City of Torment

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Xxiphu, Hall of Spawning

The man dreamed.

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

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

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

Japheth came awake with a cry.

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

The warlock levered himself up onto his elbows and saw a narrow phosphorescent tunnel snaking up and away.

He was alone and glad for it. The dream was similar to ones he'd had before, but unlike them too. Anusha was in the dream mouthing the same incomprehensible warnings as always, but her surroundings seemed more dire than the crazed visions his sleeping mind had earlier painted.

Japheth shivered, but not from the dream or the cold. It was his body betraying him. He couldn't predict when the shakes would surface in his flesh. The trembling in his hands and the flinching tic in his expression appeared without warning and stayed overlong. Sometimes when he concentrated, the quavering subsided. A few times, the shuddering intensified so much he feared a seizure was imminent.

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

The fabric of his cloak was wound with subtle power and abilities that far eclipsed a normal cape, that was true.

But the powers of transposition and protection it provided were hardly compensation for the arcane might Japheth had wielded just hours earlier.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Now all we have is horror."

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

It was intolerable.

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

"By the Fangs of Neifion," Japheth swore. He was near to the precipice. If he closed his eyes, the scarlet plain was already waiting. A road slashed across the plain, and he could feel the bone cobbles through his boots.

From where he stood along its length, he could just glimpse the road's awful terminus.

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

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

A desperate addict will shout all manner of promises to the empty air when all his debts are finally called due.

No one was more surprised than Japheth when his desperate pleas were answered by a great bat that sailed down from the burning sky. Neifion, the Lord of Bats, had heard his promises and responded.

In the urgency of his need, Japheth pledged his soul to the Lord of Bats if only the creature would save him.

Only later did he learn he'd offered Neifion far too much-but the Lord of Bats took him at his word. And so Japheth was saved from his lethal addiction to crimson dust by swearing a pact to an archfey.

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

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

In that moment, a scheme slithered into his mind.

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

"Wait," he protested.

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

"It's nonsense, it's insane!" he whispered.

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

Probably.

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

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

Uncertainty coiled in his stomach.

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

He took an unsteady breath.

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

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

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

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

The stone attempted to twist the mind of any creature that remained too long in its presence, even as it offered the promise of real power. It opened new vistas of perception and possibility with skin-on-stone contact, but they were only reflexive responses, part and parcel of the Dreamheart's alien nature.

Japheth's task required that he reach deeper and And a spark of sentience with whom he could bargain. Taking advantage of the surface energy that boiled off the Dreamheart would grant potent abilities, as the kuo-toa Nogah had demonstrated. But without the strictures of a pact to protect the wielder, such power would eventually corrupt and control the holder of the stone. And the stone would always be required in order to call upon the abilities so gained.

Japheth knew how to avoid that outcome for himself. He hoped.

He turned the relic around and looked into its eye.

The lid slowly pulled back to the accompaniment of grating stone. The unmasked pupil revealed an unblinking regard. Within its darkness, Japheth discerned tiny, dancing shapes.

He squinted, trying to understand what he was seeing. Little diamonds shining amid blackness… were they stars?

Yes. He observed a swathe of stars burning in unthinkable multitudes beyond the world.

Japheth had thought the world vast, but the stars he saw in the Dreamheart reached as far beyond the sky's illusory vault as a millennium stretched beyond an hour.

His gaze was absorbed by the delicate, twinkling points. His mind flashed out into the emptiness between them.

First euphoria washed through him. The stars were like jewels. Many of them shone in costly colors, and he floated in their treasury. Existence stretched away past all imagination, yet he felt-at least in that instant-as if he might have some inkling of its vastness.

Then he noticed a few stars were not like their sisters. They wavered and danced, as if their place in the heavens was unfixed. Seeing the inconstant lamps reminded Japheth of his purpose.

When he realized the irregular pinpricks of light were less like stars and more like windows piercing the sky, a tendril of nausea touched him. A fell radiance leaked from the portholes, and behind them, dread silhouettes huddled close, peering down into reality.

Somehow, perhaps by mediation of the Dreamheart, he knew the names of the stars.

There was Acamar the corpse star whose immense size sent other stars spiraling to their doom. Caiphon was the purple star, appearing in the guise of a guide point, but he viscerally knew it was capable of betraying those who relied upon it too much.

There was Delban with its ice white glare, cruel and bitter.

Khirad was a star of piercing blue light that burned over apocalypses wherever they occurred.

These stars and many more Japheth saw and recognized.

The warlock blanched. He saw where he had to go if he was to swear a new pact to the nameless entities whose lineage included the Eldest, though he was unclear of the hierarchy. If his broken pact with the Lord of Bats could be called a fey pact because of Neifion's home in Faerie, then he supposed the one he contemplated now could be called a star pact because the entities he courted lived far beyond the world.

He would have to steel his mind against the journey lest he emerge more a servant to his new patrons than he ever was to Neifion, even when the Lord of Bats had briefly possessed Japheth's pact stone. It would all be for nothing if he toppled, glare-eyed and drool-speckled, into the clutch of mad gods. That outcome would be as bad as or worse than letting the crimson dust have him.

But even should the worst come to pass, he told himself it would be worth it if he could at least help Anusha.

He could at least get her out of Xxiphu before the consequences of his newest spectacularly bad decision claimed his soul. Probably.

Japheth allowed his point of view to be caught in the subtle current of the closest star, whose light was red. It pulled him closer, and its name came to him unbidden. Nihal.

The other stars whose names had occurred to him each pulled at his mind, altering his trajectory somewhat through the faux heavens of his conception. But it was the star Nihal whose authority most firmly grasped him.

Nihal writhed around the fixed space it should have maintained, its influence pulling Japheth nearer and nearer.

The moment before it sucked him in, the warlock screamed. The star's image changed from a cinder red fist to that of a humanoid-shaped hole in reality filled with writhing red maggots.

He flashed into a blaring space filled with sliding worms. He lost all sense of his body-limbless and formless, Japheth was helpless in the grasp of a worm-filled, churning expanse. But he continued to move. Something drew him forward, he was actually accelerating through the horrorscape. Awful sounds smashed at his eardrums. The noise was the sound of world-sized maggots scraping against each other accompanied by a vague, atonal melody. The ghastly sound concentrated all the primal, ultimate instability that lay beneath matter and behind time. Its declaration promised an unutterable and unendurable vision. Screaming, Japheth plunged into it.

*****

"That's it, then,*Anusha whispered. Yeva shrugged.

Ahead, the narrow asymmetrical tunnel opened into a larger corridor. From their vantage, the path seemed only a fifth the size of the great spiraling thoroughfare she and Yeva had trudged up after leaving the orrery. The lane was empty save for an irregularly gusting wind that rushed down its length every few moments. Purple flames burning on the crowns of stone obelisks marked the recent passage of an aboleth lamplighter.

"An important corridor, but not one frequently used by the awakened," Anusha said. "I hope."

Yeva didn't even bother to lift her shoulders. She merely said, "Let's go back and collect the warlock. We will learn how little used this way is then."

Anusha swallowed a terse comeback. She knew the woman wasn't trying to be cruel-she merely had little use for speculation. She just wished Yeva's attitude toward Japheth hadn't turned from acceptance to disdain when they learned his powers had been stripped. Yeva only cared about Japheth's ability to fashion a new focus for her spirit.

"Yes, that's true," Anusha said. "Let's hope I'm right."

They retreated back down the meandering nest of tunnels, avoiding those with encrustations of frozen memory, quivering egg sacks, and small aboleths already squirming. Some of the little monsters were far more aggressive than their siblings-and cannibalistic. On the way up, they'd chanced across an aboleth feeding frenzy. Anusha was glad for once to have left her body behind. Otherwise she would have been violently sick.

They reached the lone tunnel that spiraled down to where the warlock rested. A glimmer of red light played up the burrow.

"Looks like the warlock got bored," Yeva said. "If he's not careful, he'll draw a newly hatched clutch down on him. If he hasn't already." Concern tightened Anusha's throat. She hurried down the passage. Yeva followed.

They found Japheth sleeping at the tunnel's dead end, right where they'd left him. Anusha could see the rise and fall of his chest as the warlock slumbered. She was relieved he wasn't shaking as he'd been when they'd left.

"Where did the light go?" Yeva said.

The woman was right-somewhere in their rush down the tunnel, the flickering glow visible at the mouth had faded. They regarded the unmoving man only in the light of Anusha's dream sword.

"Japheth," Anusha said as she bent and touched the man's shoulder. "Are you awake? We're back."

The man's breathing changed and he opened his eyes. His slightly curled form unwound as he sat up.

Anusha gasped. Japheth's gaze was as clear and dark as when she'd first met him.

"Japheth? What's happened? The stain of the dust is gone. I didn't think that was possible…"

The warlock looked around with bemusement written across his face. He cocked his head as if trying to recall a favorite lyric.

Seeing his dark brown irises was wonderful. Anusha suddenly realized he couldn't see her, especially if his vision wasn't stained crimson.

She willed herself visible. The warlock immediately focused on her.

"Your eyes," said Anusha, reaching for his brow. "They're-"

The Dreamheart fell from Japheth's hands. He'd been holding it behind an obscuring fold of his cloak.

The sphere dropped only a few inches because Japheth was sitting on the ground, but the sound it made hitting the floor was like a sarcophagus's stone lid slamming shut.

Anusha couldn't contain a cry of alarm. The Dreamheart bounced once, then rolled to the center of the niche and stopped dead like a piece of metal on a lodestone.

Japheth said, his voice far away, "I had a dream the stars spoke my name…"

The man's gaze tracked down to the Dreamheart. Incredulity swept his features. He reached out and, with a fold of his cloak, encapsulated the sphere. With a shake of his hand and a flourish of the shadowy garment, the awful thing was gone.

"What were you doing with that? Were you holding it?" Anusha finally managed. The mere glimpse of the stone pained her. The psychic current flowing through Xxiphu seemed to tug and pull on her skin.

Japheth bent his head down to one hand and massaged his forehead for a moment. Then his hand dropped to his side and he said, "I found a way to reclaim my power, Anusha. A way that doesn't rely on the Lord of Bats. My spells… well, some old and many new… are mine to cast once more." He smiled.

Yeva said, "What was the stone you were holding? Does that have anything to do with your reclaimed powers?"

"I used it as a key to find them, yes."

"Then you are tainted, human," Yeva said. "Even without my body, I could smell the stink of corruption on the orb you hid in your cloak. I'm surprised the aboleths haven't already turned you into one of their slime-fleshed servitors."

Japheth looked uncertain, but he shook his head. "A reckoning may eventually find me, true enough. When I sought to swear a new pact…"

The man's eyes narrowed. He shook his head as if to jar loose an unpleasant memory and said, "But that's just one possible future. Right now, the important thing is that I have reclaimed my spells and rituals. I have power enough to release Anusha's mind from the Eldest. And perhaps enough to tie your spirit to a body that can hold it without Anusha's constant maintenance."

"When?" Yeva said, hope naked in her voice.

"As soon as we free Anusha's dream and clear out of here."

Anusha didn't know how to react. She regarded the revitalized warlock. His rejuvenation seemed too good to be true, like she had slipped into a daydream and just hadn't realized it yet.

Of course, finding Japheth clutching one of the Eldest's eyes in his sleep like a stuffed child's toy wasn't really the definition of too good. It was the same relic that sucked her mind into Xxiphu in the first place! She watched Japheth, trying to discern any change in him from his contact with the relic. Had he really sworn a pact with it?

The man stood up and shook out his cloak. The sick trembling that had invaded his limbs was gone, as if it had never been. The set of his shoulders was as wide and commanding as she'd thought them when she'd trailed Japheth unseen through the streets of New Sarshel so long before. And his eyes were lucid and unmistakably clear of the least residue of the terrible dust he'd indulged overlong. "You've sworn a new pact," she said. "To the Eldest?" The psychic undertow strengthened around her.

"No," he said, his tone definitive. "I've sworn to entities beyond the world of men and monsters-and aboleths who've outlived their time like the Eldest. I have sworn a pact to the undying stars." He looked up, and Anusha followed his gaze. The only thing above them was the blank, damp rock face of the cavity. Japheth continued to gaze at the ceiling as if he could see through the rock and all the earth between him and the empty sky over Faerun.

"I don't understand," Anusha said. "How can the stars offer you power? And… how are mere points of light able to relieve you of your addiction to traveler's dust?"

"Also," Yeva broke in, "if you claim your spells now flow from celestial objects, why did we find you with your hands wrapped around the petrified eye of the Eldest? Are you trying to suggest there is no connection whatever?"

"Honestly, that troubles me too," Anusha said. "I'm sorry to keep pressing you on this, but just what role did the Dreamheart play in your rejuvenation?" She ignored the invisible tide that surged all around her, willing herself to remain in place and focus on the warlock's words.

Japheth raised his hands, a placatory smile on his face. "No need to apologize, it's a fair concern. I'd have the same. It's hard to explain to someone not versed in arcana, but mainly I needed a catalyst. Some arcane source of power I could use to unlock the spells I once enjoyed thanks to Neifion. The Dreamheart provided that. But to answer Yeva's earlier question: Yes. A tiny thread of connection has been forged between myself and the master of Xxiphu."

Anusha retreated a step. The tide seemed to froth and bubble around her. She was surprised the others couldn't see and feel it.

"Japheth," she said, "I-"

"Listen!" he said. "I did not give up my independence! I remain my own man. Yes, the Eldest served as the conduit for finding my new pact, but that's all. The Eldest doesn't even know I exist. Moreover… the tiny connection I do share will help me find your focus in the creature's mind." He looked at Anusha, his face beseeching. "Find it, and free you from all this. And perhaps Yeva too."

So many battling impulses occupied Anusha, she couldn't honestly say how she felt. And the influence pulling at her wasn't making it any easier to think!

It horrified her that Japheth would bind himself to the very thing trying to consume her soul. But seeing him standing, clear eyed and in command of his body-and apparently flush once again with potent magic… she couldn't deny it fueled a tiny flame of hope.

"Anusha?" he asked, and held out his hand. "Take me to the Eldest, and I will remove your focus from its mind.

But we must be quick. Each hour that passes, more and more of its scattered thoughts return to it. Soon the dreaming thing will rouse, and then it'll be too late."

Anusha exclaimed in dismay, "The tide has me again!"

Yeva leaped for Anusha and grasped her arm. But the mottled woman's own flesh began to steam, on the verge of falling into so many formless motes.

Japheth's eyes widened. He lunged, but his hands passed through her. Anusha felt herself being swept away, just as she had been on the balcony.

The warlock said, "Not again!" and uttered a series of syllables, each one forming a pulse of blue light. The points of illumination spun themselves into a chain of light that snapped around her and Yeva.

The crashing blare of the undertow instantly quieted. Anusha imagined she felt the solid floor of the tunnel beneath her feet once more. Yeva's skin and clothing ceased their dissipation.

"That…" said Japheth, "was close."

The ephemeral cord of light faded away, but the psychic undercurrent remained bearable. However, it was not gone.

Anusha shuddered, then took a deep breath. The warlock couldn't have shown her any more clearly that he retained his mind. If he hadn't taken his new pact, she'd have been no more.

More than anything else, she just wanted to believe him. In the end, that moved her more than reason or odds.

She took his hand, imagining hers solid enough for him to hold. He said, "I can only hold you back for a little while."

"Then come," Anusha said. "Yeva and I found a route out of the nursery."