Key of Stars

by Bruce R Cordell

  He squinted. The citadel top was a wide expanse, plus it was difficult to see through the press. “Yeah!” he cried. “How the hell did he get here?”

  “How should I know?” said Yeva. “But he’s obviously trying to reach the crystal gate.”

  “Must think he can do some good there,” said Thoster. “Let’s give him a hand!”

  “Nothing else suggests itself,” Yeva said. “So … very well. Stay near me—I can lay upon us a semblance of belonging.”

  The iron woman raised a hand to her temple. The air shimmered violet around them, then faded.

  “That it?” Thoster asked.

  “A minor mental glamour,” Yeva said. “It won’t stand up to intense scrutiny. Let’s go! But don’t move too quickly.”

  They entered the press. Thoster recognized aboleths, but nothing else. Sure, that thing over there that bayed like a wolf at the moon, well, at the Far Manifold, looked sort of like a cross between a rhinoceros and a monkey with a terrible skin condition, but it wasn’t really either. He saw what could be described as a scarily agile mass of incandescent, translucent slime in which all the organs of a living creature swam about independent of each other. He saw …

  “Oh, Umberlee’s creaking knees,” he said. “That’s a beholder, ain’t it?”

  Yeva turned. Another vibration ran through the metal of her body.

  An armored sphere of living flesh hung in the air along their intended path. The thing possessed a wealth of eyes, most of which blinked from the ends of coiling tentacles. The largest eye protruded directly from the sphere, and did not blink. Beneath that ever-vigilant orb, a cavity lined with teeth gaped open and shut, open and shut, like a fish trying to breath air.

  “Let’s go around,” murmured Yeva. “My glamour’s not up to fooling something like that.”

  “Agreed,” said Thoster.

  They circled around the thing. Thoster was about to declare success when Yeva yelled, “Run!”

  One of the eyestalks flashed a yellow ray that caught Yeva directly in the chest. She screamed as the beam bodily picked her up and threw her back the way they’d come. The sound of her distress quickly fell away, attenuated by distance.

  “Fish piss,” he said, and broke into a sprint.

  The beholder didn’t even have to whirl to keep him in its sights. Three eyestalks tracked him independently, seemed to triangulate, then unleashed lines of color.

  One ray was black and hissed with the promise of ultimate obliteration. He whimpered in relief when it missed. The red line burned fire across his ribs, and he convulsed but continued moving. The last ray was gray, like the color of basalt. He dropped flat on his stomach to avoid it.

  A thing with green skin and a face like a melting cockroach took the beam instead. The monster’s green hue faded to gray, as it became a sculpture of unmoving stone.

  Thoster scrambled back to his feet. No more running—the beholder would just cut him down from behind if he did so. The pain from the ray of fire faded—his new power of regeneration was on the job.

  Which reminded him of his heritage. Not that he should have needed a reminder, standing here amid the throng of gruesomes. Most of him wanted to retch at the sight. But something deeper within Thoster felt … anger. As if everything around him was a personal affront! More than that. He felt a desire to order these lesser creatures as he willed.

  What in the endless Abyss was that about? he wondered.

  The beholder drifted, earthmote-like, toward him. Its central eye flashed. Thoster leaped, but the yellowish ray struck him. Tiny stars danced in his vision; it felt like someone had knocked him across the head with a club.

  Still dazed, he stumbled when he tried to avoid the next colorless ray, and it caught him squarely.

  His muscles seized up. He wasn’t turning to stone, thank Umberlee’s merciful wiles. But he couldn’t move.

  The beholder drifted closer, and its mouth stretched wider. A grin?

  He strained with all his might to break free of the magical constriction. He couldn’t tell if it was physical or mental—not that it mattered.

  The beholder spoke, and Thoster was startled he could understand. “Mortals here to see the beginning of the new Age? No. Not worthy. I would like it better if you were dust.”

  His anger swelled; this was how he would die? Struck down as he stood motionless before a gloating monster? Thoster redoubled his effort to move. Something inside him nearly emerged. Something huge. Something that was fury incarnate. Something that wouldn’t be restrained by the beholder’s enchantment!

  The amulet around his neck burned him with a fire hotter than the aberration’s scorching ray. The trinket grew as red as a coal as it kept that which lurked in Thoster’s blood caged.

  “What is that?” said the beholder. “A pretty for me?” It bobbed closer.

  A yellow ray flashed from an eyestalk and lanced Seren’s amulet. The amulet jerked toward the aberration, parting the leather thong with a painful jerk.

  It was like discovering a secret level in a dwelling he’d lived in his entire life. Beyond the façade, a watery vista beckoned—a font of strength that ran deep inside him, and always had.

  Thoster turned inward and groped for the headwaters of his power to influence kuo-toa, to regenerate, and to recognize aspects of Far Realm influences. He descended to where blood and bone met his heritage.

  The flashing light of the Far Manifold behind Thoster cast a shadow of his deeper self as it slid over his merely human-sized shade. The two shapes remained separate, hovering in between possibility and actuality.

  He found the lever between what he’d always been, and what lay in his blood. He pulled it.

  Green and white brightness exploded inside his stomach, throat, and head. The violence of its detonation was excruciating. Wild, raw, and uncontrollable, it tumbled his consciousness beyond the confines of his flesh for a timeless instant.

  He saw his skin, bones, sinews, blood vessels, and beating heart frozen in the light of his scrutiny. Beneath that, he glimpsed another shape, rousing.

  Thoster grabbed the shape, and willed it to manifest completely.

  He screamed as the pain of the detonating brightness redoubled. Every particle of his existence momentarily disassociated from its neighbor before falling into a new configuration. There was a chance he’d come out of it as just so much red and gray sludge.

  Thoster blinked as the pain fell away.

  Only a single shadow remained—a hulking entity. At his feet lay a scatter of his clothing: his boots, his sword, his coat, and his hat.

  Comprehension dawned on him.

  “I am born, at last,” he said. His voice was deeper than it had been. Rougher.

  The beholder remained where it had last attacked him. It looked smaller than it had before. Its many eyes were all wider too. It said, “A demon hiding in human flesh?”

  “A demon scion, you unlucky bastard,” replied Thoster. “I’m a descendent of Dagon!”

  “Dagon—some ancient, watery demon lord?” the beholder said. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is why you’ve come. Are you here to proclaim yourself a servitor of the Sovereignty, and that which is about to unmake the worlds?”

  Several aberrations near Thoster turned to regard him. None moved closer, and a couple slid or stepped back a pace. He wondered what he must look like. But raw anger at the beholder’s words made his fingers tingle.

  “Your Sovereignty has usurped what ain’t yours to take,” Thoster said. “Kuo-toa were never meant for aboleths and their ilk; Dagon’s claim is older, and deeper. I ain’t here to serve the Sovereignty. I’m here to show you bastard aberrations what for!”

  Thoster lurched forward. He was more top-heavy than he had realized, but he managed to leap as he tripped forward. He reached out to grab the beholder. His arms were great masses of scaled green muscle, corded to an almost absurd extent. His hands were huge, and each finger ended in a massive green claw.

  The behol
der loosed a salvo of multicolored rays. A beam of fire slid across Thoster’s stomach, raising a painful welt. A purplish ray shone in his eyes, but he shook off the confusion. A line of light the color of sand tugged at his consciousness. But he was too angry to sleep.

  He crashed into the beholder and bore it to the ground. The beholder bit him. Ichor the color of the sea dripped from the wound.

  But he punched his clawed hands deep into the beholder’s sides and squeezed, grabbing shreds of organ and muscle beneath.

  The beholder uttered an oddly plaintive wail that grew in volume.

  Several more eye rays played up and down Thoster’s scaled length, some cutting terrible fissures in his flesh, others trying their best to fry his mind.

  But Thoster would be damned if he was going to release the mewling servitor just because of a little pain.

  Uttering a roar so loud he surprised even himself, Thoster exerted the entirety of his strength and yanked.

  Everything grew quiet for a moment. Thoster stood and tossed away two limp fragments of beholder.

  Thoster looked around. He’d gathered an audience. All were scary, nightmare-inducing monsters. But he was taller than nearly all of them. And, by the sight of his own scaled arms, legs, and torso, he wasn’t too far from being a nightmare-inducing monster himself. He wondered what his face looked like. One thing was certain: he was stronger than before, tougher. And descended from royalty.

  Curiosity about his new likeness would have to wait; the aberrant horde drew forward. They knew he didn’t belong here.

  He shouted, his fury reborn in an instant. Most of the anger was the power of Dagon in his blood. But some of it was his own wrath at what the creatures represented, and what they wanted to do to Faerûn.

  But they were all in his way, preventing him from reaching the eladrin noble, Malyanna, the author of the world’s imminent misfortune.

  Thoster decided it was she whom he would make pay. It would be even easier to pull an eladrin in two than a beholder. But, first things first. He scooped up his clothing, sword, and hat, and stuffed them into a handy fold of skin running down his torso. Those might be useful later!

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

  Citadel of the Outer Void

  Storm light ripped flickering lines across Taal’s eyelids. Agony clogged his throat, ran like magma in his veins, and crouched on his back like a red-hot anvil, holding him face-down against a surface that rubbed at his skin like sandpaper. All around him, shrieks like a chorus of fervent devils pierced his ears.

  He was dead. His soul had been dropped into the Nine Hells for an eternity of torture.

  Except … that couldn’t be.

  Anything beyond the discontinuity, including the Citadel of the Outer Void, lay outside the dominion of the gods. Even the disposition of immortal souls! Instead of being taken up by Kelemvor, spirits of the slain would simply fall and gutter out like dying embers.

  He couldn’t be a disembodied soul feeling the first lashes of eternity’s punishment; the fact he was having these thoughts at all meant … he was still alive.

  Why? Taal wondered.

  He’d openly defied his oath. He’d aided an enemy of Malyanna, then instructed that same enemy to kill her.

  The memory spiked fresh lava across his skin, and he cried out.

  And still he didn’t die, though the pain was so extreme he wished he could expire to escape its viselike jaws.

  If the oath didn’t have the clout to kill him, there at the Citadel of the Outer Void where his mistress’s power was arguably stronger than anywhere else, had it ever had the power to slay him?

  It didn’t seem likely.

  The disconnect reminded him of something. Something that hadn’t completely hung together, though he’d accepted it at the time. When they’d arrived at the ziggurat’s base, Malyanna had crowed how she’d known all along about his secret misgivings in serving her. According to the eladrin, those misgivings were sufficient to allow him to deactivate the defenses of the Citadel; they showed he wasn’t an aberration or touched by aberrations, because he served his oath first.

  But Malyanna had sworn him to an oath that would kill him if he swayed from serving her. And she was a priestess of the Sovereignty! Wasn’t that the definition of being “touched” by an aberration? Whether forced into service or choosing to take up service willingly, he was a servitor; he had no choice but death or do the will of Malyanna, thanks to the magic she’d imparted when he had sworn the oath.

  Yet he wasn’t dead, and he had been able to bypass the Citadel’s defenses.

  Which meant what? he wondered.

  It meant, he realized, that despite what she’d originally claimed and repeated over the years, Malyanna hadn’t woven a ritual of lethal enforcement into the oath he’d sworn to her.

  The only thing that powered the oath, he realized, was the strength of his own belief that once one’s word was given, that word should never be foresworn, no matter what.

  He remembered Raidon asking him how that made any sense at all, given that the world was a changeable place. Situations change, people change, and new information comes to light. He’d always believed that being unwavering in one’s beliefs and in one’s duties and obligations was a sign of true strength—the sign of someone above the common, changeable rabble, who could flip-flop on an issue with hardly a care.

  As he lay there puzzling it out, it came to Taal that sticking to one’s stated intention—or oath—regardless of how the situation changed, was more reasonably the sign of a simpleton.

  The monk from Faerûn was right.

  For the very first time since he’d taken his oath, Taal felt shame.

  Always before he’d felt at least some pride at his ability to keep his word no matter what the provocation. He recognized, finally, at the end of everything, that it had been fool’s pride all along.

  If he could do it over again, he’d break that oath the moment he realized Malyanna was playing him false.

  The searing pain lifted away from him like a kite on the wind.

  Taal rubbed his eyes. He rose.

  The abominations who’d answered the call of his mistress surged all around him. Their combined utterances were a grinding, chattering, teeth-gritting rasp. Many moved to contest the progress of a enormous humanoid with green scales, despite it seeming nearly as much of an aberration as those it contested.

  He witnessed an enormous white griffon slash terrible wounds in the flanks of the shadow hound Tamur. The hound fastened its teeth on the griffon’s neck.

  Reflected in a sheen of oily slime on the ground, he saw a woman in golden armor gutting an aboleth, then a gelatinous insect, and then a four-headed leech in quick succession. He marveled, because he couldn’t see her except in the reflection. Then she was gone again.

  A figure made of iron, much dented and scraped, topped the stairs. It commenced projecting bolts of psychic energy into the backs of the aberrations that sought to swarm the green scaled giant.

  Arrowing away from Taal and toward the base of the Far Manifold was Raidon. Raidon moved like a shark through a wave-tossed sea, with his sword as his dorsal fin, blazing like a cerulean beacon. Aberrations either scrambled out of his way or died on the blade.

  And there was the Lady of Winter’s Peace—she who’d bound him in his own misplaced sense of duty for centuries, at least according to how much time had passed in Faerûn. She was locked in mortal combat with a leviathan bat!

  “Time for you to die, Malyanna,” Taal said. “And, by my hand, I … hope!” He grinned, because he’d almost said, “I swear!”

  Taal ran after Raidon. The monk from Faerûn had a large head start, and would reach Malyanna before Taal could. But not by much.

  Raidon swept the Blade Cerulean through the flesh of something with too many arms drenched in red slime. It fell directly in his path, its limbs suddenly a frenzy of whipping branches in its death throes. He leaped over
it. A surge of strength from Angul as he jumped lent his feet wings. He whisked over the heads, eyes, and waving tentacles of half a dozen creatures before they realized he was near.

  The monk came down in a clear space, rolled twice, and was on his feet running forward again in one continuous movement.

  A gangling horselike creature without a face tried to scramble out of Raidon’s way, so he ignored it, until one of its dozens of flailing hooves caught him in the shoulder like the blow of a mace. The force spun him around, and Angul lopped off the offending leg without his conscious direction. A heartbeat later, the pain of the strike was also smoothed away by the Blade Cerulean, and Raidon rushed on.

  He reached the raised dais of pitted metal directly in front of the Far Manifold. The crystal’s overpowering size, the horrific images that squirmed behind it, and the crack that marred its face, promising apocalypse, finally gave the monk pause.

  Malyanna stood before the gate as if it were merely a backdrop prepared for her presence. The woman’s eyes were flickering points of starfire. She wielded the Dreamheart in one hand like a mage’s implement. From it emerged erratic bolts of pale energy. The bolts struck a massive bat lying twitching on the ground at her feet.

  Was it Japheth? Raidon wondered. No, it was Neifion, fighting Malyanna!

  The giant bat shuddered. Neifion screeched out an invocation, and his bat wings burned with shimmering emerald light. Neifion leaped at the eladrin noble, and attempted to encircle Malyanna in his ensorcelled wings.

  Raidon jumped onto the dais. Between them, he and the Lord of Bats—

  A shadow sunk teeth into his neck, and a black paw raked his side, scraping away a swathe of skin. He’d forgotten about the Shadowfell mastiff.

  The shadow hound shook its head, its hide rippling night, as it tried to snap Raidon’s neck.

  The monk twisted, and drove his elbow into the side of the dog’s face with all of his weight.

  Tamur howled, and its jaws relaxed. The monk spun away. Warm, sticky blood poured down his arm and torso, and a wave of dizziness made the monk falter. Where blood ran across his spellscar, it flashed into coppery steam.