Stardeep (2 page)

“He is a Keeper.”

Delphe shrugged. As if that was a guarantee of anything. In fact, Telarian’s overpowering belief in the Cerulean Sign’s charter sometimes pushed him along personally dangerous paths. His recent obsession with expanding his divinatory skills, already exceptional, into the deep future, was a symptom of his fierce dedication. But if he pressed himself too hard, Delphe feared Telarian would burn out his mind. Despite her own specialty in the art of abjuration, she couldn’t stop her friend from overreaching.

Her gaze swept the deepest chamber of the Inner Bastion, officially called the Chamber of Surveillance, though Delphe and Telarian always called it the Throat. And what would a Throat be without a Well? Her gaze dropped to the room’s nadir.

The Well was a circular shaft, wide enough to swallow two of Cynosure’s largest homunculi without difficulty. The Well’s reflective sides were impeccably smooth, but dozens of glass slabs protruded from the concave wall, spiraling down from the top, forming a precarious stair. The slabs were enchanted to extend or withdraw into inset sleeves at her or Cynosure’s command. Her observation seat was forged of similarly ensorcelled glass so it, too, could extend over the lip of the Well or pull back for a less precarious view, as it suited her.

Sheets of polished iron tiled the chamber’s periphery, so smooth they acted as mirrors. Delphe saw herself reflected

many times, slightly distorted in a different way in each image. No obvious doorway allowed entrance or egress. Access was controlled by Cynosure, who could open direct paths for Keepers anywhere within Stardeep. Traversing these paths always made Delphe vaguely nauseated, so she called on Cynosure’s aid for getting around Stardeep only when absolutely necessary. She preferred taking the long way whenever possible. Unfortunately, no “long way” existed in or out of the Throat. That was one more measure meant to keep the Traitor secure.

She was halfway through her observation shift. Delphe leaned forward once again. The prominences below continued their unfamiliar cycle, strobing through the gelatinous barrier like thrusting, bloody spikes. If anything, they were brighter, though their hue had graduated from merely orange to a hideous tangerine-tinted scarlet.

She waited for the constructs voice to comment on the activity and act on its observation.

Cynosure uttered no sound and initiated no activity.

Worrisome. The idol should autonomously dampen irregular cycles that threatened to break into chaotic, unmodulated activity. The Well was displaying a classic pattern of stochastic feedback in the boundary layer.

She glanced at her amulet. Its emblazoned blue symbol was deepening, becoming dark as a starless night.

“Cynosure! Barrier layer modulation!”

Delphe leaned forward. She couldn’t risk waiting for the disconcertingly silent construct. She shouted syllables of sealing and calming. More than merely audible, her words poured forth like a stream of blue smoke. Energy crystallized from her enunciation and strictures. The secret of the Keeper’s wizardry relied on a lingua arcana older than contemporary wizardry, a language whose roots lay beyond the creation of the world itself. Her benediction became a sheen of silver-blue light that

fell down the hollow Well. It fell upon the barrier layer like rain upon water, dotting the shining margin with hundreds of expanding circular ripples.

The bubbling, sunlike frenzy beneath the ectoplasmic film sizzled and spit in the silver mist, spiking in sudden frenzy as if in realization that if it didn’t succeed now, its chance was spent.

The fury at the interface was inexorably smothered in Delphe’s chant of silver-blue assuagement.

A few moments later, the prominences were completely gone.

The abjurer blew out a breath of relief. “Cynosure—”

“Delphe!” the constructs voice suddenly blared out. “Instability detected at the boundary… hold… hold…”

Pain tweaked her jaw. She had involuntarily clenched it at the sudden reemergence of the constructs voice. She consciously relaxed her muscles. Was something wrong with the idol?

“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 Faeriin. 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 Faerun 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 counterattack 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 telltales 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?

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 insciibed 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 singulatly 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 risk 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 ciry 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 Faerun’s core, shorn of its supposed dependency on the depths… could an age of terror and slavery be far behind?

City of Laothkund, Shadow Tongue Lair

Aman in soot-blackened clothes balanced on a ledge thtee 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.