“The world is hardier than you suspect, mortal,” replied Neifion.
“Is it?” asked Japheth. “The Spellplague hit us only eleven years ago. Toril and its echoes yet shift and shudder from that onslaught. It is now, perhaps more than at any previous time in Faerun’s history, that the entire dimensional edifice could be kicked over and shattered by a determined assault from outside.”
The light of Khirad sparkled in the Lord of Bats’ eyes as he stood. He blinked, and the light failed.
But Neifion didn’t move. His eyes slowly narrowed. “Outside?” he said.
“From beyond all the worlds where people, gods and demons dwell, beyond our concept of time itself,” said Japheth.
“You’re awfully knowledgeable of such esoteric matters for someone so recently pledged to a Lord of Faerie.”
“My pact is with the stars now, Neifion. The association we shared is through. You may hate me, and rightly so-”
“You have my lesser skin, you rat-snuggling bastard.”
Japheth swallowed and continued, “Someone of your intellect must realize seeing me to my grave is a sideshow compared to the threat posed by the waking Sovereignty. I’m trying to stop Malyanna, and you should too. Even if you don’t care about the screams of a world eaten alive by the Far Realm incursion she plans on triggering with her Key, I imagine you are concerned with your own continued survival.”
Neifion laughed. “I swore I’d eat your liver after you bound me with the curse of the Feast Everlasting,” he said. “And I mean to have my cloak back, and a new homunculus in the bargain-fashioned from your flesh. However, you do raise an interesting point to ponder.”
“Malyanna counts on your rage toward me,” said Japheth. “It blinds you to the magnitude of the change she hopes to accomplish.”
The Lord of Bats said, “I wonder …”
The glyph on the archfey’s brow went into spasm. Neifion cried out and clapped a hand to his head.
The glyph transformed, lengthened, and became a green serpent covered in thousands of black, blinking eyes instead of scales. Its tail was a dual-pronged spike, and its head was all mouth and teeth.
It wrapped itself three times around the Lord of Bats’s neck, stabbing with its pronged tail and ravaging Neifion’s face with its maw.
Japheth’s mouth dropped open in surprise.
Neifion’s fingers became talons, and he tore at the creature, trying to pull it from his face. Despite all the Lord of Bats’s strength and fury, the serpent tightened its stranglehold. Its eyes blinked in a syncopated rhythm that instantly stirred nausea in the warlock’s stomach.
Japheth realized the serpent glyph had lain dormant on Neifion, learning the man’s power, all the while becoming inured against it. Malyanna had foreseen the possibility of her ally eventually turning on her.
“Get this thing off me!” Neifion said, his voice a choked whisper.
The warlock shook off his paralysis and invoked the influence of Acamar, a dark and distant star. Crackling black energy shrouded him. A stray bolt speared the serpent, and pulled it off the Lord of Bats in a spray of blood.
The moment the serpent was free of Neifion, a treant fist hurtled down from the canopy and smashed the awful thing into a goopy splatter of green paste.
Japheth and Neifion looked at each other. The bites the serpent had scored on the Lord of Bats’s cheek oozed blood, and red rings of constriction abraded his neck.
“Well?” said the warlock.
“You’re still a dead man, Japheth, don’t think otherwise,” said Neifion.
“But?”
Neifion chuckled. “But you’ve gained a little time with your clever arguments, and timely aid,” he replied. “Still, when we see each other next, watch your back, mortal.”
The archfey leaped upward, his flesh flowing and elongating into a gargantuan bat mid leap. He ascended as quickly as an arrow, then winged west. Japheth lost sight of him as soon as he cleared the hollow.
With the archfey’s departure, the awakened trees settled backward, fading once again into green somnolence.
Japheth turned to Raidon.
The monk was no longer curled on his side. Instead he rested in a lotus position facing Japheth, his eyes open and clear. Wounds marked him, but the man wasn’t inches from death as the warlock had feared.
“I heard what you said to Neifion,” said Raidon.
“Yeah?” said Japheth.
“Yes. About everything and everyone dying if Malyanna has her way.”
“I was trying to convince him I wasn’t his enemy.”
“But what you said-it was still true.”
Japheth nodded.
“Your heart is in the right place, despite your allegiance,” Raidon said. The sword sheathed on the monk’s hip groaned in complaint, but the monk ignored it.
Japheth bit back his initial sarcastic response. If he could find the strength to be diplomatic with Neifion, certainly he could do the same with the monk.
“You care,” the monk said, as if surprised.
“Of course I care, I’d be an idiot not to,” Japheth replied.
The monk nodded thoughtfully.
“How are you doing?” the warlock asked.
“Rebuilding my strength,” Raidon said. “One of Neifion’s awakened trees broke a few bones when it hit me.”
“I saw. Did Angul heal you?”
“No. If I allow it, the lore of Xiang Temple suffices. Though slower, meditation on the healing syllables of my order doesn’t corrode my thoughts like the Blade Cerulean’s impatient power.”
“Ah.”
Raidon smiled. “What I said earlier, about you caring-it inspires me, warlock,” he said. “If you, an addict to hell drugs and ill-considered pacts, can try to put the world before yourself, how can I not attempt the same?”
Japheth frowned. But he nodded. “I hope you can, Raidon,” he said. “Of us all, you are the one, with your Sign and sword, most capable of stopping Malyanna from opening the Far Manifold.”
The warlock held back a final bit of honesty, lest he disrupt Raidon’s equanimity. He hadn’t been entirely candid with Neifion or the monk. Sure, he cared for the world. But he cared for Anusha more. He’d shown that before, when he’d stolen the Dreamheart.
It was only because Anusha had pledged herself to Faerun’s defense that he was here. Had she decided to seek peace in a distant land for the time left to them, leaving some other hero or god to step into the breach, Japheth would have been more than happy to accompany her.
Of course, Anusha wouldn’t be who she was if she hadn’t decided to face the threat of the Sovereignty head on, even though that meant pushing him away. The more he discovered her secret strengths, the more she occupied his thoughts. It was possible she was stronger than he, than Raidon, or really, anyone he knew.
He was proud of her. He adored her.
But he was still hurt. Try as he might, he couldn’t forget how she’d pushed him away.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Watch on Forever’s Edge, Feywild
Everything shattered. Sight fell away like icicles knocked loose from the eaves of the world. Taal was alone in a cocoon of night.
His totem loosed a howl of despair.
Then light returned, a piece at a time, like a puzzle reassembled by a demented god.
He was standing on an eroded stone balcony. Malyanna, the petrified corpse of Carnis, and the shadow hound were with him, though they occupied different positions than before the eladrin had used the Dreamheart. He was slightly misplaced too, and stood appreciably closer to the balcony’s edge then before.
Beyond the balcony’s curb, the Sea of Fallen Stars and the storm-shrouded skies of Faerun were gone. Instead, a great cliff face studded with eladrin watchtowers loomed. They were the final rampart against a gulf of space Taal knew too well, having stared into it for a goodly portion of his adult life. Malyanna had ripped Xxiphu out of Faerun and brought it to the Watch on Forever’s Edge.