Key of Stars

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 Faerun. 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 Erunyauve. 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.