Her lips moved, too, but Angul's words were in her mouth. "We do not suffer abominations."
She learned that day that Angul impelled where dry reason faltered. Angul excited where debate and philosophy failed to motivate. With Angul in hand came purpose, exaltation, and the ultimate high of being part of a spectacular moment. A moment in which Angul delivered triumph in the face of insurmountable odds . . .
The screams of the children, as she cut them down, penetrated her blade-given conviction. She paused, wiping blood from her face with the back of one gauntleted hand, her eyes blinking. Abominations . . . ? What in the name of the Well was she doing? These were children! And she had. .. she was . ..
An arrow bloomed in her abdomen. She shrieked, went down on one knee. A girl had run when the others had remained within Kiril's fatal reach. She'd escaped the swords-woman's initial onslaught. But she stopped to loose an arrow, despite the fear trembling her limbs. The half-elf girl pulled another arrow to her bowstring.
Kiril struggled onto both feet, her breath ragged. Angul flared and the ache in her stomach melted. Like moral distractions, pain was a diversion to the glorious certitude Angul burned to dispense. With the pain, her moment of confusion, too, was swept away in cerulean light.
She raised the sword and his blue-white light doubled, then redoubled. Sunrise came early under the branches of Aglarond. Or was it sunset?
Kiril swatted the girl's second arrow out of the air with a twitch of her wrist. The half-elf turned to run. The swordswoman launched Angul through the air as if he were a spear.
Her aim was true.
When all was quiet again, she gathered the bodies and burned them on a pyre. To do so, she sheathed Angul.
Later, she retrieved from the heaped ashes the fire-cleaned skull of the girl, the elf archer, the only one who'd put up any kind of fight. She decided she would bring it back to Stardeep as a trophy, a sign of her vigilance in keeping the hidden dungeon stronghold safe.
As the fire burned down, she resisted drawing her blade again. Instead, she fingered the skull, looking at it, worrying it between her hands. Something was hideously significant about the object she held so tightly. It indicated something portentous, but like a puzzle box, she couldn't solve its significance. She stood, thinking to return down the Causeway before the access failed. But. . .
The longer she avoided contact with the blade, the more the blade's influence waned.
Finally, her captive conscience burst through the final, benumbed layers of Angul's influence.
Kiril screamed, long and loud. She collapsed to her knees, clutching the skull in front of her, her eyes bulging in disbelief. It couldn't be! She hadn't! But the warm, fire-blackened skull in her blood-stained grasp refused to retreat to the phantasmal state she needed it to be.
Then Kiril went insane.
* * * * *
Kiril's voice broke, but she managed to croak, "I slaughtered them."
The elf looked down, tears streaking her cheeks.
Gage whispered, "Damn."
"It broke me. I've been running since then, running from what I did. But I. . ."
". . . you kept the thing. Why?" interjected Gage.
Why hadn't she gotten rid of the sword? At first, she was crazed, incoherent; she couldn't quite recollect what she'd done in the year after she'd slain the children. One thing was certain; she had not returned to Stardeep. By fleeing, she renounced her position as Keeper and her identity as a star elf.
She'd thrown it all away. But Angul, she kept.
Even mad, she couldn't bring herself to cast him away. And now, ten more years, at least, had got behind her.
Aloud, she said, "I couldn't leave Angul behind! He's all I had left of Nangulis! But he's a curse, too, don't I flecking know? And now you tell me Sathra dealt with someone called Nangulis. Impossible! Isn't it? Where is she? I must talk to her." Kiril made to rise, determination firing her eyes.
"Hold on!" Gage reached across the table and put a restraining hand on her shoulder. "After I got hold of the sword and got clear of her vault, she attacked me again. With the blade in hand, I killed her. So, uh .. . sorry. She can't tell you anything because she's out of the picture. But..."
"But?"
"She indicated the fellow she was working for hailed from someplace called Stardeep."
Kiril shook her head, tears again tracing tracks on her face. She said, "Stardeep. After all these years, it reaches out to me."
Slowly mastering herself, the elf considered. The name, the theft, the possibility, however minute, that Nangulis might somehow be among the living again. She couldn't ignore that chance.
"Stardeep has called, and I must answer," she decreed, tears breaking around a sudden unexpected smile.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Stardeep, Epoch Chamber
"Cynosure?" Telarian asked the empty air of the Epoch Chamber.
"Yes?" said the disembodied golem's cultured voice.
"I'm done for now. Connect me to my quarters."
"Very well. Hold still. .."
Telarian waited for the idol to set up the transfer. Cynosure always required a span of moments to process each new point-to-point teleportation in the Outer Bastion. Of course, such tricks were not allowed at all in the Inner Bastion, which contained the Well. That is, they were not normally allowed, but Telarian had been working on contingencies . . .
Just one more thing he'd failed to inform Delphe about. As with everything else, he justified keeping her in the dark on some of his activities because her role in Stardeep was so time consuming. Yet her dedication was futile. Her vigil at the edge of the Well was doomed to failure. He now understood, thanks to his visions, Xxiphu would one day rise whether or not the Traitor gained his freedom.
A blue flash and piercing odor, a moment of disorientation, and Telarian was back in his private room, a few levels above where he'd secreted the doorless Epoch Chamber. His room opened off a common hall in the Inner Bastion.
His unsteady hands found the neck of a wine bottle, then a glass. Not even the finest vintage could withstand neglect, and the wine in the bottle had turned vinegary and rancid. He should have finished it sooner after opening it a few tendays past, but he drank alone these days, and in moderation. Hard to finish a bottle before it turned sour. But his own cussed fastidiousness wouldn't permit him to throw it out and uncork a new one. Waste not, want not.
His thoughts remained on Delphe. For the thousandth time he wondered if perhaps he shouldn't bring her up to date on his preparations. Would she understand the risk they must undertake to avoid the disastrous certainty he had foreseen?
No, he didn't think she would. In fact, she would likely declare him mad with one breath, and disown him with the next.
Madness. In the lonely passage of time between shifts, he sometimes wondered. There might be a tinge of madness to his actions. Then again, madness is what those with limited imaginations called inspiration, imagination, and even revelation.
He knew first hand of places where doctrine had taken firm hold, where free thinkers and visionaries were abhorred. But without revelation, civilization's zenith would yet hunker in caves, drawing stick figures by firelight.
True, some prophets walked too close to the line separating inspiration from crazed imprecation. But the ones remembered as paradigm-changers and world-savers far after the fact were derided by their contemporaries. And though they sometimes faltered and fell, others in their wake benefited from the sacrifice.
Telarian's problem was he couldn't wait for the historians of later ages to acclaim his actions as heroic and necessary. What he had to do in the present, without the context the future would bring, was hard to explain to someone who doubted the effectiveness of divination magic to begin with.