Mistshore

CHAPTER 20

As Cerest spoke, Icelin felt a kind of stupor descend upon her mind. The fog thickened and deepened. This was not like the other times she'd gone into her mind, seeking a stray piece of lost information. This was not in her control. She was being led down the twisting corridors by a hand that belonged to a person that was her and yet not her. This person was a child and yet possessed of more wisdom than her waking self.

Icelin was only half-aware, in this state, of Cerest moving closer to her and Ruen farther away. This repositioning made no sense to Icelin, but she had no time to consider the implications. The hand pulling het was moving faster, sweeping her along with its urgency.

The corridors turned to aged stone; dust and cobwebs clung to the corners. Was she going backward in time? An appropriate metaphor, Icelin thought. Brant always said her mind worked with the same ptacticality of a history text. Past was old, present was new.

She came to the end of the passage and found a swathe of green cutting brilliantly across the stone. Stepping out of the passage, Icelin found herself in a vast held.

At first she was afraid. The space was too open. The smells of the city were gone. She could only detect grass and the distant smell of smoke in the air.

This was what outside the city smelled like. This was what space smelled like. Gone were the constant press of animals and South Ward wagon traffic and the refuse of so many folk living side by side. She felt-remembered-the grass tickling her ankles, the movement of insects in the living carpet.

She breathed deeply and caught the hint of smoke again. Mingled with the ash and fire was the scent of onions cooking, and fresh game nearby.

A dusty ribbon of road, stamped many times over with hoof prints, snaked out in front of her. It led up a steep hillside and out of sight. She followed it, and when she crested the rise saw the campfire, the stew pot cooling in the grass, and the circle of figures waiting for their meal.

The feeling of familiarity cascaded over Icelin with such intensity that it left her dizzy and unmoored in her own memories. It was like encountering beloved friends with whom she'd corresponded for years but never seen face to face.

Elgreth cradled a spit stuck with flaming venison. He looked young, his dark brown hair showing only a few threads of silver in the sunlight. He had a thick moustache and wide arms like ale barrels. His cloak fell around him in a pool of darker green against the grass. He pulled the venison off the spit, snatching his hand back from the steaming meat. He sucked on his fingers and pulled faces at the child seated across the fire from him.

Icelin recognized her young self only distantly. Her black hair was trimmed short. She looked like a boy, except she was delicately framed and wore a dress of thick cotton and indeterminate shape.

How strange to see herself this way. She was no longer walking through vague half-memories, as she had been in her dreams. Her mind was spinning the completed story, as vividly as Kaelin had staged his play.

A woman stepped into view and dropped a blanket over her younger self s head. The child squealed and crawled out from under the quilt, her eyes staring adoringly up at her mother.

Her mother and father. Icelin saw them more clearly than she saw her younger self. Her father sat behind her mother, pulling his wife back into his lap, trapping her between thin arms. He was not nearly as burly as Elgreth. His back was slightly hunched under the weight of the pack he wore. His spectacles had been bent and repaired so many times they gave his face a misshapen appearance. When he looked at her mother, his face was so full of love. And in that breath he became the most beautiful man Icelin had ever seen.

Her mother looked exactly like Icelin. She had the same dark hair, trimmed short, but there was no mistaking her curves for a boy. She had the full mouth and healthy weight Icelin lacked, but their eyes were the same, their cheekbones as finely chiseled.

How did I keep you away from my memory for so long? Icelin thought. Where have you been hiding? She sat down on the grass, determined to stay forever in the field, content to bask in the presence of the family she'd never met.

When she looked back at the scene, she noticed the tower for the first time. An ugly gray spike that was slightly off center from the rest of the landscape, the tower cast a shadow that reached nearly to the campsite.

She noticed other things. Her father kept shooting glances in the tower's direction, a look of barely contained excitement stretching his face.

Thirty paces from the fire, Icelin saw another figure, small with distance, agile when he moved. The figure had his back to her, but Icelin could see he was male. Two points of flesh stuck out from his golden hair. When the figure turned, Icelin was shocked to see the smooth, handsome features, the lively eyes unmarked by grief and trauma.

Cerest was an angelic blight on the idyllic scene, Icelin thought. She could see how anyone, man or woman, human or elf, would be taken with him. His face, in its symmetry, was more beautiful than any she'd ever seen. He motioned to her family, his face bright with exhilaration.

The camp broke up. Elgreth left the venison smoking in the grass. Her mother scooped her younger self up in her arms and tossed her over one shoulder. Her delighted squeals trailed away down the hill toward the tower.

Don't do it. Don't go. Stay, and be with me always. Icelin got to her feet and followed her family. She tried to tun, but the tower seemed always at a safe distance from her footsteps, and no shout would reach the ears of the living memories before her.

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she was inside the tower, just as she had been in every nightmare that had haunted her from childhood.

This time, she was no spectator. She resided in the body of her younger self. She could feel the cool ground beneath her bare feet, and the shadows swirling around her had form and substance. They were her family. Her father was taking scrapings from the brittle stone walls and placing them in vials on his belt. Her mother was chanting in an undertone, her hands on the spine of what had once been a massive tome. The spine was all that remained. Her mother's eyes were closed. Yellow light encircled her fingers.

Her mother-a wizard! Icelin couldn't believe it. Her mother had carried the gift of the Art, and Icelin had inherited it. Gods, how much her mother could have taught her, guided her, if she had lived to see to her daughter's tutelage.

"Be cautious," said a voice.

The sudden interruption jarred Icelin from her thoughts. She looked to see who had spoken and saw Elgreth standing next to her mother.

"It's all right," her mother said. She touched Elgreth s arm. "I sense no pockets here. Cerest was right. The plague has abandoned this place. Have you found anything?" she asked, addressing her husband.

"Where's Cerest gone to?" Elgreth asked.

"I think he's putting out the campfire," her mother said. She touched Elgreth's cheek affectionately. "I expect we forgot to douse it in our excitement."

Icelin only half-listened to the test of the convetsation; her attention was caught by the ruined book. She got on her knees and turned her head to see the letters on the spine. They were outlined in blue fire, the edges of the script blurring and fluttering like wings on a dying butterfly.

As she watched, the flames punctured the leather binding, leaving blackened curls in their wake. The smell of charred leather rose in her nostrils. She looked up, and saw that her mother was watching the book too. Her eyes widened, and the color drained from her lovely face.

Icelin, hampered by her younger body, could not get to her mother. She tripped over a pile of wood and fell. Her face caught the sunlight coming from a gaping hole in the towet ceiling. The light beating down was too intense. The ground had been cold only a breath ago, yet everywhere around her she felt heat. It was like she'd stepped into the middle of the campfire.

"Icelin."

She heard her mother's voice. It had nevet sounded like that before. With a child's cettainty and an adult's memoty, Icelin knew this was the end.

The spellplague pocket, awakened by her mother's simple magic, swirled to life from the tafters of the ruined towet ceiling. A cerulean cloud that looked like a tiny, confined thunderstorm, it crawled along the walls, finding cracks in the stone and exploding them, spraying shards of rock on the helpless people below.

Someone was at her side, hauling her roughly under a cloak.

"Get her out!" she heard her mother scream. Then her voice faded. Icelin was running, running on legs that didn't belong to her. Elgreth had picked her up. The blue fire was everywhere- in her eyes, her mouth. She was blind. She couldn't see either of her parents.

They broke free into daylight, but the blue fire wasn't done with them. It stretched out hungry tendrils and snared her hair and her arms. Elgreth dropped her to the grass.

She statted to cry. The heat was too intense. It was the wotst sunburn she'd ever had. Her flesh should be melting from her bones. She heard Elgreth next to her, screaming. She reached for him, but she couldn't touch him. The blue light was everywhere. There were other screams, shouts her young mind couldn't comprehend but that the adult Icelin recognized as the Elvish language.

Cerest was nearby, crying out in agony. His beautiful face was melting and being reforged into something new, a visage that more closely matched his soul. Icelin curled up in a ball on the grass and waited for it to be over. She didn't care if she died, as long as the pain stopped.

Oblivion came, sweeping its cool hand across her body. She was resting in a dark place. She wanted to sleep there forever. To wake was to re-enter that world of horrid pain.

When she opened her eyes again, she was still on the ground. She could see the tip of the tower, weirdly, in her peripheral vision, as she stared up at the sky. Star and moonlight illuminated the scene now, and somewhere, far off, she smelled another campfire burning.

Elgreth leaned over her, adding another blanket to a growing pile on her small body. Her nose was cold. Elgreth's breath fogged in the night ait.

"Is she awake?" It was Cerest's voice. He spoke in the human tongue. He sounded weak.

Elgreth didn't reply. He stroked her cheek, and threaded his fingers in her hair to push it away from her face.

He looked broken, the adult Icelin remembered. Gone were the light-hearted smile and the fringes of youth that she'd seen by the campfire. They had been replaced by a tremendous weight and sadness.

She reached up to touch him. His skin was warm, his moustache hair brittle. He smelled like smoke. It was no campfire that burned, only the remnants of the Rikraw Tower-the funeral pyre for her parents.

When Elgreth left her at last, she crawled out from under the blankets and walked to the tower. Elgreth called to her, screamed for her to stop. But she couldn't. Her parents were somewhere in the wreck of stones.

The tower's collapsed wall was a black blemish on the landscape. Scorch marks sprayed out from it in jagged, oily streaks. Viewed from above, the tower might have been a stygian sun.

Elgreth was still screaming. He's injured, Icelin thought, or he'd be running after me. I am wrong for leaving him. But she couldn't make her feet stop walking.

She caught her foot on a rock. When she looked down, she realized the rock was a hand, clutching her ankle. The fingernails were black, the palms blistered and oozing white pus.

Frightened, Icelin jerked away. She followed the arm attached to the hand and found Cerest, cuded on the ground. He had one arm thrown across his face. The appendage'was out of its socket. His other arm stretched toward her, tiying to stop her.

Icelin looked at that blistered, trembling hand for a long time before she turned and resumed her long journey to the tower.

The stones vibrated with a power beyond sun-warmth. Everything was cold now, but she could feel where the energy had been. When her eyes adjusted to the dimness inside the tower, Icelin could see there was nothing left. Her mother's hair, her father's spectacles-the spellplague had burned them to ash.

She touched the blackened stones, caught the ash-falls drifting through the air. Illuminated in moonlight, they might have been dust or the remains of flesh. She caught as many as she could in her small hands and clutched them against her chest. She started to cry and found she was too dehydrated for the tears to form.

Carefully, she got down on her hands and knees and placed her cheek against the ground. The ash stirred and warmed her skin. She stayed there, imagining her mother's arms around her, while Elgreth screamed for her outside the tower.

Daerovus Tallmantle was a patient man, and his office demanded discipline, but, as he surveyed the wraiths circling the distant Ferryman's "Waltz, he concluded that he'd been patient long enough.

"That's the place," he said.

"Can we trust him?" Tesleena asked.

The Warden thought of Tarvin, his head crushed by a plank. His body had been borne away to the Watch barracks and then to his family.

He surveyed the group of men and women that stood before him in homespun disguises. Their eyes flitted between the Ferryman's Waltz and his face.

"You know what's expected of you," he said. "If any man or woman among you feels he cannot perform his duty, you may accompany Tarvin's body back to the barracks. I look you in the eyes and ask this plainly: will you see justice done?"

A chorus of "ayes" answered him. As promised, he stared each of them in the eyes, hunting deceit. He found none, and was satisfied.

"On the boats," he said. " 'Ware the wraiths, but Icelin is the one you want. Bring her in."

"You have to untangle yourself from this," said a voice Icelin did not, at first, recognize.

She looked up, and for some reason was unsurprised to find Aldren standing in the shadows of the tower.

"I didn't think you could weave yourself into memories," Icelin said.

"Only yours, it would seem," Aldren replied. "But I would rather not be here. This is a foul place, and you're needed elsewhere."

"I don't know how to leave," she said. "What if the plague won't let me?"

Aldren made a motion with his gnarled hand, and his staff appeared in the clawed grip, as if it had always been there, invisible.

"To weave magic requires discipline," he said. "At the best of times, anything can go wrong, because the Art runs unchecked. We are its only shepherds now." He held out his staff to her. "To be a weaver requires a focus," he said, "a tool to channel your energy. You should never rely on such a thing completely, but in the worst of times it can help you endure the wildness of the raw Art."

Icelin touched the staff and felt a pulsing energy. The Art ran through the staff like blood in wooden veins. She. could feel the contained power, frightening and pure.

"What if it gets away from me again?"

"It surely will," Aldren said. "Such things are inevitable. The only thing you can do is focus on what is most important to you-what's worth saving."

"Ruen." She remembered his name as if he had been the dream, and this her only reality. She stood up, and her body was an adult's, though weak and fragile.

The tower melted around her. The black stones faded, as if all the filth was being drained from her memory. She closed her eyes against the swirling, turbulent cleansing.

She smelled the harbor, but when she opened her eyes, the scene had changed. Her mind couldn't process it at first.

Ruen stood thirty feet away, fighting two men at once. A third man floated in the water, his right arm and chest contorted at an odd angle in the water.

She was lying on Ruen's raft. Cerest crouched over her. His crumpled face showed concern, but Icelin noticed he held a dagger slackly in his fight hand.

"Are you well?" he asked.

She licked her lips and tried to speak, but she'd been in her mind too long. The words came out as incoherent mumbles.

Cerest leaned closer. "Say it again, Icelin. I didn't hear you."

Icelin didn't repeat what she'd been trying to say. She brought her knee up and crushed it into Cerest's stomach.

He lurched back onto his right elbow, losing his balance when he tried to bring the knife to bear. He pitched over the side of the raft into the water.

Icelin sprang to her feet and immediately saw that Ruen was in trouble. He held off the two men at his right and left Bank, but the man on the crow's nest was frantically cranking a crossbow into position. He propped it on the lip of the nest to steady his aim.

Cerest thrashed in the water. He grabbed for the raft. Icelin kicked him in the face. Blood exploded from his nose; her heel had knocked it out of position. The elf cursed and backstroked, putting a safe distance between them.

Lifting her. arms, Icelin chanted a spell and brought her hands together, as if she were cupping them around the crow's nest. The basket of rotting wood burst into flames that rose up around the man with the crossbow.

The man shrieked and dropped the weapon. It landed in the water and sank. The man dived from the nest, fistfuls of flame eating at his clothing. He hit the watet belly first.

The men fighting Ruen had their backs to the crow's nest. They tried to turn to see their companion's fate, but Ruen wouldn't give them a respite. He clipped the shortet of the two in the jaw, spinning him half toward the water and upsetting his balance on the bones of the leviathan.

It was all about balance. He kept them both at bay because they couldn't keep their feet. If they'd been on level ground, Ruen would have had several of his bones crushed by now.

While the shorter man steadied himself, Ruen dodged a roundhouse punch from a man wearing a mail vest and thick gauntlets. Built like a brick, this man would be harder to move with simple punches.

Icelin picked her spell carefully, focusing on the chain links pressed tight against the man's body. She could feel the trembling in her fingers as she worked through the complicated gestures.

Two spells, by the gods. Give me two spells without pain, Icelin pleaded. Lady Mystra, I can't pray to your memory. I never knew you. But if any goddess can hear me…

She flexed her fingers and released the spell. Her vision blurred. Nausea rose in her gut, and she felt cold, sticky sweat clinging to her forehead. She forced past the sickness and concentrated on the brick man's mail vest.

There was no visible change. Ruen took a glancing punch to his shoulder from the shorter man. He answered with a kick that took the man's tight leg out from under him. The short man grabbed an overhanging bone, perhaps a rib of the long-dead creature. The bone snapped off. The man grabbed wildly for his companion and buried his fingers in the mail links.

The brick man roared in pain, and the shorter man cried out as well. Smoke rose from the brick man's clothing where it had pressed against the metal links.

Wide-eyed, the brick man patted his chest, touching hot links wherever his hands rested.

Ruen shot a quick glance at Icelin across the water. He jerked his head in acknowledgment.

"Let me help you with that," he told the brick man. He aimed a kick to the man's midsection. The brick man howled and fell backward into the water. A chorus of snakelike hisses rose from where the hot metal touched the cold water. The brick man sank to his chin, a look of relief crossing his face.

"Get back up ere!" cried the short man. He dodged a second kick from Ruen. "Help me!"

The brick man shook his head and swam away. He was obviously done with the fight.

Icelin turned her attention from Ruen to Cerest, who was climbing onto the raft behind her. His knife was gone, but he looked furious enough to kill her with his bare hands. His nose was a red, twisted mass on his face. The blood seeping into his scars made him look like a demon. Icelin remembered the scene outside the tower, when the newly scarred elf had looked up at her young self in agony.

"I remember now," she told him. "The tower. My parents. Elgreth. Did you really think it was safe for us to go in, Cerest? Or was that just what you told yourself? The same way you convinced yourself it wasn't your fault that they died?"

"I had to weigh the risk and reward," Cerest said. There was no remorse in the words. "The knowledge and artifacts we might have found would have enriched all our lives, including yours."

"Oh yes, my life has been enriched indeed," Icelin said.

"I was more than willing to take care of both of you afterwards," Cerest said. "Elgreth could have used his scar to unearth treasures unimaginable. He'd become just like my father, a god of magic-the very aberration I never thought to see again. But he refused to help me. He forced me to look to you."

"And here we are," Icelin said, "in another plague den." She listened to the sounds of fighting behind her, Ruen's muffled cry of pain as he took a blow to some vulnerable part of his body.

"I'm sorry," she told Cerest as she came to a silent decision. "You named me, Cerest, but you were never my family. I thought my family was Waterdeep and a sundries shop. That would have been more than enough for me. But my family is everywhere: Waterdeep, the Dalelands, Aglarond, Luskan-even a burned-out tower. Their footsteps can be heard in the tombs and lost places of Faerun."

"You can be more than they ever were," Cerest said. "You survived, when Elgteth did not."

"I survived because my gift is different," Icelin said. "Poor Cerest, I share your curse. I don't have Elgreth's sense of magic. I only know memory."

She took a step toward him and lifted her hands, the palms facing each other. Cerest flinched, but only for a breath. His eyes reflected the blue glow illuminating her fingers. He was transfixed, watching the power swirl in the empty air between her hands.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Protecting what I have left," Icelin said. She felt the cold touch her palms. She thought it was the first taste of the frost ray forming, but the sensation spread up her arms and lingered around her shoulders.

Icelin looked up and saw the wraiths swirling silently, less than ten feet above theit heads. Like Cerest, they seemed transfixed by the radiant glow that was now climbing her arms. Her flesh glowed cerulean, far beyond the scope of the attack spell.

"What's happening?" Cerest demanded. He looked up at the wraiths. Icelin followed his gaze. Beyond the undead, another blue glow was forming on the bones of the leviathan. More of the creatures dived and chased the light around the bones. Like mad fireflies they soaked up the raw spell energy.

"It's the spellplague," Icelin said. Her magic had released the long dormant energy. The wraiths were finally going to have their feast.

"Get off the raft," Cerest cried. He grabbed her arm, trying to tow her toward the Ferryman. "If we can make it to some cover-"

Icelin stumbled and fell. On her knees, with one hand on the raft and the othet caught in Cerest's grip, she looked up and saw the blue light descending the magnificent bones, a waterfall coming down a mountainside.

"It's too late," she said. "Ruen!" she screamed, and turned to see the monk holding onto one of the rib bones for support. He clutched his chest with his other arm. The short man lay at his feet, a strip of blood leaking from his mouth. His eyes stared vacantly up at the doom working its way down to them.

Ruen jumped into the water. He surfaced five feet from the raft and started to swim to her.

"No!" Icelin waved him off. "Go down," she cried. "Swim down, as far as you can. Get away from the light." She could barely see him now. The light was so bright, she had to squint. "We'll be behind you."

Ruen hesitated. Icelin could almost see him calculating their odds. "I'll try to find an air pocket around the ship," he said. Then he was gone, diving beneath the surface. Icelin crawled to the edge of the raft to follow, when suddenly a heavy weight hit her from behind.

Her breath gone, Icelin fell flat to the raft. She could feel Cerest pressing his body against hers.

"Get off!" she cried, but her scream was lost in the ciy of the wraiths. They dived and hovered around the raft, blocking her escape into the water.

"They still smell the magic," Cerest shouted. His strength held her immobile. The blue light fell over them in a curtain.

The glare brightened to a painful intensity, and suddenly everything went black. Icelin thought she'd gone blind.

Blinking reflexively, she felt a warm breeze against her face. She looked up and saw a crescent of sunlight spilling over a pile of stone. It was the remains of a rooftop.

She was back in the tower. The heat continued to build, just as it had in her vision. Her two realities were merging, past and present bridged by rhe spellplague.

But this time something was different. Icelin rolled onto her side and saw the body lying next to her. Cerest was staring, disoriented, up at the sunbeams and the tower roof.

He doesn't know where he is, Icelin thought. His mind is joined to mine by the plague.

"What happened?" The elf sat up and swung toward her. His face paled visibly. Icelin turned to see the specters of her parents and Elgreth searching the tower. They went about their exploration, smiling and laughing, oblivious to the two figures sitting on the ground.

Cerest's lips formed the name of his old friend, but he couldn't speak. His eyes welled with unshed tears. Icelin couldn't believe the sight.

He's in pain. This pains him. Does he know what's coming? She looked up at the light. It fell in sunbeams and blue threads. Did Cerest know how few breaths stood between his friends, and oblivion?

She reached out, against her will, and touched the elf on the shoulder. "Cerest," she said. "Close your eyes."

"What?" He turned to her, gripping her shoulders. "It's them, can't you see them? They're alive!"

Icelin winced at the pressure he exerted. His hands trembled. Half-crazed joy shone in his liquid eyes.

"They aren't real," Icelin said. "This is memory. Everything's going to burn, Cerest." Maybe us too.

"No!" He shook his head. Sweat dripped from his hair. "Not this time. I'll be able to warn them this time. I'll get them out before anything happens."

"They can't hear you," Icelin said. She closed her eyes. She couldn't watch it a second time.

Cerest continued to hold her in a crushing grip as the heat built to a roar in her ears. She heard the screams. Cerest's raw shriek pricked icy needles all over her flesh. She tipped her head forward, resting against his chest while he wept and screamed, over and over.

He was seeing everything as he had never seen it before- from the inside of the inferno. Elgreth had long since carried her young self away, but the memory and Cerest's imagination had taken over. She could hear her mother crying out for her husband and for Cerest. The smell of burning flesh filled the air.

To distract herself, Icelin conjured an image of Ruen, swimming deep in the rotting harbor. She prayed he'd found safe haven from the plague's reach. He'd already drowned in its grip once.

And what about Aldren, Darvont and Bellaril? Would they be safe inside the Ferryman, or would the plague consume the ship and crush them all? She held onto the screaming elf and hoped that one of Aldren's deities would take pity on all of them.