Would I have time enough to flee? he wondered. If I could escape the misty hall… but there again the barrier against teleportation would foil me. At best I could try to outrun the daemonfey, but they have wings, don't they?
He could try to feign compliance, returning to offer Nurthel a fake Nightstar. It was possible that the fey'ri sorcerer didn't know what the device would look like. That might give him an opportunity to flee later, but if Nurthel discovered the deception he would know that Sarya's compulsion had failed. Perhaps the best thing would be to simply wait in the buried chamber without ever returning, and make sure that the daemonfey were denied the Nightstar forever. Would it be worth his life to keep the selukiira out of their hands?
"Not just your life, Araevin," he reminded himself.
Sarya still held Ilsevele and Maresa in her stronghold. If he did not return there quickly, and with his will un-trammeled by the daemonfey enchantments, Ilsevele and Maresa would suffer for it, and he could imagine only too well what form their tortures might take.
There is no way out, he realized.
Even if he regarded his own life as forfeit, he could not do the same for Ilsevele and Maresa. He had to find the path that offered him some chance to return and free them.
If he simply seized the gemstone and let it have him, there was a chance that Ilsevele and Maresa might be rescued by some other agency. Seiveril might divine her location and send help. At the very least, Araevin's resistance would not be an excuse for Sarya to kill his companions. There was at least some small possibility that the selukiira was not programmed to destroy its defiler. How much of a risk it would be, he had no way of knowing.
And when it came down to it, he was curious. Even if it destroyed him, he wanted to know what secrets the Nightstar concealed.
"Damn," he breathed.
He reached out and grasped the Nightstar.
His vision whirled, and in a flash of lambent light he felt himself drawn into the dormant consciousness of the gemstone. It engulfed him like a violet sea, smothering him in its power. He felt its might rising around him, ramparts and battlements of dangerous lore looming around him on all sides, penning him in, trapping him. Then the edifices vanished, leaving him to plummet screaming into a terrible and dark abyss, falling for what seemed to be hours through a cosmos of purple facets and white-glowing runes of fire. Darkness came, and a flash of brilliant light.
Araevin opened his eyes, and found himself standing in a wondrous and terrible garden. Walls of perfect white stone, graced by elegant arches, seemed to wall out some place of infernal terror. Brutal red firelight shone through the gaps, and the sky overhead was a sickly yellow-brown, streaked with columns of toxic smoke. The garden was home to scores of exotic plants and stunningly colorful blossoms, but they were alive and predatory, slow-moving things that writhed like serpents and dripped venom from their delicate structures. The golden fountain showed a marvelous sculpted scene of elf maidens and dancing satyrs, yet on a closer look the maidens' faces gaped with terror and the satyrs were scaly devils.
A flicker of light caught his eye, and he turned to look. From a soft sparkle of lavender a handsome sun elf stepped into the garden, appearing from the air itself. He was a regal fellow, tall and broad-shouldered, and he wore long crimson robes with a shorter vestment of gold-embroidered black over his torso. His face was sharp-featured, and his eyes were a startling, powerful green in color.
"Well," he said, his voice lilting with sinister beauty. "You are not what I expected. Who are you?"
Araevin steeled himself, determined not to show his dread, and replied, "I am Araevin Teshurr. Who are you?"
"I am Saelethil Dlardrageth. Or at least, a facsimile of him-me. I am the Nightstar."
"What is this place?"
"I am holding your mind within mine, as I assay you. Of course, your body still holds me in its hand." Saelethil paced nearer, his hands clasped before him, a sinister smile on his face. "I have taken the liberty of examining your predicament, at least as you perceive it. I am rather astonished to find that five millennia have passed, while I waited in Ithraides* prison. Saelethil did not-that is, I did not-anticipate this turn of events. If he had, I would know better what to do with you."
"If you mean to destroy me, then get on with it. I have had enough of bantering with daemonfey."
"Destroy you? Why, it's a lovely offer, but I am afraid I cannot oblige."
Araevin narrowed his eyes and studied the strange apparition more closely.
"I thought selukiira destroyed those unfit for their use," Araevin said.
"Of course I would do that. However, you are not unfit," Saelethil replied. His smirk faded a bit, and his eyes darkened with ire. "My purpose, as Saelethil himself inscribed it within me, is to teach sun elves of House Dlardrageth the secrets of Aryvandaar's high magic, provided they are sufficiently skilled in the study of magic to comprehend such things. You are a mage whose skill, while modest, still falls within acceptable limits. Therefore, I am not to destroy you."
"But I am not a Dlardrageth," Araevin replied, even as he wondered how hard he ought to argue that point with the Nightstar.
Saelethil laughed darkly and said, "Well, you may think you are not, but evidently you are. I have an infallible sense for this, and cannot be mistaken."
Could it be true? Araevin wondered. He thought back to what he knew of his ancestors… and he recalled his kinship to Elorfindar Floshin. Elorfindar and he shared an ancestor, a Floshin. And House Floshin had been one of the Houses of ancient Siluvanede, a House whose name was claimed by some among the fey'ri.
"I am a Floshin," he mumbled.
"That does not make you a Dlardrageth," Saelethil observed. "However, I would guess that one of my family chose to favor one of the Floshins with a child. The Floshins served us long and well, after all. Your heritage likely derives from such a dalliance." The cruel sun elf shook his head. "I was not nearly specific enough when I created the descriptions of who could use this device. Of course, I had no idea that five thousand years and dozens of generations would pass, allowing Dlardrageth blood to surface in some unexpected places."
"If I am a Dlardrageth, then how did I manage to unlock Ithraides' telkiira or gain access to this chamber?" Araevin asked. "These things were locked against the daemonfey."
Saelethil pursed his lips in displeasure and said, "Take up that question with Ithraides' shade, not mine. If I were to guess, I would suppose that his defenses were designed to hinder those with the stain of evil marking their souls. Your high and useless morals likely met the stodgy old bastard's approval."
Araevin closed his eyes and laughed bitterly.
"So I represent the one contradiction that neither you nor Ithraides foresaw," he said, "a Dlardrageth free of the supernatural evil of the rest of the House. Had I been evil, I never could have found this place. Had I not been a Dlardrageth, I never could have survived it."
"The irony overwhelms me," Saelethil said, grimacing.
"So, what now?"
"What now?" Saelethil repeated. He fixed his emerald eyes on Araevin, and a cruel smile grew slowly on his features. "What now? Now, my weak-minded bastard whelp who happens to be blessed with a genealogy you do not appreciate or deserve, I am going to do what I was made to do and instruct you in the things that Saelethil wished to see preserved. And well see if you are Dlardrageth enough to survive the scars I'm going to sear into your soul."