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“I grew up on stories of the Forest Monarchs,” she said. “Like the Golden Tree of Dawn that clutched the sun in its boughs and whose leaves split the light into creation’s prism …”

“Sounds beautiful,” he replied.

“Yes …”

She shrugged and shook her head. “But that was before I found the strength the Far Manifold offers,” she said. Her face lost the softness of reminiscence. Had it been there at all?

The great dog brushed her flank, then bounded away back down the slope, its nose to the ground. Taal doubted it’d flush any game in the dead and decaying pocket world.

Malyanna reached for the tree. Before her fingers could touch it, a spark of cerulean fire leaped the distance, like static discharge. She cried out as a wave of ice materialized from the air and pushed her away from the tree’s rigid surface.

Taal dropped into his ready stance, his oath tugging him to protect the Lady of Winter’s Peace. But how could he defend her from a petrified tree?

Malyanna examined her hand.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded. The ice shield she’d reflexively conjured steamed away. “Residual charge of Keeper warding fire,” she said. “This Monarch was an embodiment of it, most likely … but its energies are spent.”

“Spent on what?” Taal said.

“Unless I miss my guess, capturing that which attempted to flee Stardeep,” she replied.

They traced the periphery of the gnarled tree until they came to a place where the contorted, squeezed branches offered a gap wide enough to serve as passage inward, toward the heart of the cyst the tree clutched.

Malyanna bowed her head and muttered a few words whose meaning evaded Taal’s understanding like fish darting away from questing hands. When she finished, she stood straighter and nodded at him.

He preceded her into the opening. The fissure tapered, constricting more and more as he went. Finally he was forced to crawl. The stone-hard bark abraded his knees.

The faintest glimmer of blue light danced somewhere ahead. It was enough for Taal to see that the gap narrowed even further. Dropping to his stomach, he squirmed forward. He was relieved to finally emerge into a larger space.

The curling branches of the petrified Monarch formed a cathedral-like cavity of stone: the heart of the cyst. A figure hung above Taal, caught at the apex of the cavity. It was the source of the blue light. A male elf or perhaps an eladrin … at least from the waist up. A forest of sinuous tentacles splayed from where the man’s hips should have been. Most were dozens of feet long. Grasping tree branches and reaching tentacles were an interwoven mess. He could well imagine how the Monarch’s woody limbs had snatched the horror out of the air and wrapped it within the tree’s confining embrace.

And, then, apparently, it had sacrificed its own life by petrifying itself and its captive, ensuring the Traitor would never break the trust of the Keepers.

Malyanna squirmed into the cyst. Her eyes fastened on the hybrid horror held above them.

“Poor Carnis,” she said.

“It’s really him?” Taal asked.

“After all these years, I never thought to see him again.”

“Do … you mean to free him?”

“No!” she said, laughing. “He had his time, and failed. Besides, look at him. He allowed the influence to have its way with him, warping his body in return for easy power. Do not doubt that his mind was similarly twisted. Moreover, he is dead.”

“You could bring him back, in some form, if you wanted,” Taal said, knowing he was baiting her, but his oath allowed him that much.

“From this,” she said, waving her hands to encompass the entirety of the stone cyst, “there is no coming back.”

“Then what use was our trip to this dead-end dimension?” asked Taal.

“Carnis’s spirit may be fled or shattered, but his remains can still be persuaded to give up his secrets.”

“What shall I do?”

“Join Tamur outside and defend the Monarch’s corpse.”

Before he could ask from what, his totem growled. Something from the world had followed them.

“Very well, my lady,” Taal said. “I sense someone has come calling. I’ll deal with them.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

Feywild Splinter (Stardeep)

Japheth’s cloak unfolded like the wings of a soaring hawk. Where it touched, a swarming, glowing moth disappeared, pulled into the realm of darkness that lived in its folds.

The path that split the bank of flapping oversized insects had looked navigable. But as the blood staining Raidon’s forearm attested, the boundaries were not constant, and the moth wings were as sharp as swords.

The monk leaped and spun, swatting moths from the air and stamping them straight into the earth. He was amazingly proficient at avoiding the wings, but a few cut him nonetheless.

“They’re not alive,” Japheth said. “They’re constructs of spiritual energy.”

The monk didn’t answer; he continued down the wavering lane. Japheth realized the lane wasn’t so much a breach in the moths’ ranks as a bridge created by his and Raidon’s mere presence. Sure, a bridge fraught with the possibility of severed limbs, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Raidon sped ahead and exited the inconstant corridor. A moment later Japheth joined him and looked around the slope of a dreary hillside.

A jumble of ruins lay immediately before them. The monk was gazing at them with eyes that, just perhaps, conveyed sorrow.

The thread of power Japheth followed shuddered and pulled. He craned his neck back and looked up the barrowlike incline. Darkness shrouded the summit, but he knew his quarry was that way.

Japheth pointed. “Malyanna is close, up on top of this hill,” he said. “And she’s started some kind of massive spell or ritual!”

Raidon’s eyes narrowed. The design on his chest brightened. “I feel it too,” he said. “If she’s still here, she must believe she can find the information she seeks.”

The monk hauled Angul forth. The blade flared with cerulean fire. His legs were a blur as he raced away from Japheth up the slope.

“Wait!” the warlock yelled. The monk didn’t slacken his pace.

Japheth cursed and followed. He couldn’t hope to match the half-elf’s speed, but he could take shortcuts here and there through his cloak.

An explosion burst on the summit. The hill shuddered, and Japheth stumbled. A shaft of shimmering purple light shot into the air, pulsing with an energy he was becoming intimately familiar with. It was the power of the stars as embodied by his new pact. He gasped as vigor warmed his skin.

The illumination revealed a tree of incredible proportions crowning the hilltop. Its branches, closed like a fist when he had first glimpsed them, were moving. They uncurled like colossal fingers reluctantly giving up their grip on something precious. The clamor of splintering stone boomed down the hillside. White dust billowed up from the unfurling tree, hiding it again in a purple-tinged haze.

Japheth spied the monk, well ahead of him. Raidon dashed for the spreading, tumbling cloud of stone dust. Just before he reached it, a black dog leaped from a boulder’s shadow and slammed the half-elf to the ground.

A moment later, a billowing wave of white fog enveloped both the monk and the hound.

“By the Nine!” Japheth swore.

The noise ceased. In its place Japheth heard chanting. It was a woman’s voice, but magnified by magic so palpable each word struck him like a slap. He recognized the voice as Malyanna’s.

Then he, too, was enveloped in the white fog.

It was a fine dust of pulverized stone. Japheth coughed, and blinked tiny specks from his eyes. He could see only a couple feet inside the spreading cloud. But he could still hear the eladrin’s chant, and the bay of a hunting mastiff, off to his left.