarond? His heart skipped a beat.

“That does not bode well,” he said.

Everyone looked at him. Seren raised an eyebrow.

Raidon continued. “If Malyanna is in Aglarond,” he said, “it’s possible she is looking for a secret place called Stardeep, an eladrin citadel.”

“What’s that?” said Thoster.

“Stardeep was a secret prison-dungeon hidden in the depths of the Yuirwood forest …,” Raidon said. “Well, actually in a splinter of Faerie accessible only from certain points in the Yuirwood. It was hard to find and even harder to escape from.”

“Who are these eladrin, and whom do they imprison?” said Seren.

“They were called the Keepers of the Cerulean Sign. They watched over someone so perilous that killing him was deemed too dangerous. So they kept him, isolated and alone, impotent. They called him ‘the Traitor.’ His crime was preparing the way for the Aboleth Sovereignty.”

“You’re speaking in the past tense …,” Seren said.

“Because Stardeep is gone,” Raidon said. “So is the splinter of Faerie where it was built, a realm called Sildëyuir. The Traitor either escaped, or more likely died in the Spellplague, and the Keepers and their golem warden are dead. The Cerulean Sign burned into my chest is all that remains of their order.”

Raidon saw each person around the table digest his news in their own way; quietly, with a raised eyebrow, and in Seren’s case, a tiny shake of her head.

Thoster poured himself more tea. “So if this place is gone, why’s Malyanna interested in it?” he asked.

“Stardeep is destroyed … but its ruins remain,” said Raidon. “If she discovers their location, she might unearth the Traitor’s remains. I don’t know what the Key of Stars is that Xxiphu and Malyanna seek, but if it has to do with the Sovereignty, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Traitor knows.”

“You said the Traitor died when Stardeep was destroyed,” said Anusha.

“Remains can be reanimated, and questioned,” said Japheth.

Raidon nodded. “Just so,” he said.

Anusha frowned.

“So,” said Thoster. “There’s the hoary old aboleth city itself, hovering off the coast. And then there’s Malyanna, digging around somewhere in a ragged tatter of the Feywild near Aglarond, looking for the Key of Stars, or news of it. If we’re really serious about doing something about the situation—”

“And we are,” said Anusha.

Thoster nodded. “Then we need to deal with both,” he continued.

“Which first?” said Japheth.

Anusha stood up. “We need to split our efforts,” she said. “One group needs to monitor Xxiphu in case it does something awful, while the rest of us try to catch the eladrin noble in Aglarond before she finds Stardeep.”

“Well, I want to keep an eye on Xxiphu,” said Thoster. “It’s what’s sending out the call.”

“Good—I was thinking the same thing,” said Anusha. “With Green Siren, you can follow it around the Sea of Fallen Stars—for some reason, it seems to want to stay over water. Yeva should go with you; she can use her mental abilities to keep tabs on the aboleths’ intentions perhaps, or see if Malyanna puts in an appearance. And, with my dreamwalking, I can send a dream up to take a peek at what’s going on.”

“Hold on,” said Japheth. “You want to go with Green Siren, and spy on Xxiphu?”

“Yes,” Anusha replied.

The warlock frowned. “Which means, you’re suggesting that Raidon, Seren, and I go after Malyanna,” he said.

“Not me, remember; I’m out of this,” said Seren.

“Yes, I guess that’s correct,” said Anusha, ignoring the wizard.

Japheth’s face reddened, and his brows drew together. Words seemed to escape him for a moment.

“Look,” Anusha said, looking directly into Japheth’s eyes. “We can’t afford to let either the city or Malyanna slip away from us.”

“But your dream form is vulnerable to the Eldest!” said Japheth.

Seren raised a hand. “And, sorry to be blunt,” she said, “but isn’t anyone concerned that Raidon isn’t going to go after the warlock again once they’re alone? Raidon looked like he was hell-bent on killing Japheth down in the cellar. Seems like a dangerous idea.”

Raidon stirred himself to raise a conciliatory hand. “It was a lapse I don’t plan on repeating,” he said.

“All right,” said Seren, looking at him with a slightly disbelieving expression.

“I can take care of myself, and I certainly trust the monk,” said Japheth, interrupting. “What I don’t understand, Anusha, is how you think it’s a good idea that you get anywhere near Xxiphu? You should … come with me.”

Anusha turned to the wizard. “Remember how you gave the captain a charm to help him resist the call of his blood?” she asked. “Could you fashion something like that for me to wear to keep my mind anchored safely in my body?”

“Maybe,” said Seren.

“Would you?” said Anusha.

Seren smiled. “Of course,” she replied. “You might not guess it, but I do feel a little guilty leaving all of you in the lurch; it’s the least I can do. Shouldn’t be the work of more than a few hours. And Hells, then I can help Japheth with opening a way to Aglarond, should he require my aid. I recall a sequence or two for portal endpoints out that way. After that … I must hide away from Thay before Morgenthel finds me.”

“And what of our contract?” Raidon said to Seren.

“It was fulfilled when I ventured into Xxiphu with you, half-elf,” Seren replied. “If anything, I should be asking you to hold up your end of the bargain.”

The monk couldn’t bring himself to argue. Seren was partly right in any event.

“If you can find me when this all ends, I will do so,” he said.

The wizard sniffed. “Do you really think you’re going to live through this?” she said. “If you had any sense at all, you’d run and hide with me until it all blows over.”

Seren’s words made Raidon sad. But only a little. Because her words also sparked a memory of nobler days, and a protest. Raidon hadn’t been trained to give up when things got hard. No. He’d been taught, and he believed somewhere in his core, that the true mettle of a person was revealed in how they ultimately faced a difficult or even an impossible situation. Since returning from Xxiphu, he’d failed to be his best. But there was a chance to try one more time.

“I am pledged to this fight, whatever the outcome,” Raidon said. “It has taken so much from me already, I hardly begrudge giving up the rest.”

A weight seemed to lift from his shoulders, and he stood straighter.

Japheth, Anusha, and even Thoster frowned at his statement. His ability to read others was returning. His hallucination of gauzy webs filling in every empty space in the room had evaporated. The air in the salon was sweeter than when he had first entered, and the colors were more vibrant. He was feeling … relief?

Yes.

“Anusha Marhana,” Raidon said, “thank you for your intent to see this disaster through. You have my gratitude; you’ve kept us together since we returned from Xxiphu, you gave us a place to rest and recover from that horrible place, and now, despite our reluctance, you have brought us together long enough for a plan to be forged.”

“Here, here!” Yeva said.

Anusha blushed. “Thank you,” she said. “I only did what needed doing.”

“Exactly,” said Raidon.

CHAPTER NINE

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Aglarond, Yuirwood Forest

Japheth surveyed the circle formed by the glowing sigils. A hazy image of a forest path glimmered within its circumference. He and Seren had spent a good part of the afternoon scribing the design on the catacomb floor with golden chalks and purple inks.

He and Anusha had said their good-byes after the meeting in the salon. It’d been too hurried, with too many things left unsaid. She’d gathered her things, including her travel chest, and left the mansion. She’d accompanied Captain Thoster and Yeva, whose metallic form was concealed in a hooded cassock, down to the docks to see about Green Siren.

Watching her go had been as hard as resisting the call of his addiction. All Japheth wanted to do was run off with her to someplace safe from all worries. Childish fantasy, of course. Anusha was committed to putting things right. The only way he and she could have any kind of future was if he did his best to help her foil Malyanna and Xxiphu’s search for the Key of Stars. Whatever that was.

He still hated that Anusha’s plan required that he and she separate. When he considered all the terrible things that might befall her, he felt dizzy.

And he was going to miss her.

But, damn it, he was angry too. He’d shown he’d do anything for her by stealing the Dreamheart and imperiling his own sanity, and the world itself, to save her.

He’d put her first.

But she very obviously didn’t put him in the same place. He was secondary to her concern over dealing with the Sovereignty. That thought burned him. He’d sacrificed everything and laid his soul at her feet. She hadn’t reciprocated; she had put other things before him. More than that, she had pushed him away.

His skin warmed.

Two could play at that game. If she wanted to be quit of him, and that was her way of showing it, fine.

Japheth clenched his hands and ground his teeth.

“The circle is complete,” said Seren. “You and the monk should be on your way before it fades.”

For a moment, Japheth’s anger urged him to turn and simply walk away from it all.

Raidon, who’d spent the last few hours sitting in a lotus position meditating, stood. The half-elf’s sheathed blade released a cerulean spark that skittered across the floor. The monk bowed to the wizard.

“Thank you,” he said. “Without your help, none of this would have been possible. I hope we see you again after this is all over.”

Seren was caught off guard by the monk’s words. She nodded, coloring. “You’re welcome,” she managed to say. “And you will see me, because I mean to collect. Don’t go getting yourself killed just to get out of our bargain.”

When Raidon actually smiled, Japheth’s smoldering anger faded somewhat.

Then the monk turned to him and asked, “Ready?”

The warlock released a long breath. Of course he wasn’t going to walk away. He could stew about Anusha anytime, damn it.

“Yes,” he replied. He had everything he needed for a long trip hidden away within his cloak.

Japheth focused on the blurred forest inside the circle. He stepped past the threshold, into the image. He gripped his rod in one hand, ready for—

There was no ground on the other side of the linked portal.

Japheth fell. Branches lashed his body and his flailing limbs.

Then his cloak caught him in a fist of lightless safety.

When the darkness let go, Japheth stepped onto a buckled, overgrown flagstone path shadowed by a thick forest canopy.

Weathered stone columns poked from the ground, pointing at awkward angles like teeth in an orc’s mouth. They had probably once formed a ring, but time and some past earth movement had destroyed their symmetry.

A crash of branches jerked his head around.

Raidon slid down the bole of a tree, slowing his descent with a single hand on the trunk. The monk made being dropped out of thin air into a tangle of tree branches seem like an everyday occurrence.

When the half-elf’s feet were on the ground, he said, “I’ve experienced worse, but that transition was unexpected.”

“I hadn’t realized how disrupted the circle was,” Japheth replied. “Now that I see this side, I’m surprised it worked at all.”

Raidon gave a slight nod. The monk’s attention shifted to the trees that pressed close beyond the periphery of leaning stones. “Back in Aglarond,” he murmured.

Japheth studied the monk. The man seemed more like the person he’d first met below Gethshemeth’s island. The listless detachment Raidon had displayed since they’d returned from Xxiphu was still somewhat in evidence, but it was clear the man was making an effort to throw it off.

Raidon continued gazing into the trees, as if recalling an old escapade.

“What is it?” said Japheth.

Raidon shook his head. “Not important,” he said. “Is Malyanna near?”

Japheth frowned and said, “Give me a moment.”

The warlock drew in a breath. He focused on his pact. He imagined it as a physical thing, as a thin strand of celestial fire connecting his heart to all that lay beyond the vault of Faerûn’s sky.

Since he’d sworn his new pact, he’d noticed occasional tugs and tiny yanks on the connection. At first, he hadn’t thought anything of it. Then three nights before, he’d awoken from a dream of empty space with an insight. The sensations corresponded to individual and particularly powerful beings associated with the stars. And the two he recognized were the Eldest, and Malyanna.

It scared Japheth more than a little that those two were so entwined with his new spell source he could sense them, even if only vaguely, through the connection he shared. It was something he tried not to think about too much. Unfortunately, just as he could sense them, apparently they were aware of him; Malyanna had crafted a glyph that allowed the Lord of Bats to find him with little effort. He’d have to devise a way to shield himself from such scrutiny.

But it was the Lord of Bats’s appearance that made him realize that each tug he discerned through his connection to the star pact probably indicated literal shifts in the geographical or planar positions of Malyanna and the Eldest. Because she’d sent Neifion after him, Japheth realized he could track her the same way.

Unfortunately he couldn’t yet imagine how to fashion a glyph as potent as the one Neifion enjoyed. Not that he’d had any time to spend on it, given that Neifion had only appeared the day before. Then, that night …

Japheth shook his head, trying to clear it of distracting thoughts. Concentrating on the celestial thread of his pact was difficult enough without the memories of the silky warmth of Anusha’s skin intruding—

Stop it.

He placed his hands palm to palm and closed his eyes. He imagined the thread once again, trying to detect in it the tiny shifts of tension that would betray Malyanna’s location to him.

It’d be child’s play to see where the eladrin noble was if he placed a crystal of traveler’s dust in one eye. The gates of perception would open wide, then.

No! No, not unless he’d exhausted every other method. The desire for the dust still lived in him. Thankfully the urge to dig out his supply wasn’t the irresistible geas it had once been. Lately, it was more like the memory of an urgent desire rather than the desire itself.

Was he finally leaving the crimson road behind?

“Can you sense her?” said Raidon.

“Don’t rush me,” snapped Japheth. In truth, he was embarrassed. He was allowing distractions to cloud his mind. He was scared to make a real effort and engage so intimately with the star pact.

He drew in a slow breath and released it, imagining as he did so that he expelled all the diversions, all the fears, and any concern other than the sense of connection with the stars.

There! The celestial connection pulled and shifted … that way! She was near. But something was muffling his ability to determine specific distance. It was as if Malyanna were not fully in the world.

Japheth cleared his throat. “This way, but I don’t know how far,” he said. He pointed north, away from the path, into the darkness between the trees.

“Then we’d best start,” said the monk. He stepped off the path and headed in the direction Japheth indicated.

Walking between the trees proved easier than Japheth had guessed. The trunks were several paces apart, and at least in the region they moved through, the undergrowth was suppressed beneath a layer of reddish humus. They advanced up a slope at an angle. The ground was studded with stones and larger boulders, occasional ravines, and deadfalls, requiring that they divert from the straight-line path Japheth tried to stay on.

Birdsong brightened the air, but it was infrequent and tentative. The warm smell of a growing forest was evident, but an underlying tang of sweet rot underlay everything, as if corpses of dead animals and overripe fruit lay just beneath the loam.

A few times a curling, scratchy sensation skittered across Japheth’s skin and crazed his sense of connection to his pact. When that happened, the disagreeable smell grew stronger. The first time it happened, Japheth nearly gagged. He realized then the smell wasn’t the odor of rotting flesh—it was the odor of decaying magic.

It was the aroma of a pocket of active spellplague.

Raidon didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he kept his poker face perfectly intact. The warlock resolved to do the same, but he paid careful attention to his surroundings. He didn’t want to step into an unknown sinkhole dancing with unbound wild magic.

After traveling for what seemed like a quarter hour, Japheth stopped.

“What is it?” asked Raidon.

“We’re hardly getting any closer,” the warlock replied. “I don’t understand it. It’s as if she’s moving just enough to stay ahead of us … no, that’s not it. It’s like she’s behind some sort of veil.”

“If Malyanna is looking for Stardeep, she could well be behind ‘a veil’ as you say; she could be in the Feywild,” said Raidon. “Stardeep lays in a splinter of Sildëyuir, itself a fragment of ancient Faerie. With the Feywild’s return, Sildëyuir, and perhaps the prison complex of the Keepers, was reabsorbed, and not gently.”

“How do you know that?” asked Japheth. “Sounds sort of esoteric for someone like …” He trailed off, but let his comment stand without apology.

“You know I bear the Cerulean Sign and the blade Angul,” Raidon said. “Is it really a surprise I know something of what has occurred here, where the Keepers sheltered?”

“I suppose not.”

“Before I found you in Gethshemeth’s lair, I was in communication with the last remnant of Stardeep; a sentient golem named Cynosure. It was Cynosure that transferred me across the face of Faerûn more than once, first to collect Angul, then to the island where we met.”

“So this Cynosure—it’s in Stardeep?” said Japheth. “It sounds like a useful ally. Are you talking to it now?”

“No, Cynosure is gone,” replied Raidon. “It used up the last stores of its endowed life to get me to the isle, so I could sunder the Dreamheart before the Eldest woke.”

Japheth thought back to that subterranean cavern and winced. Stealing the relic, and thus preventing Raidon from concluding his quest had been his only option. But of course the monk had never forgiven him for what he’d done. Were the warlock in Raidon’s place, he’d probably feel the same way.

It was a bit unsettling to travel alone with a man who’d just tried to kill you the day before.

Japheth cleared his throat. “Right!” he said. “So you’re saying that if we find a way to step over into the Feywild, I could trace Malyanna better?”

“It could be.”

The warlock pursed his lips, considering.

Raidon said, “This forest is rife with portals into what was once Sildëyuir, though Cynosure indicated many of them were likely contaminated with spellplague.”

“More than likely; it’s a certainty,” said Japheth. “I can sense it, you know. Pockets of spellplague. Cynosure was right. It’s like a battlefield through here, scattered with dead and twisted fragments of the old Weave.”

Raidon narrowed his eyes, glanced around, then shook his head. “You can sense it? I don’t detect anything,” he said.

“Really?” said Japheth. “Trust me, we’ve passed some nasty bits I steered us around.”

“I don’t doubt it,” replied Raidon. “Most of my abilities are manifestations of the power of my mind over my body. Perhaps spellplague doesn’t pull at me like it does a spellcaster. When the Year of Blue Fire found me, it didn’t like my taste, and spit me out, though not without consequence.”

Japheth’s eyes dropped to the spellscar on the half-elf’s upper chest.

“You were lucky to get off so light,” said the warlock.

The monk made no reaction.

“Anyway, we should head back to the last concentration of spellplague I noticed,” Japheth said. “It was big. Sometimes such sharp concentrations indicate the presence of an old portal.”

They backtracked. First there was a smell of sour oranges, but soon enough, the revolting odor was turning the warlock’s stomach again. It put Japheth in mind of an undead whose flesh was nearly sloughed off. In their case, though, it was the world’s facade ready to fall away.

They skirted the bole of a large, tree that stood dead center in the spellplague pocket.

In a hollow between two of the tree’s massive roots, a sinkhole created a natural stair that apparently provided an entrance into the forest’s understory down steps of dead roots, boulders, and raw earth. Another root curled over the top of the hollow, creating a natural lintel.

Japheth advanced, one hand extended before him. When his boot heel touched the first rocky step, the “lintel” and the hollow beyond it burst into blue flame. A streamer of fire separated from the blaze and reached for him.

Japheth yelled and threw himself back. His cloak, sensing his desire to escape, automatically tried to pull him into its protective embrace.

Like the head of a striking cobra, the streamer of spellplague lunged. It speared Japheth through the gut and retracted, pulling him through the arch and in an explosion of blue flame.

Raidon leaped for the trailing hem of the warlock’s cloak. His fingers brushed the fabric, but it jerked away like a live thing.

The filament of fire retracted, and Japheth disappeared in sapphire light. The Sign on Raidon’s chest tingled in sympathy.

The monk’s unsuccessful leap put him on the lip of the hollow.

The light of the roused spellplague pocket danced before him. Through it he saw past the arch to the hollow’s far wall. The warlock was not inside the tree.

A disconcerting sense of loss swept over Raidon.

Had Japheth found an active portal into the Feywild, or had he simply been dissolved by the roused plague? Dissolved, like the people in the trade caravan taken by the fire during the Year of Blue Fire. Just like Hadyn, the youth who’d died trying to gain a spellscar in the Plaguewrought Lands. Just like …

He wrenched his mind from the trap of contemplating the death of his adopted daughter.

Instead, Raidon made fists capable of breaking stone. But no foes offered themselves for him to sate his urge to hurt something.

Angul murmured and shifted on his back, as if imploring the monk to take some foolhardy action anyhow.

He forced his hands open. He had to think, and not let emotion channel his decisions—especially the part of himself that hoped the warlock really was dead, burned to ash by remnant wild magic. It would be a fitting punishment for the man responsible for keeping the threat of the Eldest alive.

Only one way to find out what had really happened. He would have to pass through the natural arch himself.

“So be it,” he said. He’d survived contact with spellplague on more than one occasion. Perhaps he had developed resistance. He touched the Sign on his chest. Once more the image of his mother came to him, stronger than ever.

Not a bad thought to go out on, he thought, and walked into the hollow through a screen of flame.

Warmth brushed his skin, like the sun’s caress on a clear day. Colors, mostly blue, swirled before his eyes. One more step, and he was someplace else.

The scent of cedar and loam sharpened. The air was cooler too. It was like a draft of cold water on a hot day, refreshing and bracing, and just slightly intoxicating.

He was still surrounded by forest, but one whose majesty exceeded the Yuirwood in every way. The trunks here were massive. They marched away like pillars in an emperor’s throne room whose lofty ceiling was a canopy of mists, leaves, and dancing firefly lights.

He stood on a granite step draped in a fall of autumn colors. A nimbus of blue fire played at its periphery. Japheth sprawled half on, half off the platform. The warlock wasn’t moving, and smoke curled up from inside his cloak. Despite everything, Raidon was relieved to see his companion still in one piece.

The half-elf bent and placed a finger along the fallen man’s neck. He detected a pulse, slow and steady. Raidon pulled Japheth all the way onto the platform so that his feet weren’t dangling over the residual tongues of blue flame. As far as he could discern, the warlock hadn’t suffered any obvious burns from the fire. Nor could he discover any sign of a spellscar. Maybe the warlock has passed through the portal too quickly to be affected. On the other hand, sometimes spellscars took time to manifest …

A rustle of leaves drew Raidon’s attention to the forest.

A gnarled mass of tree roots stepped out of the undergrowth, revealing itself to be a man made of bark and boughs. He looked like a rougher, cruder version of Grandmother Ash, the entity who’d guided Raidon across the Plaguewrought Land. If the creature was so close to a spellplague-infested portal, perhaps it was touched by the same wild magic.

“Who are you?” said Raidon.

The creature snarled “Desecrator!” in the fey language Raidon’s mother had taught him, then charged.

The monk slipped to the outside of the creature’s massive clublike arm, then sidekicked it in the neck. The snap of breaking branches ricocheted through the forest, and the woodling dropped like the felled tree it resembled.

Two more woodlings appeared on the edge of the clearing. They studied the tableau. One murmured to the other. Its rough voice was too soft for the monk to make out distinct words.

“We are not here to fight you. I’m sorry about your companion here,” called Raidon in Elvish. “But we will defend ourselves if attacked.”

The creatures returned their attention to the granite step. One said, its voice louder, “Then you’d best prepare your strongest defense.”

The woodlings melted back into the forest.

When he was satisfied the two creatures were not preparing an immediate offense, Raidon stooped and pulled Japheth up onto his shoulders. He stepped over the first crumpled fey creature and off the low platform. The faint play of flames surrounding the platform doused itself.

The monk made his way to the base of the closest tree trunk. He studied it for signs that it might suddenly animate into a far larger tree monster like the one the Lord of Bats had briefly called below Marhana Manor.

He detected no telltale signs of an imminent threat. He carefully rolled Japheth off his back and arranged him to a sitting position.

He produced a wineskin. He took a swig of the wine himself, then bent over the warlock. Raidon wet Japheth’s lips before pouring a tiny portion of the red fluid into the man’s mouth.

The warlock coughed and opened his eyes. “What’re you … Oh,” he said. Japheth looked around, taking in the forest, the platform, and the unmoving man made of branches.

He abruptly glanced down at himself, his hands, arms, and torso. He was looking for something, but seemed afraid to find it.

“The spellplague didn’t care for your taste, it seems,” Raidon said. “It happens. You’re fortunate.”

Japheth blew out a breath. He returned to scanning the surrounding panorama. He smiled and nodded as if satisfied in what he saw.

“This is Faerie?” said Raidon. “Or, what was Sildëyuir, merged back into Faerie?”

“Faerie, at the very least,” said Japheth. “A forest vista like this one is visible from the cave mouth where Neifion laired in the Feywild.”

“And Malyanna?”

Japheth closed his eyes and cocked his head to one side. He raised a finger and pointed off through the trees. “That way,” he said. “I can sense her as clearly as if she were standing right there. She’s close.”

“Close?”

“The veil is gone,” Japheth replied. “She’s within this realm, and no more than half a day’s walk, if that. But be on your guard. I’m pulling on the thread that leads to her. Unless my luck changes for the better, she’ll feel the tug, and know we’re coming.”

CHAPTER TEN

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Green Siren, Sea of Fallen Stars

The cool wind off the water tumbled Anusha’s hair. The salty tang smelled like childhood.

Mist clung to the wave tops. Green Siren’s prow swept a lane through the fog as the ship pushed across the sea.

Anusha was not a sailor, but she was the daughter of a shipping merchant. When she was a child, she’d spent years aboard the small fleet of craft Marhana kept. That familiarity allowed her to note the newer boards interspersed with original planking, the fresh sails, recently cleaned surfaces, and dozens of other small improvements to Green Siren’s demeanor. Anusha could tell that each repair had been done with masterful attention to detail.

The captain stood next to her, his weathered hands on the wheel.

If Lucky had been aboard, he would have been standing between them, probably licking Anusha’s hand looking for a treat. But she’d decided to leave the loyal hound at home, in the care of the servants. She’d become too attached to the mongrel to put him in harm’s way. It was different for her, the captain, and the crew. They knew what they were getting themselves into.

“So, what do you think?” said Thoster, nodding across the deck.

“Stonekeel’s work?” Anusha asked.

The captain smirked and nodded.

“You must have paid through the nose to get her on such short notice,” she said. “I can’t think of a shipwright with a longer backlog.”

“Karna Stonekeel and I go back, ’s all,” the captain said. “I paid her a king’s ransom, aye, but she owed me too.”

Anusha decided not to ask what the shipwright could possibly owe a pirate.

“Last time I put out of New Sarshell,” said the captain, “it was Japheth on deck, and you stowed away in the hold, not that I knew it then. With you up here this time, it makes me wonder; do you think we’ll find a warlock down there stuffed in a trunk?”

“You’re funny, Captain,” she said. She smiled at the ridiculousness of the image.

No, Japheth wasn’t on the ship. He was … where? If the wizard’s portal ritual had worked, he was deep in the Yuirwood, tracking down Malyanna.

Using the powers granted to him by his newly sworn star pact.

Anusha frowned.

“You all right lass?” asked Thoster.

Anusha drew in a breath, and nodded. “Just letting my mind reel out too far,” she said.

“Worried about the warlock?” the captain said.

She wasn’t worried in the way he guessed, but she nodded anyway.

“I wouldn’t,” Thoster said. “He’s no slouch, and he’s with Raidon too.”

“True,” she said.

“And, I hope he ain’t worrying about you; I’m here,” the captain added with a chuckle.

“Don’t forget Yeva,” she said.

“Your friend the walking statue?” the captain replied. “She likes it below, it seems.”

“Well, she doesn’t like to come on deck much because she’s afraid she’ll fall off and sink.”

The captain grinned.

“Also—just like you said about Raidon, I’m ‘no slouch’ either,” she said.

“Indeed,” Thoster replied.

Anusha laughed.

“Japheth,” mused the captain, “comes off as a fierce sort, at least on the surface. He once told me he could curse the heart out of a demon. Trying to ruffle my feathers by way of indirect threat, I think. But … I don’t doubt he could slay a demon just so, and probably not think twice about it.”

“I suppose,” said Anusha.

“But I think he’s proved he’d go the last mile for you,” the captain said.

“Yes. What’s it to you, pirate?”

“Well, I don’t mean to be nosy, but I have to wonder why he’s there”—the man pointed east—“and you’re here?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Anusha said.

The captain chuckled. “Mayhap,” he said. “But were I you, I wouldn’t throw a good thing away just to prove I could.”

Anusha snorted. “We each took on the task suited to our strengths,” she said. “Separating was the logical choice—we didn’t choose against the relationship, as you make it sound. It’s not an either-or. Being in love doesn’t mean you do everything together.”

The captain raised his hands. “My misunderstanding!” he said. “Didn’t mean to wrinkle your frock.”

“It’s all right,” Anusha replied.

But it unsettled her how the privateer had so casually pierced to the heart of the matter. Had she separated them for more than merely logical reasons?

If so, then so be it, she thought. It had been necessary. Too many questions required answers—answers she was unlikely to get if they remained together while danger closed in from every direction.

The question was, could she separate the man from his issues? When she was with him, forgetting her concerns was easy. Despite her fears, he’d demonstrated he wasn’t a slave to his new pact, nor even to his old addiction.

It was when she was apart from him that all her worries returned. That’s really why she’d suggested they separate, so she could think clearly without Japheth around to confuse her.

At this point, she had to admit her plan wasn’t working.

If anything, with only her memory of him present, she vacillated even more spectacularly between hope and distress, back and forth over the course of hours.

All she knew for certain was that she missed him.

“Hold,” said the captain. His voice was devoid of the amusement it’d held moments earlier. “Listen!”

“No, I’d rather we not discuss my love life any longer …” Anusha saw the captain’s head was cocked to one side, as if he were straining to hear something.

The mist around Green Siren thinned. Then the fog peeled away, opening up the view on all sides.

Streamers of black cloud swirled on the horizon, creating a vortex in the sky. Lightning danced at the storm’s hollow heart, briefly illuminating an obelisk jutting from the crown of a thunderhead.

It was still miles away, thank Torm, but—

A brilliant flash revealed the petrified shape that crouched atop the obelisk. The Eldest! Still unmoving and as stiff as stone … But even the glint from its pocked carapace across the miles that separated them made Anusha’s stomach heave. She flinched her gaze away, then forced herself to return her regard to the horrific sight.

Small dots circled Xxiphu like crows around a tower. If the flying shapes were visible at such a distance against the city, Anusha realized that whatever the specks were, they must be colossal.

“The music … it’s like smoke in my mind,” Thoster said. “Awful, yet … enticing. Xxiphu commands that we find the Key of Stars and deliver it.” The privateer clutched the amulet that lay atop his jacket. When his fingers brushed the stone, some of the tension that bunched above his eyes faded.

Anusha swallowed. She strained to listen, but heard only the sound of the waves against the ship and the distant rumble of thunder.

“I hear nothing,” she said.

The captain shook his head. “It’s there all the same,” he said.

“Does it say anything else?” Anusha asked.

Thoster nodded. “It says, ‘Come to me, children of Toril, and serve.’ ”

The fluting melody tattered the moment Thoster’s fingers brushed Seren’s amulet. The sound threatening to engulf his mind in a conflagration of wonder was reduced to simple, if atonal, music. The piping melody, echoing and ethereal, lost its power to command him. He let out a relieved breath.

The magic in the talisman, which kept him from unraveling into a scaled mess, also protected him from Xxiphu’s mental compulsion.

“Children of Toril?” said Anusha.

Thoster shrugged, but as he did so, the image of a scaled fish person flashed in his mind. A kuo-toa. He tried to say the word aloud, but surprise robbed him of volume.

The deck vibrated with Yeva’s approach from belowdecks. “I counsel we keep our distance,” the iron woman said.

Thoster only nodded.

“Yeva,” said Anusha, “The captain says he can hear some sort of music. But I don’t hear it, nor does the crew. Can you?”

The woman’s metal head swiveled to regard the distant city. “A telepathic aura surrounds Xxiphu,” she said. “It carries some kind of compulsion, but one narrowly tuned to reach only a certain subset of creatures. More than that … I cannot say.”

“Kuo-toa,” said Thoster, finally managing to make his voice work again. “That’s what Xxiphu’s after.”

“And you can hear it?” said Anusha. Her gaze dropped to the captain’s forearm. It was covered with the sleeves of his black coat. She’d seen what was hidden beneath, though. “Would that mean—”

“Something along those lines,” Thoster interrupted. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out myself.”

“Mmm,” Anusha said.

The lookout on the mainmast screamed. “Something in the water! Approaching starboard!”

Thoster followed the woman’s pointing finger.

A school of large fish darted along just below the sea surface, occasionally breaking above, roiling and splashing the water. The disturbance was closing on Green Siren’s position. He squinted, focusing on the approaching school. He felt his eyebrows rise when, instead of fins, he saw scaled limbs and webbed feet. Spear tips, harpoons, and other weapons gripped tight in fishy hands also flashed above the water line.

“Hard about!” Thoster yelled, even as he spun the wheel. Too little, too late. The attackers were already too close. He wished, not for the first time, that Green Siren had a porthole installed below the waterline to afford a better view of threats that swam beneath the surface.

“Break out arms! Repel boarders!” he shouted.

He glanced at Anusha. “Don’t just stand there; get to your cabin and lock yourself inside your strongbox, lass!” he said. “You ain’t protected by dream!”

Anusha ran for the stairs. Yeva stamped after her.

Thoster lunged for the starboard railing.

The approaching swimmers had already halved the distance. Though still mostly hidden beneath the waves, Thoster knew what they were: kuo-toa. He also knew there were many, many more than the few dozen he could see along the surface.

Crew swarmed the railing around Thoster. Most had their swords and axes drawn, but a few fired crossbow bolts into the swell of the approaching tide. The bolts struck the frothing water with no apparent effect.

“Don’t waste your shots!” Thoster yelled. “Wait until they breach!”

He drew his venomous blade. Its cunning gears immediately began to spin and click, pulling poison from the ever-full reservoirs hidden in the hilt.

The kuo-toa reached the ship and swarmed up the sides.

Ten or twelve attackers fell back into the waves, crossbow bolts buried in their heads, necks, or chests. But others leapt from the water to take the place of the fallen. The kuo-toa gave voice to a wordless chant that prickled Thoster’s spine. It was the same melody as the one emanating from Xxiphu.

The second wave of climbers reached the railing, and nearly as one, the crew slashed, stabbed, and clubbed the boarders. A dozen more kuo-toa fell back into the water. Scarlet threads of blood spread through the lapping waves.

A crewman screamed as a kuo-toa harpoon skewered him through the chest. The attacker wrenched the harpoon, pulling the crewman forward over the rail. The man yelled again before he hit the water. Thoster kept his eyes on the spot where the man had gone under, even as he dispatched two boarders with his sword. The crewman didn’t surface again.

A yell pulled his attention to the ship’s port side. A separate wave of kuo-toa poured over the railing there, unopposed. The damn things had surrounded Green Siren!

“ ’Ware behind you!” he screamed at his crew. Their attention was fully occupied with the initial boarders, who’d apparently served merely as a distraction.

Thoster swept his sword through three more starboard attackers, then charged across the deck to a wedge of spear-wielders who’d come over on the port side. The kuo-toa hissed and cried out in a disturbing language whose slick consonants made him queasy. He didn’t know the words, but … The sounds were hauntingly familiar.

He growled and engaged the lead kuo-toa. It was more proficient than the ones he’d already dispatched, damn it all. The two sides of the wedge continued to move forward, attempting to wrap and surround him!

A kuo-toa on his flank shoved a spear into Thoster’s left hip.

“Umberlee’s lying lips!” he said.

He took a step back, but his sword found the throat of an attacker. The creature blackened with poison and fell, but another kuo-toa immediately stepped into the gap.

Thoster tried to take another step, but the smooth curve of the mainsail ended his retreat. At least they couldn’t get behind him, he thought.

The exclamations of his crew grew more desperate. Thoster couldn’t spare a moment to assess the situation. It was all he could do to keep the five creatures pressing him from sliding something sharp into his viscera.

Then the kuo-toa on his right spit up blood and dropped. A sheen of light briefly illuminated … something standing behind it.

The creature next to it turned to see what happened to its comrade, but before it could complete its motion, it screamed. It joined the first on Green Siren’s deck. The same sparkle of golden light hinted at an invisible presence.

“Anusha?” the captain said, and plunged his sword through one of the remaining confused kuo-toa.

Yet another of his attackers shrieked and fell.

“None other!” came the woman’s voice from an empty point in space.

The combined effort of his poisonous blade and her invisible one broke the wedge of attackers into so many unmoving fishy corpses.

The deck vibrated beneath his boots an instant before Yeva appeared from the doorway leading to the ship cabins. Four milling kuo-toa rushed her. She glanced in their direction. A corona briefly flared into an elaborate pattern of light haloing her head, and two of the four tumbled and lay still.

The other two didn’t flinch. One stabbed Yeva in the stomach; its spear broke on her metal body. The other tried to run past her through the door, but she stopped it cold with an iron punch to the face.

“Why are the kuo-toa attacking us, Captain?” said Anusha’s voice.

He shrugged. “They’re babbling something, but I ain’t proficient in fish talk,” he said, grabbing his amulet.

When he touched it, his sense of the ethereal music sleeting through his head faded, and the chant the creatures uttered lost its familiarity. But something in him was kin to the fatherless biters, and both Anusha and he knew it. She did him the courtesy of not pursuing the issue.

Another wave of kuo-toa swept over the railings on both the port and starboard sides simultaneously.

“How many are there?” Yeva yelled.

“Too many,” he said. “Yeva, you and Anusha are worth five of my crew put together. Hold ’em off the port side. I’ll help the lads keep starboard clear.”

He swept into the press, wielding his sword like a scythe; with it, he reaped.

But no matter how many kuo-toa they killed, more leaped out of the water. Their awful, lisping chant, voiced nearly as one, was thick in the air. The words tugged at him, urging him to accept some terrible insight. Part of him wanted to look. Most of him wanted to turn tail and run the other way.

Thoster’s shadow reached out across the deck for an instant as thunder cracked, too close.

He whirled and saw Yeva lying unmoving, face down. Her metal skin glowed a dull red. Where her body touched the deck, wood smoldered.

Two kuo-toa with elaborate headdresses and brandishing pincer spears stood near the fallen woman. Residual sparks of electricity danced between them. They reminded him of the priestess Nogah, whose strange message had pulled him into the mess in the first place. If those two shared anything like the power Nogah had been able to command, Green Siren was in trouble.

Kuo-toa stampeded through the doorway Yeva had guarded, into the crew cabins.

“They’ll find my luggage!” came Anusha’s voice.

She briefly materialized, resplendent in golden armor. She hewed into the rear flank of the creatures swarming the cabinway.

“Here! This way!” she yelled. “I’m right here!”

A few of the boarders turned to engage her. Most didn’t.

The anxiety fluttering in his stomach redoubled. Green Siren was being swamped beneath a horde whose numbers seemed endless. If ten or twenty kuo-toa appeared for every defender, the ship would be lost no matter how much power he, Yeva, or Anusha could bring to bear individually. And Yeva didn’t look like she was part of the fight any longer. Anusha might soon follow; if she wasn’t able to defend her body, her phantom self would be snuffed out too.

He had to do something. But he was terrified to try.

“You’d rather be dead?” he muttered to himself as he pushed his sword into the stomach of a kuo-toa trying to do the same to him with its spear. His enemy curled into a knot of unmoving scales.

With his shaking free hand, Thoster grabbed his amulet. He jerked hard, parting the leather strand securing it around his neck. He dropped it into a jacket pocket.

The ethereal music resolved to a symphony of dire portent and crystal-clear meaning. The chant of the kuo-toa sounded in nearly perfect accompaniment. The kuo-toa were indeed set to guard the ocean beneath the hovering city of Xxiphu.

With his mind now naked to the penetrating emanation, Thoster was commanded to do the same.

“No,” he said. “I am Eneas Thoster. I am slave to no one!”

The clamor of Xxiphu’s melody redoubled. He resisted the authority the music tried to assert over him. It did not have the right. Xxiphu was claiming dominion where it should have none. And Thoster wasn’t going to stand for it.

His fear turned suddenly to anger.

Something inside him reacted. Like a burning taper set to a pile of oil-soaked tinder, rage flared in his chest. It filled him up like waves fill a bay at stormcrest. It was intoxicating. His eyes and mouth popped wide, and he screamed out a challenge. His voice was louder and deeper than was humanly possible, but he was too caught up in the surge of his fury to marvel at the volume.

His wrath burned away his wall of denial. Time to stop hiding from himself.

He was of kuo-toa lineage.

Denying it was a childish pursuit. Because, he suddenly understood, the blood that flowed in his veins was akin to the scaly forms that surged around him, but … it was also more potent. There was a strength in him that the kuo-toa around him lacked.

He reached for that strength, and it fitted itself to him like a comfortable pair of gauntlets.

His shadow wavered on the deck, seeming to inflate for a moment before becoming his own shape again.

Thoster’s gaze fell upon the two kuo-toa wielding lightning. They stared back at him. Their confident grip on their pincer spears grew slack in confusion.

One spoke. Her voice slurred as it attempted Common. “What … What is this? Who are you … Should we know you?”

Thoster didn’t have an answer for her.

Anusha’s form wavered into existence once again, convulsing. It disappeared in a puff of golden light. A scream, Anusha’s physical, fleshy scream, echoed down the crowded cabinway. The invaders had found her sleeping body. Time was up.

He bellowed out a command of his own. “Stop your attack!” He felt his voice partly reaching into that same mental plane in which Xxiphu’s mental command reverberated.

All around him, kuo-toa paused.

Thoster raised both hands over his head, the palms spread wide. A vibrancy tingled beneath his skin, a feeling of freedom that, for the first time, didn’t terrify him. He wanted to see what he truly was.

Time for worry was long past. He channeled all the power surging through him into his voice. “Leave these waters, kuo-toa!” he called. “By the right of my blood, which I share with you, listen to me! Forsake this false idol, lest it command you to your doom.”

His last word hung in the air and in the ethereal space beyond hearing like the tolling of a cathedral bell. His shadow enlarged once more for the length of a heartbeat. When the sound finally died away, Thoster slumped to the decking, utterly wrung out.

But he was grinning from ear to ear. Across the entire ship, kuo-toa turned from their onslaught. One by one, they returned to the Sea of Fallen Stars.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Feywild

Taal strode across a vista of bare rock, jagged boulders, and the occasional stunted tree. Malyanna went before him, silhouetted by the golden illumination that rimmed the approaching horizon. The black hound Tamur slipped in and out of the shadows at the periphery of his vision.

They were leaving the Watch on Forever’s Edge behind. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be giddy at the prospect.

A thought occurred to him.

“My lady,” he said, “Why do we travel by long roads when your shadow beast could whisk us through shadow to our destination in an instant?”

“The roads we must ultimately travel are broken, and lie tangled in half-meshed demiplanes,” the eladrin noble said. “Even routes through shadow would prove laborious, since Tamur has never physically visited the site we seek.”

“I see,” said Taal, even though he didn’t, really. What did it matter? The Edge dropped farther and farther into the darkness behind them, while ahead, the trees grew thicker, the light more glorious, and the sense of desolation lighter.

Finally they topped a rise, and looked down into a valley verdant with growth, ringing with bird song, and brightened by slanting beams of sunlight. Tears welled in his eyes.

Fireflylike motes of brilliance darted on gusts of cool wind. Falls in the far distance were a thread of silver that plunged down from majestic cliffs. The land was effervescent and alive, filled with a vigor that burned in every blade of grass, every tree leaf, and even in the towering white clouds that loomed above in the sky.

“Faerie,” he said, his throat tight.

“Just so,” Malyanna replied.

“Where do we go from here?” he asked.

“From here—Oh!” she cried.

Malyanna clutched her temple. “Something’s happening. Tamur!” she said.

The hound looked up from the root tangle of a large tree it was sniffing. Its ears twitched. Its tail was curled down and its ears laid back. The dog did not like the Feywild. It slunk over to Malyanna.

“To the observation balcony, Tamur,” the woman said. “The last one we visited. As quick as you can!”

The great dog lifted its head in the air, sniffed, then padded down the slope to where the ground was broken with several jutting rocks. Malyanna and Taal followed.

“What is it?” asked Taal.

The eladrin noble ignored him.

As Tamur drew closer to the stones, their shadows lengthened and deepened. The mastiff passed into the dimness.

Taal followed Malyanna into the stone’s murky shade.

Cold whispered against his neck.

From within the boulder’s shadow, the stone seemed like a hole in the Feywild itself. Tamur stepped through, and they followed.

Beyond lay a shifting corridor of gloom.

Taal’s boots sunk a few inches with each step into the floor. The air was as cold and as still as a winter’s night. Taal’s breath steamed, though Tamur’s and Malyanna’s did not.

He’d wondered, having seen Malyanna and the mastiff fade into shadow on more occasions than he could count, what they experienced. And he knew it for what it was: a bleak, cold path with nothing to recommend it except speed of travel.

They followed the sniffing hound down the interminable corridor for what must have been at least a bell, maybe two. So much for speed …

When the cold threatened to become unbearable, he called upon the power of his totem. A layer of warmth, like invisible tiger fur, formed around him.

When the corridor ended, Taal was unprepared. One moment he trudged through shadow. The next, he was standing on a roofed stone balcony overlooking a stormy seascape from a staggering height. His totem yowled in sudden, tense warning. Wherever they were, it wasn’t a safe place.

At least it wasn’t as cold … though the tang of brine and rotting fish wrinkled his nose.

Malyanna rushed to the curblike railing and looked over. He joined her. The moment he did so, he knew why his totem had cried warning. He was standing on a balcony of what could only be the aboleth city of Xxiphu.

His gaze fell down the side of a clifflike drop: Xxiphu’s exterior face. Terrible images were carved on the age-worn exterior, depicting thousands of interconnected images he couldn’t quite comprehend. Some inscriptions flowed and changed their shape.

The city’s base was lodged in the foot of a snow-topped mountain. No … that wasn’t what he was really seeing. It was a cloud top! Xxiphu rode the storm face like an observation tower. And miles lower yet stretched the dappled surface of the Sea of Fallen Stars.

Taal’s head threatened to spin, but iron discipline proved his anchor. He avoided showing any visible reaction.

Malyanna stabbed a finger down toward the water. “It’s that ship, Green Siren! Always meddling!”

Taal narrowed his eyes, searching. He saw a dot trailing a hair-thin wake almost lost in the glare off the sea. Was that it? The speck didn’t seem especially threatening from their position.

“I divined no one would have the stomach to continue opposing me,” the eladrin noble continued, “but they found determination somewhere. Fools. I should have made a greater effort to destroy them instead of letting them flee.”

“What, they think to enter Xxiphu again now that it’s partly roused?” he said.

She swung around to glare at him. “Who knows?” she replied. “I hope they do; they’ll find many more aboleths awake this time! But they’ve disrupted the Calling.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Ancient bloodlines, touched ages ago by the aboleths, yet live and breed on Faerûn,” Malyanna explained. “Xxiphu can command their loyalty by calling in the debts of their dead ancestors. Somehow, someone on that craft severed what I set in motion days ago. Japheth, I expect. I wonder …”

“Yes?” Taal said.

“Why hasn’t the Lord of Bats slain him yet?”

Taal had no answer.

Malyanna leaned farther over the curb and studied the point, her eyes narrowed with concentration. Taal asked for sharpness of eyesight from his totem. The dot instantly enlarged, becoming a ship in truth. He saw figures on deck, but they were too far away to make out as individuals. None had the dark clothing and milk-colored skin he associated with the Lord of Bats.

“Perhaps he grew tired of the chase?” Taal said.

“Or they slew him,” she said, shrugging. “Anyhow, if Green Siren is here, I can leave to retrieve the Key of Stars unopposed. The pretend Keeper who sought to bind the Eldest in the crown chamber, or Japheth with his Dreamheart-sworn pact, will count for nothing once I have the Key.”

Before Taal could ask what Malyanna meant by “pretend Keeper,” his attention was drawn to a shadow on a nearby cloud. He shifted his gaze and couldn’t restrain a gasp.

A kraken writhed through the air, no more then a hundred yards from the balcony. One dinner-plate eye fixed on Taal as it passed. He shuddered and looked away.

The eladrin paid the swooping horror only a passing glance. “Tamur! Take us to the Forest of Moths,” she said.

A lane of shadow whisked them away from the hovering atrocity called Xxiphu.

The darkling road deposited them in the middle of a thousand birdsongs. Trills, coos, and shrill whistles resounded through the living, bark-wrapped pillars enclosing them, all of which glowed with a silver radiance. The trees supported layer upon layer of mounting canopy. Breaks in the canopy revealed stars in a vast darkness. They were at least as grand as the stars of Taal’s long vanished youth.

Moths, each glowing with the same light as the tree bark, flittered and danced through the trees on all sides. Their wingspans easily measured three hands across.

Taal breathed in air thick with the perfume of night flowers. His mind whirled … not with the heady scent, but with the rapid transition of locations. He’d spent too long at Forever’s Edge to suddenly be jerked hither and yon and not suffer pangs of displacement. If he was forced down one more path of shadow to discover another fascinating, extraordinary, utterly unique vista, the contents of his stomach would join the tableau.

He swallowed. “We are back in the Feywild?” he managed to say.

“An imperfectly connected portion,” murmured the eladrin noble. She was studying the movements of the moths. “The Spellplague restitched Sildëyuir, a fragment of Faerie broken off long ago, back with its parent. But Sildëyuir was in pieces before the rejoining, thus the process remains ongoing, and the seams where the two sibling planes meet are unstable. Some pieces are hardly reconnected at all.”

“Is it dangerous here?” Taal asked.

“Of course,” Malyanna replied. “And home to creatures stirred from wherever they lurked before, like these moths. They are fey spirits of flux and instability.”

“Undead?”

“No. Spirits of the land itself, of Faerie’s pain. They are manifestations of the disruption.”

“And they’re dangerous?”

“Yes, I just said that. But they will also guide us to the ruins of Stardeep. As spirits of the tumult and reconnection, they possess a link to the shattered geography that would require Tamur weeks to learn.”

Malyanna lifted one hand to her mouth and bit her palm. A spurt of cold air preceded the ruby red blood that welled from the wound.

She lifted her arm and whistled. Blood trickled down her ivory limb in ragged lines.

The closest flux moth twisted in the air and arrowed toward the eladrin noble. Taal’s tiger tattoo snarled.

The moth all righted on Malyanna’s palm and unfurled a proboscis half a foot long. It sipped the red fluid like dew from a flower. Its wide, glowing wings shimmered from white to red.

The insect jerked up and fluttered in the air for a moment, then darted away, streaking the night with crimson radiance.

Malyanna made a fist with her bleeding hand and followed the creature. Taal and Tamur darted after her.

“I’ve temporarily bound it,” the eladrin threw over her shoulder. “While the binding remains active, its fellows will not harm us. Do nothing to provoke them!”

Taal made no answer as he followed.

He lost track of time as they rushed through a fey wood of dreamy radiance. Only he and Tamur did not glow; Malyanna began to leak a radiance similar to the trees as she stalked after the spirit moth. A sickly purple undertone gave her skin a diseased aspect.

The forest boundary was knife sharp. When the moth broke out into open space, Malyanna followed without comment. Taal realized that what he’d taken for a bank of mist beyond the tree’s edge was a thrashing swarm of flux moths. The mass extended off into a hazed gloom to the left and right, and dozens of feet into the air.

“There must be thousands,” he said.

“Thousands, or perhaps just one, iterated many, many times over,” said Malyanna.

“Ah. And our route is through the press of wings?” Taal said.

She nodded. “Though it’s different elsewhere,” she said, “in the Forest of Moths, the flux spirits guard weak points and serve as the agents of reconnection.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Malyanna,” he said.

“Think of them as needles and stitches that, before they are drawn tight in torn flesh, can draw blood,” she replied. “Just follow, and guard me.”

Malyanna whistled, producing a hollow, low-pitched hum. The bound flux moth returned to her hand and sipped again. But before it could flutter away, the eladrin noble closed her fist, catching the creature tight.

The moth flapped madly, buffeting Malyanna. New lines of blood appeared on her face and arms where the wing edges caught her. Taal realized the insect’s wings were sharp as razors.

Ignoring her fresh wounds, Malyanna approached the greater mass of spirits. She thrust the captive moth out before her like a brand set to ward off gathering dark, and chanted in a low, steady voice.

The bank of moths parted before her. A causeway of clear air formed ahead. She walked down the constricted way, careful to keep to the exact center.

Taal followed her into the lane. It wasn’t so narrow their shoulders risked brushing the edges, but if they were to swing their arms, their fingers might well graze the moth wing walls. Dead grass crumbled beneath his feet. The stars overhead wheeled in the sky, and he had to look away. The open air churned with the movement of thousands of flapping musky membranes. He resisted the urge to sneeze.

A totem growl drew his attention up.

A mote of glowing white fell from the left wall and stopped at Malyanna’s head. Taal leaped, snatched the thing out of the air with his right hand, and smashed its body into his left elbow. One of the trailing wings brushed his forearm. Blood welled instantly, and a line of pain stitched his skin. He dropped the unmoving body to the grass, careful to avoid the flaccid wing membranes. The body dissolved into dust.

The eladrin noble continued her steady progress forward.

Then they were through.

They stood before a massive gate, tumbled and broken beneath a darkling sky suddenly bereft of stars. The gate was mounted in the side of a great tor that rose up out of a “lake” of flux moths. The visible portion of the massive hill featured dead grass and tumbled stones.

Granite fragments of the ruined gate were half-buried in loose soil. The throat of the opening was completely collapsed and filled with rubble. One section of the fallen stone was chiseled with the stylized sign of a white tree. A great crack split the symbol nearly in two.

Nearly every other piece of stone was etched with lines of script. A few used letters familiar to Taal. He squinted, reading:

This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here … Nothing valued is here.

What is here is dangerous and repulsive. This message is a warning about danger.

… And more of the same. Taal looked up. “The warning written on these stones; it is scribed in many tongues,” he said.

“For all the good it did,” replied Malyanna. “The Traitor fled when this pocket plane lurched back into conjunction with Sildëyuir, and Sildëyuir with Faerie. But with the Spellplague raging he obviously didn’t get far, for he never returned again to the Spire of Winter’s Peace …”

Malyanna studied the collapsed gate a moment longer, then turned and ascended the slope. She and Taal picked a path between tumbled stones that looked as if they had extruded from the earth as slender rocky splinters, only to fall and shatter on the hillside.

Tamur bounded ahead, sniffing at every surface.

The summit resolved in the gloom as they drew closer. On it grew a single tree, larger than any tree Taal had ever before seen—and he’d seen his share of woody giants. But the one on the hilltop was bare of leaf. Its many branches clenched into a tight fistlike cyst.

“A Forest Monarch!” said Malyanna, her voice surprised.

“A dead one, if you mean the tree,” said Taal. “See—it’s petrified.”

“So it is.”

They approached until they stood beneath the mineralized growth. It was even larger than Taal had first surmised. Its trunk was easily more than a hundred feet in diameter!

“Forest Monarchs,” said Malyanna, her voice soft, “were primeval trees. But they were more than mere plants; they were emblems of the Feywild itself, vigorous beyond measure, and vessels of pure life force.”

“You sound melancholy,” Taal said. Was the eladrin actually showing sentiment?

“I grew up on stories of the Forest Monarchs,” she said. “Like the Golden Tree of Dawn that clutched the sun in its boughs and whose leaves split the light into creation’s prism …”

“Sounds beautiful,” he replied.

“Yes …”

She shrugged and shook her head. “But that was before I found the strength the Far Manifold offers,” she said. Her face lost the softness of reminiscence. Had it been there at all?

The great dog brushed her flank, then bounded away back down the slope, its nose to the ground. Taal doubted it’d flush any game in the dead and decaying pocket world.

Malyanna reached for the tree. Before her fingers could touch it, a spark of cerulean fire leaped the distance, like static discharge. She cried out as a wave of ice materialized from the air and pushed her away from the tree’s rigid surface.

Taal dropped into his ready stance, his oath tugging him to protect the Lady of Winter’s Peace. But how could he defend her from a petrified tree?

Malyanna examined her hand.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded. The ice shield she’d reflexively conjured steamed away. “Residual charge of Keeper warding fire,” she said. “This Monarch was an embodiment of it, most likely … but its energies are spent.”

“Spent on what?” Taal said.

“Unless I miss my guess, capturing that which attempted to flee Stardeep,” she replied.

They traced the periphery of the gnarled tree until they came to a place where the contorted, squeezed branches offered a gap wide enough to serve as passage inward, toward the heart of the cyst the tree clutched.

Malyanna bowed her head and muttered a few words whose meaning evaded Taal’s understanding like fish darting away from questing hands. When she finished, she stood straighter and nodded at him.

He preceded her into the opening. The fissure tapered, constricting more and more as he went. Finally he was forced to crawl. The stone-hard bark abraded his knees.

The faintest glimmer of blue light danced somewhere ahead. It was enough for Taal to see that the gap narrowed even further. Dropping to his stomach, he squirmed forward. He was relieved to finally emerge into a larger space.

The curling branches of the petrified Monarch formed a cathedral-like cavity of stone: the heart of the cyst. A figure hung above Taal, caught at the apex of the cavity. It was the source of the blue light. A male elf or perhaps an eladrin … at least from the waist up. A forest of sinuous tentacles splayed from where the man’s hips should have been. Most were dozens of feet long. Grasping tree branches and reaching tentacles were an interwoven mess. He could well imagine how the Monarch’s woody limbs had snatched the horror out of the air and wrapped it within the tree’s confining embrace.

And, then, apparently, it had sacrificed its own life by petrifying itself and its captive, ensuring the Traitor would never break the trust of the Keepers.

Malyanna squirmed into the cyst. Her eyes fastened on the hybrid horror held above them.

“Poor Carnis,” she said.

“It’s really him?” Taal asked.

“After all these years, I never thought to see him again.”

“Do … you mean to free him?”

“No!” she said, laughing. “He had his time, and failed. Besides, look at him. He allowed the influence to have its way with him, warping his body in return for easy power. Do not doubt that his mind was similarly twisted. Moreover, he is dead.”

“You could bring him back, in some form, if you wanted,” Taal said, knowing he was baiting her, but his oath allowed him that much.

“From this,” she said, waving her hands to encompass the entirety of the stone cyst, “there is no coming back.”

“Then what use was our trip to this dead-end dimension?” asked Taal.

“Carnis’s spirit may be fled or shattered, but his remains can still be persuaded to give up his secrets.”

“What shall I do?”

“Join Tamur outside and defend the Monarch’s corpse.”

Before he could ask from what, his totem growled. Something from the world had followed them.

“Very well, my lady,” Taal said. “I sense someone has come calling. I’ll deal with them.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Feywild Splinter (Stardeep)

Japheth’s cloak unfolded like the wings of a soaring hawk. Where it touched, a swarming, glowing moth disappeared, pulled into the realm of darkness that lived in its folds.

The path that split the bank of flapping oversized insects had looked navigable. But as the blood staining Raidon’s forearm attested, the boundaries were not constant, and the moth wings were as sharp as swords.

The monk leaped and spun, swatting moths from the air and stamping them straight into the earth. He was amazingly proficient at avoiding the wings, but a few cut him nonetheless.

“They’re not alive,” Japheth said. “They’re constructs of spiritual energy.”

The monk didn’t answer; he continued down the wavering lane. Japheth realized the lane wasn’t so much a breach in the moths’ ranks as a bridge created by his and Raidon’s mere presence. Sure, a bridge fraught with the possibility of severed limbs, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Raidon sped ahead and exited the inconstant corridor. A moment later Japheth joined him and looked around the slope of a dreary hillside.

A jumble of ruins lay immediately before them. The monk was gazing at them with eyes that, just perhaps, conveyed sorrow.

The thread of power Japheth followed shuddered and pulled. He craned his neck back and looked up the barrowlike incline. Darkness shrouded the summit, but he knew his quarry was that way.

Japheth pointed. “Malyanna is close, up on top of this hill,” he said. “And she’s started some kind of massive spell or ritual!”

Raidon’s eyes narrowed. The design on his chest brightened. “I feel it too,” he said. “If she’s still here, she must believe she can find the information she seeks.”

The monk hauled Angul forth. The blade flared with cerulean fire. His legs were a blur as he raced away from Japheth up the slope.

“Wait!” the warlock yelled. The monk didn’t slacken his pace.

Japheth cursed and followed. He couldn’t hope to match the half-elf’s speed, but he could take shortcuts here and there through his cloak.

An explosion burst on the summit. The hill shuddered, and Japheth stumbled. A shaft of shimmering purple light shot into the air, pulsing with an energy he was becoming intimately familiar with. It was the power of the stars as embodied by his new pact. He gasped as vigor warmed his skin.

The illumination revealed a tree of incredible proportions crowning the hilltop. Its branches, closed like a fist when he had first glimpsed them, were moving. They uncurled like colossal fingers reluctantly giving up their grip on something precious. The clamor of splintering stone boomed down the hillside. White dust billowed up from the unfurling tree, hiding it again in a purple-tinged haze.

Japheth spied the monk, well ahead of him. Raidon dashed for the spreading, tumbling cloud of stone dust. Just before he reached it, a black dog leaped from a boulder’s shadow and slammed the half-elf to the ground.

A moment later, a billowing wave of white fog enveloped both the monk and the hound.

“By the Nine!” Japheth swore.

The noise ceased. In its place Japheth heard chanting. It was a woman’s voice, but magnified by magic so palpable each word struck him like a slap. He recognized the voice as Malyanna’s.

Then he, too, was enveloped in the white fog.

It was a fine dust of pulverized stone. Japheth coughed, and blinked tiny specks from his eyes. He could see only a couple feet inside the spreading cloud. But he could still hear the eladrin’s chant, and the bay of a hunting mastiff, off to his left.

He made for the thunderous chant. Raidon was more than competent enough to deal with a big dog, however much shadows empowered it.

Japheth hustled, but didn’t hurtle forward headlong; he didn’t want to run full tilt into a jutting boulder. The haze was thinning. Was the dust settling? And why was Malyanna pulverizing stone in the first place? He’d see soon enough.

Then the woman’s voice rang out speaking … Elvish. He knew the fey tongue well enough, though he was rusty. “Where is the Key of Stars, Carnis?” she said.

Who was Carnis? Japheth wondered.

The warlock increased his pace. He was close; he could see the hilltop silhouetted above him, and the broken remnants of the colossal tree, by the pillar of light that still played over the area.

Something hit Japheth across his face. Streaks of light and pain crazed his senses.

His cloak translated him away from a flurry of follow-up blows that cracked the air where he’d been standing. Had the monk gone berserk and attacked him again?

Japheth appeared a dozen paces back in the settling cloud where the haze was thicker. He reeled, but caught himself on the side of boulder covered in dead, flaking lichen.

“You mind-bent fool …,” he said before he realized the man who’d just attacked him wasn’t Raidon.

First, his attacker was human, not a half-elf. Where Raidon’s hair was black, the human’s head sported a carroty mass of hair. He wore a black robe belted at the waist, not a silk jacket and pants as his friend preferred. The man had bare arms, and the tattoo of some kind of hunting cat curled down one arm.

The man stood with his legs set apart and bent slightly at the knees, with both hands half raised, ready to deflect an attack or launch one. He scanned the periphery of the dispersing dust. Japheth took a moment to regain his breath, but the man’s head swiveled to face the warlock. The man’s pupils were slender splinters, as piercing as a cat’s. Or a demon’s.

“Where’d you come from?” said Japheth. The man sprinted for the warlock.

“Caiphon, unfurl your stairs!” Japheth called out.

Wind shrieked in his ears and bore him upward, even as his form faded into invisibility. From his perspective, he ascended a wavering staircase of indescribable colors. A pseudo-landscape tried to unfold around him, attempting to displace the hilltop, at least in his mind’s eye, but Japheth concentrated on keeping his attention firmly planted in reality.

The enemy monk’s charge petered out before he reached the spot where Japheth had stood moments earlier. The man scanned the periphery of the dust again, as he’d done earlier to spy the warlock with his catlike gaze. For the moment, the man didn’t think to look up.

Japheth was grateful to evade him. He must be Malyanna’s defender. It gave Japheth a chance to see what was happening. But he couldn’t stay on Caiphon’s stairs too long. Already something shuddered on the pseudo-horizon of the illusory world. It was—

He wrenched his eyes back to the enemy monk. The man was circling outward, but still seemed unaware of Japheth hovering overhead. The warlock glided forward through the air, toward the tree … which was now a stump! The “fingers” had all broken away. He was high enough to see what occurred on its surface.

Japheth saw the eladrin noble was there. A litter of stones and dust spilled away down the opposite side of the hill, away from the devastated ruins of the tree. Malyanna crouched at the stump’s center, before the sculpture of a nightmare—half man, half aboleth, or something worse. It was chipped and broken, and scorched nearly black under the beam of coruscating light that speared it.

“I … am dead. I am not here,” said the thing. It sounded like dried leaves blowing and scraping across bone.

“Very perceptive, Carnis,” replied Malyanna. “You’re only a shell of what Carnis once was. And animated at some cost, to be blunt, and only for a brief few heartbeats. I don’t have time to explain, husk of my old mentor. Where is the Key of Stars? By the power of the Far Manifold, you must tell me!”

Japheth drifted closer.

The half-petrified thing’s head moved to meet the warlock’s gaze.

Its eyes were stone cinders. In them the warlock saw the death of worlds unending. Japheth stumbled and nearly fell out of the sky.

The thing’s regard ground back to Malyanna. “One of the Seven Keys, one of the few to survive, is clutched in my hand, as it has been through all the long centuries of my captivity …,” it said.

The illusory wind generated by Japheth’s spell shrieked with renewed vigor. He strained to hear more … but couldn’t make out any more words. But he’d heard enough. The thing had a Key of Stars, one of seven?

He saw the eladrin raise a hand and execute a simple gesture.

Suddenly the black mastiff was at her side! Its ability to step through shadow exceeded even the powers of his stolen cloak. Speaking of which … Was the Lord of Bats lurking nearby, ready to grab him? Neifion probably wouldn’t stray too far from his ally. But the longer the Lord of Bats stayed out of sight, the better.

A black orb rose over the horizon—No, it was the false horizon of his spell. The orb wasn’t real either, but … He screamed upon seeing its indescribable face. Pain lanced his temples, and he tumbled downward as he frantically dismissed the “invisibility.”

Japheth fell out of the air in a graceless heap. Somehow, he managed to land without breaking his leg.

The warlock resisted an urge to retch. At least he was fully back in reality, thank the Nine. He looked up; the enemy monk stood over him. The man regarded Japheth’s splayed form, surprised at the warlock’s sudden awkward reappearance.

“Hail,” Japheth said, as he silently urged his cloak to translate him backward as far as it was capable.

Apparently his cloak was just as dazed as he was, as it failed to do more than flutter.

“We’re leaving,” the man said. “Malyanna has described you to me, Japheth. Do not pursue us, or you will be consumed.”

Japheth waited for an attack. When none came, he carefully stood. The man just watched him, his face impassive.

“Are you a stooge of Malyanna’s?” Japheth asked. “Why are you talking to me?”

“My name is Taal,” the monk replied. “I am oath-bound to serve the will of the Lady of Winter’s Peace that stands at Forever’s Edge.”

Japheth blinked. “Forever’s Edge?” he repeated.

“The fey echo of the world has a periphery,” Taal said. “Beyond that rim, the void is a window into the world that must be ceaselessly guarded. Malyanna was one of those guardians, before she was corrupted by what watched beyond.”

The names and concepts ran through Japheth’s head, but he’d never heard of them before. “You speak in riddles,” the warlock said.

“I speak the truth.”

Japheth stared closely at his face, trying to read the man’s intentions. Why was the enemy monk volunteering information when he should be trying to kill Malyanna’s foes? The man’s expression remained studiously blank.

Taal glanced away from Japheth. “Your friend approaches,” he said. “Besides, I expect Malyanna has finished preparing the Traitor for transport. It has the Key she seeks. If I see you again, I will slay you. Though Neifion will likely claim your death as his prerogative; he hunts you still. Failing either of those fates, when Malyanna unlocks the Far Manifold, you will certainly die, as will most creatures of this world.”

The man turned and sprinted to the base of the stump and then up it as if it were level ground. Japheth couldn’t see the broken top of the tree any more, as he no longer “stood” on Caiphon’s stairs.

The warlock was confused. Not only had Taal warned that the Lord of Bats yet hunted Japheth, the man had named where the eladrin was based, and told that she had her Key of Stars. Was the man an incompetent? Or—

Raidon flashed past Japheth without a word, following Taal’s earlier path to the stump.

Japheth tried to shake off the lingering stupor of his last spell and called on his cloak.

Unlike before, it functioned properly and pulled him through darkness. Japheth stepped forward onto the top of the stump, only a dozen paces from the eladrin.

The tentacled corpse had lapsed back into solid immobility and Malyanna had arranged the grotesque sculpture on a conjured sledge of silvery light. She was pulling the conveyance effortlessly, following her dark hound down a lane of shadow. Taal brought up the rear.

Japheth lifted his rod and loosed a blast of eldritch fire. He aimed at the sledge, but the enemy monk interceded. Taal flinched at the impact, but failed to fall.

Malyanna glanced around and sneered at Japheth. She made a clawing gesture in the air. He heard a sound like parchment tearing, but couldn’t discern where it came from.

Raidon crested the side of the stump and launched himself across the uneven petrified wood. He drew Angul as he charged forward. The blade screamed in triumph as the air kindled cerulean fire on its greedy edge.

Darkness closed in behind Malyanna.

“Face me!” yelled the half-elf.

Japheth reached for the knowledge bequeathed by his pact. Maybe if he could disperse the shadows used by the hound quickly enough …

He channeled the fire of Ulban. A blaze of blue-white fire streamed from his fingers and rent the shade that sought to steal away his foes. The light hurt his eyes, making him squint. It burrowed in after Malyanna, Taal, and her silvery sledge, but darkness won. The light went out.

They were gone.

The sound of tearing parchment grew louder. The empty space in front of Raidon rippled like distortions at the bottom of a water glass. A hulking red something emerged from the wavering light and threw itself into the monk’s path.

Raidon dived beneath the creature’s arms and rolled, holding Angul to one side to avoid snagging the blade on the irregular ground.

The thing moved as fast as the half-elf, stamping down. It trapped the monk beneath a giant hooflike foot. Japheth heard bones crunch.

Raidon swept Angul around and up. The blade sheared through the creature’s calf, severing half the hoof. The thing screamed, but in redoubled fury, not pain.

Japheth realized the vaguely manlike horror was red because it was skinless. Its muscles, raw and oozing ruby-bright blood, slid over each other like a disturbed nest of snakes. A prickle on Japheth’s skin told him what he could have guessed: the foul thing was a spawn of Malyanna’s twisted star pact.

The warlock raised his rod. A snaking strand of golden light lanced the creature’s oozing chest.

Its eyes darted to meet Japheth’s. It stumbled, its rage suddenly turned to confusion. It took a step backward, removing its weight from the half-elf. Taking instant advantage of the creature’s distraction, Raidon spun up off the ground as if caught by a whirlwind. Angul, still held straight out from the monk’s body, cleaved the creature’s skull in two.

Japheth turned to regard the dimness where the eladrin had escaped, but no—the shadow lane was rolled up and gone. Japheth, Raidon, and a slowly liquefying skinless corpse were all that remained beneath a starless sky.

Raidon held Angul at full extension, its blade pointed to the empty heavens. A wave of healing energy surged from the sword’s hilt, straightening the bones of his leg and knitting his skin where the aberrant skinless creature had stomped on him. The feeling, like hot wires being pulled through his flesh, was worse than the original injury. He ignored the pain, just as he ignored the blade’s insistence he stick it point first into the nearby warlock.

This one’s soul, imparted Angul, is entangled with the same putrid filth as the creature who lies melting at your feet. Why not—

The half-elf plunged Angul into its sheath instead.

Lightness went out of him, and clarity of purpose. He wanted to sag, but his trained muscle memory kept him upright.

Then again … He was surprised the cavity in his well-being wasn’t as wide as he’d expected. His mind didn’t instantly slide back into the sucking pit of despair where he’d spent most of his time lately. Sure, he could feel the black mood waiting to claim him, but … He breathed deeply of the cool air.

Despite everything, something of the atmosphere of the dying demiplane was a balm to his ragged spirit.

Raidon touched the design on his chest, the stylized tree, and wondered if the stump upon which he stood was related.

Of course, it must be. If so, it was dead, like the citadel of Stardeep crushed beneath the weighty hill and shifting realities.

Shouldn’t that be a cause for despair?

Maybe. But it was also a clear demarcation of an ending. And there was peace to be had in endings.

The spellscar held the essence of a Cerulean Seal, a gift from his vanished mother. A gift that had brought him here long before in search of her. Though he’d never found her, he’d discovered something of her history. And her name: Erunyauvë.

And he was back, for the very last time, he knew. When Raidon had witnessed the great tree break apart on their arrival, something in him recognized a sort of cosmic symbolism. In endings, new beginnings were born.

“Raidon?” said the warlock.

Japheth stood near the center of the stump. The man’s expression was tight. The warlock apparently felt more put out by events than Raidon did.

“Yes?” the monk replied.

“They got the Key of Stars. Did you see?”

“I was fighting a hound that used shadow more skillfully even than you; I was preoccupied.”

“Malyanna pulled a petrified thing—half man, half monster—out of the tree. It was dead, but she animated it long enough to tell her it had what she wanted—a Key of Stars. That’s why she took the corpse with her when she left.”

“If that’s true,” said Raidon, “then the petrified corpse must have been the Traitor’s. Stardeep was built to contain him, lest he raise Xxiphu and usher in the age of the Abolethic Sovereignty.”

“Hmm.”

Raidon sighed. “I gave much, once, to see him contained,” he said. “All my effort was for naught.”

“But he never escaped … This tree caught him,” said Japheth.

“Which is perhaps why the Sovereignty remains contained in a single city of sleepy monsters,” replied Raidon. “But Malyanna retrieved the Traitor and his Key. The full power of the Sovereignty may soon wash across Toril, and beyond.”

The warlock scowled. “You don’t seem particularly perturbed by that thought,” he said.

Raidon smiled. Some of Angul’s lucidity returned to him, but it wasn’t the artificial clarity of the blade; it sprang from somewhere inside his own heart.

“What is, is,” the monk said.

“You’re saying we should give up?” asked Jephath.

“No. I’m saying that, here on the precipice of all things … I will make my own choices; I will not bow to the obligations of my past failures, or the manic purpose of a sentient blade.”

“You sound no less crazy than before, my friend,” the warlock said, studying him as if looking for signs of mental instability. Raidon didn’t blame him.

“In any event, it’s time to leave this cemetery plane, and seek our friends,” the monk said. “We should be after Malyanna before she prizes the Key loose from the Traitor’s petrified hands.”

“Listen, did you see who I was talking to before you ran up?” said Jephath.

“Yes—I assumed he was a servitor of Malyanna, and that you’d ensorcelled him,” replied Raidon.

“No. Well, yes, he serves the eladrin, but I didn’t manage to tag him with a spell. He got the drop on me. Funny thing was that once he had me where he wanted me, he stopped to warn me off instead of attack me.”

“He didn’t want to take the time to dispatch you?”

“Maybe, though he seemed a little too forthcoming. I know where Malyanna is going—we won’t have to resort to tracking her with my star pact.”

“Where?”

“A place called Forever’s Edge.”

A flare of cerulean fire erupted from the symbol on Raidon’s chest, and warmth like an embrace enfolded him. He smiled.

“You know it?” asked the warlock.

“My Sign recognizes the name, though I do not,” Raidon said. “It can guide us.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Green Siren, Sea of Fallen Stars

Anusha watched the last of the kuo-toa slip over the side of the ship, and slide away beneath the sea.

Grins stretched the crew’s faces as they realized the overwhelming attack was over. Several shouted imprecations after the departing creatures. But many warily studied their captain. “He dismissed the beasts, all of ’em, with a harsh word!” Anusha heard one whisper. They didn’t understand what power their captain had displayed. Anusha didn’t, either.

Thoster stood at the starboard railing, looking out to sea. He didn’t move, other than to finger his amulet that lay in one hand. The amulet’s leather thong was snapped.

She willed herself into visibility. Her dream armor, in all its golden glory, melted into view.

“Captain!” she called.

Thoster turned to stare at her. His eyes were slightly unfocused.

“Are you alright?” she said.

“Aye,” Thoster replied. “Glad to see you back on deck. I was worried. Lass, did you see what I just did?”

“Some of it,” Anusha said. “How … How did you make them leave? Hundreds of them, all at once!”

He shook his head. “I wish I knew,” he said. “Something in my blood surged up. Suddenly I just knew the damned fish folk would listen to me. Because … I’m kin to them.”

“Even if you’ve got some kuo-toa in your ancestry, it doesn’t explain why they obeyed you,” Anusha said.

“That’s the question, eh?” Thoster replied. “I wish Seren were here. She’s the one who made this amulet. Maybe she gave it a little more potency than she meant.”

“Except you’re not wearing it anymore.”

“True. It got in the way.”

Anusha glanced up. She saw Xxiphu and its swaddling storm remained unchanged. The colossal creatures swooping in and out of the clouds around the city were similarly unperturbed. Good. The aboleths weren’t reacting to the dismissal of their sea surface guardians. At least not obviously.

Yeva joined them at the railing. She flexed an arm, moving her articulated joints with un-golemlike smoothness. “Japheth did an amazing job on this form,” she said. “Did you see the way those spears broke on my stomach?”

Thoster smiled. “Those kuo-toa didn’t know what to think!” he said. “Being iron-hard has its advantages, eh?”

“And disadvantages,” Yeva replied. “I’d give much to be able to sit down to a meal, for instance. Or feel the sun on my skin, or a cool breeze. Or, better yet—”

The captained clapped Yeva on the shoulder. “Once we get this Sovereignty business sorted out, maybe we can find you a mage or priest who can return you to mortal flesh,” he said. “That’s the hope I have for myself—I got these damn scales growing over most of me now.”

Yeva nodded, but her iron features didn’t shift. They couldn’t. “I saw how you ordered the kuo-toa to stand down,” she said. “Impressive.”

“Thoster wonders if it has something to do with the amulet Seren crafted,” said Anusha.

“May I?” Yeva asked as she held out a dull gray hand to the captain.

Thoster dropped the talisman into her palm.

A halo of violet light played around the iron woman’s temples as she examined the pewter bit strung on a leather thong. To Anusha’s eyes, the object was unremarkable.

Yeva shrugged, and returned it to the captain. Thoster eyed it a moment longer, then tied it back around his neck.

“A stricture is wound into your talisman, captain,” Yeva said, “one that presumably gives you the mental space to control your own non-human heritage. However, it doesn’t contain any special power that would grant the holder power over sea creatures.”

“Even if the wearer is part fish himself?” said Anusha. “No offense, Thoster.”

“Not even then,” Yeva replied. “Whatever power the captain has over kuo-toa, it is inherent with him.”

“Huh,” said Thoster. His gaze strayed back into the sky. Anusha and Yeva followed suit.

Xxiphu remained a splinter of black stone high on the horizon.

“What do you reckon is going on up there?” he said.

“They watch,” Yeva said. “They observe what passes on the world, and draw their plans accordingly.”

“Can you sense their thoughts?” asked Anusha.

Yeva shook her head. “I’m merely guessing,” she said. “It is what my people would do had we come to Toril with plans for invasion.”

“Who are your people?” said Thoster.

Yeva answered with a stiff shrug.

Anusha asked again, “So, could you sense their thoughts, if you tried?”

“Remember what they were like when we were caught inside?” Yeva said. “Aboleths don’t have thoughts like you and I—they have reactions. They cannot be rationally understood, only avoided, or defeated.”

“But they have intentions,” Anusha said.

“Instincts,” the metal woman replied. “The essence of what they are drives them. They are like the wind blowing down the valley. When the wind encounters a wall, it doesn’t think, ‘how will I get over this?’ It merely flows over the barrier and continues without pause. Perhaps the wall slowed the wind, but the wind did not notice—it simply persists, mindlessly howling across the world.”

“That ain’t particularly reassuring,” said Thoster.

“But,” Yeva continued, “There is something I could try, since we seem to have bought ourselves the luxury of some time.”

“Why didn’t you just say so to begin with?” said Anusha, feeling an unwelcome stab of frustration.

“Because it’s not easy,” Yeva replied. “It’ll take about a half an hour to prepare, assuming the captain can afford to give up a few things I’ll need for my trance.”

“What kind of things?” said Thoster.

“Oh this and that, nothing too valuable,” Yeva said. “When I have the components, I can attempt to consult the spirits of my forebears, who lie beyond this sphere. Though gone, the knowledge they gathered is accessible to their kin.”

“Fine,” said Thoster. “Just tell my first mate what you need. She can gather things from ship stores.” The captain looked around. “Hear that, Mharsan?” he yelled. “Get Yeva here what she requires. But keep track of the cost. I’ll be billing Anusha for all expenses.”

The captain winked at Anusha. She took it as one of those “jokes” that have a seed of truth at their heart.

Not that it mattered—If they managed to stymie the Sovereignty and foil their mysterious plan to find the Key, she’d gladly pay nearly any bill Thoster was cheeky enough to send her way.

Yeva climbed down into the hold with Mharsan.

“Meantime …,” said Thoster. “Maybe I can try my hand at influencing one of those kraken circling the obelisk.”

“Are you insane?” said Anusha. “What if you manage to catch its attention?”

“That would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt I’ve got some kind of affinity for commanding sea monsters,” said Thoster.

“Or irritating them! Kraken are not kuo-toa, captain,” she said.

Thoster laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he replied.

Anusha watched as the captain turned back to the railing. By the set of his shoulders, he seemed more anxious than cheerful. The man was still dealing with the revelation of his newfound strength, whatever it was.

When nothing noticeable happened after several heartbeats, Anusha shifted her attention to Xxiphu itself. What was going on up there, and … Why wasn’t she attempting to send her dreamform to the city and spy it out herself?

Seren had, good to her word, “thrown together” a charm that would, the wizard claimed, protect Anusha’s mind against external enticements. Anusha wore the charm on her sleeping body. It was a bracelet on her right arm—a silver chain onto which three small, greenish crystals were threaded.

Anusha took a deep breath, wondering if it was time to test Seren’s handiwork. The only problem was if Seren was off her game, Anusha’s mind would be swept up by the Eldest’s dream-catching aura. Cold fingers brushed Anusha’s spine.

Yeva climbed up from the hold, one arm hugging a small crate piled with various objects. The first mate followed Yeva up from the hold. She yelled at the handful of loitering crew who watched to see what would happen next. The captain glanced over, then returned to his contemplation of the stormscape.

The metal woman pulled a ceramic bowl out of the crate and placed it on the deck. She dropped a couple of chunks of coal into it, then pointed. A spark jumped from her finger to the coal, setting it all right.

Yeva watched the coal burn for a moment, then sifted together a couple of different powders into a tankard.

“Incense?” asked Anusha.

Yeva nodded. “Green Siren has some premium cargos still secured in the hold,” she said. “Thoster must’ve lost a small fortune to abandon his patrons to run off after Xxiphu.”

“I suppose you’re right …,” Anusha said, not correcting Yeva. Thoster was a privateer. He claimed he only plied his trade on Amnian craft, whose cargos were themselves likely the product of piracy and corruption. Not that such a distinction made Thoster’s trade legitimate by any stretch of the imagination, but it did make dealing with the jovial captain much easier if she took him at his word.

Yeva continued, “I’m a little concerned about the incense, actually—though it doesn’t really matter what sort I use. It helps center my thoughts when I breathe it in.”

“But you don’t breathe … anymore,” said Anusha.

“Exactly,” replied Yeva. “I’m hoping going through all the steps of the ritual will be enough.”

The coal burned down to a red ember.

“It’s time,” Yeva said. “Let’s see what happens.” She dusted the glowing coal with incense dust from the tankard as she fanned it with her free hand.

Despite being present only in dreamform, Anusha smelled the earthy, slightly sharp odor … Or so it seemed. How was it that she could smell the incense when she didn’t have a body present to breathe in the fumes, while Yeva, physically present though devoid of lungs and a nose, remained unable to sense the odor? There was much about her ability she didn’t comprehend.

Yeva fanned the rising lines of smoke into her face. She clicked her metallic eyes closed. A halo of electric yellow light flared out from her temples and faded again.

Nothing else happened for a long time. Anusha waited, shifting her attention between Yeva, the captain, and the distant black speck hovering in the sky.

Finally the ember died into a pile of white ash.

The metallic woman’s eyes slid open. “I asked my ancestors what goes on in Xxiphu,” she said. “I was rewarded with a vision of the Eldest, still half-caught in stony sleep, straining to wake. I saw a kaleidoscope of images: miles of briny halls pulsing with aboleths, empty gulfs of space, and egg chambers quivering with new sacs. All waiting.”

“For the Key of Stars?” Anusha asked.

“Yes,” Yeva said.

“Did you see Malyanna?”

“No.”

“Anything we can we do from here to, I don’t know … distract them?”

“I don’t think so,” Yeva said. The woman collected the bowl, incense jars, and tankard, and handed them off to Mharsan.

Anusha moved to stand with Thoster. Yeva followed. “Having any luck with those monsters?” Anusha asked the captain.

Thoster started, then blinked rapidly.

“ ’Fraid not,” he replied. “Not even a hint of connection. Whatever power I got, it ain’t for kraken.”

“Did you hear what Yeva just said?” Anusha asked.

“Ah …,” said the captain.

“Nothing’s going on up there—the city’s just waiting for someone to bring it the Key.”

“Huh. Well, if Raidon and Japheth are successful, perhaps Xxiphu can wait forever and rot.”

Quiet fell over the group.

Anxiety fluttered in Anusha’s stomach. The captain and Yeva had both tried their talents, such as they were, to divine more of Xxiphu. Which left her, the only one potentially capable of visiting the place, a mere bystander.

She finally said, in answer to Thoster, “If only. Japheth and Raidon are capable … But so is Malyanna and the Lord of Bats. I should try to see with my own eyes what’s going on up there.”

The captain nodded. “Can you cast your dream that far?” he asked.

She let out her breath and said, “I can try.”

“Even with that wizard’s charm, your mind is at risk of being caught,” Yeva said.

Anusha nodded. “Monitor my sleeping body, Yeva,” she said. “Try to pull me back if you notice anything odd. With your psychic gifts, you can be my safeguard.”

“I can try,” the metal woman said.

Anusha allowed her dream to lapse into invisibility. She climbed into Green Siren’s rigging until she was standing high above the deck. Thoster had moved the ship so it floated directly beneath the hovering citadel. Thankfully, the sentry krakens hadn’t taken notice. The scarred foundation of Xxiphu hung unsupported at least a couple of miles overhead.

Of course, she wasn’t actually “standing” on anything—she was a mental projection, a lucid dream. Which meant that despite the gulf of air separating her from Xxiphu, she should be able to cross the distance. She’d pulled off similar feats before, just never so far.

As long as she avoided the idea that she was “flying” up to the aboleth city, she should be all right.

Instead, she imagined a gleaming length of elven rope extending up into the clouds. And it was so.

She took hold of the rope and climbed.

Anusha started slow, but quickly increased her pace. She had no weight, or muscles to become weary. Soon enough, she was nearly sprinting straight up, hand over hand.

Green Siren dropped away beneath her boots, until it was a toy bobbing on a wide plain of storm-shadowed water. Shimmering carpets, where the sun broke through the cloud rents, stretched to the western horizon, as if promising lanes of escape. Anusha forced her gaze upward.

The clouds drew closer, resolving as tufted, slowly curling masses of downy gray. Lightning stuttered through them, accompanied by a continuous growl of thunder.

And there hung Xxiphu. The floating obelisk was wider than several city blocks, and ten times as tall. Rookeries, balconies, inscriptions, runes, and enigmatic structures gaped like hungry mouths across its face. Some of the runes writhed into new configurations as her eyes danced across them. She’d learned last time it was better not to examine them too closely.

A feathery contact startled her. Xxiphu’s tide! She stopped climbing, and considered abandoning her dream. The Eldest’s mind-catching pull was still active. She’d known it would be, but the reality of its touch was nearly more than she could bear.

Then again, it didn’t have the punch she feared.

While the tide was undeniably present, its strength was feeble, as if hardly catching at her heels. Not like last time. Of course, then her mind had been caught in Xxiphu already, trapped outside her body. On the rope her focus remained safely in the slumbering flesh on the tiny ship far below. And there it would stay, thanks to the aid of the abjuration charm Seren had provided. She either had to trust the charm, or turn around immediately. Which would be giving up. She would fail in her self-given quest to foil the Sovereignty’s agenda.

Anusha started climbing again.

The tide’s pressure climbed too, pulling her upward. That was counterbalanced by a stretched feeling, one that tried to yank her back down. She was approaching the limits of her dreamwalking range. Anusha took comfort in the evidence that her spirit’s focus remained rooted in the ship.

She was close enough to determine a destination. Where would be safest to “touch down”? A cavity too small for a kraken to squirm into, she decided.

She saw an outcrop protruding from a covered balcony midway between Xxiphu’s tip and foundation. Without giving it too much thought, she made for it, climbing hand over hand on her dream rope.

The last few tens of feet were the hardest. She dreaded actually having to set foot on Xxiphu again. But she swallowed, and pulled herself up and over, onto the rough balcony of black stone.

The balcony was empty. An orifice plunged into the dull black wall, providing entry into the city. The opening was empty as far as she could see, but its lightless convolutions caused the hair on the nape of her neck to rise. Or perhaps it was the tide, still trying to claim her. Thankfully, the draw was hardly any greater here than when she’d first noticed it. Her mind remained her own.

Anusha gazed back down over the side. The sea was so far below that she had a hard time finding Green Siren. It was almost lost in the shadow of the storm over the water. But seeing it made her feel better. It was the one friendly, familiar point in a panorama of horror. As long as she could see the ship, she knew she could return to it and her sleeping body with a thought.

She forced herself to look away and focus on the irregular city entrance. Even its shape repulsed her. Maybe she should find a different way in? There were many to choose from on the obelisk’s exterior.

Of course, what would an opening into a city of aboleths have to look like in order to seem appealing? She smiled at her own expense. She was here to spy on the aboleths. Time to follow through. She approached the entrance—

A shadow drew her attention up.

A blaze of blue-white fire flickered high overhead. A balcony closer to Xxiphu’s crown burned with a head-splintering light. She heard a cry of anger, faint in the high distance. A woman’s voice.

Anusha looked up Xxiphu’s uneven side. The city’s exterior wall almost looked like … an expanse of flat earth. And why not? She imagined it was so. With a nauseous twist, her perspective shifted.

Anusha sprinted “across” the plain of dark stone, up the city’s vertical wall. The balconies and other entrances in Xxiphu’s side were pits and sinkholes to be avoided. In her peripheral vision, distant runes writhing along the obelisk seemed like great snakes coiling across a desert wasteland. She ignored them and kept running. Ahead, the strange radiance died away.

Eventually she reached the balcony that had burned. The balcony bottom jutted out of the “ground” like a boulder, the portion facing her a pocked black expanse. She slowed to a walk, double-checked to make certain her dreamform was invisible, and peered around to see who or what was there.

It was Malyanna, as Anusha had guessed from the sound of the voice. The imperious eladrin’s face was drawn in pain and anger. The material of her gown was scored, blackened, and rent on her upper left shoulder, as was her pale skin beneath. Blood seeped from the ragged flesh, forming narrow rivulets that flowed down her side and dripped on the black stone.

A man with red hair tended Malyanna’s wound. He wore a black robe belted at the waist, but his arms were bare. The tattoo of some kind of hunting cat curled down one arm.

A huge dog shadowed the far side of the balcony, working with shockingly white teeth at something caught in the fur of one leg. If she squinted, she could see the resemblance between the creature and Lucky. Except that thing was far bigger, more vicious, and shadows clung to it like waving banners.

Lying in the center of the balcony was a twisted stone statue of a humanoid caught in some horrific transformation. Anusha went cross-eyed as she tried to trace the object’s lower half, so she shifted her gaze back to Malyanna.

“That damned warlock!” screamed the eladrin. “We should have stayed to finish him and that damned half-elf off. Look at this!” She gesticulated with her free hand to her wound. “I can’t remember the last time I was so wounded!”

Anusha put a hand to her mouth. The three had encountered Japheth, and recently. What had been the outcome?

“He used your own power against you,” the man said.

“Taal, please keep your insights to yourself unless they actually pertain,” Malyanna replied.

The man named Taal nodded. He made as if to speak, but cocked his head instead.

Anusha became aware of a low warning growl. She looked at the huge mastiff, but it was busy licking its paws.

“An enemy is near,” said Taal.

Anusha fixed her eyes on Taal. The man placed one hand on his tattoo. The growl, she realized, had been exactly like that of a wild cat!

“Something?” Malyanna pressed.

Taal allowed his gaze to range around the balcony. Anusha hunkered down until only her eyes remained above the level of the railing. Was the man able to sense her despite her immaterial status?

“My totem indicates we are watched,” Taal said.

The eladrin sniffed. “I don’t doubt we are under observation by half a dozen aboleths this very moment,” she said. “Don’t trouble yourself about it. Finish up, will you?”

Taal returned his attention to Malyanna. He placed a hand over the angry wound and closed his eyes. When he withdrew it three heartbeats later, the rent flesh had closed. While still discolored, it was obvious the eladrin was no longer in danger of bleeding to death.

She stepped away without a word of thanks to Taal to study the disfigured statue. Her pupils grew wide, and a grin stretched her mouth. “We finally have it,” she said.

It? Anusha thought. Was the horrible stone sculpture special? It couldn’t be the Key of Stars, could it? Anusha wished Yeva were here. Maybe she would know the statue’s significance.

“You’re certain?” said the man. “What if Carnis lied? He was always a betrayer at heart—”

“After all these years, you’re getting cold feet, Taal?” said Malyanna.

The man shrugged. “My oath compels me to serve,” he replied.

She nodded. “Of course it does,” she said. “That’s why I chose you. Now then … It’s time.”

Taal sighed.

“Time,” continued Malyanna, “to reacquaint the Eldest with the Citadel of the Outer Void.”

“How?” Taal asked.

“Despite that I put the Lord of Bats on his scent, Japheth is still alive,” Malyanna said. “Which means the essential spark the warlock stole to power his new pact remains missing. So the Eldest yet slumbers, and its vast power lies unused.”

Taal gave a cautious nod.

“So, the Eldest won’t object if I siphon a bit of its strength so I can open the way,” the eladrin continued.

Malyanna made a fist, and waved her other hand over it in a circular motion. She opened her fingers. A dark, circular object appeared, nestled in her grip.

The Dreamheart!

Anusha’s breathing hitched. She should do something! Summon her sword and knock the vile thing from Malyanna’s hand, or strike the woman’s head from her neck!

Yet the sight of the stone paralyzed her. If she got too close to it, it might snag her mind, wizard charm or no, and seal her fate for good. She should have acted sooner!

The eladrin noble stared at the sphere as if it were a scrying ball. She crooned a high-pitched chant laden with barbed consonants and keening vowels.

Splintering white light accompanied a raucous crack of thunder so close the balcony shuddered. Anusha tried but couldn’t tear her gaze from Malyanna and the piece of poison heavy in her hands.

A seam on the stone parted, an eyelid shuttering open. Malyanna’s gaze met the Eldest’s eternal stare.

“Storm’s worsening, Captain,” said Mharsan. A sudden, stiff breeze pulled the woman’s silver braid nearly straight out from her head.

Thoster peered up through the rigging. The thunderheads swaddling Xxiphu’s bulk flashed and rumbled with accelerating rage. The black clouds smeared and elongated, reaching out windblown arms, as if to encircle the floating obelisk. It almost looked like a whirlpool trying to form, but in the air instead of the sea.

“What in Umberlee’s name is going on up there?” he said.

He grabbed Mharsan’s arm. “Go to the sleeping woman’s cabin. Tell Yeva to wake Anusha!”

Mharsan nodded and dashed away. Thoster kept his eyes on the sky.

A series of jolts shook Green Siren. He ripped his gaze away from the spectacle above.

Waves tore at what had been a calm sea moments earlier. Water frothed into a foaming ridge, forming a vast circle centered on the floating city far above. And his ship was caught inside the circumference!

Thoster opened his mouth to scream orders at his crew. A shrieking gust of noisome air rent the words from his mouth, and tried to liberate his hat in the bargain.

He clamped a hand to his head and grabbed a mainstay with the other. The blast caught the ship from the stern, which was lucky. Instead of just pushing her over in the water and drowning everyone, it propelled the ship forward. The wind didn’t blow straight though; it coiled, round and round. Green Siren plowed through the ocean, following the curved line of the foaming water, tracing the edge of a bounded region of boiling sea.

Thoster assumed a maelstrom was forming, and was about to suck his ship into the depths. And without the benefit of a school of gleamtail jacks. His crew and his ship would be lost. His own abilities, however, would probably see him through, assuming the current didn’t dash his head against the hull of his splintering ship—

Wait.

He stared hard out into the center of disturbance, though seaspray stung his eyes. Instead of dimpling down at the hub as he’d expected, the water bulged upward. In the very center, the bulge birthed a waterspout of madly spinning water that reached still higher.

“What the …?” Thoster said.

Above, the racing clouds completed their weave around the impassive aboleth city. A funnel of vapor and sparking lightning formed directly beneath Xxiphu. The spinning structure dropped away toward the surface of the Sea of Fallen Stars. The funnel was like to the one beneath it on the water. The thinning, twining finger stretched down from the sky, and another one reached down from the surface of the sea.

Thoster felt the ship buckle and scream. Spars snapped, and masts broke and tumbled away, even as the hull was pulled higher and higher, up the narrowing path of the swirling cone of water.

When the two funnel tips finally touched, a soundless explosion of purple light raced away in every direction. Thoster blinked several times, trying to clear an afterimage of gnashing teeth. When he could see again, he saw a hole lay behind the expanding wave of light. It was like a yawning mouth in the air, inhaling reality.

The spinning funnels of cloud and water tattered and ripped apart, sending scudding fragments of vapor every which way. Xxiphu, completely exposed, was pulled into the maw like a fly on a frog’s tongue.

The cavity’s growth slowed, then ceased. A heartbeat later, it began to collapse back on itself.

Green Siren hung midway between the crumpling fissure in the sky and the unforgiving face of the Sea of Fallen Stars below.

It might have gone either way, but with a sudden jerk, the ship was pulled into the fissure the instant before it closed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Feywild

Long before he had been old enough, Raidon had yearned to join Xiang Temple. He’d been certain he’d love fighting. His mother had let him observe the choreographed but nonetheless spectacular fights the monks demonstrated on festival days. Watching all the ways someone could move and evade, and manipulate a foe with a subtle twist or hip rotation was all the magic Raidon had ever craved.

When he was eight years of age, he enrolled. His expectations were fulfilled, and more. He loved the forms, the conditioning, and the camaraderie. The first years numbered among his most cherished memories. And after all those years, he still relished the complexities of striking, despite where his vocation had ultimately led him.

Remembrances of his training came to Raidon as he moved through the fey forest. A towering tree reminded him of the pillars that graced Xiang. Firefly gleams flaring in the shadows to either side recalled the fantastic lanterns that hung over the main dojo. Above, the sun glimmered through a ragged cloak of green and gold leaves, which was in color like the silk belt he was given upon achieving his first rank.

Then Japheth stepped out of the black cavity of his cloak. The warlock didn’t shake loose any pleasant associations.

Their trip through the woods of Faerie was rapid, at least. Raidon could move much faster than his companion, but Japheth could take shortcuts and leap ahead. Raidon would then make up the distance with a quick burst of reaching strides.

The monk tried to recall the contented glow of his early training again, then allowed the image to fade. The moment was past.

The memory of the petrified Traitor returned front and center. Seeing the statue, as it slipped down the hound’s path of shadow, had shaken Raidon.

Something terrible was loose, and he didn’t know if anyone had the knowledge or the power to stop it. The thought actually worried him. He’d imagined he had gone beyond the ability to feel concern. And so, paradoxically, Raidon was also grateful.

Of course, he wished he could have made the return to human feeling via some other route. Each time he concentrated on the gnarled, twisted shape of Stardeep’s “escaped” prisoner, the Cerulean Sign became as ice across his chest.

The half-elf shook his head. Worry was an old friend, much preferred to the desolate winds howling across his soul since the … incident … in Xxiphu. He’d believed his mind was shattered for good.

Yet here he was. Pushed past the breaking point, he’d located the grit to keep trying. And in that resilience, in the uncomplicated striving, he’d found a simple peace. It was the peace he’d once taken for granted, but forgotten.

Achieving one’s goals was not what brought lasting satisfaction—it was the journey itself that gave peace. When one stopped trying for what was new or what was right, finally satisfied in one’s past achievements, or maybe too tired to continue trying to make or find something new, then life was finally over.

It was entirely possible his current mood was an aberration, and doomed to go the way of all his earlier hopeful thoughts, but he was determined to enjoy the calm it brought while it lasted.

Ahead, Japheth translated across a chasm, and Raidon leaped it. A press of wide trunks lay on the chasm’s opposite side, obscuring the view ahead. He sprinted through the trees, leaning into each course correction, laying a hand on warm bark when necessary to make particularly sharp turns.

When the monk regained sight of the warlock, the man stood at the edge of a clearing amid the towering trees. It was the clearing holding the stone dais on which they’d arrived in the Feywild.

A figure stood on the platform, the suggestion of a smug smile tugging the corners of his mouth.

Raidon felt as if someone had just punched him in the stomach.

“You!” said Japheth, his tone incredulous.

The Lord of Bats’s smile widened. The green glyph slithered on his forehead like a leech looking for blood. Its influence woke a cool resonance in Raidon’s spellscar.

An iron spear appeared in Japheth’s right hand. It glowed cherry red from infernal heat. The warlock hurled it. Before it could find its mark, the archfey opened his mouth, releasing a torrent of screaming bats that instantly filled the hollow. Flapping darkness hid the spear’s trajectory.

A voice issued from the obscured clearing. “I’ve taken possession of this exit,” the archfey said. “To go through, you must defeat me.”

“We beat you before, Neifion!” Japheth yelled over the sound of flapping bat wings.

“You’re in the land of my power, fool,” the archfey called. “You chased me out of your dreary catacombs with the aid of all your friends, but in the Feywild, I command the very earth and air.”

Raidon came up beside the warlock and yelled, “Neifion, forget your revenge. Your hate blinds you to the true nature of your ally. Malyanna may be eladrin, distant kin to you perhaps. But she serves creatures of abomination, who would wreak ruin not only on Faerûn, but Faerie too, and beyond. Is your revenge so important that you’d destroy your home?”

Silence met the monk’s entreaty for several heartbeats.

“She is an ally of convenience,” Neifion said. “Once Japheth is blooded and rendered, and serves as one of my homunculi, she can rot. Until then, I find her gifts useful.”

“He’s insane,” Japheth said to Raidon, shaking his head. “Reason isn’t going to work on the Lord of Bats.”

“Insanity is something I’ve come to understand,” Raidon said. “Sometimes, even the crazed can come to see reality.”

The swarm of bats obscuring the hollow expanded. Suddenly, scratching, chittering darkness tore at Raidon’s face, the back of his hands and forearms, and his chest.

He slapped his palm onto his Cerulean Sign. A blaze of blue light swept from him. Where it touched, the press of bats faded like shadows fleeing a sunrise.

Raidon allowed the influence of his Sign to wax, until its boundary washed away the last bit of darkness in the hollow, revealing the platform and its occupant.

Neifion’s smile soured. “I suppose I’ll have to kill you too, monk,” he said.

Raidon charged the archfey. His initial front kick knocked the Lord of Bats to the edge of the platform, but didn’t push him off the dais as Raidon had expected.

The monk closed with his foe again, his hands ready to block or strike.

Neifion’s cape flared outward, transforming into great wings. His limbs lengthened, and his pale skin sprouted ratty fur. His body expanded in size fourfold. His horrid leathery wings stretched from one end of the hollow to the other.

The hybrid creature swept one enormous wing at the monk. Raidon ducked beneath the edge, and came up on its trailing side. Something blurred in the corner of his vision, and Raidon dived sideways off the platform. A gargantuan fist wound with holly vines smashed down where he’d been standing.

With groans of straining roots, the trees surrounding the hollow woke to animation. They raised clenched fists of branch and bark. Each was kin to the creature that had almost killed Raidon below the Marhana mansion—and that had only appeared for the space of a single attack.

The skyline surrounding the clearing was transformed into a jagged, closing circle of leaning treants. Raidon was surrounded. Again, worry threaded his mind.

The Lord of Bats laughed. Another gnarled fist the size of a boulder crashed down, but Raidon evaded it on light feet. The impact sent the ground cover of leaves swirling away. Several earth-shaking booms told the tale of a series of narrow escapes.

Angul vibrated in its sheath, humming with impatience to be pulled. Thankfully, it didn’t jump around so violently it threw off Raidon’s dance of evasion. How long would the blade behave itself?

Points of light flared into existence around Japheth’s head. The warlock gestured, and one blue-white orb leapt upward in a halo of choking smoke. It transfixed a treant and burst with a miniature detonation of blinding illumination. The creature straightened and clapped twiggy hands to its eyes.

Three more points of light sped away from Japheth, each dazzling another of the awakened trees. Only two treants continued to lean over the hollow, scrabbling after the darting monk with hands the size of bazaar carts.

“You are ever my nemesis,” Neifion said, and gestured at Japheth with a winged claw. A whirlwind of writhing vines attempted to wrap around the warlock, but Japheth vanished into his cloak before the verdant strands could tighten.

Raidon dodged a treant fist, feinting as if to dash out of the hollow. Instead he threw himself into a backward roll, covering the distance to the still chuckling Lord of Bats in half a heartbeat. He flipped out of the roll and channeled his backward momentum to twist his body around, clenching his fists tight even as it took fire from his cerulean spellscar.

The spinning backfist caught the Lord of Bats beneath his pointy, ratlike chin. The sound of the contact boomed across the fey forest. Neifion’s winged body arced through the air, off the platform, and across the clearing. It smashed into the knee of a blind treant.

Raidon leaped after his foe. The monk realized his error even as he committed himself to the attack—the awakened tree that had inadvertantly stopped the Lord of Bats’s progress through the air was no longer blind.

The monk twisted his body, trying to alter his trajectory in the air. A treant fist the size of a boulder clipped him, and broke Raidon’s course toward Neifion with a sharp correction directly down.

Raidon managed to twist one final time, orienting himself so he could slap his arms out on either side to break his fall. But the tree creature’s fist continued downward too, and like a hammer, pounded him into the anvil that was the ground.

Japheth stepped from his cloak. The thunder of massive fists flailing the ground shuddered through the earth, nearly making him stumble, even though the clearing lay several dozen paces away through a screen of obscuring trees. The warlock saw Raidon darting about, avoiding one bone-crushing blow after another. Each dodge seemed a minor miracle.

Why hadn’t Raidon drawn Angul? Raidon was exceptional, but the blade in the monk’s hand made him nearly unbeatable, at least against most foes.

But Neifion was in a different category. Their chances against the archfey, even with Angul in play, were poor. The Lord of Bats was simply too powerful on his home turf, as the creature had rightly boasted.

The only way he and Raidon were going to escape was to convince Neifion to give up his vengeance. Which meant Raidon’s earlier diplomatic tack was correct. Japheth either had to try that again, or just turn and run away into the forest …

Japheth stepped around the bole of a tree into the clearing, just in time to see Raidon’s string of successes end beneath a treant fist. The sound of the impact was awful.

But Neifion was on his back, and had reverted to his humanoid form. By the way the archfey was shaking his head and groaning, it was obvious the monk had landed a telling blow before his fall.

Perfect!

Japheth called on his pact, incanting the apocalypses over which a star named Khirad had burned over the ages. Akin to the light of the star itself, a pale blue flame sprang from the warlock’s brow. The light washed over the supine Lord of Bats. Though still adjusting to the lore of his new pact, Japheth knew that Khirad’s radiance sometimes revealed secrets and gruesome insights. With its gleam in his eyes, perhaps the Lord of Bats would forget his vengeance for a time.

“Neifion, listen!” called Japheth. “Recall what the half-elf said; what do you really know about Malyanna’s ultimate intentions?”

The bald head of his old master wavered around to look at Japheth. The creature’s pupils were huge, and glowed pale blue.

“She serves ancient powers,” Neifion said. “She’s no different than any fervent cleric of forgotten gods. She’s dangerous, but all her actions are ultimately futile. Whatever entities she serves, their time is over. It is the way of the worlds.”

“Lord of Bats, search your heart, and your memories,” said Japheth. “Do you really, truly believe Malyanna’s actions are futile? She has found her ‘Key of Stars’ and even now likely presents it to the Eldest aboleth in Xxiphu. Trust me when I tell you this: she could unlock an age of horror, one so overwhelming that it could completely wipe away Toril and its echoes. If the world dies, so dies the Feywild.”

“The world is hardier than you suspect, mortal,” replied Neifion.

“Is it?” asked Japheth. “The Spellplague hit us only eleven years ago. Toril and its echoes yet shift and shudder from that onslaught. It is now, perhaps more than at any previous time in Faerûn’s history, that the entire dimensional edifice could be kicked over and shattered by a determined assault from outside.”

The light of Khirad sparkled in the Lord of Bats’ eyes as he stood. He blinked, and the light failed.

But Neifion didn’t move. His eyes slowly narrowed. “Outside?” he said.

“From beyond all the worlds where people, gods and demons dwell, beyond our concept of time itself,” said Japheth.

“You’re awfully knowledgeable of such esoteric matters for someone so recently pledged to a Lord of Faerie.”

“My pact is with the stars now, Neifion. The association we shared is through. You may hate me, and rightly so—”

“You have my lesser skin, you rat-snuggling bastard.”

Japheth swallowed and continued, “Someone of your intellect must realize seeing me to my grave is a sideshow compared to the threat posed by the waking Sovereignty. I’m trying to stop Malyanna, and you should too. Even if you don’t care about the screams of a world eaten alive by the Far Realm incursion she plans on triggering with her Key, I imagine you are concerned with your own continued survival.”

Neifion laughed. “I swore I’d eat your liver after you bound me with the curse of the Feast Everlasting,” he said. “And I mean to have my cloak back, and a new homunculus in the bargain—fashioned from your flesh. However, you do raise an interesting point to ponder.”

“Malyanna counts on your rage toward me,” said Japheth. “It blinds you to the magnitude of the change she hopes to accomplish.”

The Lord of Bats said, “I wonder …”

The glyph on the archfey’s brow went into spasm. Neifion cried out and clapped a hand to his head.

The glyph transformed, lengthened, and became a green serpent covered in thousands of black, blinking eyes instead of scales. Its tail was a dual-pronged spike, and its head was all mouth and teeth.

It wrapped itself three times around the Lord of Bats’s neck, stabbing with its pronged tail and ravaging Neifion’s face with its maw.

Japheth’s mouth dropped open in surprise.

Neifion’s fingers became talons, and he tore at the creature, trying to pull it from his face. Despite all the Lord of Bats’s strength and fury, the serpent tightened its stranglehold. Its eyes blinked in a syncopated rhythm that instantly stirred nausea in the warlock’s stomach.

Japheth realized the serpent glyph had lain dormant on Neifion, learning the man’s power, all the while becoming inured against it. Malyanna had foreseen the possibility of her ally eventually turning on her.

“Get this thing off me!” Neifion said, his voice a choked whisper.

The warlock shook off his paralysis and invoked the influence of Acamar, a dark and distant star. Crackling black energy shrouded him. A stray bolt speared the serpent, and pulled it off the Lord of Bats in a spray of blood.

The moment the serpent was free of Neifion, a treant fist hurtled down from the canopy and smashed the awful thing into a goopy splatter of green paste.

Japheth and Neifion looked at each other. The bites the serpent had scored on the Lord of Bats’s cheek oozed blood, and red rings of constriction abraded his neck.

“Well?” said the warlock.

“You’re still a dead man, Japheth, don’t think otherwise,” said Neifion.

“But?”

Neifion chuckled. “But you’ve gained a little time with your clever arguments, and timely aid,” he replied. “Still, when we see each other next, watch your back, mortal.”

The archfey leaped upward, his flesh flowing and elongating into a gargantuan bat mid leap. He ascended as quickly as an arrow, then winged west. Japheth lost sight of him as soon as he cleared the hollow.

With the archfey’s departure, the awakened trees settled backward, fading once again into green somnolence.

Japheth turned to Raidon.

The monk was no longer curled on his side. Instead he rested in a lotus position facing Japheth, his eyes open and clear. Wounds marked him, but the man wasn’t inches from death as the warlock had feared.

“I heard what you said to Neifion,” said Raidon.

“Yeah?” said Japheth.

“Yes. About everything and everyone dying if Malyanna has her way.”

“I was trying to convince him I wasn’t his enemy.”

“But what you said—it was still true.”

Japheth nodded.

“Your heart is in the right place, despite your allegiance,” Raidon said. The sword sheathed on the monk’s hip groaned in complaint, but the monk ignored it.

Japheth bit back his initial sarcastic response. If he could find the strength to be diplomatic with Neifion, certainly he could do the same with the monk.

“You care,” the monk said, as if surprised.

“Of course I care, I’d be an idiot not to,” Japheth replied.

The monk nodded thoughtfully.

“How are you doing?” the warlock asked.

“Rebuilding my strength,” Raidon said. “One of Neifion’s awakened trees broke a few bones when it hit me.”

“I saw. Did Angul heal you?”

“No. If I allow it, the lore of Xiang Temple suffices. Though slower, meditation on the healing syllables of my order doesn’t corrode my thoughts like the Blade Cerulean’s impatient power.”

“Ah.”

Raidon smiled. “What I said earlier, about you caring—it inspires me, warlock,” he said. “If you, an addict to hell drugs and ill-considered pacts, can try to put the world before yourself, how can I not attempt the same?”

Japheth frowned. But he nodded. “I hope you can, Raidon,” he said. “Of us all, you are the one, with your Sign and sword, most capable of stopping Malyanna from opening the Far Manifold.”

The warlock held back a final bit of honesty, lest he disrupt Raidon’s equanimity. He hadn’t been entirely candid with Neifion or the monk. Sure, he cared for the world. But he cared for Anusha more. He’d shown that before, when he’d stolen the Dreamheart.

It was only because Anusha had pledged herself to Faerûn’s defense that he was here. Had she decided to seek peace in a distant land for the time left to them, leaving some other hero or god to step into the breach, Japheth would have been more than happy to accompany her.

Of course, Anusha wouldn’t be who she was if she hadn’t decided to face the threat of the Sovereignty head on, even though that meant pushing him away. The more he discovered her secret strengths, the more she occupied his thoughts. It was possible she was stronger than he, than Raidon, or really, anyone he knew.

He was proud of her. He adored her.

But he was still hurt. Try as he might, he couldn’t forget how she’d pushed him away.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Watch on Forever’s Edge, Feywild

Everything shattered. Sight fell away like icicles knocked loose from the eaves of the world. Taal was alone in a cocoon of night.

His totem loosed a howl of despair.

Then light returned, a piece at a time, like a puzzle reassembled by a demented god.

He was standing on an eroded stone balcony. Malyanna, the petrified corpse of Carnis, and the shadow hound were with him, though they occupied different positions than before the eladrin had used the Dreamheart. He was slightly misplaced too, and stood appreciably closer to the balcony’s edge then before.

Beyond the balcony’s curb, the Sea of Fallen Stars and the storm-shrouded skies of Faerûn were gone. Instead, a great cliff face studded with eladrin watchtowers loomed. They were the final rampart against a gulf of space Taal knew too well, having stared into it for a goodly portion of his adult life. Malyanna had ripped Xxiphu out of Faerûn and brought it to the Watch on Forever’s Edge.

A thunderclap of displaced air and water belled outward from the intruder city. The watchtowers shuddered under the onslaught of Xxiphu’s appearance. One swayed, cracked, and as if in slow motion, toppled backward with a groan of protest. When it came down, it broke into hundreds of pieces and sent up a plume of dust.

“The Spire of Winter’s Peace!” yelled Taal, pointing at the fallen tower.

The eladrin nodded. “I prepared the foundations to fall should the Eldest ever come here,” she said. “Less evidence implicating me will come to light, which means I have more time to act before my fellow wardens realize I’ve betrayed them.”

Images of the knights, servants, and other staff who lived within the Spire of Winter’s Peace whirled through Taal’s mind. It was too far to see any detail, but it was likely the collapsed tower meant their deaths. More than a hundred lived there. Or had.

He took a deep breath and focused on the other towers.

Though he’d never before observed the Watch from beyond its edge, he recognized Solstice Tower, Summer Mist, and the Spire of the Moon, the latter of which was the largest and best garrisoned.

A boom of splitting rock drew Taal’s eyes down to the cliff face. A mote of stone as large as an eladrin warship peeled away and launched itself directly at Xxiphu.

Malyanna gasped. She brandished the Dreamheart and uttered a word slippery with urgency.

The balcony lurched, and the cliff wall began to recede.

No, Taal realized, it was Xxiphu that receded, sailing into the darkness toward the discontinuity over which the towers watched and defended. The halo of water and cloud, ripped from Faerûn’s surface, was pulled in the city’s wake.

His mistress planned to steer them into the discontinuity, past which they’d find the Citadel of the Outer Void. Horror spider-walked down his spine.

Despite the long years he’d served the eladrin noble, Taal had never faced the possibility that he might one day interact directly with the entities his mistress commanded and served in equal measure. Acid churned in his stomach.

“Taal, compose yourself,” Malyanna said.

He nodded, feeling the constraints of his oath bolster him. He kept his gaze locked on Forever’s Edge.

The onrushing mote birthed from the cliff face continued its approach. It was gaining on them, despite Xxiphu’s acceleration. If the mote got close enough, it would detonate in a massive flash of green, or red, or most likely, sky blue. Would the explosion be large enough to destabilize Xxiphu and kill the aboleths within its slimy hollows? He hoped so, despite it meaning his own death, and … despite his oath.

“The mote will catch us,” he felt compelled to say, pointing.

“No,” she said. “Watch.”

Malyanna brandished the Dreamheart again, and muttered more foul invocations.

A trio of kraken emerged from their recently claimed rookeries that gaped on Xxiphu’s steep sides. Swimming through empty space, they swarmed together in a knot of flailing arms. Then the krakens propelled themselves directly into the path of the onrushing mote.

The three kraken together were only about a tenth of the mote’s size. Still, their association with Xxiphu meant they carried taint enough to trigger the mote. One moment it tumbled in placid silence toward the clump of kraken. The next moment the void was illuminated in a sun-bright flash of blue fire. The light seared Xxiphu’s pocked face, and rocked the flying obelisk from top to bottom.

When the glare faded, the mote and the krakens were so many drifts of fading embers falling into darkness.

“Only one kraken remains,” murmured Malyanna.

“Plus a city of aboleths of every shape and size imaginable,” Taal said. “Some of the old ones surely rival a kraken in size.”

“True,” replied the eladrin noble. “But commanding members of the Sovereignty strains my strength, all of which I will need to take up the Key of Stars. Creatures of Faerûn that I’ve subordinated, on the other hand, are eager to do my will.”

Taal’s face grew warm. He wondered if she counted him among those “eager” to accept her commands.

“Not that it should matter,” she continued. “With the lead we have, I can open the Far Manifold before the Watch realizes what Xxiphu’s appearance portends. Even if they raise all the platoons of the Watch and launch a pursuit across the gulf and into the Citadel, it will be too late for them to stop me.”

Taal restrained a frown.

“Let’s improve our point of view,” the eladrin said.

She gripped the Dreamheart. White fire limned the irregular sphere. She slowly rotated the relic in place. As she did, the entire bulk of the floating city followed suit. The view of the receding Watch on Forever’s Edge rotated to the left and away, until only darkness remained beyond the balcony. They faced directly into the void, toward the city’s hidden destination.

Taal gazed into the gulf. He saw Xxiphu was gaining on lesser defensive motes previously launched from the Edge. The massive face of the city overran and smashed the sentinel particles like sea flotsam broken on a ship’s prow. The motes sparked and detonated, but none were large enough to do any lasting damage. Still, some were so big the balcony shuddered and creaked. Each time that happened, Malyanna only laughed.

Taal saw things flitting in the void, briefly illuminated by distant mote detonations. They streamed out of the black, each one a unique snowflake of aberration. The light was too erratic for him to catch more than fragmented suggestions of corrupted physiologies, some of which aped creatures of the natural world, and some of which defied comparison.

Several man-sized tangles of teeth, horns, and scales arrowed in to flitter like moths around the balcony, keening out a low, raspy melody that threatened to break into comprehensibility. They smelled like a body buried in too shallow of a grave. Malyanna shooed them off with a sharp word and a gleam of power from the Dreamheart.

A serpentlike form nearly as large as a kraken coiled out of the void above them. Its oddly handlike head flexed slimy mandibles resembling reaching fingers. The creature fixed black eyes on the approaching bulk of Xxiphu and paused as if startled. A defending mote launched from Forever’s Edge clipped the beast, exploding in a spray of fire. Half the creature was incinerated, and the other half spun away, creating a nebula of fluid from jetting ichor.

Blinking in and out of sight were cascades of twining hair, as if shorn from a giant’s head, then given unholy life. Several blinked away, only to reappear too close to Xxiphu’s advancing ramparts. They screamed from hidden mouths as their lives were smeared out on the city’s black walls.

The distant, weak stars of the void glimmered beyond it all. Taal couldn’t gaze too long upon them without regret rising like gorge in his throat. More than anything else, they reminded him of his oath to Malyanna, and his unswerving obedience ever since.

Well, not utterly unswerving. He recalled the face of a man with care worn deep around his eyes who he’d met on the tor above Stardeep: Japheth the warlock.

He had told the man more than was absolutely necessary to warn him off. In fact, from a certain perspective, one might argue he’d revealed confidences. Confidences that might even provide Malyanna’s opponents clues on where to find—

The formless stricture of his sworn oath, awakened by the direction of Taal’s thoughts, tightened like a noose around his head and squeezed. He restrained a gasp, lest the eladrin notice.

The power invested in his oath was a constant threat. Usually, it lay like a snake in the grass, content to watch and wait. However, should it judge that he’d stepped beyond the confines of its constraints, it would core out his mind in a twinkling, and make a hollow vessel of him—a mindless automaton. Should he ever betray Malyanna or her aims, it would be his last action as a thinking being.

Probably.

Sometimes, he wondered.

The stricture tightened further, as if warning him that even doubt regarding the oath’s efficacy might itself be a betrayal. That time Taal couldn’t help but shudder slightly with the pain.

He closed his eyes. When he opened them, Malyanna was before him.

“Don’t look too long into the void, Taal,” she said. “It is different out here than viewing it from the safety of the Edge. We are over the Edge. Even I know better. The rules are different here.”

The eladrin had misread his distress. He swallowed. Despite everything, he was buoyed by evidence that the woman was not omniscient. Her plans could still fail.

“Thank you for your concern,” he said.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” the woman replied. “I’m only worried for the potential loss of a talented servant. That, and I enjoy our little conversations.”

“Hmmph.”

Malyanna laughed, then pointed. “Look!”

Taal gazed in the direction of the eladrin’s finger.

A wide swath of void ahead wavered like a black, star-spangled curtain billowing in a breeze.

“The discontinuity?” he said.

Malyanna nodded. The grin on her face was too wide for Taal’s liking.

In the space of ten long heartbeats, Xxiphu plunged through the veil and into the pseudo-space that adhered to reality like a cyst.

Humid, briny air slapped across Taal’s face.

Xxiphu appeared over a circular plain shrouded in churning white mist. The city dived out of a pale, bruised blot of light hanging in the colorless sky like a shoddy imitation of the sun. The detritus of Faerûnian seawater and flotsam pulled in the city’s wake rained down into the fog. Their impromptu halo was finally gone.

Hundreds of creatures like those he’d glimpsed in the void fluttered madly around that side of the glowing discontinuity like moths around a candle flame. They continually spiraled in, only to disappear. Their numbers were constantly replenished from curling edges of the shrouding mist below.

The fog repeatedly threw filaments of arcing white upward that fell back to create grand arches that lasted for several heartbeats. The colorless expanse pulsed and boiled, and gave up its progeny of dread to the discontinuity.

Screams echoed up from the veiling fog, savage and cruel. Mixed with those were snatches of chants, fell music, and sounds like cracking stone and shattering crystal. The cacophony bored into Taal, as if designed to compel a cry of protest. He raised his hands to his ears.

Malyanna said something. Her voice broke in easily above the ambient sounds, revealing the volume to be a chimera of his imagination. He took a relieved breath. The eladrin was looking at him expectantly.

“What?” he asked.

“Pay attention, Taal!” the eladrin said. “Do you see anything familiar?” She pointed across the expanse.

Some of the disturbances in the mist that he’d taken for prominences were actually solid structures. The tops of slender mesas peeked above the coiling white.

Something much larger loomed near the horizon, some kind of mountain perhaps, but intervening patches of mist obscured it. But in any case, Malyanna was pointing at the mesas.

“What’s their significance?” he asked.

“Can’t you tell?” she said.

He concentrated. Knowing what to look for, he saw there were hundreds, maybe more. He focused on the nearest.

The object wasn’t entirely a natural mesa, he saw. More like an … obelisk. A four-sided pillar, actually. What he’d taken for striations were actually glyphs scribed down the sides, depicting a frieze whose subject was hidden by the mist.

It looked like Xxiphu.

All the pillars looked like Xxiphu, minus a primeval aboleth crouched on top.

“I don’t understand …,” he said.

“Xxiphu is only a single seed, darling,” said Malyanna. “The first, and oldest. When I open the Far Manifold, all these will quicken, and disperse across the world and its echoes like fluffs of dandelion. Remember how beautiful a single aboleth city looked over the Sea of Fallen Stars? Imagine a thousand Xxiphus hovering over the Faerûn, darkening the land with their shadows!” The eladrin laughed.

His breath caught. It was a mad vision. “The gods won’t stand for such an invasion,” he said.

“They ignored one floating city of aboleths!” Malyanna said. “But yes, you’re right, they won’t ignore an armada. But by then it’ll be too late. The Sovereignty is only a herald for the changes that await Toril.”

Taal imagined the age of horror for a land subjugated by aboleths and shuddered. “What could be worse?” he said.

Malyanna chuckled. “The Sovereignty waits for the Far Manifold to open, to quicken all the remaining seeds,” she said. “But the Sovereignty’s ascendance will be only a harbinger. When the Far Manifold gapes wide, the cosmos will be finally and fully undefended from the infinity that lies beyond it. Everything will be different then. All reality will become one with the Far Realm. And I will gain my reward.”

“You’re mad,” he said.

Pain seared his temples, and his knees buckled.

“Have a care,” Malyanna said.

Taal gasped. “What I mean is, you’re mad to believe that what lies beyond the Far Manifold will care about your efforts to open the way, or even notice you!” he said. “You’ll be … absorbed, like everything else!”

She tapped her long scarlet fingernails on the Dreamheart. “I think not,” she said. The great eye within the stone blinked.

The band of pain around Taal’s head lessened. He drew in several deep breaths. He was surprised he could still think. Though he’d explained his initial outburst as concern for the eladrin noble, he’d never before gainsaid Malyanna so bluntly.

What was wrong with him? It was as if his subconscious was finally done with servitude, and had decided to leap from the precipice of his gods-damned oath.

Malyanna drifted closer to the edge of the balcony and held up the sphere, waking new glimmers of light from its depths.

Taal’s agony faded further, but the point had apparently been made: watch it, or die. Taal got to his feet, blinking away the last slivers of pain. He joined his mistress at the balcony’s edge.

He saw Xxiphu was settling down into the mist. From a distance the fog had seemed opaque, but beneath its feathery surface, the vapor proved translucent.

A solid plain of mottled ground lay beneath the drifting white. As the city continued down, a great crater resolved. Jagged cracks burst from its periphery like streamers from a sculpture of the sun.

Xxiphu continued lower, until its foundation settled into the gaping hole. A muffled thud vibrated up through Taal’s boots.

The cries, screams, and peals of dread melody he’d heard earlier rippled across the plain. But the sound of his own breathing was louder, as was the occasional low-pitched growl of his totem.

Taal made out other obelisks, like shadows as tall as mountains, in the far distance. Odd protuberances, pools of varicolored liquids, and slick phosphorescent trails decorated the ground. Few of the creatures he’d seen above the mist apparently ventured below it. The alien threat of the scene wormed its way into Taal’s heart and cooled it to the temperature of ice.

“Come,” said Malyanna. She glanced at Taal and the shadow hound, then at the petrified form of Carnis. “Beyond these hollowed columns lies a door. And I have the Key to open it.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Feywild

Warmth like a welcoming hearth fire drew Raidon onward. His Cerulean Sign knew the name Forever’s Edge. With every heartbeat, a pulse of familiarity tingled from his chest to suffuse the rest of his body. With every step, the connection grew stronger. His spellscar was again his guide.

A breeze tousled his hair, and fey light streamed down from the flawless sky. Anticipation made his stomach taut.

“A shadow clings to that ridge,” Japheth said.

Raidon followed the warlock’s gesture, through a succulent green valley illuminated with sunlight. A steep rise, bare of vegetation, formed the far side of the valley’s bowl.

His spellscar pulsed in that direction.

“That’s the way we need to go,” Raidon said.

“I concur,” said Japheth. “Malyanna passed this way … but some time ago. It almost seems she came from the direction we go, but did not return this way. Yet, my connection to the power we share places her beyond that rise.”

They hurried through the valley, jumping across a clear brook that wandered the valley’s trough, then ascended the rise. On the lower slope, grass and a few trees struggled to gain a foothold. The vegetation failed completely as they ascended.

On the other side of the bare knob of stone, the land fell away into dimness. A cold air blew from that direction, and it smelled of endings.

“Of course. I should’ve guessed our path would be the one clogged with darkness and dread,” said Japheth.

“What, you expected a castle made of confection and honey?” replied Raidon.

The warlock laughed. “If you know of a place like that, I wouldn’t mind a rest! I’ve got a sweet tooth,” he said.

“Only in the stories I once told my daughter,” said Raidon.

“I imagine, somewhere in the world or one of its echoes, such a place exists,” Japheth said. “If we get through this, I’m going to try and find it.”

“A quest without consequences for failure? I think I’ll join you,” said the monk.

Both men plunged down the other side, into the gloom that lay beyond. They walked into a tableau of bare rock, jagged boulders, and half-dead scrub grass. The farther they went, the darker it became.

Raidon glanced back once and saw the glow of Faerie still gleamed behind them on the horizon. Something caught in his throat.

A presentiment stole over him—a whispering certainty that he’d never walk in that golden light again.

“What is it?” said Japheth.

The monk glanced at his companion. The warlock’s cloak made him hard to pick out against the black sky.

“Nothing,” Raidon said. “Just resting. I think we’re close.”

“Taal explained that Malyanna was some sort of guardian at the edge of the world,” said Japheth.

“A guardian?” said Raidon.

“She was co-opted,” replied the warlock. “Do you suppose the other guardians were also compromised, or she’s working alone?”

“We’ll know soon enough,” Raidon said.

They pressed onward. Raidon wondered at the lack of animal life, so close to Faerie. Not even a single snake, fox, or a crow had crossed over. Or if any had, they hid themselves from him and Japheth.

Hours later, a row of lights appeared on the horizon. Raidon pointed them out to Japheth.

The warlock grunted in acknowledgment.

The tiny lights resolved as they approached, and revealed themselves as beacon fires. The fires glittered from the tops of tall towers constructed at the edge of a rocky rise. The towers were delicate yet sturdy, and each one was surrounded by an outer wall and ward.

A tower near one edge of the line had toppled forward across the rocky plain, smashing through its own retaining wall. Its cylindrical stone shell was broken into rubble.

A vast darkness swirled beyond the towers. It was a void shot through with faint stars and the occasional flare of red light that brought a slight chill to Raidon’s spellscar.

“This is it. Forever’s Edge,” said the monk. He pulled his silk shirt tighter around him against the cold.

“Is your symbol telling you anything else?” Japheth asked.

“No.”

They approached the central, largest spire.

Despite the high wall and thick gate, they heard voices yelling out orders and questions, the sound of hooves on stone, blares of horns, and occasional cursing in a variety of languages. Noises like stone banging on stone, metal on metal, and less identifiable sounds skipped across the rock.

“Sounds like cavalry preparing for a sortie,” Raidon said.

“All for us?” said Japheth.

Raidon glanced to the farther towers. Moving lights on the tops of the walls, surging beacon fires, and the occasional flicker as something passed in front of a light told a tale of similar activity.

“Seems unlikely—unless your pact is far more dangerous than you let on,” Raidon said.

“Hmmph,” replied Japheth.

“But they have noticed us,” said the half-elf, gesturing.

Several eladrin on horseback issued from a side gate and approached them along the wall. Some wielded swords, others bows, one a lance. All were caparisoned in silvery mithral greaves and hauberks. Their panoply reminded Raidon of the knights he’d seen in Stardeep. What had they been called …?

Empyrean Knights. Those in Stardeep had ultimately been betrayed by their leader. Was the same true for these?

The lead knight didn’t quite point her lance at Raidon. “Name yourselves and your purpose!” she said.

“We seek Malyanna,” replied the monk.

The knight blinked. “What’s your business with the Lady of Winter’s Peace?” she said. “I don’t recognize either of you.”

Raidon considered the knight, wondering if she was in Malyanna’s power already.

Before he could decide, the knight gave a single nod at the toppled tower. “I’m sorry to give you the bad news,” she said. “Spire of Winter’s Peace fell in the attack. Lady Malyanna is missing.”

“Attack?” Raidon asked.

Before the leader could respond, one of the other knights called up. “These two strangers arrive suspiciously close to the assault,” he said. “What if they’re here to take advantage of the distraction?”

“Nonsense,” said Raidon in a loud voice. “We are foes of abominations and aberrations! We arrive now only because dark forces are on the move, goaded by their new priestess. I hope you are, and remain, foes of that which lies outside the natural order too.”

“You hope we …?” called the knight. “Don’t be foolish, it is our ancient charter!”

“I’m glad,” Raidon said. “But a traitor is among you.”

“He seeks to turn us against each other!” said a knight.

“No. I seek to open your eyes. The traitor is Malyanna.”

Several of the knights exclaimed with angry curses. Japheth swirled his cloak defensively.

“It was she who was probably responsible for your ‘attack’!” yelled Raidon.

“Stop your prattle, human,” said the woman. “You don’t know of what you speak, here on the Edge.”

A thread of anger heated Raidon’s reply. “Do I not?” he said. “Then why do I suspect that if you can’t find Malyanna, it is because she is already on her way to a place called the Far Manifold.”

“A mortal creature can’t open the Far Manifold,” the woman said, her eyes narrowing as she spoke.

The knights began to form up behind the woman in the lead, drawing their lances down their line. Japheth glanced at Raidon. The monk could tell his companion was on the edge of violence, or perhaps a quick retreat.

Raidon tried again. “Listen to me,” he said. “Malyanna has retrieved the Key of Stars from Faerûn! With it, a mortal can indeed open that bleak gate, and she intends to try! Then the lords that the Eldest aboleth in Xxiphu serves will be free to enter existence, and erase it.”

“You’re either insane, or more likely, agents of the aboleths yourselves,” the lead knight said. She took her signal horn from her belt and prepared to sound it.

“Would a foe from the Sovereignty bear this?” Raidon said, pulling open his silk shirt and baring the Cerulean Sign. A purifying light bloomed in its simple lines and washed across the ground until it enveloped the knights, the gate, and a portion of the outer wall.

A hush fell across the men and women on horseback, and beyond. The noises on the other side of the wall fell away too. From the tower above them, at the highest point just visible above the wall, came an answering glow.

The lead knight looked up at that radiance, then back to the monk. Raidon saw the tension go out of her shoulders. Her eyes were suddenly wide with confusion. She raised her lance in a salute. “It seems you are expected by the Lady of the Moon,” she said, her voice now hushed.

“Who is the Lady of the Moon?” said Japheth, stepping forward.

“Each watchtower is under the command of a lady or a lord,” the lead knight said. “The Spire of the Moon answers to Lady Erunyauvë.”

The ground seemed to drop away beneath Raidon’s feet. The air in his lungs didn’t seem to be enough to sustain him. Could it really be, after all that time?

Japheth glanced at the monk. “You know that name?” he asked.

Raidon swallowed. He tried to speak, coughed, then said, “Yes. Erunyauvë is my mother’s name.”

Raidon walked in a daze. Images of his mother, as he remembered her, overlay reality. Part of him was sure it was all some kind of misunderstanding. How many eladrin took the name Erunyauvë anyway?

He and Japheth were led past iron valves into a square-cut tunnel flagged with granite. The corridor pierced the outer wall, and was lit with flickering lamps. The knights preceded them into a wide courtyard surging with knights, mounts, ballistae, and steeds of various sorts, including several dozen griffons.

The central tower was the courtyard’s focus.

The Spire of the Moon, from a closer vantage, lost some of the slender elegance that distance lent it. The tower had been built up from lesser structures, one upon the next, over centuries. Roofs had become balconies for elevated watch posts, and foundations for higher walls, and basements the origin for yet deeper halls and armories cut into the earth. The congested construction thrust aloft the Spire, making it a citadel both high and wide. Slender walkways and curling stairways provided external access to various levels and galleries. At inconstant intervals, great lamps burned, spilling a silvery radiance down the spire’s side.

The knights directed the visitors to the tower’s entrance, which was flanked by sculptures of guardian unicorns.

Four eladrin in silver livery stood in the Spire’s entry hall.

“Greetings,” said one.

“We’re here to see Erunyauvë,” said Raidon.

“Yes. But first, we are to show you to your rooms, so that you may take some rest from your journey.”

“What? No,” said Raidon. “I want to see Erunyauvë.”

“All in good time.”

The monk narrowed his eyes.

Japheth put his hand on Raidon’s shoulder, and the monk realized that of all places, this was the place to show control. He sought his personal focus. Over slow heartbeats, his irritation fell away.

“Then I thank you, for we are travel weary,” said Raidon. “Please show us our accommodations. But also tell the Lady of the Moon that Raidon is anxious to see her, and that time is short.”

“She knows,” one of the eladrin said. “Now, follow me.”

Raidon’s room was high up on the tower’s side. It overlooked the keep, the darkling plain, and far beyond, the glimmering light of the Feywild.

Hot water was drawn for a bath. The monk called again on his focus for the timeless patience it could provide. Not all Xiang’s lessons had been martial.

As the steaming fluid sluiced down his head, cleansing the dirt of days from his hair and body, the tension washed away. His speculations on what was to soon occur smoothed away. His reunion with his vanished mother, whom he’d spent over a decade searching for and was likely the reason he became the man he was, was imminent.

That sufficed.

Raidon rose from his bath and dressed. He poured tea from a cunningly inscribed service left in the room. The flavor was nearly as good as his favorite variety, and that was saying something—West Lake Dragon Well was a gem of Faerûn. The eladrin in the tower on the edge of everything obviously maintained a degree of contact with the world.

Someplace in the tower, a bell chimed.

A knock at Raidon’s door preceded the appearance of another silver-clad servant.

“It’s time,” she said.

Raidon nodded and followed.

“We go to the Court of the Moon,” said the eladrin.

They collected Japheth.

“Ready?” said the warlock.

Raidon said, “One hopes.”

They ascended more stairs, past closed doors, windows, and enigmatic statuary lit by candle sconces. Finally they came to a chamber high in the tower.

The room occupied the entire level. What seemed like Selune’s Tears glimmered upon the high ceiling, providing light more than bright enough to see by. A massive crystal throne occupied the chamber’s center, carved with subtle designs of moons, stars, leaves, and frolicking animals of the natural world. The designs seemed to swirl and move slowly across the crystal as if shadows of actual living creatures.

A woman sat on the throne with solemn grace, robed in emerald. A mantle of silver swathed her shoulders, and her hair was knotted with more braids and charms than Raidon could count. Her eyes were silver, and when they turned to regard him, he recognized them as his mother’s.

His breath hitched. Moisture filled the corners of his eyes.

Various knight commanders, courtiers, and other eladrin in the room parted to allow Raidon and Japheth room to approach.

“Welcome, my son,” said Erunyauvë. Her voice was heart-breakingly familiar. “I’ve missed you. More than words can say, I’ve missed you.” She smiled, and the room grew lighter.

Raidon went to her.

The woman looked up at him and raised her arms, but did not rise. He bent and embraced her. Her flowery smell was a door, and a flood of recollections tumbled through. Tears blurred his vision, but a warmth kindled in his stomach that he hadn’t felt in years. It was the warmth of belonging. It was truly his mother before him.

“Why …?” said Raidon, but his throat constricted.

The woman took his hand and said, “I’m sorry I left you. Duty called, and … I couldn’t stay. It nearly tore me in two to leave you.”

Their embrace broke.

“Duty?” said Raidon, his voice hoarse. He regained a portion of his focus.

“Yes,” she said. “I had to choose. I chose to take up an obligation I’d long prepared for.” Tears pooled in Erunyauvë’s eyes, shimmering silver.

“This place, I presume,” Raidon said, gesturing around the tower chamber.

She nodded. “I am one of the wardens of the Watch on Forever’s Edge,” she said. “I have been for decades—centuries even, at least according to the count of time in the world.”

“How did you ever come to Telflamm, to be with my father?” Raidon asked. “How was it that you, an eladrin warden of a place like this, and my father, a human; a Shou …?”

“I wasn’t to have assumed the mantle for many years,” his mother replied. “I traveled the world, and saw so many things.”

“That’s when you met my father?”

“Sometimes the heart leads us, not cold reason. He was the kindest of men. And, well … life’s tide washed over me.”

“Then you left us. You were ‘impelled’?”

“The warden of this tower died suddenly. I was his heir. The summons came to take my position on this unforgiving throne. I dithered long, because I knew if I left, I’d probably never see you, my son, ever again.” The woman cast her gaze down.

“You had no choice?”

“No, I had a choice. Some other could have taken this burden. But wardenship was what I’d spent my life preparing for. I couldn’t not accept it once it was offered, despite the awful timing.”

“Even though it meant leaving behind a child who would forever wonder what had become of his mother.” It wasn’t a question.

“And for that, I can never forgive myself.”

Raidon was confused. “Why would your position here prevent you from coming back to us, even for a short visit?” he said. “It would have been hard to explain, but at least we could have seen you from time to time.”

“I am the Lady of the Moon. I sit on the Throne of Seeing.”

Raidon stared at the woman before him, gladness and hurt battling each other. Her posture seemed almost awkward for someone so graceful.

“Why do you not stand?” he asked.

“I cannot. Whoever sits on the Throne of Seeing gains great powers of vision and prediction. But she who sits on the throne remains bound to it until the title is relinquished. Its embrace is unflinching.”

“How awful,” whispered Raidon. “So you left us, knowing that this would be your fate?”

“It was necessary,” his mother replied. “It is one of the tools that allows us to keep watch on the Citadel of the Outer Void.”

“But it’s like slavery,” he pressed.

“No, it is not that, though it kept me from seeing you,” she replied. “At first, I thought I never would again. Later, I saw a chance that, though slim, might one day bring you to me.”

She offered a hand, and he took it. She squeezed, and he returned the pressure.

Raidon felt brittle. In that room, beyond all belief, was she whom he’d spent so many years searching for, before the Sovereignty. But Erunyauvë had willingly chosen to separate herself from him. It was almost as though she’d chosen to sacrifice herself. He wondered, though, why she hadn’t even chosen to send a messenger?

“Well, now I’ve arrived,” he said. Resentment coiled just behind his words. “But a threat to everything rides at my heels. Why did you not call me before now, when we could have spent days, or even years catching up?”

“Because that is not the way I saw events proceeding. We have only a thin chance of surviving what occurs next, and meddling with that thread … Purposefully muddying the visions shown me by the throne might have changed things and ensured the Sovereignty’s victory.”

“I see,” he said, though he didn’t, really. “So, my part here is all foreseen.”

“Not entirely; events spiral out of control,” his mother replied. “I only hoped you would come. And, now that you have, you can help stem the incursion.”

The monk wanted to start over, to begin his meeting with his mother again, and hear comforting words. He wanted her to be what he’d always imagined: a being of perfect love who’d had no choice but to leave him. Instead, he found a woman with complex motivations of her own, motivations that went beyond love for an absent son.

“Will you help?” she asked.

Raidon clung to his focus and nodded.

Japheth spoke up for the first time. “What was the nature of the attack your knights spoke of at the gate?” he said.

“A city of aboleths appeared in the void no more than a few bells ago,” Erunyauvë said.

The warlock gasped.

“Xxiphu came here?” said Raidon.

“Just so,” replied the Lady of the Moon. “The wards tried to crush the city, but the ancient cyst proved too strong. The Spire of Winter’s Peace toppled, and the other towers were damaged.”

“Did anyone else accompany the city?” asked Japheth.

“Anyone else?” Erunyauvë asked.

“Companions of ours were observing the city, before it came here. A woman, named Anusha—and her friend Yeva. A ship captain called Thoster, and his crew and vessel …”

Erunyauvë shook her head. “I didn’t see a sailing craft. Xxiphu appeared several hundred yards off the cliff face. The city was haloed in worldly cloud vapor and sea water. It’s possible a ship was caught up in that detritus. But the city didn’t linger after it appeared; it receded into the dark, toward the Citadel of the Outer Void. If others accompanied the city, they never came here.”

The warlock scowled, worry plain across his tight face.

“What about Malyanna?” said Raidon, curious despite his hurt. “Did you see her on Xxiphu’s ramparts?”

“No,” replied Erunyauvë. “My knights relayed your claim, that the Lady of Winter’s Peace is a traitor.”

“It’s true,” said Japheth.

The Lady of the Moon nodded, her demeanor resigned. “Her mentor, the previous Lord of Winter’s Peace, was also a betrayer,” she said. “How tragic; Carnis’s corruption claimed his successor.”

“Carnis, who you kept in a prison splinter of the Feywild called Stardeep,” said Raidon.

“Not me,” she replied. “An arm of our order did, at least they did so until the changing of the world, when Stardeep was destroyed, and Carnis with it. His death contributed to Xxiphu rousing.”

“Others also contributed,” Japheth said, frowning.

“No one person or event is fully to blame,” said Erunyauvë.

The warlock nodded. Then his eyes narrowed. “You should keep better track of your bad seeds, Lady,” he said. “Malyanna found the remnants of Stardeep and the petrified body of Carnis. From it, she’s apparently got her Key of Stars, whatever that is. She believes she has what she needs to open the Far Manifold.”

The eladrin returned Japheth’s gaze with her silver regard until he blinked.

“You don’t seem surprised,” Raidon said.

“The Throne of Seeing revealed this to me,” Erunyauvë said. “Malyanna retrieved what she sought.”

She paused a long moment, then turned back to him. “I left you with something to remember me by when I departed,” she said.

A smiled tugged at the corners of Raidon’s mouth. “And I treasured it,” he said. “My one physical remembrance of you.”

“You showed its power at the gate, so I know you still have it with you,” Erunyauvë said.

“After a fashion,” Raidon replied, opening his shirt wider to reveal the Cerulean Sign stitched into his flesh as a spellscar. Its fire flickered and bathed the room in its sapphire glow.

“The Throne did not reveal this!” she said.

“It helped me fight the aberrations,” Raidon said. “With it, and the sword Angul forged in Stardeep, and my own modest skills, I kept the Eldest somnambulant when Malyanna tried to rouse it.”

Composure returned to the seated woman. “You did well, better than you know,” she said. “But the Sign—” She put one hand to her mouth. It worried Raidon to see a hint of doubt cloud his mother’s features.

“You knew it was more than a remembrance when you gave it to me?” said Raidon.

“I left a Cerulean Sign for you, as a remembrance only,” his mother said. “Each Sign is precious to us because they are vanishingly rare. I couldn’t think of anything more fitting to leave for you. It was only later, upon taking up my position, the Throne hinted you might one day return it to me when the need for it was most urgent.”

Japheth broke in, “To see so far into the future, you must command a considerable talent,” he said.

“Yes. But it’s a lonely power,” Erunyauvë replied. “To see the future, sometimes blurry, sometimes clearly … Destiny can seem so certain that neither fate, nor luck, nor intervention of any kind can alter what is fated. But for all that, the Throne did not reveal the Sign would be bound indelibly to my son’s flesh!”

Raidon saw tears well anew in Erunyauvë’s eyes. His heart hurt a little to see her distress. “Don’t worry,” he said, pointing at the Sign. “It seems to have all the power it possessed when it was an amulet.”

“It’s not that,” she replied. “It means your part in this fight is not done, Raidon. I had planned to take this burden from you at the last, relinquish my title, and leave this seat. You’ve had to bear so much, even though you did not choose to do so. But now …”

The monk put a hand on her arm. “It’s literally been a journey of decades to find you,” he said. “Know I would not turn away now, even though we are reunited. It seems I have a part to play yet, and I mean to fulfill it. The death of my own child still lays heavy on me.”

“I know,” she whispered.

Silence stretched in the court.

“My lady,” said Japheth. “What is the Watch going to do now that Xxiphu has appeared?”

“You saw the activity in the courtyards?” Erunyauvë asked. “We are preparing to storm the void and go after the city, of course. We must eject the Eldest from the Citadel, and Malyanna, and take the Key of Stars from them.”

“May I accompany you?” said Japheth. “I’m worried what has become of our companions. And my power is useful against these foes.”

Erunyauvë turned her eyes on the warlock again. Under their regard, he reddened, but did not look away.

“Yes,” she said. “You are touched by the void, but not consumed by it. The Throne tells me you have a part to play too, but I can’t tell for good or ill—your pact corrupts my sight. It is allied with the same power that inhabits Xxiphu.”

The court murmured at the lady’s words. She flicked her gaze out across them, and the voices quieted. “But if Raidon counts you as an ally, I do too,” she said.

The monk thought of the time he had tried to stab the warlock with Angul, but kept his peace.

Japheth coughed. “Thank you,” he said. “Then, we should go after Xxiphu as quickly as possible!”

“The hours flow more slowly here at the Edge than in the world or its echoes,” Erunyauvë said. “Beyond the discontinuity, they move slower still. This has been our one advantage over the centuries, as we’ve watched. It means we have the luxury of preparing a force large enough to have some hope of winning through.”

“How much time before we leave?” Japheth asked.

“Not long, but … enough to present you both with gifts.”

“What?” Japheth said.

Erunyauvë motioned with one hand.

Two courtiers parted from the press of the court and advanced. Each carried a chest.

The Lady of the Moon said, “Raidon, as I said, I saw there was a chance you would arrive here, you and at least one ally. I had planned on relieving you of the burden of the Cerulean Sign, but I suspected you might still wish to accompany the forces I sent, since I would have personally been leading them.”

“You?” Raidon blurted out

She smiled. “From where do you think you got your fighting instinct?” she said. “Before I took this seat, I was considered the most accomplished warrior in the tower.”

“Oh,” Raidon replied.

“Anyway, I prepared a couple of things,” Erunyauvë continued. “Even though I won’t be with you, these may help you in the Citadel of the Outer Void.”

The courtiers set down their burdens.

The first chest contained a pair of matched gauntlets, thin and supple, and dyed the color of the sky.

“My son,” Erunyauvë said, “these will increase your already considerable strength. You may call upon their power three times before it is spent.”

Raidon accepted the gloves, and drew them on over his hands. They fit perfectly, and he could feel vitality tingling at his fingertips. “Thank you, Mother,” he said.

She nodded, then pointed to the second chest.

It contained a rod of darkly oiled wood. Japheth pulled it forth. The rod flashed with the green of leaves in sunlight, or grass blowing across a rain-wet plain. The smell of growing things and cool wind briefly played around the chamber. The warlock gave a tentative smile.

“This is the Rod of Silvanus,” said the Lady of the Moon. “It is a reminder of the natural world. Its mere presence unsettles aberrations. However, for you, Japheth, I foretell it will serve an even more important function—it will anchor you to Toril and its echoes. When you stand before the Far Manifold, and your pact pulls at your mind, remember the Rod of Silvanus.”

Japheth blinked. “I … I shall,” he said. “Thank you, lady.”

Erunyauvë clapped, and a bell chimed in synchrony. The note hung in the air, swelling until it was a thunderclap that must have been audible across the Edge and in the other watchtowers.

“Listen to me now; listen!” she said, her voice somehow energized by the bell’s lingering volume.

“The forces of the Watch are marshaled and ready. The time has come to cease our preparations, and act! The battle over the Edge is about to begin. Upon this fight depends the survival of more than just our own lives; upon it depends the welfare of the world itself. And against us is arrayed an enemy whose power is beyond measure, whose fury and might would rip asunder any lesser force.

“The Sovereignty sees its chance to open the Far Manifold. If successful, all the world and its echoes, including the Feywild, will be washed away as if they had never been. All will be lost, forever.

“We do not fight against simple oppression, or mere dominion. We fight for our right to live! Our right to exist!

“So take up your lances and your swords, your wands and your spells, and your courage. Fight with all of your heart and all of your mind. If we succeed, the continued survival of world and its echoes will be your badge of honor! And forever after, until the world is renewed, the wise will say, ‘they were the saviors of us all!’ ”

A throaty yell reverberated through the court. Raidon found he was cheering just as loudly as the eladrin knights. A grin was plastered across Japheth’s face. And Erunyauvë smiled. She raised her arms to receive the court’s appreciation.

When the noise died away, the room cleared as knights found the exits.

Only a few servitors, Raidon and Japheth, and the Lady of the Moon remained.

“Raidon,” said Erunyauvë.

The monk leaned into another embrace. Her smile slipped. “As skilled as are the forces of the Watch, and the various wardens who will lead our knights, you are more powerful still, in part because you bear a Sign,” she said. “It may be that in the end, the conflict will come down to you and your compatriots. Do your best to … keep Malyanna from opening the Far Manifold.”

“That is our goal,” he replied.

She nodded. Raidon made to pull away, but she held his hand. “It’s truly good to see you again,” she said. “Despite seeing the possibility of your coming here, I couldn’t let myself hope in case that future played me false.”

Raidon had no words for her. He just held her hand. In his grip was the culmination of a quest he’d begun the day she’d left him. Neither of them wanted the moment to end.

The pain he felt at her revelation, that’d she’d chosen the Watch on Forever’s Edge instead of him, was already fading. Erunyauvë had chosen duty over parenting, but standing here at the far end of that decision, it didn’t seem so poor a choice. He brought her hand to his cheek, and though no words passed his lips, he forgave her.

Lightness blew through his soul like spring’s return.

“Mother, you’ve given me even more than you know,” he said. “I feel revived. That you’d never forgotten me was always my fondest hope. Knowing it’s true is a boon of incalculable value. Thank you.”

Fresh moisture glistened in Erunyauvë’s eyes. “I’m so proud of you, you know,” she said.

“I know,” Raidon replied.

“Well, then,” she said, squeezing his hand hard. “Though time is on our side, it still slips away without pause. I wish …”

“I’ll go.”

“But come back to me, Raidon. I’ll be waiting for you. We have so much to catch up on.”

He kissed her forehead. Without his focus, he would have been unable to leave the presence of his mother. As it was, his arms shook inside their silk sleeves as he left the chamber.

Japheth walked at his side down the stairs. The footfalls and voices of the knights who had preceded them still rang in the shaft.

“Amazing that your mother is here,” Japheth said. “It’s too much for coincidence.”

“It was Erunyauvë who gave me the Cerulean Sign,” Raidon replied. “Had she given it to another, perhaps that one would be here. It actually explains many things about my life. I wish she had contacted me, though, even via a messenger …”

The monk shook his head. “But I’m just grateful I’ve found her finally,” he said. “Though it would have been …” He couldn’t get out the words that he wished his mother could have met Ailyn.

The warlock clapped him on the shoulder. They continued down the stairwell in silence.

The courtyard outside the tower swarmed with knights, winged mounts, and engines of war. A great force had been drawn up before the war gates. The largest company was comprised of knights on griffons. The griffons wore silver barding, and the knights wielded crystalline lances.

Some of the griffons were hitched to chariot-like conveyances outfitted with ballistae, catapults, and a few devices Raidon didn’t recognize. Two griffons overshadowed all the others, and their pelts seemed equal parts feather and frost. Plumes of cooled air rolled from their nostrils with each breath.

The knight who had met them at the gate turned up at the monk’s elbow.

“This way!” she said, leading them to a chariot designed to carry soldiers. Four archers were already aboard—one at each corner.

An eladrin in red robes and a flaring collar was also aboard. A thick tome hung off his belt on a golden chain.

The knight said, “Dayereth, these are—”

“I know who they are, though I can hardly believe it,” the robed eladrin said. “Who would have thought the Lady of the Moon had a child? Unthinkable! But, here you are, nonetheless. Anyway, come, come aboard! I’m honored to have you in my chariot. I’m Dayereth.”

Japheth shot the monk a quick look. Raidon guessed the warlock’s unstated thought was something along the lines of, “What’s going on with this fellow?”

Raidon shrugged to the warlock, and stepped up into the chariot. Japheth coughed, then followed.

Instead of seats, the transport was outfitted with several upright metal poles fixed to the floor. Hand grips jutted from the poles at shoulder height. The archers, disdaining the hand holds, were loosely attached to their poles with tethers.

Dayereth pointed at the monk. “You are obviously Raidon, progeny of our lady,” he said. “My, my—you really do have a Cerulean Sign stitched to you! How did that happen? And what’s this I hear about your sword? It contains the soul of a Keeper of the old order?”

Raidon blinked. The eladrin’s rapid fire speech could prove a trial. “Dayereth, suffice it to say I’ve enjoyed interesting times over the last decade or so,” he said. “Once we defeat the Sovereignty, there will be time for long tales.”

“Listen,” broke in Japheth. “You seem to be familiar with us—Raidon, at least—but what’s your story?”

The man grinned and pointed at his book. “I’m a wizard of uncommon strength,” he said. “The Spellplague may have changed magic, but I’ve charted entirely new paths to arcane power that far outstrips what I could do when the Weave was in place, holding us back.”

“Ah,” said Japheth. “That’s nice … Probably another long story we’d love to hear after this is all taken care of.”

“But I’d be delighted to tell you more right now!” the eladrin said.

Raidon felt his focus fraying.

Japheth raised hand. “No! I mean, uh, no,” he said. “I have a question first, about these chariots. One griffon is really enough to pull them into the air?”

The wizard waved a hand. “Magic went into each chariot’s making,” he said. “A single flying steed can draw one with ease. I worked on the ritual myself, as a matter of fact. It wasn’t too—”

Notes blared from a hundred horns. Japheth sighed with relief; Raidon felt the same. Anything to shut the odd wizard up.

Raidon glanced at the war gates. They remained steadfastly closed.

He chided himself—what need did a flying armada have for gates?

The griffons screamed a chorus of piercing hunting calls and took to the air. The chariot jerked forward into a storm of beating wings and rushing air. Raidon was glad for his grip.

“Forever’s Edge!” Dayereth yelled. He waved one hand, and a golden light shot out before them.

Their chariot cleared the top of the wall by just a few feet, its wheels spinning without purchase. They passed out over the dark plain in a wide curve. Their griffon was momentarily silhouetted by the Feywild gleam on the horizon before the view rotated as they followed a curving flight path. A moment later, and they were aimed directly into the void.

A wedge of mounted knights took the lead with their crystalline lances drawn. Each lance produced illumination like Dayereth’s conjured light. The two larger griffons with hoarfrost pelts flew on either side of the vanguard.

The remaining knights and chariots drew up in discreet squads behind. Their own chariot was nearer to the front of the flying platoon than the rear, and higher than most of the others too. From their vantage, Raidon saw occasional flashes of light emerging from the depths of the dark abyss falling away before them, and in those brief flashes, images of writhing horror.

“Look!” Japheth said, pointing. “They’re all emptying out.”

Raidon saw platoons issuing from the other watchtowers, billowing up into the darkness beyond the cliff face like dust in the wind.

The gathered armada of Forever’s Edge flung itself into the void.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Over the Edge

White light splintered the heavens. Thunder tumbled like crashing stones. But Anusha’s gaze was riveted on Malyanna, and the Dreamheart in her hands.

A seam on the stone parted, revealing an unblinking eye old past understanding. The fey woman peered into that mind-shattering gaze and laughed.

The world parted, bleeding darkness. Xxiphu fell through the wound, and out of the world.

The link connecting Anusha’s dreamform with her body snapped as taut as a hangman’s rope at the bottom of its drop. She was jerked off the balcony and back into the waking world, back to the safety of Green Siren.

Something hard struck her forehead. Anusha opened her eyes. The entire room was spinning, tumbling, including her! A horrible roaring, tearing sound vibrated through the hull.

The room continued to rotate, and she found herself on the ceiling, then on the opposite wall. She banged her elbow hard against the doorframe. A brush, a pitcher, pieces of loose parchment, quills, and clothing leaped through the air. The pitcher just missed her head, and smashed against the door frame. An old belt buckle pelted her stomach.

“What’s going on?” she yelled. Her voice was drowned out by the sound of Green Siren’s hull crumbling.

“Yeva?” she called.

When she’d fallen into her dream, her friend had agreed to watch over her, and wake her up if her sleep looked troubled. But Yeva was not in the cabin. Although a human-sized hole gaped in the ceiling, near the door, about the size a woman made of metal might make …

A sound of cracking wood somewhere beneath the floor jerked her attention back to her wheeling cabin.

The bureau and her traveling chest remained fixed to the wall and the floor. But for how long? The fastenings holding them were for rough seas, not wholesale flipping end over end. She was surprised the ship hadn’t come apart already.

Wetness trickled on her scalp. She ran her fingers through her hair, and they came away with a faint blush of blood.

Beyond her door came the plaintive sound of people calling out in surprise, in dismay, and for someone to help them.

No one was going to help them. Or her.

Anusha closed her eyes, and willed her dreamform to emerge.

A sharp sting in her knee jerked her eyes wide open. Before she could identify what had hit her, the washbasin struck her. A piece of loose board barely missed blinding her.

“It’s impossible!” she said. She couldn’t summon the concentration to fall asleep while her life was being battered from her. Panic clawed at her stomach and her chest. She’d never felt less like sleeping.

A glint of purple pulled her eyes up.

A vial of fluid tumbled through the cabin with the rest of her belongings. It was one of the potions Japheth had prepared for her, back when she had first learned of her ability. He’d created the sleeping elixir to help her fall asleep.

The fluid had been responsible for trapping her in dreamform when the Eldest snatched her—

Her head smacked hard against the edge of the bureau, and she saw only white for a moment.

Every part of her body ached with pain. The cabin continued to spin and jerk. She had to get out of there, or she’d die. But even as she spun through the air, a view through the porthole revealed that beyond Green Siren lay an abyss of black space. If she managed to exit her room and the cabinway, she’d probably be flung off the spinning ship.

The purple vial tumbled until it struck the cabin’s far wall, and lodged against a shelf.

She’d never completely forgiven the warlock for how his potion had kept her from escaping the Eldest’s reach. That stuff was a dangerous drug! If she’d drank it before her last visit to the aboleth city, she might have become trapped all over again! It was unthinkable she’d even consider—

The ship slammed her to the floor, and all her breath fled.

“Torm, forgive my stupidity,” she gasped. It was the elixir or death.

She gathered her legs and leaped for the vial.

A package of hardtack struck her temple, and she came down hard on her shoulder. She scrabbled through the loose detritus that had gathered for a heartbeat along the wall that briefly served as the floor.

She plucked the vial from the mess. The cabin shuddered, and suddenly the ceiling was the new floor. She curled into a ball around her prize, and managed to hold onto it even when she hit the ceiling so hard her left arm went numb with the impact. She heard the sound of the porthole shattering, and cold air swirled in.

Anusha pulled the stopper out with her teeth and sucked down the vial’s purplish fluid.

The pain disappeared like a heavy blanket being pulled away. Anusha looked upon her bruised and scraped sleeping body.

She savored her success for a heartbeat, and imagined herself accoutered in her golden panoply. Then the “floor” tilted, threatening to catapult her sleeping body through the gaping porthole.

Anusha intervened. She plucked her body from the air and cradled it in the arms of dream.

The cabin continued to pitch, but Anusha decided to treat the floor as the floor, no matter Green Siren’s orientation.

Items battered her, but her armored dreamform protected her sleeping body.

What in Torm’s name was going on?

She stepped to the porthole and gazed through.

Outside was the void of darkness she’d glimpsed earlier. Broken timbers, flailing crew, and shreds of sail fluttered and fell away into an endless sky.

“Oh gods,” she whispered.

Something large rotated into view as Green Siren continued spinning.

Anusha gasped.

Xxiphu hovered in the darkness. A halo of water and cloud vapor trailed behind the aboleth city, almost as if the city moved at speed through the void. Green Siren was part of that halo.

Anusha remembered Malyanna staring into the Dreamheart and laughing, and the opening in the sky … The ship had been caught up when Xxiphu fell out of the world! The wooden craft was like one of Selune’s Tears, trailing the moon through the night.

Except Green Siren was gradually disintegrating.

Anusha turned away from the desolate view. She walked to her cabin door, her feet steady on the planking despite what gravity wanted. Her body felt as light as a sleeping cat. She shifted her grip, then unlocked the catch with her other hand.

Yeva was in the cabinway.

The iron woman was wedged into a crevice between two stanchions. Part of the ceiling was missing, but Yeva had avoided falling through it. She had one arm hooked around a stanchion, and another around the first mate, Mharsan, who was unconscious.

Anusha willed her dream form visible. “Yeva!” she said. “Are you all right?”

Yeva’s expressionless face whipped around to regard Anusha. “Fires of Tu’narath!” she said. “You’re alive! What happened up there?”

“Malyanna used the Dreamheart. She called a portal, and Xxiphu went through.”

“And so did we. We’re in trouble.”

“Where’s Captain Thoster?”

“Somewhere out on deck, if he was fast enough to grab something. I’ve seen more than a dozen crew flung off since Green Siren began spinning.”

“Are you all right here?”

Yeva snorted. “Until this whole ship comes apart, yes.”

“Then I’m going to find Thoster. The spin seems to be slowing.”

Anusha held her sleeping self tighter and walked to the cabinway’s far end. The hatch was gone, twisted from its hinges. She gazed down the length of the deck.

The mainmast was gone, though loose sails fluttered like white waves across half of the starboard side. What she could see of the remainder of the deck was empty of everything save a litter of detritus that hadn’t yet been flung away, and a few crew clinging to whatever piece of solid railing or trailing rope was nearest at hand.

Thoster stood by the mainmast stump, one hand closed in a deathgrip around a stanchion. His sword was in his other hand, and he was waving it around as if expecting to hold off a hoard of boarders. The captain’s hat was gone. For good, Anusha supposed. The man’s eyes were fixed on something overhead.

Looking up into the void was wholly different than when she’d peered out through the porthole. From the deck, the night seemed to go on forever, in all directions. The barest glints of distant lights showed the space wasn’t absolute. However, the far-off stars didn’t cheer Anusha. Rather, they brought home the magnitude of the gulf through which Green Siren fell. She shivered.

The rotation was definitely slowing. When Xxiphu rotated into view again, it crawled up the horizon formed by the broken deck, rising almost as slowly as a real moon, if a moon could ever look so dreadful.

Colorful flashes, like distant explosions, flared in the darkness beyond Xxiphu. Hints of sinuous bodies flashing away in fire put up the hair on the back of her neck.

Anusha looked back to Thoster. “Hail, Captain!” she cried.

Thoster glanced at her. His scowl lightened for a moment. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said. “I thought the city got you.”

“No … No more than it ‘got’ all of us, anyway,” she said.

“Damn straight,” said Thoster. “We were a little too close when the city plunged into this benighted realm.” The captain made to say more, but concern suddenly sharpened his expression.

“Brace yourself!” he yelled.

“What? I don’t see anything,” Anusha said. “We’ve almost stopped rolling …”

“Remember, I hear Xxiphu’s song,” Thoster said. “It prepares to breach something called the ‘discontinuity’! Be ready.”

“Oh, wonderful,” she said.

How could she brace herself? She was already holding her dreamform in place merely by effort of will. Still … She stepped back into the open cabinway and gripped the door frame with her free hand. Her sleeping body continued to take long, untroubled breaths.

“There!” came Thoster’s voice. He pointed to Xxiphu with the tip of his blade. Beyond the receding city, the blackness wavered, as if it was actually an ebony flag undulating in a night wind.

The city plunged into the face of the rippling field. Green Siren followed.

A pale light stung Anusha’s eyes. A panorama of mist stretched to every horizon. A pale blot of light flared across an alien sky. Monsters flitted around the light like moths around a candle flame.

Then the floor dropped beneath her feet.

The entire ship was falling! Whatever influence had held them in the aboleth city’s sway was concluded. She glimpsed Xxiphu for half a heartbeat as they hurtled downward into the waiting arms of substanceless fog.

Her body would be crushed! Unless … She imagined her real body protected in armor, just as she outfitted her dreamform, but stronger, more like a golden sarcophagus. Strong and impregnable, and capable of withstanding any sort of violence, especially that inflicted by a fall from a great height. It would have to be enough.

The ship plummeted. The mist streamed by on both sides like reversed waterfalls.

When Green Siren hit the ground beneath the mist, it shattered.

Anusha stood on the hull of what had once been a ship. It was nothing more than a heap of splintered beams and broken planks. The cabinway and forecastle that had enclosed it was gone. The deck had mostly fallen into the level beneath, and debris spread away from the ship in a wide halo.

A capsule of gold dream metal lay on its side next to Anusha. It encased her sleeping body.

A headache threatened to split her head in two. She was drained; her ability had been pushed to its utmost.

But the protection she’d fashioned had worked! She was still alive.

Unless her body had been killed by the impact, rendering her a ghost in an instant, as Yeva had been when they’d first met.

But no. Anusha looked into the translucent faceplate of the protective capsule. Her body was within, taking deep, drugged breaths. It actually didn’t look any the worse for the fall.

Thanks to the elixir, it would be several hours before she woke up. Perhaps she’d regret it later, as she had the last time. But deciding to take Japheth’s drug was the only reason her body wasn’t lying amid Green Siren’s ruin like everyone else must be …

Don’t think about that yet.

Haunting screams and obscene fragments of chant washed across her. Anusha could almost make out the words. She allowed her attention to drift up, over the broken shell of Green Siren.

Mist cloaked everything, but it wasn’t opaque—she could see for what seemed like a mile or more. The ground beyond the shattered craft was blotchy soil and stone, gray and green. Crystalline growths pocked the rock, as did tidepool-like catchments of brine. Slick phosphorescent trails stretched randomly across the earth, sometimes leading straight, other times winding into tighter and tighter spirals.

Anusha recognized the trails. Aboleths made them. Anxiety spiked the intensity of her headache. Just knowing one of those quivering bulks, or something even worse, could slide into view any moment was hardly bearable.

The mist blocked easy vision after an indeterminate expanse, but she was still able to make out towering shadows in the far distance.

A fissure in the mottled ground zigged and zagged away from the starboard side of Green Siren. The fissure’s sides followed a rise in the ground up to what appeared to be the rim of a low caldera.

A pile of broken beams near her shifted.

An iron hand pushed a beam up. Debris fell away, revealing Yeva.

“You’re alive!” said Anusha.

“I suppose so,” mumbled the woman.

“Gods, I thought everyone was killed when the ship fell.”

“I have some new dents, that’s certain. And something’s pinning my legs. Give me a hand, will you?”

Anusha pulled on Yeva’s proffered limb. The pain in her head complained, but she heaved. With a snap, the metal woman broke free from whatever had caught her.

Yeva stood up. As she’d said, her carapace was dented and scratched. Her left arm was bent so that it no longer dangled true from her shoulder. “If it’s not soul-trapping ice, it’s crashed ship debris, apparently,” she said. “Thanks, once again, for pulling me free.”

Anusha smiled. “Of course,” she said.

“I’m afraid Mharsan didn’t fare as well as I,” said Yeva. She wiped at some red fluid that stained her torso.

Anusha let her mouth fall open, unable to speak. The blood was evidence of what she’d already assumed, but seeing it in such quantity made her drop to her knees. If she’d been awake and in the flesh, she might have sobbed.

Yeva took in the surroundings. Her features were immobile, so Anusha couldn’t read anything in them. She imagined Yeva felt as vanquished as herself.

“What’s this?” said Yeva, indicating the protective casket with a nod of her head.

“I … I spun it up to save myself from the fall,” replied Anusha.

“When did—”

A groan interrupted the metal woman.

Something farther out on the deck moved beneath a fold of torn sailcloth.

“Stay here,” Anusha told Yeva. Another survivor meant she could stop thinking about Mharsan. “I doubt what remains of the floor can support your weight.”

Anusha rose and walked on the shattered deck to the sound’s source. She flipped aside the fold of stained cloth.

Thoster lay tangled in a heap of uncoiled hawser. His left leg was bent at an angle that was not natural. Blood soaked his clothing. A gruesome cut traced a ragged line down his face and neck. He moaned again.

Anusha put a hand to her mouth. It was amazing he’d survived at all, but it was obvious Thoster wasn’t long for the world.

Though … She couldn’t see any other injuries besides the broken leg and cut. But his insides must be hardly better than jelly—just as her body would have been without her dream casket.

Wait. The cut on the man’s face wasn’t as deep as a moment earlier. She frowned, then gasped as the ragged flaps of the wound curled together to form a red seam of scar tissue. Then even the scar faded, leaving behind smooth skin and a scattering of green scales.

“It’s Thoster!” she yelled back to Yeva. “And he’s … he’s regenerating!”

At the sound of her voice, the man’s eyes snapped open.

“I hurt. I really, really hurt,” he said.

The captain sat up suddenly. He jerked his broken leg out of its unnatural position, and howled at the unexpected agony.

Anusha put her hands on his shoulders to steady him. He grimaced, then looked at her. His eyes widened with recognition.

“Anusha, lass!” he said. “I remember now—we followed Xxiphu through the waterspout in the air. What does …” He trailed off as his eyes took in the wreck of Green Siren.

“On my grave, she’s gone,” he murmured.

The awful sounds emerging from the mist made a dirge to the craft’s final mooring.

“Captain—,” Anusha said.

“Don’t call me that,” Thoster interjected. “Ain’t my title any more. I’ve lost my ship and my crew.”

Anusha looked down. “It wasn’t your fault—”

“No, not true! I brought them here, didn’t I? They’re all dead, and I’m responsible.”

She didn’t know how to respond. She recalled seeing several crew spiraling out into the void before they passed through the discontinuity—those might still be alive. For a little while, anyway, until they died alone in unending darkness.

She decided not to voice that conclusion. Imagining such a fate made her heart ache.

Thoster put his face in his hands. She couldn’t imagine what thoughts were going through his head. All those who’d looked to him as their captain, dead. But it really wasn’t his fault—it was Malyanna’s.

“They deserved better,” murmured Thoster.

Anusha had no answer. Of course they did. It was an awful, tragic thing. It was too much to hold in her head. She didn’t want to witness the desolate scene, yet here she was, a part of it. In fact, as much as Thoster was responsible, so was she. She’d wanted the captain to move the ship closer to the floating city so her dreamform could reach Xxiphu. If the ship had been farther away, the crew would be alive, and they’d be safely sailing the Sea of Fallen Stars.

Yeva called, “Something’s happening!”

Anusha looked around. Was it getting darker?

Thoster rubbed at his face, then said, “The song is back.”

A shadow like a giant’s finger pressed down through the mist above them. A single digit, massive in width, stretching up who knew how far. The air shuddered in concert with a basso rumble climbing up from inaudibility.

A fitting end to this ill-fated voyage, Anusha thought. Smashed into paste by the idle finger of some alien demigod.

She recognized the shape as it came clearer through the mist. They’d stared at it long enough from where they watched it on the Sea of Fallen Stars.

Xxiphu descended. Only at the last moment did it become clear the city wasn’t going to land on them. Instead, it settled itself into a nearby caldera. It dropped so smoothly into place, like a hand into a custom-tailored glove, that it must have been from where the city originally hailed.

Silence. All the noises that had earlier echoed across the plain were quiet. It was as if the entire place waited with bated breath.

Xxiphu’s sides stretched back up into the mist so far that its top, and the Eldest who squatted there, were hidden from view.

Thoster raised himself to both feet. His leg, the one that had been broken only moments before, supported the man’s weight, though it trembled.

Anusha was at a loss for words. She heard herself ask, “So, you can heal yourself now?” Her voice sounded frail.

“Must be another gift from my polluted heritage,” Thoster said. “I didn’t know about it.”

“Of course not …,” Anusha replied.

He cocked his head, listening.

“What?” she said.

He nodded. “The aboleths are satisfied to return to their ‘roost,’ ” he said.

He put a finger to his lips and leaned closer, “Someone comes,” he whispered into her ear.

Anusha raised her eyes to the towering obelisk’s zenith.

Thoster raised a finger and pointed much lower.

Light flared in a cavity pocking the city’s face. The opening was equal to the level of the crater rim Xxiphu rested in. Silhouetted in the glare were several figures, made tiny with distance. They emerged from the opening, and moved down the side of the pitched mound. Two were people, and one was a blot of darkness in the shape of the hound. Anusha supposed they were Malyanna, Taal, and Tamur the shadow mastiff.

Several aboleths squirmed from the cavity. A couple flew into the sky, and took up wide circuits like vultures over dying prey. Two more aboleths emerged, but they remained earthbound. They were hitched to a gnarled shape: Carnis, the Traitor.

“They’re coming nearly straight for us,” whispered the captain.

So they were. If they continued on their present course, they’d see Green Siren splayed across the ground. They might ignore it as a wreck. Then again, if they investigated …

“We can’t attack, if that’s what you’re thinking,” whispered Thoster. “I can barely hold myself up, let alone grip my sword. Assuming I can find it in this mess. I need to rest …”

Anusha’s pounding headache reinforced the captain’s statement. Hiding was their best option.

If only the mist were thicker.

Maybe it could be. Anusha concentrated, and pain smote her like a flail across the back of her head.

No. It was too much. She had pushed her ability beyond the limit, even for hiding.

“Stay here and be quiet,” Anusha said.

She crept back to where Yeva waited. The iron woman watched the procession grow closer.

“Any way you can conceal us?” Anusha asked.

“I’m already trying,” Yeva replied.

Anusha squinted. She saw that the mist around the ship did seem thicker than before. She glanced at Yeva. One of the woman’s hands was raised to her metallic temple.

The mist continued to thicken, so much so that Anusha finally lost sight of the approaching group.

Noises of something approaching easily penetrated the mist, though everything sounded slightly muffled.

Anusha heard a woman say, “Careful! Don’t let it bump so much! If you break off a piece, I’ll make a new skirt from your hides!” That had to be Malyanna.

“I don’t think they care,” a man replied. Taal’s voice, probably.

“They don’t, Taal, but don’t be pedantic,” came the woman’s voice. “It’d be a shame if they broke off the piece of Carnis holding the Key.”

“That would be a shame,” said Taal’s voice. Even through the fog, Anusha thought she detected a sardonic tone.

“Are you testing me, Taal?” Malyanna asked. “Here, so close to the goal we’ve worked so many decades to see fulfilled? Because if so, I can see this task through to its end without you.”

The mist swallowed whatever Taal said in return. The procession had moved past Green Siren and its lurking survivors.

After another few moments, Yeva slumped. The cottony white that surrounded the ship slowly peeled away.

Malyanna and her troupe once again resolved in the mist, but they were receding across the plain. The aboleths swimming through the air above them apparently had no interest in the detritus of a broken ship. Soon enough, distance would swallow them.

And then what? They were shipwrecked in a place so far from the world that most of the Wise probably didn’t know of its existence.

Without anyone to stop her, Malyanna would apply the Key to whatever foul gate she had in mind for it.

“No,” Anusha said.

“What?” asked Yeva.

“We have to go after them,” Anusha said. “We may be hurt and tired, but we have to try and stop them before they reach the Citadel of the Outer Void and the Far Manifold. It’s what we came here to do.”

“How?” said Yeva.

“I don’t know,” Anusha said, annoyed. “But they’ll be out of sight soon. We’ve come too far, sacrificed too much, to stop trying now.”

The captain made his way across the ruined planking until he stood with Anusha and Yeva.

“I heard what you said, Anusha,” he said, his voice tight. “I’m in. I got a debt to pay them. Vengeance for my ship. Even if it means my death, I owe my crew at least the attempt.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Anusha said.

“Don’t mention it,” he replied. “Now, if I could only find my sword.”

Yeva put a hand back to her temple, then pointed. “There,” she said.

The captain raised an eyebrow, but followed her directive. He bent and lifted away a section of sailcloth. His golemwork sword lay revealed. And stuck in a crevice between two collapsed barrels … “My hat!” he said.

“I wonder if I should leave my body here,” mused Anusha. “The dream capsule should stop anything that comes sniffing around.”

“No, bring it,” Yeva said. “We might go far enough to strain the limit of your link. Can you modify this encasement to give it handles? I can pull it behind me like a sledge.”

Anusha bent to the armor protecting her body. She was tired, but maybe she could manage what Yeva asked without collapsing … Yes! Two stanchion-like handles formed at one end of the capsule.

“You have incredible power, lass,” said Thoster. He nudged the armored case with his foot, moving it several inches. “Even in the short time I’ve known you, your abilities have waxed. A useful curiosity has become something quite different. You’re fashioning ‘real’ things out of nothing.”

“I suppose,” Anusha temporized.

The captain was correct, if she stopped to consider it; creating a solid object out of dream that waking people could interact with was something she wouldn’t have earlier even attempted. If she could make a case to protect her body against a great fall, what else could she make? She shook her head; the headache made it hard to think straight.

“And what about you?” Anusha finally replied. “You’ve got something strong in your blood, and now we find out that even a fatal drop only slows you down.”

The captain’s somber features didn’t change, but he nodded.

“Our enemies are receding,” said Yeva. “We need to go now.”

They lowered Anusha’s case over the side.

Without another word they set out in the direction Malyanna had taken. The eladrin had gotten so far ahead it was only just possible to see the aboleth that circled overhead—the mists had swallowed Malyanna and her companions.

The ground was alternately gritty and smooth, and they walked around the catchments of salt water bordered by white crusts. Yeva pulled the armored capsule with relative ease. Her iron muscles apparently didn’t feel fatigue.

The space was vast and shrouded by coiling vapor. Only the shadows of massive, distant towers were visible, stretching away in all directions. Anusha wondered if each shadow was akin to Xxiphu, and she shuddered. It was like being in a cathedral built for gods. Even giants would feel dwarfed striding through the columned expanse.

Before Green Siren slipped out of view behind the veiling fog, Thoster paused and turned. He doffed his hat.

Anusha and Yeva waited. Anusha felt a lump in her throat.

“Farewell, my Green Siren,” Thoster said. “Farewell, my crew, to whatever destination your souls have found. You served me well without too much complaint. You were merry in our victories, and you put your back to it when the seas were rough. I will avenge you. We’ll meet once more, I promise you all, though never again in this world.”

All the feeling she’d tried to bury washed back over Anusha, and she had to turn away. Her dream armor offered no protection from the grasping briars of grief that squeezed her heart.

Thoster bowed his head a moment, then he turned and continued through the mist.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Over the Edge

A cold wind blew out of the void, sending Japheth’s cloak streaming behind the chariot in dramatic emphasis. The armada pushed forward. Glittering motes, like a bonfire’s embers, swirled beneath them in a turbulent lane stretching away through the void.

Dayereth pointed. “There, you see?” he said. “Detritus from Xxiphu’s passage. The city impacted more than a few of its own as it hurtled back through this gods-damned abyss.”

“Those lights are, what, carcasses of aberrations Xxiphu ‘ran down’?” said Japheth.

“Just so,” replied Dayereth. “And fragments of the Watch’s magical defenses too, I imagine.”

A sudden pall of stinging dust seemed to appear out of nowhere. “By the Nine, that tastes foul,” the warlock muttered.

“Just as the bulwark of the natural world reacts when aberrations stream in from the void, the void reacts to our presence in such numbers,” Dayereth said.

Black clouds boiled up ahead of them, blotting out the handful of pale stars. The sight was horrifying.

The eladrin wizard grinned from ear to ear.

Idiot, thought Japheth. Clearly the man hadn’t seen more than the inside of his private playpen in the past century. The wardens should have let the knights and wizard-warriors out more. He wondered how Dayereth would have fared during the fight with the aboleths they had faced in Xxiphu’s crown chamber. Probably he would have laughed maniacally until an aboleth grabbed him with an enslaving tentacle. Then he would have soiled himself.

Japheth glanced at Raidon; the monk was studiously looking away from the eladrin. It was obvious that Dayereth was getting under Raidon’s skin too. Japheth chuckled.

The chariot bucked suddenly. The warlock tightened his grip on the iron pole nearest him.

The vanguard of griffon-mounted knights swept wide beneath the boiling clouds, though a few directed the golden beams of their lances into the thunderhead’s belly. Where the light touched, lightning was born.

Their own chariot, pulled by the relentless flapping wings of their steed, went up over the clouds instead of beneath.

Japheth watched the boiling clouds as they passed over them. Flying through such emptiness made his stomach feel slightly off. Looking down at the immaterial vapor of the ebony clouds as they strove to climb above them didn’t help.

The clouds convulsed as a massive shape burst up from their depths. It was half crow, half leprous giant, and all nasty. “Beneath us!” the warlock yelled.

A fell light flickered between the feathers of the thing’s wings, forking back into the swelling clouds that had birthed it. A caw burst from its clacking beak-mouth.

Japheth’s hair stood on end as thunder rattled his brain like a clapper in a bell. Dayereth’s eyes went wide, or wider at least.

The archers leaned as one over the sides of the chariot and loosed arrows.

Japheth leaned too, and released a stroke of eldritch fire from his jade rod, only remembering afterward the Rod of Silvanus still strapped to his belt. Almost simultaneously, the eladrin wizard swept the beam of golden light emanating from his left hand down, directing the beam directly into the creature’s eyes.

Screeching and smoking, the crow-thing veered off. Instead of hitting them directly underneath and overturning the chariot, the creature flashed upward tens of feet away. The rush of its passage blew Japheth’s cloak straight up. The smell of corrupt flesh and burning hair washed over the chariot.

The griffon pulling them screamed a challenge, but continued to beat at the chill air. When the crow creature finally pulled out of its rise, they were far away. It cawed after them, but then turned its attention to the approaching chariots from another tower.

“Pity,” said Dayereth.

“It is foolish to begrudge a fight avoided,” said Raidon.

“Is it foolish to desire to flex one’s hard-earned arcane strength?” the eladrin said.

Japheth shook his head. The man truly was an idiot.

One of the archers yelled an alarm.

The thing from the cloud had changed its mind, and was swiftly catching up.

The archers loosed another volley as the aberration came into range. Purplish ichor beaded where the arrows struck home, but the monster came on.

When the horrid smell was bitter in Japheth’s nostrils, he channeled the blue-white fire of Ulban, a power named in his new pact. The fire washed across the monster and ate at its feathered, corpselike flesh. It cawed as its wings momentarily lost their rhythm.

Dayereth incanted a dozen vicious syllables in rapid succession. Ribbons of fire dropped from nowhere onto the creature and set it ablaze.

It cawed again, even as it burned brighter. The thunder of its dying call shook the chariot, and one archer dropped his bow in his haste to clap both hands over his ears.

Japheth was considering congratulating the wizard, but didn’t want to feed the man’s inflated ego. Maybe—

Someone shoved him. His cloak caught him before he could fall over the railing. It translated him mere feet to the opposite side of the chariot.

An entity of black ice crashed down where he’d been standing. Raidon must have knocked him out of the way before the creature dropped onto the chariot from its soundless trajectory through the emptiness.

The thing was something in shape like a bear, but a bear with too many arms, some of which could more readily be described as tentacles. Cold like a gale off a glacier’s face blew from it. Rivulets of icy water poured from its heaving body, quickly filling the chariot in an ankle-deep liquid that pulled heat from everything it touched.

One archer slipped and fell off the edge of the chariot. Her tether, perhaps weakened by the cold, snapped. The archer fell silently into the darkness, windmilling her arms to no effect.

The thing’s gruesome limbs were also in motion, but Raidon somehow ducked and weaved beneath every lashing one to come up inside the creature’s reach. His Cerulean Sign pulsed as the monk leaned back and speared his knee into the creature’s chest. The ice creature screeched, and the sound of breaking ice issued from its interior.

Dayereth began to incant once more. The moment he did so, a stray tentacle slapped him. The wizard stumbled back and nearly toppled over the side. Dayereth’s sudden screams were muffled behind a layer of blackish ooze that had frozen hard across his lower face.

“Curse you, beast of the Edge,” Japheth cried, and hurtled another barrage of eldritch fire. His spell cut deep into the aberration’s icy hide. It staggered, crying out in a voice terribly similar to a man’s.

It went for the monk with a concentrated fury of slashing limbs and ice-sharp tendrils.

A second creature of black ice flashed through the beam of Dayereth’s wildly swinging light. It nearly managed to land on the chariot, but a quick shot by one of the archers sent it spiraling past.

Japheth realized the void was probably thick with monsters, streaming quietly through the dark. Or perhaps, like Dayereth said, the armada’s mere presence called them from nothing. Either way, at this rate, they’d soon be overwhelmed.

“Griffon!” Japheth yelled to their steed. “Take us down—follow the lane through the void cleared by Xxiphu’s passage!”

The chariot dipped as the flying steed responded to Japheth’s directive, and dived. Dozens of gallons of cold water surged forward. The torrent knocked another archer to his doom, and pushed Raidon and the beast to the front railing. The creature started to go over, but three tentacles and one muscled arm latched on.

The monk drew Angul. With a bellow of triumph, the sword bloomed with avenging fire. With a single slice, the ice monster’s multi-limb grip was severed. It went writhing down.

Raidon watched the creature fall, Angul drawn and ready. Fire from his symbol and sword arced back and forth, producing an illumination far more brilliant than any of the knights’ lances.

Two archers remained in the chariot, but only one with a bow.

Dayereth lay nearly submerged under the water still in the chariot, weakly clawing at the ice covering his face.

Japheth bent and examined the situation. The ice smelled foul; it wasn’t formed of pure water. The warlock shoved his old jade rod into its holster and pulled out the one given him by the Lady of the Moon. He muttered a simple curse of breaking, and directed the energy through the rod. Verdant strength momentarily greened Japheth’s flesh even as the ice shattered.

The eladrin gasped and sputtered. Japheth helped him to his feet. The wizard was pale, and his hair was in disarray. The warlock resisted asking him what he thought about avoiding fights. By Dayereth’s expression, Japheth already knew the answer.

Instead, he examined the implement of Silvanus. Merely handling the item produced a comforting warmth. It calmed him. “This rod your mother gave me; it’s powerful,” he said to Raidon.

“The armada is beset,” replied the monk.

Japheth looked out and saw flickers of golden light swirling through the darkness, each one a knight on a griffon, or perhaps a chariot. The formations that had formed up so smartly upon their departure from Forever’s Edge were mostly broken. Lone knights swerved and dodged through the abyss, pulsing the night with bursts of brighter illumination from their lances. Sometimes those pulses caught abominations and blasted them into so much drifting dust. Most times the attacks missed and were swallowed by the immensity of space.

Every few heartbeats, one of the golden gleams went out all together. Most of the knights were so far away, he couldn’t determine for what reason they were being doused. But he could guess.

“The armada needs to form up in the lane Xxiphu made!” Japheth reiterated. He grabbed the wizard, who was staring out at the flickering lights with dismay. “Dayereth, can you contact the knights?”

“I … I should … I mean, yes. I can,” the wizard said. “Sorry, I just didn’t expect—”

“Get hold of yourself, wizard,” said Raidon. “Contact the knights and have them follow us.”

The wizard closed his eyes and raised a fist to his mouth. A ring on his finger winked with yellowish highlights. The wizard waved his other hand over the ring, and its glow increased tenfold. “I can only do this once,” he announced, then said in a stronger voice, “Knights of the Watch, listen! This is Dayereth of Moon Spire. We are being torn asunder! But we have a chance to salvage our mission: follow the path of the aboleth city that preceded us. Its passage broke a course through the aberrations that flood the void. Quickly now!”

The ring’s glow failed.

Their own chariot leveled out as the griffon reached the altitude it sought.

All round them, emberlike objects swirled, leaking red light. So close, Japheth was able to make out their shapes.

The closest one looked like nothing so much as a set of disembodied intestines with slack human mouths dotting its exterior. Part of the thing was torn away and missing, and it was that ripped flesh that glowed fire red, like violence given malevolent memory.

Japheth’s throat constricted. That … carcass, that cast-off thing was an instrument of the same pact to which he’d sworn himself.

He wondered, not for the first time, if one day he would end up looking something like that aberrant shell. His earlier musings were academic. With evidence so close at hand that he could smell its unnatural odor …

Bitter fluid rose in Japheth’s throat. He coughed and forced his eyes forward, away from the drifting mass that flashed past the chariot.

He raised the Rod of Silvanus. The Lady of the Moon’s words, when she had presented her gift, rang in his ears. The object remained warm to the touch, and its simple, elegant designs drew his eye into a calmer space.

No. He would not end up like one of these aberrant bulks. The lady’s gift would be his anchor. He let out a breath.

Everyone else’s attention was fixed on the remnants of the armada. The survivors finally managed to form up in a line behind them. Its size was half what it’d been when they departed Forever’s Edge.

Their intuition had been correct. No more blights winged out of the void to draw knights screaming into the darkness.

One of the hoarfrost griffons appeared beside their chariot, and set its pace equal with their draft steed. The warlock saw no sign of the other white griffon, or for that matter, the vanguard of knights who had so boldly taken the lead into the gulf of emptiness.

“It could have been worse,” said Raidon as he sheathed his sword.

“How are you doing?” Japheth asked the monk. “Getting a better handle on your sword?” Usually the half-elf struggled to return Angul to its scabbard.

“This is the fight I was meant for,” said Raidon. “Angul feels it too. The blade knows it’ll be drawn again, and soon. When that happens, it will be to destroy the passage into this world of all things aberrant. Angul is content to wait, and dream of future glory.”

The monk actually smiled. Japheth returned it.

Silence descended on the chariot as they advanced down the lane of shattered aberrations, toward a destination likely to take all their lives.

There was a real possibility he would die fighting the aberrations. But for some reason, he wasn’t afraid. Instead, he felt light, and almost giddy.

Maybe this was what sacrifice for a larger cause felt like. All his passions were usually for selfish aims—for himself, or more recently, for Anusha.

Was this what she felt, when she had set them all on their current course? If so, he finally understood some inkling of what impelled her. He understood, just perhaps, why she’d insisted that he and she separate.

For him at least, as long as Anusha was around, his concern for her would trump every other consideration. Maybe it was the same for her?

Some measure of the anger he’d gathered against Anusha dissipated then. She’d pushed him away, yes. Maybe even partly because she knew he and she would have a rocky future, at best. But perhaps also so she could allow what was most noble inside her to shine forth.

That noble impulse was one of the things he loved about her. That, and her soft skin, her sweet breath, and the texture of her dark hair beneath his hand …

The only problem was, he suspected Anusha no longer sailed safely on the Sea of Fallen Stars. If evil had befallen her despite all his efforts to preserve her safety … He inhaled sharply.

If she had come to permanent harm, all these thoughts would crumple into so much dross. His heart would cease beating, he was sure; he’d die. He couldn’t bear thinking that it could be true.

No. Anusha was safe back in Faerûn. Nothing else would do.

“We’re getting close,” said Dayereth.

Japheth turned, welcoming the wizard’s distraction for once. “How close?” he asked.

“Well, hard to know exactly. No one now alive has pushed this far into the void before. We know the Citadel of the Outer Void lies this way from related lore. But out here, distance is relative, as is time. The farther we go, the more hours and days shall pass us by in the world, and even along Forever’s Edge.”

“Right, time is slower the closer we get to the Citadel. Does it stop dead in the Citadel’s main hall?”

“Doubtful—It’s merely slower there than here. If time halted before the Far Manifold, then nothing done there could ever affect the world. By the time any gate opened to a place outside the cosmos, the universe could be born, grow, mature, and die away over long ages. I wish that was the case, because then we would have nothing to worry about.”

“Good point.”

Silence fell on the chariot again. Japheth gazed at the mighty wings of the white griffon that paced them, watching the muscles move beneath its hoarfrost feathers.

“The creatures of the void gather behind us,” said Raidon, pulling Japheth from what had almost become a waking trance.

Japheth glanced back. At first he couldn’t discern what the monk meant. The surviving knights and chariots continued to follow the fading path. The darkness seemed to stretch on beyond them forever.

Then he noticed glints of dirty purple and green in that all-consuming blackness. Each one by itself seemed innocuous. But when he unfocused his eyes and concentrated on the tiny glimmers as a whole, he frowned.

“Those ‘tiny’ lights I’m seeing out there; they must be fairly big if I can see them from here,” Japheth said.

“Some are,” said Raidon. “The Cerulean Sign senses thousands, most of which do not produce any light of their own. You’re only seeing the few that produce their own fell glow. Every one of the beasts of this void capable of directing its own trajectory is turning our way. They will follow us all the way back to their origin.”

“Will they catch us?” asked Dayereth.

“I expect so,” said the monk.

Japheth watched the darkness. The dim flickers drew closer together, as if they were condensing to form a vast hand. A hand closing around them, right before it squeezed.

A fluttering, winged shape briefly appeared in the distance, far behind the light of the last knight. It had neither the golden glow of the crystalline lances, nor the purplish radiance of some of the gathering aberrant host. It sort of looked like a bat.

“By the Nine!” Japheth exclaimed. There was no possible way Neifion was following them. Right? Fresh dread pulled at his stomach.

The griffon pulling their chariot screeched. Dayereth yelled something incoherent as the chariot lurched. The wizard nearly pitched out of the conveyance, but Raidon caught him. Had the idiot eladrin removed his tether?

Japheth opened his mouth to ask, then pale light bloomed across the sky.

Everything was different. “What happened?” the warlock asked.

At least he couldn’t see the damned bat anymore.

Instead, he saw a vista of churning mists. Aberrations wheeled around a glaring spot of nothingness in the sky. From it, the remnant of the armada from Forever’s Edge issued, one by one.

Pursuing monsters poured out of the discontinuity behind the knights. The creatures joined forces with those already fluttering around the portal in the sky. The last several knights to emerge from the gate flew straight into the claws of clutching, roaring, many-mouthed beasts.

“Dive!” yelled Raidon. “Below the mist line!”

The draft griffon tucked its wings, and the chariot dropped like a stone. Their companion griffon followed suit. A moment before the fog obscured his vision, Japheth gasped. He glimpsed the Eldest, wrapped in half-petrified majesty across the top of Xxiphu, not more than twenty stone throws away!

Then they were below the coiling fog.

Instead of blindness, Japheth glimpsed a vapor-shrouded tableau. The sheer sides of Xxiphu descended to a mottled plain. The city had landed, and had become a fell tower.

Strange music trembled on the edge of making sense. The air itself was … invigorating. He breathed in, and caught a scent that reminded him of the moment he had first picked up the Dreamheart. Promises were made him then, of power and strength enough to best nearly any threat.

His eyes fastened on an object far below, not far from where Xxiphu had grounded. It almost looked like—

“Land next to that!” Japheth yelled, pointing.

“Land?” said Dayereth. “An army of abominations follows us!”

“Most won’t venture beneath the mist,” said Raidon. “At least, not immediately. I don’t quite understand it—despite this place being a source of aberrations, it is also somehow inimical to them.”

“That hardly makes sense,” said Dayereth.

“Yet there is a reason,” Raidon replied. “But my Cerulean Sign doesn’t make it clear.” The monk raised one hand to his blazing spellscar.

The oppressive bulk of Xxiphu’s exterior seemed to press upon them as they descended, but the warlock had eyes only for the pile of timbers at the city’s foot.

Japheth called on his cloak to translate him across the intervening distance when they were close enough.

It was the wreck of Green Siren, as he’d feared.

“Anusha!” he cried.

From the shipwreck, no answer came, and no movement.

“Captain Thoster? Anusha!” Japheth called again. He was able to tell the front of the ship by the scaled figurehead that lay broken there. Which meant the forecastle had been about … there!

He began heaving pieces of board, sailcloth, rope, and other wreckage away.

“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. Something 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.”

Cold realization, like winter’s breath, blew across Taal’s heart.

Malyanna had known he would never accept her insane faith. From her perspective, he’d always been a tool. He’d been kept in reserve against the day the Eldest or she herself stood here before the last obstacle preventing the Sovereignty from achieving its ultimate aims.

She’d used the pride he felt in his own spectacular abilities against him, lured him into a competition, and crowned him the winner, the one who among all had attempted it. He’d proved himself the most “deserving” of being sworn into eternal service.

Then she’d used the oath itself to keep him docile.

He darted forward, his head low, his arms outspread, meaning to catch her in the stomach with his shoulder and smash her to the ground—

When the pain eased enough for him to see, he found himself curled at Malyanna’s feet. She held the Dreamheart, which sparked with purple static.

“Now, get up,” she said. “Hew to the word you gave. If you break your vow now, even the sad mockery of purpose you’ve had all these years will be for nothing. And then I’ll burn your soul out of your fleshy frame, here in this place so far beyond the world that Kelemvor has no way to claim and preserve it. You’ll be lost forever, as if you’d never been, and with no chance for judgment or afterlife.”

Damn her, he thought.

He pulled himself upright.

“After you, Taal,” she said.

Perhaps she was right. He had served his oath all those years without fail or exception. He’d never wavered in his dedication to the letter of his spoken contract. In service to that ideal, at least, he was pure.

There was a kind of satisfaction in that, a kind of solace to be had. Not everyone finds their purpose in life, and few discover one so grand, so cosmic. If it just weren’t so utterly horrific …

Taal called upon the discipline of his training and put the turmoil from his mind. Perhaps an opportunity would present itself later. But at that moment, Malyanna watched him like a hawk.

He mounted the stairs, attempting to contain his thoughts within the bounds of the task before him. With each step, the material beneath his feet shimmered between slate, oak, parchment, bone, and fur. If he squinted ever so slightly, the transformations all ran together. He imagined each change were like his own scurrying desires; whether the stair his foot rested upon was composed of porcelain or iron, it was still a step, and still bore his weight. They were akin to him—no matter the varied motivations that wrestled inside him, one after the next, his oath remained.

Behind him, the remaining flying aboleths came to ground. Malyanna directed them to help drag the petrified form of the Traitor up the stairs with additional care.

Taal paused when he reached the first switchback landing. To continue forward, the procession would have to ford a stream of luminous white water that surged across the landing floor and jetted out over open space; it was the lowest of the falls they’d seen from below.

The fluid emerged from the open mouth of a relief sculpture of a massive humanoid. The mouth was set flush with the landing’s floor. The eyes of the sculpture danced with cerulean flame.

Four cryptlike structures, two on either side of the stream, rose from the landing’s floor. They were composed of rough pieces of basalt dry mortared in place, and did not shift substance like the floor supporting them. Each bore an unfamiliar glyph over an entrance sealed with yet more packed stone.

Nothing moved except the flowing liquid.

He was still studying the tableau when Malyanna came up behind him.

“What are you waiting for?” she said.

“Insight,” he replied.

“Time’s up,” she said as she shoved him. He could have swiveled, used her momentum, and thrown her over his hip so that she flew several feet out onto the landing. Instead, he stepped forward.

The eyes on the relief sculpture burned brighter. A spark leaped from them to the liquid. The fluid took the flame, and burst into an eye-searing trail of blue fire that raced to the end of the water channel. Instead of a shallow stream, a wall of cerulean flame blocked the next leg of ascent.

He raised his hand against the sudden glare. Warmth reached him across the gap, about as hot as he would have expected for a normal fire so large.

He glanced back at Malyanna. She and the aboleths were retreating down the stairs. Where the light touched the aboleths, tendrils of smoke rose. The eladrin noble’s skin went puffy, and she bared her teeth like a cornered wild animal.

“Put out that fire, Taal!” she said and moved even farther down the stairs, until she and her servitor monsters were shadowed from the fiery light by the landing’s lip.

“I live to serve,” he replied.

Taal walked to the sculpture fountain. Was there a mechanism to turn off the flow?

He reached the face in the wall, but the sound of cracking stone made him glance back.

The rocks sealing the cryptlike structures on his side of the burning stream had fallen away; he couldn’t see through the flames, but he supposed the same had occurred on the landing’s opposite side.

Human figures stepped forth from each opening. They were shriveled and gaunt, twisted like bodies mummified by a thousand years of desert heat. They wore loincloths. One gripped a spear tipped with lightning white radiance, the other a sword and shield. The sword’s edge glinted with the same stark glow.

They charged. They moved at least as quickly as living creatures despite their withered demeanor.

Taal turned to face the attack. The sword bearer was on his right, and the one with the spear approached on his left. The spear wielder was also slightly closer, or at least its weapon extended further. As it thrust for his face, Taal deflected the shaft sideways across his body with the open palm of his left arm. The thrust skewed toward his right, enough to momentarily block the sword wielder’s charge.

Even as he deflected the spear thrust with his outside hand, Taal stepped forward along the line of the spear wielder’s charge, his right arm coming up so that his elbow was at equal level with his shoulder, and his fingers pointed toward his attacker. In effect, he’d created a hook.

The creature had no time to react—its rush hurtled it forward so that its neck intersected with Taal’s bicep. He instantly squeezed the thing’s neck tight into his elbow and spun. With its head completely captured by Taal, its body had nowhere to go but where he directed it—which was into the fire.

The sword bearer had untangled itself from its fellow’s spear and was already coming at him.

The second creature attacked, trying to disembowel him with a horizontal cut across his stomach. Taal skipped just outside the swing, then snapped forward again as the tip passed. The thing was quick, faster than Taal had figured; it almost managed to bring the sword back into line before Taal stepped in and trapped its extended sword arm against its body, so that the blade was momentarily immobilized.

He smashed his knee up into the thing’s elbow and heard a satisfying snap.

The creature didn’t react with pain, or even drop the sword as a living opponent would have. However, when it broke free of Taal’s grip and swung at him again, the attack went wide on account of its arm hanging without skeletal support at the joint.

It also wasn’t completely mindless—it dropped its shield and took up the sword in its offhand. But by then, Taal had launched an attack of his own—a front kick in the thing’s stomach sent it stumbling back into the fiery stream.

That was when Taal saw the first creature emerge, completely unharmed by the blue energy or singed by the heat.

He realized he’d been stupid. The guardians would have been pretty poor wardens if they could so easily be harmed by their own in-place defenses.

He sidled away, so that his back was to the open drop behind him.

The first attacker, without its spear, saw the opportunity and charged him. It opened its toothless mouth as if to scream out a challenge, but it had no breath. Its attack was soundless. As it reached him, Taal snatched its outstretched hands and fell onto his back, kicking up into the creature’s stomach at the same time. The undead defender flipped high over him and off the side of the ziggurat.

Taal’s totem growled, and he rolled to one side. An arrow glanced off the ground where he’d planted his back.

Another arrow came through the fire, and he rocked the other way. Guardians must have emerged from the other two squat bunkers too. Or the second one he’d thrown through the fire, which hadn’t yet re-emerged, had found a bow and a supply of arrows.

Either way, he needed to get across that river and deal with them before one got off a lucky shot.

He recalled the width of the stream before it had become a river of blue fire. It was about twenty feet. Should be easy, he thought.

Taal ran straight at the fire. His totem gave him enough warning to dodge another arrow, but his footing was slightly off when he launched his diving roll over the flow and through the sheet of flame.

Fire seared his skin. When his reaching hand struck the far side of the landing, the combined stumble in his step and pain of the burn contrived to degrade his form; he didn’t quite curl his body into a smooth roll. When his body spun around the first time, his ankle cracked the ground. It could have been worse, but at that instant, the Citadel’s substance was composed of some kind of chalky green soil, which was slightly springy.

Three shriveled guardians stood on the other side of the flames. Two had bows, and one was the creature whose elbow he had shattered. Like its fellow, that one didn’t seem any the worse the wear for its swim in the blue fire.

Taal regained his feet, and ignored the twinge in his right ankle from the bad landing.

The two creatures with bows loosed, and he was forced to drop again.

The swordless undead lunged at him and tried to stamp on Taal’s head.

He caught its foot, twisted, and pulled. The undead didn’t fall, but stayed unbalanced long enough for Taal to use its body to pull himself upright. It tried to grapple him, and its undead sinews were unnaturally strong. But it had no technique whatsoever.

On the other hand, the threat of cutting off its air or blood supply to its head by squeezing its neck was nullified by the fact that it needed neither. So instead of trying to choke it, he managed to snake his arm up and apply an arm lock on its good arm, levering the creature’s head down by pulling its elbow into his own stomach. It might not need air or circulating blood, but ligaments and bones connected the same way in living adversaries as they did in those animated by magic.

The archers loosed again, but Taal ducked behind his captive enemy. One of the arrows struck it. Like the sword and spear, the arrows burned with some kind of holy white light. Unlike the blue flame, that energy had an immediate and deleterious effect on the undead.

It spasmed, opened its mouth wide in a silent scream, then fell limp. White vapor escaped from its lips and whispered away.

When the next arrow whistled toward his head, Taal attempted and succeeded at one of the feats for which Xiang Temple had been famous. He snatched the arrow from the air, and hurled it back at his foe.

The arrow caught the undead archer in the neck. It fell onto its back like a toppled statue and lay still. A faint banner of vapor streamed from its mouth and was gone.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the last defender even as it nocked another arrow and loosed it on him.

He skipped out of the way, bent, and pulled the shaft that had killed the undead he’d held in the joint lock. The arrow tip yet glimmered white.

Taal charged his foe, the arrow held in his grip like an ice pick. The undead didn’t have time to draw again before Taal ended its sentinel duty in the Citadel of the Outer Void.

When Taal approached the sculpted face for the second time, nothing contested him.

On that side of the stream, he noted a rune scribed just inside the gaping mouth. He didn’t recognize the symbol, but it glowed with the same white light as had glinted from the guardians’ weapons. Bracing against the heat of the burning river, he reached in and touched it.

The blue fire died out.

Taal waited, watching the lip of the landing. A moment later, Malyanna came into view up the stairs, her wolf-grin back in place. “You are a wonder, Taal,” she said. “Have I ever told you that?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Then let’s go—I see we have at least three more landings dripping this horrid fluid to get past.”

“I think I know how to deal with the remainder more efficiently,” said Taal. He picked up the spear his very first adversary had dropped. Its tip still shimmered with holy radiance.

He turned and ascended the second stage of the stairs.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Citadel of the Outer Void

White light blinked through the surrounding haze like distant lightning. The shadow of a gargantuan pillar flickered across Raidon. He slowed his frantic pace to a walk and called, “Japheth, did you see that?”

The warlock stepped out of his cloak directly beside the monk.

“Yes, some sort of detonation?” he said.

The monk thought better of asking Japheth to investigate the disturbance via his pact. Considering what had happened last time, he doubted the man would return a second time from whatever mental abyss he’d stared into so raptly.

Another display of flashing light danced soundlessly from somewhere ahead of them, its origin hidden by the twisting vapor.

Raidon laid his palm against the Sign. Its energies hadn’t really settled down since they’d come through the discontinuity, making it difficult for him to direct its power. Truth was, he’d never actually mastered its functions in the first place.

When the next series of flashes lanced through the fog, he communicated his desire through the Sign, asking it to show him what had transpired.

A point of fire expanded before his face, becoming an image of Malyanna, laughing, her mouth wide with more teeth and mirth than nature had ever intended. She stood atop some high place. The vision blew away a heartbeat later.

Concern sharpened Raidon’s breath. “We don’t have time to follow these tracks,” he said. “Malyanna’s reached the Citadel. We must go now.”

“But … very well,” said Japheth, “I suppose these tracks go to the same place. But how do we get there? I need a lot more preparation to go that far through my cloak, especially for a location I haven’t actually seen yet.”

Raidon looked up. “Madwing! Can you bear us?” he called. “We need to move as quickly as your wings can fly us!”

The white griffon screamed a piercing affirmation.

“Wait! I’m—,” yelled Japheth.

It stooped upon them. Raidon had a moment to wonder about the creature’s intentions before one of its massive talons snatched him from his feet. The other grabbed the warlock.

Then they were lifting away from the plain, Madwing’s wavering shadow becoming ever smaller and fainter across the mottled landscape.

The griffon was cold. Even though it wasn’t actively trying to harm him, Raidon supposed he’d develop frostbite if the talons held him too long.

“I could have stood a little more warning,” yelled Japheth.

The warlock looked fine, just surprised, so Raidon ignored him.

As they continued to rise, the fog above them began to thin.

“That’s right, Madwing, as fast as you can!” said Raidon. “But don’t go above the mist line.” He assumed the host of creatures they’d witnessed swirling just above the vapor when they’d arrived hadn’t gone anywhere.

The griffon arrowed through layer upon layer of cloaking mist, swerving left then right to avoid towering pillars, each easily the size of Xxiphu. The obelisks were scrawled with frozen runes and pocked with balconies, but nothing moved within their shadowed hollows.

Ahead, a shape resolved from the fog as they rushed upon it.

It was some kind of triangular structure. The dazzling light they’d witnessed from afar was eye-searing so close. It came from the blocky pyramid’s highest point.

“Madwing, take us closer; land us on top!” Raidon said.

The griffon spiraled inward. The structure fluctuated, shimmering uncertainly between color and substance, though its shape remained constant. The top of the pyramid was a wide, flat expanse containing a single feature: some kind of crystalline lens standing on its edge.

Blue metal, scratched and pitted with the rust of ages, formed a wide band holding a crystalline disk upright. Unnerving colors and light swept across the disk, sometimes flashing as bright as the sun. Several tiny figures stood before the disk, giving Raidon a sense of the lens’s size; it was easily large enough to permit an elder dragon to swoop though with its wings fully extended, assuming the crystal was shattered.

The monk’s spellscar burned with a cold more chill than the hoarfrost griffon’s talon as he realized the disk’s significance.

“The crystal is the Far Manifold, Japheth!” said Raidon.

“Is that Anusha up there? Is she among those gathered?” replied Japheth.

“We’ll see soon enough!” Raidon said.

Madwing bore them closer even as the massive lens flashed again. In that glare, he recognized Malyanna and her hound, the stony horror that was the Traitor, a man in a black temple robe, and several milling aboleths. No Anusha, Thoster, or other friendly faces.

The hoarfrost griffon came in low and dropped Raidon and Japheth at the edge of the platform. Raidon tucked his head and rolled, easily coming up on his feet. Japheth translated through his cloak the moment the griffon released him, and reappeared only a few feet from the monk.

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.

He sprinted to the lens again, grabbing Angul up by the hilt as he sped by.

Foolish to drop me, Raidon, chided the blade. The monk ignored the mental voice, and focused instead on charting a path through the riotous press of creatures clogging the path between himself and the Far Manifold. Why couldn’t he see the eladrin noble?

She is there. I sense her putrid life force.

A humanoid whose flesh swirled and rippled like a poorly sewn quilt leaped to intercept him. Angul cut the creature out of the air. When it fell, the “quilt” burst open to reveal a swarm of spiderlike insects, each scampering on a dozen translucent brown legs. Several brandished stingers dripping with poison. He was past it before the new hatched horde could envelop or sting him.

A scream of triumph drew his eyes through the throng to a figure composed of flapping bat wings … No, not made of bats—covered in them. Malyanna appeared, shaking off the dispersing shroud.

She still had the amulet, twin to the one he had before the Year of Blue Fire transferred the design to his chest.

With stray bats still flapping in her hair, Malyanna raised the amulet and peered into the crystal face.

“No!” Raidon screamed as Malyanna touched the Key to the crystal disk.

“It is done!” she shrieked. “All the days of all the worlds are done!”

The amulet turned to dust in her hands. Raidon felt a sympathetic pinch in his chest and knew that the key she’d just used to open the Far Manifold was destroyed. Even were he to reach Malyanna’s side and slay her with Angul, he couldn’t use the Key of Stars to lock the gate again.

Every eye, aberrant and natural, turned to regard the massive crystal disk.

With a shudder, the Far Manifold cracked open.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Citadel of the Outer Void

The stairs on the crazy Citadel didn’t bother Anusha; she took them three at a time. The walk across the hazy plain had seemed interminable, but had provided her mind a chance to rest.

She knew she was leaving Yeva and Thoster behind, but they would have to get to the top when they could; something big was happening up there! At least she’d convinced Yeva to leave the capsule protecting her body at the foot of the ziggurat. The iron woman would move much faster without hauling that around.

Of them all, only Thoster was susceptible to purely physical fatigue. Then again, with his newly discovered regenerating ability, Anusha wasn’t sure even that was true.

She sprinted across one final landing, leaped another channel filled with white fluid, and ignored more of the sprawled bodies that looked as if they’d been dead for centuries. She had no time to investigate curiosities.

She flew up the last set of stairs and finally gazed across the uppermost level of the ziggurat. A throng of ghastly creatures swirled in an ever-widening knot around the base of a gargantuan plug of crystal. The disparate creatures before her were awful to behold, but didn’t hold a candle to what she saw through the crystal.

Through it, the malignant, all-too-cognizant end of the world stared out.

The sound of fighting, fist on flesh, metal on metal, and the muttering of spells was audible above the hunting screams of the monsters, but the physical press hid from view what was going on at the base of the crystal lens. The number of aberrations only continued to grow as more and more gyred down from a sky cleared of mist.

Anusha rendered her armored form as invisible as the dream it was, and dashed forward. She drew her golden blade, but avoided assassinating every monstrosity that stumbled into her path. No need to draw attention to her presence before she knew what was going on.

Then she saw two human-sized figures facing off amid the press of creatures. One was Taal, the man who served Malyanna. The other was Raidon! It took her a moment for the fact of the monk’s presence to sink in.

Her heart hammered. If the half-elf was there, it meant he and Japheth had successfully tracked the crazy eladrin!

But where was the warlock? She gazed around the Citadel. Such a horde of cawing, huffing, and gesticulating creatures had gathered that it was impossible to say. Her throat tightened.

Anusha ran for the monk, dodging hulking beasts she didn’t care to examine closely. Among the creatures that flopped, slid, and flew across the wide ziggurat top, she recognized several aboleths. Thankfully, none resembled the yellow-hued variety that could see her even when she didn’t want to be noticed.

She raised her sword to slay Taal as she closed. The man wouldn’t even know she was there before her dream sword ended his existence. Then Raidon could tell her what had happened to Japheth.

Something cackled with unearthly glee. She glanced to her left and stopped dead.

A human-sized ogre hunched on double-jointed knees. Its arms hung down and trailed clawed hands on the ground. It had no neck, and its “face” was a single massive eye that stared unblinking at her. A mouth gaped beneath the eye, which opened wider as the thing produced a crazed laugh that would have done an asylum inmate proud.

Could it see her?

The eye pulsed orange-red, and its iris swirled. Oh my. How indescribable; how beautiful! Anusha stumbled forward to get a better look at that swirling, whirlpool design …

When she reached the creature, its clawed arms came up and swiped through her dreamform. Had she been flesh, the claws probably would have disemboweled her. As it was, it broke the spell that compelled her to stumble up to it like a rapt fool.

“I don’t have time for this,” she said and lunged at the thing with her sword.

The thing easily evaded. She took a step and sliced again, and the creature jumped back, just outside of sword range.

It wasn’t so easy to strike down foes who could see you coming.

The thing cackled like a demented crone as its lone eye pulsed black. An echoing black miasma appeared around Anusha. Pain doubled her over. A mental attack!

All it had to do was look at her to affect her. The eye pulsed again. Her golden armor faded to a dull yellow. Parts of it corroded still further, and turned to dust. Beneath it was her bare flesh. She stared at her arm in dismay—the revealed skin bubbled, roiled, and dripped. The pain was like the time as a child she’d accidentally spilled boiling water on herself.

She turned and ran from the creature.

It hopped after her.

“No!” she cried.

Where could she hide? She could retreat back to her body … No, the elixir still kept her under.

When the answer came to her, she nearly smote herself in the head for being such an idiot.

She stopped. The floor, like every other material of the waking world she interacted with, was something she’d merely decided was necessary to hold her dream. Since she wasn’t real, or at least she was only as real as she wanted to be, the floor should be no barrier to her, despite how it couldn’t seem to decide whether it was granite, snow, or soft black foam.

What if the floor were no more solid than water? Like the Sea of Fallen Stars, which she had once swam in every tenday to satisfy her father’s desire that she be prepared should she ever fall from one of the Marhana ships.

Anusha sank into the changeable ground, until only her head remained above the “surface.”

Her pursuer paused, but dropped its gaze. She’d have to “go under” for her plan to work.

Steadying herself, she took a deep breath, and put her head beneath the floor.

It was dark. No hint of light pierced the surface. Like a tomb of rock sealed beneath the earth.

Stop that! she thought. She “swam” forward, moving through varying mediums. Or at least she hoped she was moving. It was impossible to tell without reference points.

When she reached the point a few paces past where she estimated her one-eyed foe had been, she spared a moment to imagine her armor once again securely fastened around her body. Then she surged up, reaching for light exactly like a drowning person reaches for air.

Relief was sweet when the sickly illumination of the Citadel found her again.

Her foe was still more or less where she had hoped it would be.

She shoved her dream sword directly into it, imagining it sharp enough to cut and kill.

The cackler ceased its laughter and died.

Anusha gazed around to get her bearings. She’d lost sight of Raidon and Taal. She still didn’t see Japheth anywhere.

But she saw Malyanna. The hateful woman stood an arm’s reach from the crystal.

In the eladrin’s hand dangled an amulet blazing with a symbol of a leafless tree. It looked like the symbol seared into Raidon’s flesh. How odd, she thought. The eladrin handled it with almost holy reverence. Anusha hoped it wasn’t the Key of Stars.

As if on cue, as happens in nightmares, Malyanna touched the amulet to the crystal disk.

“No!” a voice yelled out. That sounded like—

The noise of shattering glass drew her up short. She, along with every creature in range, watched what happened next.

A fissure splintered up the crystal. It was a line of absence, and with every yard it traveled and branched up the surface of the Far Manifold, something seemed to tear at her mind.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

Through the crack, oily fluid began to seep.

Japheth gaped. By the burning beards of the Nine, the gods-damned woman had cracked the gate. He blinked. Had it really happened?

“Don’t just stand there drooling, simpleton!” commanded the Lord of Bats. “Apply your fancy new pact to slow the break! I’ll deal with Malyanna as I should have done before!”

The archfey shed his humanoid form like an old rag. A bat the size of a house ripped free of his confining, human flesh and took to the air. Tentacles lashed, but none caught Neifion.

Malyanna, a grin on her face, whipped her gaze up to regard the oversize bat, which seemed to pause at the top of its dive.

“My old ally!” she called. “Come to congratulate me on my success?”

Neifion folded his wings and dived, his fangs and eyes gleaming with Feywild vigor.

The Lord of Bats and the Lady of Winter’s Peace engaged. A flurry of fur and phantom light burst from where they came together.

Incoherent swirls of brightness and atonal distortions of sound drew Japheth’s attention above the fracas to the splintering crystal. Distortions played around the crack which, still spreading, now stretched nearly a quarter way up the face of the crystal. Through the lens’s facets, a kaleidoscope view revolved: Translucent, gelatinous, onion-thin layers of fleshy landscape were pierced by bone white rivers of foul fluid, seepages of blue slime, and undulating eel-like worms. He glimpsed incalculably large shapes drifting at the edge of sight through the semi-solid substance composing a singular amoebic sea. The shapes were blurrily reminiscent of creatures from the deepest sea trenches of Faerûn. Others seemed quite familiar—they had the vague silhouette of aboleths. But many of the indistinct forms seemed as large as cities—and those were the small ones.

Before the lens had cracked, what lay beyond the gate rarely touched the rational world. It had never been a place people could visit; it was only a place from which terrible, insane influences originated. In the Far Realm, contradictions and toxic cosmic laws were born at whim, only to dissolve like vapor to make way for newer, more insane dreams.

The vast entities residing there were so alien that reality would buckle under their scrutiny. Dread was like a dagger in his chest as he watched the crack in the barrier between reality and insanity widen further.

What could he do? he thought. The Lord of Bats had bidden him to delay the damage to the Far Manifold with his star pact. Could he?

Of course he could try. But it seemed even odds that merely attempting to use the powers of his star pact while standing on the Citadel of the Outer Void would consume his mind instantly. He’d be just one more brain-cored servitor rampaging on the ziggurat the roof. Fear made him hesitate.

It occurred to him that, even though she might fear it, Anusha would do it. What would she think of him if he quailed to even try?

“Wherever you are, know I love you,” he muttered.

An aboleth the size of a whale slid past him on its route to the Far Manifold, but paused as if puzzled at Japheth’s vocalization.

It was just one of the hundreds of terrible creatures, already manifest from ages of slow leakage from the Far Manifold. They’d been ignoring him, apparently caught up in the excitement of what was about to happen.

The thrice-damned aboleth brought its three red eyes around to stare at him.

Japheth knew only one spell of concealment. It was from his star pact. Speaking it would be a good test. He raised his gloved hands, focused his eyes on the patterns of vines that swirled amid the weave, and whispered, “Caiphon, unfurl your stairs!”

He was jerked upward. His flesh became as substanceless smoke. Last time he’d used that spell it seemed he’d walked upon a phantom stair that bridged a pseudo-landscape very similar to the Citadel of the Outer Void.

He laughed when a hand of writhing tendrils grasped his body, which threatened to disperse in the lightest wind. Not that that would have been unwelcome, given how unreserved he suddenly felt. Everything seemed so beautiful, so glorious. It all finally made sense. No more struggle. No more—

No! Concentrate on … hands. Yes. The gloves! What had the Lady of the Moon promised? Strength? Whatever, it didn’t matter. He triggered the magic woven into the gauntlets.

Cool confidence surged up his arms, into his heart and his head. His thoughts sharpened. The vista lost its beauty, its allure. His willingness to disintegrate into the effluvia of Far Realm leakage died. The gloves increased a user’s strength, but the mere discharge of Feywild magic into Japheth’s flesh was what anchored him.

The aboleth that had paused to fix its mind-shattering gaze on Japheth moved on. He was invisible while he stood on Caiphon’s stairs. He couldn’t stand upon them indefinitely, but probably long enough to try his scheme.

Last time he’d been on the stairs, the illusory world he’d seen had possessed a pseudo-horizon over which something awful lay hidden. In the Citadel of the Outer Void, that sunrise was literally the Far Manifold breaking.

Japheth reached for his newly forged star pact, for its innermost chains of connection linking what lay beyond the gate with his mind and soul, and pulled them.

Instantly, fear and agony clawed at his sense of self. His vision splintered into reverberating layers of diabolic darkness and searing light.

The growing crack in the Far Manifold, when viewed through the lens of his star pact, was like a river surging ever higher, fed by a mighty snowmelt somewhere high beyond imagining. Its waters were foul, but in its raging substance was power undreamed of for any star pact initiate who dared the torrent’s inchoate force.

He sipped from the overflowing river and screamed. Or perhaps his mouth merely formed an O as he threw back his arms and legs as if transfixed upon some heathen crucifix. But he didn’t release the connection; he tightened his grip on it. And with a slick new energy burning like a vice between his temples, he attempted to stem the river’s flow.

It was intolerable. He knew he couldn’t keep straining like that for even one more heartbeat. Yet a heartbeat passed. Then another. And another after that. His flesh wavered, and seemed on the brink of flashing away into so many chasing motes.

He called upon the power in the gloves a second time. The strength that answered his summons buffered him for a moment, giving him another span of heartbeats to maintain the struggle. Far too quickly, the anchoring power lent him by the Feywild gauntlets waned.

He had just enough mental reserve remaining to wonder if he was having any effect at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Citadel of the Outer Void

Thoster raced Yeva up the last flight of stairs. The woman’s footfalls, iron hammering on stone, announced their approach to whatever foes might await them. But there wasn’t anything for it but to keep on going.

Even before he reached the top, Thoster spied the edges of the Far Manifold. He knew it immediately. Something in him was drawn to it. Seren’s amulet simultaneously burned hot, as if to remind him to take care. Or as if something indescribable wished to strip him of his mental protection and claim Thoster for itself.

When they crested the last stairs, horror’s own army waited for them. And towering over that awful host, the Far Manifold shimmered and vibrated. A massive crack marred its face, though the fissure hadn’t lengthened enough to completely breach the gate.

The hundreds of milling creatures didn’t rush Thoster and Yeva as the captain had assumed they would—most seemed mesmerized by the Far Manifold’s incipient opening.

“If I trawled all the seas of Faerûn and brought up only the ugliest sons of sharks and daughters of sirens, I wouldn’t even come close to matching these unsightly bastards,” Thoster said.

Yeva scanned the scene. “What can we hope to do here?” she said. “The gate; it’s already been breached!” Her shoulders shuddered; even dead iron couldn’t contain the woman’s despair.

Thoster drew his blade and shrugged. “Find Anusha for starters,” he said. “Sure, it’s been breached, but notice how you ain’t dead? Something’s holding it from breaking altogether. Maybe that gives us a chance. But if not, and it’s all a foregone conclusion, well, at least we can go out fighting foes the likes of which few have ever faced!”

“You’re crazy,” Yeva replied.

“Not crazy enough. Or sadly, drunk enough.”

“You’re drunk?”

“You know how to wound a man! No, not even the least little bit. Damn poor time to lose my flask.”

“Thoster—wait! Look, about three quarters of the way to the gate. Isn’t that Raidon?”

He squinted. The citadel top was a wide expanse, plus it was difficult to see through the press. “Yeah!” he cried. “How the hell did he get here?”

“How should I know?” said Yeva. “But he’s obviously trying to reach the crystal gate.”

“Must think he can do some good there,” said Thoster. “Let’s give him a hand!”

“Nothing else suggests itself,” Yeva said. “So … very well. Stay near me—I can lay upon us a semblance of belonging.”

The iron woman raised a hand to her temple. The air shimmered violet around them, then faded.

“That it?” Thoster asked.

“A minor mental glamour,” Yeva said. “It won’t stand up to intense scrutiny. Let’s go! But don’t move too quickly.”

They entered the press. Thoster recognized aboleths, but nothing else. Sure, that thing over there that bayed like a wolf at the moon, well, at the Far Manifold, looked sort of like a cross between a rhinoceros and a monkey with a terrible skin condition, but it wasn’t really either. He saw what could be described as a scarily agile mass of incandescent, translucent slime in which all the organs of a living creature swam about independent of each other. He saw …

“Oh, Umberlee’s creaking knees,” he said. “That’s a beholder, ain’t it?”

Yeva turned. Another vibration ran through the metal of her body.

An armored sphere of living flesh hung in the air along their intended path. The thing possessed a wealth of eyes, most of which blinked from the ends of coiling tentacles. The largest eye protruded directly from the sphere, and did not blink. Beneath that ever-vigilant orb, a cavity lined with teeth gaped open and shut, open and shut, like a fish trying to breath air.

“Let’s go around,” murmured Yeva. “My glamour’s not up to fooling something like that.”

“Agreed,” said Thoster.

They circled around the thing. Thoster was about to declare success when Yeva yelled, “Run!”

One of the eyestalks flashed a yellow ray that caught Yeva directly in the chest. She screamed as the beam bodily picked her up and threw her back the way they’d come. The sound of her distress quickly fell away, attenuated by distance.

“Fish piss,” he said, and broke into a sprint.

The beholder didn’t even have to whirl to keep him in its sights. Three eyestalks tracked him independently, seemed to triangulate, then unleashed lines of color.

One ray was black and hissed with the promise of ultimate obliteration. He whimpered in relief when it missed. The red line burned fire across his ribs, and he convulsed but continued moving. The last ray was gray, like the color of basalt. He dropped flat on his stomach to avoid it.

A thing with green skin and a face like a melting cockroach took the beam instead. The monster’s green hue faded to gray, as it became a sculpture of unmoving stone.

Thoster scrambled back to his feet. No more running—the beholder would just cut him down from behind if he did so. The pain from the ray of fire faded—his new power of regeneration was on the job.

Which reminded him of his heritage. Not that he should have needed a reminder, standing here amid the throng of gruesomes. Most of him wanted to retch at the sight. But something deeper within Thoster felt … anger. As if everything around him was a personal affront! More than that. He felt a desire to order these lesser creatures as he willed.

What in the endless Abyss was that about? he wondered.

The beholder drifted, earthmote-like, toward him. Its central eye flashed. Thoster leaped, but the yellowish ray struck him. Tiny stars danced in his vision; it felt like someone had knocked him across the head with a club.

Still dazed, he stumbled when he tried to avoid the next colorless ray, and it caught him squarely.

His muscles seized up. He wasn’t turning to stone, thank Umberlee’s merciful wiles. But he couldn’t move.

The beholder drifted closer, and its mouth stretched wider. A grin?

He strained with all his might to break free of the magical constriction. He couldn’t tell if it was physical or mental—not that it mattered.

The beholder spoke, and Thoster was startled he could understand. “Mortals here to see the beginning of the new Age? No. Not worthy. I would like it better if you were dust.”

His anger swelled; this was how he would die? Struck down as he stood motionless before a gloating monster? Thoster redoubled his effort to move. Something inside him nearly emerged. Something huge. Something that was fury incarnate. Something that wouldn’t be restrained by the beholder’s enchantment!

The amulet around his neck burned him with a fire hotter than the aberration’s scorching ray. The trinket grew as red as a coal as it kept that which lurked in Thoster’s blood caged.

“What is that?” said the beholder. “A pretty for me?” It bobbed closer.

A yellow ray flashed from an eyestalk and lanced Seren’s amulet. The amulet jerked toward the aberration, parting the leather thong with a painful jerk.

It was like discovering a secret level in a dwelling he’d lived in his entire life. Beyond the façade, a watery vista beckoned—a font of strength that ran deep inside him, and always had.

Thoster turned inward and groped for the headwaters of his power to influence kuo-toa, to regenerate, and to recognize aspects of Far Realm influences. He descended to where blood and bone met his heritage.

The flashing light of the Far Manifold behind Thoster cast a shadow of his deeper self as it slid over his merely human-sized shade. The two shapes remained separate, hovering in between possibility and actuality.

He found the lever between what he’d always been, and what lay in his blood. He pulled it.

Green and white brightness exploded inside his stomach, throat, and head. The violence of its detonation was excruciating. Wild, raw, and uncontrollable, it tumbled his consciousness beyond the confines of his flesh for a timeless instant.

He saw his skin, bones, sinews, blood vessels, and beating heart frozen in the light of his scrutiny. Beneath that, he glimpsed another shape, rousing.

Thoster grabbed the shape, and willed it to manifest completely.

He screamed as the pain of the detonating brightness redoubled. Every particle of his existence momentarily disassociated from its neighbor before falling into a new configuration. There was a chance he’d come out of it as just so much red and gray sludge.

Thoster blinked as the pain fell away.

Only a single shadow remained—a hulking entity. At his feet lay a scatter of his clothing: his boots, his sword, his coat, and his hat.

Comprehension dawned on him.

“I am born, at last,” he said. His voice was deeper than it had been. Rougher.

The beholder remained where it had last attacked him. It looked smaller than it had before. Its many eyes were all wider too. It said, “A demon hiding in human flesh?”

“A demon scion, you unlucky bastard,” replied Thoster. “I’m a descendent of Dagon!”

“Dagon—some ancient, watery demon lord?” the beholder said. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is why you’ve come. Are you here to proclaim yourself a servitor of the Sovereignty, and that which is about to unmake the worlds?”

Several aberrations near Thoster turned to regard him. None moved closer, and a couple slid or stepped back a pace. He wondered what he must look like. But raw anger at the beholder’s words made his fingers tingle.

“Your Sovereignty has usurped what ain’t yours to take,” Thoster said. “Kuo-toa were never meant for aboleths and their ilk; Dagon’s claim is older, and deeper. I ain’t here to serve the Sovereignty. I’m here to show you bastard aberrations what for!”

Thoster lurched forward. He was more top-heavy than he had realized, but he managed to leap as he tripped forward. He reached out to grab the beholder. His arms were great masses of scaled green muscle, corded to an almost absurd extent. His hands were huge, and each finger ended in a massive green claw.

The beholder loosed a salvo of multicolored rays. A beam of fire slid across Thoster’s stomach, raising a painful welt. A purplish ray shone in his eyes, but he shook off the confusion. A line of light the color of sand tugged at his consciousness. But he was too angry to sleep.

He crashed into the beholder and bore it to the ground. The beholder bit him. Ichor the color of the sea dripped from the wound.

But he punched his clawed hands deep into the beholder’s sides and squeezed, grabbing shreds of organ and muscle beneath.

The beholder uttered an oddly plaintive wail that grew in volume.

Several more eye rays played up and down Thoster’s scaled length, some cutting terrible fissures in his flesh, others trying their best to fry his mind.

But Thoster would be damned if he was going to release the mewling servitor just because of a little pain.

Uttering a roar so loud he surprised even himself, Thoster exerted the entirety of his strength and yanked.

Everything grew quiet for a moment. Thoster stood and tossed away two limp fragments of beholder.

Thoster looked around. He’d gathered an audience. All were scary, nightmare-inducing monsters. But he was taller than nearly all of them. And, by the sight of his own scaled arms, legs, and torso, he wasn’t too far from being a nightmare-inducing monster himself. He wondered what his face looked like. One thing was certain: he was stronger than before, tougher. And descended from royalty.

Curiosity about his new likeness would have to wait; the aberrant horde drew forward. They knew he didn’t belong here.

He shouted, his fury reborn in an instant. Most of the anger was the power of Dagon in his blood. But some of it was his own wrath at what the creatures represented, and what they wanted to do to Faerûn.

But they were all in his way, preventing him from reaching the eladrin noble, Malyanna, the author of the world’s imminent misfortune.

Thoster decided it was she whom he would make pay. It would be even easier to pull an eladrin in two than a beholder. But, first things first. He scooped up his clothing, sword, and hat, and stuffed them into a handy fold of skin running down his torso. Those might be useful later!

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Citadel of the Outer Void

Storm light ripped flickering lines across Taal’s eyelids. Agony clogged his throat, ran like magma in his veins, and crouched on his back like a red-hot anvil, holding him face-down against a surface that rubbed at his skin like sandpaper. All around him, shrieks like a chorus of fervent devils pierced his ears.

He was dead. His soul had been dropped into the Nine Hells for an eternity of torture.

Except … that couldn’t be.

Anything beyond the discontinuity, including the Citadel of the Outer Void, lay outside the dominion of the gods. Even the disposition of immortal souls! Instead of being taken up by Kelemvor, spirits of the slain would simply fall and gutter out like dying embers.

He couldn’t be a disembodied soul feeling the first lashes of eternity’s punishment; the fact he was having these thoughts at all meant … he was still alive.

Why? Taal wondered.

He’d openly defied his oath. He’d aided an enemy of Malyanna, then instructed that same enemy to kill her.

The memory spiked fresh lava across his skin, and he cried out.

And still he didn’t die, though the pain was so extreme he wished he could expire to escape its viselike jaws.

If the oath didn’t have the clout to kill him, there at the Citadel of the Outer Void where his mistress’s power was arguably stronger than anywhere else, had it ever had the power to slay him?

It didn’t seem likely.

The disconnect reminded him of something. Something that hadn’t completely hung together, though he’d accepted it at the time. When they’d arrived at the ziggurat’s base, Malyanna had crowed how she’d known all along about his secret misgivings in serving her. According to the eladrin, those misgivings were sufficient to allow him to deactivate the defenses of the Citadel; they showed he wasn’t an aberration or touched by aberrations, because he served his oath first.

But Malyanna had sworn him to an oath that would kill him if he swayed from serving her. And she was a priestess of the Sovereignty! Wasn’t that the definition of being “touched” by an aberration? Whether forced into service or choosing to take up service willingly, he was a servitor; he had no choice but death or do the will of Malyanna, thanks to the magic she’d imparted when he had sworn the oath.

Yet he wasn’t dead, and he had been able to bypass the Citadel’s defenses.

Which meant what? he wondered.

It meant, he realized, that despite what she’d originally claimed and repeated over the years, Malyanna hadn’t woven a ritual of lethal enforcement into the oath he’d sworn to her.

The only thing that powered the oath, he realized, was the strength of his own belief that once one’s word was given, that word should never be foresworn, no matter what.

He remembered Raidon asking him how that made any sense at all, given that the world was a changeable place. Situations change, people change, and new information comes to light. He’d always believed that being unwavering in one’s beliefs and in one’s duties and obligations was a sign of true strength—the sign of someone above the common, changeable rabble, who could flip-flop on an issue with hardly a care.

As he lay there puzzling it out, it came to Taal that sticking to one’s stated intention—or oath—regardless of how the situation changed, was more reasonably the sign of a simpleton.

The monk from Faerûn was right.

For the very first time since he’d taken his oath, Taal felt shame.

Always before he’d felt at least some pride at his ability to keep his word no matter what the provocation. He recognized, finally, at the end of everything, that it had been fool’s pride all along.

If he could do it over again, he’d break that oath the moment he realized Malyanna was playing him false.

The searing pain lifted away from him like a kite on the wind.

Taal rubbed his eyes. He rose.

The abominations who’d answered the call of his mistress surged all around him. Their combined utterances were a grinding, chattering, teeth-gritting rasp. Many moved to contest the progress of a enormous humanoid with green scales, despite it seeming nearly as much of an aberration as those it contested.

He witnessed an enormous white griffon slash terrible wounds in the flanks of the shadow hound Tamur. The hound fastened its teeth on the griffon’s neck.

Reflected in a sheen of oily slime on the ground, he saw a woman in golden armor gutting an aboleth, then a gelatinous insect, and then a four-headed leech in quick succession. He marveled, because he couldn’t see her except in the reflection. Then she was gone again.

A figure made of iron, much dented and scraped, topped the stairs. It commenced projecting bolts of psychic energy into the backs of the aberrations that sought to swarm the green scaled giant.

Arrowing away from Taal and toward the base of the Far Manifold was Raidon. Raidon moved like a shark through a wave-tossed sea, with his sword as his dorsal fin, blazing like a cerulean beacon. Aberrations either scrambled out of his way or died on the blade.

And there was the Lady of Winter’s Peace—she who’d bound him in his own misplaced sense of duty for centuries, at least according to how much time had passed in Faerûn. She was locked in mortal combat with a leviathan bat!

“Time for you to die, Malyanna,” Taal said. “And, by my hand, I … hope!” He grinned, because he’d almost said, “I swear!”

Taal ran after Raidon. The monk from Faerûn had a large head start, and would reach Malyanna before Taal could. But not by much.

Raidon swept the Blade Cerulean through the flesh of something with too many arms drenched in red slime. It fell directly in his path, its limbs suddenly a frenzy of whipping branches in its death throes. He leaped over it. A surge of strength from Angul as he jumped lent his feet wings. He whisked over the heads, eyes, and waving tentacles of half a dozen creatures before they realized he was near.

The monk came down in a clear space, rolled twice, and was on his feet running forward again in one continuous movement.

A gangling horselike creature without a face tried to scramble out of Raidon’s way, so he ignored it, until one of its dozens of flailing hooves caught him in the shoulder like the blow of a mace. The force spun him around, and Angul lopped off the offending leg without his conscious direction. A heartbeat later, the pain of the strike was also smoothed away by the Blade Cerulean, and Raidon rushed on.

He reached the raised dais of pitted metal directly in front of the Far Manifold. The crystal’s overpowering size, the horrific images that squirmed behind it, and the crack that marred its face, promising apocalypse, finally gave the monk pause.

Malyanna stood before the gate as if it were merely a backdrop prepared for her presence. The woman’s eyes were flickering points of starfire. She wielded the Dreamheart in one hand like a mage’s implement. From it emerged erratic bolts of pale energy. The bolts struck a massive bat lying twitching on the ground at her feet.

Was it Japheth? Raidon wondered. No, it was Neifion, fighting Malyanna!

The giant bat shuddered. Neifion screeched out an invocation, and his bat wings burned with shimmering emerald light. Neifion leaped at the eladrin noble, and attempted to encircle Malyanna in his ensorcelled wings.

Raidon jumped onto the dais. Between them, he and the Lord of Bats—

A shadow sunk teeth into his neck, and a black paw raked his side, scraping away a swathe of skin. He’d forgotten about the Shadowfell mastiff.

The shadow hound shook its head, its hide rippling night, as it tried to snap Raidon’s neck.

The monk twisted, and drove his elbow into the side of the dog’s face with all of his weight.

Tamur howled, and its jaws relaxed. The monk spun away. Warm, sticky blood poured down his arm and torso, and a wave of dizziness made the monk falter. Where blood ran across his spellscar, it flashed into coppery steam.

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.

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.

The portal was locked, forever.

The wrath of beings older than Lord Ao splashed against the Far side of the Far Manifold. They gibbered and shrieked with harmonies so dire the least tremolo would blast asunder a mountaintop. All for naught. The last Key of Stars had fulfilled its function.

Raidon collapsed.

He lay on his back. His gaze traced up the side of an ice-smooth, unmarred crystal face.

A thin column of white smoke swirled up from his chest, where the Cerulean Sign had tattooed him. It was gone.

He lifted a hand, one finger pointing to the heavens. A sapphire spark like a firefly swirled down from the high air and lit on his finger.

Raidon Kane breathed out his last breath.

The spark lifted into the sky.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Citadel of the Outer Void

Thoster helped wrap Raidon in fabric Anusha formed of dream silk. For all his bulk, he could manipulate objects with surprising delicacy.

“We’ll honor his last wishes,” said Anusha. “We’ll bury him in Faerûn, in Nathlekh.”

“No honor is too great for him,” said Japheth. He reached for her hand, and she gave it to him.

“If you would permit it,” said Taal, “I would like to see Raidon laid to rest. If not for his wisdom, I might not have broken Malyanna’s thrall.”

“Of course,” said Anusha. Her voice had gone hoarse. Thoster wondered how that was possible, given that she wasn’t real, but figured now wasn’t the time to ask. The monk’s sacrifice was too fresh. It just wasn’t in him to crack wise.

They left the pristine face of the crystalline disk behind and descended the ziggurat stairs.

An armored capsule lay at the base of the pyramid.

“Time to wake up,” Anusha said, and disappeared. The gold capsule melted away, revealing the same woman, but now she wore sturdy clothes and her hair was pulled back in a fraying braid.

“Good to see you in the flesh again,” said Japheth.

She took his hand.

“The fog returns,” said Yeva, pointing.

The mist rolled back like a typhoon wave of white. The sound of thunder boomed from somewhere across the plain. The fog converged on all sides, until it broke upon the ziggurat, rushed up its sides, and enveloped them.

Except for the sounds of their breathing and footfalls, especially Yeva’s, silence closed around them, quieting the distant clamor.

By all rights, they should be skipping with joy, reflected Thoster. The world had escaped a horrific finale, something so beyond imagining that even the gods had failed to understand the threat and act.

Assuming Raidon’s intercession, and all their actions for that matter, hadn’t been divinely inspired. It was hard to know with gods.

They walked unmolested from the Citadel of the Outer Void and across the befogged plain. The only monster remaining below the haze was himself, Thoster thought.

He recalled the pain of assuming his bulky shape. And, to some extent, the process. He thought he could probably manage it in reverse.

He trailed a little behind the others, dropped his belongings, and put his hypothesis to the test.

He regarded his shadow, and tried to find within it his original shape.

It took all his concentration, and not a little pain, but eventually Thoster found his shape of old. He grunted and collapsed into his pile of clothing. But he was grinning. All the disfiguring scales that had so beleaguered him during the previous months were gone!

Thoster rose, and dressed in his underthings, coat, and boots, and girded his sword at his side. And, most important for last, his hat.

He grinned. It felt good to have his regular-sized teeth back.

But the blood of Dagon remained in his veins. Thoster suspected that if he wanted, he could call on that incredible power again.

If he dared. Some of the imagery and odd fragments of lore that stole into his head while he had fought the aberrations as a huge scaled monster were unsettling. It was probably a shape he should call upon sparingly. He resolved, should he ever manage to return to Faerûn, to learn all he could regarding the ancient demon called Dagon.

He caught up to the others. Anusha saw him and said, “Good for you, Thoster.” He chuckled.

They reached the splintered remains of his ship. A group of eladrin camped in the lee of the starboard hull. Griffons stood in loose picket around the ship. The beasts raised their beaked heads to stare at the newcomers and loosed eagle cries.

The eladrin jumped into action, but quickly recognized they were not aberrations.

“Hail!” yelled one in flamboyant mage’s robes.

“Dayereth!” said Japheth. “You survived!”

“Can you believe it?” the wizard replied. “It was touch and go there for a while. I’ve never seen so many horrors …” His voice trailed off, and he wiped at his brow with a shaking hand.

“But you persevered,” the warlock said, prompting him.

“Yes, thank the Lady of the Moon,” said Dayereth. “And so did you. And you found new friends! Where … Oh.”

The wizard’s eyes had found Yeva, who carried Raidon’s draped form.

“He gave his life for the world,” said Japheth. “Erunyauvë will be told of her son’s heroism.”

Dayereth dropped his gaze and said, “Given her power, I imagine she already knows.”

A long moment passed. All present stared at the half-elf’s shrouded remains. Thoster recalled again how the monk had stepped confidently to the buckling crystal and had done what needed doing without hesitation. He felt tightness in his throat and coughed.

“When the mists returned, the creatures attacking us fled upward,” said the wizard. “Those that couldn’t fly dissolved on contact. After that, we decided to wait and see who might return from the Citadel.”

“Got anything to eat or drink?” Thoster asked.

“We have a little,” replied Dayereth. “Should we break out rations before we try our luck returning across the void?”

“I could eat a horse,” said Anusha. Japheth chuckled, and she smiled at him.

A knight handed Thoster a wineskin. He upended the bag, drawing down most of the contents in a single swallow. It was wonderful. Of course, he’d have preferred ale, but eladrin spirits would do in a pinch.

His eyes drifted across the plain as he wiped his mouth.

“Hey!” he said, pointing. “Where’d Xxiphu go?”

All heads turned to the crater where the aboleth city had rested. It was vacant.

“By the Nine!” exclaimed Japheth.

“It departed,” said Dayereth. “When the fog began to return, it rose straight into the sky on a pillar of noisome gas. The thunder of its going rocked the entire plain. Did you hear it?”

Thoster remembered the thunder that had accompanied the mist’s return.

“Then what?” said Anusha.

“It plunged into the discontinuity,” replied the wizard.

“Then we should depart quickly, in case it threatens the Watchtowers,” said Anusha.

“The time disparity between here and Forever’s Edge means years have streamed by at the Edge,” said Dayerth. “Whatever Xxiphu did or didn’t do has already happened long in the past.”

“Time disparity?” said Thoster and Anusha in chorus.

“Erunyauvë explained how time moves differently here,” said Japheth.

Taal spoke up. “Past the periphery of the Feywild, time moves slower than in the world,” he said. “The farther one travels from the border, the slower it passes. Even at Forever’s Edge, the effect is noticeable. The upshot is that though I’ve only spent about fifteen years in Malyanna’s service, several centuries have passed in Faerûn. Out here, beyond the Edge, the differential is even more pronounced.”

“Then we should leave here at once!” said Anusha. “How much time has passed in Faerûn?”

“Difficult to say,” said Dayereth. “But I take your point. Knights! Prepare your mounts and chariots for departure!”

Anusha returned to her dreamform, and encased her body within the protective capsule once more. The passage back through the discontinuity and across the void might be dangerous. Even though Raidon had locked the Far Manifold, hopefully for good, leakage from the portal was still an issue, as were the existing aberrations.

From a separate chariot, Japheth watched Anusha secure the golden encasement.

She joined him in her dreamform, dispersing her golden armor. In its place she imagined herself in a demure but fashionable green gown. Fashionable when she’d left Faerûn, anyhow.

“Well met, fairheart,” Japheth said. “You’re going to ride with me?”

“Where else?” she said. He smiled, and she stepped into his embrace.

She was so very glad to see him again. More than glad—a tangible feeling of connection warmed even her dream.

“I missed you,” she said. It was true, though she had been so caught up in events she hadn’t realized it until that moment.

“I’m happy to hear that,” Japheth said. “When you insisted we separate, I’m afraid my feelings were hurt, child that I am.”

She cupped his face and shook her head. She knew how he felt about her—it was written plain across his features. Not to mention how he’d endangered the world to save her. What surprised her was she realized she felt the same.

Seeing the Far Manifold shudder open and a universe of madness nearly spill through and consume everything you’ve ever known has a way of rearranging your priorities. She chuckled.

“What?” Japheth asked.

“I was just reflecting about what’s important,” she said. “At least, what I once thought was. And … Well, I’m thinking a little differently now, is all.”

“Mmm,” Japheth said, touching his lips to her forehead.

“You held the Far Manifold from breaking open completely after Malyanna unlocked it,” she said.

“Yeah. I didn’t know if it would work. I had to use the star pact to forge a connection. If I hadn’t had the gloves, I would have been lost. And Neifion, even as he fell to Malyanna, lent me a last gasp of fey strength too, if you can believe that.”

“Did you know I was on top of the ziggurat?”

“No. I didn’t know for sure where you were. For all I knew, you’d been killed.” Remembered concern pinched his mouth for an instant.

“But you did it anyway. You put the world ahead of yourself. You’re not a child. You’re a man. A man I love.”

He ducked his head and pressed his lips to hers. Japheth’s kiss was warm and tasted like him.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

The Year of the Ageless One (1475 DR)
Nathlekh, Faerûn

I still can’t believe it,” Japheth said.

“Believe what?” said Anusha.

“How in some ways, not much has changed,” he replied. “But in other ways, everything must be different.”

He waved one arm in a gesture meant to illustrate his point.

“Hmm. Really?” said Anusha. “I think the Shou remembered their dead in this fashion a lot longer than we’ve been gone.”

They stood in Nathlekh’s odd graveyard. With them were Taal, Yeva in a concealing cloak, Captain Thoster sporting his cleaned-up hat, and even the eladrin noble Erunyauvë. They were surrounded by short markers resembling beehives. The markers were scattered in small clusters. In each grouping, smaller markers spiraled around the larger. More traditional tombstones poked up randomly, but those were the exception.

Japheth laughed. “No, not the city of the dead; Faerûn!” he said. “The sky’s the same, the rise and fall of the land, mostly. The general shape of each city, I’m sure. But the particulars!”

“I know; I was teasing,” she replied.

“Everyone we knew must either be dead or changed so much we might not even recognize them,” he continued. “Seren, Behroun, all the librarians I knew in Candlekeep, tavern and shop keepers we used to see every day—everyone!”

The enormity of what Japheth was saying threatened to make his head spin. He closed his eyes, and thought back to their journey “through time.”

When the knights had winged back to Forever’s Edge, the few star spawn and aberrations they’d encountered in the void had been dazed and inactive, as if shocked by having their victory yanked from them so precipitously.

Everyone was relieved to find the Watchtowers waiting on the other side of the gulf. Xxiphu was nowhere to be seen.

They later learned that several decades had passed since they had first set out across the void. Xxiphu had reappeared about halfway through that span. The skeleton forces remaining behind along the towers panicked, but the aboleth city had only approached close enough to slip back through the aperture of its initial appearance, which hadn’t completely healed over. The millennia Xxiphu had spent below the Sea of Fallen Stars had given it an affinity for the world. When Malyanna had released her hold on it, the city had been pulled back to Faerûn.

The Eldest, half petrified though it was, likely had something to do with that, Japheth reflected.

They and the surviving knights enjoyed a hero’s welcome. A revelry lasting three full days, as well as long rests in sumptuous quarters, went a long way toward renewing all their spirits. Anusha in particular was glad to shuck her dreamform and walk again in her own skin for the entire time they stayed with the eladrin.

She and Japheth had been given separate quarters. Of course, he hadn’t done more than look into those they showed him. When they were not attending the ongoing revelry, he and Anusha spent the majority of their private time in her suite.

Whatever darkness had lurked between them was forgotten. They celebrated their survival and each other.

But a shadow still lay on them. Raidon’s sacrifice was an omnipresent fact. Everyone felt the monk’s final request shouldn’t be put off long, especially given the time disparity that continued to widen the gap between Faerûn and everyone remaining in Forever’s Edge. Though not as extreme as the differential past of the discontinuity, it still pushed the calendar forward in a way that made Japheth slightly giddy when he considered it overlong.

The Lady of the Moon herself led them back into the world. The Throne of Seeing had, upon their return, given up its claim on her. She would remain warden of the Spire of the Moon until such time as someone else groomed for the title took the seat.

An expedition set out from Forever’s Edge across the blasted heath, toward the glimmering horizon. The Lady of the Moon preceded them out of the darkness and into the light. She led them through a glimmering wood, which gradually lost its fey qualities to become “merely” a forest of the natural world called Gulthandor.

Erunyauvë explained that many places had grown strong connections with Faerie since its return, especially Forest of Amtar in Dambrath, the Forest of Lethyr in the Great Dale, and several others the warlock didn’t remember. But one was Gulthandor on the Dragon Coast.

As the eladrin had obviously known, Nathlekh was visible from the eaves of Gulthandor Forest. Or rather “Nathlekh City,” as they had learned upon entering the architecturally striking metropolis. Since they’d been gone, the city had become the capitol of a Shou-dominated region called Nathlan.

They spent a tenday preparing to have Raidon interred. Thankfully, stories of xenophobia in the city must have been only tall tales. That, or in the decades since—

Somewhere beyond the gravesite, a city bell tolled.

“It is time,” said Erunyauvë.

Japheth blinked and focused on the present.

“Let us lay my son to rest,” the eladrin continued.

They gathered close to a newly constructed hardened clay marker. A plaque upon it read “Raidon Kane. Beloved son, friend, and hero. He saved everyone.”

A smaller, much older marker was next to Raidon’s. It belonged to the monk’s long-dead adopted daughter.

“The door is closed,” the Lady of the Moon said. “All the Keys are destroyed. The Sovereignty will not launch a thousand more seeds like Xxiphu across Toril as the Far Realm’s vanguard. The aboleths sought to collapse the wall between creation and madness, but failed.

“Thanks to Raidon Kane.

“My son. I was with him for the first ten years of his life, and after that, I was with him in thought. I loved him as much as any mother adores her child. He was my legacy, and now I’ve survived him. But without his sacrifice, none of us would be here now. It was a necessary sacrifice. Still, my heart is broken. I go back to Forever’s Edge diminished, knowing Raidon is gone. Knowing I could have saved him, had I not given him the Key of Stars, and set him on his path.”

Erunyauvë stopped speaking. Her cheeks glistened with tears.

Anusha knelt before the marker. “Good bye, Raidon,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

She traced Raidon’s name on the plaque, then rose and stepped back.

Japheth knew he should say something, but his throat was tight. He forced out, “Raidon conquered foes of every sort. Not just monsters, but ones he battled inside himself. In the end, he defeated them all. He found peace. Not many can claim that. He is an inspiration. I’ll never forget him.”

He wanted to say more, but shook his head and stepped back instead.

Anusha took his hand.

Taal produced Angul.

Like Raidon, the blade had fallen silent when the Key had turned. Its fires were permanently doused.

“I saw a tiny light rise from where Raidon fell,” Taal said. “I believe that spark was the spirit of a hero that wouldn’t be denied a fit reward for his labors. We were told that those who died past the discontinuity are gone for good. But not Raidon! Like Japheth, Raidon inspired me. I’ll always remember what he did.”

The man stepped forward and held out the blade. Erunyauvë uttered a chant, and golden sigils appeared around her head. She touched Angul’s tip, and the glowing runes streamed from her to the sword. Taal raised Angul high, then drove it into the marker stone. A reverberation like a cathedral bell rang out across the city.

“Angul will serve as a remembrance, forever,” Erunyauvë said.

“Well done,” said Thoster. The captain doffed his hat and stared at the earth.

They stood there for a long time then, wrapped in quiet, regarding the monument.

The Nathlekh City bell tolled again. Time didn’t care about sorrow, reflected Japheth. It just ran on and on, grinding out lives and dreams as it rushed ceaselessly forward.

“I’ve lingered long enough in Faerûn,” Erunyauvë said. “I must return to the Watch, and discover the new shape of things along the void.”

“But you’re giving up your title,” said Anusha. “You don’t have to go back right away. Stay with us awhile and see what you helped save.”

The eladrin smiled. “The wardenship of the Spire of the Moon may soon pass from me, true,” she said. “But I’ve spent too many years dedicated to keeping the border safe to leave it for long, until I’m assured my successor is chosen and has things in order. However, regardless of my position there, know that any of you will be welcome if you venture again to Forever’s Edge.”

“I’d like that, to see you again,” Anusha said.

Taal approached Erunyauvë. “I’d like to return with you now, if you’ll have me back,” he said. “I have amends to make along the watchtowers.”

The eladrin nodded. “I’m glad to hear it, Taal,” she replied. “The Watch could use your help, to put right the ill effects Malyanna’s slow betrayal wrought over the centuries.”

“Thank you,” Taal said.

Thoster said, “I should take my leave too. I need to procure another ship.”

“I’d think you’d had enough of ships,” Japheth said.

“The sea’s in my blood, warlock!” Thoster replied. “And I ain’t quite ready to give up my captain’s title. I’ve gotten used to it.”

“It suits you,” Anusha said.

“Westgate is close,” said Japheth. “You could find yourself a ship there in no time.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” replied the captain. “And from the sound of things, Xxiphu’s been hanging over the Sea of Fallen Stars for more than fifty years; to most, it’s always been floating up there. I hear it hasn’t been too much of a threat, at least lately. But all of us know the horrors that crawl inside that hollow seed.”

“So what?” Japheth said.

“Well, it bears watching, is all,” Thoster said. “By someone who has dealt with the likes of those aboleths before. Once I find a ship to my liking, and a crew, and a steady income stream—”

“From piracy?” said Yeva.

“I’ve taken ownership of the occasional Amnian merchantman’s cargo, true enough,” said the captain. “And I don’t regret it. However, we’ve skipped ahead decades, and things are different. From what I’ve been able to gather, trade along the Inner Sea is good. It ain’t anywhere near where it was before, but it’s a damn sight better than what I was dealing with back in the 1390s. I think I’ll give honest shipping a go. Besides, with my advantages, I figure I’ll earn a king’s bounty in short order.”

“Could you use a first mate?” Yeva asked.

Thoster’s smile slipped. “Everyone I promoted to that position of late has turned up dead,” he said. “It might not be a healthy post to accept.”

“I’m made of sterner stuff than most, remember,” said Yeva. “Nor can I drown if I fall overboard. Though I might rust.”

The captain’s grin returned, and he clapped her on the shoulder. He winced at the impact, but said, “How could I forget? I would be honored, my lady, to have someone as accomplished and as, um, solid as you to help me out.”

Eventually only Japheth and Anusha remained at the gravesite. Japheth watched the sun wester. The orb struck shimmering highlights off the distant Lake of the Long Arm.

Anusha nudged him. “You all right?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said. “It’s just we’ve been caught up in this thing for so long. I don’t really know what’s next. Do you want to back to New Sarshell? I can try to work out a shortcut with my cloak and Neifion’s castle as a stopover.”

“Hmm. Things have probably changed beyond recognition. Marhana Manor will no longer be mine to claim. On the other hand, I hear Behroun isn’t dead.”

“What? That weasel half brother of yours would have to be over a hundred years old!”

Behroun was the author of many of the ills that had befallen Japheth. The merchant had manipulated him by threatening to destroy his pact stone, and the mere thought of the man’s smirking face made his blood boil.

“Knowing him, he’s used foul magic to extend his life,” Anusha said.

Japheth shook his head. “I wouldn’t mind paying him a visit,” he replied. “A last visit.”

“He does have much to answer for. But I don’t think I’m up for confronting him. For us, only days have passed. For Behroun, eighty years have gone by.”

“Ah yes,” Japheth said, sighing. “I keep forgetting what that actually means.”

Whatever the man was up to, he wasn’t the same person who’d blackmailed Japheth. He might have reformed. Or have become irredeemably evil. Either way, he probably hadn’t given the warlock and his missing half sister even a passing thought in more than half a century.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “At the very least, I do have something to thank him for. Without his grimy schemes, I’d never have met you.”

She smiled. “See? There you go,” she said. “Everyone has something to offer.”

They watched the horizon take a bite out of the sun. Dust in the air painted the sky iridescent orange.

“I would like to return to Impiltur eventually,” she said. “But not immediately. After so much time, it’ll be different. I’d rather go somewhere completely new. Someplace I don’t have any expectations. We could go anywhere!”

It still made him almost giddy when she used the word “we.”

He gazed at her. The slanting rays of fading day made her angelic. She was everything to him, bright and vital, and filled with eagerness for life. Just being near her made him glad. He was beginning to believe she felt the same about him.

“What’re you thinking?” Anusha asked.

“Oh, that you’re wonderful,” he said. “And about the future. Can we make our way in a world that’s forgotten us?”

“Let’s find out, Japheth,” she replied. “Together.”

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Anusha Marhana (a-NOO-shah mar-HAN-a)
Once the spoiled daughter of the Marhana merchant family whose dreams proved a little too real, Anusha learned she could fashion a body composed of dream and walk and interact in the waking world. Anusha is the younger half sister of Behroun Marhana. She does not share her older half brother’s designs on nobility.

Captain Thoster (THAWH-stir)
The captain of the pirate ship Green Siren. Thoster is generally considered to be without conscience but not without his own peculiar sense of honor. He often boasts his blood is “unclean,” though what he means by such claims remains unclear—but that is becoming less true.

Japheth (JA-feth)
A pact-sworn warlock with abilities that defy common wizardry. He “walks the crimson road,” and thus his soul is foresworn. He manages to avoid his ultimate destiny through abilities derived from his new pact with the stars.

Malyanna (mal-YAN-na)
A woman who presents herself as an eladrin noble of the Feywild. While true, Malyanna betrays the eladrin reputation of genteel civility, and a pledge she made to protect the world from the horrors that wait beyond Forever’s Edge.

Neifion (NEH-fee-on)
An enigmatic elder creature native to the Feywild to whom Japheth swore his pact. Usually referred to as the Lord of Bats. Of a class of creatures sometimes called ‘archfey.’ Neifion is an ally of Malyanna.

Raidon Kane (RAY-dun KAYN)
A Xiang temple-trained warrior who is competent in any fight, but particularly so when battling monsters not born of the natural world, thanks to his implements: the sentient sword Angul and the Cerulean Sign which is spellscarred onto his chest.

Seren (SER-ren)
A female wizard who relearned the knack of casting spells in the wake of the shattered Weave more quickly than many others. Seren is a mercenary wizard who seems primarily motivated by the bottom line.

Taal (DAY-ul)
The castellan of the Tower of Winter’s Peace and oathsworn servitor and guardian of the eladrin noble Malyanna. Taal is proficient in martial arts and bears a tiger tattoo on his arm that possesses partial sentience.

Yeva (YEE-vah)
A lost soul caught by the Eldest’s condensed memories. Freed by Anusha and saved from dissipation, Yeva befriends the dreamwalking woman and uses her mental powers to aid Anusha thereafter.

OTHER CHARACTERS

Ailyn (AYE-lyn)
The adopted daughter of Raidon Kane. Died in the first hours of the Spellplague.

Behroun Marhana (Bh-ROON mar-HAN-a)
The lord of the Marhana merchant family with schemes on nobility, troubled by few qualms in his efforts to achieve such status. Behroun is the older half brother of Anusha Marhana. He is allied with Malyanna.

Dayereth (DAY-r-eth)
An eladrin war wizard of the Spire of the Moon, a Watchtower on Forever’s Edge.

Erunyauvë (ERIN-ya-va)
The Lady of Moon Keep, one of the Watchtowers on Forever’s Edge. Erunyauvë possesses a relic throne that allows her to glimpse the future, but the price for using the throne is steep.

Gethshemeth (geth-SHEH-meth)
A greater kraken that once abided in the misty depths of the Sea of Fallen Stars. Gethshemeth possessed the Dreamheart for a time and was changed by it, until the relic was taken from it. Now the kraken is drawn to the rousing city of Xxiphu, and serves as one of its guardians.

Lucky (also known as Blackie)
The ship dog aboard the Green Siren privateer vessel.

Morgenthel (MOOR-gen-thel)
A bounty hunter seeking Seren for her apparent betrayal of her previous allegiance.

AUTHOR BIO

Bruce R. Cordell has authored several novels and short stories, including Plague of Spells, City of Torment, and Key of Stars. Besides writing, Bruce is interested in martial arts, science of all kinds, and an eclectic brew of other activities. Befriend Bruce on Facebook at http://facebook.com/brucecordell.