After traveling for what seemed like a quarter hour, Japheth stopped.
“What is it?” asked Raidon.
“We’re hardly getting any closer,” the warlock replied. “I don’t understand it. It’s as if she’s moving just enough to stay ahead of us … no, that’s not it. It’s like she’s behind some sort of veil.”
“If Malyanna is looking for Stardeep, she could well be behind ‘a veil’ as you say; she could be in the Feywild,” said Raidon. “Stardeep lays in a splinter of Sildeyuir, itself a fragment of ancient Faerie. With the Feywild’s return, Sildeyuir, and perhaps the prison complex of the Keepers, was reabsorbed, and not gently.”
“How do you know that?” asked Japheth. “Sounds sort of esoteric for someone like …” He trailed off, but let his comment stand without apology.
“You know I bear the Cerulean Sign and the blade Angul,” Raidon said. “Is it really a surprise I know something of what has occurred here, where the Keepers sheltered?”
“I suppose not.”
“Before I found you in Gethshemeth’s lair, I was in communication with the last remnant of Stardeep; a sentient golem named Cynosure. It was Cynosure that transferred me across the face of Faerun more than once, first to collect Angul, then to the island where we met.”
“So this Cynosure-it’s in Stardeep?” said Japheth. “It sounds like a useful ally. Are you talking to it now?”
“No, Cynosure is gone,” replied Raidon. “It used up the last stores of its endowed life to get me to the isle, so I could sunder the Dreamheart before the Eldest woke.”
Japheth thought back to that subterranean cavern and winced. Stealing the relic, and thus preventing Raidon from concluding his quest had been his only option. But of course the monk had never forgiven him for what he’d done. Were the warlock in Raidon’s place, he’d probably feel the same way.
It was a bit unsettling to travel alone with a man who’d just tried to kill you the day before.
Japheth cleared his throat. “Right!” he said. “So you’re saying that if we find a way to step over into the Feywild, I could trace Malyanna better?”
“It could be.”
The warlock pursed his lips, considering.
Raidon said, “This forest is rife with portals into what was once Sildeyuir, though Cynosure indicated many of them were likely contaminated with spellplague.”
“More than likely; it’s a certainty,” said Japheth. “I can sense it, you know. Pockets of spellplague. Cynosure was right. It’s like a battlefield through here, scattered with dead and twisted fragments of the old Weave.”
Raidon narrowed his eyes, glanced around, then shook his head. “You can sense it? I don’t detect anything,” he said.
“Really?” said Japheth. “Trust me, we’ve passed some nasty bits I steered us around.”
“I don’t doubt it,” replied Raidon. “Most of my abilities are manifestations of the power of my mind over my body. Perhaps spellplague doesn’t pull at me like it does a spellcaster. When the Year of Blue Fire found me, it didn’t like my taste, and spit me out, though not without consequence.”
Japheth’s eyes dropped to the spellscar on the half-elf’s upper chest.
“You were lucky to get off so light,” said the warlock.
The monk made no reaction.
“Anyway, we should head back to the last concentration of spellplague I noticed,” Japheth said. “It was big. Sometimes such sharp concentrations indicate the presence of an old portal.”
They backtracked. First there was a smell of sour oranges, but soon enough, the revolting odor was turning the warlock’s stomach again. It put Japheth in mind of an undead whose flesh was nearly sloughed off. In their case, though, it was the world’s facade ready to fall away.
They skirted the bole of a large, tree that stood dead center in the spellplague pocket.
In a hollow between two of the tree’s massive roots, a sinkhole created a natural stair that apparently provided an entrance into the forest’s understory down steps of dead roots, boulders, and raw earth. Another root curled over the top of the hollow, creating a natural lintel.
Japheth advanced, one hand extended before him. When his boot heel touched the first rocky step, the “lintel” and the hollow beyond it burst into blue flame. A streamer of fire separated from the blaze and reached for him.
Japheth yelled and threw himself back. His cloak, sensing his desire to escape, automatically tried to pull him into its protective embrace.
Like the head of a striking cobra, the streamer of spellplague lunged. It speared Japheth through the gut and retracted, pulling him through the arch and in an explosion of blue flame.
Raidon leaped for the trailing hem of the warlock’s cloak. His fingers brushed the fabric, but it jerked away like a live thing.
The filament of fire retracted, and Japheth disappeared in sapphire light. The Sign on Raidon’s chest tingled in sympathy.
The monk’s unsuccessful leap put him on the lip of the hollow.
The light of the roused spellplague pocket danced before him. Through it he saw past the arch to the hollow’s far wall. The warlock was not inside the tree.
A disconcerting sense of loss swept over Raidon.
Had Japheth found an active portal into the Feywild, or had he simply been dissolved by the roused plague? Dissolved, like the people in the trade caravan taken by the fire during the Year of Blue Fire. Just like Hadyn, the youth who’d died trying to gain a spellscar in the Plaguewrought Lands. Just like …
He wrenched his mind from the trap of contemplating the death of his adopted daughter.
Instead, Raidon made fists capable of breaking stone. But no foes offered themselves for him to sate his urge to hurt something.
Angul murmured and shifted on his back, as if imploring the monk to take some foolhardy action anyhow.
He forced his hands open. He had to think, and not let emotion channel his decisions-especially the part of himself that hoped the warlock really was dead, burned to ash by remnant wild magic. It would be a fitting punishment for the man responsible for keeping the threat of the Eldest alive.
Only one way to find out what had really happened. He would have to pass through the natural arch himself.
“So be it,” he said. He’d survived contact with spellplague on more than one occasion. Perhaps he had developed resistance. He touched the Sign on his chest. Once more the image of his mother came to him, stronger than ever.
Not a bad thought to go out on, he thought, and walked into the hollow through a screen of flame.
Warmth brushed his skin, like the sun’s caress on a clear day. Colors, mostly blue, swirled before his eyes. One more step, and he was someplace else.
The scent of cedar and loam sharpened. The air was cooler too. It was like a draft of cold water on a hot day, refreshing and bracing, and just slightly intoxicating.
He was still surrounded by forest, but one whose majesty exceeded the Yuirwood in every way. The trunks here were massive. They marched away like pillars in an emperor’s throne room whose lofty ceiling was a canopy of mists, leaves, and dancing firefly lights.
He stood on a granite step draped in a fall of autumn colors. A nimbus of blue fire played at its periphery. Japheth sprawled half on, half off the platform. The warlock wasn’t moving, and smoke curled up from inside his cloak. Despite everything, Raidon was relieved to see his companion still in one piece.
The half-elf bent and placed a finger along the fallen man’s neck. He detected a pulse, slow and steady. Raidon pulled Japheth all the way onto the platform so that his feet weren’t dangling over the residual tongues of blue flame. As far as he could discern, the warlock hadn’t suffered any obvious burns from the fire. Nor could he discover any sign of a spellscar. Maybe the warlock has passed through the portal too quickly to be affected. On the other hand, sometimes spellscars took time to manifest …