"No," said Thoster. "At least, not since your ritual." He put his hand on the amulet cord. "Still, how often does a fellow walk into a primeval relic filled with half-petrified monsters older than gods?"
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Xxiphu, Hall of Spawning
The man dreamed.
A many-columned structure stood on a mountain at the edge of a void. Vast scale was implied by the misted clouds that wreathed the peak and edifice alike. The columns surrounded an inner citadel of solid stone-solid but for a gigantic gate of star iron. The enormous valve was pitted and ancient. Sometimes it rattled and shook with the slow cadence of mighty waves, as if something inside strove to throw it open with steady, unrelenting strength.
The man knew with dreamy conviction that on the other side of the gate stretched forgotten dimensions that lay beyond the stars. Through its sealed gap, whispered this unearned certainty, infinities stretched outside mortal and divine conception alike.
A woman in golden armor stood before the gate, in the shadow of the towering columns. Her lips moved, but the man couldn't hear her. Her words were important, that was clear. Something he needed to understand immediately. If he failed to put meaning to her increasingly desperate attempts to communicate, he realized something catastrophic would shudder to its world-breaking culmination…
Japheth came awake with a cry.
He lay curled like a newborn within a hollow niche coated with residual slime. His cloak was draped around his body like a shroud.
The warlock levered himself up onto his elbows and saw a narrow phosphorescent tunnel snaking up and away.
He was alone and glad for it. The dream was similar to ones he'd had before, but unlike them too. Anusha was in the dream mouthing the same incomprehensible warnings as always, but her surroundings seemed more dire than the crazed visions his sleeping mind had earlier painted.
Japheth shivered, but not from the dream or the cold. It was his body betraying him. He couldn't predict when the shakes would surface in his flesh. The trembling in his hands and the flinching tic in his expression appeared without warning and stayed overlong. Sometimes when he concentrated, the quavering subsided. A few times, the shuddering intensified so much he feared a seizure was imminent.
And what of his abilities? His mind probed for his missing spells like a tongue unable to ignore an empty tooth socket.
The fabric of his cloak was wound with subtle power and abilities that far eclipsed a normal cape, that was true.
But the powers of transposition and protection it provided were hardly compensation for the arcane might Japheth had wielded just hours earlier.
Without his arcane tools, he was little more than a man far out of his depth. Without the patronage of his sworn pact, he was succumbing to the end stages of a lethal addiction to traveler's dust.
He was in a bad way. If he didn't take a crystal every hour or so, he would slide right off the end of the putative road and die, his soul claimed by demons. But every time he took a crystal, he also moved farther down that demonbuilt avenue and closer to the precipice, although at a less breakneck pace.
But fast or slow, he would soon be dragged into the Abyss.
He lashed out with a curled fist at the sticky niche wall. His knuckle split open, but the pain was a welcome, if brief, diversion.
Japheth put his knuckle to his lips and glanced around. Neither Anusha nor Yeva had returned. They sought a way through the spawning hall that avoided newly birthed aboleths. The creatures couldn't see the women, but they were all too aware of him.
"It was supposed to be different," he murmured. "When I imagined us together, we were going to be so happy. I imagined us attending Midsummer Festival, sharing candied apples, and laughing in the sun. And as the sun westered, our embraces would grow more urgent…" He sighed and shook his head to dislodge such distracting thoughts.
"Now all we have is horror."
He would be dead in a day, perhaps two. And the one who had captured his heart would be left to fend for herself in an impossible situation. She would likely perish not long after he succumbed to the dust. Her soul would become food for the Eldest.
It was intolerable.
Everything had taken on a shade of crimson through the lenses of his permanently dust — hued eyes.
"By the Fangs of Neifion," Japheth swore. He was near to the precipice. If he closed his eyes, the scarlet plain was already waiting. A road slashed across the plain, and he could feel the bone cobbles through his boots.
From where he stood along its length, he could just glimpse the road's awful terminus.
The scene had blotted out his senses years earlier. That time, he'd seen the road even when his eyes were wide open.
That time, he'd been pushed to the crimson road's precipitous end. He'd witnessed the space beyond: a tooth- lined gullet where all dust users were finally consumed, mind and soul. Demons winged through that hungry hole, culling souls at their leisure.
A desperate addict will shout all manner of promises to the empty air when all his debts are finally called due.
No one was more surprised than Japheth when his desperate pleas were answered by a great bat that sailed down from the burning sky. Neifion, the Lord of Bats, had heard his promises and responded.
In the urgency of his need, Japheth pledged his soul to the Lord of Bats if only the creature would save him.
Only later did he learn he'd offered Neifion far too much-but the Lord of Bats took him at his word. And so Japheth was saved from his lethal addiction to crimson dust by swearing a pact to an archfey.
He'd lived several years since then, his dust-promised death sentence stayed by the pact. But now the agreement was shattered. Japheth's powers were fled, and Neifion no longer shielded him from the poor choices of his youth.
"I doubt," he whispered, "my old patron will take me back. I need a new one. Ha! Down in this hellhole, that's so likely."
In that moment, a scheme slithered into his mind.
It was an awful idea, and dangerous in equal measure. But he already knew it was his only option.
"Wait," he protested.
The logic was inescapable. He needed a new patron. He needed a new pact. Death was certain for him and Anusha otherwise.
"It's nonsense, it's insane!" he whispered.
But was it really? He had pledged a pact to Neifion, a creature of bloodlust and dubious ethics. If he hadn't gone overboard in what he'd initially sworn, things would have been far different, he rationalized. He could have gone about his own purposes, and the Lord of Bats wouldn't have taken such an overweening interest in Japheth's activities.
Probably.
Of course he wasn't sure, but what was. certain in his life? His own gruesome death and Anusha's soon thereafter if he didn't try to save them, that was what.
He'd worked at cross-purposes to Neifion's goals. He could do the same to a new entity to whom he swore the pacts of a warlock, right?
Uncertainty coiled in his stomach.
Another thought occurred to him, this one almost comforting. He was an old hand at swearing pacts. He'd learned in the school of hard knocks how not to craft one. He had a pretty good idea, now, how to go about devising a pact that would not only grant him power but also avoid promising his soul away to a new master.
He took an unsteady breath.
The decision was already made the moment he thought of it. All the rest was just delay.
He reached into the folds of his cloak and produced the Dreamheart.
The eye in the stone was half lidded. Sitting with his legs folded and his cloak spread behind him, Japheth placed the Dreamheart so its gaze faced the damp cavity's far wall. He wasn't ready to look into that awful pupil quite yet. Touching the stone calmed his shaking hands, but its slick warmth wound his nerves more tightly.