The sound of dripping water echoed faintly as rain leaked through the soil, but he stepped down only onto a soft, damp floor of thin mud. The candlelight glittered dully on rusted tools hanging on the back wall and reflected on the brimming surface of a well-placed rain barrel, but he saw no sign of Ghaelya or anything that would have indicated she had been in the basement at all.
Ghaelya awoke with a cold slap of water.
Reality rushed her senses, overwhelming them with the chill of the flooded basement even as water filled her lungs. She gagged as she made the swift transition from breathing air to inhaling the cold water, shivering as it flowed down her throat. A taste of rust filled her mouth, and gritty bits of dirt caught in her teeth. Quickly orienting up from down, the images and sounds of her sleepwalk seeped into her conscious mind as she faced the cloudy darkness of the basement waters. Thrashing away from the murk, she braced herself against the wall and waited for the crimson eyes from her dream to come rushing at her through the shadowy flood.
Her body cooled, adapting as she waited, submerged and fearful of where she’d awoken and even more so of how she’d gotten there. As she drew her sword, careful not to disturb the water’s surface any more than she already had, she caught sight of a wavering shadow dancing through pale light from a narrow window. Mud and rust settled, allowing the shape to form in fractured beams of flashing light on the basement floor. Her eyes widening, she drifted forward, following the light to the dirty glass of the window.
There, crudely drawn in rust-colored lines roughly the size of a slender fingertip, lay the familiar mark of a candle’s flame—the mark of her family.
“She was here,” she muttered, her voice sounding swift and strange. Caught in a sudden storm of joy, fear, and relief, she stood in the waist-high water, her sword and caution forgotten at the sight of her sister’s drawing. Struck by her own sense of shock, she whispered, “She’s alive.”
“Indeed she is, child.”
Ghaelya spun to the dark, southeastern corner, her sword at the ready as ripples radiated outward, lapping gently against her thighs as the speaker moved. As her own voice had underwater, the newcomer’s bore a chilling, drowned quality that echoed in odd directions from the source. Grimly, she realized the voice was quite familiar.
“She is more alive now than she has ever been,” Sefir said with reverence as he moved into the dim blue morning light, little more than a crouched shape in the water that swayed slightly, as if he listened to a slow melody that only he could hear. “And she waits for you to join her.”
“Where is she?” Ghaelya demanded, the weight of the broadsword in her hand comforting as she banished all thought of escape from her pursuer. The mere idea of his hands on Tessaeril made staying her blade all the harder.
“I will take you to her,” he replied, rising from the water, his silhouette manlike at first, but changing, unfolding as he reached his full height. Twisting limbs curled languidly around him, undulating above the water briefly before dipping under again. “If only you will allow me the honor.”
“Wh-why should I trust you?” she asked, taken aback and horrified as Sefir slowly approached, gliding toward her. She backed away, keeping the sword between them and found the bottom step of the stairs with her foot.
“You should not trust me,” he answered, his voice changing, growing more sonorous and suggestive, crawling around inside her thoughts. “I am unworthy of trust, merely a humble servant, a tool … A sword at the end of a divine arm.”
Ghaelya took the first stair behind her, rising slightly from the water and eager to escape. Placing her boot upon the next step, she paused as his voice somehow preceded itself, a chorus of sounds pressing on her mind until words formed within the chaos.
“She calls endlessly for you to join her, Ghaelya,” he said, nearing the bottom of the stairs as lightning filled the kitchen, giving her a brief glimpse of his tortured visage. A single eye glared dully from a network of fresh scars above a wide, lipless grin of sharp teeth. Blood-soaked bandages covered part of his face, dripping crimson down his cheeks and staining his rows of teeth, reddened spittle escaping them. “She sings in a glorious pain that even I will never know.”
She faltered on the next step, a familiar nerve-rattling growl shaking her from atop the stairs as she imagined the glassy, predatory eyes fixed on her back.
Brindani stumbled slowly through the cold, misty rain, his movements awkward and his legs heavy. His breath came quick and, despite the rain, he could feel the cold sweat breaking out on his brow. Each step seemed a forced effort, painful and frustrating, as the lack of his drug was announced by every muscle in his body. His eyes burned, and a pulsing headache had settled down in the space behind them, pushing outward into his temples and filling his ears with a storm that only increased his pain.
Once, when he was a boy, he’d taken deathly ill and had barely survived. He thought fondly of those days as his stomach churned, as if it were eating itself.
“Quickly,” Vaasurri intoned yet again from several strides ahead, an undertone of annoyance in the killoren’s voice causing Brindani to grit his teeth in anger. “Keep up. Stay alert.”
Cursing quietly, Brindani forced himself to move faster, though his gaze drifted from house to house, corner to corner, the details of a former village coming into sharper focus even as his body seemed to fall apart. His mind placed ghostly figures and candlelight in each dark window, families hurrying to board their doors and hide from the coming storm. Turning a corner, he paused, his attention caught by the remnant of an old smithy sign squeaking in the wind.
He rocked back on his heels, staggering in the intersection of two narrow streets. Agony ripped through his stomach, and he bent double, kneeling as phantom cries and shouts echoed in his thoughts. The memory flared to life as he tried to breathe despite the pain in his gut. He placed his hands in the soft mud and wet grass, gulping for air.
“What is it?” Vaasurri called out, running back to join him, “Have you found something?”
Brindani stared blankly at the old street corner, his pain fading though his throat burned with the faint taste of blood and bile.
“Faldrath … He died here,” the half-elf muttered, shaking his head and recalling the bloodied face of the once talkative soldier, silenced with no last words to pass on. “He was just a boy.”
Vaasurri laid a hand upon his shoulder, at first reassuring then forceful. Shoved hard, Brindani landed on his back in the mud, squinting at the killoren as tiny drops of rain stung his eyes.
“Focus!” Vaasurri said sternly, gesturing with his sword at the empty town. “Otherwise just stay here, out of my way … out of everyone’s way.”
“I’m trying—!” Brindani began angrily.
“Try harder!” Vaasurri shouted, shaking with anger. He turned away, back to his tracking, calling over his shoulder, “Fight it or die! Make a choice! I’ve no time to coddle you now.”
Brindani stood, indignant and furious, drawing his sword before taking hold of himself and calming his wounded pride. He closed his eyes, lest some familiar building or patch of ground remind him of more deaths, more long fights, and the people who had once lived in Caidris.
Torn between self-pity and inexplicable rage, his only focus remained on the silkroot.
“Just once more,” he whispered to himself. “Once more and I’ll be fine. I can do this.”
He laid his hand upon the leather strap of his pack, slowly, as if at any moment a fresh surge of resistance might save him from himself. But the pain kept his hand moving. Vaasurri had stopped and knelt at the end of a short street, as Brindani searched through his pack, briefly hoping he’d lost the last bit of the drug. His hand closed on the soft lump of silkroot just as the strident clash of steel on steel rang through the air.
Vaasurri stood and charged toward an abandoned house on the next corner, but Brindani hesitated. Time felt stretched as he warred with two compulsions, and he recalled yet another memory fr
om the battle in Caidris, Uthalion’s voice, as darkness had fallen over the town, echoing in his mind.
“Keep moving, don’t think, and do your job,” he said under his breath as a low growl rumbled from in between the houses ahead of him.
Prowling into the overgrown road, the dreamer bared its tusklike fangs. Its thin gray coat was soaked with rain, and its claws were covered in mud. Haunting roars and raised voices erupted from the house on the corner, galvanizing Brindani’s will to resist the urge that gripped him. He left the silkroot to its hiding place and raised his sword, stifling the pain in his stomach and advancing on the beast between him and his friends.
Uthalion stared at the old basement in a daze, seeing nothing changed since he’d closed the door at the top of the stairs behind him six years ago.
Empty bags of stored food were thrown in a corner, some torn at the seams to serve as blankets. And in the darkened space beneath the stairs, the one real blanket they’d found during that time concealed a pile of discarded weapons, cast aside and, with whispered oaths, never touched again. Uthalion imagined that beneath the smell of dust and time, a scent of blood was still on the air. Surely its crusted stains still adorned the abandoned blades.
He stood at the bottom of the stairs and saw them all, each soldier in their place, trying not to listen to the raging storm that had brought no rain. Their faces and names were burned in his memory, sellswords from all walks of life and parts of the world, gathered together under the banner of the Keepers of the Cerulean Sign. A banner of war against the aboleths he had not seen since Tohrepur, nor ever desired to see again.
“We did what we had to,” he whispered, his breath quick and his pulse erratic. A sudden anger clenched his fist as he cursed the road that had brought the soldiers to Caidris. “We cleaned up the mess.”
“And left a fair mess behind, I would say.”
A swift breeze rushed down the stairs as Uthalion turned toward a voice as much a ghost as the phantoms he’d been speaking to. He backed away from the dark figure standing at the basement door, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Khault?” he said, trying to reconcile his memory of the man with the hunched silhouette at the top of the stairs.
“I am surprised you remember my name, Captain,” Khault replied smoothly, a humming edge in his words that cut like a saw through Uthalion’s skull. “Though I am not surprised to find you here, moping in a dusty basement, speaking only to ghosts.”
“Not just ghosts it seems,” Uthalion muttered, unable to tear his eyes away from the old farmer. Thunder rumbled as lightning flashed through the upstairs windows, giving him a glimpse of dirty white robes and a ruined, scar-laced visage that bore only a faint resemblance to the man he’d known.
“I was here once, like you, talking to the past, trying to sort out what had gone wrong first,” Khault said. The basement door creaked ominously on its hinges; a sound like nails being dragged through the old wood echoed down the stairs. “But I found myself alone. Within months my sons had left me, along with everyone else; but I stayed, unable to leave my wife’s side.”
Uthalion pictured the simple gravesite and recalled lowering Khault’s wife into the soil, burying her in silence as plumes of oily smoke rose from the fields outside town. Hers was the only body not burned that day, the only grave that bore a marker instead of soil darkened by ash.
“I spoke to you a hundred times down here, pleaded with you to leave, thinking I could change the past somehow, make it right,” Khault continued. His shoulders shook as he spoke, and his voice rose with a growl that clawed painfully through Uthalion’s thoughts. “I killed you a hundred times over as well, Captain.”
Casually drawing the first handspan of blade from its sheath, Uthalion stepped forward, bracing his boot on the bottom step. Pity drew him toward the brave man he had once known, the farmer that had sacrificed so much to do what was right, but Uthalion let anger grip the sword at his side, to wield against the thing Khault had become.
“I am no captain,” he said sternly, slowly taking the first step. “A dying man handed me a sword and ordered me to lead a retreat. Nothing more.”
“I found your Tohrepur, Captain,” Khault spat. The single thrumming word slammed into Uthalion’s chest like a thrown brick, briefly stealing his breath. He fell back, coughing as Khault continued, “I had sought only another answer, some reason for the battle that had come to my doorstep. Instead I found bones … and singing … and in the ruins of your foolish battle, I found what you left behind.”
“No,” Uthalion whispered, breathless as his mind raced. He wondered where the Keepers had gone wrong, fearing the horrors they’d left alive in Tohrepur. As the powerful vibrations of Khault’s voice shivered across his skin, he looked upon the old farmer with new eyes, seeing the trapped man beneath the tortured flesh, and the work that he had left unfinished.
“You were my only reason for coming back here,” Khault said, sliding away from the open doorway. Its rusted hinges groaned as the door swung to close. “I wondered at your reasons at first, but now I see … the trembling man, his heart racing, speaking to the long dead … He never really left this place, did he?”
Lightning flared, a brief, narrowing band of light.
“Do you remember what you said to me before I left?” Uthalion said, forcing the words out swiftly. The closing door paused. “You said to save pity for myself, that you didn’t want it.”
“Yes,” Khault growled. Again came the sound of long claws scratching deep into wood.
“Truth be told, I didn’t pity you,” Uthalion continued, standing straighter and staring hard at the dark silhouette of the old farmer. “Until now.”
A long moment of quiet passed between them, and Uthalion suspected he might have goaded Khault into the fight he desired. But the door slammed shut, the sound followed by that of wooden bars being slid into place—then silence. In the dark, Uthalion felt his nerve waver for a heartbeat, a breath of panic that he quickly stifled.
Faraway, through the wood of the old house, he caught the faint sound of roaring monsters. Even through the mud beneath his boots, he could feel the thunderous howling erupting from outside. Banishing the urge to crawl away and wait out the storm as he once had, he considered his options and set a course of escape.
Relighting the nub of the candle, he set it down upon the bottom step. He pulled his hand away and froze at the sight of twin, gleaming flames behind the stairway. The glassy eyes swiveled in the candlelight as the rumbling growl of the hidden dreamer stole his brief hope away.
Ghaelya leaped beyond Sefir’s reach as the walls shook with the painful roaring of the dreamers. She gasped, bracing herself until the sound passed, the pressure in her temples threatening to burst outward. Sefir winced slightly, but was otherwise undeterred by the chorus of howling beasts. His bandaged, clawed hand stretched out, offered to her with a smile that reached her most primal fears.
She slashed at the hand, taking another step back, all too aware of the dreamer at the top of the stairs and unsure of which threat she should deal with first. Clouds of dust fell from the ceiling, falling dryly on her arms as tingles of warmth rose like gooseflesh across her body. She gritted her teeth, the elements of water and smoldering flame warring through her spirit, each calling for dominance and promising blood.
“Peace, child!” Sefir called, his hands spread wide, but held beyond the reach of her blade. “We mean no harm to you! Pain is a blessing only our Lady shall bestow.”
As she recoiled at the serenity in his voice, her elemental spirit chose. Crashing waves rushed through her body, and she rolled into a swift flow of liquid motion. Her skin erupted with swirling blue flares of light as she charged the mutilated man, her body bending through his faltering grasp, her sword rising to cut at the throat of his maddening voice.
Her blade rang loudly as it caught the rusted, serrated blade that appeared between them, a length of steel that bore her solid blow without bending. Hot, strange
ly sweet breath washed over her face, an overpowering scent of flowers and blood stealing her breath away.
“I bring to you promises of song and suffering,” Sefir whispered over their crossed blades, the power in his words caressing her cheeks lovingly as they tried to soothe the tempest that stormed within her. “Why do you deny what your twin accepted so willingly?”
Shaking free of his voice, she pushed on his blade, bracing one foot on the wall as she jumped and spun. Steel scraped on steel as she turned in the air, dragging her blade up and across Sefir’s face. She caught a glimpse of his bandages falling away, of the ruined, empty socket beneath them, before kicking off the opposite wall and charging the dreamer above. A shrill scream of pain chased her up the stairs, the sound rippling across her skin.
With its fangs bared, the dreamer crouched low, snarling and shaking its head as if in pain. White hot needles of agony stabbed through Ghaelya’s skull as Sefir thrashed against the walls of the stairway, but she ignored the sensation. She thought of Tessaeril with each step taken, she heard Sefir’s promise of suffering with each quick breath, and felt a glimmer of the dream-song pacify the pain of the twisted man’s scream. Like a near-forgotten childhood memory, it whispered in the back of her mind and steadied the edge of her blade.
Her sword struck the dreamer just below its gnashing teeth, splitting the flesh of its jowls wide as she rolled in the opposite direction to her gruesome slash. The beast clawed at her nimble legs clumsily as it yelped; its stinking blood splashed on the floor of the narrow kitchen. She huffed like an animal, feeling as though the walls were closing in on her, trapping her and teasing her with scents of fresh air wafting through the window.
She sidestepped as the dreamer pounced, pulling her offered blade deeply through its throat. She turned to leave it writhing and gurgling on the kitchen floor. An unnerving sliding sound arose from the dark basement stairway, accompanied by light footsteps and creaking wood. A massive roar from the front room shook the floorboards, and she flattened herself against the wall as a large object was hurled into the kitchen.
The Restless Shore: The Wilds Page 16
