The warlock glanced around one last time. Still no sign of Anusha. Good. He took a deep breath and then placed both hands back on the object. Its mere presence was an affront to the natural order of Toril, and touching it felt like touching a dragon's oily scales.
The stone attempted to twist the mind of any creature that remained too long in its presence, even as it offered the promise of real power. It opened new vistas of perception and possibility with skin-on-stone contact, but they were only reflexive responses, part and parcel of the Dreamheart's alien nature.
Japheth's task required that he reach deeper and And a spark of sentience with whom he could bargain. Taking advantage of the surface energy that boiled off the Dreamheart would grant potent abilities, as the kuo-toa Nogah had demonstrated. But without the strictures of a pact to protect the wielder, such power would eventually corrupt and control the holder of the stone. And the stone would always be required in order to call upon the abilities so gained.
Japheth knew how to avoid that outcome for himself. He hoped.
He turned the relic around and looked into its eye.
The lid slowly pulled back to the accompaniment of grating stone. The unmasked pupil revealed an unblinking regard. Within its darkness, Japheth discerned tiny, dancing shapes.
He squinted, trying to understand what he was seeing. Little diamonds shining amid blackness… were they stars?
Yes. He observed a swathe of stars burning in unthinkable multitudes beyond the world.
Japheth had thought the world vast, but the stars he saw in the Dreamheart reached as far beyond the sky's illusory vault as a millennium stretched beyond an hour.
His gaze was absorbed by the delicate, twinkling points. His mind flashed out into the emptiness between them.
First euphoria washed through him. The stars were like jewels. Many of them shone in costly colors, and he floated in their treasury. Existence stretched away past all imagination, yet he felt-at least in that instant-as if he might have some inkling of its vastness.
Then he noticed a few stars were not like their sisters. They wavered and danced, as if their place in the heavens was unfixed. Seeing the inconstant lamps reminded Japheth of his purpose.
When he realized the irregular pinpricks of light were less like stars and more like windows piercing the sky, a tendril of nausea touched him. A fell radiance leaked from the portholes, and behind them, dread silhouettes huddled close, peering down into reality.
Somehow, perhaps by mediation of the Dreamheart, he knew the names of the stars.
There was Acamar the corpse star whose immense size sent other stars spiraling to their doom. Caiphon was the purple star, appearing in the guise of a guide point, but he viscerally knew it was capable of betraying those who relied upon it too much.
There was Delban with its ice white glare, cruel and bitter.
Khirad was a star of piercing blue light that burned over apocalypses wherever they occurred.
These stars and many more Japheth saw and recognized.
The warlock blanched. He saw where he had to go if he was to swear a new pact to the nameless entities whose lineage included the Eldest, though he was unclear of the hierarchy. If his broken pact with the Lord of Bats could be called a fey pact because of Neifion's home in Faerie, then he supposed the one he contemplated now could be called a star pact because the entities he courted lived far beyond the world.
He would have to steel his mind against the journey lest he emerge more a servant to his new patrons than he ever was to Neifion, even when the Lord of Bats had briefly possessed Japheth's pact stone. It would all be for nothing if he toppled, glare-eyed and drool-speckled, into the clutch of mad gods. That outcome would be as bad as or worse than letting the crimson dust have him.
But even should the worst come to pass, he told himself it would be worth it if he could at least help Anusha.
He could at least get her out of Xxiphu before the consequences of his newest spectacularly bad decision claimed his soul. Probably.
Japheth allowed his point of view to be caught in the subtle current of the closest star, whose light was red. It pulled him closer, and its name came to him unbidden. Nihal.
The other stars whose names had occurred to him each pulled at his mind, altering his trajectory somewhat through the faux heavens of his conception. But it was the star Nihal whose authority most firmly grasped him.
Nihal writhed around the fixed space it should have maintained, its influence pulling Japheth nearer and nearer.
The moment before it sucked him in, the warlock screamed. The star's image changed from a cinder red fist to that of a humanoid-shaped hole in reality filled with writhing red maggots.
He flashed into a blaring space filled with sliding worms. He lost all sense of his body-limbless and formless, Japheth was helpless in the grasp of a worm-filled, churning expanse. But he continued to move. Something drew him forward, he was actually accelerating through the horrorscape. Awful sounds smashed at his eardrums. The noise was the sound of world-sized maggots scraping against each other accompanied by a vague, atonal melody. The ghastly sound concentrated all the primal, ultimate instability that lay beneath matter and behind time. Its declaration promised an unutterable and unendurable vision. Screaming, Japheth plunged into it.
*****
"That's it, then,*Anusha whispered. Yeva shrugged.
Ahead, the narrow asymmetrical tunnel opened into a larger corridor. From their vantage, the path seemed only a fifth the size of the great spiraling thoroughfare she and Yeva had trudged up after leaving the orrery. The lane was empty save for an irregularly gusting wind that rushed down its length every few moments. Purple flames burning on the crowns of stone obelisks marked the recent passage of an aboleth lamplighter.
"An important corridor, but not one frequently used by the awakened," Anusha said. "I hope."
Yeva didn't even bother to lift her shoulders. She merely said, "Let's go back and collect the warlock. We will learn how little used this way is then."
Anusha swallowed a terse comeback. She knew the woman wasn't trying to be cruel-she merely had little use for speculation. She just wished Yeva's attitude toward Japheth hadn't turned from acceptance to disdain when they learned his powers had been stripped. Yeva only cared about Japheth's ability to fashion a new focus for her spirit.
"Yes, that's true," Anusha said. "Let's hope I'm right."
They retreated back down the meandering nest of tunnels, avoiding those with encrustations of frozen memory, quivering egg sacks, and small aboleths already squirming. Some of the little monsters were far more aggressive than their siblings-and cannibalistic. On the way up, they'd chanced across an aboleth feeding frenzy. Anusha was glad for once to have left her body behind. Otherwise she would have been violently sick.
They reached the lone tunnel that spiraled down to where the warlock rested. A glimmer of red light played up the burrow.
"Looks like the warlock got bored," Yeva said. "If he's not careful, he'll draw a newly hatched clutch down on him. If he hasn't already." Concern tightened Anusha's throat. She hurried down the passage. Yeva followed.
They found Japheth sleeping at the tunnel's dead end, right where they'd left him. Anusha could see the rise and fall of his chest as the warlock slumbered. She was relieved he wasn't shaking as he'd been when they'd left.
"Where did the light go?" Yeva said.
The woman was right-somewhere in their rush down the tunnel, the flickering glow visible at the mouth had faded. They regarded the unmoving man only in the light of Anusha's dream sword.
"Japheth," Anusha said as she bent and touched the man's shoulder. "Are you awake? We're back."