The thief had taken a lance strike to his right shoulder. His gauntleted hand hung limply, and the hellmouth was silent. Blood flowed down the front of his creased leather armor. His eyes were full of amazement. He mumbled, "I think he landed a good one. ."
Kiril put off questioning the bleeding thief about the "trap." She said, "They'll flank us, but we can hold them. I'll take your right."
Gage nodded and drew a long knife into his left hand.
She unsheathed her weapon. A spark of well-being stole through her, but Angul failed to burst into blue flame. What?
"Angul, aid me!" she ordered.
These Knights Empyrean are aligned with the cause of righteousness, the sword imparted into her mind, and I will not destroy them.
"You bloodstained monster, help me or these brainwashed Knights will slay your wielder!" The sword remained adamantly unlit. Nor did it attempt to overpower her sense of reality…
The Knights most affected by the hellscream were shaking off its effects. They began to separate, intent on spreading out around Kiril and Gage.
Before they could implement their strategy, a pebble of flame skipped into the midst of the Empyrean Knights and exploded, briefly silhouetting them against a field of boiling red light before enveloping elf and horse alike.
Someone was throwing fireballs! And that someone had attacked the Knights, not herself and Gage, thank the Sign.
Kiril scanned the perimeter of the clearing. She spied two figures. One figure … a human male, she saw, was gesticulating as if preparing to cast another spell.
Gage cried a new warning. She whirled to see the same Knight who'd skewered the thief retracing his path, this time his lance aimed at her.
She dropped into a crouch as she raised Angul in a vertical line, pointed at the earth. Her blade clashed along the lance shaft, deflecting the tip sideways then into the ground. The Knight held his seat despite the terrible jolt, but his lance remained behind. The impact nearly caused her to drop Angul; the blade was staying true to its promise, and provided her not one drop of supernatural strength, speed, or solidity of frame. At least it wasn't actively inhibiting her from using it as an ordinary weapon.
Gage flipped his grip from hilt to blade in a blink, then threw the knife after the Knight. His aim was off, and his target cantered forward, undeterred.
"What's wrong with your sword?" he asked, his voice weak. Blood continued to run from his wound.
Before she could answer, two of the Knights upslope launched their lances as if they were javelins. Gage stepped left and avoided the one aimed at him. Kiril stumbled, and the sharp pole plunged into her right leg, driving right through flesh and into the ground. An unfamiliar tug pulled through her entire body and she gasped in surprise.
One of the newcomers broke from the encircling eaves, moving from a standstill to full sprint instantly. The fire thrower remained partially hidden, his hands aflame with another spell.
The sprinter was a human-no, a half-elf in a black, tattered silk jacket. A slender sword was strapped to his back. He charged the closest Knight. A full ten feet before reaching his target, who failed to realize he was under attack, the newcomer leaped into the air, spinning as he did so, and delivered a flying kick straight into the mounted Knight's chest. As the newcomer landed gracefully, the Knight tumbled from his saddle and smashed limply to the ground.
Another Knight spurred his mount forward and slashed at the stranger, missing completely-the half-elf rolled beneath the mount's prancing legs, came up on the other side, and jerked the man off his horse. The unseated Knight crashed to the ground, and the half-elf followed him down with a brutal elbow to his windpipe.
With her left hand, Kiril pulled the lance from the earth, freeing her right leg. The shaft of wood still protruded from her flesh, and she could barely walk. Even with the unexpected aid from the strangers, she wondered if she would survive the day. She advanced, stiff-legged, down the slope, Angul held high but still nothing more than dumb metal in her weakening grasp.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Stardeep, Throat
Delphe stood on the Well's lip. Unsettling reflections played on her face. A stagnant wind blew up the shaft, tousling her hair and cooling her skin. A wind where none should be.
Something stirred below.
"Cynosure, initiate primary containment!" She glanced up at the idol of stone, iron, and crystal. The figure stared unblinking into the containment fires, as always. But from it, no answer came.
"Cynosure?" Delphe's stomach fell away as sweat broke on her brow. The wind up the shaft turned colder.
A crash, as of crystals breaking, or perhaps reality tearing, echoed through the Well. If Cynosure were somehow disabled, a full-scale containment breach could be moments away!
Delphe shrugged away the panic prowling her mind. Time to work. She extended her arms over her head, calling on her connection to the Cerulean Sign. An arc of silvery blue fire spanned her reach, then dropped into the Well, broadening as it fell toward the interface. She watched her magical quelling fold into the sun-bright chaos of the containment layer.
A green-gray burst of energy bounced back, flaring brightly before resolving into a ropy loop of phantom matter. The object gyrated and spun, almost like something alive, as gravity grabbed and pulled it back toward the scalding boundary layer.
One end of the spiraling phantasm flailed wildly and managed to touch the smooth side of the Well, and stuck.
Delphe gasped. Whatever had just emerged, or been projected from the Well, wasn't mere illusion, as sometimes happened when the Traitor dreamed. Whatever its origin, this sluglike entity had to be sterilized. Immediately.
Like an obscenely thick snail, the grayish thing began to inch up the concave wall of the Well. The light of the boundary layer failed to fully illuminate its sickly gray flesh.
"Cynosure, burn it!"
Nothing. The mind of Stardeep was focused elsewhere, if not worse. "Stars guide me," she murmured. Cynosure's wardenship had failed again.
The thing on the wall crept higher.
Delphe channeled the Sign. Blue fire warmed her chest, then burst out upon her arms, hair, and palms. Her eyes blazed, and she saw deeper into the slowly rising aberration.
Beneath its gray skin, the creature continued to modify itself, trading possibility for strength, raw energy for tissue, and dreadful desire for fell ability. It pulled mass from tiny particles in the air, and magical energy from the very spells meant to contain that which lay below it. It was fortifying itself, empowering itself. .
The longer it was allowed to persist, the more difficult it would ultimately become to defeat! She couldn't wait for Cynosure to wake from its somnolence.
Delphe pointed down, recalled the proper key phrase, and spoke the awkward syllables. The dozens of glass slabs protruding from the Well's concave wall, spiraling down the sides, swiftly and silently retracted. The tentacle-like head of the creature, which had been reaching for the bottommost step, now found only a slippery, smooth surface, like the rest of the Well. At least Stardeep's manual functions remained accessible, despite Cynosure's absence. If that obscenity wanted to escape, it would have to inch the entire way.
Which should provide her with more than enough time to incinerate it, Cynosure be damned. Only one way to test her hypothesis.
Ragged words burned her throat. Arcs of energy trailed her gesturing hands as she wove an arcane discontinuity, a discontinuity shaped like a scythe. It burned with cerulean fire. The spellscythe neared the height of her magical arsenal, and cost her a large part of her strength.
For its part, the slender monstrosity continued to heave its way up the vertical shaft. As it moved, it shed streamers of gray flesh, like dead scales, revealing a larger, appalling bulk beneath. Silvered now, and sleek rather than stringy, the entity bounded an entire body length upward with a single leap, slapping onto the wall only fifteen or so paces beneath Delphe's protruding toes.
As it gathered itself
for another, stronger jump, Delphe hurtled the spellscythe down the Well shaft, directing her weapon's motions with an outstretched hand. The aberration scuttled sideways. The spellscythe just missed the fleeing creature, and smashed instead into the Well's glossy side. Oh, shards!
An explosion hurtled up the Well's shaft, expanding as it breached the lip. The abjurer was battered, but kept her feet. Her ears rang in the aftermath, but through the cacophony she heard snuffling and growling down in the well. A terrible, hacking cough, chillingly similar to how a man might clear his throat of phlegm. Something was straining to speak, perhaps, or more likely seeking to sing forth dark sorceries all its own.
She rushed back to the edge, gazed down through the explosion's residual haze, and saw the remnants of her spell-scythe unraveling. Near it was the entity, rent and smoking from the near miss, but already scabbing over with nacreous flesh even tougher and more spell-resistant than that which had burned off.
One of the rents remained, a gap which protruded greenish fangs even as Delphe watched. The flesh around the opening flexed, elongating to become an obscene organ. From this orifice echoed the coughing. Soon it would be capable of uttering terrible words of power, if it could evolve the capacity before Delphe eliminated it.
The abjurer desperately clutched at the threads of the dissipating spellscythe. Quicker to salvage its energy than attempt to summon a new tool.
Words floated up from below, stinging the elf's flesh with their magical import. "I. . call. . call upon the Final Pact of-"
Delphe jerked her spellscythe to the left, despite her lack of complete control. It sliced into the creature's roiling skin. Where it touched, the entity hazed away like mist, and its words collapsed into a basso scream of transcendent pain.
Three pseudopods burst from the creature's sides, each tipped with an ebony spike. Two of these scrabbled for a better hold on the Well's side. From the last emerged a cloudy green beam aimed at the spellscythe. Where it struck, portions of the abjurer's weapon boiled and failed, as if touched by the putridity of rot.
Delphe palmed her amulet with her right hand. Lifting it high, she chanted hoary words older than some races that now walked Toril. Her amulet took on the hue of the limitless sky. In its glow, the spellscythe was fortified.
The creature was only moments from cresting the lip.
"Delphe! Delphe!" Cynosure's voice, strident with alarm, blared suddenly from overhead. "Category two breach in effect, on the cusp of category one!"
The idol, attached horizontally to the ceiling, took on the hue of Delphe's amulet. The idol's eyes snapped open, revealing a vista of shining sapphire. As if windows to a world apart where storms raged, a blast of howling wind poured forth.
A spindle of madly spinning air extended, its tip reaching down the shaft, growling with pure, elemental fury. A heartbeat later, the lengthening funnel stabbed the creature, even as Delphe's spellscythe cut at it with waning strength. Cynosure's vortex caught the aberration, snapping its tendrils away from the walls. It screamed, a booming moan that caused ice to crystallize from the air throughout the Inner Bastion. Then it plummeted, spinning and flailing, back through the boundary layer.
The ensuing splash of boundary fire rose high in the shaft, burning so fiercely Delphe's eyelashes were singed. She didn't care. She continued to gaze down the Well, anxiety clutching at her lungs. When the disturbance subsided, she saw that the boundary layer was still intact. Thank the Cerulean Sign.
The abjurer studied the Well's lowest reaches a while longer, suspiciously eyeing each new swirl and pattern.
"Delphe!" said Cynosure again. "We are under attack!"
The abjurer balled her fists, considering whether to utter the words that would shut down the sentient artifact immediately, or to query it first. While its aid had been ultimately necessary to defeat that which had leaped from containment, its inability to stay connected with real time events had become a liability she could no longer overlook.
But years of history required she give the construct fair warning.
"Cynosure," she began, "the attack is quelled. Recall to mind the previous instance? You and I thwarted the Traitor's-"
"Yes, yes. Do you think my mind broken?" interrupted Cynosure. "I meant what I said-at this very moment, the Empyrean Knights have ridden forth to repel an invasion occurring at the end of the open Causeway!"
Surprise made Delphe catch her breath. "Show me!" she commanded.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Stardeep, The Causeway
Telarian watched the fight unfold at the Causeway's end. He stood just within Stardeep's open Causeway Gate. Nearby loitered Commander Brathtar, also watching, though the Commander frowned and scowled by turns. A small cavalry unit of mounted Empyrean Knights waited in the gate tunnel, ready to ride out and again defend Stardeep from what they believed to be another foray of violent wood elf invaders.
Anxiety tightened Telarian's throat. Something was wrong. No, that word wasn't weighted with enough soul-churning dread; something was terribly, horrendously off beam. He'd foreseen the addled, alcoholic Keeper would give up her sword to avoid a fight. Yes, he'd prophesied a struggle to convince her what must be done, but in her need to see Nangulis reborn, she gave up her one remaining connection to Stardeep: Angul. He'd seen the future!
But reality unreeled right in front of him far differently. Knights lay dead, and a former Keeper was imperiled by orders he'd given those same Knights. How had it come to this? How could his divination be so much in error?
Just yesterday, a wood, wild, and half-elf force of considerable size approached Chabala Mere and attempted to lay siege. Three Knights had perished in that attack, plus a host of wood elves that hadn't understood what they assailed. A few of their bodies lay in scattered graves, while the bulk of that defeated force lay at the bottom, if it had a bottom, of Chabala Mere.
He hadn't foreseen that, either.
Events were tumbling out of control, and worse, beyond his sphere of foreknowledge.
The thought assailed him, not for the first time: if his ability to see the future was careening wildly away from reality, should he not entertain the possibility his most terrifying vision of the far future, the rise of the city Xxiphu, might also-
Divination is muddied if one relies on those hiding betrayer's thoughts, intruded the simple, irrefutable voice of Nis.
Betrayers? Which were they? The two survivors of the devastated wood elf force who'd reappeared to save the day? A crazed half-elf monk and a wounded human sorcerer. They should be dead, like the other elf attackers-hadn't he instructed Brathtar to sweep the area beyond the Causeway and eliminate all signs of conflict? Yes. Brathtar. .
Perhaps the Commander was the betrayer Nis described. The appearance of these last two, unlooked for, was just one more failure the Commander had laid at Telarian's feet. Now that he thought on it, it was Brathtar's failure to completely purge the tribe of wood elves that had summoned the mixed-blood elves of the Yuirwood to Stardeep's very porch.
Was it possible loyal Brathtar worked against him? The fight beyond the Causeway was undeniable proof of something, after all. Perhaps Brathtar truly was to blame. Because of the Commander's list of failures, Kiril's return hadn't followed the script his vision had foretold. She'd fought instead of sued for peace against those who once served under her, the Empyrean Knights.
He tightened his grip on his belt, a mere inch from Nis's beckoning pommel. Strange. He'd failed to don his protective gloves today. Such lapses were not like him. The first chance he got, he'd retrieve them.
Despite everything, his new turn of thoughts brought clarity. He was emboldened, heartened even, now that he had pieced together Brathtar's lies, failures, and misrepresentations. He'd found the flaw at the center of all his plans: Brathtar.
If only the Keeper, returning to the fold after these long years of her absence, would surrender and enter Stardeep peaceably…
As he watched Kiril fight, bloodied but unbowed, a f
ury growing in her eyes-if not her weapon-he recognized the possibility of parley with the swordswoman was past. If she survived the initial foray, she'd never give up Angul to him.
She must, Nis insisted. Telarian nodded, knowing his dark blade spoke truth.
He raised his right hand and waved the cavalry unit forward, down the Causeway. "Attack!"
The Knights failed to advance.
He looked behind him, "I ordered an attack!"
"Keeper Telarian," said Brathtar, "I recognize that woman, and believe she is who she claims: Kiril Duskmourn, once a Keeper here, a Keeper of the Outer Bastion. She held the same position you now hold. She successfully defeated the Traitor's attempt to escape. Surely you don't mean for us to slay her?"
"What I mean. ." said Telarian, then he paused. He paused because his ungloved hand had just unconsciously slipped along his belt loop and onto Nis's protruding hilt.
It occurred to him in that instant that convincing Brathtar to return to obedience was not something he had the time or patience to accomplish. Nor could he trust Brathtar not to return to his questioning ways with the very next order Telarian issued. Questioning the Keeper in front of the Knights he commanded-Brathtar knew such a breach of protocol could only seed discipline problems. Thus, he obviously questioned Telarian for just that purpose. A demonstration was required.
Telarian swiveled his head to regard the Commander. With an air that seemed like lazy curiosity to the onlooking Knights, he pulled Nis from his sheath and plunged it into Brathtar's stomach, burying the blade to the hilt.
"Keeper! What. ." were Brathtar's last words. The slumping body of the Commander of the Empyrean Knights slid off Nis's bleak, life-ending edge and clattered to the stone.
Telarian turned to face the mounted Knights who yet queued up behind the gate, Nis free of its scabbard and idly clutched in his left hand. The blade seemed to pull the very light from the air, creating a zone of shadowless gloom, dim at the edges, but blackening to utter night around the sword blade.
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