The only question remaining was how.
A long step through his cloak might get him to the place where he'd seen Anusha's soul caught up. To do so, he would have to touch the Dreamheart again and draw upon its energy to extend the range of his step. It might be possible.
First he needed allies. Working by himself was proving too limiting. A trip down to Xxiphu without backup would probably see him dead not long afterward, with Anusha no better off than before.
Japheth cast about, wondering who could help him. A name popped into his head, he already knew someone who possessed the knowledge and resources to help.
It was unfortunate that person hated Japheth so fiercely he'd sworn multiple oaths to see the warlock dead. But with Japheth's pursuers nipping at his heels, the Lord of Bats would have to serve.
Fear lent his tired limbs new swiftness. He found a canvas satchel and swept all the items on the podium into it.
He rushed from the vault into the adjoining suite and began snatching up tomes. There were a few treatises and ritual books he'd need, especially if Neifion didn't prove amenable to Japheth's charm.
Lucky, mistaking his frantic motion for play, barked and leaped in the warlock's path. "Not now, boy!" Japheth said.
He pushed one last tome into the satchel, then popped the whole thing into his cloak. Several books rich with precious lore remained scattered among the printed dross in his suite, but he didn't have time to weigh their merits against the ones already in his bag.
He returned to Anusha's side. He gazed at her serene, pale face. "Raidon's on his way. He means to destroy the Dreamheart. By the Nine, I wish I had more time!" He brushed a stray strand of hair from Anusha's forehead. "So we must travel again. To Darroch Castle. Don't worry. I'll keep you-"
The crack of splintering timber resounded through the vault. A flash of cerulean light glinted on the door frame.
Something had breached his outer suite.
He whirled, his stomach clenching. He hadn't finished his preparations.
"Japheth!" a hard voice called. "Give up the relic!"
The warlock lunged for the Dreamheart at the head of Anusha's travel chest. In his haste, he fumbled the cage and knocked it to the floor.
Raidon Kane appeared in the vault entrance. The halfelf moved with a relaxed grace that conveyed unswerving menace. Angul was in his hands. It burned with blue fire, as did the tattoo on Raidon's chest.
Lucky growled. Despite everything, concern troubled the warlock for the dog's welfare.
"Lucky! Get away!" Japheth ordered. He loosed a crackling line of eldritch fire from a finger, missed the halfelf, then ducked below the top of the travel chest, which lay between him and the door. The relic lay some five feet from him. It was completely undefended, vulnerable to a single stroke of the monk's sword-
Raidon came around the other side of the travel chest and saw the relic at his feet. The monk was impossibly fast! His sword swept high, preparing for a sundering stroke. Angul's flame was bright as the sun, if the sun burned blue.
"No!" croaked Japheth. He tried to get off another spell, one that would knock the monk away from his target, but he was too slow-
The Dreamheart's eye shuttered open and fixed the monk with its ageless glare.
Raidon hesitated.
Japheth finished his incantation. A golden glow snatched the half-elf and transferred him as far as Japheth could manage with so little time to prepare-out into the suite, perhaps even into the hallway beyond.
A cry of surprise from two throats issued from the next room, one a man's, the other a woman's. Thoster and…
Seren? It didn't matter. They would have to deal with a disoriented monk, perhaps murderously so, giving Japheth precious moments to flee.
He stooped and grabbed the Dreamheart. Its cage was broken. He shook the orb loose of its shattered fetters.
The stone was clammy and cold, slightly slippery. He cringed from the touch, but its coolness faded almost instantly. Heat woke along its irregular sides, a warmth that tingled. It was… pleasant. And terrifying.
Just as when he'd fled Gethshemeth's sea cave, he instinctively sucked energy from the stone and channeled it into his cloak. That time, he'd stepped first from the cavern to the seamount's surface to gather Anusha, the chest, and Lucky. From there he'd stepped across the world, east over the Sea of Fallen Stars.
Now he needed to go even farther, and in a direction that didn't exist in the world.
Normally he had to leave his cloak behind as a bridge if he wished to access the Lord of Bats's home. He didn't have that luxury at the moment-his enemies would simply follow him to his sanctuary.
The Dreamheart warmed further, becoming like a live thing shuddering in his grip. It gave him what he asked for, enough strength to use his cloak as a door to another plane.
Raidon cradled the relic in the crook of one elbow, then bent to gather up Anusha. Before he managed her weight, Raidon reappeared in the vault's doorway, with Captain Thoster only a step behind.
It almost looked like the captain was reaching out, trying to restrain Raidon. But the monk leaped, too fast for the captain. He was a streak in the air whose leading point was a flying knee, rigid like a ship's prow. The monk held Angul straight over his head so that the blade's flame streaked the air with cerulean fire.
The half-elf s brutal knee caught the warlock in the chest. Pain splintered Japheth's awareness and tore Anusha from his grip.
He tried to mouth a curse, but the blow emptied his lungs of air. The savage force tumbled Japheth and the Dreamheart into the waiting void of his gaping cloak. He fell headlong through a one-way portal to a place beyond the world.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Veltalar, Aglarond
Raidon cracked his knuckles, one after the other. Angul was plunged point first into the vault floor, simmering. He stared at empty air where the warlock had escaped into a collapsing portal mouth formed of his own shadowed cape. Holding the Dreamheart. He stared as if wishing alone could bore that portal open anew.
"He's slippery like a fish off the hook," said Captain Thoster. The pirate stood looking down at the girl Anusha, one hand scratching his chin as he considered the sleeper. "Japheth'd give up his mind to the relic for this one, eh? She doesn't look like anything special. He called her Anusha in the grotto."
Seren, standing in the vault doorway, said, "He was hiding her aboard the ship all along. How macabre."
A low growl sprang up. A dog, large and black, advanced on the captain from the vault's corner.
"Blackie!" exclaimed Thoster, his eyes lighting with recognition. "What're you doing here? I thought the crew threw you overboard!" The pirate approached the growling beast, his hands proffered for the dog to sniff.
"Your hound is a poor guard-it took up with the ghost girl here quick enough," Seren said. "Dispatch the disloyal cur."
The captain shook his head, laughing at the mercenary wizard's suggestion. "I think I might have a treat, Blackie," he crooned to the dog, one hand searching through his voluminous pockets.
Raidon watched without really seeing, as canine and man were reacquainted. His thoughts were elsewhere.
Once again, the aberrant relic had avoided destruction through the warlock's interference. The object had obviously corrupted the man as it had corrupted Nogah.
It was Raidon's own fault. The Dreamheart had lain before him, fully vulnerable. The Blade Cerulean was poised, vibrating unswerving conviction through its hilt into Raidon's soul. Why had he hesitated?
Because the Dreamheart looked at him. In that look a momentary connection formed, and Raidon saw through the eye. As the golem of Stardeep had warned him, he saw down into the mantle below the world and glimpsed awakening Xxiphu. Beslimed creatures, sluggish yet with eons of sleep heavy on their tentacles, swam through drowned crannies and crept along purple-lit tunnels leaving trails of mucus. Malevolent and vile, they converged on a cavity high in the city's crown painted with glyphs in colors Raidon's eye couldn't resolve. The creatures… the aboleths, Cynosure called them, gathered in that arcane cavity. They were performing a ghastly ritual.