Stardeep d-3 Read online

  "I've managed the surge, Cynosure," she said. Was the construct seeing something new, or was its attention somehow delayed? Had it just now noticed the breach attempt she'd had to damp out? She glanced down. Yes, the instability was absent. The boundary layer was again as placid as she had ever seen it.

  "But what about you, Cynosure? Why didn't you respond when I called? More importantly, why didn't you notice the disequilibrium before it grew into a problem?"

  If the warden construct upon which all of Stardeep relied was becoming erratic. . she didn't want to imagine it. The construct was too intimately wound through the structure, the fail-safes, and the Well itself. She waited, hoping for an answer she could believe.

  After a pause, it replied. "Delphe, please accept my most heartfelt apologies. You were correct. The prominences you observed earlier were not merely an unusual mixture of incompatible protective wards. The light heralded an escape attempt. The Traitor does not sleep."

  Dread blossomed in her stomach. What evil must live in the Traitor's heart, what power, that even a thousand years after his internment he still plotted novel escape tactics? Tactics so devious they were able to surprise captors well-schooled in the art of safekeeping?

  If only he could be killed instead of kept. But with all his other options and original grandiose plans closed to him, death was exactly what the Traitor most desired. His personal martyrdom, he believed, would propel his spirit into the depths of Faer?n. His essence would become a necromantic signal burrowing through the rock of ages until it discovered an ancient cyst-a cyst where aboleths of the most ancient lineage slept away the eras in a city sealed outside time. They waited only for the proper signal to once more attempt to establish a realm of madness across all Faer?n as they had tried in the dawn era.

  "I did not initially answer," explained Cynosure, "because I engaged the layer moments before you noticed the cascade. My counter-attack required the concentration of my entire sensorium-I could not reply verbally. I am happy to report that below the boundary layer, I deployed a protective enchantment that dazed the Traitor and concluded his bid for freedom."

  "Thank the stars! When you didn't answer I wondered …"

  "Again, I ask your pardon. But take heart-the ruse just attempted by the Traitor is now known to me. I have journaled the elements of this strategy and will recognize its tell-tales going forward."

  "You had the situation in hand, then?"

  "Yes, but your response was also required. Your ward kept the Traitor's attention the vital few moments necessary for me to finish my abjurative task."

  Delphe chose to believe the construct.

  After all, Cynosure was old. Who wouldn't expect a few hiccups after a few thousand years of constant awareness?

  But, on second thought. . hiccups in the mind of the warden idol could lead to disaster.

  She probed further. "Cynosure, you did finally reply to my query-after the threat was past. Your response appeared out of sync with events."

  The voice paused a heartbeat, then, "True. You noticed a side effect of my total concentration. You know that my 'mind,' such as it is, is widely distributed around Stardeep. The concentration of all my faculties in the Well led to some disarray in the weave that holds 'me' together. But I assure you my consciousness is functioning at peak performance."

  "You would tell me if you noticed a change in yourself? I mean, you would warn me if you suspected your ability to watch over the dungeon and the Well were in any way compromised, correct?"

  "You would be first to know if any of those parameters were even close to being met. They are not. Do not worry yourself over this, Delphe."

  Delphe frowned, looking at her amulet.

  The field around the tree remained coal black. The blue faded whenever the Traitor stirred, but she had quelled his latest activity.

  Why, then, did it remain dark?

  CHAPTER TWO

  Stardeep, Epoch Chamber

  Telarian saw what protruded from the thunderhead's belly. It was not alive-not quite. A glyph-scribed obelisk wrapped in eternal storm soared above the world. A writhing frieze was carved on the age-worn exterior depicting thousands of interconnected pictures. The inscriptions constantly shifted and changed, as if unseen carvers swarmed across the stone face, engraving atrocities to the beat of a mad drummer. The full meaning of the evolving image invoked a concept too ghastly for a mortal mind to comprehend and remain sane. Telarian jerked his gaze away, but felt understanding bridge the gap anyway.

  Slime-crusted creatures crept within the obelisk's hollow interior. The vast object was inhabited, a primeval city regurgitated into the world that had forgotten its existence.

  A squalid miasma altered reality in its vicinity, unfettering vast creatures of the deeps, giving them mastery of the sky as they before hunted the sunless seas. Tentacles slithered and crawled in cold rookeries encrusting the vast object's sheer sides.

  But these were mere servitors, children compared to the sinful, gelatinous carapaces of those creatures within. Their minds churned with philosophies inimical to all beasts not part of their ancient Sovereignty. They waited for the call of mortal priests who perverted their souls and hollowed their minds to serve abominations.

  Roused from the drowned depths, the fabled city was fable no more.

  Telarian screamed and opened his eyes.

  He lay on the floor in the center of a divinatory circle. The circle's periphery was decorated with skulls, hourglasses, butterfly wings, and unidentifiable sigils. A twelve-pointed star was inscribed inside the curved pattern. Smudgy lines of burning incense rose from each of the twelve corners. .

  . . which meant the circle hadn't been broken. Telarian wished he could sigh in relief; instead, he wanted to scream again. If the pattern had been breached, he might have been able to convince himself he'd experienced a false foretelling. But his view into the far future, as chancy and unreliable as such arts were, remained accurate, unchanging, and too awful for Telarian to accept. The same scene had blistered his mind each time he looked so far forward.

  He rolled to his stomach and pushed himself to his feet. Muscles in his legs shook from having clenched too long without ease. The scabbard of his new blade knocked awkwardly against his thigh. He wasn't used to carrying such a thing. But desperate times were the mother of desperate strategies.

  Telarian walked the circle's exterior and carefully pinched off each burning stick of incense. With each glowing ember doused, he spoke a mental syllable designed to calm the mind and moor the spirit. When it came to the art of divination, ritual was important. Not so much for its own sake, but as a way to condition the mind against the rigors of peeling away the present to reveal the future. Most diviners could see heartbeats or moments ahead with relatively little effort, but days and years. . few could match Telarian's skill. He'd pushed the art forward by centuries during his time in Stardeep. But he wasn't vain about his accomplishments.

  As a Keeper of the Cerulean Sign in the heart of the dungeon constructed to hold the Traitor, unmatched resources were available to Telarian for his research. He had tapped those resources, especially the singularly potent construct Cynosure. His interactions with Delphe, his co-Keeper, were few and far between. Her duties monitoring the Well were substantial, and thus her relative absence granted Telarian free reign in the Outer Bastion. Not that she had any direct authority over him, nor could he command her. Still, best to keep Delphe mollified. Delphe's problem was she didn't quite know what to make of his ability for prophecy, and thus often failed to appreciate the personal costs true visions of the future demanded. In the end, when he labored to pierce the veil of the far future, he kindly refrained from telling her, and she did not complain.

  Of course, his lapse in telling Delphe of his construction of the Epoch Chamber, the chamber wherein he stood at that moment, might one day make her doubt him. Nor would she look kindly upon him should she discover that he often directed Cynosure to lie about his location. It was a ris
k he was willing to take.

  The Epoch Chamber was smoothly spherical. Its lower portion sloshed with mystical fluid he'd distilled from years of dream-wandering. A disk, scribed with a twelve-pointed star, floated immovably on the surface of the fluid, and when Telarian reclined in its center, his divinatory ability was enhanced by orders of magnitude. He'd predicted fires, earthquakes, the deaths of kings, and the initiation of wars years prior to their occurrences. He'd never been wrong.

  Was there anything he couldn't foresee?

  Perhaps, but he cared to preview only a single event. He obsessed over it, and each time the vision thundered through his mind's eye, his despair grew.

  Despair wasn't an emotion a Keeper could afford, so he converted melancholy to a desperate plan. He disavowed the future he saw. He would prevent it from occurring. If he did less, could he honestly claim to be a guardian of the Cerulean Sign?

  And so, his arrangements proceeded-daring, appalling arrangements that, if successful, might prevent the horrid soaring city of his vision from ascending.

  The city he had seen in the thundercloud was Xxiphu, and it was inhabited by aberrations of the ancient world, creatures known as aboleths that were old when the sun was yet young. While aboleth splinter populations persisted in the world, Xxiphu was the seat of the Abolethic Sovereignty, possessed of a malignancy inconceivable. If it rose from Faer?n's core, shorn of its supposed dependency on the depths.. could an age of terror and slavery be far behind?

  CHAPTER THREE

  City of Laothkund, Shadow Tongue Lair

  A man in soot-blackened clothes balanced on a ledge three stories above the winter-chilled street. A gaggle of sentries on its way to Sal's Tavern for warm buttered rum passed beneath him. The lamplight from their shuttered lanterns receded, once again plunging the shivering seaside district into night's full embrace. He loosed his held breath, wending steam into the icy air.

  The man faced the wall, the pitch-soaked toes of his boots gripping the frigid mortar hardly at all. As if in supplication, he rested the side of his face against the tomb-cold stone, his arms splayed to either side. He hadn't counted on the freakishly chill weather. Gusts off the Sea of Fallen Stars usually kept the city of Laothkund bearably temperate, even in midwinter. Not tonight.

  He eased his left foot forward. His supple, calf-hide boots were ordinarily like extensions of his feet. But he was so cold he couldn't feel his toes, and instead of providing extra grip when he needed it, the pitch seemed determined to trip him. The wind, muttering with winter's chill, threatened to pull him from the precipice, with or without help from the pitch on his boots, and dash him to the street.

  A particularly stiff gust nearly turned his speculation into reality. He hadn't had such a rude introduction to the hard cobble streets since childhood. Fear was not an option; he simply required a better hold. Immediately.

  He inched his left hand along the too-smooth wall, feeling for irregularities between the bricks, his fingers searching for a grip. He'd removed his black gauntlets, as thin and fine as they were. Despite their demonic talents, an unimpeded sense of touch was too precious to hamper when taking the street less traveled. But his fingers were quickly losing sensation in the heat-thieving zephyr.

  The man, known in the city of Laothkund as Gage, was no stranger to heights. He'd plied his trade too long and too successfully to hesitate over leaping an alleyway chasm, or to shy from ascending a tower in utter darkness. He was so familiar with the lofty, tight places of the city he actually preferred them to the wide streets. Normally.

  His fingertips eased over a gap, deep enough for good purchase. "Thank the Queen of Air," he muttered. With the new handhold, he levered himself around to the east side of the building, out of the wind.

  Gage was a slender man, so much so that most assumed he was a wood elf mix. Many in Laothkund were, after all. But his birth hadn't followed a moon date. No, his wiry shape was forged from years spent running through Laothkund's twisting neighborhoods. Few could match his knowledge of the city or his ability to quickly navigate the congested lanes. No one was better at jumps, vaults, wall runs, slides, or lucky tumbles. No one knew better which of the many laundry lines would hold a man's weight, and which would instantly snap if tested.

  Serendipitously, the same skills were perfect for a housebreaker. Or, as they called it in the narrow streets of the Tannery, thieving.

  Ahead was the high shuttered window that had first drawn Gage's attention from the neighboring roof. He sidled along the ledge, moving with increasing confidence.

  No light escaped from between the shutter slats. He pried a wooden strip away from the sill and saw the reason-behind the shutters, the window was completely sealed with brick and mortar.

  He rubbed his nose, considering. The thief had reconnoitered the warehouse yesterday. This window was the only entrance not under constant scrutiny. Sure, he could probably engineer a ruse that would allow him to slip in the front door. But the time necessary to design and implement a plan subtle enough to penetrate the lair of Sathra of the Shadow Tongue would be onerous. And boring.

  Actually, the bricked-up window might work in his favor. How could any of Sathra's stooges predict the resources Gage could bring to bear against simple mortar? He doubted whatever lay beyond the sealed window was guarded. Gage cautiously pried a few more slats away from the shutter.

  He pulled his gauntlets from his belt and slipped them onto his hands, clenching his right hand as if squeezing something lest it wriggle from his grasp. The gloves were warm, almost hot to the touch, and his chilled fingers tingled. The eye on the back of the left glove opened and blinked up at him. A muffled voice groaned. Gage brought his right fist up to his face and whispered, "Quiet. We're on a job."

  He unclenched his fist, revealing a disturbingly realistic mouth in the palm, complete with lips bordering a dark cavity where none should be, in which a too-sinuous tongue squirmed, dripping venom. The glove whispered, "I will eat your soul."

  It always said that.

  "Eat rock instead." Gage responded.

  He turned the muttering palm toward the mortared wall and pressed, achieving complete contact. The eye on the other glove blinked stupidly, but the demon physically bound in the fabric of the thin gauntlets knew what he wanted.

  The wall seemed to shrink away from his touch. A moment later, every brick in the sealed window shivered and pulsed, each pushing away from the other in defiance of the mortar that held them. Gage pushed forward and the bricks dimpled, parted around his silhouette, then closed over after him. He was inside. Behind him, the bricked window settled back into perfect solidity, hardly any worse for wear. Not a trick he could pull very often.

  Gage carried many hidden advantages-a half-dozen throwing knives secreted about his body; a broad leather belt stitched with pockets containing a spool of stiff wire, a petite oil tin, several miniature abrading files, a flask of pitch, and an assortment of alchemical mixtures; and of course, his catlike grace and exceptional mind.

  All these tools and talents paled in comparison to his gloves, despite their penchant for sneaking out in the middle of the night and getting up to mischief. Not for the first time Gage thanked the Queen of Air, Akadi, on his good fortune in acquiring the gloves. A year ago, he'd taken a commission to pilfer a tome called Glyphs and Griffons from the library of the mage Tenambulum. Once he'd secured the book, he'd been unable to resist looking around Tenambulum's sanctum. The absent mage had a reputation as a demon catcher. Most of a day later, shivering and bleeding, Gage had emerged wearing the Hands of Paymon. Almost all the days since then had proved his choice a good one. Though he'd learned it was dangerous to rely on the gauntlets too entirely..

  He stood in the cluttered interior of a small, nearly pitch black room. A storage closet of some sort? He produced one of his alchemical oddities-a clear glass vessel that produced light nearly equal to a candle when shaken. He shook. Crates, barrels, and boxes jumped into visibility, jammed and jumbled toget
her. A fine layer of dust covered everything. No one had opened the door into this room for some time.

  He sidled up to the door, under which wan light peeked. He pressed an ear to the wood and held his breath. He heard nothing save the beat of his own heart.

  Unless the silence heralded an ambush, he'd penetrated the lair without alerting the occupants. Although "penetrated" was perhaps too optimistic a spin on the depth of his entry into Sathra's domain. Metaphorically, the closet was more like a ledge to which he clung by his fingers.

  He sincerely doubted the prize he'd come to claim resided in the jumble of crates and barrels.

  Nonetheless, he examined the contents of a wooden container; old habits were hard to break. He found dried fish-and it had gone bad. He crinkled his nose and replaced the barrel-head, careful not to touch the rancid contents. A foul smell could betray him as easily as too much noise or straying into a sentinel's peripheral vision.

  Back to the door. The hinges were chancy. He pulled the oil tin from his belt and dripped the lubricious fluid onto the two brass fittings. He stowed the canister, waited a moment for the oil to penetrate, then eased the door open a finger's breadth.

  A hallway. Not very wide. Stairwell at the far end. Two other doors stood in view besides the one he peered from, one of which was ajar. A hanging lantern, its wick turned low, burned from the hallway's center. Both ends of the passage were thick with night shadows. Good.

  Gage stowed his light and emerged from the storage closet. He eased the door shut and merged with the darkness. He crept down the hallway, approaching the glimmering lantern and the doors that stood across from each other. Brighter light danced from the slightly open door.

  A raucous laugh told him the room was occupied. The laugh was followed by a hoarse shout, several jeers, and a draft redolent with stale pipeweed and vinegary wine.