The Restless Shore

CHAPTER NINETEEN

11 Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One

(1479 DR)

The Lash, Akanul

Keening voices clashed with metallic clangs, drawing ever closer as Brindani twisted his blade through Arasteht’s flesh, growling savagely as tentacles wrapped around his arms and legs in a tightening embrace of death. The singer’s gurgling death rattle incited its battling servants, the Flock, to greater ferocity; their shrieks increased as they frantically fought to reach the bone-patterned chamber. Uthalion caught the shocked gaze of Chevat, his lips set in a thin line. He waited for the aranea’s decision, though Ghaelya spoke first.

“They can die,” the genasi said coldly to Chevat as Brindani fell away from Arasteht’s body, sweet-smelling blood dripping from his blade. “That’s two we’ve slain in as many days, and they have my sister, my twin. I do not intend to stop killing them, or anything else that gets in my way, until I have her back.”

Chevat hesitated for only a moment, sparing one last glance at the dead body of Arasteht before turning to the back of the chamber, a fleetness in his step as he called over his shoulder.

“Come!”

Uthalion waved the others on, keeping a careful watch on the dark tunnels of the northern wall, convincing himself for a moment that he would stand strong if the white spiders broke through, that he would make the necessary sacrifice for his companions. There was some truth in the lie, enough that he knew it was what he should do, but not enough to make him abandon fear for his own family-not enough to banish that part of him that still longed for the beguiling song out of the south.

He turned and ran just as the others disappeared into the shimmering shadows of a southern tunnel, the shrieks and scratching claws sounding dangerously close on their heels. Chevat’s voice echoed loudly from the lead, the language unknown to Uthalion, though the tone was as familiar as his own battle-tested sword. The aranea barked orders as they twisted and turned through narrow tunnels and crawl spaces, creating a shadowy flurry of activity in their wake.

Uthalion spied dark cloaks and jade eyes. Heavy-bodied spiders scrambled along the walls and crouched among the glowing roots overhead. Humanoid forms dived out of side passages, their bodies shifting with alarming speed. They landed more gracefully on eight legs than Uthalion mused he might have managed on two. They hissed as he passed, glaring before moving on, clearly not pleased with the newcomers’ presence, but loyally gathering to defend their warrens.

The light flashed and flickered constantly as the sounds of battle faded farther and farther behind them. The tunnels slowly widened into ones less ornate than the web-lined artworks of the araneas entrance tunnels and more easily traversed by those unused to such shifting terrain. At length they came to a massive chamber scattered with thin shafts of glimmering light. An incline at the far end led to a loosely circular line of illumination, much like the trapdoor Chevat had led them through. It was a welcome sight for Uthalion’s impatience to be free of the spiders’ kingdom.

They rested at the base of a narrow tunnel leading out, listening to the passing of the Lightning Tide and waiting for Chevat’s word that it was safe to leave. Uthalion kept a sharp eye on the aranea, half-expecting any moment for the spiders’ leader to change his mind and seek to slay Ghaelya-it was, after all, a decision Uthalion would have considered had he been in the same position.

“What used to live there, in the Temple?” Ghaelya asked Chevat, breaking the silence. “Did your people ever discover?”

The aranea shook his head thoughtfully.

“Whatever it was, men died trying to possess it,” he said after a time. “The walls were decorated with their bones, their drowned bodies used for trifles, the abandoned artwork of a fickle creature that thought little of mortal lives or desires.”

Chevat’s words turned over and over in Uthalion’s mind, stirring an old memory that he couldn’t quite grasp. When he was young, his grandfather would tell him stories of fantastic beasts, of dragons and evil elves. Though no one story came to mind, he recalled having a long-standing fear of water before learning to swim years later. He looked to Ghaelya, remembering her voice echoing up to him from the bottom of the vine-tree lined pit.

Something in the water.

Uthalion blinked, turning away from the genasi and the flickering ring of light just beyond her at the tunnel’s edge, suddenly unsure of which he had been truly focused on. With some effort he calmed his racing, muddled thoughts, though he was anxious to keep moving rather than sit and wait in the dark.

“Almost there,” he said under his breath, repeating the phrase for the strange sense of calm it brought him.

“I must admit,” Chevat said sternly, “I do not know if I have chosen wisely in this.”

“Not all sacrifices involve blood,” Vaasurri replied.

“It’s always blood,” Brindani muttered as he cleaned his sword, not bothering to look up. “One way or another, always.”

The chamber’s dim light grew darker, and the thin ring at the tunnel’s end disappeared as if shadowed from the outside. Chevat crawled closer, listening and raising his head to sniff the air, nodding and gesturing for Ghaelya to approach.

“You must run to the southern foothills. They are not far,” he said quickly, his eyes darting to them all. “Climb until you are well beyond the lower level of blackened rocks, and the Tide shall not catch you. Tohrepur lies half a day’s journey from the top-just follow the cliffs.”

“Thank you, Chevat,” Ghaelya said.

“No,” the aranea replied. “I might have killed you myself. And by helping you, I daresay I may have done just that.”

The genasi merely nodded and crawled toward the trapdoor, followed by Vaasurri and Brindani. As Uthalion took the first handhold, Chevat placed a long-fingered hand on his arm.

“Those affected by the song do not return from Tohrepur as they once were,” the aranea said solemnly. “Do you hear the song, human?”

“No,” he answered, the lie slipping out before he could stop it, denying that his motives were anything but honorable, though he wondered if they were truly his motives at all. Chevat slipped a leather pouch into his hand and closed his fingers around it tightly before letting go.

“Be swift,” the aranea said. “And if I happen to find you no longer yourself in the days to come, I shall slay you quickly.”

Before Uthalion could think of how to reply to such a statement, the aranea had dashed into the shadows, his legs lengthening and splitting behind him into the long, sharp-footed legs of a spider. Wind caressed Uthalion’s face, and he turned to the pale light outside, scrambling up the tunnel and out onto the stiff, warm grass of the Lash.

Brindani staggered out into the light, wild-eyed and running through the gray. The foothills were just ahead, and he quickened his stride at the sight of them, desperate to reach them, to climb them, and to find the place of the song and dreams. He felt as though he were falling with each step, tumbling toward an end he knew deep down he should fear, and yet he could not resist the summons in his blood. Cool wind blew across his fevered skin like a breath of winter. The sweat on his brow felt like ice, and he ran faster.

He was dimly aware of the poisonous ache in his limbs. Though Chevat’s potion had done much to ease the pain, it left him drained and nauseous. He stumbled against the incline of the foothills, falling to his hands and knees in blackened soil that smelled of char. He craned his neck to the top of the rocky foothills above, grinning weakly as he stood, so close to the promise of the song, a promise of peace. His eyes widened as he panicked for a moment, looking around until he saw Ghaelya climbing the hill behind him. He watched her pass with a dazed expression, letting relief calm his anxiety.

“All will be well,” he muttered, his eyes fixed on the genasi. “All will be well.”

He tried to stand and felt a twisting pang in his stomach. He faltered, confused and trying to catch his breath when the pang returned more forcefully, stabbing his insides with pure agony. A dry scream scratched its way through his throat as he doubled over, rolling in the ash. He felt rough hands grab his arms and haul him up, and tried to keep his feet moving as he was dragged up the hill backward. Rolling thunder deafened him and hid his feeble cries in crashing waves that shook the air. Though his eyes were closed, he could see the Lightning Tide return in bright flashes of red as it scoured the Lash.

His body curled in on itself as pain needled hungrily through his gut. It was not the gentle pain of the song; it did not bring him dreams or enhanced senses and it did not sink through his skin or bear the sweet scent of the red flower that Sefir had fed him. The pain was more familiar, almost forgotten, and it seemed it had returned with a vengeance. As the thunder died, following the Tide on its route around the Lash, he heard the tired grunts and cursing of Vaasurri and Uthalion, heard Vaasurri muttering as they pulled him to safety.

“Silkroot,” the killoren said derisively.

“No …” Brindani whispered, gasping for air and fighting against the hands that held him. He’d left the silkroot behind him, not having needed or wanted the drug since finding the song and tasting the red flower. But his body was betraying his wishes, filling him with a base hunger that he loathed. He fought harder and found his voice, roaring in defiance of his own addiction, “No!”

He kicked against the ground hard, and he was released in a volley of shocked curses. Hitting the ground he turned and leaped forward, climbing as fast as he could manage, scraping his hands on the rocks, feverishly pulling himself higher and higher. All the while he felt the memory of the summoning song fade a little from his mind, felt his blood grow cold, and wanted to weep. The taste of blood filled his mouth; he huffed it from between his lips to spatter little red droplets on the gray stone as he climbed and scrambled for the top of the foothills.

He blocked out all but the top of the tall slope, enduring the pulsing pain through his abdomen. He listened for the song, but it did not come to him. He wanted to scream, to demand that it return and banish the agonizing remnant of the pathetic man that had wandered Aglarond in a drug-filled haze. Briefly, he considered how high he had climbed, contemplated the long fall over rocks, bits of half-buried walls, and the rotted out hulls of ancient fishing vessels.

“Just one slip,” he whispered, the thought coming through his pain in a rare moment of clarity. The song was missing, the grips of the silkroot were fading, and his more substantial wounds had begun to ache, leaving him for several breaths in between desire and necessity, his own man. “One slip …”

His head began to swim, and he felt faint. Grasping at another handhold, he tried to lift his suddenly wavering legs. His field of vision narrowed, overtaken by a tunnel of smoky black as his eyelids fluttered. His breath came quick and shallow. The scent of blood surrounded him, his wounds seeping through bandages that felt too tight, itching his skin abrasively. One hand slipped on the rough wood of an old fencepost, and he lurched backward, his eyes rolling in his head.

“Brindani!”

He heard his name but could not place the voice. The ground fell away, and a sickening freefall took him in an airy embrace. In the time between falling, bouncing off a smooth rock, and feeling sets of hands grasp his arms and legs, he heard shocked voices cry out in startling detail.

He felt the rough pattern of swirling fingerprints scrape across his skin. His nose was overcome by powerful scents of blood and sweat as he was lowered to the ground. Though a throbbing, needling pain remained in his gut, another, smaller pain began to spread over his skin and sink into his flesh. Again, he wanted to weep.

“It didn’t leave me …” he rasped quietly, grabbing at an arm that supported his head. Though the touch of the song was little more than a flicker, unable to totally banish the grips of his old addiction, it was enough to give him a warped sense of hope. The two painful compulsions warred over his spirit and threatened his sanity. “It didn’t leave me … All will be well …tomorrow …”

“All will be well,” a voice like Uthalion’s answered, though a coldness in the human’s tone was somewhat alarming as Brindani slipped into the velvety black of slithering dreams and distant singing.

On a wide ledge just over halfway up the long, rocky incline, a small campfire burned with a pale brightness next to the flashing plains of the Lash. Uthalion kept his back to the Lightning Tide, his eyes still burning from his last glance at the gray plains. The sun would set soon, and at length they had decided to rest before pressing on, preferring to enter Tohrepur by day instead of night. And, Uthalion had reasoned reluctantly, they shouldn’t leave Brindani behind unprotected.

Vaasurri had been the only one to agree out loud, though Uthalion suspected the killoren’s reasons had less to do with the unconscious half-elf and more with the mysterious ruins. Vaasurri hadn’t said as much, but their proximity to Tohrepur seemed to be having an effect on him as well. His hair had darkened, and his eyes wavered between emerald green and shadowy gray, a sign of something unnatural, beyond even the experience of the sensitive fey.

Uthalion stared up the slope, tracing the edge with his eyes and pointedly ignoring the urge to keep climbing. He questioned his own motives and desires as he suppressed the impulses that sought to overcome his good sense. Absently, he twirled the silver ring on his finger, pulling it on and off with his thumb, an old habit of his that Maryna used to tease him over, saying that if he lost her ring she’d find another man who could hold on to it better. His breath caught in his throat at the memory, and he waited as the sudden emotion rose and fell in his chest, exhaling slowly as it passed. He wondered if his family truly had been taken to the ruins, not as sure as he’d been that morning, the strong certainty of his dream no longer as strong. But still, the possibility weighed on his mind.

“Almost there,” he said under his breath and recalled why the words seemed so familiar. “Leave a light in the window. I’m almost there.”

Over and over, through the Lash, the Wash, and the rising lands of the Spur, he had uttered the phrase as he’d led his men out of Tohrepur six years before, all the while focused on his family. Maryna had been waiting for him with Cienna in her arms, just as he’d imagined, ever since their argument over soldiering and gold. But his experiences had been there too, like a hulking shadow in the corner of their little cottage, casting a pall over their lives. He’d come home a different man, a different husband and father than when he’d left, and Maryna hadn’t known how to deal with him.

She smiled less and less in the days following. He had slept on the floor when exhaustion had taken him and had spent his days and nights by the window, waiting for something to happen, waiting for the world to tumble away into chaos so that the fear he felt might be justified. He wanted to keep fighting, to keep surviving so that Maryna could have seen what he had seen and know what he then knew-that with the slightest push in the right spot, everything could fall apart.

Nothing ever came. They argued more and more each day until she told him to leave. Eventually he did, promising that he would return, a promise he still intended to keep. With a gentle tug he pulled the silver ring away, reached into a secured pouch, and replaced the band with his wife’s scratched and slightly bent ring, suddenly needing a greater magic than the silver could provide to keep going.

“We’ve been on the road longer than I thought,” Vaasurri said, gesturing at the ring as he joined Uthalion by the fire.

“Too long,” Uthalion replied with a deep sigh. “How’s Brindani?”

“He’ll live,” the killoren answered. “Though his withdrawal has only gotten worse. He’s barely touched the leaves I gave him for the pain days ago. I think he wants to die.”

“He’ll have his chance soon enough,” Uthalion said, glancing again to the edge of the slope worriedly. “I should have listened to you, outside of Caidris,” he said as he turned his gaze to his old friend. “I’m sorry for that.”

Vaasurri nodded slowly, his gray-green eyes gleaming in the firelight.

“No regrets now,” he said quietly. “Almost there.”

“Almost there,” Uthalion whispered, fearing what the next day might bring.

Ghaelya sat in the dark beyond the fire’s light, gazing up to the long divide between the swirling, dark clouds over the Lash and the clear, darkening skies over the south. The setting sun’s light was split between the two lands: deep blue and muted to the north, purpled and clear to the south. She rubbed her hands gently, tracing the rough edges of scratches, testing the tenderness of new bruises along her arms. All the while she knew that somewhere, just to the west of where she sat, her sister waited for her, as did the monstrous beings of the Choir and likely the creature that had somehow made them into things of nightmare.

It had proven difficult admitting to the others that she needed rest and stopping herself long enough to consider sitting-even longer to contemplate eating, which she had done sparingly, nibbling at bits of dried fruit and venison. Those were luxuries she felt she neither could afford nor really deserved, though without them she would be useless to her sister. So she sat and waited impatiently for sleep to claim her.

She had thought briefly of speaking with Uthalion, thanking for him for bringing her so far on little more than faith. But at the sight of his haunted eyes, she turned away, feeling foolish. Vaasurri had watched her with a guarded expression, saying little more than was necessary. She could sense a tension with the killoren that she regretted.

Brindani moaned in his sleep nearby, muttering unintelligibly as he tossed and turned. His tortured voice, rasping quietly and rattling deep in his chest, made her wince; the half-elf looked much the worse for their long journey. She pitied him, though she hated herself for doing so, knowing full well that without him she wouldn’t have made it here. Given the chance to do things over again, she still would have accepted his help, despite the consequences.

She had used the last of her water cleaning his wounds, leaving only a small sip to slake her thirst before replacing his bandages. His wrists were covered in spidering blue veins, the skin of his forearms almost transparent. A patch of raw skin on the back of his neck had spread to his shoulder, taking on a familiar pale texture that caused her to shudder and turn away.

Biting her tongue, she saved her rage, storing it away for Tohrepur. She was angry at herself for caring what happened to the half-elf, but more angry for not wanting to care. She had no room for regret, not yet, not until she found Tessaeril and fixed the rift between herself and the better person her twin had always pushed her to be.

She rested her head upon her knees, staring into the middle-distance until her eyelids grew heavy. Darkness and light flickered before her eyes, and she caught the sound of her own breathing, deep and throaty, bordering on a light snoring. Gasping softly she sat up straight, realizing what she was doing. She was suddenly aware of the profound silence that had fallen around her.

“The dream,” she whispered, lucid and aware. For a moment she doubted that she dreamed at all until the gentle lapping of heavy waves drew her attention to the north and the vast inland sea spreading out across where the Lash had been. The rolling surf of the blue-black mirror of water nearly reached her feet, and a soft, white sand beach stretched from east to west. An eerie singing echoed faintly from the sea, the song sounding like a rusty nail pulled skillfully down the length of a harp string. In the sand, tiny pale figures writhed, sliding over one another and moving in a strange sinuous rhythm to the tune of the song.

She pulled away from the living shore, turning to see Brindani lying on his back, his black glassy eyes reflecting the light of the stars as he quietly gasped for air, surrounded by pulsing red flowers. He was trying to speak. Uthalion and Vaasurri were gone, and the campfire burned with a green light that rolled and wavered slowly, as if underwater.

Beside the fire she saw her sword, its heavy blade shining dully in the light. A dripping coat of blood covered it and pooled around the point. Crawling closer, Ghaelya reached out for the hilt and paused, her hands covered in blood as well. She tried to wipe it away to no avail; her fingertips dripped crimson on the ground and each drop sprouted small red blooms. The little flowers spread, leading her eyes in a long string to the shoreline, where she found the familiar bright eyes, bursting with fleshy red flowers watching her. A blue-black silhouette lounged half on the sand, half in the water.

“Tess?” she asked, leaning forward and squinting in the green light of the fire. “I’m coming, Tess. I’ll find you!”

The silhouette slowly withdrew into the tide until only its crimson eyes were visible among the waves. The tiny, writhing figures in the sand bent their bodies toward the figure in the water, their red mouths open wide and their whispering voices joining the haunting song.

“Can you hear the song, sister?” Tessaeril asked from the water.

“I can! I can hear the song!” Ghaelya answered, shouting as the song grew louder. “Is it you? Are you singing?”

“Did you bring your sword?” Tessaeril asked.

“I did,” Ghaelya replied and glanced at the weapon as if in a trance. The blood on its blade began to spread into the green fire, hissing as a sweet scent rose in thin tendrils of smoke, “But it’s covered in blood.”

“It’s always blood,” Tessaeril answered, her eyes disappearing in the depths of the Mere. “One way or another, always.”

Ghaelya turned to Brindani. Hearing his words repeated by her sister sent chills down her arms, and she shuddered. But the half-elf was gone, replaced by a growing mound of pulsing flowers whose crimson nectar ran freely into the sand and mingled with the surf.