Forge of the Mindslayers: Blade of the Flame Book 2 (18 page)

Galharath frowned, his psionic senses sweeping through the chamber, and while he was normally acutely aware of his surroundings, this time he paid far closer attention to its minute details. At first, he detected nothing out the ordinary, and he began to wonder if perhaps Cathmore’s dark spirit hadn’t corrupted his mind to the point where the old man was starting to take leave of his senses, but then he found it: the merest flicker of a mental presence, so infinitesimal that even the most skilled psionicist would have been hard-pressed to notice it without conducting a careful search. The physical nexus for the presence lay in the far corner of the observation chamber. Galharath got a firm mental fix on the presence to make certain that it couldn’t conceal itself from him once more, and then turned in its direction.

“We know you’re there, and there’s no way that you will be able to hide from me again. Show yourself.”

At first nothing happened, and Galharath was contemplating a psionic strike against the presence when the air in the corner rippled, and a hulking stone and wood being with numerous multicolored crystals affixed to its body appeared. Galharath instantly recognized what he was looking at, though he wasn’t sure he believed it. This was an artificial being produced by the crystalline forge that lay at the heart of Mount Luster. This was a psi-forged.

“How interesting,” Cathmore said. If the master assassin was surprised by the sudden appearance of the psi-forged, Galharath couldn’t tell it from the calm tone of his voice. “I wasn’t aware that the forge was ever operational.”

Galharath was intrigued, for there was so much they could learn about the forge and its processes from this being that had
been born within its mystic fires, but he was also cautious. It was clear that the psi-forged was powerful, or else it wouldn’t have been able to cloak itself from Galharath’s perception for so long, and if Cathmore’s dark spirit hadn’t detected it, allowing Galharath to search for the creature, there was a good chance he might never have discovered it. That meant the psi-forged was extremely strong—and therefore extremely dangerous.

Galharath felt an itching sensation, as if hundreds of ants had somehow found their way into his skull and were crawling over the surface of his brain. The psi-forged was attempting to probe his mind. The technique was clumsy at best, but there was no denying the power behind the probe. The creature had been able to penetrate Galharath’s standard defenses as easily as his physical body could pass through air. Already the itching sensation was beginning to hurt as the psi-forged intensified its probe. It now felt as if the ants were sinking their mandibles into the tender, moist flesh of his brain and tearing away chunks to devour. At this rate, if Galharath allowed the creature to persist in its attempt to explore his mind, there was a chance he would suffer significant brain damage.

Galharath concentrated on strengthening his psionic defenses, visualizing his head surrounded by an impenetrable globe of blazing light. He drew additional power from the psi-crystals he wore on his gloves and chest, as well as those shards woven into his hair. He used this power to increase the globe’s density, adding layer upon layer to it, each layer vibrating at a different frequency, exponentially strengthening the whole. Galharath felt the pain of the psi-forged’s mental probe begin to subside, and then it was gone. Before the psi-forged could renew its efforts to penetrate Galharath’s defenses, the kalashtar went on the attack, both in an attempt to distract the creature as well as to conduct a probe of his own. His vision shifted, and he now saw the psi-forged not as a physical creature of darkwood, silver,
obsidian, and stone but rather as a luminous being composed entirely of various hues of light.

And what light! Galharath’s psychic vision was dazzled by the array of colors that comprised the creature’s astral form: fiery reds, pulsating blues, glowing oranges, warm yellows, cool greens, and so many, many more—colors that Galharath had never seen, colors which he wasn’t sure even had names … All were interwoven in a complex pattern that formed the true core of the psi-forged’s self, what—for a lack of better term—could be called the creature’s soul.

Galharath pictured tendrils of energy emerging from the globe surrounding his head like pseudopods. The tendrils lengthened and extended toward the multicolored patchwork of energy that was the psi-forged. The ends of the tendrils waved in the air around the creature’s astral form, tentatively probing its outer defenses, searching for a weak point that might allow entry. No matter where the tendrils looked, they could find no weaknesses in the psi-forged’s defenses, but Galharath did sense something odd about this creature …

He recoiled as images, thoughts, emotions, and sensations assaulted his mind. He tried to shut them out, to deny them entrance, but they crashed through the protective globe of mental energy protecting his brain as if it were the most fragile of glass. Galharath clasped his head in his hands and screamed.

The pieces had been crafted and assembled into a rough approximation of a humanoid shape. Now all that remained was to infuse the creature with the spark of life. The construct lay motionless atop a crystalline table in the middle of the spherical structure that was the psi-forge’s main chamber. The crystal struts that connected the sphere to the cavern’s ceiling and floor
pulsated with soft illumination as they drew upon the vast thermal energies contained beneath the mountain, and the runes carved into the sides of the table glowed with eerie eldritch light. The atmosphere of the cavern was charged with the sensation of building power to the point where the air crackled with barely restrained energy.

Four people wearing protective crystal-lens goggles watched closely as the forge continued siphoning the mountain’s power into itself. Three of them stood close to the forge’s main chamber so that they might more closely observe the device’s first test—and intervene in the unlikely event that anything went wrong. The fourth stood much farther back, almost with his back against the cavern’s far wall. In addition to his goggles, this cautious individual wore a heavy cloak imbued with nearly a dozen different enchantments designed to safeguard the wearer from all harm, whether physical or mystical. This was Karnil of House Cannith, high-ranking member of the Fabricators Guild and overseer of this installation. He was a short man, though he thought himself of medium height. Ever since childhood he had endured jokes from people inquiring if he had any halfling blood in his ancestry, which was perhaps why his face seemed to be set in a permanent scowl. House Cannith carried the Mark of Making, and during its long and illustrious history, the House was responsible for some of Khorvaire’s greatest achievements, including the towers of Sharn, the lightning rail, and the warforged.

It had been Karnil’s task to shepherd this project from its inception to this moment, when the psi-forge was ready to become fully operational. It had taken a great deal of time to get to this point, and Karnil felt both pride and trepidation. If the psi-forge worked properly, House Cannith would be able to produce warriors the like of which Khorvaire had never seen, and his status within the House would rise immeasurably, but if the forge failed … Karnil thrust the thought away, lest he
somehow jinx today’s test by allowing his doubts to fully form in his mind. He rubbed the dragonmark on the back of his hand for luck, an unconscious habit he’d had most of his life. The forge would work because it
had
to work, he told himself. Simple as that.

The trio standing close to the forge were just as responsible for the device’s creation as Karnil, but where he had served in primarily an administrative capacity, these three—kalashtar all—were the ones who’d done the actual design and construction. In their minds, that made the psi-forge
theirs
, but they wisely kept this feeling to themselves.

The first kalashtar’s name was Banain, a telekineticist who specialized in animation psionics. He wore a silken robe of fiery red that rippled as if stirred by a gentle breeze, though the cavern air was still. This wasn’t the first creation forge he had helped build, but it was certainly the most complex and challenging. If it worked, it would be the crowning achievement in a long, and if he did say so himself, distinguished career. His face betrayed none of the excitement that he felt, but his eyes gleamed with anticipation.

Next to Banain stood Evalina, a psionic artificer. She wore only a sleeveless black tunic and sandals, but her flesh was so covered with tattoos and piercings that it appeared she was clad in a multicolored body stocking from head to toe. She specialized in the miniaturization of psionic objects, and the myriad metal rings, studs, and pins embedded in her flesh were all devices of her own creation, each allowing her to perform psionic feats of various kinds. She had also developed a process—known only to herself—of mixing tiny shards of psionic crystals with ink, and the tattoos that adorned her skin were also powerful psionic devices in their own right. Evalina had a single driving purpose in her life: to do that which others thought impossible. Though this wasn’t the first psi-forge ever built in the history
of Khorvaire, all of the others had been failures and quite disastrous ones at that, but
she
had helped create this forge, therefore she knew it would work. In Evalina’s mind, the only true impossibility in existence was that she could ever fail at something she attempted, so she waited for the psi-forge’s successful activation, which in her mind was a certainty, a smug smile on her lips.

Turi was the last kalashtar’s name, and he was a highly skilled and most powerful psionicist. He possessed no hair anywhere on his body, which was cadaverously thin. His only article of clothing was a white breech cloth, and it was all he ever wore, regardless of the climate. Turi sought to transcend his physical form and become a being of pure thought, and to this end he traveled the length and breadth of Khorvaire learning everything he could about the nature and practice of psionics. He had helped to create House Cannith’s psi-forge not because he cared about the House’s fortunes, and not because he cared who won the long war that had ravaged Khorvaire. He had done it for the knowledge he’d gained throughout the process, and because he saw the constructs the forge would produce as being a major step toward true psionic transcendence. If psi-forged could be born, perhaps he, Turi, could at last discover a way to achieve the apotheosis he so desired.

Banain, Evalina, and Turi monitored the complex interplay of energies—both mystical and psionic, visible and invisible—that coruscated across the psi-forge’s surface. A few more seconds, and the forge would be up to full power, and then …

A burst of brilliant white light poured forth from the forge’s main chamber, so intense that even though they wore protective goggles, the four in attendance were forced to avert their faces lest they risk blindness. They could feel the vast energies released by the forge as it worked to imbue the construct with life. Of the four, only Karnil knew that the true process by which life was granted to constructs remained a mystery. Oh,
the Fabricators Guild pretended it understood, that House Cannith were the masters of the creation forges, but in reality the ultimate nature of how an inanimate being made of stone, metal, and wood became a living, sentient being was as much a mystery to them as to anyone else. Thus Karnil watched through eyes squeezed almost shut as the blazing light of life itself poured into the cavern, his heart filled with both awe and terror at the fearsome energies unleashed.

Then like a storm whose peak fury had passed, the light began to dim. A few moments more, and it had diminished to the point where the four could once more look upon the psi-forge. The crystalline structure continued to pulse with soft light, and the air was filled with the acrid smell of released energy, like after a lightning strike. More, each of the observers experienced a nauseating sensation of vertigo, though only Turi wasn’t bothered by it. The dizziness was a result of energies that had rippled through the localized psi-scape as the forge discharged its power, affecting the mental equilibrium of the observers in the process. Turi was unconcerned; he knew the effect would soon pass.

The four waited, their gazes locked on the construct lying motionless upon the crystalline table inside the forge’s main chamber. Several moments passed, during which the forge ceased to glow, and the vertiginous sensation in the observers subsided, but still the construct did not move. Karnil ground his teeth together in frustration. After all this time—all the careful preparation, all the exacting work—they couldn’t have failed! He started forward, intending to enter the chamber and check on the construct himself, when the creature’s left hand twitched.

Karnil froze, a hesitant smile on his lips. Had he imagined it or—There! The hand moved again!

Slowly, awkwardly, the construct sat up. It looked at the four observers, tiny pinpoints of light, of
life
, flickering deep within its eyes.

“We’ve done it!” Banain shouted. “It’s alive!”