Key of Stars

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.