she’d be there to put them back together as best she could after everything went hideously wrong, as she feared it was bound to.
Sinnoch continued work on the Overmantle while Elidyr slept in a wooden chair, slumped over in a position that looked exceedingly uncomfortable to Sinnoch. Humans had so many frailties, the dolgaunt thought, the need for sleep chief among them. As soundly as Elidyr slumbered, anyone could sneak up on him and slit his throat before he had a chance to defend himself. As the dolgaunt worked, he amused himself by imagining the patterns the resultant blood spray would create in the air along with the desperate gurgling sounds Elidyr would make as his life rapidly bled out of him
Despite Sinnoch’s earlier skepticism that the Overmantle would be ready in time, the work had gone rather well, and the device was almost finished. Actually, it was complete as far as Elidyr’s design was concerned, but Sinnoch had a few touches of his own to add before tomorrow, so it was just as well that the artificer slept. Of course, it helped that an hour ago the dolgaunt had offered to fetch Elidyr a cup of water
Elidyr would doubtless give the device a thorough going-over before the experiment, but Sinnoch wasn’t worried that the artificer would detect his tampering. The changes he was making consisted of subtle, but vital, alterations in various energy valences that, while innocuous enough in and of themselves, would produce quite a dramatic effect once the Overmantle was activated.
As he continued making adjustments, Sinnoch thought back to his first meeting with Elidyr. The man had been much younger then, though the dolgaunt had a difficult time judging the ages of other species by appearance.
When Elidyr the young scholar had first met Sinnoch, it had never occurred to him that the dolgaunt didn’t make his home in the empty cave where they’d talked. Sinnoch’s abode lay deeper in the earth, a cave filled with a collection of mystic artifacts he’d acquired since escaping Xoriat. Sinnoch had gathered these items, often pried from the rapidly cooling hands of their recently deceased owners, for a single purpose-he had once traveled from Xoriat to Eberron through a dimensional portal, and he hoped to discover a way to create a similar passage for his lord and master, the daelkyr Ysgithyrwyn, to step through. And when Sinnoch encountered Elidyr, he’d realized the brilliant young artificer might prove to be the perfect tool to help him achieve his goal.
At first, he’d merely encouraged Elidyr’s interest in matters related to Xoriat and its denizens. But as time went on and the young artificer-who was no longer quite so young-continued his visits, Sinnoch began to pry information from him about spells designed to breach the dimensional barriers between planes. And then, one day, Elidyr, now a middle-aged man, had come to the cave and asked Sinnoch to help him with a very important project … Sinnoch wasn’t certain how aiding the artificer in creating a battalion of impure princes would help him free his master, but he’d recognized the opportunity for what it was and agreed. And now, with the Overmantle nearly completed-and modified by Sinnoch-the day of Ysgithyrwyn’s liberation was finally at hand.
Sinnoch turned his face toward Elidyr’s sleeping form. Though the dolgaunt could not see by conventional means, his sensitive cilia allowed him to perceive the artificer’s body.
Tomorrow you will learn more about Xoriat than you ever imagined, my friend, Sinnoch thought with amusement. You will make wonderful clay for my master to reshape. I cannot wait to see what dark wonder you will become beneath his hands.
Sinnoch was about to turn back to the Overmantle to make further adjustments when he sensed a presence outside the door. There was no sound, no knock. Nevertheless, the dolgaunt knew someone stood outside, waiting. More, he knew who-and what-it was. A creature of corruption himself, he could always recognize its presence in another. Though Elidyr had been drugged and was unlikely to wake even if someone were to sound a trumpet blast next to his ear, Sinnoch moved silently across the room. He opened the door quietly, glided into the hall, and closed the door behind him.
While most of the soldiers in the Outguard had quarters on the lower levels of the lodge, none of their rooms were near Elidyr’s work chamber. Even so, Sinnoch spoke softly as he addressed his visitor.
“How did it go?”
The visitor also spoke in hushed tones. “I do not believe she will ever choose to accept a symbiont.”
The disappointment was clear in the other’s voice, and Sinnoch couldn’t help thinking how weak humans were made by their emotional needs. Then again, their emotions certainly made humans easier to manipulate.
The dolgaunt laid a lean-fingered clawed hand on the man’s shoulder then smiled with his mouthful of sharp teeth.
“Fear not, Rhedyn. Tomorrow we both shall get what we want.”
CHAPTER SIX
Lirra stood on the far side of the chamber where the symbionts were kept, Vaddon on her right, Rhedyn on her left, Ksana on the other side of her father. The general wore the protective armor that Elidyr had created to guard against a symbiont attack, but as during Osten’s test yesterday, Lirra and Rhedyn wore their Outguard uniforms, and-despite her preference for comfortable clothing-Ksana also wore her uniform. In addition, she’d brought her halberd with her, and she held it in her right hand, the butt of the handle resting on the chamber’s stone floor. Lirra, Vaddon, and Rhedyn were armed with swords, along with daggers for backup weapons. Standard precautions for any Outguard experiment, but that day their weaponry was even more important. Given how rushed Elidyr had been to complete the Overmantle, Lirra figured there was a good chance that the device could go wrong, and they needed to be ready for whatever might happen if it did.
Lirra thought the Overmantle was a bit on the disappointing side. Given what the device was supposed to do, she’d been expecting something more impressive than a box holding a handful of pretty stones. But her uncle was a skilled artificer, and if he thought his metal box could generate the magical energies necessary for the day’s experiment, then she knew it would function as advertised, regardless of its unprepossessing appearance … hopefully.
The Overmantle rested atop a stone column that one of the soldiers had hauled into the chamber at Elidyr’s request. Her uncle stood on one side of the device, while the dolgaunt stood on the other. Sinnoch wore the outsized robes which concealed his inhuman form with the hood up. Even so, Lirra could see slow, sinuous movement beneath the cloth of Sinnoch’s robes which she knew came from his shoulder tentacles and, to a lesser degree, the cilia covering the rest of his body.
Four symbiont cages sat on the chamber floor-two on one side of the room, two on the other. The rest of the cages had been removed by soldiers earlier and hauled off to another chamber for temporary storage. Elidyr always insisted that an attempted bonding between symbiont and host take place in the chamber where the symbionts were normally kept. They were more comfortable there, he’d explained to her once, which helped them relax during the bonding process. Well, relax more than they might have otherwise. During an ordinary attempt at joining, the other symbionts remained in the chamber, but Elidyr had thought it best if only the symbionts that were going to be involved in the day’s experiment were present, and Lirra thought it a wise move.
Soldiers wearing enchanted armor stood guard by each cage, keeping a close eye on the symbionts inside. Their soldiers’ swords were sheathed for the time being, and instead they carried the metal rods Elidyr had designed for capturing and handling symbionts. A steel table was positioned in front of the cages, and upon each a volunteer lay prone. Affixed to the foot of each table was a single three-foot long crystalline rod, its milky-glassy surface gleaming in the illumination cast by the everbright lanterns stationed around the chamber. Each volunteer was an Outguard soldier, and they all wore their uniforms.
The volunteers lay still, features composed, though it was clear to anyone watching that they were working hard to project the appearance of calm, in defiance of how they really felt inside. Their hands were clenched into fists, their chests rose and fell in erratic patterns as they struggled to master their breathing, and they swallowed often. Lirra looked at Osten. Given the bad experience he’d endured yesterday, she wouldn’t have blamed him for being a nervous wreck, but of the two men and two women who’d volunteered to receive a symbiont today, he looked the calmest. Out of the four, he was the only one who’d been bonded to a symbiont before, if only for a short
