Bruce Cordell - Plague of Spells

She wondered what had become of the rowers left by the first sortie. Nothing pleasant, she guessed.

Anusha debated whether she should pull the travel chest completely ashore or leave it in the boat for a quick getaway later. She decided to leave it in the boat.

She addressed the guard dog. "Lucky! Good boy! Good boy! Stay here, Lucky. Guard! Stay until I return, all right?" Lucky tried to lick her proffered hand and settled himself directly on top of the travel chest. What had she done to deserve the trust of such a loyal, innocent little creature? She patted him on the head, then turned toward the isle's interior.

Raidon hurtled through a gap between nothing and everything, through a space where people were not meant to go. Light speared his eyes and burned his face. His teeth rattled in his jaw. All the bones in his body tried to burrow out of their fleshy cocoon. His chest ached as he gasped over and over, trying to draw in another breath of air. But there was no air. A gray haze narrowed his vision smaller and smaller…

A guttering blue parabola snatched him out of the no-space where he trespassed. Raidon and Angul fell ten feet onto a flagstone floor.

He couldn't suppress a long, hacking cough, even though his ribs seared with each contraction. He lay on his side in a half fetal position, riding out his body's mutiny. When the coughing subsided, he rested.

Where had Cynosure dropped him this time?

The chamber was a great stone 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 on the blocks; the source of each object's glow was this script-born light. Two walls were collapsed beneath rubble, and many of the blocks were sundered, their runes darkened.

Slender tubes of dully pulsing light protruded from the stone blocks, one or two from each. The corralled light was gathered in thick bundles, suspended from the high ceiling by fancifully carved stone gargoyles. Many of the cords were frayed and snapped, their light dead, and others lay in snakelike disarray on the rubble-strewn floor.

It was cold too. Raidon's breath steamed, and his face and hands were already chilled.

Other than the cold, nothing immediately threatened him except the wounds the Chalk Destrier had given him as their fight concluded.

He closed his eyes, reaching for his focus. He visualized his chest and the bones that gave his torso shape as lines of energy. They were cracked and misshapen-a few were broken. Pulses of pain spiked out from them through the rest of his body He imagined the spikes as real objects, then imagined their pointy ends eroding away. These sorts of visualization tricks aided his concentration. When the piercing pain receded enough for him to continue, he mentally grasped each broken and damaged bone, one after another, and straightened it. New spikes of agony shot through his body, ones he couldn't dampen. But he did not stop until every bone was mended.

Raidon finally released his focus. Stabbing pain had been replaced by a body-wide dull ache. He lay awhile longer in the winter-cold chamber of rubble and strange objects. Stray thoughts of his long-dead life intruded. He saw Ailyn playing in the courtyard of their home in Nathlekh. She wore a yellow dress, and her face was grubby. She clutched a great mass of wild daffodils from the garden. He could smell them.

The monk smiled. Ailyn returned the impish grin he knew so well. His heart clenched. "Hey, little girl," he murmured to the phantom. His throat was tight. Ailyn laughed and skipped away.

A new pain pulled him from waking reverie. Something hard and painful lay below his prostate form. He shifted and saw the object was Angul. He looked at its dull length for a few moments. His vision was blurred with unwept tears born of his daydream.

The monk rubbed at his eyes until they were clear.

He grabbed Angul's cold hilt and stood. From this new vantage, he could see farther into the chamber. The lines of light that were not burned out seemed to lead to a nexus at the chamber's heart. He walked toward that gathering point, favoring one foot slightly.

At the center lay a crumpled, half buried shape, like the husk of some fantastically large spider's recent meal. The shape was a humanoid figure forged of crystal, stone, iron, and more exotic components, but it had fallen over. Its surface was rusted, pitted, and cracked, and half of it was buried beneath a section of collapsed ceiling. A partially visible design winked from its dented metallic chest-the Cerulean Sign.

"Cynosure?"

The figure did not respond. Despite that, Raidon was certain he was in the presence of the artificial entity who once served as Stardeep's warden.

"Are you awake?"

He bent, tapped the golem's forehead. Was that a slight glimmer of light deep in the idol's stony eyes? He couldn't be sure.

"Did you exhaust yourself pulling me from the Chalk Destrier's domain?" he asked. "If so, thank you. I hope it does not prove your last act. I'm not worthy of such sacrifice."

He frowned. "You sacrificed yourself to save me, someone you hardly know."

His thoughts turned backward. He murmured, "Me, I left the heart of my life to die alone while I slept in safety."

Even as he spoke aloud, he recognized he half consciously reflected the golem's noble act back upon himself. A pathetic show of self-pity, and for whom?

He was far more human, with all the failings that implied, than he'd ever admitted to himself. He was only a fool with an outsize ego, like every other fool who pranced and paraded through life, deluded they were somehow finer and better trained than most others, until shown the truth.

He turned, disgusted. His hip brushed a stone block, closer to the golem than all the rest. The glyphs on the stone flared into life. Their shapes fluttered and morphed, until the monk saw they spelled out words in Common. He read:

Raidon,

If you can read this, I have consumed my last remaining store of animating elan. Fear not, I did not trap you. With your Sign, you can access Stardeep's functions and propel yourself across the face of Faerыn one last time. You must go to the seamount we earlier scried, where Gethshemeth lairs. You have the Cerulean Sign. Worry not about your lack of training. Concentrate on Stardeep's spellmantle, and you will be able to access it as I have. Go to Gethshemeth. Subdue the great kraken. Destroy the relic of Xxiphu it wields. Much depends on you, Raidon. Though I have no spirit or life that will persist beyond my physical death, I wish you well with all the fiber of my faltering existence.

Your friend, Cynosure

"I am doubly unworthy of your trust," Raidon murmured.

He gazed long at the stone block. The runes he'd read were changing, forming a great ring. The ring lifted off the stone until it hung vertically before Raidon. Within it, an image resolved.

Raidon saw the isle where kuo-toa cavorted above, and a tentacled monstrosity lurked in the watery hollows beneath.

The view through the scrying circle showed him the island's surface. It was night, but noisome glows and glimmers gave outline to the sentinels that continued their circuit above the island.

"Angul, are you ready?" The monk raised the sword, gripping it. The cerulean light in the blade's pommel continued to glimmer, no softer, but no stronger.

He recalled one of the last times he'd seen the sword. It had been more than ten years ago, more like twenty, he supposed.

Kiril had stood before Angul, considering relinquishing the blade that had cursed her with its overzealous nature. Cynosure's words came back to him: "Angul's life is only a half-life. Without a living wielder, the soul-forged blade will fail, releasing the soul to its final peace. All that will remain is a dead length of sword-shaped steel."