Key of Stars

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

Watch on Forever’s Edge, Feywild

Taal pulled the sack beneath an empty sky. The two bodies weighed the bag down. The fabric whispered as he hauled it along the uneven stones that flagged the tower’s zenith.

He hauled the bundle to the parapet’s edge. The void’s sprinkle of stars only accentuated its emptiness. He squatted, lifted the body bag, then heaved it over the edge.

Instead of plummeting down, the burlap mass fell outward, directly away from the tower. No matter how many times he’d launched objects off the edge, Taal was always fascinated by the way the void pulled all things to itself.

The slowly rotating sack, illuminated by the watchtower’s lights, receded at a steady rate. Its shape grew smaller with distance. Finally the encroaching darkness consumed it.

“Good-bye, Lady Eloar. Farewell, Lord Dramvar. I’m sorry-”

A low growl from his totem tattoo warned Taal he was no longer alone.

He turned.

A torch flared. In the wavering shadow of a merlon, Malyanna and her hound were revealed.

“Taal, I return,” she said. Her skin glimmered like a sheet of glacier ice.

He bowed. “Welcome back to the Spire of Winter’s Peace, my lady,” he said. “Where is your new friend?”

“Neifion and I are allied only so long as our interests intersect,” Malyanna replied. “The warlock Japheth, who I described to you, is someone both of us want dead. I set the Lord of Bats on Japheth’s scent.”

“I hope he enjoys success,” Taal said.

Malyanna shrugged. “What did you just discard?” she asked. “Looked bulky.”

Taal filled his lungs with the frigid air. “Lord Dramvar and Lady Eloar came calling,” he said. “When they discovered you gone, they invoked the Articles of the Compact.”

Malyanna frowned. “Were you able to …,” she said, trailing off as Taal shook his head no.

“I couldn’t dissuade them,” he said. “Only one way remained to defend your secrets.”

“The Master and Mistress of Summer Mist were in the bag you just launched?” Malyanna asked.

Taal bowed assent.

“Are you trying to undermine me?” said Malyanna, her voice quiet but sharp as a razor.

“I remain true to my oath,” replied Taal. “If you think I’ve done anything other than preserve your interests, remove me from your service.”

The shadow hound slunk from behind Malyanna and stared at Taal. Its eyes were avid with hunger.

Malyanna snorted. “I’m sure you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she said. “No. I’ll dispatch messengers to Summer Mist. I can replicate Eloar’s handwriting. Apparently, she and Dramvar have decided to enjoy Winter’s Peace for an extended visit.”

“No need,” Taal said. “I’ve already dispatched messengers. They plan on enjoying our company for a full tenday.”

A smile stretched the eladrin noble’s face. “I can always count on you, can’t I?”

“It seems so.”

Taal regarded the warden of Winter’s Peace. Like Eloar and Dramvar, Erunyauve of the Spire of the Moon, Karsalvan of Spring Bloom, and the others, Malyanna shouldered a terrible responsibility at Forever’s Edge.

A responsibility she had abnegated so utterly she was a cancer in reality’s bulwark. It didn’t bear thinking on too long.

“What did you learn?” Taal asked. “What is the disposition of the … risen city?”

The woman nearly danced with glee. “Xxiphu is a new moon over Toril, an omen of what will come,” she said. “Even now, it begins to harvest Faerun’s dreams.”

“The Eldest is waking?” Taal said, alarm nearly making his voice quaver.

“No. It is caught in the transition; I told you that,” Malyanna replied. “The Eldest’s mind is trapped on the edge of consciousness.”

“Then why are you so ebullient?”

“Because I know where to find the Key of Stars!”

Taal rubbed his chin. “Without the Eldest, what good will that do?” he said. “Your prophecy indicates-”

Malyanna waved away his protest. “If Neifion kills the warlock, the Eldest might throw off slumber,” she replied. “Japheth thieved some essential essence from the Dreamheart before he left it behind. If that essence is released, it could well enliven Xxiphu’s lord. So, if I can find the Key of Stars in the meantime, I’ll have saved the Eldest time dredging up the Key itself.”

“What if the warlock’s death doesn’t wake the Eldest?” asked Taal. “You said a surviving Keeper of the Cerulean Sign managed to perform a ritual in Xxiphu’s crown chamber.”

The eladrin noble’s lips thinned. “Yes, Raidon Kane,” she said. “I don’t know from whence he came, or how he came by his Keeper lore. Somehow, he proved capable of scribing a Rune of Binding, using a sentient sword only Keepers could have forged as his quill, no less. He reminded me of someone. I can’t quite put my finger on whom …”

“This Rune of Binding; won’t that prevent all the Eldest’s eyes from opening?” asked Taal.

“I’ll not wait for failure, Taal!” Malyanna said. “I’d rather plan for success. However, if the worst befalls us, and the Eldest remains unresponsive, I’ll still have the Key of Stars in hand. I’ll use it in the Eldest’s place to unlock the Far Manifold.”

Taal’s eyes widened. “You would promote yourself above the Eldest?”

“I must be prepared for all contingencies,” Malyanna replied. “So gather your things. I’ll need your help in retrieving the Key. You’re coming with me.”

An odd feeling bloomed in the pit of his stomach. Surprise? Hope? It had been so long since he’d felt the latter, he couldn’t identify the sensation.

Malyanna said, “We must find the one who was lord in Winter’s Peace before I. My poor, long departed mentor, whose schemes were discovered by ancient Keepers.”

“You mean the Traitor,” Taal said. It wasn’t a question.

Taal had heard, several times, about the eladrin who had commanded the spire before Malyanna. It had been centuries earlier in the world-but not nearly so long out at Forever’s Edge, where time ran differently-when Malyanna, fresh to the tower herself, once served as castellan to an eladrin noble named Carnis.

Carnis had been as committed to the Watch as any. But the eladrin had been incautious. He had stared too long into the void. The things that stirred in utter emptiness had lost their horror for the Lord of Winter’s Peace. They had become objects of curiosity.

Or maybe his call to service had been a charade all along. He might have joined the Watch already compromised.

Regardless, he eventually showed Malyanna “the truth and the glory” that lay beyond the void, in the fearfully whispered Citadel of the Outer Void.

Instead of striking Carnis down or reporting his treachery to the other watchtowers, Malyanna had joined his cause.

The two plotted long together, and dreamt of a future twisted and wrecked, wherein they were elevated by their association with the creatures who would become the new lords of reality. Taal had never been sure how that was supposed to have worked. Then Carnis departed Winter’s Peace, intent on achieving the first awful piece of their plan.

But the Lord of Winter’s Peace was found out. He was caught and imprisoned in a splinter realm of Faerie called Stardeep. His name and station were stripped from him. Ever after, he was known simply as the Traitor.

And in Stardeep he had rotted until the changing of the world.

Malyanna did not betray herself to the other wardens of the Twelve Towers. She remained in Winter’s Peace, and showed all the proper surprise, distress, and outrage a pupil would be expected to display if her lord was unveiled as a monster. She helped the other wardens root out all the strange books, secret chambers, and miscellaneous ilk Carnis had stockpiled in the watchtower under the noses of his fellow watchers. It was after that event the Compact had been modified to allow wardens to request to see the content of neighboring towers.

Malyanna had been a consummate actor. She destroyed lore with full knowledge that doing so would delay her own plans for a century or more. In the end, the other wardens of the Watch on Forever’s Edge were convinced of Malyanna’s purity.

In only a few short years, she had been promoted. She became the Lady of Winter’s Peace, and was given full dispensation over its functions, armory, and the watchtower’s armed eladrin forces.

“Yes, I am talking about the Traitor,” Malyanna finally answered, breaking Taal from his reverie. “How astute of you to remember.”

“The Traitor and his prison are gone,” said Taal. “You said so yourself.”

Malyanna nodded. “I assumed so,” she replied. “But I never bothered to discover exactly where it was located; at first, it would have seemed suspicious to the other wardens had I shown too much interest in what our sibling Keepers did with the Traitor. Afterward, I was angry with Carnis for being such a fool and rushing in too soon. Eventually, I determined I would be the better instrument for the Sovereignty. I figured, let him rot.”

“So Stardeep was not destroyed?”

“I don’t know,” Malyanna replied. “That’s what we’re going to discover, my pet. I suspect it might be ashes, but even if all I can find are a few of the Traitor’s bones, I can interrogate the memory of his spirit. Before he was caught, he learned where the Key of Stars was located.”

Taal remained quiet, studying his mistress. He wondered if she were finally giving in to wishful thinking. By her description, despite Xxiphu’s rise, the lone abolethic city seemed crippled. With its nigh omnipotent lord asleep, it hardly seemed a Sovereignty.

Was Malyanna grasping at straws out of desperation?

A flutter of hope was born in Taal’s heart. Perhaps her entire purpose was in danger of collapsing.

“If Carnis knew where the Key of Stars was all along, why didn’t he find and use it?” Taal asked.

Some of Malyanna’s exhilaration faded from her face. “Though he was a failure in many ways, Carnis said it was the Eldest’s place to take up the Key,” she said. “Even if he had it, he would not have tried it himself.”

“But you will.”

“If circumstances leave me no choice,” she replied.

“Even if using it burns you to a cinder?” Taal said. “Maybe the Eldest is supposed to turn the Key because only a near-deity like it could handle the relic capable of opening the Far Manifold.”

Malyanna frowned. “I appreciate your concern, Taal, false as it is,” she said. “Perhaps I will give the matter a little more thought-It’s not my intention to miss out on the era of the Sovereignty’s reign when I’ve sacrificed so much to ensure its birth.”

Taal nodded. “Don’t think overlong on it,” he said. “We have only the grace of a tenday, at most, before the other watchtowers become suspicious of Eloar and Dramvar’s absence.”

Malyanna sniffed, as if in disdain. Torchlight played on her skin as she gestured to her hound. “Tamur, to my study,” she said.

The shadows swallowed eladrin and mastiff, leaving Taal alone again with the void.

The castellan descended from Winter Peace’s zenith, taking each step one at a time, until he reached his own chambers.

They were empty of everything save what was needful for him to survive and perform his duties. Despite Malyanna’s urging that he allow himself the luxuries his station could command, Taal preferred blank walls. He was determined that, despite his oddly privileged servitude, he would not give in to enticements that might make his position seem comfortable, or even enviable. Malyanna had become a willing acolyte of Carnis; Taal preferred the daily reminder that he served the Lady of Winter’s Peace under protest.

He went to his writing desk, where he drafted his daily directives to the staff and stewards, captains and commanders of the tower. On it lay a silver pin, in the shape of a snowflake. It was the badge Malyanna had given him after she’d recruited him to the Watch.

Following her promotion, she required a castellan of her own.

With a deviousness born of long centuries, she had spun a rumor built to snare would-be heroes, and whispered it into the world. The rumor painted the tale of a monstrous evil that required constant watching in a lonely waste, lest some sliver of it escape and infect Faerun.

The best lies wrap themselves in truth like a second skin. Taal had numbered among those who heard the lies, and believed them. He and the others who heard and believed gathered together and followed the threads, and indeed, discovered actual aberrant cults, ghastly items that fostered nightmares, and eventually a mind flayer cyst, which proved great evil was afoot. From there, Taal and his company of heroes found paths into the Feywild and beyond.

They found Malyanna waiting. In aspect she seemed a queen, wise and dangerous, yet beautiful too. She described the Watch on Forever’s Edge, the void that lay beyond, and the sacrifice all who joined the Watch must endure. She said she was in need of an ally, to help her in her duties.

Malyanna asked which one among Taal’s company would join her, and serve as castellan of the Spire of Winter’s Peace.

Of all his company who quested through the meandering, dangerous route to appear on the doorstep of Winter’s Peace, Taal had proved the most capable.

He was the one given the reward. His prize was to become a watcher himself, to learn the lore of the void and how to fight what seeped from it, and the opportunity to pledge himself to reality’s defense.

His friends, perhaps jealous, or maybe relieved to be able to remain carefree adventurers and righters of lesser wrongs, had wished him well. They returned to the world, leaving Taal to take up his new duties and instruction.

How foolish, how intemperate he’d been to voice the pledge. He’d wondered, even as he spoke the words of binding, why the language seemed so light on defense of the helpless and heavy on the unquestioning service he would provide to the eladrin noble.

But Taal was a man of his word, and with just a few short breaths, he had foresworn himself, believing he was on his way to a glorious career as a warden-in-training.

In that assessment, he’d been appallingly, catastrophically wrong.

Taal blinked away the recollection. He picked up the silver pin and rubbed it between his fingers. His totem cat growled. It recognized the threat to Taal’s equanimity that the symbol of office represented.

Taal replaced the pin on the desk, sat, and drafted instructions that would see to the disposition of Winter’s Peace in his absence. The spire could run itself for long periods, assuming nothing happened to break normal routine. But his thoughts skipped away from the boring details of duty rotation and resupply as he scribbled on the parchment.

Despite himself, Taal found he was looking forward to the trip.