She had only spent a short time in reverie in the last couple days, and her brain fizzed with fatigue. Manually triggering Stardeep's useful but complex transfer function was exhausting. Add to that the stress of worrying about the Traitor while at the same time attempting to evaluate Cynosure's nodes for possible contamination, and the result was a Keeper a hand's span away from collapse.
Delphe mentally tallied her success. She'd checked twenty of the thirty-some partial and complete nodes through which Cynosure's mind normally resonated while he was in Stardeep's command loop. All seemed clean, with no sign of decay, corruption, or tampering. Likewise, Prime itself was a paragon of health. Good progress, but. . .
It would take at least another day to finish checking the rest of the nodes.
She dropped her head into her hands.
"Are you well, Delphe?" Cynosure Prime's deep voice boomed from the darkness.
She lifted her head, tracking slowly up the immense, streaked, and stained form of the sentient idol, and looked into its dimly shining scarlet eyes.
"I fear I'm about to discover the limits of my competence," she admitted.
"Have you finished your trace?"
"No, I am two-thirds complete," she replied.
"Then our progress is positive—why so forlorn?"
"I don't have the strength to finish," said Delphe, slumping further.
"I have been monitoring your progress, and I agree," rumbled the idol. "I have a solution, if you wish to hear it."
She blinked. "Please, share."
"It is not necessary to bring me completely back into the loop in order for me to gain access to a majority of my previous functions. Many of my nodes are redundant. You could drop from the loop the nodes you are uncertain about, then reroute and reintroduce my consciousness to what remains."
Delphe blinked again.
"That... is not a bad idea." She considered Cynosure's words. It was true, now that she allowed her tired mind a moment's contemplation—every one of the focus points serving as nodes were not strictly necessary. She had checked out and passed more than enough nodes to do exactly what the idol suggested. Enough nodes were clean.
At least, clean as far as her abilities could trace. Which was the real worry—what if some insidious error or malign influence lay hidden from her yet, like a cyst in a piece of meat about to be eaten? What if she brought Cynosure back into the loop only to trigger that influence once again?
"Dark the stars, what choice do I have? Cynosure, prepare yourself to be reinvested into Stardeep's control functions."
Delphe pushed herself up and walked to stand directly beneath the towering figure. She grasped her amulet containing the Cerulean Sign and invoked one of its abilities, one of the few still recalled. The same symbol on Cynosure Prime's chest blazed the color of heaven, and the red glow in its eyes flashed once, then faded.
She asked, "Am I speaking to Cynosure Prime, or Cynosure?"
A moment of silence, then, "I am back in the loop, Delphe. Thank you." The voice emerged from the air next to her as if to prove the point.
"And how are you . . . finding the landscape now that you've returned?" The abjurer clutched her amulet, ready to sever the idol's connection with Stardeep at the very first sign of anything untoward.
"I find everything a bit. . . cramped, I suppose is the best way to explain it. But other than some awkwardness, it seems that my access to Stardeep's functions is reestablished. For instance, I note all conditions are ideal in the Well."
Delphe nodded, allowed herself a shard of hope. She said, "Cynosure, please transfer me to the Throat now."
A shiver of discontinuity, and she stood in the mirrored chamber. The glow from up the Well cast her features in flickering orange hues. As usual.
"By the Sign, I'm happy to leave those transfers to you!"
"It is my pleasure, Delphe."
She walked to her glassy command chair and sat.
"Delphe, I have something I'd like to ask you about."
Her heart caught in her throat. Apprehension pitched her voice higher than normal as she said, "Ask away, Cynosure. Is something wrong?"
"Perhaps. As we speak, I am re-acquainting myself with the nodes that have returned to my control, including the statue in the Throat, and those in the Inner Bastion and the Outer, as well as all those in between and underneath. However, I find myself unable to access certain memories stored in the loop."
"Memories?"
"I am unable to access records for specific places and times within Stardeep, beginning some two years ago."
A chill crawled across Delphe's neck. "Is it a corruption?" Did she need to flush Cynosure from Stardeep's control functions once more?
"I am unable to access specific memories because of a command lock. A command lock I wasn't even aware of until you reintroduced me moments ago. Prior to taking me out of the loop, one of the nodes, now inactive, must have been preventing me from noticing. But now the missing records are obvious, and I must admit, unsettling."
"What is the authorization on the command lock?" she asked. Unless the idol itself had experienced some sort of schizophrenic error localized to one of the nodes she'd dropped from the network—
"Keeper Telarian ordered the lock."
It seemed that the entire world dropped a foot.
She started breathing again and said, "Cynosure, listen. I am giving you a counter command. As a Keeper of the Cerulean Sign, I command you to erase those locks and integrate those memories. Now."
Just in case, she keyed her mind, ready to flush Cynosure. Clicking issued from the large statue on the ceiling, then the idol said, "All records are integrated."
"And?"
"Delphe, we have a problem with Telarian."
* * * * *
Delphe sat in her chair, watching a landslide of events unfold that she could scarcely acknowledge. She saw Telarian unearthing an ancient test node from the repository with Cynosure's unsuspecting help, a node that the diviner then used to infiltrate Stardeep's command functions. One of his first actions was ordering Cynosure to keep part of itself private and secret from its larger cognizance, and what's more, from her.
"How . . . why . . . why would he do that?" she murmured as she watched.
She saw Telarian leaving and returning to Stardeep via the Causeway far more often than she'd ever realized. Creeping dread tingled up her spine.
And Delphe witnessed Telarian accessing an ancient space known to the previous Keepers but which appeared on no map she'd ever seen: the fabled armory.
In that dark space, Telarian found a glass vessel containing a wraithlike essence—a soul, or part of one. In that container was the detritus of a spirit left behind after every hint of nobility was extracted to forge the Blade Cerulean.
Delphe was familiar with the history of Stardeep, especially the momentous events of ten years ago. No one connected to the Cerulean Sign didn't know Keeper Nangulis's personal sacrifice, though because it had occurred a decade ago, few recalled the event with any regularity. Nangulis's body had died, and his fellow Keeper had wielded his soulforged blade to quell the Traitor. The Traitor's foiled effort severely weakened him, and he had not stirred again within the Well until just recently. The remaining Keeper, unfortunately, had then fled Stardeep with the Blade Cerulean in hand, robbing the Keepers of the Cerulean Sign of a potent weapon.