“How they have savaged my dear friend,” he said, the sound of his voice pouring over the body in ripples, echoing and reporting Sefir’s injuries in greater detail as Khault blindly studied each cut and swollen limb. “Beaten. Impaled. They even stole your voice in the end, but it was always meant to be, I suppose.”
A thin, roping tentacle unfurled from beneath his voluminous, dirty white robes and lifted the serrated blade of his fallen brother from the mud. He turned it over curiously as other growths reached out, stroking and studying the weapon, even tasting the rust-marked steel.
“The warrior that presents the sword to his enemies must always find its twin presented back upon him. They could not have known your mercy, dear Sefir,” Khault intoned somberly as he stood back from the body. He cast the blade into the mud angrily, overcome with a primal urge that caused him to gnash his many rows of teeth. He calmed himself after a moment, a sliver of reason still strong in his mind. “But you have succeeded, though you sacrifice your flesh to do so. They shall come to us, ushered to Tohrepur by one of our blood as our dreams foretold. The Lady shall have her twins, and their song shall be carried far and wide, a glorious crusade of Voice and Prophet.”
With a wide, fang-filled smile of sharklike, uneven teeth beneath his scarred, eyeless visage, he turned to the south, imagining the simple mortals escorting the girl to her destiny. The idea of the brutish, blood-thirsty men gawping at her and protecting her as if she were as low as they, turned his stomach, and his smile faded to a jagged scowl.
“I should like to sacrifice them myself,” he growled, envisioning the deed and the ease with which he might steal their pitiful wills and wits, forcing them to slay one another for his Lady’s glory. “But I shall not disobey the Lady’s will.”
He stretched, his changed body writhing, defying the physical limits he had once known and filling with a power far beyond the farmer that had known Uthalion. Sensitive tentacles lashed the mud, cooling themselves and tasting the soil even as Khault shifted his weight forward, half walking, half slithering away from Sefir’s body.
“I must be swift and greet them upon our Lady’s shore,” he said, then added over his knotted shoulder, “I shall report your service and make your name well known to your … successor.”
With a swift, rolling gait he made his way through the shadows of Caidris, sparing little attention to once familiar places. He paused as he turned curiously to a small tree and the rounded stone placed by the trunk. A glimmer of memory flashed among his thoughts, as quick as the storm’s lightning and gone in a blink, bringing with it a strange sensation of sorrow. He hissed warily and pressed on to the outskirts of town, some part of him vaguely aware of the once oft-visited grave-that of his wife, a place where he’d spread the ashes of his two youngest sons.
Brindani had turned away from the fire and stared out across the highland in troubled wonder. The thick veil of night retreated, drifting away from him to reveal gently swaying grasses and insects taking wing. As he traced the wandering path of a large moth, he shuddered and closed his eyes. He rubbed them fiercely, afraid to open them again lest they show him even more of what should be hidden by the dark. Even with his eyes shut he could hear the moth, rapidly beating its wings, swooping closer, and fluttering over his left shoulder as it was drawn to the fire.
He imagined that if he’d needed to, he could have deftly plucked it from the air without looking. Gingerly he opened his eyes, stared at his hands, and wondered what would become of him-and what he was becoming.
The image of Sefir, writhing in the mud like a landed fish, gasping for air and gurgling as the wound in his lung denied him breath, was burned in Brindani’s mind. He recalled peculiar details the more he thought of it-the set of the singer’s jaw, the remaining pale eye and its dimmed blue iris, the smooth curve of an earlobe, and the tendons of Sefir’s throat, stretching taut above the hollow of a malformed collar bone. Despite the teeth and scars and squirming tentacles, Brindani could see the man within the beast.
A part of him wanted to dash out into the Akana, lose himself in the broken landscape, and just wither away, to find some end to the waking nightmare in which he found himself. It was the part of him that feared for the others more than he feared for himself, the nobler voice which he had always heard, but rarely acted upon.
The stronger part of him, however, kept him still, hugging his chest and clenching his cloak tight across his shoulders. Even as he clung to the hope that his addiction had led to delusion, that it lied to him, cajoled him into a fear that would lead him back to the silkroot, he knew the truth was nothing to do with a simple drug-his need had been surpassed by more dominant and mysterious desires.
He could feel a gentle tug on his spirit, pulling him south and poisoning his reason. It itched across his skin like ants, though he refused to scratch for fear it would grow worse. It pained him like an aching tooth, swelled beneath his flesh like a cancer, and promised to end his misery if only he would follow its sweet song. The unbidden want to keep going, to find Tohrepur at all costs, needled at his every thought and overrode his better instincts.
He glanced at Ghaelya and thought of warning her away, the words rushing to the tip of his tongue though his throat refused to give them voice. They fell apart, overtaken by a maddening, irrational panic.
Clasping his hands together, he laced his fingers over one another tightly, as if he could hold onto himself, keep his flesh from betraying him and melting away into something else. He might have prayed, but he had never given much thought to the gods-they’d never seemed to take any interest in him or his fortunes, unfortunate as they were. He considered his own sword and the release he might find upon its blade, but lacked the conviction and courage to take his own life.
Overcome by exhaustion, he leaned over and lay on his side. He hoped the morning light might spare him, awaken him to baseless fears and the long road ahead, nothing more. He closed his eyes, covered his ears against the thunderous crackling of the campfire, and quietly gasped as the whispering song came to him, keening softly as it slowly carried him to sleep.
He resisted for a moment, raising his suddenly heavy arm to grasp at a bending blade of grass as if it might anchor him, but the enchanting song was far stronger than his ability to defy its call.
It rolled through his body in ceaseless waves, soothing the itch upon his skin and the pulsing pressure in his muscles. He was drawn into a dark well of sweet oblivion, of haunting dreams where pain was a blessing and flesh was as malleable as clay, shaped to the will of an alien mind to which he was nothing more than a figment. Though he drowned in a thick blackness full of singing and shifting half-formed beasts, he breathed evenly and did not resist sinking further.
As he slept and gave himself over to the dreaming song, that nobler part of himself, a small and tinny echo in the endless black, wished that he would not wake up at all.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
10 Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One
(1479 DR)
South of Caidris, Akanul
Uthalion blinked.
He sat cross-legged on the curl of rock, his hands at his sides. A deep ringing filled his ears as he narrowed his eyes and tried to recall what he’d been doing. He had no measure of how much time had passed, though the campfire had burned itself down to a glowing pile of orange embers, casting the campsite below in an eerie light. Alarmed, he felt for the silver ring upon his finger, fearful that he’d lost it and fallen asleep while on watch. Though it remained, he was not reassured that all was well.
The night seemed frozen. The wind had stilled, and the whisper of waving grasses was gone, making the ringing that pounded in his skull all the more profound. Panicked, he rolled to his feet and drew his sword, searching for any sign of threat. Vaasurri was curled asleep near the dying fire as still as if he were dead. Brindani rolled and stirred just beyond the glowing embers, sleeping fitfully, but unharmed.
As Uthalion’s eyes turned to where he’d last see
n Ghaelya, he caught the faint sound of a boot crunching down through long, crisp blades of grass. The genasi’s slender leg stepped beyond the circle of the dimmed fire, disappearing into the tall grass with a dreamlike grace.
Uthalion hesitated and ran a hand through his dark hair nervously. He tried frantically to recall the lost time, only remembering the bright flash of sun before it had disappeared in the west. Brindani moaned and mumbled incoherently in his sleep, breaking Uthalion’s line of thought and bringing him back to the present.
Leaping down from his perch, he glanced at Vaasurri and the half-elf, unsure if he should leave them alone, but already Ghaelya’s footsteps were retreating to the edge of his ability to hear. Quietly cursing, he rushed into the dark after the genasi, though the constant dull ring in his head seemed to grow louder the farther he progressed in Ghaelya’s wake.
Deep red lights drifted through the sky, islands of rock floating south out of the northbound storm, called storm-motes by the few who lived on the Akana. Their bulk was scored by strokes of lightning, and they trailed long plumes of white steam streaked with glowing bands of reflected crimson. He could make out the distant silhouette of Ghaelya, walking languidly through the grass, her fingertips brushing the stilled green tide that spread out around her. He almost called out to her, but stopped himself in mid-breath, struck by the dreamlike view and wondering again if he truly had somehow fallen asleep on watch.
Instead he remained quiet, keeping her in view as he stealthily followed in the thin trough she had made through the grass. The ringing he heard changed in pitch and tone several times, but never left him, always rising when he thought it might fall, drawing him along despite the ache of pain it caused him. He wondered if it was the powerful song, reaching out to him in some new form the closer he traveled to Tohrepur.
“Is this how Ghaelya was drawn to Caidris?” he whispered, wondering if the genasi were even awake. She had left her sword behind and made no effort to hide herself, walking carelessly out in the open with an almost preternatural awareness of her surroundings.
The land rose slightly just ahead of her, and though there was no wind to speak of, the long, dark mass she approached writhed and twitched. Uthalion quickened his step, lengthening his stride through the grass, but Ghaelya disappeared, engulfed in a forest of animated foliage.
Uthalion stood at the edge of the thick grove, the whiplike vine-trees growing tight against one another. The sudden, swishing movement of one spread to all those around it, causing waves through the squirming trees like ripples that hissed for long breaths, then would grow suddenly silent before starting anew. Dark thorns dangled at the ends of roping branches, glowing with a thin crimson light from above. Uthalion knelt low and made his careful way into the grove.
The ringing in his ears was joined by the constant whispering of the vine-trees, and he found it hard to breathe, imagining himself underwater, with the way the trees swayed. He flinched as their narrow roots moved beneath his hands as he crawled, the soft soil parting easily for his weight. A thick carpet of dried insects crunched against his skin, churned through the dirt, and was joined every so often by a fluttering newcomer, struck from the sky by an accurately aimed thorn.
He could no longer hear Ghaelya moving ahead of him, though her footprints were somewhat easy to track through the soft, heaving dirt. Crawling faster, he felt as though the ground might swallow him if he stayed too long in one spot. Breaking through the shifting press of thin stalks, he stood cautiously in a wide clearing. A glowing rock-mote drifted slowly overhead, illuminating the rising and falling sea of dulled green and flashing red thorns.
Hundreds of small, buzzing insects flitted through the clearing and over the tops of the living ocean, many swarming around a circle of large stones. As he approached the stone ring, he could make out worn, handmade lines amid the cracks and soft moss, bits of ancient architecture gathered together around the edge of a yawning pit of deep black. Thick branches snapped beneath his boots, but as he knelt to inspect the pit, wondering if Ghaelya had fallen in, he realized that he stood on a pile of bones.
As he looked down into the leering face of a dry skull, picked clean of flesh long ago, the ringing in his ears, the whispering vine-trees, and the buzzing wings of insects came together in a strange harmony. He wavered, leaning on the stone circle for support as the soft, beguiling tones of the song reached out through the myriad of sounds and left him gasping for breath on the edge of the deep pit.
Ghaelya descended slowly, her hands carefully finding holds on damp rock or making them in dense mud. Her body seemed to move of its own accord, and she felt more an observer than a part of her surroundings, watching herself drift, drowsy and calm, into flickering shadows and ghostly light. Dripping water echoed in a deep chamber somewhere below, the sound drawing her back to her senses for a breath. She wondered why it alarmed her so, but the feeling passed swiftly. She breathed in tune to the soft singing that led her down, her heart beating in time with the peaceful melody, only vaguely aware of her last descent into a basement in Caidris. Like then, it did not occur to her to be afraid.
Dragonflies buzzed around her, hovering and studying her with their large, flashing eyes before flitting away. A long, spiraling column of drifting motes stretched from the dark below to the open sky above, tiny graceful wings belying the hunger of hundreds of mosquitoes that did not stop to inspect her or feed upon her blood. The walls of the pit fairly hummed with the sound of so much tiny life in the air. As her boots found the soft, gritty floor of the pit, she pulled her hands away from the rock, her fingertips tingling from the exertion of climbing. Trancelike, she turned to continue her dreaming journey.
A thin layer of seashells, bones, and fallen insects coated the sandy floor of a wide cavern lit by some unseen source of flickering illumination. A bowl depression in the center of the chamber bore a still pool of somewhat clear water. A sour smell of stagnancy hung on the air along with other scents that touched lightly upon memories of death and possibly burning, but they did not remain long as she stepped forward. There were more bones set into the walls, most of them old and yellowed, but some still bore the rusty blush of blood upon them. They were set deliberately, forming intricately detailed designs and patterns. She saw a mosaic of fantastic sea monsters amid stylized waves, and symbols of an unknown language that nevertheless spoke to the water in her spirit somehow, like an alphabet to describe the tides.
The largest of the seashells fanned outward from the edge of the still pool, their well-polished, opalescent edges swirling with eerie light.
As she knelt down, little ripples on the pool’s surface caught her attention. Dark shapes darted and crawled in the muddy silt of the bottom. The smallest, with large heads and legless bodies twisting back and forth to swim up and down from the bottom, she recognized as the larvae of mosquitoes. When she was little, she and Tessaeril had found some of the larvae in an old water bucket and had taken them home as pets. Their mother had screamed in disgust, emptying the bucket and punishing them for bringing the creatures home. Ghaelya knew better now, but she still smiled at the sight of the larvae.
The others, larger ones crawling slowly along in the mud, she did not recognize until one snapped up an infant mosquitoes. Tiny legs propelled it, hunting for more larvae, a long armlike jaw hinged beneath its upper body. Dragonfly larvae, or water-dragons she’d called them as a young girl.
“They brought me here to die,” said the unmistakable voice of Tessaeril. It filled the chamber, wafting gently over Ghaelya’s skin. and she did not look away from the water. She somehow expected her sister and accepted her presence as a matter of course, one more part of the dream. A reflection of faintly glowing crimson eyes danced on the water, as did the dark silhouette of their bearer who sat in shadow on the opposite shore of the pool. “The Choir brought us here, one by one, and asked us if we could hear it …”
“The song?” Ghaelya muttered, her tongue feeling thick and sluggish as the crimson eyes
nodded solemnly.
“Those that could not hear it were slain … mercifully,” Tessaeril answered, her voice breaking slightly, causing a brief disturbance in the humming melody that held tight to Ghaelya’s will. “Those that could hear it … were not so fortunate.”
Ghaelya swooned, dizzy as the chamber suddenly shifted, the ghostly light flashed, and ripples coated every surface, spreading out from the stagnant pool. She stumbled backward, blinking and shaking her head, trying to focus as Tessaeril’s eyes grew and split at their centers, blossoming into brilliant, deep red petals. Ghaelya slowly withdrew into the shadows.
“Is this real?” she mumbled hoarsely. “Am I dreaming?”
“We are, all of us, dreaming,” Tessaeril replied from the dark, her voice growing louder, echoing and rippling through the bone mosaic on the walls.
“Wait!” Ghaelya cried, reaching out and advancing only to splash into the pool, far deeper than it had appeared. She sank swiftly as the light faded, kicking as she fought to keep her head high, to keep Tessaeril in sight.
“Only, some of us are trapped,” Tessaeril continued, her eyes dripping streams of crimson nectar. “Some of us are not dreaming, but rather, are dreamed …”
“I don’t understand!” Ghaelya replied, trying to swim forward, but held back by a swiftly growing current. The edges of the pool spread outward, and the walls faded to a hazy black. A sense of unfathomable depth overtook her, and the distant crests of sloshing waves flashed far beyond the meager perimeter of the chamber as she called out to her sister, “Don’t leave me!”
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