Key of Stars

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

Citadel of the Outer Void

The eladrin noble’s utterance distracted Taal long enough for Raidon to shake off the man’s blow. It’d been some time since Raidon had been caught off guard by a foe’s speed. He’d become reliant on things other than his own skill. In the Citadel of the Outer Void, of all places, it had seemed reasonable to assume all their foes were aberrant to one degree or another.

But Angul hadn’t reacted to Taal’s attack in the least, nor did his Sign burn cold with the man’s proximity. Somehow, the servant of Malyanna was not affected by the woman’s servitude to the Far Realm.

Raidon drove the Blade Cerulean point first into the ground. “Stay here,” he said. Better to divest himself completely, if temporarily, of a weapon not interested in fighting someone as proficient as Taal had revealed himself to be.

He charged Taal, feinted with an eye-jab, feinted with a throat-poke, then put his hips behind a roundhouse kick. Taal took the kick but turned away from it too, so that most of the force was wasted. The human grabbed for Raidon’s leg, but Raidon managed to disengage and hop back.

Taal pressed him, attempting to take advantage of Raidon’s hop.

But Raidon was not off balance; he planted the raised leg and spun around low, lashing out with his other leg to deliver a vicious, hooking kick with his heel just beneath Taal’s ribs.

The human grunted with surprise, but didn’t otherwise waver; he grabbed for Raidon’s foot as swiftly as a striking snake.

The monk managed to dance away from the man’s grasp a second time, but somehow Taal’s thumb found his eye in the process. It wasn’t serious, but it made Raidon pause.

He blinked at Taal from a distance of only a few strides. All around them, the mist fell away. From the corner of his watering eye, Raidon saw all the monsters of the upper air as the fog receded. And it seemed they saw him.

“Do you understand now?” said Taal. “It’s hopeless. You can’t defeat such a multitude. At least I have my oath to sustain me.”

What was the man going on about? Raidon thought.

Then Taal darted inside Raidon’s range. Somehow he threaded a hand past his guard and grabbed the back of Raidon’s neck.

Raidon was able to twist out of Taal’s grip only to find himself launched in the air as his legs were kicked out beneath him.

He knew how to fall. Taal would have had more success if he’d merely dashed Raidon to the ground instead of sending him arcing over it. Raidon tucked his head and rolled into the impact, and used the momentum to spin around and end up standing, facing his antagonist.

The man was a bare-hands fighter, but obviously preferred a style the Xiang temple had neglected. Raidon knew some grappling-reliant techniques, but his school preferred the art of striking with fist, foot, elbow, knee, and even sword. As a stopgap, the Xiang temple taught never to allow one proficient in grappling to get a good hold on you.

A distraction was in order.

“What kind of oath can sustain you in service to this?” said Raidon.

“A magical binding,” said Taal. “Its strictures allow me to endure what you can hardly imagine.”

Raidon snorted. “I’ve also endured a few hard things, Taal,” he said. “The death of my daughter, Ailyn, whom I failed to protect despite her utter reliance on me as her guardian. The destruction of the world and the deaths of all whom I once held dear. I’ve had to cut down, without mercy, innocents whose only crime was to have had the misfortune of coming into the bondage of the Sovereignty and the Eldest. Moreover, I failed to destroy the Dreamheart when it lay within my ability to do so-all these things I’ve endured, and paid for. But neither oath nor duty is why I stand here now, trying one last time to put right all my failures. Oaths have no give-attempting to live by unbreakable strictures breaks the spirit instead. I’ve endured much to stand here, and I do not call on oath or duty to use as a crutch to explain my actions.”

Taal frowned, then advanced by circling in. Raidon kept the man at bay with a push kick that cracked into Taal’s sternum too swiftly for the man to capture.

Taal paused. He said, as if talking while exchanging deadly blows was something he did daily, “You think duty is an excuse, or that an oath is a crutch? What, you don’t believe a person’s word is their bond?”

“Not especially,” replied Raidon. “Circumstances change. What one vows to do may no longer make any sense in light of new information. Bulling ahead anyway is lunacy.”

“Sticking to your word shows conviction!”

“No. It merely shows stubborn inability to change. What’s important is how someone copes with a difficult or impossible situation.”

“And how did you cope?”

Raidon feinted with a side kick, a rising knee, then put his hips behind his next cross, which caught Taal directly on his chin.

Taal stumbled back several steps and blinked.

“My mind broke. I mentally fell to pieces,” said Raidon. He stepped forward to follow his cross with a series of elbows. Taal deflected the first, dodged the second, but took the third across the temple.

Instead of dropping, Taal got hold of the back of Raidon’s arm. Raidon tried to disengage, but somehow Taal positioned his legs beneath the half-elf. That time, instead of throwing him in a wide arc, Taal did smash Raidon straight into the earth.

His breath whooshed out in a single exhalation. But when Taal tried to drop onto him, Raidon kicked out with all his own considerable strength. He caught the man right in the stomach, which was enough to make Taal hesitate.

Raidon snapped to his feet and regarded his foe. “As I was saying,” he continued, “I lost all sense of myself. Life, which had become one hard fall after another, finally left me in a place where I could fall no more.”

“And yet here you are, fighting with a half smile on your face against impossible odds,” Taal said as he gestured around him. “You, who talk of madness, are the one who must be insane to see what gathers around you. Yet you continue to fight against such an overwhelming force, knowing you have no chance for victory?”

Aboleths, foulborn creatures only slightly humanoid in shape, tentacled masses, bogs of animate, translucent ooze, shifting miasmas of gas, and things that defied description spiraled down from the sky. So far, none seemed interested in going after Raidon while he faced off against Taal.

Raidon couldn’t see Malyanna, but the disk of the Far Manifold remained intact-Japheth must still be keeping her busy. Which meant the warlock would likely appreciate it if Raidon continued to keep the deadly human engaged too.

“I’ve found serenity,” Raidon said. “For the first time in my adult life. Before now, I had a focus I could cling to, one that provided a facade of tranquility. But I’ve finally found something even better. I’ve made peace with all I’ve done. All that is left is to strive for what’s right. Can you say the same, oath-keeper?”

Even as the words dropped from his mouth, the monk realized that by saying them aloud, they crystallized something he had subconsciously come to believe. His words were all true. He breathed out and smiled at his enemy.

Taal stared at him with the surprised intensity of a man who’s just been told he was suffering from a terminal curse.

He said, “I’d give much to accomplish even one thing that was ‘good’ after serving the twisted will of the Lady of Winter’s Peace for so long. But it’s too late for me, monk.”

Taal advanced, his face falling into an expression of resignation. Raidon dropped into his ready stance. “Then you-”

Something grabbed Raidon from behind-a skinless arm as wide as Raidon’s waist. Blood seeped from the raw muscles, and he smelled the breath of something unutterably foul. The thing lifted him from the ground.

It occurred to him, as he twisted in the grip of the aberration, that he probably should have sheathed Angul in its scabbard instead of leaving it burning point down in the ground. In the course of his fight with Taal, they’d moved a dozen or more feet from the Blade Cerulean.

Raidon called on his Sign, which the arm that held him draped partly across. Blue light spouted from the spellscar, illuminating the bones and vessels of the creature; the brief image of bones showing through the thing’s flesh revealed odd spurs. The creature loosened its grip and screamed. Raidon kicked out, using the chest of the monster to launch himself directly away.

Straight for Taal.

Instead of capitalizing on Raidon’s discomfiture, the man sidestepped, allowing Raidon to tumble past and find his legs.

The horrific odor was back, and the half-elf saw why-the creature had chased him down. The thing was a hulking, blood-soaked aberration twice as tall as a man. Its mouth was a horror of mismatched teeth, and its eyes were zombie white orbs. Saliva the color of jade bubbled from the corners of its mouth.

Then Taal was on its back. One of the man’s arms went around the creature’s neck so that his elbow was directly under its chin. Taal squeezed down, using his whole body’s weight and strength to collapse the thing’s head forward.

Something snapped. The creature flopped forward like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Taal jumped away to land on his feet. “Stop wasting your time with me, Raidon, or any of these monsters,” he yelled. “Only one thing matters-stop Malyanna!”

As if his pronouncement was the trigger for a death spell, the man’s eyes went wide with agony. Taal clapped his hands to his temples, screamed, and fell facedown to sprawl beside the aberration he’d just killed.

“Zai zi!” swore Raidon. Apparently the man’s oath had involved more than mere words. It had contained an element of magical enforcement that Taal had failed to mention. Despite that doom, here at the last, Taal had broken his oath anyway, knowing full well the lethal consequence of doing so. It said a lot about him. Not many had the inner will to do what was right if death was their immediate reward.

“You won, Taal. You were not defeated by your oath,” Raidon called.

Shrill screeches of creatures as horrible as the skinless spawn Taal had killed ended Raidon’s musing. If they succeeded, Raidon would tell everyone of Taal’s final sacrifice. If they failed, well, then nothing mattered anymore anyway.

He sprinted to the lens again, grabbing Angul up by the hilt as he sped by.

Foolish to drop me, Raidon, chided the blade. The monk ignored the mental voice, and focused instead on charting a path through the riotous press of creatures clogging the path between himself and the Far Manifold. Why couldn’t he see the eladrin noble?

She is there. I sense her putrid life force.

A humanoid whose flesh swirled and rippled like a poorly sewn quilt leaped to intercept him. Angul cut the creature out of the air. When it fell, the “quilt” burst open to reveal a swarm of spiderlike insects, each scampering on a dozen translucent brown legs. Several brandished stingers dripping with poison. He was past it before the new hatched horde could envelop or sting him.

A scream of triumph drew his eyes through the throng to a figure composed of flapping bat wings … No, not made of bats-covered in them. Malyanna appeared, shaking off the dispersing shroud.

She still had the amulet, twin to the one he had before the Year of Blue Fire transferred the design to his chest.

With stray bats still flapping in her hair, Malyanna raised the amulet and peered into the crystal face.

“No!” Raidon screamed as Malyanna touched the Key to the crystal disk.

“It is done!” she shrieked. “All the days of all the worlds are done!”

The amulet turned to dust in her hands. Raidon felt a sympathetic pinch in his chest and knew that the key she’d just used to open the Far Manifold was destroyed. Even were he to reach Malyanna’s side and slay her with Angul, he couldn’t use the Key of Stars to lock the gate again.

Every eye, aberrant and natural, turned to regard the massive crystal disk.

With a shudder, the Far Manifold cracked open.