The Restless Shore tw-2
Page 28
And the sirine screamed for her.
Damps rocks cooled Uthalion’s palms as he stared into the ethereal blue glow, the song’s endless tide washing through his body. He pulled toward it, enthralled and unable to resist. At the bottom of the cavern entrance he found Ghaelya sitting with her back to him, a nightmarish mirror image slumped on the rocks in front of her. Dazed, his eyes wandered to the sword lodged in the lifeless body. Whispered words echoed over and over through the song, growing faster and faster as they blurred together, ripping through the air at a frantic pace until they were little more than a discordant keening.
“Forgive me.”
There is nothing to forgive.
Gods have mercy, he thought, as the song was unleashed.
Whatever veil had kept him from the true force of the sirine’s singing was lifted. He gasped at the exultant power and thought his heart would burst. A single wave of perfection flooded his senses, a thrall so deep he never wanted to be free. And he was ashamed at the meager, imperfect soul he brought to lay upon the glowing altar at her feet. Every muscle in his body flexed, and his back arched painfully, assaulted by what seemed an entire lifetime of memories in a long, rattling breath of transcendent joy and sorrow.
When it ended, and the taste of blood filled his mouth, a gaping pit of oblivion filled his mind, swallowing the heaven he had found hiding in Tohrepur.
The song withered to little more than a whisper, a faint longing that floundered weakly in his ears as it trickled through the cavern. He resisted it easily, as a man once caught in the open sea withstands even the strongest tides of the shore. He sat up, rested his head in his hands, and averted his eyes from the ethereal glow and the slumped silhouette before it.
Though the translucent form and haunting melody of the plaguechanged sirine filled the cave, it was Ghaelya’s stilled silence that dominated the murmuring song.
“The flesh is strong,” he whispered under his breath. “The flesh is strong.”
Emerging from the cavern they found Vaasurri, awake and kneeling beside the prone form of Brindani. The dreamers had dragged away the carcass of Khault, fighting over it and tearing it apart among the forest of glittering spires, but they had not touched the half-elf. A few sat by watching curiously as Ghaelya knelt at Brindani’s side and gently closed his eyes.
Mist-grass rippled around the pair, its deep green dulled by splotches of rust red.
Uthalion joined Vaasurri some distance away, sensing no threat from the beasts as they padded peacefully to the sirine’s cavern. They settled into the mist-grass and formed a circle around the mouth of the cave as it whispered and sang to them. Several licked Khault’s blood from their faces, and they growled if anyone came too near the cavern’s circle, a behavior that assuaged Uthalion’s concerns over the sleeping sirine. There was a cruel, possessive intelligence in the dreamers’ expressions-he supposed they would not so easily lose their dreaming Lady again.
Darkness still reigned over Tohrepur as they exited the crystal forest, the other end of a night that had already begun its slow journey toward dawn and a new day for the restless ruins. There was no sign of the Choir, though Uthalion imagined he could hear pained moans from deep in the city streets. The sirine’s vines still blanketed the stone walls and cobbled avenues, though the life in them seemed withered slightly- their flowers were less red, the scent not as sweet. At every corner they met the tortured gazes of the sirine’s thralls, the Flock.
The pale citizens of the Choir’s doomed cult stared strangely at one another, curious and dazed. Some made their way to the spires, frantically seeking for the song that had ended so abruptly, its river now a trickling stream. Others babbled incoherently, frustrated as they tried to form the words they had not used in so long, their minds shredded by restless nights and endless waking dreams. Still others sat and wept, rocking back and forth on street corners and inside the hollowed buildings, quietly mourning either the shattered thrall of the sirine or the slowly returning memories of lives lost.
Uthalion barely felt the weight of Brindani in his arms, carrying instead the heavy burden of the half-elf’s memory as the hauntingly quiet stride of Ghaelya led the way out of Tohrepur. The journey home would be long and difficult, but he would sleep when he was tired, and he would dream of his wife and daughter.
Starlight glittered through the crystal forest long after the moon had set, and the dreamers could not yet smell the warming rise of the sun. They gathered, making their way through the shadows to sit and sprawl in the mist-grass around the cavern of the sirine. A few wandered to its edge and stared curiously at the blue glow upon the glistening rocks inside. Sleepless and tireless, it was long before they settled, troubled by thoughts that were new to them, an awareness that was both a comfort and a curse. Regret and pity and hate tugged at their minds, emotions at odds with the primal urges that pulsed in their hearts.
More than the mere wolves they’d been ages ago when a single pack had stumbled upon the slumbering sirine, they wondered at the new sense of fear they felt for the dreaming lady. Some paced restlessly, flexing their claws and baring fangs at each imagined enemy among the stone forest. They watched the spires, listened for the slightest noise, alert for any sign of the men that had come and stolen what had been theirs since, what they understood to be, the beginning of time.
At length they calmed, and as one they stared off beyond the spires, a low humming forming in their throats as the lady’s true dream returned to them and them alone. Though they rested upon grass and dirt and were surrounded by towers of sparkling stone, the longing, endless song of the sirine carried them back to the shores and depths of another world and another time.
Their shining eyes glazed over and glowed fiercely as the song rose and fell like crashing waves. It sang in their blood and matched the bestial chant that droned throughout the forest of crystals.
White birds danced on the air in the sirine’s dream, diving through warm winds and landing on soft sand. Distant wooden vessels of men grasped the wind in white sails, casting nets into the sea. Vast dark waters sparkled beneath a starlit sky as blue-black waves flashed and rolled restless to the shore.
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