had been.
Thankfully, convincing Cynosure to side with him relied less on the art of persuasion and more on technical wizardry. Telarian had a knack for golem and construct enchantment, despite his primary focus in oracular insight. He had surreptitiously applied that skill to the linked nodes making up Cynosure's mind. After a year of gradual tinkering, the sentient idol was now partially under Telarian's control.
Cynosure was free-willed no longer, though its greater mind didn't realize a lesser portion of itself was almost completely commandeered. Despite this success, Telarian remained stymied; none of the tactics he'd devised had proven capable of overriding Cynosure's control over the Inner Bastion. It was too fundamental to the constructs creation. He eventually realized he would never succeed in gaining complete control of the sentient idol. It had become necessary to pursue other options. Of course, even if he had complete control of the construct, another tool was also required.
He trailed a finger up the length of his sword scabbard. What would Delphe do if she found out about Nis?
He shuddered. He removed the scabbard from his belt, careful not to touch the pommel of the dark blade.
His conscience skittered across the surface of his resolve. Too late. He'd done it; he couldn't undo what he'd forged.
He had learned the secret of the armory's existence, a place created by the previous Keepers, with Cynosure's help. In the armory, he found the vessel containing the split soul.
It was a half-soul, separated from its lighter half. Before being split, all the soul's goodness, all its righteousness, and all its morality were strained and infused into an animate blade of virtuous light: Angul. With that singular blade, the Traitor's most successful bid for escape in a millennia was foiled. The success of that event was known to all Keepers, though none realized what had gone into making the Blade Cerulean. None now recalled the sacrifice of the man who made the blade's existence possible.
A soul split along philosophical lines has two parts, as there is no light without darkness. Sin would not exist without morality. What is certainty without doubt to measure it against? The half-soul Telarian found was the detritus left over from Angul's forging.
Why the half-sentient thing had been preserved, when it should have been destroyed, was a real question. Perhaps the Keeper who forged it with Cynosure's aid was too sentimental? Or had fate stepped in on Telarian's side? Either way, that lapse was Telarian's opportunity.
His elaborate plan took form in the ashes of dream-tossed nights, as so many of his divinatory visions had since he'd come to Stardeep and looked into the Well. Something had opened in him then, and now his best insights came unbidden. In fact, it was during just such a divinatory dream that he first learned of the armory, and the stored half-soul. The future had seized his eyes and shown him the way.
Upon waking, Telarian asked Cynosure to transfer him to the armory, despite the idol's protestations that no such place existed in Stardeep. But Telarian trusted his vision, and overruled the idol. Cynosure teleported him into a space that didn't exist on any map-and found himself where Stardeep's history had been fashioned.
A dark, decommissioned vault, it contained a furnace, forge, magical fire, and masterwork tools capable of forging weaponry. And most importantly, in a darkened alcove resided a glass vessel where the fractured thing dwelled.
Soon thereafter, Telarian began his sword-forging project. He knew little of the craft, so his dreams began to instruct him.
He recalled how he carefully decanted the half-soul, inky and deceitful, into the cast already seething with molten steel. With Cynosure's halting aid, he mixed soul and metal into a singular bound thing.
He remembered beating the howling, screaming shaft of white-hot metal. It cried for release from torturous pain, as if alive. He could still smell the acrid salt and oil of the quenching.
When he removed the blade from the bath, its white-hot glow was gone. But it was only as Telarian tempered the blade over the ensuing tenday that all trace of hue slowly faded, until it was utterly colorless.
The naked blade was like a blind spot, a gap in perception. It took the name Nis, the Blade Umber. When Telarian grasped its hilt. .
When he grasped the hilt, he forgot fear. His disordered thoughts cleared. The solutions to problems and difficulties he'd noted in other parts of Stardeep rushed upon his brain as clarity washed over him, and cold logic grasped his heart and squeezed. As he caught his breath, it seemed to him that nothing was really beyond him-no problem couldn't be overcome, nor challenge met, if only he was able to devise the appropriately reasoned plan. Lucidity wracked his frame, and his mind ran and leaped, but could not win free. Some part of him did escape, and darted out upon a dim plain of disquietude. But it was fragile, easily eviscerated.
Telarian gasped, allowing his reverie to lapse. He took another large gulp of the nearly rancid wine. He'd learned not to touch the hilt. The time for drawing Nis would come soon enough.
Already, his agent in the outer world reported success in locating the bright twin of his newly forged dark sword. He disliked dealing with liars, backstabbers, and spies. But in this particular circumstance, the ends justified the means, he wholly believed. Telarian would stymie the Sovereignty's appearance, but only if he pushed through all interference, all weakness. All foibles and regrets of conscience.
His success would be assured once his agent completed the assignment and delivered him the sword Angul.
With Angul in one hand and Nis in the other, he would combine the blades, merging the split souls into the unified whole they once were. Then he would see about the Traitor's release.
CHAPTER EIGHT
City of Telflamm, Gates
The caravan set out from Telflamm, making good time down the Golden Way. Grasslands and cleared farmlands soon gave way to forested boughs in the north-the Forest of Lethyr.
The saddle transmitted a jolt up Raidon's spine with each step of his steed. At first tolerable, he was fast approaching the point where he supposed the regular punishment would probably kill him. Where swords, enchantments, curses, and vengeful criminals had failed, a long journey by horseback would accomplish.
Raidon wondered if contracting as a caravan guard had been the best idea. Quent, the caravan chief, explained he would gain his saddle legs soon enough. In the meantime, Raidon required all his discipline to ignore the pain.
They stayed the night beyond the walls of Phent, where Quent received several wooden crates in trade for a few stained barrels. Raidon didn't inquire what was contained in either. It wasn't his business to know, but more significantly, extinguishing the least hint of saddle-soreness from his joints required the majority of his attention.
When Raidon's hauling and lifting duties for the evening were complete, he moved some distance from the encampment to practice his forms. Soon enough, he was stepping lightly over the frosted grass, slicing the air with his moon-sheened daito, his breath a cloud of white, the jolts of the day a mere memory.
The next morning they veered off the Golden Way, taking a lesser-traveled trade route south, toward the jagged spine of the Dragonjaw Mountains. Quent boasted of a secret pass he knew that would see them straight through to the edge of the Umber River, and then back to the city of Emmech in Aglarond. Raidon nodded, but thought about his darkened forget-me-not.
They camped in a slew of rugged, bare-topped hills bordered by sharp, razor-edged peaks. As darkness descended, bone-chilling winds stole down from the Dragonjaws to race each other through the maze of surrounding hills and valleys. The temperature dropped so precipitously the horses had to be gathered in the lee of the wagons for fear they would freeze.
Raidon supposed that he trusted Quent. The man was obviously a veteran of several trips. The caravan chief led a tight crew. From the discipline he instilled in the scouts who ranged ahead, keeping eyes out for trouble, to the concern he demonstrated for the welfare of the pack horses, to the punishment he doled out to the grub cook
