The Restless Shore

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 seen 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!”

“You will understand, when you come to me …” Tessaeril said, the last echoing from far away, buzzing and repeating on the air. “…Come to me … to the blood … and to the bloom …”

A wave surged over Ghaelya’s head, blinding her for a moment and filling her mouth with a taste of seawater. She trod water, bewildered, flinching as thunder rumbled overhead and lightning tore through a cloudy sky, illuminating an expanse of choppy water that stretched in all directions.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered, once again able to feel fear as a line of brilliant blue flared on the horizon. Gulls wheeled in circles, complaining loudly as they fled a swift wall of sparkling blue fire that roared across the surface of the water. Ghaelya tried to swim away, diving beneath the surface, but even the darkest depths glowed as the blue flames neared. She surfaced again, gasping as the seagulls, unable to escape, were engulfed.

Some simply disappeared, others were incinerated into little puffs of ash, but a handful were horribly changed, twisting into distorted masses of flesh that had little resemblance to the gulls they had been. Plummeting into the water, the lifeless lumps left behind a single bird flapping clumsily, little more than a collection of giant wings and squawking beaks, a monster that hung heavily on the air.

“The Spellplague,” she muttered in horror, recognizing and somehow bearing witness to events she only knew of through century-old stories and legends. The Blue Breath of Change had been born in the death of a goddess and ravaged all that it touched as the fabric of magic fell apart at the seams.

Stunned and helpless, Ghaelya froze as the blue fire washed over her, shaking her violently and drawing massive waves behind it. As it passed, she felt no different, and drifted momentarily in a void of utter silence, waiting. The silence was broken by a drowned scream, a melodious shriek that rose from the depths beneath her and touched her soul with pain and terrible sorrow even as it ripped through her body like a thousand spinning blades.

She screamed as well, her vision fading to darkness; and her body lifted, floating in a weightless void for several breaths before everything suddenly stopped.

Opening her eyes, she found herself lying on the floor of the chamber, bones and dead bugs pressed against her cheek. The light was gone, and in the dark she shuddered, inhaling deeply, relieved even by the scent of stagnant water and death. Her skin tingled uncomfortably as she sat up and brushed the filth from her face, a dim memory instinctively guiding her back to the present and the bottom of the pit, though the strange dream sat heavily in her thoughts.

“Something … Something in the water,” she whispered.

“Ghaelya?”

Uthalion’s tired voice called down to her through the cloud of buzzing insects, and she hesitated, saying nothing and shivering in the dark. She gripped the sides of her head, assuring herself of the solid reality around her, trying to sort through the course of the dream.

Through it all, she felt a grim certainty.

Through finding her voice and calling back to the human, through climbing out of the pit and breathing fresh air, through each new moment that passed, she was certain that Tessaeril was alive and waiting for her. She dreaded the idea with a quiet shame, however, for she was as yet unsure if simply being alive was for the best.

Uthalion stumbled free of the vine-trees, wiped the mud from his hands, and glanced back across the sea of waving plants before putting a safe distance between them and himself. He collapsed to his knees in the tall grass, wild eyed and breathing heavily. He pressed his hands hard into the ground, pushing dirt between his fingers purely for the sensation, to feel the solidity and find control over his own faculties.

The song had taken him, drowned him in the darkness of the pit, and he had been unable to turn away, longing to stay forever in its embrace. He spat, repulsed by the idea, violated by a will that was not his own and yet one that could not be ignored. He could still imagine the surging tune digging into his mind before abruptly ending, leaving an empty space that seemed to shatter his ability to reason the difference between reality and dream.

He closed his eyes as a spinning vertigo threatened to make him sick, but he held on, willing his heart to slow its rapid beating. Only when he had regained some manner of control, a better awareness of his surroundings, did he look to Ghaelya.

She sat just beyond the wide grove, shivering as she whispered to herself, shaking her head and gesturing as though she argued with someone.

“Madness,” he muttered and looked away, leaving the genasi to herself until he could compose his own thoughts into a coherent order. Night still ruled the Akana, and he suspected little time had passed since he had fallen by the edge of the pit though it had seemed an eternity. He dug his fingernails deep into the palm of his hand as he stood and tested his balance, reassured by the dull pain.

“Tess was down there,” Ghaelya said suddenly, looking at him wide-eyed and wringing her hands. The energy lines flowed over her skin, flaring with a soft light, rolling from one pattern to another like a restless tide.

Uthalion felt an urge to take her by the shoulders and shake her, to slap the faint glint of mania from her eyes. He wanted to say she was lying and that she would find nothing of her sister save bones like those they had just crawled through. But he stepped back, his hands at his side to keep them from betraying his better sense.

“She showed me things,” the genasi continued as she rose to her feet. “Horrible things.”

Uthalion backed away again, as if her touch might infect him, flood his mind with insanity and nonsense, though he suspected it was already too late. He found he could not keep his eyes on her for too long, drawn as they were again and again to the dark southern horizon. The song had left him, but the summons remained, a powerful force that took some effort to delay, much less ignore.

“We should keep moving,” he said and turned back to the camp and the others.

“I–I don’t know,” she replied, her gaze locked on the south as well. “I’m not sure we should. Not anymore.”

“You do know,” Uthalion said, pausing and ignoring the unnatural instinct to look again, the irrational hope that a shining light and unimaginable music might flood across the Akana and set him free of all worry. “Things like these … nightmares, doubt, fear … They do not just go away because you are afraid to face them.” Absently he made a fist, feeling the cool surface of the silver ring on his finger with a twinge of shame. “In the end it all just depends on what you’re willing to live with … or without.”

He cursed the truth that spilled past his lips, sighing quietly and unable to avoid his own hypocrisy. A solemn clarity had settled back into his thoughts, and though it gave him enough to contemplate and wonder what was occurring, it was not enough to cure him of the song’s memory and the familiar tune of his wedding hidden within its strains.

Ghaelya stood still, intently studying the shadowed distances between them and Tohrepur. Uthalion felt as though they stood upon a mystical border, an invisible point of no return. Once they crossed into the land beyond, an elemental plain of storm and frost known as the Lash, there could be no second-guessing, no turning back.

“Tell me,” Ghaelya said. “Have you lived with or without Tohrepur?”

Uthalion stiffened at the unexpected question, a shock of alarm running down his spine as if even the mention of his dealings in Tohrepur might awaken the beasts of his past. When nothing came but a soft breeze hissing through the grass, he lowered his eyes to the ground and considered his answer honestly.

“With, I suppose,” he said and started back to the camp, hearing her fall into step behind him. He dreaded her next question almost as much as he willed her to speak it while the brief calm in his spirit lasted.

“What happened there?”

A breath caught in his throat before he could think of how to answer. He imagined how he might answer the question if it were posed by his wife. He could almost hear Maryna’s voice asking it and wondered if, at some point during the time he tried to be her husband again, she actually had. He pictured the narrow, cobble-stoned streets of Tohrepur, the scent of salt-stained stones from a time when water lapped at a small fishing harbor on the north end of town, and the seemingly kind guards that had met them at the gate.

“I … We-Brindani and I-were soldiers once, sell-swords marching to the ruins under the gold-promising banner of a greater cause,” he started in a rush, forcing the words out before he could change his mind. “We were to help them battle an aboleth, ancient and far older than those nightmares freed by the Spellplague.” A phantom smell of smoke burned in his nose as he recalled the trailing plumes across the city, the screams, and the chaos, “Even in death its unsuspecting thralls … just people, twisted and corrupted … The entire city came for us. I called a retreat and never looked back … until Caidris. We met them in Caidris.”

The last he spoke in a hoarse whisper. The memory of that last day was vivid but lifeless, like the mechanical working of a windmill grinding grain. He had done his job and little else-his heart had not fought with him, but remained injured nonetheless.

“You killed them,” Ghaelya said flatly.

Uthalion did not respond, focusing instead on placing one foot in front of the other, as mechanical as once he’d been. He rarely missed the heartless mind-set of the sell-sword, his wife having cured him of his ways for a time, but it had served him well when work needed to be done. He stopped when the faint glow of dying embers came into view.

“It was a mercy,” he said by way of answer. The truth of the statement was only superficial, only the long considered idea of a clear-minded hindsight searching for an answer to ease his mind. He wanted it to have been mercy, but there had been none of that in his actions-only fear. He glanced at Ghaelya, unsure if he expected judgment or understanding, but she merely nodded and continued on to the camp, her step a little stronger, and her chin a little higher.

“We’ll go on,” she said in passing, and Uthalion felt a weight lifted from his shoulders only to be replaced by yet another. Despite telling her the truth, he sensed the slow crawl of guilt sliding over his soul like mold. Even his truth had served the echoing will of the song.

Wearily he joined the others and climbed back to the rocky perch he’d held before. At first he was intent on resuming his careful watch until sunrise, but his attention turned to the silver ring, the magic that held sleep and nightmare at bay. It was the one treasure he’d rescued from Tohrepur, and had meant to sell it at Airspur, to make up for the gold he had never received from the Keepers of the Cerulean Sign.

Ghaelya sat wide awake and scanning the grassland, her watery eyes catching the light of a reborn campfire as if flames could not escape her gaze, no matter the direction she turned.

Resigned, Uthalion laid back and secured his sword, stared up at the crimson streaked darkness, and whispered a prayer to whatever benevolent power might be listening. With a slow, torturous pull, the silver ring slipped free of his finger, and many days of lost sleep descended upon him, hungrily dragging him down into a quiet slumber.