“No need for sorrow,” he said to Anusha. “You’re not the author of this catastrophe. You have only my gratitude for putting all the pieces together when I was slow to do so.”
Japheth approached. The warlock was haggard and drawn, and blood oozed from several small cuts. Behind him came Yeva, dented so much her joints were partly seized. And following all of them trudged the green scaled demon.
Raidon tensed at the sight of the monster. “Hold, demon!” he said.
The creature paused, then raised a huge finger as if asking for a moment. It reached its other hand into a crevice in its demonic flesh. Raidon blanched, but what came out was merely a jumble of loose clothing. The creature plucked a much-battered hat from the clutter and mashed it onto its misshapen head.
“Thoster?” said the monk.
“Yes,” replied a voice an octave deeper than Thoster’s. “I hope I can figure out how to change back, eh?”
Raidon blinked.
Anusha and Japheth embraced.
“We failed,” the warlock said.
“No,” said Yeva. “There’s one more thing to try.”
Anusha stepped from the warlock’s arms. “Raidon’s going to try his Cerulean Sign on the Far Manifold to relock it,” she said. “It is the essence of a Key of Stars. But it means he’ll probably …” She couldn’t finish.
Realization dawned on Japheth’s face. “Oh,” he said.
Shards of broken crystal rained down on them, slick with unearthly goo.
“If you’ve got something to try, better do it now, Raidon,” Thoster said. “The Far Manifold ain’t going to last much longer. It’s been an honor knowing you. And who knows? Could be, you’ll survive!”
The aberrations remaining atop the Citadel of the Outer Void ignored the mortals; they were mesmerized by the multiplying lens fractures, the oozes and slimes forcing their way through those cracks, and the brightening colors behind the disk.
Anusha laid her head against Japheth’s shoulder, but she continued to regard Raidon with tear-bright eyes.
“Go, Raidon, before it’s too late,” she said, the last word fading to a sob.
He nodded, and gazed at each of them in turn. Japheth nodded gravely. The warlock’s eyes were as damp as Anusha’s.
Raidon proffered Angul to Taal, but the blade said, Do not give me up. This shall also be my final task.
“Very well,” the monk said.
Raidon turned to face his destiny.
The lens’s appalling facade was crisscrossed by a thousand tiny lines, like the splintered pane of a window moments before the shards fall out of the frame. The shattering sound of breaking glass was reaching a crescendo.
He saw a girl’s small body dancing across a sandy courtyard, a painted doll clutched to her, her footprints like tiny promises of the adult she should have one day grown to be.
He saw his mother as she’d been when he’d been only a child himself, when she’d kissed him on the head and given him the amulet.
He saw the advent of the Plague of Spells, where that amulet had been seared in blue fire and dissolved, leaving behind only a symbol and a roil of insubstantial glyphs. A symbol that had stitched itself to his flesh.
A symbol that burned on his chest like a cerulean sunrise.
He placed one hand on the Sign … on the Key, and stepped to the crystal face.
With his other hand tight on the hilt, he extended Angul until the blade’s tip rested against the Far Manifold. At the moment of contact, his vision expanded many times, becoming as farseeing as a god’s regard.
Raidon saw the gaping wound in the side of reality, and how the Far Manifold plugged that horrifying puncture. He saw its age, and the manner of its construction. He saw that the barrier’s nearly implausible endurance had been unsecured from its foundation, thanks to Malyanna’s use of her Key.
He understood only one Key remained as part of him, and so was his to use.
Raidon willed the Cerulean Sign to lock the Far Manifold.
A wheel made of a million stars turned, revealing other wheels, both vaster and far smaller, wheels within wheels all turning, part of a cosmic gearworks beyond his ability to grasp. A scream of celestial negation blossomed on the far side of gate, its violence exceeding that of a thousand exploding suns.
The portal was locked, forever.
The wrath of beings older than Lord Ao splashed against the Far side of the Far Manifold. They gibbered and shrieked with harmonies so dire the least tremolo would blast asunder a mountaintop. All for naught. The last Key of Stars had fulfilled its function.
Raidon collapsed.
He lay on his back. His gaze traced up the side of an ice-smooth, unmarred crystal face.
A thin column of white smoke swirled up from his chest, where the Cerulean Sign had tattooed him. It was gone.
He lifted a hand, one finger pointing to the heavens. A sapphire spark like a firefly swirled down from the high air and lit on his finger.
Raidon Kane breathed out his last breath.
The spark lifted into the sky.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Citadel of the Outer Void
Thoster helped wrap Raidon in fabric Anusha formed of dream silk. For all his bulk, he could manipulate objects with surprising delicacy.
“We’ll honor his last wishes,” said Anusha. “We’ll bury him in Faerun, in Nathlekh.”
“No honor is too great for him,” said Japheth. He reached for her hand, and she gave it to him.
“If you would permit it,” said Taal, “I would like to see Raidon laid to rest. If not for his wisdom, I might not have broken Malyanna’s thrall.”
“Of course,” said Anusha. Her voice had gone hoarse. Thoster wondered how that was possible, given that she wasn’t real, but figured now wasn’t the time to ask. The monk’s sacrifice was too fresh. It just wasn’t in him to crack wise.
They left the pristine face of the crystalline disk behind and descended the ziggurat stairs.
An armored capsule lay at the base of the pyramid.
“Time to wake up,” Anusha said, and disappeared. The gold capsule melted away, revealing the same woman, but now she wore sturdy clothes and her hair was pulled back in a fraying braid.
“Good to see you in the flesh again,” said Japheth.
She took his hand.
“The fog returns,” said Yeva, pointing.
The mist rolled back like a typhoon wave of white. The sound of thunder boomed from somewhere across the plain. The fog converged on all sides, until it broke upon the ziggurat, rushed up its sides, and enveloped them.
Except for the sounds of their breathing and footfalls, especially Yeva’s, silence closed around them, quieting the distant clamor.
By all rights, they should be skipping with joy, reflected Thoster. The world had escaped a horrific finale, something so beyond imagining that even the gods had failed to understand the threat and act.
Assuming Raidon’s intercession, and all their actions for that matter, hadn’t been divinely inspired. It was hard to know with gods.
They walked unmolested from the Citadel of the Outer Void and across the befogged plain. The only monster remaining below the haze was himself, Thoster thought.
He recalled the pain of assuming his bulky shape. And, to some extent, the process. He thought he could probably manage it in reverse.
He trailed a little behind the others, dropped his belongings, and put his hypothesis to the test.
He regarded his shadow, and tried to find within it his original shape.
It took all his concentration, and not a little pain, but eventually Thoster found his shape of old. He grunted and collapsed into his pile of clothing. But he was grinning. All the disfiguring scales that had so beleaguered him during the previous months were gone!
Thoster rose, and dressed in his underthings, coat, and boots, and girded his sword at his side. And, most important for last, his hat.