No, the auguries had been clear about what would happen if he succumbed to that temptation. She'd turn on him. Then he'd be forced to cut her down with Nis. She didn't have the breadth of imagination to understand he did what he did for a reason. All the atrocities he would commit, all the lies he would tell, all the lives that had to be expended were required if apocalypse were to be prevented. If his vision of the future containing the awful soaring city was to be foiled, he could do nothing else.
Telarian closed his eyes and briefly saw the glyph-scribed obelisk wrapped in eternal storm, hollowed and inhabited by slime encrusted creatures whose hunger could never be sated, the city that heralded a change so extreme nothing would be the same ever again.
He shook the tendrils of the vision clear of his mind's eye. Not now.
"Cynosure?" Silence followed. Just checking.
Without Stardeep's mind to guide him, he didn't know which functions to manually access to locate Delphe. Even if he guessed properly, he wasn't particularly adept at manually managing instant transfers. He hoped she wasn't in the Throat overlooking the Well; then he'd have no choice but to trust his skill—
Or you could allow me to manage the transfer, offered Nis. Telarian looked down and saw his hand absentmindedly draped on Nis's pommel. Where were his gloves? No matter.
"Perhaps I shall," muttered Telarian. Time was of the essence. Who knew what the swordswoman was doing beyond the Causeway? With the Causeway Gate sealed and Cynosure unavailable to relay external events, he was blind. Time to return control of the situation to his own hand. Like Nis, Angul was indispensable to his world-saving plan.
Telarian left his room. Tardoun Hall curved into dimness to the left and right, the friezes intricately carved onto the facing walls blurring into obscurity. He'd always hated the carvings.
As he walked, the unusual quiet cloaking the hall seeped into his awareness. Normally a constant susurrus of bangs, clicks, and whistles bled from the chamber where Cynosure Prime was housed. Not now.
Silence reigned because the idol was asleep, of course. It was pulled back into its original self, alone with its thoughts.
He paused. Now that he thought of it, perhaps it would be prudent to confer with the disconnected construct before he talked with Delphe. He was sure all traces of his interference with the sentient object were hidden, most of all from Cynosure itself, but it wouldn't hurt to check.
He started forward down the curving corridor, but stopped short of his destination at double doors that opened onto Cynosure Prime's chamber. Each was carved with a great white tree bordered in cerulean.
He threw wide the doors and entered.
The chamber was a great vault filled with hulking, dimly glowing rectangular objects. Most protruded from the floor, but some stuck out from the walls and several hung from the ceiling. Ancient magical script glimmered across the face of each shape; the source of each object's glow was this script-born light. Cords extended from each stone shape, some bulky and metallic, others thin, fleshy, and moist. The cords trailed away from the blocks and were gathered in thick bundles, suspended from the high ceiling.
Telarian walked to the center of the chamber, following the fattest cord bundle to its nexus: a great humanoid shape standing in darkness. The cords plunged onto the shape on every side, as if catching the figure in a great web. But it was not caught—quite the opposite. The many connections offered transcendence. For this shape was Cynosure Prime, the artificial entity that served as Stardeep's sleepless warden. Normally, the cords pulsed with light, indicating the distribution of the construct's mind across the citadel. Their dullness revealed the idol's mind was, after centuries, reduced to the single node before him.
Cynosure Prime was the shape the construct had used upon first entering Stardeep, before the incorporation of its mind into the very fabric of the dungeon stronghold. Despite the construct's diminishment, Prime remained an immense humanoid forged of crystal, stone, iron, and more exotic components, now rusted, pitted, streaked, and stained. Standing nearly thirty feet tall, its dimly shining scarlet eyes calmly observed the approaching Keeper. A design was fused onto its metallic chest, unblemished by time—The Cerulean Sign.
Delphe stood at the construct's feet.
The diviner caught his breath as she turned and saw him. He smoothed his features—quickly enough, he hoped, to hide his consternation.
She said, "Telarian. Just the man I wanted to see."
"Ah, um . .. Delphe! You surprised me!"
"My apologies." She continued looking at him, her head cocked to one side.
Telarian's face grew warm. He spoke, "After our talk, this is the last place I expected to find you."
She nodded and said, "I thought more about your arguments. Perhaps you had the right of it."
"My argument?" The diviner's mind swirled, his surprise muddling his ability to concentrate. He resisted the urge to grasp Nis's hilt.
"You argued Cynosure's reconnection was vital. I'm afraid I put you off. But the more time I spend in the Well, the more I realize the task of sole wardenship is beyond me—no spell I erect in my absence can hold a candle to Cynosure's constant surveillance."
"Of course," exclaimed Telarian. In fact, he'd argued from that point of view, though his hidden goal was to reconnect Cynosure so he could open the Causeway Gate without alerting Delphe. Without Cynosure, revealing the Causeway required a mutual effort from both Keepers. He'd prefer not to answer her pointed questions if he made such a request.
"So," he continued, "shall we reintroduce Cynosure to Stardeep?"
"First," she said, turning her gaze back to the stony figure, "I must satisfy myself that its mind is not touched by corruption."
"Right, right. And what have you found?"
The massive form of Cynosure Prime shifted its weight, ever so slightly, as it fixed its granite visage on Telarian. The construct spoke, its voice resonant and sure. "Delphe has riddled me with questions, and we've discovered I remain inviolate."
"That's a relief—"
"However," continued the smooth voice of the construct, "we suspect some of the outlying nodes have been partly compromised."
They knew! He managed to avoid flinching. Were they waiting for him to bolt, confess, or attack?
"Compromised?" Telarian inquired. Grab the blade and end this—no. He didn't know if Nis could stand before Cynosure's original avatar.
Delphe said, "It is the only conclusion that fits all the criteria. Thankfully, the avatar poised above the Well seems to be untouched."
True enough, thought Telarian guiltily. Most of Cynosure's homunculi scattered about the dungeon were too visible, too open to scrutiny by Cynosure itself. He recalled his covert interactions with Cynosure's most vulnerable node: a miniature statue carved of jade currently hidden at the bottom of a silver chest in his quarters.
Without so much as the ability to articulate its limbs, the jade sculpture was merely a handspan in length. The ancient statuette was a prototype created to test the possibility of adopting Cynosure as Stardeep's warden mind. When perusing the oldest documents in the archive, Telarian had stumbled across the reference. Sure enough, he'd found a proto-node in the dusty, cryptlike recesses of the repository. With his divinatory craft, he had soon determined how to inject the sculpture back into Cynosure's mental loop as a fully functioning node. Functioning save for a lack of wards against magical manipulations. Through this tiny flawed foothold, Telarian had begun to subvert the entire distributed intelligence of Stardeep, node by node.