City of Torment

CHAPTER FIVE

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Veltalar, Aglarond

She was so cold. Desolate winds whispered around her, jealous of the tiny spark of heat she retained. Yet a moment earlier, she'd been colder still, a horrified scream frozen in ice.

Her eyes flipped open. Light stung them, but the illumination was sweet despite the pain. It had been too long since she'd seen anything but chill darkness.

A shape moved in the light. A man she'd known once.

She said, "What…? I dreamed I was far away..

The man bent down. He wore a cloak black as coal, an ominous counterpoint to his concerned expression. He said, "You're back, Anusha. That's the only thing that matters. You're back." "Japheth?" she asked.

The warlock nodded and took her hand. His palm was warm. His eyes were watery… and red with a recent dose of traveler's dust. He said, "I'm here. And so are you!"

She sat up. Fragments of what had happened since she followed him through the streets of New Sarshel began to assemble.

A black dog jumped up and rested its paws on the opposite side of the travel chest. It stretched out its head, trying to lick her face. She remembered the mutt and smiled, turning her head from Lucky's joyful attentions.

Anusha's gaze wandered, but her attention focused inward as her memory wove itself from past to present.

She'd been dreamwalking in a dark place half drowned 1 with seawater, beneath an island. A tentacled monster had attacked her with a relic like a disembodied eye-an eye whose gaze caught her. She'd tried to flee, to return to the safety of her physical body…

But something had prevented her.

Her gaze snapped back to Japheth. "Your elixir of sleep trapped me in dream form. I couldn't get away. It almost caught me because of you!"

The man's eyes widened and his grip slackened. He nodded and said, "I am so sorry, Anusha. I never meant-"

Heat blossomed in her chest, dispelling the chill. It was the same feeling she felt when she thought of her half brother, Behroun. Spiteful words danced in her throat, eager for escape. "These drugs of yours… you're on the dust right now-I can tell by your eyes! What is it with you?"

The warlock looked away.

She wondered how she could be attracted to him. How could she even think of him like that when he was a drugaddled, Hells-bound scoundrel? A roguishly handsome, sweet, and determined scoundrel, but a scoundrel all the same. Was she the stupidest woman in all Toril? Anyone with any sense would flee and never think of him again. She would do just that…

Which would be easier if the mere sight of him didn't make her heart expand.

Japheth said, "You're right, Anusha. The dust's in me right now. But I had no recourse. You didn't get away. It caught you."

"What do you mean?" He looked back at her, swallowed. "I mean that godsdamned relic sucked your mind into its heart and pulled you down to a city of torment. I've been trying to rescue you for tendays. I needed a pinch of traveler's dust to find and see your dream form. You were one of hundreds caught. It was… the only way I knew to save you."

The heat in her chest cooled but did not burn out. She asked, "If I could have woken up, you wouldn't have had to spend tendays trying to rescue me!"

Then the full import of his words breached her anger. "Wait. You mean I've been… sleeping? For tendays? And you couldn't wake me up, even when the elixir you gave me ran its course?"

Her skin prickled. Memory crashed upon her-an ice cocoon stifling her body and psyche, a void of motionless thought speckled with dreamers trapped like flies in a web. She gasped in dawning revulsion.

"Your mind was ensnared," Japheth said. "But I pulled you free."

The frozen image seemed to solidify around Anusha. Lassitude crawled down her limbs, tying them with strands of returning sleep. She said, "Did you? I don't think so…

The Dreamheart's eye stared straight into her soul. Anusha heard Luckyk frantic barks as if from the bottom of a well, then nothing.

*****

Anusha saw a woman standing in a place shrouded by mist and slicked with luminescent slime. Pillars whose size she couldn't begin to guess faded off into the fogged distance.

The woman was familiar. It took her a moment to recognize herself.

She realized she was dreaming. It was odd to see herself at such a remove, though dreams were often strange like that.

Her image seemed distraught. It beckoned and spoke, but not the least sound emerged. Was she mute? Anusha strained but heard nothing. She tried to sound out the words her lips made. Something about a… Key of Stars?

And a Citadel. Plus something else she couldn't quite decipher.

Horror closed over her head as if she were being pulled beneath a pool of ice water. She tried to scream, to move, to warn the image. But no feeling of flailing limbs, or even breath in her chest, rewarded her effort. She was like a bug under glass, slowly smothering.

Searing pain shattered the dream into jagged shards that exploded outward.

Anusha lurched and fell forward. Several small, hard objects clattered on her back. Silence followed. She coughed.

Cold shards dug into her cheek and prone body. She lay facedown in a scatter of… broken glass? No, too cold.

The shards were chips of ice. She levered herself up and stood.

A rough wall of ice, like a glacier's face, stretched away left, right, and up many tens of feet. It shed wan, bluish light. Even standing only a couple of paces from it, she saw a subtle receding curve to the chill face, as if instead of a wall, the ice were a massive dome. Or perhaps a sphere set in the dark stone floor. Murky blots lay just below the surface, oddly symmetrical.

A rough crater marred the ice in front of her. Anusha reached for the edges of the pit, but paused before her finger touched. The cavity, while broken and jagged, traced a humanoid outline. Something had broken free of the ice.

Had it been her? Probably yes. She shuddered.

A memory jolted her. Anusha recalled Japheth's relieved face, telling her he'd rescued her.

"Some rescue!" she exclaimed, remembering the coiling force that snatched her back down into unconsciousness.

She clenched her fists, hoping to feel a renewed surge of anger, enough to banish the first unwelcome hints of fear. Japheth's mysterious patron and unfathomable powers, his quests and his potions-they all added up to her being here, wherever here was.

But her anger seemed spent. If she was fully honest with herself, it was her initial act of stowing away on Green Siren that set her course and finally landed her here.

And Japheth's ritual had accomplished something good, she mused. He'd pried her loose from the wintry sphere, even if he'd ultimately failed to merge her dream with her sleeping body.

Hold on. Was she in her dream form? Anusha studied her hand. It looked and felt normal. She imagined she wore a glove. A gauntlet of golden, articulated metal shimmered and enclosed her hand.

Yes, she was dreaming. She tried to wake up.

A flicker of blackness, and then… nothing changed. The great globe of ice remained obstinately front and center. She tried again, failed again. Then again. Another failure. She was locked out of her body! And this time it wasn't because of the elixir of sleep.

Hints of the smothering dream she'd just escaped enclosed her.

Where was she? Anxiety made her thoughts come fast.

Japheth said something about her being pulled down to a city of… terror? Torment? She couldn't remember.

Was she in the place she'd imagined, where her image tried to talk but no words emerged? She didn't see any mist or columns.

Fear seeped in beneath her reason and pawed at her self-control.

"What am I going to do?" she whispered, her eyes darting away from the ice into the wider darkness that enclosed it. Awful scenarios twirled her around in a full circle. Dire prospects half solidified like a spider's web.

Every possibility ended in her grisly death.

Her mind was trapped outside her body in a place that would shame most nightmares. Japheth had tried to free her, but failed. She would die here. The only question was whether she would fail slowly over time or suddenly when some soul-eating creature caught sight of her.

She could hardly breathe.

The thought was like the sun rising on a dreary plain. She was in her dream form. Breathing was an illusion!

She was formless-and invisible to most things.

Anusha's panic fell off, becoming a more manageable ache of worry. Fear she could handle. Panic would propel her to a quick end, she'd heard enough stories to know giving in to arm-flailing terror rarely worked out-

The sound of something cracking drew a shrill yelp from her.

Her eyes fastened on the great dome. It was riddled with shadows beneath the surface. Not air pockets… She realized the symmetrical shadows were the outlines of people! People trapped in the ice, as she had been.

She walked in measured paces along the frozen boundary, controlling her phantom breathing. Anusha gazed into the blurred surface. All were preserved motionless, as if dead. It was probably how she'd looked.

There were so many! She saw a short woman-a dwarf, a human man in lavender robes, a creature whose lower face had tentacles hanging off it, another woman, either a comely human or an eladrin-her loose hair hid the most telltale feature. And there was a fellow whose hair was composed of glowing crystal-

Another crack. It was from back the other way. She hurried around the periphery until she returned to the crater where she had emerged. One of its rough edges had spawned a fissure nearly two feet wide that zigzagged across the crystalline face for several feet.

Even as she watched, another retort like glass breaking issued from the crevice. A body slipped from the fissure and dropped to the floor only a pace from Anusha.

"By Imbrar!" she gasped.

The figure moaned. It was a woman! But not human-her skin was the color of desert sand with darker mottling. Her hair was brown and long, layered into braids. H6r features were sharp and her ear s were as elongated as an elfs. But the woman's severe features and coloration, and her silvery plate armor, didn't seem particularly fey.

The woman shivered. She stared at the icy tomb from which she'd emerged, and croaked several rough syllables. Whether ritual or language, the sounds were crude and slippery and assaulted Anusha's ears. She retreated a step.

The woman broke off her litany and turned to regard Anusha. Though she continued to shake with cold, the woman's filmy translucency argued she was as immaterial as Anusha.

"Who are you?" Anusha ventured.

The woman's face seemed expressionless. She said in oddly accented Common, "I am… Yeva. I am dreaming."

"You're not dreaming," Anusha said without thinking.

The woman nodded and bent her head into her hands. Silent sobs shook her shoulders. Tears trickled between her fingers. Her form began to waver and thin like fog before the rising sun.

"Hey!" Anusha exclaimed and dashed forward. She touched the woman's shoulder, but her form continued to unravel and fade. "Don't leave me alone here!" Anusha said. She hugged the woman, trying to hold her fraying presence together.

The woman's body was filmy strands of gauze in her arms.

"Stay!" Anusha pleaded, wishing the woman's presence to endure just as she willed her own shape and clothing.

Yeva's body gradually came back into focus. It returned to being only slightly translucent to Anusha's eyes and solid and warm to her touch.

The yellow-skinned woman drew in a deep breath. She looked into Anusha's eyes and whispered, "You have power here? Who are you who can command the captured dreams of Xxiphu?"

Anusha released the embrace. The woman's form remained constant. "I am Anusha Marhana. I'm no one, really."

"You are a human, of Faerun, if I'm not mistaken. A great sorceress you must be, though I admit I am not familiar with your name, and I made some study of such things before I was trapped. I wonder how long…"

Lines of worry creased her face.

Anusha shook her head. "I'm no sorceress. I just got caught up in events I didn't understand. I don't even know where I am, really. But I do have some control over my own dreams…"

"And the dreams of others, it is clear," Yeva said, her voice louder and more assured. "Your touch anchored me.

I was shriveling, dispersing. If you hadn't intervened, my soul would have become gruel for the Eldest." The woman shuddered.

"The Eldest?"

The woman gestured to the expanse of cold white. She pronounced in her lilting accent, "The Eldest broods over this city. It is an entity whose age surpasses most gods."

"And this… Eldest, it eats souls?"

Yeva nodded. "The Eldest sleeps. Its mind moves so slowly its thoughts hardened millennia ago. The chambers where the creature's attention flowed through Xxiphu in ancient days are choked with its petrified thoughts.

People whose dreams veer too near are caught here forever while their bodies waste until they perish. As likely happened to my body centuries ago..*The strangely hued woman cast down her eyes.

Anusha didn't have a ready reply. If what Yeva said was true, that her body was dead even though her dream remained-did that make her a ghost?

Ghost or not, Anusha wondered about Yeva's strange coloration and features. The woman was a member of no race she'd ever seen or even heard about.

She decided not to pursue either question. Instead, she asked, "Xxiphu-what is that? Is it where we stand?"

The woman gave a curt nod. "Xxiphu is a city of primeval aboleths. So I have learned, to my despair. I did not seek it, but those I hunted tricked me and lured me here. Where my mind was caught." The woman's fists clenched. "And now I am nothing but a figment." Her eyes slicked with a new surge of moisture.

"More than a figment, unless I'm imagining you," Anusha said, smiling.

The woman studied Anusha and said, "Perhaps you do but imagine me. If you hadn't reinforced me somehow, I'd be gone. I felt my mind slipping away, dissolving."

"You said that before. How can you be sure?"

Yeva tilted her head. "I have abilities too, Anusha. Potent ones, if not suited to my present predicament. I sense a burning power in you, despite your lack of physical form. You are not a memory like me. More like a… construct of psionic power. A thread of your will keeps me here."

Anusha shook her head, not really understanding the woman. "You have abilities? What sort? Can they help us to escape this place? My body lies on the surface."

The woman looked out into the surrounding darkness, toward the ice face, then back at Anusha. She considered for a long while, saying nothing. Finally, she shrugged. "Even though reason suggests our attempts shall fail, we should try. I am not the sort who gives up my quest while reasonable hope remains. I don't know what my fate will be if we do win free. Nor do I know how many years have passed since I was trapped. But I'll never know if I do nothing."

"Can your abilities help us escape?" Anusha asked again.

Yeva produced a short bark of laughter. "My talents would be useful should any creature threaten our insubstantial selves. I suppose in this terrible place there might be such creatures. Aboleths can blast the minds of their foes or enslave them." Anusha didn't like the sound of that. She'd been hurt while dreamwalking once before.

Yeva continued, "Let us explore. Perhaps the inhabitants of this city hibernate like their lord, the Eldest. We shall search for a door and try to exit. Unless things are changed, we are deep in the earth, in the bottommost cellars and roots of the Underdark. Perhaps some tunnels to higher caverns can be found."

Anusha said, "Yes, let's try! Though I hope if I walk too far, I won't be pulled back here."

"Pulled back here? Is there some reason to believe you might be?"

"No, I… well, yes. There is that concern. My dream form used to be bound to my body. I could only move so far from it before I was pulled back into wakefulness. Now, my body is far away, much farther than my old limit.

When I try to wake up, I flicker and remain in this chamber of ice…"

"So?"

"So, I might have a new focus. Maybe this very sphere of ice."

Yeva said, "For your sake, I hope you're wrong. Otherwise, you will probably never escape. Then it will only be a matter of time before you go insane, or the Eldest's condensed and frozen thoughts reabsorb you."

"Oh."

Yeva gave a grim chuckle and gestured into the darkness. "This way?"

"Sure."