Stardeep_ The Dungeons - Bruce R. Cordell [4]
She waited for the constructs voice to comment on the activity and act on its observation.
Cynosure uttered no sound and initiated no activity.
Worrisome. The idol should autonomously dampen irregular cycles that threatened to break into chaotic, unmodulated activity. The Well was displaying a classic pattern of stochastic feedback in the boundary layer.
She glanced at her amulet. Its emblazoned blue symbol was deepening, becoming dark as a starless night.
"Cynosure! Barrier layer modulation!"
Delphe leaned forward. She couldn't risk waiting for the disconcertingly silent construct. She shouted syllables of sealing and calming. More than merely audible, her words poured forth like a stream of blue smoke. Energy crystallized from her enunciation and strictures. The secret of the Keeper's wizardry relied on a lingua arcana older than contemporary wizardry, a language whose roots lay beyond the creation of the world itself. Her benediction became a sheen of silver-blue light that fell down the hollow Well. It fell upon the barrier layer like rain upon water, dotting the shining margin with hundreds of expanding circular ripples.
The bubbling, sunlike frenzy beneath the ectoplasmic film sizzled and spit in the silver mist, spiking in sudden frenzy as if in realization that if it didn't succeed now, its chance was spent.
The fury at the interface was inexorably smothered in Delphe's chant of silver-blue assuagement.
A few moments later, the prominences were completely gone.
The abjurer blew out a breath of relief. "Cynosure-"
"Delphe!" the constructs voice suddenly blared out. "Instability detected at the boundary… hold… hold…"
Pain tweaked her jaw. She had involuntarily clenched it at the sudden reemergence of the constructs voice. She consciously relaxed her muscles. Was something wrong with the idol?
"I've managed the surge, Cynosure," she said. Was the construct seeing something new, or was its attention somehow delayed? Had it just now noticed the breach attempt she'd had to damp out? She glanced down. Yes, the instability was absent. The boundary layer was again as placid as she had ever seen it.
"But what about you, Cynosure? Why didn't you respond when I called? More importantly, why didn't you notice the disequilibrium before it grew into a problem?"
If the warden construct upon which all of Stardeep relied was becoming erratic… she didn't want to imagine it. The construct was too intimately wound through the structure, the fail-safes, and the Well itself. She waited, hoping for an answer she could believe.
After a pause, it replied. "Delphe, please accept my most heartfelt apologies. You were correct. The prominences you
"observed earlier were not merely an unusual mixture of incompatible protective wards. The light heralded an escape attempt. The Traitor does not sleep."
Dread blossomed in her stomach. What evil must live in the Traitor's heart, what power, that even a thousand years after his internment he still plotted novel escape tactics? Tactics so devious they were able to surprise captors well-schooled in the art of safekeeping?
If only he could be killed instead of kept. But with all his other options and original grandiose plans closed to him, death was exactly what the Traitor most desired. His personal martyrdom, he believed, would propel his spirit into the depths of Faeriin. His essence would become a necromantic signal burrowing through the rock of ages until it discovered an ancient cyst-a cyst where aboleths of the most ancient lineage slept away the eras in a city sealed outside time. They waited only for the proper signal to once more attempt to establish a realm of madness across all Faerun as they had tried in the dawn era.
"I did not initially answer," explained Cynosure, "because I engaged the layer moments before you noticed the cascade. My counter-attack