Lady Ruin

CHAPTER FOUR

Lirra made her way to the great room of the lodge. A good-sized fire blazed in the large stone fireplace, as the dreary cool summer set in, and the cheery warmth of a fire was always welcome. Thick wooden beams crossed the length of the high-ceilinged room, and the walls were adorned with the stuffed, mounted heads of beasts that Bergerron and his ancestors had run to ground and killed: stags with huge antlers, fierce dire wolves, massive bears, razor-tusked boar, and sleek forest panthers.

Located in the hills on the southeastern edge of the Nightwood, the lodge was well away from main routes of travel but still close enough to the town of Geirrid, where the lightning rail could easily bring supplies. Plus Geirrid had its own garrison, which Bergerron made certain was well funded and well staffed, just in case he should have need of a military force when in residence at the lodge. And while the lodge’s hidden levels had proven perfect for the symbiont experiments, the creature comforts of its aboveground levels had made it a most pleasant place to bunk during the Outguard’s time there.

Chief among those comforts was the great room. Men and women sat in chairs or reclined on couches, talking and laughing while sharing after-dinner ale or playing a game of Conqueror. Over in a far corner of the room, a soldier with a bit of musical talent-a very small bit, judging by his playing-strummed a lute and led a merry group in song. Despite the would-be musician’s meager skills, his friends received his playing with happy enthusiasm, clapping along in time to the tune.

Tonight Lirra had come in search of one soldier in particular, and she spotted him resting on a couch by the fireplace. She walked over to Osten and sat in the empty chair next to him. The others in the great room grew quiet and looked in their direction, more than a little curious. A quick glance from Lirra reminded them to mind their own business, and they resumed their conversations and merrymaking, though perhaps at a softer volume than before.

“Hello, Osten,” she said.

He lay propped up on the couch, a blanket over his legs drawn up to his waist, two pillows supporting his back. He stared into the fire, its flickering orange-yellow light reflected in his brown eyes. At first he didn’t react. She was about to repeat the greeting when he finally spoke.

“Hello, Captain.” His voice was soft, the tone almost completely devoid of emotion. Lirra didn’t like the sound of it.

“Ksana tells me you’re going to make a full recovery,” she said.

“I’m sorry I let you down today, Captain. Sorry that I …” He paused, swallowed, and when he resumed his voice held an undercurrent of sorrow. “That I hurt you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I took far rougher hits than anything you can dish out when my father first taught me how to handle a sword.”

Osten’s lips formed a small smile, but he didn’t take his gaze from the flames. “Knowing the general, I can believe it.” His smile vanished then. He took in a deep breath, let it out. “It’s a lot harder than I thought.”

“What is?”

“Bonding with a symbiont. Your uncle tried to prepare me, as did Ksana. I practiced the meditation techniques the cleric taught me, ran their advice over and over in my mind. And when the day arrived, I thought I was ready.”

A bitter chuckle escaped his lips. “I was a fool. Nothing can prepare for you for the reality of the experience. Even before the symbiont latches on to you and pierces your flesh, you can feel it beginning to assault your mind. There’s a … a pressure, as if phantom hands have gripped your skull and are squeezing it. And then there’s a whispering in your ears. No, deeper than that. Inside your mind. Words spoken in a soft, sly voice-words that always seem just on the verge of being understandable, but no matter how closely you listen, you can’t make them out. It’s maddening. And then, when the symbiont actually bonds with your flesh …”

He trailed off and shuddered from head to toe. After a moment, he continued speaking, his voice so soft she could barely hear it over the gentle pop and crackle of the fire.

“The whispering in your mind becomes shouting loud as thunder, but you still can’t understand what’s being said. The ghost hands gripping your head squeeze so tight you feel your skull will shatter and collapse inward like a rotten melon. Your blood seems to boil in your veins, and if you could, you’d grab a dagger and slice open your wrists to drain the molten fire out of you, but you can’t move. You can’t even draw in a breath. The symbiont is on the verge of claiming your body as its own and you have to fight, and fight hard, or be lost. It was a near thing for me, Captain, my fight to retain control of my own body, and to be honest, I feared I would lose. But in the end I won. Or at least, I thought I had.”

Osten tore his gaze from the fire and turned to her with a look of haunted desperation in his eyes.

“They’re intelligent. And if they don’t manage to gain control of your body when you first bond, they bide their time and wait for another opportunity. See, they never stop trying to take you over. Never! The voice quiets after a time, the pressure lessens, and the fire in your blood cools somewhat, but the sensations are always there. Sometimes worse than others, but you’re never free of them. It … it wears you down. I thought I was strong. I grew up on a dairy farm not far from Geirrid, the youngest of seven children. Not only did I work hard at my chores, I had to be tough to hold my own against my brothers and sisters when we played, and we played rough. When it came time for me to serve in the military, I chose to apply to the garrison at Geirrid. It was close to home, and my parents were getting older and …”

His gaze went blank and he frowned, as if he were in danger of losing his line of thinking.

“You joined the garrison,” Lirra prompted.

His gaze sharpened once more and he continued. “Anyway, my point is that I believed myself strong in both body and mind. I thought I could do anything, endure anything, to serve Karrnath. But I was wrong. I was overconfident today. I was determined to do well, to justify your faith in selecting me to receive a symbiont, Captain. And when I saw that the general himself was going to observe my test, I was doubly determined to acquit myself with honor. I was so concerned with impressing you both that I forgot about my symbiont, just for an instant. But that’s all it took. If it had managed to kill you …”

“But I didn’t die, Osten, and Ksana was able to heal the injuries I sustained. And while I’m sure the process wasn’t pleasant for you, we were able to remove the symbiont. You’re free now. And while the test may not have turned out the way you’d have wished, remember this: You resisted the symbiont’s influence longer than most could have. You should be proud of yourself.” But even as she said this, she wondered if she would feel proud if their roles had been reversed. Probably not, she decided.

“You’re wrong, Captain.” He turned his head so that he could gaze upon the fire once more. “About my being free, I mean. The symbiont is no longer attached to my body, and it’s sealed up tight back in its cage. But I can still hear its whispering in my mind. I think perhaps I always will.”

Lirra had to suppress a shudder at Osten’s words. “Give it time. The whispering will fade.”

“Perhaps.” But Osten didn’t sound as if he believed it. He changed the subject then. “Most of the others have been keeping their distance from me, but a few have come over to talk. They told me that Lord Bergerron has ordered the Outguard to cease our experiments and vacate the lodge. They also told me that your uncle has managed to convince the general to allow one last experiment to prove to Bergerron that our program has merit and should be allowed to continue. Are these things true?”

“More or less. The general has given the order for us to begin packing up our equipment in preparation for leaving. He wants us to be out of here before sunset tomorrow. My uncle has proposed a final experiment-one that he’s been preparing for the last several weeks-but the general is still considering the matter and hasn’t given his permission yet.”

“But Elidyr prepares nevertheless,” Osten said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes. Just in case.”

“Do you think your father will approve the experiment?”

“I don’t know. I hope so.” She was of two minds about the matter. On the one hand, she’d devoted months of her life to this project-as had everyone else in the Outguard-and she wanted it to be a success. But on the other hand, she thought of what Ksana had said earlier in Vaddon’s den, about how symbionts could never be controlled, certainly not reliably. Rhedyn may have succeeded, but he was the only success out of dozens of attempts. She was beginning to believe that the cleric was right, and the project had been a fool’s dream from the start. Still, if there was a chance to salvage even a modest success from all their failures, she believed they should at least make the attempt.

“What sort of experiment?” Osten asked.

“Elidyr believes he has a way to artificially nullify a symbiont’s ability to dominate its host. He’d hoped to have a few more weeks to work out the details before attempting the process, but he’s almost finished with the construction of the apparatus needed for the experiment, and he believes he’ll be ready to test it by tomorrow morning or afternoon at the latest.” At least, that’s what her uncle had promised Vaddon. She wondered if he’d be able to deliver on such short notice. Then again, Elidyr was a brilliant man. If anyone could accomplish the task, he could.

Neither of them spoke for several moments after that, and Osten appeared to be deep in thought. Finally, he said, “So if Elidyr gets the chance to test this new process tomorrow, he will need volunteers to help him.”

Lirra understood where Osten was going with this, and she didn’t like it.

“I know what you’re getting at, and while I can sympathize with you wanting to make another attempt at mastering a symbiont, I can’t-”

Osten interrupted her. “Hear me out, Captain. I’m not asking for a second chance simply to redeem myself.” He paused. “Well, not only for that reason. Believe me, after what I’ve been through, I’d be only too happy never to hear the word symbiontagain, let alone have one of the damned things attached to my body. But as you said earlier, I did manage to successfully bond with the tentacle whip, and I was able to maintain control for several days before it finally succeeded in dominating me. I know what it’s like to resist a symbiont’s influence. I’ve done it, even if for only a short time.” He turned away from the fire to look at Lirra once more. “Besides, if Elidyr’s process works, the whip won’t be able to dominate me.”

“And what if the experiment is a failure and the whip takes control of you once more?”

Osten shrugged. “Then you’ll just have to cut the thing off of me again. Look, I know better than most just how powerful a weapon a symbiont can be. After all, I was bonded to one. Can you imagine the contribution a division of symbiont-enhanced warriors could make to Karrnath’s defenses. Five divisions? Twenty? That’s worth the risk to me.”

Lirra understood how Osten felt. After all, it was the same vision that had motivated her to join the Outguard in the first place.

“Very well. I’ll discuss the matter with the general-if he allows the experiment to go forward. All right?”

Osten gave her a smile-a real one, this time. “Thank you, Captain.” He then turned back to face the fire once more.

Lirra sat with him in silence for a few more moments before taking her leave. Osten needed to rest … especially if he was going to attempt to bond with a symbiont again the next day.

She just hoped her uncle knew what he was doing.

“So now that I’ve promised my brother I’ll work a miracle tomorrow, I need you to help me deliver, Sinnoch.”

The dolgaunt made a liquid rattling in his throat, a sound Elidyr had learned was the equivalent of a sigh. “Ideally, we could use another two weeks to prepare, but I suppose we could be ready in three days if we pushed ourselves. But in less than twenty-four hours?” The creature shook his head, his mane of tentacles writhing slowly like a nest of half-asleep serpents. “I don’t see how we can do it.”

The two stood in Elidyr’s workroom in one of the lodge’s lower levels. Wooden tables lined the wall, their surfaces covered with books, scrolls, and bits of parchment arranged in seemingly haphazard piles. Everbright lanterns resting on the tables provided illumination, and while Elidyr appreciated the lanterns’ convenience-unvarying light, no wick to burn down-he missed working by candlelight, as he had during his student days at Morgrave University. There was something romantic and mysterious about it, as if one were reading in some hidden chamber, delving into ancient and forbidden lore.

One table in the workroom was reserved for Elidyr’s artificer’s tools, devices both small and large, mundane and arcane, from simple hammers and screwdrivers to etheric energy aligners and thaumaturgic rebalancers. And in the middle of the table rested a square metal framework constructed from two-foot lengths of focusing steel, an extremely expensive material designed to collect and channel various types of energy. There were three flat panels inserted into the framework, and upon each was fastened a row of crystalline objects even more expensive than the focusing steel. Some were translucent with pulsating veins that made them seem almost alive, while some were a glowing blue and green.

“The dragonshards and psi-crystals are in their correct places,” Elidyr said, sounding more defensive than he liked.

“But they haven’t been properly attuned to one another,” the dolgaunt pointed out. “If you tried to activate the device now, at best it wouldn’t function, and at worst it would fail catastrophically and destroy half the lodge in the process.” The creature’s leathery lips stretched into a smile far wider than a human could manage. “Although now that I think of it, that could be amusing.”

Elidyr knew the dolgaunt wasn’t joking-he would find the devastation amusing-but the artificer chose to ignore the comment. Sinnoch’s mind was sharper and more focused than others of his kind. That was the only reason Vaddon had agreed to allow the dolgaunt to assist with the Outguard’s work. But in the end Sinnoch was still a creature of chaos, and thus periodically given to bizarre and unsettling turns of thought. However as long as the dolgaunt chose not to act on those thoughts, Elidyr didn’t worry about them-much.

Elidyr had dubbed the device the Overmantle, a rather elegant name, he thought, for a somewhat unimpressive-appearing piece of equipment. But he’d always been more practical than artistic-the Karrn in him coming through, he thought with some amusement-and he really didn’t care what the device looked like, as long as it worked. The Overmantle was designed to help humans bond with symbionts while leaving the hosts in complete control. The psi-crystals would form a psychic barrier in the hosts’ minds to protect them from symbiont influence, while the dragonshards would open a miniature portal to Xoriat and channel a small measure of its chaos-based energies into the hosts in order to create a kind of “chaos inoculation” to help further shield them from the symbionts’ psychic contamination. If the Overmantle worked as designed, hosts would have complete control over their symbionts and be able to use them as safely and effectively as any other weapon, without fear of succumbing to the aberrations’ corruption.

“The basic attunement of the shards and crystals shouldn’t take more than a few hours,” Elidyr said. “My major concern is making certain the dragonshards we configured to open a portal to Xoriat will be able to do so safely.”

The portal in question would be smaller than a pinprick, but that would still be large enough to draw the needed amount of the realm’s energy into Eberron’s plane to allow the Overmantle to complete its work. So far all their tests in this area had proven to be failures-sometimes quite spectacular ones. The last such had created a portal to Xoriat the size of a man’s fist, and a slime-covered green tentacle had slithered through. There had been a tiny toothless mouth on the tentacle’s tip resembling an infant’s, and it crooned a wordless song in a woman’s voice. Sinnoch had managed to close the portal, severing the tentacle, and Elidyr had hacked the still-writhing monstrosity to pieces with an axe he kept close at hand. Pieces which Sinnoch had disposed of by devouring them. Elidyr shuddered as he remembered the satisfied moaning sounds the dolgaunt had made as he’d feasted.

Needless to say, Elidyr had decided not to report the result of that particular test to his brother. But it pointed out the reason why they needed to proceed with extreme caution, and Elidyr had been determined to do so-until Bergerron’s recent ultimatum that they shut down the project and vacate the lodge. But he couldn’t do that without at least trying out the Overmantle, not when they were so close.…

Elidyr had first become fascinated with Xoriat during his early days at Morgrave University. His homeland had a long and proud history of military service, but at the beginning of the Last War the nation had become a military dictatorship, and still was. Martial law remained in force, and unlike the rest of Khorvaire, instead of following the Code of Galifar, Karrnath followed the more rigid Code of Kaius, a set of laws restricting many rights in the name of national defense. Men and women like his brother saw nothing wrong with this system, or if they did, they accepted it as a necessary evil for the protection of Karrnath and its people. But there were those like Elidyr-freethinkers who chafed under the Code of Kaius. And so even with the Last War still raging, Elidyr had left his homeland to study in Sharn. At Morgrave University he studied the craft of artificing, telling Vaddon that he planned to use the skills he gained in service to his country when he graduated. Which was true enough-though admittedly Elidyr hadn’t been in any great hurry to graduate.

Elidyr had studied many subjects at the university, but he’d found himself most fascinated with the subject of Xoriat, the Realm of Madness. At the time Elidyr hadn’t understood the strange attraction he’d felt toward Xoriat, but in the years since, he’d come to believe it had something to do with how different the dimension of madness was from Karrnath. While Karrnath was tightly structured-Elidyr often ironically used the word regimented to describe life there-Xoriat was the exact opposite: total freedom reigned in that realm … so much freedom that even the basic laws of nature held no meaning there. The very existence of Xoriat had posed a compelling question for the young scholar. Was there such a thing as too much freedom? Without some sort of structure to give it form, like water given shape by the cup that held it, could existence truly have purpose?

Elidyr read everything he could about Xoriat and its denizens, of the daelkyr, and of the aberrations they created to be their servants. He’d learned of how the daelkyr had once attempted to take over Eberron and, when they failed, how some had retreated with their servants to the subterranean realm of Khyber, where they were reputed to still live to that day. Elidyr had learned of a handful of explorers and adventurers who supposedly had traveled to Khyber and survived, and he sought them out, hoping to gain firsthand knowledge of the daelkyr and their aberrations, but while he’d tracked down a few adventurers, all he’d learned were a few scraps of information, little more than what his own studies had taught him. He’d eventually set out on expeditions of his own in search of aberrations to study firsthand. He began with symbionts, for as dangerous as they were, they were tame kittens in comparison to creatures such as mind flayers and their brethren. It was during one such journey into the Nightwood that Elidyr encountered Sinnoch.

He’d been in the forest for several days when he discovered a subterranean cave system that showed signs of symbiont habitation. He’d gone into the caves, which displayed a dismaying lack of aberrations, when the dolgaunt approached him. At first, Elidyr thought the creature intended to attack, and he prepared to defend himself using a rod he’d designed to collect energy from the sun and release it in a blast of light and heat. But when the dolgaunt made no move toward him, Elidyr had lowered his weapon and was surprised when the dolgaunt spoke.

“I’ve been watching you. You search for that which most humans fear and loathe. Why?”

They talked for hours after that. Elidyr was fascinated and thrilled by their conversation. Not only was this his first true encounter with an aberration, it was with one who could think and communicate. For his part, Sinnoch seemed intrigued to meet a human who did not revile him simply for being what he was. Sinnoch explained that he had stumbled through a naturally occurring but unstable portal from Xoriat some years previous and, unable to find his way back, he had lived in the cave system ever since. Elidyr learned much that day about Xoriat and Khyber and the nature of aberrations, and the young artificer stayed with Sinnoch for three more days before reluctantly heading back to the university.

Elidyr made several more trips to visit Sinnoch over the years, both before and after he graduated from Morgrave. And when he developed the idea of finding a safe way to employ symbionts as living weapons, he’d returned to the Nightwood and asked Sinnoch to help him. The dolgaunt was skeptical at first. Why should he wish to help humans when they despised his kind so much, when they took every opportunity to hunt aberrations down and destroy them?

“Because it’ll be more interesting than sitting here alone in your cave,” Elidyr had said.

Sinnoch thought over these words for a time before finally nodding.

The dolgaunt wasn’t his friend-Elidyr had no illusions about that. But there was an understanding between them, a connection that Elidyr was hard-pressed to define but which was real nevertheless. Sinnoch’s motivation for helping with the project was simple-he found the idea of an army of impure princes amusing, and he found the challenge of creating such an army intellectually stimulating. Nothing more. But it was enough to gain his assistance, and without his intimate knowledge of Xoriat’s chaos energy, Elidyr would never have been able to construct the Overmantle. So what if the others didn’t trust Sinnoch? Elidyr didn’t blame them in the slightest. After all, he didn’t fully trust the dolgaunt himself.

Sinnoch moved toward the Overmantle. One of his shoulder tentacles snaked out from under his robe and stretched toward the device. The tentacle tip began touching the crystals, seemingly at random.

“There are no guarantees, Elidyr, especially when dealing with the forces of chaos. You know this. We could perform a dozen successful tests of the Overmantle and still fail to safely open a portal to Xoriat the next time. The best we can do is to fine-tune the crystals and hope for the best.”

Elidyr sighed. He knew the dolgaunt was right, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

“Then I suppose we should get to work.” He reached for a thaumaturgic rebalancer and got started. He had a feeling it was going to be a long night.