The fading dream

CHAPTER SIX

The Mournland B arrakas 22, 999 YK

The dead-gray mists,” Cadrel said. “The tears of Cyre.” The barrier stretched out before them, a dense wall of fog that reached the limits of sight and rose up to touch the sky. Thorn had heard of the mists that defined the borders of the Mournland, but she’d never actually seen them. As their boat slowly drifted toward them, she felt a chill run across her skin. The fog was slightly luminescent and constantly churning, as if stirred by a strong wind, but there was no wind whatsoever and no sound at all. And there was the stench of death. The scent changed any time her attention slipped. Rot and corruption… fresh blood… burning hair and flesh. Staring into the silent mist, it was all too easy to let the scents paint a vivid picture of what lay beyond.

“How far until we reach the shoreline?” she said.

“I don’t know,” Cadrel replied. “The mists cling close to Cyre. Less than a mile, to be certain. We’ll find out when we run aground.”

“I know where we need to go,” Drix said. He set down his oar and moved to the back of the boat. “The mists don’t bother me. You row. I’ll take the rudder.”

Cadrel glanced at Thorn and raised an eyebrow. “And how is it the mists don’t touch you, boy?”

“Call me ‘boy’ again, and I’m going to start calling you ‘old man,’ ” Drix said with a grin. He certainly didn’t seem to be put out by their eerie surroundings. “They touch me. You just get used to it after a while, and it took me a long time to find my way out of this place. The mists reach into your heart, feeding your hopes and spilling out sorrows. Just keep rowing. Don’t let go of your oar. And don’t dwell on anything bad.”

“I’ve faced sorrow before,” Thorn said.

“Then you’ll face it again and worse,” Drix said. “Find someone to talk to. A friend who’s always there. Your dagger, perhaps. He seems like a kind soul.”

Thorn found herself smiling, in spite of the grim wall ahead. She tapped Steel’s hilt. “Did you hear that, little dagger friend? You’ve got a kind soul.”

“You shouldn’t mock him,” Drix said. “You’ll need every friend you can find.”

“Right.” She patted Steel’s hilt again. “I’m sorry, little dagger.”

Very amusing, the both of you, Steel said. I just hope he actually knows where you’re going. I’ve heard many unpleasant stories about traversing the mists, and even sheathed I can sense the negative energy ahead of us. Be careful.

“Are you prepared, Lady Thorn?” Essyn Cadrel had set his oar in position, raised and ready for another stroke.

“Not yet,” Thorn said. “Drix, you can get us to the coastline, but there’s no telling how far this extends from there. How’s your sense of direction once we reach land?”

Drix looked into the mists. “Good enough. It’s not just a matter of direction. If you spend enough time in the mists, you can recognize the voices. It’s sort of like wind, but it’s emotional. You learn to follow your feelings. I could do it with my eyes closed. And closing your eyes isn’t a bad idea, actually. You might want to do that.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Thorn said. “But you can do it? How long do you think it’s going to take?”

“There’s no way to know, really,” Drix said. “An hour. A day. Two at the most.”

“We could be walking in that soup for two days?”

“Perhaps,” Drix said. “You won’t really notice if we do. You’re going to have other things on your mind.”

“Which is why we need to be prepared.” Reaching into the supply pack, Thorn pulled out an assortment of gear. She tossed a harness at Cadrel, an array of straps and hooks. “Put this on. I’m going to link us together. We don’t want to get separated in this muck.” She ran a length of rope through connecting loops and produced other pieces of equipment. “You’ve got the troll rod if you get hungry. The cold-fire flare will help in the dark-”

Drix shook his head. “No lantern will help in there. You’ve only got one source of light that matters-hope.”

Thorn stared at him, but he seemed to be completely serious. “I’m going to ignore that,” she said. “But even if it’s true, we may need the light on the other side. Careful with the Irian tears; only take a sip if you’re feeling completely overwhelmed or exhausted.”

“Irian tears,” Cadrel said, running a finger along the fluid-bearing pouch at the top of the harness. “Marvelous. The light of the Sovereigns, distilled into wine.”

“Let’s hope Olladra has greater gifts for us than wine,” Thorn said. She took her seat and hefted her oar. “Ready?”

Drix nodded.

Cadrel shrugged. “I suppose I am.”

The prow of the boat disappeared into the mists. Then it was all around them.

The first thing she noticed was the silence. The mist absorbed all sound. She could feel her oar strike the water, but she couldn’t hear the splash. The rich scent of blood surged into her nostrils, and for a moment she could see through the fog, see the ocean of blood around her, stripped bones bobbing on the surface like driftwood. Then the vision faded, and she was back in the cold, damp gloom.

It was one thing to hear the effect described, another to actually be caught within the isolating gloom. “Cadrel?” she said. “Drix?”

There was no response. We’re moving forward, so they must both still be there, Thorn thought. If Cadrel stopped rowing, we’d be going in circles.

Just to be sure, she reached out to where Cadrel had been. She felt the pressure of his body against her hand. Still there. Nonetheless, there was a disturbing numbness to the sensation, a slight chill in her nerves with no sense of the warmth in the old man’s body. Another vision flashed through her mind, of the mist clearing to reveal the rotting corpses sharing the boat with her, Drix’s dead eyes staring straight ahead.

Just keep rowing, she thought.

With no sight and no sound, there was no way to know how close they were to the shore and only the vaguest sense that they were moving forward at all. At times the mist clung to her skin; it was more like thick cobweb than fog, and she could feel it tugging at her arms, trying to reach beneath her gloves and caress her skin. She clenched her teeth together and kept rowing, and the sensation passed.

It might have been hours. It might have been minutes. The hardest thing was holding on to hope. She told herself that every stroke was bringing her closer to shore, but she couldn’t really believe it. More and more, she found herself thinking that she’d never see the light again, that they’d never find their way out, that she’d be rowing until the oar rotted away and she was left alone to drift in the mist.

Was it beginning to fade? She could see Cadrel next to her, his silhouette becoming clearer with each moment. Or was it Cadrel? The shadow seemed too lean, a younger man, lacking Cadrel’s beard. Then he spoke.

“So you still don’t remember. You still think you’re Thorn.”

It took all of her will to hold to her oar, to continue rowing. She knew she was imagining it. But she remembered that voice and those words.

Drego Sarhain.

When she’d met him, he was serving as an agent of Thrane. In time, she’d discovered his true nature. He was a demon of deception, an ancient fiend engaged in a shadowy war she still knew nothing about. And in their last meeting, he’d claimed to know things about her she still didn’t want to believe.

“You’re Sarmondelaryx. The Angel of Flame. The Devourer of Souls. Condemned by the Conclave of Argonnessen, yet they need you, if the prophecy is to fall as they wish it. Embrace the dragon within you. Embrace her power. Let us be together and mock dragon and tiger alike.”

“No,” she whispered. She knew the voice was only in her imagination. But in the utter silence and gloom, it was easy to drift into the memory, to have something to hold on to. She remembered that gleam in Drego’s eyes as he looked at her.

“Every time you draw on her power, she grows stronger,” he whispered. “It’s only a matter of time.” She could see him, lying on the ground and looking up at her, her dagger against his throat.

And the boat ran aground. The jolt shook the vision from her mind, and she was back in the utter silence of the mists.

Setting down the oar, Thorn reached out, finding Drix and Cadrel. Fears lingered at the back of her mind as Drix’s hand closed around hers, but she pushed them away. The water was cold and silent, and a moment later, they were on dry land.

Drix took the lead, and Thorn let the rope play out to give him a little room. The ground shifted beneath her feet: sand. Once she had a hand free, she drew Steel.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” she said. “But I’m thinking Drix had the right idea.”

I can hear you perfectly, Steel said. The world around Thorn was silent, but his whisper was still clear in her head. Are you having difficulty?

“Thank Onatar for the smith that made you,” Thorn said. After the endless silence, the familiar voice was an anchor. “I can’t hear a damned thing.”

Fascinating. It must be some sort of mental effect-an illusion of sorts, affecting your ability to perceive your surroundings. Have you been experiencing other delusions?

“You might say that.” Although she couldn’t hear them, she felt twigs crack beneath her feet, and in her mind’s eye, they were bare ribs, bones picked clean and strewn across the beach. The stone she knocked out of her path felt like a skull. Flashes of sorrow and anger flowed through the back of her mind, and she wondered if that was what Drix meant by his emotional winds, if the feelings were literally moving across the landscape.

Perhaps you can’t see it, Steel said, but you are walking across a field of bones. I’m sure that’s not the best thing for your mental state.

While his voice was a comfort, Thorn found it hard to focus on it. Drix was just ahead of her, a shadow in the mists. And once again, that figure began to change. Thorn could see only the silhouette, but she remembered the woman from her dreams. Her own reflection, wrapped in red leather and silk.

“You’ve had your time, Nyrielle.” It was Thorn’s own voice, cold and cruel. “Now it’s my turn.”

For a moment the mists around her shifted. She could see the tunnels deep below Sharn, the chamber where she’d killed the Son of Khyber. She remembered that struggle in her mind as the spirit within her fought to get out…

Then she walked into Drix. He’d stopped moving, kneeling down as if to lace a boot. And still the voices whispered in the back of her mind. Was it truly him? Was he possessed? She couldn’t hear a thing, could barely see him, and she held out her hand just in time to keep Cadrel from walking into her. Yet there was no sign of tension in the shadow, no fear. And for a moment she saw the faintest pulse of light-the stone in his chest. Had he stumbled? She reached out to take his hand, to help him to his feet. He pressed something into her palm, a small disk of metal. She couldn’t see any details through the mist, but it was thicker and larger than a coin. He closed her fingers around it and disappeared into the fog, drawing out the rope again.

“Steel?” She touched the tip of the dagger to the disk, using her thumb to trace a cross on his hilt. It was a signal: threat analysis.

The mists themselves are charged with magical energy, he said. If the object you are holding has any mystical aura, it’s being hidden.

She closed her eyes. “Just keep talking, Steel,” she whispered. “Tell me what you see.”

And he did: a beach covered with bones, a long passage up the hill. Thorn could feel her enemies all around her. She could feel the shard embedded in her neck as it began to burn against her bone, hot and angry. She ignored it all, just concentrating on Steel’s voice, on the give and tug of the rope, and on the object in her hand. It was slightly warm, a faint echo of Drix’s touch. She could feel engraving on the surface, a hinge. A moment more and she found the latch, and the disk split open. It was a locket. Running her fingers along the edges, she imagined what might be inside. She knew her father had carried an image of her and Nandon into war, though he’d fallen far from the place she found herself. Was it a child? A lover? A parent? She thought of all of the people she wanted to remember, the people whose faces mattered to her, and between those thoughts and the calming voice of Steel, all the despair and the fear faded away.

Then she stepped out of the mists.

The return of her senses was staggering. In the mist every sense had been dulled, but outside she was flooded with sensation: the scuffing of her feet against the ground, the sound of a hinge squeaking as a door swung in the wind, Drix’s voice, the breeze against her skin, the smell of dirt and sweat and rotting wood. She closed her eyes and ground her teeth together, trying to drive it all away. Steel was whispering, Drix was talking, and it was all too much.

“Be quiet!” she roared. She took a deep breath and pushed it away, slowly drawing in each piece, one sensation at a time: Essyn Cadrel, stepping out of the mists behind her, the scent of damp soil, an utter lack of any animal sounds-no birdsong, no scurrying rodents-Drix just ahead of her, wood structures channeling the wind. They were in a town. The faint breeze blew, cool and carrying an all-too-familiar scent.

She opened her eyes and tightened her grip on the rope binding her to Drix and Cadrel. A quick slash with Steel severed the connection. “Both of you. Back. Hide in the mists if you have to.”

“I wouldn’t.” She’d heard that voice only once, but Thorn remembered it clearly. “My soldiers are already in there, waiting for you.”

Cazalan Dal stepped out from the shadows of a shattered building, into the light of a cold-fire streetlamp.

“Welcome to Seaside, my lady. I’m glad you could make it.”

The scar running down his face bent with his smile, and his dark sword took shape in his hand.