The Restless Shore tw-2

by James P. Davis

  He stood still a moment before following the street with an easy stride, shielding his eyes when a shaft of light fell on him from an empty alley. Ghaelya watched him go, hesitating for half a breath as the occasional whimpers increased and the ghostly breathing intensified, becoming faster and faster.

  “Let’s go,” Uthalion said, his voice breaking through the fear that threatened to leave her frozen in place. Despite the cacophony of crushed teeth and leaves that seemed to thunder beneath them, Ghaelya made out the muffled sound of heavy forms thudding against old wood, of fingernails scratching at stone, and tortured throats groaning as some unseen host was awoken by the dying light of day.

  Her step quickened as they climbed higher into the city, keeping Brindani one block ahead. He led them inexorably closer to the glittering forest of crystal spires. Faintly, as the shadows lengthened and the eastern sky turned a bright shade of purple, she could hear the slightest whisper of a distant singing.

  For the last block, deep in the thick shadows of the dark, crystal spires, she ran as fast as she could. Tessaeril was calling for her.

  Uthalion followed as quickly as he could, though the half-healed wounds on his leg had begun to ache with the steady climb of the street. He’d been relieved at first when Ghaelya chose to move south-the lair the Keepers had sought six years ago had been hidden beneath the northern edge of the city. But as they drew closer to the spires, and he heard the first murmuring strains of beguiling song, his relief quickly faded.

  At the end of the street he stopped short behind Ghaelya. They stood in a large clearing between several buildings. It might have once been an open air marketplace, or perhaps a stable, but it seemed a gateway only to the encroaching bulk of the spire forest. The towering spears of rock and crystal had crumbled the city’s southern wall and pushed forward mounds of dirt and weeds. A passage sloped into the darkness between the spires.

  Brindani sat at the center of the clearing, on his knees amid the vines and clutching the sides of his head tightly. He trembled violently, locked in a struggle that Uthalion could not imagine. Ghaelya stepped toward the half-elf, and Uthalion stopped her, shaking his head and placing a finger to his lips. He raised his sword, uncertain if Brindani could fight the song or the infectious influence it had over him, and ready to cut down his old friend if necessary.

  Bathed in the crimson light of the dying day, the clearing seemed stained in blood beneath the jagged spires. Veins of onyx ran through the massive crystals, reflecting a thousand setting suns at once like a bizarre timepiece winding down. As the city grew darker, it grew more and more alive with the distant and unnerving huffing, like a thousand breaths merged as one beast, awakening in the dark of a thousand different windows and doors.

  The wind picked up as the breaths increased. It whistled through the spires then changed into a whispering melody that rushed through the city streets like an army of keening ghosts. The thousand mirrored suns were halved by the dark silhouettes of their horizons, and Uthalion found himself breathing as hard and as fast as the unseen host in the city below.

  “What in all the hells?” he whispered, slowing his breathing, though unable to calm the pounding of his heart. The song slid around him like an old friend, blowing softly in his ear as if it greeted him alone. Bits and pieces of the melody took on the form of the old wedding song it had sung to him in the Spur and in his dreams at the old farmhouse on the edge of the Wash. Alarmed, he looked to Ghaelya and cursed himself, recalling the song’s last words.

  Bring her to me.

  Bring her to me.

  Brindani cried out suddenly, pounding his fists into the ground and inhaling sharply. Control of his faculties seemed to return as he sat still. As he stood, his trembling muscles slowed and his bloody knuckles dripped thick crimson on the dirt and vines. His tortured features calmed, though he stood against the shining columns as if he challenged them, drawing his sword and stretching his neck. He looked sidelong at Uthalion, his eyes reddened and ringed with dark circles.

  “It’s coming,” he said. The words chilled Uthalion to the bone.

  The reflections of the thousand suns were mere slivers now, thinly sliced by their horizons and broken in places by the city’s mirrored skyline. The haunting song grew stronger, flowing around Uthalion and then wailing past him into the city’s depths. Yet despite the eeriness of the singing, he mourned losing its attention, if only for the moment.

  Low growls echoed from among the spires, and Uthalion turned, his sword leveled, as wolflike forms prowled through the crystals, their glassy eyes gleaming red and purple. The muscular dreamers appeared, pawing at the dirt threateningly and baring their tusklike fangs. They formed a wall of pale fur and flexing claws at the edge of the forest. Several snapped at the air, gnashing their teeth menacingly, but beyond their threatening postures, Uthalion could see several staring at him almost curiously. They crowded and nosed through the snarling pack, never leaving the edge of the stone forest, but trying to get a look at the newcomers. Those beasts sprawled on the ground, holding their noses low as they sniffed the air and regarded him with quizzical expressions.

  He and Ghaelya backed away, forming a semicircle with Vaasurri. Brindani never moved, staring down the growling beasts from only a few strides away.

  “What’s he doing?” Ghaelya asked quietly. Uthalion could only shake his head. He felt confused, as though he were caught up in someone else’s nightmare, a dream he might only escape by waking an unknown dreamer.

  He flinched as the ground shifted and buckled, adjusting his footing as the network of vines writhed between his legs. They tightened like deep green muscles, and the broken wall at the clearing’s edge cracked a little more, spilling dirt onto the cobblestones. The tremors spread through the ruins, the stone splitting and crumbling as the vines pulled and twisted like a single living thing. An ear-splitting rumble shook the ground as some distant building gave way, crashing into the streets and sending clouds of rolling dust through the long avenues in waves of choking debris.

  Amid the destruction Uthalion could make out tiny screams and wailing cries. But they were cut off swiftly, dying away as the dust settled and the vines relaxed. A hush fell over the city like a held breath, and Uthalion tensed. The dreamers had ceased their posturing and sat stoically at the spires’ edge as the last thin measure of sunlight dipped below the horizon.

  “There,” Vaasurri whispered and pointed with his sword. “A path between the spires.”

  Uthalion squinted in the deepening shadows, just able to make out, between the lithe bodies of the dreamers, a rough-stoned walkway through the crystals. Ghaelya started forward anxiously, and Uthalion grabbed her shoulder.

  “Are you mad?” he asked as she wrenched away from him. “There’s too many of them!”

  “Tess,” she whispered, fixing him with a determined gaze. “I can hear her.”

  As if in answer to her, the tall crystals shook, hairline cracks forming in a few as the ghostly song thundered through the forest again. Wordless and haunting, it sang all around him, unleashed in a flood of tumultuous, screaming melody. At the core of the song was an unmistakable femininity that rippled with unseen fingertips over Uthalion’s skin, pushing and pulling him as he fought to remain standing. With soft, resounding whispers it clawed a deep pit in his mind, like a watery grave that promised peace if he would only lie down and submit.

  He cried out and fell to one knee, swearing loudly, his voice swallowed in the maddening torrent of song. Vaasurri and Ghaelya remained standing, covering their ears as best they could and turning away from the crystals as the roaring melody shook the city anew. Brindani weathered the song, seemingly unmoved. His black hair was blown in a powerful breeze as he turned; his eyes as dark as a cold forge.

  “Can you hear it?” he asked casually.

  Vines writhed and twisted around them, erupting small nodules that grew and burst with flashes of crimson. The buds cracked open at their centers like sickly flowers, and the fl
eshy, red petals they bloomed throbbed and puckered like living tissue. They pulsed rhythmically like little heartbeats, tiny veins pushing to the petals’ surface as sweet scents filled the air. The flowers spread throughout the city, almost glowing in the deep twilight. As the blooms appeared, the dreamers growled and whimpered, their long mournful whines blending seamlessly with the song’s tempest.

  Uthalion fell backward, catching himself with his free hand. He cursed as he looked across the nightmarish ruins, at the shadows of Tohrepur erupting with renewed life. The dark gaping maws of windows discharged sluggish, pale bodies that flopped into the night air. Doorways were crowded with white, slack-jawed faces that peered out into the bruised light of the day’s end. Twisted and hairless figures crawled languidly from their hiding places, huffing loudly as they awoke from strange slumbers to gather in the streets. They bared needlelike teeth and dark eyes to the sky, crawling over one another in a sickly mass.

  Uthalion picked out several races among the throng, noting the bloated abdomens of large white spiders amid the groaning crowds.

  “The Flock,” he muttered, horrified as they knelt and tore at the crimson blossoms. Red juices ran through their fingers as they stuffed the petals into their mouths and fed hungrily, the sticky red nectar dribbling down their chins and staining their thin lips.

  “The Choir brings us,” Brindani said, a bizarre quality in his voice buzzing through Uthalion’s skull. “The Song calls us … The Lady dreams us … And her blood feeds us.”

  “Blood,” Uthalion whispered, staring at the enthralled Flock. The bodies grew slick with bloody nectar, blending together as they slid and pulled themselves deeper into the restless press, the streets disappearing beneath them. Long fingernails caked with dark pulp scratched at the sky, as the bodies swayed with the terrible song.

  Reluctantly, Uthalion studied those he could see clearly, moving from one to the next. He dreaded the sight of a bared breast or a curving, feminine hip, afraid of finding Maryna. But he did not see her-did not want to see her-and slowly convinced himself, for the sake of his own sanity, that she was not among the Flock. She couldn’t be.

  He turned away, unable to look at the pitiful faces or contemplate such a horrid existence. The song had lessened somewhat, and he stood on shaky legs, his sword in a grip so tight he feared his fingers might break.

  “Not here,” he whispered under his breath, willing the words to be true. “She’s not here.”

  Vaasurri stood close by, his eyes darting between the wailing Flock and the strangely quiet dreamers. The beasts had lowered their heads, sorrowful expressions on their faces as they pawed at the dirt and paced back and forth at the clearing’s edge. Ghaelya edged closer to the crystal forest cautiously, earning threatening growls and toothy snarls from the dreamers, though they did not leave the glittering perimeter of the spires.

  Brindani had lowered his sword. His dark eyes still gleamed with some alien presence, a gaze that seemed to switch continuously between the half-elf Uthalion knew and something else that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

  “Uthalion,” Brindani said, his voice wavering discordantly with strains of the beguiling song as he looked out across the ruins and the reveling Flock. A flash of fear crossed the half-elf’s features, and behind him the dreamers flinched, whining low in their thick throats. “The Choir is coming.”

  A distant, monstrous roar echoed through the streets, answered by others from different parts of the city as Uthalion turned, glaring and searching for the monsters amid the bloody, wailing figures-searching for Khault.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  12 Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One

  (1479 DR)

  Ruins of Tohrepur, Akanul

  Muscles rippled and undulated in waves as the gathered masses of the Flock shifted and wailed at the coming of the Choir. Booming voices trumpeted in eerie whale-song echoes. Misshapen limbs grasped and clawed for purchase on the streets, their flesh in flux even as they answered the call of the song. The ground shook at the Choir’s approach, and their sonorous bellows seemed to shake the very air, as if the fabric of reality shuddered to expel such abominations from its firmament.

  Brindani staggered, at last released briefly from the will of the song to fall and gasp for air. The singing remained a constant force in his body however, pain and pleasure ripping through him in fine threads of bittersweet melody. Resting on one knee, he endured the scent of the crimson blooms that summoned his unnatural hunger, but as his stomach twisted in agony, he tempered his addiction with the thick taste of blood that flavored each breath in salt and copper. Somewhere between song and addiction he found a balance, a precarious perch upon which to hang his sense of self.

  A feminine screech tore through the air, parting the red and white sea of the Flock with thrumming, destructive tones. Almost visible at the end of a steep avenue, a beautiful, angular face rested like a mask upon stretched and pockmarked flesh. Red lips, pierced with barbed, hooklike teeth parted in a deep sigh that rushed through the clearing like an autumn breeze. The Flock swarmed at the thing’s feet, fawning over and caressing the Choir, their singing angels in a temple of ruins.

  Brindani gripped his stomach tightly, his heart pounding as he drew back his sword. He was prepared to defend himself to the last even as the powerful song lessened his pain. Sweetly, it whispered wordless charms to him, the tendrils of enchanting melody so strong that he imagined he could even see them, wrapped around him in an inescapable embrace. He trembled as the song touched upon his mind, fearful of again losing his will and giving in to his temptations. But deep in the song’s core, a strangely familiar voice reached him. Gently it pulsed outward, the tendrils sweeping through the ruins, its touch connecting him to those it found.

  He gasped in horror as the minds of the Choir brushed against his thoughts, assaulting him with madness. Wants and needs and unimaginable lusts left his skin crawling, though their singular attention was focused just to his left. He glanced to Ghaelya, an unhallowed image flashing through his mind with a stab of fear for the genasi. The song softened in her presence, becoming a low hum of sorrow, unconditional love, and primal terror.

  “Khault,” Uthalion muttered as a figure in tattered, dirty robes distinguished itself among the nightmarish horde.

  Brindani barely recognized the old farmer, hidden as he was in a twisted body of rippling limbs and warped bones, but the half-elf knew him nonetheless. The song fairly screamed at the sight of the man, filling him with a boundless rage that he fed upon, using it against the pain in his body and holding it tight in the hilt of his sword.

  “Captain,” Khault replied in a thunderous voice, shaking the ground as the dreamers whined, pawing at the ground. “You bring to us the twin.”

  The grisly host responded savagely, their voices and hands raised to the sky, each note feeding into Brindani’s body through the song. Their exquisite pain ran through him, though it was nothing compared to what he’d done to himself over the years. He endured, but in their chanting exultation, he was shown their shared secret, the source of their reasonless fanaticism and the infection that ruled their bodies. He glimpsed a deep chamber in their minds, adorned with bones, filled with a soft blue glow that glistened like water. A massive blue eye turned sightlessly in the murk as he was torn away from the image and left panting, on his knees before the nightmarish things she had dreamed.

  “She,” he whispered.

  The creature of the depths, the whisperer of songs and the seductress of drowned sailors. A collector of polished bone, torn from the ocean by the death of a goddess, changed by the blue fire of the Spellplague into a living scourge of dreams. Unbidden tears sprang to Brindani’s eyes as he looked upon the fools that drowned in madness for her now.

  It had been a sirine’s song that had called them to Tohrepur, and he’d been as much the fool as any of them.

  Uthalion stood strong as the Choir approached. None were so bold as Khault; the rest hid among the
ir Flock, excitedly gibbering to themselves and twitching in the shadows. The singing had faded somewhat, though Uthalion could still sense it as if it were intentionally eddying around him, leaving his mind clear and his old sword at the ready. The captain’s blade gleamed sharply, returned to the place where its first wielder had fallen. It again threatened the flesh of abominations, though there were no proud banners to hang over its singular purpose.

  Khault stood at the head of the misshapen congregation, his arms bent at odd angles, and his legs lost in a mass of fleshy tentacles that writhed beneath his robes. Deeply stained bandages covered the scarred place where his eyes had sat, though he seemed no blinder than those who looked upon him with disgust and pity. The others, beyond simple descriptions of race or gender, shambled on limbs that only played at being legs. Eyeless faces rose and fell among them, peering over Khault’s shoulders. They murmured, licking torn lips with doubled tongues and absently picking at deep gouges in their flesh.

  Uthalion did not flinch at their appearance or waver beneath their eyeless, horrible gazes. He’d had a thousand nightmares far and beyond more terrible than those of the Choir; he had fought such pathetic beasts before. It was what he’d waited for, what he’d foreseen coming all those nights sitting at the window while Maryna slept alone.

  This is my place, he thought sadly, I’ve always been here.

  “Where is she?” Ghaelya demanded of Khault. “What have you done?”

  The Flock growled and hissed at Khault’s feet, baring sharklike fangs at the genasi. Gasps and sighs filled the tortured throats of the Choir as they pointed and craned their necks to hear the genasi’s voice, tasting the air with their long tongues.

  “Hush,” Khault intoned. The quiet word buzzed like a swarm of spring-beetles yet crackled like flame with a force that pushed on Uthalion’s chest challengingly. “Save your steel, child,” Khault said and raised a clawed finger to the spires with a growl that parted the assembled dreamers. They revealed a cobblestone path through the crystals. “Go, embrace your twin. It is all that we have ever wanted for you.”