Key of Stars

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.