Bruce Cordell - Key of Stars

She wanted Raidon to make the connection himself.

But the monk stood, staring at the growing nest of fracture lines as if entranced. As if he making peace with the inevitability of the moment.

Oh gods.

“Raidon, you are the Key of Stars!” Anusha said. “And the Key must turn, one last time!”

The half-elf cocked his head to regard her, puzzlement narrowing his eyes.

A tear traced down her cheek. She could hardly say it, but forced it out. “I’m sorry, it’s your death if you try it and succeed, or fail,” she said. “But you must try! Don’t you see? Your … choice … could save everything.”

Her throat threatened to close with sorrow. She wished it hadn’t fallen to her to say those hardest of words.

Raidon’s eyes widened, than he gave a slow nod. “Anusha, I will try,” he said. “Taal thought he would die for turning against Malyanna at long last, but he did anyway. Can I do any less? I ask only this: If anything of me remains, please lay me beside my daughter in Nathlekh.”

Anusha felt something inside her break.

Raidon placed a hand on Anusha’s shoulder. Fresh tears streaked her face. Her golden armor felt as solid to him as the genuine article. Funny, how a dream could seem so real.

Was Anusha right? Did his spellscar contain enough essence of his mother’s “forget-me-not” to lock the gate?

He considered Erunyauve as he’d seen her last, held to her soothsayer’s throne for years at a time. A throne from which she saw the future laid out in days and years.

It came to him then. Erunyauve had foreseen that moment, though not until after she had met his father, or given him the Cerulean Sign. But afterward, when she had taken up her seat. She had known when she talked to him in the Spire of the Moon; she had foreseen the possibility of this very moment. He understood her grief and final parting words. She’d known what he would have to do.

What an awful burden for her to bear.

“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.

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.