He made for the thunderous chant. Raidon was more than competent enough to deal with a big dog, however much shadows empowered it.
Japheth hustled, but didn’t hurtle forward headlong; he didn’t want to run full tilt into a jutting boulder. The haze was thinning. Was the dust settling? And why was Malyanna pulverizing stone in the first place? He’d see soon enough.
Then the woman’s voice rang out speaking … Elvish. He knew the fey tongue well enough, though he was rusty. “Where is the Key of Stars, Carnis?” she said.
Who was Carnis? Japheth wondered.
The warlock increased his pace. He was close; he could see the hilltop silhouetted above him, and the broken remnants of the colossal tree, by the pillar of light that still played over the area.
Something hit Japheth across his face. Streaks of light and pain crazed his senses.
His cloak translated him away from a flurry of follow-up blows that cracked the air where he’d been standing. Had the monk gone berserk and attacked him again?
Japheth appeared a dozen paces back in the settling cloud where the haze was thicker. He reeled, but caught himself on the side of boulder covered in dead, flaking lichen.
“You mind-bent fool …,” he said before he realized the man who’d just attacked him wasn’t Raidon.
First, his attacker was human, not a half-elf. Where Raidon’s hair was black, the human’s head sported a carroty mass of hair. He wore a black robe belted at the waist, not a silk jacket and pants as his friend preferred. The man had bare arms, and the tattoo of some kind of hunting cat curled down one arm.
The man stood with his legs set apart and bent slightly at the knees, with both hands half raised, ready to deflect an attack or launch one. He scanned the periphery of the dispersing dust. Japheth took a moment to regain his breath, but the man’s head swiveled to face the warlock. The man’s pupils were slender splinters, as piercing as a cat’s. Or a demon’s.
“Where’d you come from?” said Japheth. The man sprinted for the warlock.
“Caiphon, unfurl your stairs!” Japheth called out.
Wind shrieked in his ears and bore him upward, even as his form faded into invisibility. From his perspective, he ascended a wavering staircase of indescribable colors. A pseudo-landscape tried to unfold around him, attempting to displace the hilltop, at least in his mind’s eye, but Japheth concentrated on keeping his attention firmly planted in reality.
The enemy monk’s charge petered out before he reached the spot where Japheth had stood moments earlier. The man scanned the periphery of the dust again, as he’d done earlier to spy the warlock with his catlike gaze. For the moment, the man didn’t think to look up.
Japheth was grateful to evade him. He must be Malyanna’s defender. It gave Japheth a chance to see what was happening. But he couldn’t stay on Caiphon’s stairs too long. Already something shuddered on the pseudo-horizon of the illusory world. It was-
He wrenched his eyes back to the enemy monk. The man was circling outward, but still seemed unaware of Japheth hovering overhead. The warlock glided forward through the air, toward the tree … which was now a stump! The “fingers” had all broken away. He was high enough to see what occurred on its surface.
Japheth saw the eladrin noble was there. A litter of stones and dust spilled away down the opposite side of the hill, away from the devastated ruins of the tree. Malyanna crouched at the stump’s center, before the sculpture of a nightmare-half man, half aboleth, or something worse. It was chipped and broken, and scorched nearly black under the beam of coruscating light that speared it.
“I … am dead. I am not here,” said the thing. It sounded like dried leaves blowing and scraping across bone.
“Very perceptive, Carnis,” replied Malyanna. “You’re only a shell of what Carnis once was. And animated at some cost, to be blunt, and only for a brief few heartbeats. I don’t have time to explain, husk of my old mentor. Where is the Key of Stars? By the power of the Far Manifold, you must tell me!”
Japheth drifted closer.
The half-petrified thing’s head moved to meet the warlock’s gaze.
Its eyes were stone cinders. In them the warlock saw the death of worlds unending. Japheth stumbled and nearly fell out of the sky.
The thing’s regard ground back to Malyanna. “One of the Seven Keys, one of the few to survive, is clutched in my hand, as it has been through all the long centuries of my captivity …,” it said.
The illusory wind generated by Japheth’s spell shrieked with renewed vigor. He strained to hear more … but couldn’t make out any more words. But he’d heard enough. The thing had a Key of Stars, one of seven?
He saw the eladrin raise a hand and execute a simple gesture.
Suddenly the black mastiff was at her side! Its ability to step through shadow exceeded even the powers of his stolen cloak. Speaking of which … Was the Lord of Bats lurking nearby, ready to grab him? Neifion probably wouldn’t stray too far from his ally. But the longer the Lord of Bats stayed out of sight, the better.
A black orb rose over the horizon-No, it was the false horizon of his spell. The orb wasn’t real either, but … He screamed upon seeing its indescribable face. Pain lanced his temples, and he tumbled downward as he frantically dismissed the “invisibility.”
Japheth fell out of the air in a graceless heap. Somehow, he managed to land without breaking his leg.
The warlock resisted an urge to retch. At least he was fully back in reality, thank the Nine. He looked up; the enemy monk stood over him. The man regarded Japheth’s splayed form, surprised at the warlock’s sudden awkward reappearance.
“Hail,” Japheth said, as he silently urged his cloak to translate him backward as far as it was capable.
Apparently his cloak was just as dazed as he was, as it failed to do more than flutter.
“We’re leaving,” the man said. “Malyanna has described you to me, Japheth. Do not pursue us, or you will be consumed.”
Japheth waited for an attack. When none came, he carefully stood. The man just watched him, his face impassive.
“Are you a stooge of Malyanna’s?” Japheth asked. “Why are you talking to me?”
“My name is Taal,” the monk replied. “I am oath-bound to serve the will of the Lady of Winter’s Peace that stands at Forever’s Edge.”
Japheth blinked. “Forever’s Edge?” he repeated.
“The fey echo of the world has a periphery,” Taal said. “Beyond that rim, the void is a window into the world that must be ceaselessly guarded. Malyanna was one of those guardians, before she was corrupted by what watched beyond.”
The names and concepts ran through Japheth’s head, but he’d never heard of them before. “You speak in riddles,” the warlock said.
“I speak the truth.”
Japheth stared closely at his face, trying to read the man’s intentions. Why was the enemy monk volunteering information when he should be trying to kill Malyanna’s foes? The man’s expression remained studiously blank.
Taal glanced away from Japheth. “Your friend approaches,” he said. “Besides, I expect Malyanna has finished preparing the Traitor for transport. It has the Key she seeks. If I see you again, I will slay you. Though Neifion will likely claim your death as his prerogative; he hunts you still. Failing either of those fates, when Malyanna unlocks the Far Manifold, you will certainly die, as will most creatures of this world.”
The man turned and sprinted to the base of the stump and then up it as if it were level ground. Japheth couldn’t see the broken top of the tree any more, as he no longer “stood” on Caiphon’s stairs.
The warlock was confused. Not only had Taal warned that the Lord of Bats yet hunted Japheth, the man had named where the eladrin was based, and told that she had her Key of Stars. Was the man an incompetent? Or-
Raidon flashed past Japheth without a word, following Taal’s earlier path to the stump.
Japheth tried to shake off the lingering stupor of his last spell and called on his cloak.