Lady Ruin

CHAPTER FIVE

Lirra sat before her dresser mirror, staring at her reflection in the dim glow of the candlelight without really seeing it. She was thinking about what had occurred in the testing chamber that day … and what might occur there the next.

She’d changed out of her uniform and into a roomy white nightshirt that stretched down to her ankles. It wasn’t the most flattering of outfits but it was comfortable and, more importantly, warm. Summer nights in Karrnath weren’t nearly as cold as winter ones, but they could get chilly enough.

A soft knocking came at her door. She rose, crossed the small bedchamber, and quietly opened the door.

Rhedyn stood there, still dressed in his uniform.

“I couldn’t sleep. Can I come in and talk for a while?”

“Of course.”

Rhedyn entered, and she closed the door, once again careful to do so silently. Rhedyn stood in the middle of the bedchamber, looking around.

Without thinking, she said, “It’s not as if you haven’t been in here before, you know.”

He looked at her and smiled sadly. “True, but it has been some time since my last visit.”

Lirra instantly regretted her words, but she couldn’t take them back, and she didn’t know what to say to relieve their sting. A single candle resting on the nightstand illuminated her room, and in the soft light the shadowy cast that always covered Rhedyn’s form appeared even darker. It was an eerie effect, made the more so because she knew he was minimizing it. If he wished, he could draw the darkness around him like a cloak and virtually vanish in the shadows.

“I wanted to talk with you about tomorrow,” Rhedyn said. “About what it might mean for us.”

Lirra frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Rhedyn took a step toward her, and without meaning to, Lirra took a step back. She regretted doing so, but she couldn’t bring herself to move any closer to Rhedyn.

He gave her a sad smile. “I’m talking about what you just did. Things haven’t been the same between us since I bonded with my shadow sibling. You have difficulty looking at me sometimes, and you can’t bring yourself to touch me. Even being physically close to me makes you uncomfortable.”

She opened her mouth, intending to tell Rhedyn it wasn’t true, but she respected him too much to lie, so she remained silent.

Rhedyn continued. “I don’t blame you. How can I, when I understand better than anyone the nature of the creature I’ve joined with? I knew when I volunteered to receive a symbiont that it might end our relationship, but I chose to go ahead anyway … chose to do my duty.”

As his superior officer, Lirra knew she shouldn’t ask this next question, but as his former lover, she couldn’t stop herself. “Do you regret your choice?”

“As a soldier, no. But as a man …” He took another step toward her. “Very much so.”

Lirra didn’t move away this time. She gazed upon Rhedyn’s features, and in the candlelight, the perpetual shadow that cloaked them didn’t seem as unnatural. And if the candle was out, she thought, his shadowy aspect wouldn’t be noticeable at all. She almost reached out to touch his hand, but the thought of the cold, oily way his flesh would feel stopped her.

“You said you wanted to talk about tomorrow,” she reminded him. “What of it?”

“If Elidyr’s experiment proves successful tomorrow, it will provide an opportunity for us.”

Lirra frowned. She had no idea where this was leading.

“I cannot-will not-give up my shadow sibling. As an impure prince, I can serve Karrnath in ways others could never hope to. And as long as I remain bound to a symbiont, I will repulse you physically.” He paused. “But if you were to accept a symbiont …”

Suddenly, she understood.

“You believe that if I was bound to a symbiont, I would no longer fear your touch, and we could be … close once more.”

“Yes. At least, that is my hope. I would never ask you to attempt to bond with a symbiont naturally. The process is … difficult in ways that I cannot easily communicate.”

Lirra thought of her earlier conversation with Osten in the lodge’s great room and how he described being bonded with a symbiont. “I think I understand … at least a little.”

“But if your uncle succeeds and we’re able to control the bonding process so that the host remains dominant, then being bonded with a symbiont is no different than carrying any other weapon.”

“Except a weapon isn’t fused with one’s flesh,” Lirra pointed out.

Rhedyn ignored her comment. “I’m not suggesting you volunteer to join with a symbiont tomorrow. But if Elidyr’s machine works …” He reached up and gently took hold of Lirra’s arms.

She drew in a sharp intake of air at his cold, clammy touch, and despite herself, a look of revulsion passed across her face. Rhedyn held her for a second longer before letting her go.

“Just think about it. Please.”

Then he moved past her, careful not to come too close, and departed the room, closing the door softly behind him.

Ksana stood outside Vaddon’s bedchamber, hand raised to knock on the door. But she hesitated. Not because she felt uncomfortable disturbing him at that hour. It wasn’t all that late, and despite a lifetime of military service that had trained him to rise with the day’s first light, Vaddon was something of a night owl. No, the cleric hesitated because she wasn’t sure if she should interfere. She’d been Vaddon’s friend for several decades and had fought by his side on numerous occasions, and she knew that the general valued her counsel. But she was always careful not to force that counsel upon him too often. Still, Vaddon had been the one to request that she serve as healer for the Outguard, and he knew that Ksana wouldn’t limit her contributions to simply repairing wounds and relieving illness. She smiled. So if what she had to say was going to make Vaddon angry, he was only getting what he’d asked for.

She knocked.

A moment later Vaddon opened the door. He was still fully dressed, and he gave her an amused smile.

“What took you so long?” He stepped aside so she could enter.

“Am I that predictable?” she said as she walked past him and into the room.

“Would it hurt your feelings if I said yes?” He closed the door and walked over to join her.

The room was lit by an everbright lantern sitting on the nightstand next to the bed, and an open book lay facedown on the slightly rumpled bedclothes.

Ksana nodded toward the book. “Another volume of history?”

“The Collected Letters of Galifar.”

“This is, what? The third time you’ve read it?”

“The fourth.” Vaddon smiled. “But who’s counting? So … do you want to sit on the bed or the chair? Or is this something that can only be discussed while standing?”

Ksana walked over to the writing desk, pulled the chair out, and turned it to face the bed. She then sat. As much as Ksana admired Vaddon, there had never been any hint of romance between the two of them, and she felt perfectly comfortable being alone with him in his bedchamber at night. But even so, she felt a bit … awkward at the thought of sitting on his bed. Vaddon walked over to the bed, picked up his book, noted the page he’d been reading, then closed it and placed it on the nightstand next to the lantern. He then sat on the edge, facing Ksana.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked.

“Have you decided to allow Elidyr to go through with his experiment tomorrow?”

He sighed. “Yes, though reluctantly so. We have some time before Bergerron wants us out of the lodge, and I see no reason why we shouldn’t put it to good use. Elidyr can conduct his experiment while the rest of the Outguard are packing everything up in preparation of our leavetaking. And my brother made a good argument when he pointed out how much Bergerron has invested in our project-especially considering the cost of the dragonshards and psi-crystals Elidyr’s built into this latest contraption of his …”

“He called it the Overmantle,” Ksana said.

“I don’t know if Elidyr will be able to get the device functional in time, but the man’s brilliant-though if you ever tell him I said so, I’ll deny it-and if anyone can get this Overmantle working, he can.”

“You sound convinced to me. So why did you say your decision was made reluctantly?”

“For the same reason you’ve come here, I’m sure,” Vaddon said. “I’m a soldier, not an expert in magic, but from the way Elidyr described the experiment, I have no doubt it would be dangerous under the best conditions. My brother may be a master artificer, but a rush job is still a rush job. How much more dangerous will his experiment be because the Overmantle was completed in haste?”

Ksana thought of her earlier hesitation to speak with Vaddon, and she couldn’t help smiling. She should’ve known the man’s thoughts would’ve been running parallel to her own. Although now came the moment for those lines of thought to diverge.

“I believe you should reconsider allowing the experiment to take place,” she said. “I’ll grant that Elidyr’s reasons for why the experiment should be allowed to go forward were persuasive enough, at least on the surface, but in the end they all boil down to the same thing-Elidyr wants to prove that symbionts can be used successfully as weapons. You know better than I how obsessed he’s been with Xoriat and its aberrations all these years. That obsession has blinded him to the risks involved with attempting to control symbionts. We all saw the results of those risks today, and it nearly cost Osten his life-Lirra too. They both might have died if things had gone differently. As you said, the Overmantle, assuming Elidyr can finish it in time, will be completed in haste. But even if it does function perfectly, do you really think it’s wise to open a portal to Xoriat, regardless of how small that portal may be or how short a time it may be open? Who knows what sort of chaotic forces we may unleash and what sort of havoc they might wreak?”

“We are soldiers, Ksana,” Vaddon said sternly. “Taking risks is our duty.”

“Taking risks, yes. Taking foolish ones, no. A wise soldier plans before heading into battle. She knows the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses as well as her own, knows the terrain upon which the battle will take place. And she knows when a battle simply isn’t worth the cost. Over these last few months, I’ve come to see that Elidyr’s view that symbionts can be used as weapons is based on a false premise. Symbionts are creatures of chaos, and chaos-by its very nature-cannot be controlled. And the more you attempt to control it, the more disastrous the outcome. Elidyr’s experiment is doomed to failure. If not tomorrow, then later, when those soldiers who become bonded to symbionts are inevitably corrupted by them. Please, Vaddon. Do not allow Elidyr to test the Overmantle tomorrow.”

Vaddon had listened to Ksana without expression, and when she finished speaking, he did not reply for several moments. When he did finally speak, his voice was calm, but firm.

“There’s a line in one of Galifar’s letters: ‘Some see duty merely as a task to perform, while others see it for what it truly is-placing the good of one’s people above one’s own desires.’ If there’s even the slightest chance that Elidyr’s right about using symbionts as weapons, then we have to give him one last try to prove it. It’s our duty.”

Ksana sighed and nodded. If Vaddon truly believed he was acting in the best interests of Karrnath, there was no use arguing with him further. She decided to change the subject.

“I checked on Osten before coming to see you. He told me he wished to volunteer for tomorrow’s experiment and that Lirra was going to ask you to allow him to do so.”

“Lirra came to see me earlier, and she did indeed tell me of Osten’s desire to attempt bonding with a symbiont once more.”

“You’re going to let him, aren’t you?”

“Yes, though I admit Lirra didn’t have to work hard to convince me. In a way, Osten is the perfect subject for Vaddon’s experiment. We know that he could not control a symbiont on his own, but if he can do so after having been exposed to the magic of the Overmantle, that will be proof the device works.”

Ksana frowned. “You sound like Elidyr.”

Vaddon chuckled. “Don’t insult me.”

Ksana wanted to argue with Vaddon, to try and convince him to deny Osten’s request, but she knew it would be fruitless to do so at this point. After all his talk about risk and duty, Vaddon’s mind was made up and there would be no changing it. The experiment would take place, Osten and a number of other soldiers would volunteer, and she’d be there to put them back together as best she could after everything went hideously wrong, as she feared it was bound to.

Sinnoch continued work on the Overmantle while Elidyr slept in a wooden chair, slumped over in a position that looked exceedingly uncomfortable to Sinnoch. Humans had so many frailties, the dolgaunt thought, the need for sleep chief among them. As soundly as Elidyr slumbered, anyone could sneak up on him and slit his throat before he had a chance to defend himself. As the dolgaunt worked, he amused himself by imagining the patterns the resultant blood spray would create in the air along with the desperate gurgling sounds Elidyr would make as his life rapidly bled out of him

Despite Sinnoch’s earlier skepticism that the Overmantle would be ready in time, the work had gone rather well, and the device was almost finished. Actually, it was complete as far as Elidyr’s design was concerned, but Sinnoch had a few touches of his own to add before tomorrow, so it was just as well that the artificer slept. Of course, it helped that an hour ago the dolgaunt had offered to fetch Elidyr a cup of water-and that the water had somehow managed to get a sleeping draught mixed into it before Sinnoch had served it to the human. The dolgaunt grinned. Life was funny that way sometimes.

Elidyr would doubtless give the device a thorough going-over before the experiment, but Sinnoch wasn’t worried that the artificer would detect his tampering. The changes he was making consisted of subtle, but vital, alterations in various energy valences that, while innocuous enough in and of themselves, would produce quite a dramatic effect once the Overmantle was activated.

As he continued making adjustments, Sinnoch thought back to his first meeting with Elidyr. The man had been much younger then, though the dolgaunt had a difficult time judging the ages of other species by appearance.

When Elidyr the young scholar had first met Sinnoch, it had never occurred to him that the dolgaunt didn’t make his home in the empty cave where they’d talked. Sinnoch’s abode lay deeper in the earth, a cave filled with a collection of mystic artifacts he’d acquired since escaping Xoriat. Sinnoch had gathered these items, often pried from the rapidly cooling hands of their recently deceased owners, for a single purpose-he had once traveled from Xoriat to Eberron through a dimensional portal, and he hoped to discover a way to create a similar passage for his lord and master, the daelkyr Ysgithyrwyn, to step through. And when Sinnoch encountered Elidyr, he’d realized the brilliant young artificer might prove to be the perfect tool to help him achieve his goal.

At first, he’d merely encouraged Elidyr’s interest in matters related to Xoriat and its denizens. But as time went on and the young artificer-who was no longer quite so young-continued his visits, Sinnoch began to pry information from him about spells designed to breach the dimensional barriers between planes. And then, one day, Elidyr, now a middle-aged man, had come to the cave and asked Sinnoch to help him with a very important project … Sinnoch wasn’t certain how aiding the artificer in creating a battalion of impure princes would help him free his master, but he’d recognized the opportunity for what it was and agreed. And now, with the Overmantle nearly completed-and modified by Sinnoch-the day of Ysgithyrwyn’s liberation was finally at hand.

Sinnoch turned his face toward Elidyr’s sleeping form. Though the dolgaunt could not see by conventional means, his sensitive cilia allowed him to perceive the artificer’s body.

Tomorrow you will learn more about Xoriat than you ever imagined, my friend, Sinnoch thought with amusement. You will make wonderful clay for my master to reshape. I cannot wait to see what dark wonder you will become beneath his hands.

Sinnoch was about to turn back to the Overmantle to make further adjustments when he sensed a presence outside the door. There was no sound, no knock. Nevertheless, the dolgaunt knew someone stood outside, waiting. More, he knew who-and what-it was. A creature of corruption himself, he could always recognize its presence in another. Though Elidyr had been drugged and was unlikely to wake even if someone were to sound a trumpet blast next to his ear, Sinnoch moved silently across the room. He opened the door quietly, glided into the hall, and closed the door behind him.

While most of the soldiers in the Outguard had quarters on the lower levels of the lodge, none of their rooms were near Elidyr’s work chamber. Even so, Sinnoch spoke softly as he addressed his visitor.

“How did it go?”

The visitor also spoke in hushed tones. “I do not believe she will ever choose to accept a symbiont.”

The disappointment was clear in the other’s voice, and Sinnoch couldn’t help thinking how weak humans were made by their emotional needs. Then again, their emotions certainly made humans easier to manipulate.

The dolgaunt laid a lean-fingered clawed hand on the man’s shoulder then smiled with his mouthful of sharp teeth.

“Fear not, Rhedyn. Tomorrow we both shall get what we want.”