“No!” Brindani spoke up, straining to speak and sweating with the effort. His nose began to bleed, running over his lips and clenched teeth. “Not all that you wanted-”
“Quiet,” Khault boomed, and Brindani fell back, gasping and clutching his stomach in pain. Khault turned to Ghaelya. “She calls for you … Can you hear her?”
She hesitated for just a moment, looking between Brindani and the spires. The half-elf shook his head wordlessly, reaching out for her, but even Uthalion could hear the oddly familiar voice whispering through the crystal forest. He saw a woman who’d crossed half the wild frontier of her homeland to find a sister taken. The brief stare between the genasi and the half-elf was heartbreaking, but Uthalion knew her expression, had worn it himself once-she wasn’t coming back, not until things were sorted out elsewhere.
She dashed into the spires without a word, lost in the dark within a heartbeat.
“You will be the first, Captain,” Khault said, stretching his misshapen body sinuously. He grew taller, and more hideous, puckered scars opened and closed, some bearing sharp spines. Uthalion stepped back, turning sidelong to the old farmer and presenting his sword. “When she returns from our Lady’s chamber,” Khault continued, “She will be the Walking Prophet, her sister the Dreaming Voice. Twins blessed by the song. And you will be the first to hear their singing and to live at their whims.”
“Madness,” Uthalion muttered. But as he looked out across the ruins, the Choir, the mindless Flock, and recalled the power of the song he’d heard for several nights, a song that had drawn him here as surely as many of the things before him, he felt a twinge of fear.
His heart quickened into an even cadence of battle as he turned his wrist in a circle and set his stance solidly. He eyed the gathered host of nightmares, feeling himself once again the madman at the stormfront, the butcher before witless horrors. He glanced at Brindani who had risen, though dark-eyed and ghost-skinned, to stand with sword ready. And when Uthalion looked for Vaasurri, the killoren was gone, having slipped away quieter than a specter’s breath.
“Keep watch over her,” he whispered, and Khault’s head cocked like a bird’s, his blind senses reacting to the slightest noise. Uthalion narrowed his eyes shrewdly and swung his blade in a whistling flourish as his left hand reached back stealthily, hidden from Khault.
“You should have died in that basement, Captain,” Khault thundered, arching his back like a snake preparing to strike. “Leaving you there was the last of my tender mercies.”
The beasts in the streets moaned and growled as they drew away hesitantly, gnashing their teeth and beating the ground with their fists. Uthalion saw past their fangs and claws, their tentacles and stinging spines-he saw the simple people they’d been and, more importantly, the warriors they had not been.
“You should have died with your wife, Khault,” he replied. “I buried the last of my mercy alongside her.”
Khault’s features twisted in rage. His mouth gaped wide, showing the grips of a very human emotion on an anatomy more suited to the dark depths of a gods-forsaken sea than land. Uthalion smiled cruelly, seeing the man Khault had been still hiding in the beast he’d become. As Khault rose higher, several appendages rose like broken wings from his back, flat growths with tiny barbed mouths at their tips swiftly descending.
Uthalion skipped backward, batting one of the whipping tentacles away as his left hand rose to his lips, a wooden whistle between his fingertips. The tiny instrument, given to him by Chevat of the aranea, blew a single piercing note, barely more than a slight keening in Uthalion’s ears. But its effect on the hordes of Tohrepur was immediate.
Shocked screams spread through the infected assemblage, and thunderous frightened roars shook the ground as the slippery bodies slid back from the piercing whistle. Ears, heightened by exposure to the beguiling song and suddenly cut off from its soothing melody, ran with tiny crimson streams. Chaos reigned as the Flock abandoned their Choir, clawing their way past the pained beasts to seek refuge from the terrible shriek. Khault flinched in pain, stumbling backward, his head turning blindly in confusion for a moment. Then he lurched forward, ignoring the whistle with a rumbling growl.
The air grew thick as Ghaelya ran through the glittering spires, early stars shining in countless reflections all around her. Shapeless fingers breezed over her skin, dug into her flesh with tendrils of ice, and a voice sang to her of fear. A powerful scent of lavender washed over her coldly, and she paused wide-eyed as the vines that led her on twisted and changed. Their deep, rough green became a smooth pale blue that squirmed with life, pulsing with veins and gently writhing in the dirt. The roping stalks slowly converged toward a single point as she followed the broken stone path. Ghostly beams of early moonlight stabbed brightly through the spires, illuminating a large clearing ahead.
The vines knotted and entwined themselves together, disappearing beyond the edge of a wide cavern in the center of the clearing. The constant song took on a hollow, echoing quality, rising from the ground in waves. She stopped at the perimeter of the crystal forest, trembling, unable to look away from the mouth of the cavern and the web of vines spidering out from its depths.
Approaching slowly, she managed her racing heart, suddenly uncertain of herself. She glanced back the way she’d come, seeing more than just the darkness or the long journey behind her, or even her companions facing the Choir without her. She imagined Airspur and her mother sitting alone in their dark family room, weeping and worrying over the disappearance of her daughters. She pictured her father busying himself with work and unable to accept the disintegration of his family, acting among his friends as though all were normal.
She thought of these things and caught herself avoiding the idea of what she could find in the cavern that issued a music so sweet she’d heard it in her dreams and followed it beyond all reason for the brief hope of finding her sister again. She feared the blood her last dream had prophesied. Swallowing her fear, she took a step into the clearing.
“I’m coming, Tess,” she whispered.
I know.
Her sister’s voice stunned her; gliding along inside the singing, it filled her mind. She took another step, her boot disappearing in the smoky mist-grass that filled the clearing. The sudden sense that she was walking on air twisted her stomach with vertigo, but she continued, ripples radiating out from her boots and lapping at the edges of the spires.
“Tess?” she said hoarsely.
I can hear you.
Screams split the night air. The ground shook, and she crouched defensively, her sword turning in a circle and shining in the moonlight. It reflected in the eyes of a figure sitting on the opposite side of the cavern. Rising hope quickly faded as she made out the crouching form of Vaasurri, his black-green gaze fixed with a solemn sorrow.
“It was her song that called us here, a song of the Fey-wild. I should have known,” he said, staring down into the shadows of the cavern and shaking his head. “The song of a sirine, transformed by the Spellplague into a song of ruin, of nightmares made flesh.”
“No,” Ghaelya blurted out, disbelieving. “It was Tess … I know it was her.”
“An accident, perhaps fate,” the killoren said, his dark eyes rising, “Your sister, she must have run away from the Choir, tried to make her way through the crystals and … Well, I will not stand in your way.”
Just a bit farther.
Tessaeril’s voice pulled at her, drew her closer to the cavern with a gentle tug that threatened on the edge of near desperation. Hesitantly she continued, looking between the dark and the killoren, realizing that the worst of her imagination over the past tenday could become horrid reality in the next few heartbeats. She took a deep, calming breath as the fear in the song passed, giving way to an almost undetectable sorrow.
She gripped the edge of the cavern, and looked down to a rocky path leading into an ethereal, glowing pit of shadows and reflected light. The wet rock walls glistened and smelled of brine, and flower
s bloomed inside. She lowered herself over the side, hanging by the fleshy vines as Vaasurri appeared over her.
“Do not touch her, no matter what,” he warned. “I suspect that’s what the Choir wants.”
Mystified and unnerved by the emotion on the killoren’s features, she merely nodded and continued her descent. The song was focused within the cavern, almost visible as a wavering haze that eddied around her and gushed outward into the sky. She slipped on the vines a few times, her nerves causing her to make simple mistakes as she felt for the cavern floor with the toe of her boot. Setting down on the rocks, she crouched and crawled forward into the ephemeral, glittering light.
Vines squished wetly beneath her hands and led her to a viscous mass that dominated the large cavern. About to search the waters for the source of the song, she noticed a network of branching veins that spread and pulsed rhythmically through the mass. Sluggish waves roiled through the giant, watery body that was curled up before her, rippling like an underground pool. The vague shape of limbs, creases and folds suggestive of a lost anatomy, gave an impression of femininity, of soft curves and once delicate features.
The air hummed, distorted and dreamlike around the slumbering form, a constant song. Or perhaps it was the memory of a song once sung, still repeating itself over and over until fixed in place, a force flooding from the soft blue flesh. Vines fanned outward from the back of the cavern, a network of tangles and knots that crawled the walls in thick, ropey strands. They lay across the surface of the being, framing a large face that stared sightlessly toward the ceiling, occasionally shifting left or right in languid movements that shook the entire mass. Watery eyes, deep blue-black pools in the blue, rolled and turned, lost in a dream.
Ghaelya was frozen, trying to take in the sight of the creature-the sirine she decided, for Vaasurri’s word for it was as close as she might imagine could fit. She realized she had stopped breathing and gasped a long breath, the sound echoing in the chamber. The sirine took no notice, the radical changes in her form too extreme, the changes too great to support consciousness. The buzzing air vibrated across Ghaelya’s skin in a quick tempo of sound. She was reminded of the cavern outside Caidris, and the deep temple in the warrens of the aranea-places of bones and savage beauty.
The memory struck her with such force that she stumbled backward and leaned against a rock as she realized what she had truly seen. Few bones decorated the walls that she could see, but the handful or more that were visible made familiar patterns. They adorned the walls of a sirine’s home, once deep beneath the waves of the Akanamere, waters stolen by the land-shaping earthquakes of the Spellplague.
“She was trapped,” Ghaelya whispered, wide-eyed as the long years of the sirine’s imprisonment became apparent. She shivered, feeling eyes upon her even as she turned to the rising shadow on her right.
The glittering blue-black eyes caught her and held her still as Tessaeril’s face appeared in the ethereal light of the cavern. The bright orange energy lines of her sister’s fire were gone, replaced with jagged designs of pulsing green. Fleshy vines wove in and out of her pale blue flesh as she pulled herself along the rocks at the sirine’s edge. Her blue lips trembled, mouthing silently, the song an unstoppable torrent flowing from between them. A knot formed in Ghaelya’s throat, both relieved and repulsed by the sight of her sister, but she leaned forward, shaking her head slowly in disbelief.
Tessaeril’s torso, unclothed and bound by dark tentacles of vine, was cut off at the waist. Beneath the almost translucent flesh of the sirine, Ghaelya could make out a faint silhouette of bone, perhaps the shape of lost legs. Shock kept her from crying, left her eyes dry of tears as she fought to understand what she was seeing. Tessaeril supported herself with a wet hand upon the rock, her long, webbed fingers straining with the effort as she tried to speak. Her teary eyes were unbound by the shock that held Ghaelya in thrall.
She spoke softly at first, her voice an undertone to the song as she found the will to form words in its haunting tune. The song lessened for several heartbeats, as if being drained by Tessaeril’s use of its spellplague amplified power, but it bore no compulsion, no demands beyond the ability of her will to resist. The sounds gathered, fighting their way through melody until the words formed and stole quiet shock from Ghaelya’s mind, hurling her headlong into nightmare.
Kill me.
Before Uthalion could react to Khault’s sudden rage, Brindani charged forward. His sword flashed through Khault’s reaching arms, stabbed at tentacled growths, and drove the broken farmer back to the edge of the clearing with a vengeance. Uthalion circled the blur of writhing limbs and quick steel, the whistle between his teeth, keeping Khault effectively blind. But Brindani was too close, too easy a target for the singer’s fury.
Khault roared, the force of his voice slamming into Uthalion’s chest like an anvil and throwing him back to the edge of the crystal forest. He fought to regain his breath, and was scrambling to get back on his feet when Brindani landed nearby, slammed into the low wall of the clearing. Khault, bleeding and growling, slithered back into the shadows of the city, crouching low as he shook his scarred head and spat sweet-scented blood on the ground.
Brindani’s black eyes rolled as he sat up, leaning forward on his arms like an animal waiting for a challenger to reappear. His skin had grown paler, and arcing blue veins raced in thick knots through his wrists, creeping up along his arms. The half-elf’s muscles bunched and twitched uncontrollably as he raised his sword; blood ran across his fist from new and old wounds alike.
“Brin?” Uthalion asked, sitting up and cautiously pulling away from the infected half-elf.
“I’m fine,” Brindani answered. “Now go find Ghaelya and finish this.”
“I won’t leave you here,” Uthalion replied, cursing as he realized he’d dropped the aranea’s whistle. “Not while those things are-”
“You will leave me here!” Brindani growled, his voice rumbling dangerously as he flashed Uthalion a black-eyed stare. “I’ve run from this place a thousand times. This is where I should be, and while I still have the ability to choose, I choose to fight!”
“Brin-”
“Go!” the half-elf snarled, his eyes softening for a breath. “She’ll need you more than me. Get her out of here.”
Uthalion hesitated, but he could see the toll of infection racing through Brindani’s body and the way he clutched at his stomach, wincing with pain.
“I’ll tell them you’re on your way,” Uthalion muttered and backed toward the spires.
“Just do the work,” Brindani replied. “Keep moving, don’t think, and do your job.”
Uthalion met the half-elf’s gaze for a heartbeat and nodded once before running into the crystal forest, following the vines and hating his own practical honesty. He pondered their luck and brushes with death across the wilds of the Akana and lied to himself, convincing himself that all would be well. As he neared the wide clearing in the forest, he slowed, watched by a ring of glassy eyes along the edges of the spires.
The dreamers sat, quietly watching gentle ripples flow through the mist-grass as the powerful song poured from the depths of the deep pit. At the edge of the pit, his bone-sword laid across his lap, Vaasurri regarded him with a hard, solemn expression. The dreamers did not react as Uthalion entered the clearing, but merely sat with strange looks on their humanlike faces, sniffing the air before settling down calmly on their haunches.
Despite the song, Uthalion was struck by the eerie silence. Vaasurri said nothing, merely shook his head as he looked down into the pit. As frightening roars echoed from the north, Uthalion took a deep breath, and knew that all would not be well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
12 Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One
(1479 DR)
Ruins of Tohrepur, Akanul
Uthalion stood over the flickering shadows of the cavern as Vaasurri told him of what lay slumbering inside, of the fate he suspected the Choir had intended for Ghaelya. Uthal
ion swayed slightly, caught in the endless current of song that ran hungry tendrils of searching melody over his skin and through his flesh. It demanded everything of him, crooning for him to abandon all else and end his days amid blooms and blood. Forcefully he pulled himself away, gasping for breath and shaking away the instinct to dive into the cavern and dash himself on the rocks below for just one glimpse of the beauty that called to him.
He tightly gripped the gold ring upon his finger, determined to not become another of the sirine’s pathetic fools, her crimson-stained Flock.
“Has she been down there long?” he asked.
“No,” Vaasurri answered. “Not long for what she faces. And Brindani?”
Roars of boundless rage and sibilant screams rang shrilly through the crystals, vibrating in the ground and sending choppy shivers along the wavy tips of the mistgrass. Uthalion gripped his sword, expecting monsters to come pouring through the forest at any moment, knowing that even if Brindani could fell Khault, he could not face the whole of Tohrepur alone.
“He’s … on his way,” he replied, turning, careful to keep his distance from the pit. “We’ve got to get her out of there. If she touches that thing-”
“Then we know what to do,” Vaasurri said. And though the killoren seemed not to move a muscle, his gleaming bone-sword shined briefly in the moonlight as if the weapon itself knew its own purpose. “One way or another, we know what to do.”
Uthalion knelt, staring into the dark thoughtfully, sobered by the idea of striking down the girl he’d led to this place. But he could not let the sirine’s song-her infection-spread. He imagined Ghaelya striding among the warrens of the aranea, an army of beguiled spiders in her wake, drawn to the sirine’s flowers and terrible caress. He saw her at the opening gates of Airspur and thought of the throngs she might enchant, a silver-tongued conqueror succeeding where the armies of the Abolethic Sovereignty had failed.
The Restless Shore tw-2 Page 26
