Key of Stars

CHAPTER FOUR

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

New Sarshell, Impiltur

Raidon passed the open iron gates that separated the manor from the street. He trudged up the wide steps and let himself in. The grand entry door was unlocked. Wasn’t there usually a doorman?

The front hall contained a scattering of uncomfortable looking chairs and expensive pieces of art staged on elegant stands. Over the fireplace hung a slender long sword inscribed with an elaborate crest.

The monk sat down on one of the large chairs and leaned back. Angul’s sheath pressed into his back, but he ignored it. He closed his eyes. He wore exhaustion like a cloak. Once, his inner discipline had wiped away such minor physical discomfort with barely a thought. But he couldn’t be bothered to summon the control. Besides, if he slipped off into slumber, finally, perhaps he’d be graced with another vision like he’d received in the alleyway.

A distant bang sounded through the front hall.

Raidon opened his eyes. A faint shout followed, but it was too muffled for him to make out the words. A man’s voice, though.

He put his head back and contemplated the insides of his eyelids once more. Images and sound fragments darted at the edge of his attention. Colored lanterns, songs, and scenes of New Sarshell by night danced in his mind’s eye. His mother’s voice too, telling him something of vital importance-

The bark of shattering glass drew Raidon to his feet. He recalled the missing doorman as he’d entered the mansion. It seemed the doorman’s absence wasn’t merely a coincidence.

A servant stumbled into the chamber from a side hall. “Run!” she gasped. “Vermin, everywhere, flapping-”

Raidon flashed past her. He hurried down the corridor until he came to a dank chamber alive with a plague of writhing bats.

Three house servants with brooms swatted at the swarm. Each had dozens of tiny bites on their arms and faces. Shelves and furniture in the chamber were overturned and broken.

“Where did these come from?” Raidon shouted.

“From below!” gasped a servant. “From the catacombs!” The flurry of bats was like a blizzard of coal fragments, forcing the monk to raise his hand to shield his eyes.

Raidon knew Japheth was down below, working on something. The half-elf’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. The warlock’s dark allegiances had finally driven him mad. He’d unleashed the contents of his unholy cloak, probably as a precursor to a far more insidious curse. The man had touched the Dreamheart, and come away with something of its power.

Japheth called it a star pact. Raidon called it a deal with evil incarnate. He touched the Cerulean Sign tattooed on his chest … and discerned not the least drop in temperature. The swirling bat swarm, it seemed, was not conjured with Japheth’s new affiliation.

It didn’t matter. The sword on his back shifted slightly up and down, as if nodding.

The monk charged down the narrow stairs, taking them three at a time. The swarming bats grew thicker. They battered him with soft bodies and damp, bitter-smelling wings, and scratched him with tiny claws and needle teeth. Tiny lines of blood mazed his bare skin.

By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, the press of creatures was so thick that the light from above was blotted out. Even his sensitive eyes could hardly discern anything but swirling motes of hungry black.

He concentrated on his Cerulean Sign. The stylized tree pulsed into wakefulness. Sky blue light illuminated the narrow stone corridor, bewildering the bats with its sudden radiance. Raidon took advantage of their disorientation to sprint down the corridor.

Raidon had never ventured into the winding corridors beneath the manor before. The narrow way was thick with branching off corridors and sealed doors, but the monk just followed the press of bats.

Five heartbeats later, he burst into a wide chamber with a ceiling that arched high over the floor.

Raidon saw Japheth through the flurry of wings. The warlock was sheltering behind a metallic sculpture. Scratches crisscrossed Japheth’s face, just like those covering the monk’s face and forearms.

A pale man in oddly formal dress stood on the overlooking balcony, his arms wide. An aberrant glyph hovered on the man’s brow. Raidon sensed terrific power in him. He was also the source of the swarming bats; they issued from his open coat. He was obviously the Lord of Bats, Japheth’s old patron.

Raidon was disappointed that the warlock wasn’t his foe after all. At least, not immediately.

The Lord of Bats shifted his gaze to Raidon. The man’s features were human with a fey cast, but his eyes were like pools of stagnant black water. The wriggling mark above his eyes evoked chill alarm in Raidon’s Cerulean Sign. Whatever questionable moral path Japheth was on, the man on the balcony had already arrived.

“Allies will avail you not, Japheth,” said Neifion.

“We’re not allies,” said Raidon. Then he charged, vaulting onto the chamber’s central stone block. Candles, rods, glass vials, and other bits crunched beneath his feet. He used the block to propel himself into a high, arcing trajectory toward the balcony. He pulled his arm back, preparing a devastating blow to coincide with the termination of his arc.

The Lord of Bats raised his hands and pronounced a word of power even as Raidon’s foot left the block. As the monk arced up through midair, vines studded with poisonous thorns burst from the balcony’s railing.

Raidon plunged into the newborn thicket. The vines instantly wrapped around him. He grunted with surprise as the venomous thorns pierced his skin and held him fast.

“Pathetic,” said Neifion. He looked at the immobilized monk and said, “A hundred curses take you, Shou.”

A sharp pain pierced Raidon’s left temple.

The Lord of Bats stepped closer to Raidon, with one hand up. Claws the size of small daggers burst from the end of each of his fingers.

Raidon tensed every one of his muscles, then relaxed. The vines responded with a moment of slack. In that moment the monk forced one arm up across his body until his hand rested on Angul’s hilt.

His exhaustion puffed away. Numbness from the spreading poison receded. Even the jagged fractures of his mind smoothed out into a glow of calm conviction.

Neifion’s claws bit and dragged across Raidon’s ribs. Skin and muscle peeled away, revealing white bone. Pain seared, then Angul’s cerulean strength numbed Raidon’s mind to the awful trauma.

The Lord of Bats reared back for another blow. It promised to rip out the half-elf’s spine, Angul or no.

A vortex of starry energy swirled up between Neifion and the half-elf. Streamers of glowing gas engulfed the Lord of Bats. The archfey screamed in rage as his second claw swipe went wild.

Raidon hauled Angul from his sheath and ripped through the entangling vines with the extra strength the blade lent him. He swept it down, slicing through the remaining poisonous thicket in a single scything cut. Healing energy continued pouring from the hilt through his bloody body. The grievous wound on his side began to knit.

“Strike Neifion down, Raidon! Before he recovers!” came Japheth’s shout.

Raidon spared a glance over the railing. The warlock had emerged from behind the iron sculpture. One hand pointed up at the balcony; it was sheathed in the same starry mist that had slapped Neifion away from Raidon. The warlock’s other hand held open his cloak. Bats flowed out of the catacombs and into the black folds as swiftly as a river during spring melt.

A clawed fist slammed Raidon’s head so hard he saw white. He smashed through the balcony railing and fell. His trained instincts tucked him into a spin. He fell into a roll, and transferred the momentum of the fall so that he was on his feet in an eyeblink. A bloody imprint from his wound marked the floor.

“What in the Bitch Goddess’s name is going on?” came a voice.

Captain Thoster stood in the chamber entrance. Behind him was Seren. And the faintest outline of a woman in articulated gold armor.

“Wait your turn, mortals,” growled the Lord of Bats. One clawed hand gestured at the doorway. A wall of surging water appeared beneath the entrance arch. It roared like a mile-high waterfall, sealing Raidon and Japheth into the chamber with the archfey.

Neifion’s other hand formed a strange crooked configuration. The room shuddered.

“Come, my allies of the Old Woods,” said the Lord of Bats.

The domed ceiling seemed to peel away, revealing a twilight forest of towering trees. A moon many times bigger than normal peered down through the lofty canopy. One tree bent, and before Raidon quite recognized the threat, it smashed him into the floor with a gnarled fist the size of boulder.

Cerulean fire lit the dark path back from unconsciousness.

He was sprawled at the center of a crater in the stone floor. Pain stitched him to the shattered stone even as he saw his limbs straightening. His hand had maintained a death grip on his blade. Raidon sensed Angul was hard pressed to return him from oblivion’s edge. But the blade couldn’t spare him the bone-deep ache as his body was forcibly reknit into a functioning whole.

The monk rolled onto his side, gasping. The torrent of water still blocked the doorway. The Lord of Bats remained on the balcony. Thankfully the tree creature that had flattened the half-elf, along with the odd moonscape that had accompanied the thing’s appearance, was gone.

Japheth stood only a pace from where Raidon lay, his back turned to the monk as he whispered another spell to engage his foe.

The sword pulled Raidon’s hand toward the warlock’s unprotected back.

“No,” whispered Raidon, as he struggled to his knees. “The archfey first. The thing on his brow is an abomination that must be extinguished.”

Japheth had retrieved a green rod with a shattered end. A bolt of emerald energy lanced from it and struck the Lord of Bats. Neifion grunted and stepped back half a pace, but a smile remained firmly on his lips.

A woman’s voice said, “Lord of Bats, you’ve got your power back. Japheth has renounced your pact and your castle; why don’t you leave us alone?” The monk recognized the voice as Anusha’s, but he saw no hint of her presence.

“Because I swore revenge,” replied the archfey, glancing around. “When I said I’d quench my anger by eating Japheth’s liver, I wasn’t making idle threats.”

The Lord of Bats laughed.

Then he screamed. A flash of golden light briefly revealed Anusha’s new location. For the barest instant Raidon saw her standing behind Neifion. Her dreamsword was plunged straight into the archfey’s broad back.

The outline of a great dog burst from the shadows. It grabbed the flickering image of Anusha and bore her to the balcony’s floor, out of Raidon’s sight. The dreamsword protruding from the Naifion’s back blew away like smoke.

Japheth yelled, “No!” and released another crackling beam. The emerald energy played across Neifion’s body, pocking his clothing and flesh with miniature smoking craters.

The healing torrent continued surging from the Cerulean Blade. Under its impetus, Raidon stood.

The Lord of Bats glared down at the warlock and monk, smoothing his garments. Where his hands passed, some of the rents in the fabric and his flesh were made whole, though others still gaped and bled.

“Do your worst-I surpass you in every way,” Neifion said. “Besides, Malyanna and I are allied. See?” He pointed to the rune on his forehead. “She’s no simple eladrin, nor even an eladrin noble. The strength lent her by the Sovereignty makes her equal to me … if not stronger! And that’s just a splinter of the strength she and I will soon claim. Shall I call her to my side now, or will you relinquish Japheth?”

“You’re weakening; all your talk is a ploy to gain time,” Raidon said. He turned to Japheth. “Can you put me next to him?” he asked.

The warlock blinked to see Raidon standing, but nodded. Without any audible command, the folds of the warlock’s cape billowed toward the half-elf.

Night enfolded him, then Raidon stood on the narrow balcony, Japheth at his back.

A shadow hound crouched in front of him, between Raidon and the Lord of Bats. Of Anusha there was no sign.

Raidon charged, leaping over the black mastiff’s head before it realized a threat had appeared on its flank. But the dog was quick. It loosed a low-pitched bay of warning. Neifion spun around. Angul’s sweeping blow failed to lop the archfey’s head from his shoulders. Instead, the vicious cut removed half the creature’s left hand raised in unconscious defense. The fingers dropped to the balcony’s stone floor and flexed in a mindless parody of life.

The Lord of Bats screamed. The overwhelming sound buffeted Raidon and shook the catacombs’ walls. The monk nearly lost his grip on Angul when his body insisted he clap both hands over his ears.

He ignored his body. He feinted with Angul but put all his power into a front kick that blasted into Neifion’s solar plexus. A nearly comical expression of surprise crossed the archfey’s face as he launched backward off the balcony. The Lord of Bats followed a trajectory similar to Raidon’s own earlier fall. However, Neifion didn’t fall half as gracefully.

When the archfey struck the ground, his body broke into a hundred tiny pieces of winged blackness.

The motes swirled around the stone block. All were dark as night save one that shimmered green. It was the sigil that had earlier graced the Lord of Bats’s brow.

A slobbering mouth caught the back of Raidon’s right arm, the one holding Angul. The shadow hound clamped down and shook its head with frenzied strength.

When the blade finally slipped from his grip, Raidon’s surprise was nearly as great as the sword’s. A wave of agony blindsided the half-elf. The sword had been insulating him from the aftereffects of the tree creature’s lethal bludgeoning after all. The sword spun and clattered on the floor below.

“Let him go, you damned beast!” cried Japheth.

Raidon saw the warlock release a torrent of red fire. The flames licked the shadow hound. It growled, but did not release its jaws. Instead, it leapt from the balcony with Raidon’s arm still clamped in its mouth.

Neither monk nor hound managed an elegant landing. Raidon’s elbow smashed straight down on the stone with a sickening jolt, but at least his arm jerked free of the dog’s clenched teeth.

Everything was spinning. His body felt like a bundle of twigs whose tie was pulled loose. Part of him wondered at his flailing ineffectualness. What had become of the Raidon of old? He mentally groped for his focus.

Instead, his hand found Angul.

What a stupid dog, thought Raidon, to disarm him, only to drag him back within reach of his weapon. The Blade Cerulean’s influence blasted through him like a forge furnace. It lifted him to his feet as a mother might right a fallen child.

Raidon whirled, searching for his quarry.

He saw Neifion’s swarm of flickering motes follow the hound down a lane of shadow exiting the chamber in a direction that didn’t exist in the world.

The half-elf sprinted to close the gap, but the darkness fled in a candle’s flicker.

Rage burned suddenly from the sword, following the conduit of his arm. The emotion pulsed through the buffer of his Cerulean Sign. It was rage, white-hot and righteous in its certainty. Raidon shifted his grip, so that he wielded the blade like an axe, and began to hack at the catacomb’s stone wall where the Lord of Bats, the hound, and the aberrant rune had seemed to flee.

When a minor avalanche of loose masonry rained across him, Raidon continued to swing Angul. With each blow, he liberated a sizeable chunk of raw stone.

“In the name of Nine,” Japheth said. “Have you lost your mind?”

Raidon glanced back. The warlock had come down from the balcony. He stood only a few paces from him. The monk was also peripherally aware that Thoster and Seren stood in an entranceway free of water. And there was Anusha too, visible as a faintly translucent figure in a sun-bright panoply.

But Japheth captured his attention.

The warlock had thieved the Dreamheart. He had sworn a star pact. Both Angul and his Sign could discern the thread of aberration in the man like an apple hiding a worm; fell energies trickled through him. Japheth stood near his enigmatic iron sculpture, glaring at Raidon as if the monk were the one who had transgressed the laws of the natural world. As if …

The blade lashed out.

The metallic sculpture lurched into Angul’s path. The Blade Cerulean glanced off the suddenly animate shape in a shower of blue sparks.