Stardeep

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Stardeep, Underdungeon

Bolts of consumptive fire leaped from the ancient one's immaterial staff. Telarian caught each blast on Nis's length, turning ravening flame to puffs of harmless ash.

More troubling was the Keeper's footing. Telarian's stance was a constant dance upon the biting heads and grasping hands of an imbecilic army of fossil zombies. Nis lent him an agility beyond the limits of mortal flesh, yet still he gasped and trembled on the cusp of failure. Cold calculation, another gift of his dark blade, revealed it was only a matter of time before a fatal blast or stony claw broke his defense. Then he would be pulled down by so many grasping hands his enhanced strength and blade-given healing would fail.

He attempted to close with the bolt-flinging lich, the creature both he and Nis agreed was responsible for the fossil uprising. Again, the undead creature was whisked away on its followers hands, while the elf's passage was thwarted by a frenzy of activity.

Had Telarian stood upon solid ground that wouldn't suck him down at its first opportunity, his own arsenal of prepared spells waiting patiently for release might have made the difference. Waste no time on fantasies, chastened Nis, only on what is achievable.

And so the unnamed lich and Telarian continued their erratic orbit around the throne, one vainly attempting to catch the other. And all the while, his insurance, the Empyrean Knights, died in the undead tide that surged around the central mound. He could hear their yells, their calls to each other, and their death screams.

His opponent suddenly darted its caved-in face away from Telarian. The diviner followed its gaze-and saw a blue flame outlining a sword twin in shape to his own. Angul! Wielded by Kiril, the blade flashed with an energy it had withheld when last Telarian beheld it, when he'd ordered a small troop of Knights to retrieve it.

Its power in Kiril's hands was nothing short of awe inspiring. She didn't attempt to bypass the massed petrified undead. She swept through them, reducing the creatures to so much dust within the vortex of Angul's flashing influence. He knew Nis could not equal what he now witnessed. Could it be, he wondered, that in Kiril's hands, lost love urges the soul fragment to greater heights?

Nis's failure to respond was answer enough.

The lich, too, recognized the greater threat that now approached. It redirected its bedeviling bolts toward Kiril. Telarian was tempted to yell out a warning, but was quelled by Nis: Kill this creature while it is distracted.

Telarian scrambled up onto the throne, and unlike his expectation, wasn't struck with some nameless curse. With a solid foundation underfoot, he was finally able to bring Nis to bear. Even as the lich realized its lapse, Nis's black length fell full upon its head.

The undead's crown of fire flared then failed beneath the stroke. But the fading crown provided Telarian's foe one last moment of salvation from Nis's penetrating blade. The lich countered with its staff, catching the diviner on the shoulder. Pain, quickly damped down by Nis, couldn't hide the smell of cooked meat.

The rending noise of stone being pulverized announced Kiril's arrival at the base of the pyramid of squirming bodies. She abandoned her sweep-and-smash technique in favor of agility. She ascended the active pile almost as nimbly as Telarian. He noted with interest that Angul's gifts to his wielder didn't include dexterity to the same degree that Nis did.

Kiril reached the summit and her eyes flitted across him, then Nis, but she turned her attention fully on the lich. She bellowed, "Suffer not abominations!" Her accompanying strike sheared the lich's staff into so many disintegrating tongues of flame. Even as it raised its fiery cape into great wings, as if to bear itself away, Kiril and Telarian simultaneously struck at it.

Angul stabbed low, into its abdomen, Nis swept high, at its head. The flaming wings collapsed and winked out. The unnamed king of fossils who'd sat alone beneath the violet flame for years uncounted tumbled down the mound, unsupported by its subjects. It struck the hard cobbles at the pile's base and shattered with a sound high and pure.

A wave of stillness was born in that instant, an expanding circle whose circumference quickly raced away in all directions, leaving in its wake hundreds of unmoving, eroded, cracked, broken, and blood-stained statues. Above, the violet flame guttered and winked out.

Here and there across the vast city, lantern light flickered to life as surviving Knights sought to coalesce back into a unified force.

Telarian wondered how many remained to service his greater scheme, but pushed such distractions from his head for the moment. Kiril demanded all his attention and wit as she stared coolly at him, her features highlighted by Angul's blue fire. He yet held Nis, whose length remained night's own domain.

Sheathe me, instructed Nis. As always, Telarian obeyed.

The diviner blinked, and sudden fear clawed at his guts. She'd cut him down! She-

Kiril sheathed Angul in one easy motion, plunging them into darkness. Into that absence of light, Kiril spoke, her tone strangely even. "What news of the Traitor, Keeper of Stardeep?"

Telarian called up a quick spell of radiance and set it to dance on the throne top. In that glow, he lowered himself from the throne to stand on equal, if uneven, footing with the swordswoman.

He replied, "The Traitor strains at its chains in a fashion never foreseen. It has assumed mental domination over my fellow Stardeep Keeper! Things have nearly fallen completely apart in Stardeep's Inner Bastion."

"The compromised Keeper," said Kiril, "that would be Telarian? I've heard his name from the lips of the blood-flecked spy he hired to steal Angul! Telarian, the one who tried to lure me to Stardeep with his promise that.. " She gulped, and sudden moisture welled in Kiril's eyes.

The diviner frowned, swallowed his fear, and said, "You've been partly misled-it is Keeper Delphe, still ensconced in Stardeep, who has fallen wholly into the Traitor's grasp."

Kiril's eyes narrowed as she said, "Which means you are Telarian?"

He raised conciliatory hands. "I am-but forget what you think you know, and listen-"

The woman stepped forward and jabbed him in the chest with a pointing finger, asking, "And what of Nangulis? Was that your lie?"

"Hear me out, and you'll learn the truth."

"Out with it, then!"

He licked his lips. "Delphe, once under the Traitor's control, knew the one implement that could end her new master's escape was Angul. Thus she sought to steal him away from his wielder, and failing that, kill you and take Angul. To further confuse the matter, she used my name to shield her identity should her scheme ever fall apart. As it has!"

"So Nangulis. ."

"Has not returned. I am so sorry," said Telarian. Though he couldn't produce Nangulis, he could offer her the next best thing.

"However, what was once Nangulis has stirred."

She looked back, hope and suspicion battling for control of her features.

"Just as Angul holds one half of Nangulis's fractured soul, Nis holds the remainder!" He drew forth Nis once more, the blade's cool touch returning his confidence threefold and quashing his fear beneath its black weight.

Kiril's eyes grew round. She murmured, "But how is that possible? When we forged Angul, we pulled from Nangulis all purity and zeal, discarding the rest. ."

"Not discarded. Cynosure encapsulated all that remained of Nangulis, and preserved it against future need. A need that materialized when I realized Delphe had fallen into shadow."

"How?"

"I worked in secret, forging the blade beneath Delphe's very nose, until Nis was complete. At the last, she discovered my intent. I'm afraid that with Cynosure under her control, I was forced to flee Stardeep. But even with Stardeep's sentient construct set against me, with Nis in hand, I was able to escape. She'd closed the Causeway after sending out those few Knights she suborned to ravage the countryside. The only place I could flee with the remaining Knights still uncorrupted and loyal to the Cerulean Seal was down, into Stardeep's underdungeons."

Kiril gave a slow nod, her eyes still fixed to Nis's darkling span. She believes, imparted the blade to Telarian.

The diviner continued. "But Delphe's reach has grown long. With the Traitor's help, she roused the relic consciousness entombed here." Telarian made a wide gesture across the chamber. "If you hadn't come when you did, it is possible that I and the last of the Knights would have died, thus ensuring the Traitor's escape."

The swordswoman looked down at Angul, still sheathed at her side, then back up to Nis, and asked, "Can the two halves. . ever be reunited? Can Nangulis live again?"

"It is more than mere possibility. In order to see Delphe destroyed and the Traitor's escape quashed, I believe that we must combine the blades at the edge of the Well-combine the two halves of Nangulis's sundered soul. The combined blade will possess the soul-forged traits of both weapons, and I suspect, possess more power than the sum of its parts."

Kiril smiled through sudden tears. Telarian returned her smile, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Like the Knights he'd already slain, and Delphe, whose death was now assured with Angul wielded against her. Kiril, too, would find herself a corpse, kicking out her last strength on Nis's cruel length. Only such sacrifices could avert the far greater disaster his vision foretold.

He gave a small sigh. Being the unacknowledged savior of Faer?n's mortal races was soul-trying work.