Stardeep

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Aglarond, Yuirwood Forest

Raidon Kane followed the elf Kiril Duskmourn as she stalked through shallow snow drifts. She was of the same fey race to which he was kin, if he could believe her claims. She was a harsh woman, a lodestone of reluctant authority, a comet trailing foul language, threats of bodily harm, and the smell of strong drink. Nothing like his memory of his mother-were they truly of the same race?

Yet during their walk, she had relented and spoken more of the strange realm Sild?yuir. She told Raidon and Adrik the star elves had created the hidden land as a refuge, a place to which they could retreat from the cruel and ambitious human empires of old. More than a thousand years before the raising of the Standing Stone in the Dales, the human kingdoms of Narfell and Raumauthar, as well as Unther and Mulhorand, had fought furiously for dominion in the region. In western Faer?n many elves had retreated to Evermeet to avoid human ambitions, but the star elves had decided to move their entire realm rather than abandon it. All Sild?yuir was a construction of high magic, an echo of the Yuirwood itself spun into starshine and dusk through mighty craft of old.

Since the creation of Sild?yuir, the star elves had slowly slipped farther and farther from Faer?n, leaving the daylight world to its own devices. Some still traveled through the old elfgates and roamed Aglarond or the Inner Sea, but they passed themselves off as elves of other regions, and did not speak of their homeland to strangers. And of the star elves that remained in Sild?yuir, only a fraction cared enough for the Cerulean Sign to take up its practice. Had his mother been one?

The monk considered the moment, tendays past, when he'd fought Chun, a member of the Nine Golden Swords, in the Shou Town streets. His mental discipline allowed him to perfectly picture the moment he'd retrieved the daito from Chun's limp grasp. He'd clutched his grandfather's blade, raising it in a salute. On that day the honor of his family had been restored. And on that day he quit his old life, lest Nine Golden Swords vengeance find him.

If he hadn't retrieved the daito but instead turned his back on family honor, as would have been the far easier road, Shou Town would yet be his home. Perhaps he would even now be called master by fledgling students in Xiang Temple, and by old Shou merchants in the colonnaded bazaar he walked past each day. A safe life, if honorless. A familiar life, if without meaning or purpose.

Looking back, he couldn't find a time when he'd pondered the two possibilities, then decided between them. He'd never considered not reclaiming the daito. And once free of Shou Town, on what course other than finding his vanished mother could he have embarked?

From Raidon's perspective, he rode a narrow river of fate. On it he rushed, sometimes through rapids, other times on calm water, but always too swiftly for him to pause. While it was his grandfather's daito that seemed to precipitate his exit from Telflamm, he suspected the origin of his current circumstance was his mother's forget-me-not. He'd learned it possessed a mysterious power. Perhaps that power had reached out and guided the threads of his destiny.

Now fate was drawing him toward a realm few knew existed, a realm Kiril claimed was synonymous with eldritch beauty, a land of perpetual twilight illuminated only by glittering stars. She said the star elves dwelled there in glass citadels. He looked forward to seeing that.

Then there was his forget-me-not. Not merely a reminder of maternal affection, but apparently an object whose power could prove useful against monsters. Was it fate, serendipity, or cruel chance that pulled him into an age-old conflict? A conflict in which the enemy was shrouded in an evil so cruel it eclipsed the Nine Golden Swords as a mountain overwhelms a pebble.

They'd spent a bitterly cold night sheltering from another snowfall beneath the downward branches of a mighty conifer. Adrik had gathered several cones and exclaimed over their novelty. Only Xet seemed to care.

Today they'd walked only a few miles when Kiril said something in a language he didn't know.

The swordswoman stood at the base of a snowy slope crowned with evergreens and massive boulders. The confluence of boulders and boles created, from a particular perspective, an inviting cavity.

"This is an entrance to Sild?yuir," said Kiril.

"I thought all the gates were magically scribed menhirs," pondered Adrik.

The woman shrugged, "Stab me if I know. This one isn't." Raidon and Adrik followed as she headed up the slope. She paused when she stood between two of the veined, snow-dusted boulders.

"How does this damn thing function again?" Kiril muttered. With uncertainty writ plainly across her features, she traced a series of geometrical signs in the air as she spoke several words unfamiliar to Raidon.

"Something's happening," reported Adrik, his hands out before him. "A magical charge comes into alignment. ."

Kiril finished speaking and a silvery light flared in the cavity between the boulders. "The gate is open. Welcome to the realm of the star elves." She walked into the gap, Xet sitting quietly on her shoulder. As she moved, whirling shadows leaped and spun from the boulders. As the shadows proliferated, she became harder to discern, while her tracks in the snow became shallower by the step. When Kiril reached the center of the hollow, she was nothing but a fading shadow, and a moment later, completely absent.

Raidon and Adrik looked at each other. Adrik yelled, in fear or exultation, Raidon could not determine, and plunged into the hollow. Gone.

The monk, surprised to note a faint tinge of nausea, walked forward.

A handful of heartbeats passed in silence. Of those who had walked ahead and disappeared from the Yuirwood, no sign remained. A two-legged shadow slid from behind a boulder and dashed into the hollow, one hand bare, the other gloved with a bound demon.

To Raidon, it seemed day plunged into night's darkling gates. In the extravagant sky revealed, cloudless and crystal clear, all the stars of the cosmos seemed crowded. Heaven's span glittered with a million points of sparkling light, diamond white, ruby red, emerald, sapphire, and citrine. He saw circular clusters and bands of light that, when he focused on them, revealed themselves as millions of yet tinier brilliant points. Streamers of glowing nebulae poured and frothed across the firmament, mingling within them all the colors of existence.

The monk gasped, realizing he hadn't drawn breath for many heartbeats as he stood transfixed, staring upward.

The dragonet darted above them, diving and soaring, chirping bell-like tones of wonder. When it occluded a star, its crystalline body flashed sapphire, green, or red. Xet's antics broke the spell, and Raidon dropped his gaze from the entrancing heights.

Raidon stood in a half-forested valley whose opposing ridges spread away from each other as if the land itself had thrown wide arms to embrace the glorious sky. A pearl gray glow clung to the horizons, as if promising the first hints of dawn. A promise that would never be met, according to Kiril. The valley, glimmering and dreamy in the brilliant starlight, had left winter behind, or perhaps had never known it. A stream burbled through the valley, sparkling.

He breathed and smelled an odor not unlike dawn's promise, rich with growing things. It was cool, but not cold.

"Incredible!" repeated Adrik every few heartbeats. The sorcerer was turning in a slow circle, his head bobbing up and down as he sought to absorb it all.

Kiril said, "Enough sightseeing. Take it all in as we walk. We have a fair march ahead of us."

The sorcerer asked, "Will we see a glass castle? And meet any star elves? I mean, besides you?"

The swordswoman merely grunted, "Could be. There're fewer of us than there used to be." She walked toward a far ridge, paralleling the stream.

The monk yearned to demand an answer to Adrik's question. Instead he concentrated on finding his focus. The shock of bodily traveling to this alien place, coupled with the thought that his mother might be close.. well, truth to tell he was too much in the grip of the moment, not apart from it. He wrapped the lessons of Xiang around himself and followed. Adrik skipped along behind, stopping every ten heartbeats to marvel at some newly revealed celestial phenomena, then running to catch up, jabbering with a child's unrestrained wonder.

As he walked, Raidon was mostly successful in keeping his gaze below the trees' crowns, away from the captivating sky. The otherworldly landscape was somehow bound to the Yuirwood; he could see the connection in the way the starry realm's forests and hills matched the landscape he recalled from the snow-speckled forest they'd left behind. The congruence was not perfect. Here the trees were taller and wider, and more majestic, silver-trunked with little undergrowth. Their smooth boles stretched in elegant lines, supporting a silvery green canopy.

Adrik's voice rang out, calling more questions after the swordswoman who stalked ahead. "How wide a realm is Sild?yuir?" The sorcerer seemed oblivious of the dangerous mood that enveloped their new-met companion since they'd arrived.

Raidon saw the woman's hands clench, then loosen. She threw back over her shoulder, "As large as the Yuirwood, no bigger."

The sorcerer's brows knitted as he muttered something under his breath. Then, "Nearly three hundred miles?"

Kiril made no reply. Instead she raised her hand and pointed at a stone bridge silvered with moss, and a partly paved path. Here and there, silver-green grass burst up through the loose paving stones, indicating the road's infrequent use, Raidon supposed.

"Ah ha!" Adrik exclaimed, gazing raptly at the bridge and path.

Kiril walked across the bridge; monk and sorcerer followed. When he reached the top of the span, Raidon gazed down into water. It reflected the stars above, rippling and shimmering with the moving water. Of the bridge, or himself and his companions, he saw no reflection.

They walked the broad path into the forest depths, passing fully beneath the canopy. It was cooler beneath the eaves, and darker without the direct radiance of the starlight. Despite the relative gloom, the dearth of undergrowth provided Raidon long, open views to either side. As they walked, he heard the rustlings of forest creatures, and the occasional cry of a night owl, the lonely howl of a distant wolf. A few times he saw silver-gray deer flashing in the distance. Another time he saw a wheeling, darting flight of gemlike dragonflies whose slender forms burned emerald and sapphire. Because he couldn't accurately judge their distance, he was unable to measure their size, but he guessed they were large. Once, a dark, furred beast shuffled parallel to their track for a mile or more. Raidon strained his eyes to discover the creature's shape, but soon enough it turned and was gone.

"What was that?" inquired the sorcerer.

Raidon replied, "A bear, perhaps?"

"No, something bigger," said Adrik, looking forward for some confirmation from the elf.

Kiril paused and frowned back to where the sorcerer pointed. She squinted and shook her head.

"It ran off, I guess," Adrik explained, peering into the gloom.

"Sild?yuir is not entirely free of threat. You can die here from a wild creature's attack as easily as you could in the sunlit world."

"I don't think it was a bear," maintained the sorcerer.

"Did I say bear? Far worse than bears hunt my homeland, especially of late." The elf began walking. The ridge was only dozens of yards ahead, clear of trees and promising a wide view beyond.

"What? What's worse?" persisted the sorcerer, running to keep up. Raidon continued to quietly stride as the rear guard.

"Before I took up my post in Stardeep, a couple of communities went dark-a glass citadel here, a tower there-and they were found vacant. The inhabitants were gone with no explanation or sign of violence. Later it was learned that invaders were responsible, awful creatures called nilshai."

Adrik interrupted, "Invaders from where? I haven't heard that name before."

"Nilshai invade from outside Sild?yuir-not Faer?n, but from the gray misty expanse that borders all worlds."

"Does this 'gray misty expanse' have a name?"

Kiril shrugged. "Who cares? Our time in Sild?yuir is short. We go to the closest edge, and from there, we'll bridge the distance to Stardeep's underdungeon via little-used paths."

Kiril topped the rise and stopped, her head swiveling to the left, then to the right. She muttered, "What the Hells? That isn't right.."

Adrik and Raidon joined her and looked across a wide, fey plain beneath an even broader and more breathtaking swath of sky than was visible back in the valley.

Below them, a slumping glass citadel burned.

Gage moved from shadow to shadow in the gloom beneath the canopy. The great silver trees were wider than any in his experience and offered an ideal breadth from which to hide along the whitestone path. However, he was exposed to anything that hunted the deeper forest lanes behind him. His back itched at the thought.

When he'd seen Kiril and the strangers disappear without a trace between two massive boulders, he'd dashed forward hoping to take advantage of the portal before it slammed shut. His gamble paid off. A moment of sickness, and he'd opened his eyes elsewhere.

The splendid stars! How long had he stood rapt? He shook his head. It seemed like moments, but could have been longer. It was difficult to measure time in this realm that seemed always and forever a summer night. Once his wits returned, his quarry was gone.

Gage followed, or so he hoped. At least two figures had gone by foot from where he'd appeared, through the grass and trees until they found a path of overgrown stones. He was fairly certain he'd chosen the same direction as Kiril, though doubts pestered him.

Wait. Did the branch on the tree ahead just move? He stopped dead, squinting into the gloom.

It wasn't a branch, it was..

A monster.

Its shape was like a large worm with glistening, blue-black flesh. Small tendrils or limbs branched from its body. It dropped from the tree, but stopped before striking the earth. Buzzing insectile wings beat at the dusky gloom, sickeningly small but large enough to hold the creature aloft. Three golden orbs projected from a blunt, bulbous thickening that served as the creature's body, or perhaps its head.

Another appeared, and Gage caught his breath. This one squirmed along the forest floor, with a rolling corkscrew gait reminiscent of a serpent. This one was closer, and Gage perceived its alien body in all its awful asymmetry. The horrid creature possessed three clawed legs, a ropy body, and three long whiplike tentacles, each divided at the end into stubby, strong fingers. Its head was a bulbous case atop its trunk, crowned by three stalked eyes. This one's three membranous wings folded tightly into its torso as it ambled along the ground. Its hide was slick and slimy, and mottled blue and black in color.

The monster slithered straight toward Gage.

The thief drew a dagger and hurled it. The blade plunged into the creature's flesh right between the stalked eyeballs. It screamed and reversed direction.

Gage drew another dagger, holding it ready. The hovering monster's tentacles writhed, and a searing blast of lightning leaped from its stubby fingers to ground itself in the space where the thief had stood a heartbeat earlier. How many more daggers did he have ready? Only three, he realized.

As Gage ducked out of his instinctual evasive leap, his brain realized what his body already knew; the damned things could wield sorcery! He raced around the wide bole of the closest silvery tree, eluding another blast of electricity that scattered wood chips in a dozen trajectories, followed by smoking trails.

He stood, his back to the trunk, breathing hard. He yelled, "Any chance you've made a mistake? I'm no threat. What say you go your way, I go mine. No harm-"

A blast of electricity shuddered into the tree, this time penetrating all the way through. Agony seared his upper back and shoulders.

Gage darted away from the thing, to duck behind the next tree he reached. He placed a dagger in his mouth and rummaged through the pockets on his belt. Lucky his maneuvers hadn't broken any of the vials. With practiced fingers he undid a clasp and pulled forth a glass vial labeled Inhalant. Dark yellow liquid sloshed within. He whispered a prayer to Akadi, crouched, and tossed the vial onto the path he'd taken.

He heard the vial smash and the hiss of the contents as they volatilized in the air. He waited a moment then leaned to peer back.

A yellow haze hung in the forest, and at its edge lay one of the creatures. As monstrously odd as it was, it still required breath. Its inert bulk showed it was as susceptible to alchemical poisons as he was. But where was the flying one?

Perhaps it fled when its companion succumbed to the gas. Or did it merely hide, lying in wait to ambush him should he reveal himself? No way to predict the psychology of a creature so alien; it only barely possessed something resembling a body.

He had to risk it. The longer he huddled unmoving, the colder the trail of his quarry. He glanced around the tree.

He looked again at the body of the fallen creature and shuddered. The elf hadn't mentioned such dangerous predators roamed her homeland-the creature was unlike anything he'd ever seen. He sniffed. At least it didn't have the stench of the Abyss.

Nothing swooped from the canopy; nothing rose from the forest floor.

He continued on, setting a comfortable pace-not so quick as to miss the trail, nor so slow that his quarry eluded him.

Nor did Gage forget about the monster that had peppered him with sorcerous bolts. As he advanced, a conviction grew that the creature hadn't fled. No, it had merely hidden, perhaps by magic. Perhaps it followed him, waiting for him to grow tired or drop his guard.

Something creaked above him and he rolled to the left as if evading another bolt of lightning. As he pulled out of his roll he drew daggers and glared upward. Nothing but a break in the canopy, through which a scattering of stars gleamed and winked.

His gauntlet chuckled.

He resisted the urge to smash it against a nearby tree. Instead, he sheathed his dagger and curled his hand into a fist, squeezing the foul-breathed mouth as tightly as he could. "Quiet, while I try to find all my blades," he told his gauntlet.

The demonic titter was muffled, but the unholy mirth could not be stilled.