He followed the monk to the deck’s edge. Raidon flipped off and landed on the ground ten feet below as lightly as a grasshopper. The other eladrin who had climbed up to offer their aid descended hand over hand.
Japheth surveyed the scene. Three dozen or so knights remained, some mounted on their griffons. Many had suffered wounds and residual slime, dried and crusted on their armor, from their passage through the void. A few had lost their crystal lances. Their expressions varied between leaden incomprehension and wild amazement.
Not far enough behind them towered Xxiphu, mutely promising defeat to all their plans by its mere existence. The mist mostly hid the rippling runes that cascaded across its face, but the movement still managed to dig furrows in his mind.
The warlock dropped his eyes, fighting the growing hollow in his chest. What were they going to do next?
His wandering eyes noticed something scratched across the ground.
A faint double line creased in the soil not far from the chariot. It was out of place-too regular and artificial in its simple straightness for the chaotic, unworldly realm.
Japheth stepped through his cloak, a single pace, so he stood directly over the grooves. They were harder to see there-he wouldn’t have seen them without the vantage offered by Green Siren’s half-collapsed structure.
“What do you make of these?” he said.
Raidon came over and squatted. He traced the line for several feet. “Something heavy was dragged along the ground here,” he said. “In that direction.” He pointed off into the mist.
“Someone survived the crash!” Japheth said, the hollow in his chest fading before the birth of riotous hope.
“Yes,” agreed Raidon.
“Anusha might still be alive!”
Raidon nodded. “I hope so,” he said.
“Then this is the way we need to go.”
The monk stood. He placed a hand upon his sign and lowered his head. A pulse of blue fire leaped from the sign to his eyes, which blazed cerulean for a moment.
“In that direction lies the greatest wrong,” Raidon said. “But, can you sense, as you did earlier, in what direction we can find Malyanna? She is the one whom we must stop.”
Anger wrinkled Japheth’s brow. What did it matter where the damned crazy eladrin noble was when Anusha could be lying out there in the mist somewhere, dying?
“Japheth?” Raidon said.
The warlock shook his head to clear it. The smell of the place was affecting him, making him irrational, making him forget his earlier resolution. He drew in a steadying breath. He’d have to watch his gut reaction to events. In such a place, they were not reliable feelings.
“Sorry,” Japheth said. “Hold on a moment and allow me to concentrate.”
He called on his pact, and rested mental hands on the celestial lines of power that connected him to it. The few times he’d done it before, he’d sensed a hidden complexity behind the shifting lines. Though subtle, he’d teased out meaning in their interaction.
When the pattern resolved itself, he gasped. The intricacy of the design, so much clearer, struck him like a blow to the head.
Undulating globes pulsed in elaborate synchrony, breaking apart and forming together again. Other fragments of other spheres and shimmering lines did the same, flowing out beyond the edges of his perspective and back, spawning a chorus of lesser glimmers. He discerned flutelike notes echoing in a harmony of incredible texture. The fluctuating, iridescent, monstrous design danced before him, a rapture of chaos and order in one indefinable whole, straining to open.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground. The left side of his face tingled and felt slightly warm. Raidon stood over him, his expression concerned.
“What was that all about?” asked the monk.
“Um … I don’t know,” said Japheth. “Did you hit me?”
“Only to get your attention,” replied Raidon.
Japheth reached to his belt for the implement given him by Erunyauve. It was not there.
“Where’s my rod?” he said.
Raidon bent and picked up two pieces of wood. “You broke it over your knee,” he said. “Right after you started screaming something about the ‘Maw of Acamar.’ That’s when I slapped you.”
Oh, no. “That’s not good,” the warlock said.
“No, it didn’t seem that way to me either,” agreed Raidon.
“Or me!” said Dayereth, who had remained in the chariot. “I’m the one who told Raidon to break you free of your trance.”
Japheth got to his feet, rubbing his jaw. He frowned at the wizard, but swallowed the retort that rested on his lips.
“I’m sorry about that display,” he said instead. “Apparently, it’s dangerous for me here. Without the Rod of Silvanus, I …” Without the item he’d earlier called his anchor, he was probably doomed.
The monk allowed the two halves of the broken implement to fall to the ground. He chewed his lip a moment, then removed the gloves his mother had given him. “Take these-they are eladrin-made, like the rod,” he said. “Maybe they can remind you of your sanity when dark powers attempt to overwhelm you.”
“I can’t take your gloves!” said Japheth.
“Why not? I still have my mother’s first, most important gift,” Raidon said, indicating his spellscar. “I don’t need these gloves. You do. And we need you too.”
Japheth accepted the gauntlets and drew them on. A balm of stillness immediately came over him, stifling the distant music, and rendering the scents less familiar and enticing.
The doom he’d foreseen for himself receded slightly.
“You’ve been awful kind to me, Raidon,” the warlock said. “I remember not too long ago you coming after me with your Blade Cerulean.”
The monk cocked his head. “I have … found some peace since then,” he said. “I’m seeing things differently. I understand why you did what you did when you took off with the Dreamheart. All that’s important now is that you, like I, and all these knights, are pledged to stop Malyanna.”
“Speaking of which,” Japheth said, “Based on what I just experienced, I think she’s that way, in the direction of the furrows. I don’t know where else she would go. Something very powerful lies that way. Something so awful that it dwarfs even the significance of the Eldest.”
“Then we should tarry no longer,” Raidon said.
Japheth bit his lip. If Anusha had gone that way, she was walking into terrible danger.
“Dayereth,” Raidon said, “I want you and the knights to remain here.”
“Here?” replied the wizard. “That sounds like the safer choice, but-”
“Listen!” said Raidon. “Time is no longer on our side. And I’m not asking you to stay behind out of concern for your safety, as if you were children or cowards. I recognize your worth, and your willingness to sacrifice yourself to the cause.”
Japheth saw Raidon was speaking now to all the assembled knights, not merely the eladrin wizard.
The monk continued, “That’s why I need you to stay here. As the largest concentration of newcomers from the natural world, you’ll draw the largest response of defenders to yourself, here. You will give Japheth and I the diversion we need to race after Malyanna without being harassed by aberrations. We need that time to stop her from using the Key.”
Dayereth wiped his brow. “That does make sense,” he said. “We’ll guard your flank. You two knights, there-give these men your griffons!”
“No,” said Raidon, “we won’t deprive you of your mounts-we can go swiftly on our own.”
“Then Madwing shall go with you, at least,” said Dayereth, gesturing to the giant white griffon. The beast so named loosed a hunting cry.
“So be it. Fight well, Knights of the Watch,” said Raidon.
Japheth wanted to say something to lighten the mood, but his own heart was too heavy with anxiety.
And they were off. Raidon and Japheth dashed across the plain, and the hoarfrost griffon paced them overhead.
Just as when they had traveled across the Feywild after visiting Stardeep, native agility and speed propelled Raidon with an amazing swiftness. Japheth couldn’t hope to keep up with the monk, but his cloak made all the difference, allowing him to move a dozen or more feet with each stride.