City of Torment (12 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Green Siren on the Sea of Fallen Stars You can’t stop yourself, can you?” Japheth looked up, his hand half out of a fold of his cloak, his fingers clutching a dull tin. He frowned at Anusha. The girl perched on the edge of her travel case, nearly knee to knee with him as he sat on his cot. The porthole illuminated the cabin’s cramped expanse, though poorly. Her face was half shadowed, but he could read her expression well enough. She was concerned. Constant proximity to her over the last days had worn away much of the distance he preferred to maintain between himself and others. He had been lulled into a growing camaraderie. At first, she had done all the talking, relating to him the vivid details of her fight on deck against the sea hag. Japheth enjoyed her enthusiastic rendition of the events. In another person, he might have judged the story overlong, but somehow he hadn’t minded as the account poured from her lips. She’d never successfully stood off a determined attack by foes eager for her blood before�why shouldn’t she be flushed with success? More than that, he was interested to hear more of her peculiar sleepwalking ability. Her question about his traveler’s dust made him wish he’d maintained his customary reserve. The girl was becoming too familiar. Who was she to question his habits? Annoyance flared as a biting reply rose like acid in his throat. But he didn’t voice it. Why? Why did he not speak his mind with her? Why did he treat her so… delicately? Perhaps it was the fine cut of her jaw, her smooth-faced youthfulness. Her presence, in some way, recalled to him when he’d related to the world as she did, when he was still unscarred and saw limitless potential in everything. He had been like her not so long ago. Listening to her, watching her, he realized just how many dark events had got behind him. She radiated youth’s naivety and energy, unconsciously and without regard to its scarcity. If he allowed his guard to crumble further, he might make the mistake of dwelling overlong on her feminine attributes. It was better to think of her as a child, as when he’d first met her, rather than what she really was. He imagined cradling Anusha’s head in his hands and kissing her until they were both out of breath. Lord of Bats forefend! Where had that come from? He shook his head, attempting to dislodge his thoughts from that track. He didn’t need the complication of a relationship, however fleeting or innocent. He tried to think of something else, anything else. An image of his tin filled with roseate crystals popped into his head. His palms itched in immediate response. His concentration shivered, and he growled. “Are you all right?” Anusha asked, leaning toward him. “My business is my own,” he finally replied. He tried to make his voice cold, but it came out cracked. Wait! He remembered what his mind kept trying to forget. Despite her protestations to the contrary, she could still be an agent of Behroun. But once all was said and done, his hand seemed to spasm open of its own accord. The tin dropped back into his cloak. Anusha watched him a moment more, then asked, “Do you suffer? I don’t understand. You said your Lord of Bats keeps you from succumbing to the effects of traveler’s dust.” “True, but the craving never leaves me.” “Maybe you’re not getting the full benefit of your arrangement.” Japheth considered, and then said, “I have taken more than the Lord of Bats was willing to offer. I may not negotiate further without risking all I have already gained.” Anusha digested that, and then she asked, “What is a ‘pact stone’? In my half brother’s office, Behroun said he’d break your pact stone if you didn’t do as he said, and something about how that would make the Lord of Bats so mad he’d come for you.” The girl looked at him, waiting for a reply. Confident she’d get one. Was this unearned confidence a product of her youth or her privileged upbringing? Or, it dawned on him, perhaps it was merely her personality. “It is a complicated story.” Anusha stretched back. “We have days before we get to the atoll, you said. Tell me.” Japheth rubbed together the thumb and forefinger of the hand that had so recently held the dust tin. Why shouldn’t he tell her? The warlock said, “All right. This is the story. Before it became widely recognized that traveler’s dust was ultimately lethal, I traveled too far down the crimson road. I knew I was to die, so I decided to perish in dramatic fashion, at a time of my own choosing. I took all the dust I had at one time. A lethal dose.” Anusha put a hand to her mouth. “The crimson road leads directly into what may be the literal Abyss. Demons wait, hunger chasing across their glassy eyes. Victims of the dust walk, screaming, into demonic embrace. The road ends in a precipice, and in its tooth-lined gullet the drug-addled are consumed, mind and soul.” The girl’s eyes were wide. The high color in her cheeks drained to parchment white. She believed him. “Terrified, I regretted my decision and called out for succor, promising anything, if someone would save me from my self-inflicted fate. And thus, when a great bat sailed down from the burning sky, I thought it was my savior. It grasped me up before I could plunge to the road’s terminus. Its claws held me tight, but they also cut me.” Japheth’s words quickened. “It winged up through a tempest of fire, ice, and lightning, until we emerged into an enchanted reflection of the world. I saw streams of crystal water, vivid forests of living green, and mountains so high their beauty and majesty stopped my breath. I recognized it as the same landscape described in a tome I had been reading, Fey Pacts of Ancient Days. I realized the great winged creature was an entity also named in that tome, and I knew fear again. For the creature that held me could be none other than the Lord of Bats.” Into the silence that followed, Anusha asked, “Who is the Lord of Bats? A god?” Japheth shook his head. “No god, but a powerful and potent creature, if called up in just the proper fashion. More by luck than wit, I had done so in dabbling with the ancient tome that named him, and my subsequent promise to enter into a bargain with any that saved me. The Lord of Bats had the strength to find me, save me, and seal a pact between us.” “A mutually beneficial pact?” “It might have been, but in the urgency of my need, I promised everything and all; I pledged my soul, though I needn’t have done so, had I known better. The Lord of Bats took advantage of my desperation. He sealed my pledge to him in a physical object�a small emerald pendant. The pact stone. It is the pact stone Behroun threatened to break, if I didn’t do as I was told.” Anusha’s brows tightened with incomprehension. “My pact stone is, for all its small size, laden with consequence. Because it exists, I can call upon fell powers and feats of magic that are known to the Lord of Bats. Moreover, I can command the Lord of Bats’s lesser minions, use his implements of power as my own, and even travel to his shadowed fortress. The stone is a potent tool, and it binds me to him, and him to me.” “Why would he cede you so much of his power? That seems like a mistake.” “The pact stone has one more function. The Lord of Bats pledged to take back my pact-born powers, then to drink my blood and eat my body, should the stone ever be destroyed. He invested the stone with such consequence so he could hold it to ensure my good behavior. If the pact stone is broken, I lose my powers and the Lord of Bats comes for me to collect his due.” “Oh!” Anusha gripped his shoulder as if to comfort him. He didn’t shrink from the contact. “The Lord of Bats showed me the pact stone. He told me he would destroy it if I did not do as he commanded in all things. He said I would be his puppet in the world that had banned his entry. He said that through me, the Lord of Bats would hunt the world again, as he had done in the days when humans were still ‘beasts without language’ and Faerie hadn’t receded from the world.” The warlock clenched both fists and said in a louder voice, “Snatched so recently from the crimson road, I had little to Ipse. Without pondering the danger, I called swiftly and without full understanding on the power the Lord of Bats bequeathed me. I wrested the pact stone from him even as he brandished it!” “He let the stone go?” “His ego was his undoing, I suppose. He couldn’t conceive I’d have the effrontery or wit to immediately act. Perhaps he was used to dealing with primeval men of duller wit. Perhaps his fey nature prevented him from recognizing my mortal desperation. After he realized his error, it was too late. With stone in hand, I commanded a portion of his power, and I held the implement through which he’d planned to leash me. We fought, but I imprisoned him in the highest spire of his own fortress. I claimed the castle as my own and returned to the world. I was my own agent, and the world seemed alight with possibility and promise. Until your half brother stole the stone.” “Behroun is a criminal and a bastard,” agreed the girl. “I can’t believe I share even half his blood. But he is no wizard or sage. How did he discover the significance of the stone?” “That question has long troubled me. I suspect the Lord of Bats sent out messages on bat wings far and wide. The Lord of shadow-mantled Darroch Castle schemes always to break the stone, whereupon he would free himself and find me. He must have made contact with Behroun and showed Lord Marhana the significance of the stone. Not long after, I received a cordial invitation to visit New Sarshel.” The girl sniffed. “He has a way with words, when he tries.” “Yes, and my guard was down. I had no reason to suspect a trap. Moreover, I didn’t expect anyone in the world to recognize the pact stone’s significance, and I was lax in its safekeeping. Once I arrived in New Sarshel, your half brother employed master thieves to bring him the stone. His instruction from the Lord of Bats was to smash it. But upon gaining my pact stone, Behroun was too savvy to break it. Instead, he uses it to compel my service even as the Lord of Bats meant to.” “I am so sorry, Japheth.” He made no reply. He merely looked into her eyes. They were dark pools of mystery hinting at unphimbed depths. She leaned forward, her lips slightly parted. It would be so easy to bend to meet her halfway and touch his lips to hers. His heart tried to escape his chest, beating with two coequal emotions: confusion and desire. The warlock stood abruptly and said the first thing that came into his head. “Would you like to see Darroch Castle? I can show you. We can use my cloak as a bridge.” The moment was broken, as he’d intended. And now half regretted. The girl sighed. Then she cocked her head and smiled. She nodded up at him. “I’m on a ship bound for who knows where because I wanted to see wonders beyond Sarshel. Now you say you want to show me the castle you keep in your cloak? Of course… but is it safe?” Japheth already wished he’d come up with some other way to derail the moment. He didn’t want to rescind his offer, though. He replied, “Safe enough, as long as you stay close to me.” “Now?” The girl rose from the edge of her travel case. He smelled her warm scent. Exhilaration made him incautious. He knew it, but didn’t give himself more time to think it through. “Why not?” Japheth swirled his cloak off his shoulders. He turned toward the cabin’s door and held the fabric with his arms outstretched before him and slightly raised, so that the hem just touched the floor. He took one quick pace to the door and pressed the narrow rectangle of darkness he held into the door frame. When he released his grip and stepped back, the cloak remained in place, obscuring the wooden door behind it. “It looks like a door of darkness,” Anusha breathed. He nodded. “It is. It leads to my castle.” They stepped forward. Anusha flinched as if expecting to bump her head, but instead, shadows grabbed them. Cold hands pulled them along a tunnel whose floor, walls, and ceiling were composed of leathery, undulating wings. With a flurry of flapping and a whiff of ammonia, the darkness released them. They stood in a subterranean vault whose dimensions were lost to cobwebbed corners. Behind them along a rocky wall wavered a door-shaped opening. Japheth’s cabin was blurrily visible within the rectangle. Piercing gold and silver light from their right made them both squint. The light poured inward from an irregular, natural-looking cave mouth. Through it Japheth saw a verdant mountain meadow whose vivid colors stole his breath, as always, and whose piercing scents brought tears to his eyes. He’d never ventured in that direction, for Darroch Castle was the other way. The gold and silver light from the cave mouth slowly fell to purples, blues, and shadow black. Over the span of a few hundred feet, the dim illumination was transformed to a dreary radiance of hopelessness. The last glimmers of light were enough to reveal a vast castle, one whose mortar was black and whose bricks were immense blocks of void. A central spire rose above the walls, so high it brushed the vault’s stalactite-toothed ceiling. Immense wings stretched out from each side of the spire, rapacious and dragon-like in their span, like hunger itself made manifest. Anusha stifled an involuntary cry and shrank back. The noise set the ceiling to churning and chittering. It was thick with roosting bats of every variety. Many had never flown the skies of Toril. “Shh, it is all right, Anusha.” He reached for her hand, and she clutched back tight. “The bats on the ceiling will not harm you while I am near. The vast wings you see on the castle are immobile. They possess no life, not now, anyway. The Lord of Bats is safely bound and cannot enter his shape of old while he remains imprisoned. And I don’t intend to release him.” In the wan light, he saw her slowly nod, though her eyes didn’t leave the unmoving shape that crouched atop the structure. “Perhaps we should return to the Green Siren,” suggested Japheth. Anusha gazed around with rapt eyes. “No… no. It is just… amazing. To know where I now stand, someplace so far from the… world itself? I’ve never traveled by magic in such fashion. It is like the stories of the spells wizards commanded before the Spellplague.” “Those abilities are returning to many across Faer�said the warlock. “Yes, and not too soon. But even the most powerful of the old wizards would have been hard pressed to travel so far in a single step. We are not even in the world any longer.” Her wide eyes met his. Even in the dim light
of the cave, it was a connection he couldn’t long hold, if he didn’t want to be drawn into a rash act. He blinked to escape her gaze. He was glad she couldn’t see him well in the darkness. Why had he brought her here? To impress her? His base instincts worked against his reason, perhaps. No, a small cynical part of him remonstrated. You know exactly what you are doing. He said, more to defend himself from his own accusing thoughts than in answer to Anusha, “I merely make use of what I’ve stolen from the Lord of Bats.” “I am sure it is all beyond me, whatever the source.” Japheth coughed and suggested, “We should enter soon, if we are to do it at all. I can only successfully travel here once out of every four or five times I try. Access depends on a lunar schedule I haven’t quite worked out yet. And I am more vulnerable without my cloak. So time is of the essence.” She nodded. They walked forward, past a growth of dark purple mushroom caps, each the size of a dinner plate. Japheth pointed and said, “I should gather a couple more of those caps. When distilled, their taste can cause any creature to fall asleep. It is what I made your potion from, now that I think of it!” Anusha didn’t respond, and Japheth remembered she was still suspicious of his gift. A twinge of guilt touched him. In truth, when they’d returned to the boat after the attack of the sea hags, it had taken several hours before he was able to rouse Anusha from her somnolence. He led the girl through the gates of Castle Darroch and down a long entry gauntlet. He ordered the creeping, wrinkled, guardian homunculi back to their holes in the side walls before Anusha could see their horrific features. The castle was defended by the Lord of Bats’s many “children,” who answered now to Japheth as if he were their creator. They reached the foyer, which was lit by countless candelabra burning with green flames. A wide but shallow pool of dark water half flooded the space, and long, pale forms darted beneath its surface. Japheth guided Anusha past the pool up four flights of stairs. They passed busts of enigmatic, slender humanoids on each landing. Lords of the Feywild, Japheth had always assumed. Anusha lingered, but he urged her onward, explaining again that they should not dally. Finally, they entered the Grand Study. There, paintings of surreal landscapes, sculptures of fantastic beings, and objects too strange for mortal classification were displayed behind glass. The collection spanned centuries and worlds. “This is all yours?” asked Anusha, finally relinquishing his hand. “It must be worth a king’s ransom!” “These belong to the Lord of Bats. The collection could well be priceless, but I’ve never removed even a single item.” Anusha moved to gaze upon a painting of a spray of orange and yellow: a desert-scape in the grip of a storm. The hint of some vast tower was visible behind the haze of blowing sand. “Why not?” she asked. He shrugged, said, “It is just a feeling I have. I fear too many changes could upset some balance I’m not consciously aware of. Like the game where children remove twigs, one at a time, from a pile, until one twig too many causes the pile to topple. I fear to disturb things too much lest I accidentally release the Lord of Bats from his confines.” The warlock’s eyes unconsciously sought a balcony overlooking the Grand Study. The balcony was accessible via a narrow stair on the wall. The high space was bare but for an iron door. Anusha’s eyes followed his. “He’s up there?” Japheth nodded. She studied the door with wide eyes, and then said, “I hear talking.” Japheth cocked his head. Sure enough, the slight buzz of voices, at least two, sounded from the balcony. Vertigo clawed his abdomen. With eyes tight, he sprang up the narrow stairs, two at a time. He felt off-balance without his cloak streaming behind. The steel door to the balcony was open a crack, and yellow light flickered beyond. He shoved open the door and gasped. A great oaken table dominated the chamber beyond the door. A feast of rare sumptuousness was laid out on silver platters, heaped in golden urns, and sloshed in crystal decanters. Chairs lined the sides of the table, each one unique in design and workmanship, as if every piece was imported from a completely different kingdom or culture. A few were so oddly shaped that a regular person would find it difficult to sit. A thin man, bald and pale, with narrow squinting eyes, pointed ears, and drab black clothes sat at the head of the table on a chair as grand as any throne. It was the Lord of Bats in his least form. He sat as he always sat, where Japheth had bound him in a feast never-ending. The warlock sucked in his breath as if struck because of the two people sitting to each side of the Lord of Bats. They shouldn’t be there; they couldn’t be! But they were. One was a woman. Her slender limbs and graceful poise transcended mere humanity. Her white skin literally glowed like moonlight, and her eyes were utterly black. Her hair was dark blue-black, and her ears were pointed. She might have been a moon or sun elf, but he’d never known a moon or sun elf to glow before. The other was a man in unremarkable clothing. A man whose features were rough and uncouth in comparison to the woman’s. A man who was terribly familiar. “Behroun Marhana?” gasped Japheth. The man to the Lord of Bats’s left turned midsentence. He stopped speaking, and his eyes widened on seeing the warlock. “Japheth?” asked the man. “Why, it is! Our host never informed me you could visit here in his home-turned-prison.” Japheth’s mouth remained open, but he had no words. As unlikely as it was, the man was indeed Behroun. But how? Disorientation made him dizzy. He couldn’t connect the threads. The pale man spoke, “This one stole my skin; he uses it as a cloak. With it, he can travel between the world and my domain.” His white hand plucked a cherry tomato the color of blood from a silver platter. He tossed it into his mouth and chewed with gusto. “What is the meaning of this?” Japheth demanded of the Lord of Bats, attempting to assert some control over events that careened beyond his comprehension. “I have guests. It has taken me some years, but my invitations finally went out and were answered in person.” The woman merely gazed upon Japheth with emotionless, ageless eyes, as if nothing he could do or say could ever surprise her or break her from centuries-long ennui. Behroun chuckled, said, “Neifion promised me extraordinary things, but only if I shatter a certain emerald he revealed to me. I think you know the one.” The Lord of Bats glared at Behroun, saying, “You have yet to destroy it.” “Neifion?” wondered Japheth. “The Lord of Bats has a name, same as you and me,” Behroun explained. “But that’s hardly important.” “Ah…” temporized the warlock, well beyond his depth. Then, “The Lord of Bats, uh, Neifion, he was the one who told you about my pact stone? I knew it.” “A pact stone,” interrupted the pale lord. “Which you stole from me. I sent my last loyal children into the world to find an ally, and found Lord Marhana. He agreed to retrieve my property. But he failed to complete the task I set him.” “Your grace, as I said from the beginning, be patient. When Japheth has finished his current task, I shall give you the emerald as I promised.” “That is what you have been telling me for some time now.” As the Lord of Bats spoke, Behroun absent-mindedly picked up a succulent pear from the table, one of several heaped in a crystal bowl. The woman to Neifion’s right reached her slender arm across the table and slapped the fruit from Behroun’s hand before he could take a bite. The fruit spun across the room and landed in shadow. The woman said, “I told you. Do not eat from this table. If you do, you shall never leave it.” Behroun blanched. “I know that, Malyanna, but damn the old king if this food doesn’t look enticing!” The elflike woman replied, “It is a lethal enchantment given a pleasant guise.” Japheth knew that the woman, whatever her otherworldly origin, spoke the truth regarding the great feast�it was one of the Lord of Bats’s own tricks. Japheth had commandeered it and used it against its creator when he’d assumed control. The warlock wondered again if she was native to the bright, fey lands beyond the cave. Perhaps she was a moon elf “noble,” an elder native of the Fey wild, inscrutable and dangerous. What was her place in all this? Wag Malyanna her name or a title? The woman speared Behroun like a fish with her glinting stare. Behroun wriggled and gasped until she turned back to regard Japheth. She said, “You look confused, poor human. For all your stolen power, you’re only a plaything here. All of you are, Behroun too, though he thinks himself the ringleader.” She sighed and looked to the ceiling as if bored beyond the capacity for words. The Lord of Bats sucked down another bloody red tomato and announced, matter-of-factly, “I shall murder each of you in a manner so grisly that veteran warriors shall shudder and weep when they hear of it.” The woman continued to inspect the ceiling, her face managing to convey weariness for all its otherworldly perfection. Behroun spluttered, his features draining of color, “But once I break the pact stone, you will have all you desire, Neifion! You’ll have your powers returned, with Japheth here to punish�” “The longer you delay your side of our agreement, the greater latitude I’ll have in interpreting our deal,” declared the Lord of Bats, his dead-white lips smacking in anticipation. Behroun glanced at Malyanna, then he snapped his attention around to Japheth. “Warlock! How goes the mission? How close are you to retrieving this object, what did the captain call it, the Dreamheart?” With a dull voice, Japheth replied, “We sail to the lair of the creature that holds it even now.” “You hear?” asked the shipping magnate in too loud a voice. “Once I get the Dreamheart, Japheth’ll be yours. I’ll have all I need to press my claim on Impiltur. With a relic as potent as Captain Thoster claims this one is in my hand, I won’t have to be satisfied with a mere seat on the nascent Grand Council. No, with an eladrin queen of the Feywild at my side�” Malyanna’s voice drowned out Behroun with a simple, “Please, don’t you ever cease your mortal prattle?” Behroun’s face crumpled. Trying to recover, he snapped his fingers at Japheth. “Shouldn’t you get back to your ship?” Japheth looked at the man. A small man with grand ambitions was Lord Marhana. He had no power of his own, only a knack for being in the right place at the right time. Though he possessed no moral sense, he had a mean, rat-like cleverness. The warlock once confronted Behroun, asking the merchant why he should do Behroun’s bidding. After all, if Japheth did not, Behroun promised to smash the pact stone. On the other hand, Behroun had implied that at some future date he would return the pact stone to the Lord of Bats, who would promptly smash it. Either way, the stone would be smashed and Japheth would wind up dead. So why, the warlock had yelled, should he do what Behroun wanted when his choice was to die now or die later? Behroun had winked and replied that he didn’t actually intend to ever give the pact stone back to the Lord of Bats. Japheth did his bidding, promised Lord Marhana; Japheth could live out his life without fear of being slain by a vicious Feywild spirit bent on brutal revenge. The memory evaporated in a haze of reignited hate. Emotion burned the warlock’s throat as he stepped forward a pace. He was only about ten feet from Lord Marhana’s chair. Japheth asked in a casual tone that belied his anger, “Do you have the pact stone with you now, Behroun?” Both the woman and the Lord of Bats simultaneously swung their heads around to regard Behroun, real interest animating Malyanna’s face for the first time. “What does that matter?” snapped Behroun. Japheth advanced another pace. As he did so, he saw the image of someone behind him reflected in a silver decanter. A figure in full, articulated plate armor that shone like gold. The figure held a long sword as if it were weightless. Surprised, he glanced back. Nobody was there. But when he looked in the decanter once more, he saw again the figure. This time, he also noted the armored warrior was limned in small blue and black flames. The cuirass was molded to a figure with a distinctively feminine cast. Anusha? If so, she didn’t look anything like the meek dream image he’d glimpsed before. Was she, as he had half suspected, really working for Behroun? Would she attack him if he threatened her half-witted half brother, who might very well have left the pact stone back in the world? If he struck suddenly enough to kill Behroun, then he could return to the world and retrieve his pact stone from wherever Behroun had secreted it. He’d be free! Indecision cost him. Malyanna rose from her chair, pushing it back so hard it slammed into the wall and splintered. She did not stand�no, she hovered in the air with no support, her hair whipping dramatically in a wind as cold as the Hammer’s worst blizzard. She pointed a finger at Japheth and said, “Think not to harm this fool. Behroun is under my protection… for now.” Japheth realized he was flanked by enemies. A dream assassin at his back, maybe, and an eladrin noble before him, whose abilities he couldn’t gauge, though he suspected she was formidable. And he didn’t have his cloak. Japheth smiled at the floating woman, at the still seated Lord of Bats who watched the proceedings with great interest even as he nibbled on an apple, and finally at Behroun, whose struggle to stand up ended with both him and his chair sprawled on the floor. He said, “I’m done with fear, Behroun. You should have brought the pact stone with you.” Japheth uttered his most potent curse, aimed it at Behroun, and loosed it as if it were a hunting kestrel. A blaze of fire swept down upon Behroun, who already sprawled behind his fallen chair. When the flames settled over the man, he began to scream. The hovering eladrin noble sang out a single syllable. The motes of flame bedeviling Behroun instantly died in puffs of white smoke. A backwash of cold air touched Japheth’s cheeks. The Lord of Bats began to laugh, even as he reached for a platter of sugar-crusted toast. The warlock reflexively moved to step back into his cloak, � to retreat into shadow. He failed, of course he failed; his cloak still served as a bridge between Darroch Castle and the Green Siren back in the outer cavern! He cursed anew, this time with | words devoid of arcane power; they were merely fragments of j frustration and renewed fear. Malyanna