Stardeep

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Stardeep, Telarian's Quarters

Shivers coursed through Telarian as if he stood in an icy waterfall. He considered his predicament; were his machinations ill-conceived? Cracks of failure on every front threatened to erode and crumble his endeavor, potentially causing the very catastrophe he sought to avoid. Incompetence, betrayal, and perhaps insinuations of the Traitor's growing influence outside the Well worked against him.

He just prayed none of the incompetence was his own.

The Keeper of the Outer Bastion grabbed the edges of his cot and held tightly, as if it threatened to suddenly launch him toward the high ceiling of his personal chamber. His breath shuddered, his mind skittered for any answer, any assurance.

Maybe Nis. .? He allowed his head to roll to the left. Nis nestled in its sheath, leaning against a stone scroll shelf on the far wall. He'd decided he needed to distance himself from the black blade, physically and mentally, if only for a little while. Now, after candle-spans of separation, a strange anxiety mounted, an anxiety born of more than the shambles of his designs. It was an anxiety born of his desire to once again hold the blade.

Was he becoming addicted to Nis's calming presence? No! A crazy thought! He wrenched his gaze back toward the ceiling. He was the master of his own destiny, by the Sign!

He concentrated on easing his breathing. As he did so, he slowly opened and closed his eyes. The glittering points of light sprinkled across the ceiling blinked into nonexistence, then back, over and over. A minor decorative illusion meant to convey the homey feeling of Sild?yuir, a realm he'd not walked in years, despite it being his place of birth, and despite it being relatively close. Duty prevented him. Duty not just to Stardeep, but to Sild?yuir, and the wider world behind which the starry realm rested: Faer?n.

Faer?n. . and the monstrosities that yet hungered to consume it! He rose, so quickly his lower back twinged in protest. Just a minor distraction, like all the distractions, minor and major, that sought to deter him. How sad it would be if he allowed mere distractions to cloud his vision of what he had to do. How pitiful. He wouldn't!

Telarian strode across the chamber, grabbed up Nis's sheath, and tied it securely to his belt. This was the tool he'd created. It was his own true work, not something to be denied by fear-fed whispers. Weakling doubts might assail him, but he did not have to heed their traitorous suggestions, or even listen. He would fight to the end, using every weapon in his arsenal to its maximum.

The room darkened as he paced; the blade Nis streaked gloom behind him, briefly marking his path, despite residing snugly in its scabbard. Telarian failed to notice.

Besides Nis, his other tools included his own intellect and the special knowledge his divinatory craft revealed in the Epoch Chamber. That and his partially successful efforts to bring Cynosure under his direct control. But then Delphe had taken the sentient construct out of the control loop that interwove all Stardeep. Without the capacities of that mighty magical idol, Telarian's scheme would certainly fail!

He hadn't guessed or foreseen his fellow Keeper would take such direct and effective action. Nor had he counted on her refusing to listen to his many justifications for why Cynosure should be returned to active cognizance immediately. He'd finally been forced to give up his arguments for a time, lest she become suspicious over his zealousness.

Telarian always thought her a passive player, concerned chiefly with staring into the Well. His divinations had failed to reveal the depths of character Delphe would bring to bear when true danger threatened.

Damn her, though, for removing Cynosure from the equation! Without the constructs pinpoint ability to grant passage around Stardeep, he couldn't access the Epoch Chamber. It was too dangerous for him to attempt the connection manually.

After all these years of dissembling, perhaps he should simply blurt the truth to Delphe, appeal to her reason. He imagined her working with him, instead of blindly countering his moves by chance and accident.

No, the auguries had been clear about what would happen if he succumbed to that temptation. She'd turn on him. Then he'd be forced to cut her down with Nis. She didn't have the breadth of imagination to understand he did what he did for a reason. All the atrocities he would commit, all the lies he would tell, all the lives that had to be expended were required if apocalypse were to be prevented. If his vision of the future containing the awful soaring city was to be foiled, he could do nothing else.

Telarian closed his eyes and briefly saw the glyph-scribed obelisk wrapped in eternal storm, hollowed and inhabited by slime encrusted creatures whose hunger could never be sated, the city that heralded a change so extreme nothing would be the same ever again.

He shook the tendrils of the vision clear of his mind's eye. Not now.

"Cynosure?" Silence followed. Just checking.

Without Stardeep's mind to guide him, he didn't know which functions to manually access to locate Delphe. Even if he guessed properly, he wasn't particularly adept at manually managing instant transfers. He hoped she wasn't in the Throat overlooking the Well; then he'd have no choice but to trust his skill-

Or you could allow me to manage the transfer, offered Nis. Telarian looked down and saw his hand absentmindedly draped on Nis's pommel. Where were his gloves? No matter.

"Perhaps I shall," muttered Telarian. Time was of the essence. Who knew what the swordswoman was doing beyond the Causeway? With the Causeway Gate sealed and Cynosure unavailable to relay external events, he was blind. Time to return control of the situation to his own hand. Like Nis, Angul was indispensable to his world-saving plan.

Telarian left his room. Tardoun Hall curved into dimness to the left and right, the friezes intricately carved onto the facing walls blurring into obscurity. He'd always hated the carvings.

As he walked, the unusual quiet cloaking the hall seeped into his awareness. Normally a constant susurrus of bangs, clicks, and whistles bled from the chamber where Cynosure Prime was housed. Not now.

Silence reigned because the idol was asleep, of course. It was pulled back into its original self, alone with its thoughts.

He paused. Now that he thought of it, perhaps it would be prudent to confer with the disconnected construct before he talked with Delphe. He was sure all traces of his interference with the sentient object were hidden, most of all from Cynosure itself, but it wouldn't hurt to check.

He started forward down the curving corridor, but stopped short of his destination at double doors that opened onto Cynosure Prime's chamber. Each was carved with a great white tree bordered in cerulean.

He threw wide the doors and entered.

The chamber was a great vault filled with hulking, dimly glowing rectangular objects. Most protruded from the floor, but some stuck out from the walls and several hung from the ceiling. Ancient magical script glimmered across the face of each shape; the source of each object's glow was this script-born light. Cords extended from each stone shape, some bulky and metallic, others thin, fleshy, and moist. The cords trailed away from the blocks and were gathered in thick bundles, suspended from the high ceiling.

Telarian walked to the center of the chamber, following the fattest cord bundle to its nexus: a great humanoid shape standing in darkness. The cords plunged onto the shape on every side, as if catching the figure in a great web. But it was not caught-quite the opposite. The many connections offered transcendence. For this shape was Cynosure Prime, the artificial entity that served as Stardeep's sleepless warden. Normally, the cords pulsed with light, indicating the distribution of the construct's mind across the citadel. Their dullness revealed the idol's mind was, after centuries, reduced to the single node before him.

Cynosure Prime was the shape the construct had used upon first entering Stardeep, before the incorporation of its mind into the very fabric of the dungeon stronghold. Despite the construct's diminishment, Prime remained an immense humanoid forged of crystal, stone, iron, and more exotic components, now rusted, pitted, streaked, and stained. Standing nearly thirty feet tall, its dimly shining scarlet eyes calmly observed the approaching Keeper. A design was fused onto its metallic chest, unblemished by time-The Cerulean Sign.

Delphe stood at the construct's feet.

The diviner caught his breath as she turned and saw him. He smoothed his features-quickly enough, he hoped, to hide his consternation.

She said, "Telarian. Just the man I wanted to see."

"Ah, um.. Delphe! You surprised me!"

"My apologies." She continued looking at him, her head cocked to one side.

Telarian's face grew warm. He spoke, "After our talk, this is the last place I expected to find you."

She nodded and said, "I thought more about your arguments. Perhaps you had the right of it."

"My argument?" The diviner's mind swirled, his surprise muddling his ability to concentrate. He resisted the urge to grasp Nis's hilt.

"You argued Cynosure's reconnection was vital. I'm afraid I put you off. But the more time I spend in the Well, the more I realize the task of sole wardenship is beyond me-no spell I erect in my absence can hold a candle to Cynosure's constant surveillance."

"Of course," exclaimed Telarian. In fact, he'd argued from that point of view, though his hidden goal was to reconnect Cynosure so he could open the Causeway Gate without alerting Delphe. Without Cynosure, revealing the Causeway required a mutual effort from both Keepers. He'd prefer not to answer her pointed questions if he made such a request.

"So," he continued, "shall we reintroduce Cynosure to Stardeep?"

"First," she said, turning her gaze back to the stony figure, "I must satisfy myself that its mind is not touched by corruption."

"Right, right. And what have you found?"

The massive form of Cynosure Prime shifted its weight, ever so slightly, as it fixed its granite visage on Telarian. The construct spoke, its voice resonant and sure. "Delphe has riddled me with questions, and we've discovered I remain inviolate."

"That's a relief-"

"However," continued the smooth voice of the construct, "we suspect some of the outlying nodes have been partly compromised."

They knew! He managed to avoid flinching. Were they waiting for him to bolt, confess, or attack?

"Compromised?" Telarian inquired. Grab the blade and end this-no. He didn't know if Nis could stand before Cynosure's original avatar.

Delphe said, "It is the only conclusion that fits all the criteria. Thankfully, the avatar poised above the Well seems to be untouched."

True enough, thought Telarian guiltily. Most of Cynosure's homunculi scattered about the dungeon were too visible, too open to scrutiny by Cynosure itself. He recalled his covert interactions with Cynosure's most vulnerable node: a miniature statue carved of jade currently hidden at the bottom of a silver chest in his quarters.

Without so much as the ability to articulate its limbs, the jade sculpture was merely a handspan in length. The ancient statuette was a prototype created to test the possibility of adopting Cynosure as Stardeep's warden mind. When perusing the oldest documents in the archive, Telarian had stumbled across the reference. Sure enough, he'd found a proto-node in the dusty, cryptlike recesses of the repository. With his divinatory craft, he had soon determined how to inject the sculpture back into Cynosure's mental loop as a fully functioning node. Functioning save for a lack of wards against magical manipulations. Through this tiny flawed foothold, Telarian had begun to subvert the entire distributed intelligence of Stardeep, node by node.

"You have no idea what a weight is lifted from my mind to hear the avatar in the Throat is clean. Have you found the vulnerable node?"

Delphe shook her head. "Without bringing Cynosure back into the loop, no method exists to trace the corruption back to its origin."

It dawned on Telarian they didn't suspect he was the culprit. Yet. His mind whirled. Could he completely throw them off the trail of his culpability?

Telarian took a deep breath, said, "You should have come to me right away, the moment you suspected node corruption. I have an idea. What if we selectively activate Cynosure's nodes? We don't have to distribute Cynosure's cognizance across Stardeep all at once. Let us begin with nodes we know to be safe, as is the one in the Throat, and work from there, one by one, carefully checking each node for distortion. Bring Cynosure back into the loop in controlled steps."

Cynosure's voice rang out. "A reasonable approach."

Delphe's frown finally broke. She said, "So simple and obvious. You may have just saved us, Telarian."

He spread his hands. "Keep me apprised of your progress-I must return to the Outer Bastion and review the disposition of the Knights."

"Certainly. Convey my thanks for their bravery as well."

Telarian waved at Prime's massive figure and took his leave. Through his own words, he'd guaranteed Cynosure's higher functions would remain unavailable. He would not be able to command the idol to open the Causeway Gate. But he'd had no choice. If he hadn't produced such a reasonable plan with aplomb, how long would he have been able to sidestep Delphe's suspicions? This way, he put himself beyond all questions.

Of course, it didn't hurt that he could inject his prototype node into a fledgling network as easily as into the complete Stardeep-spanning mind Cynosure earlier possessed. In a day, perhaps two, he'd do just that. Unless the sentient idol managed to discover the recollections he'd blocked its higher mind from incorporating … a possibility.

Either way, by then Kiril and her blade Angul would be long gone. His spy, the roguish Gage, would likely be dead in the bargain, too. He'd frankly been surprised the man had flown so long beneath the former Keeper's notice. But his foreteller's sense told him that ruse had now run its course.

Regardless, the hook had been set. She couldn't open the Causeway, but she would not give up entering Stardeep. So what would she do? What could she?

It was obvious.

She would attempt the "long way around," a path open only to natives of Sild?yuir. She would attempt to slip in through the underdungeon!

Telarian hurried past the doors open to the dining room, ignoring the fabulous smells emanating from within. When was his last real meal? Later. He turned onto the marble dressed stairs and took them two at a time down to the thick iron doors that opened onto the Outer Bastion.

He'd promoted someone to the position of Knight Commander with Brathtar's. . departure. Dharvanum. Of course, he'd had to kill Dharvanum moments later. After that, he'd walked down to the War Room and promoted the first Knight he'd seen. An elf named Thindhul? No matter. Telarian smiled. He had a task for the new Knight Commander. A force of Knights must be prepared to enter the subterranean dungeon tunnels in which lesser criminals were housed. Those tunnels were widely known to connect, in their meandering, dangerous fashion, directly onto Sild?yuir.

And it must be an overwhelming force of Knights! Not because Angul represented a threat-the blade had already shown himself uninterested in turning his energies against pledged Cerulean Knights.

No, the force must be overwhelming because nothing less would survive that which stalked those long-abandoned passages and crawlways beneath ancient Stardeep.