The Restless Shore

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

10 Mirtul, The Year of the Ageless One

(1479 DR)

Caidris, Akanul

Rain dripped into Ghaelya’s eyes as whistling wind cooled her skin to a color of watery seafoam. Thunder pounded in time to her bloody fists as she hammered the twitching body of Sefir. His pale skin was tough and rubbery, covered in a network of long arcing veins that pulsed weakly as she bruised her knuckles and took grim satisfaction in the monster’s gasping breaths. His roping tentacles, once so strong and constricting, wrapped feebly around her wrists and flopped against her legs as she knelt in the mud at his side.

“Where is she? What have you done to her?” she yelled fiercely, each question accompanied by another blow to his stomach or his bleeding face. The constant beat of her fury numbed her aching knuckles.

His only answer was a bubbling stream of bloody bile, a pink froth that squeezed through his fangs and ran down his cheeks. Life was yet within him, and she was determined to extract every moment of it from him.

Uthalion paced nervously nearby, his sword still drawn as his eyes darted in all directions, watching for something. Brindani had wandered some distance away, cleaning his sword and averting his gaze as Ghaelya violently interrogated the singer.

“Leave him,” Vaasurri said and laid a hand upon her shoulder. She roughly shrugged it away, not bothering to spare the killoren the withering stare that crossed her face as she landed another punch in Sefir’s gut.

“He’s as good as dead,” Uthalion shouted above the thunder. “And he isn’t alone! We need to-”

“No!” she shouted back. “He knows! He told me!”

“I’m not disputing that!” Uthalion replied, kneeling down and catching her fist in an iron grip. “But we need to leave this place! Now!”

She narrowed her blue-green stare and matched his stone gaze until he released her hand and stood with an exasperated sigh. He sheathed his sword and limped away, motioning for Vaasurri to join him as he turned to the southern road out of town. Gritting her teeth and rising to one knee, Ghaelya spared the singer one last glance and caught his wide pale eye staring back at her.

“Not dead yet … child,” Sefir rasped, the effort of speaking leaving him gasping for air and coughing. The others turned, alarmed as a weak hand clawed lightly at Ghaelya’s boot. “I was chosen … to bring you home … to Tohrepur.”

Ghaelya knelt again, suffering his touch if only to keep him speaking, to glean what she could from him before leaving him to die.

“What have you done to her?” she asked, forcing herself to remain calm and clear.

Sefir arched his head back, a scratchy sound like laughter escaping his tortured throat, a haunting noise that grated painfully in her ears.

“I do naught but that which my Lady bids,” he answered at length, pausing as a fit of choking coughs left him unable to speak for several breaths. “No one lays hand upon your sister. Only you may have … that glorious honor …”

“You said-” Ghaelya began angrily, then caught herself, clenching her fists. “You said she was in pain.”

Sefir’s twisted smile faded, his morbid mirth draining as he regarded her. His remaining pale orb turned in its scarred socket to look upon her with a solemn seriousness.

“Oh yes …” he replied, sighing and sounding as though he might weep in a sudden ecstasy. “Her pain shames all who gaze upon her … Her blessings outnumber even those of the Choir … as will yours … when you are delivered … upon her restless shore …”

Ghaelya’s breath came quickly as she stood. She could not tear her gaze from the dying thing before her or banish his words from her mind. Yet she wanted nothing more than to take back her question, to erase the sight of his twisted body from her mind so that she could still doubt her quiet fears.

“You failed,” she said simply. “And you will die here, a failure.”

Again came the wheezing, horrifying laugh as Sefir writhed in the mud, craning his head as though looking for someone.

“No child,” he said, a gurgling chuckle still in his throat. “I have delivered you … as sure as I die … our Lady’s will and song … shall walk at your side …”

She puzzled over his words and slowly backed away. The others stood by, listening to her strange conversation with furrowed, thoughtful expressions.

“Kill it,” Brindani said suddenly and turned away. Lightning ripped through the clouds, the rain growing heavier in a resounding peal of thunder as the half-elf wrapped his cloak tight and headed south.

Uthalion and Vaasurri waited a moment then turned away as well, leaving her to quietly contemplate the mutilated man’s mysterious claims. His broken body’s twitching movements slowed, and his jaw went slack, though a thin, raspy breath still rattled from between his rows of sharklike teeth. She left him, dying in the mud, and stared at the dark, sweet-scented blood on her sword as she followed the others out of Caidris.

Uthalion felt strange as they made their cautious way out of the abandoned town. His body felt light, his step too soft in the mud. His arms and legs were unprotected by chain mail or greaves; no shield hung upon his arm. The foul blood so real in his nightmares of the town did not mar his skin, did not grow sticky in between links of chain armor, or gum his eyes shut when he closed them for too long. The storm overhead bore dark shades of blue and gray, coloring everything in azure tones instead of the pall of unending black he had once fought within.

With each breath he realized he had not been dreaming, that this time Caidris had been real-and that horrors still haunted the places in his nightmares.

He could not release the tight grip on his sword, and stood ready to draw the blade at the slightest threat. He flinched as Vaasurri or Brindani splashed through a deepening puddle. His heart pounded as he searched the hollowed homes and shadowed stables they passed, knowing with a grim assuredness that they contained more than nesting birds and rats.

Nothing hurtled from the dark, baring needle teeth and twisted limbs, but he imagined them there all the same.

He searched obsessively for Khault, or rather the thing Khault had somehow become, but the old farmer was nowhere to be seen. Instinct kept Uthalion on guard, a paranoia that had served him well in years past. With Sefir fallen, Khault might come slithering back to finish the job. A shiver passed through him. Though both of them had been truly hideous, the mutilations of Sefir’s visage seemed almost trivial in comparison to those of the brave, kind farmer who had given strangers shelter and had sacrificed so much.

The shallow wounds in his leg burned with sweat and exertion, forcing him to measure his long stride. But the pain cleared his mind some and kept him focused on staying alive until Caidris was far at his back.

The last farm faded to a dim silhouette, and the rain lessened again, rumbling thunder growing softer as the storm traveled north. But Uthalion did not let go of his blade and continually scanned for threats in the tall grass. He paused occasionally, sensing something and holding out his hand to halt the others, lowering it only when he was reassured that danger, if there had been any at all, had passed. He caught a questioning, concerned look in Vaasurri’s eyes, but he ignored it, wordlessly gesturing instead to the path.

His jaw ached, and he unclenched his teeth, trying to calm his shattered nerves. He had the sense that the world would fall away at any moment, that the nightmare would end, and he would awaken in the Spur, back in the Grove, and Vaasurri would question him about the nightmare. He would jest, avoiding the subject, and try to forget the dream.

But he hadn’t slept in four days, and the silver ring had not left his finger.

“We need to stop,” Vaasurri said at his side, and Uthalion flinched at the break in the long awkward silence in which they marched. “We need to rest, and you are bleeding.”

“Shallow wounds,” he replied numbly. “There’s still some light, such as it is, and we shouldn’t waste it.”

He glanced at the others, searching for dissent. But Ghaelya and Brindani only trudged along, watching the faint outline of the overgrown path and little else. Quietly he cursed their inattentiveness, shaking his head and ignoring Vaasurri’s solemn stare.

“You’re not the only one who’s wounded,” Vaasurri pressed, an edge of anger and concern in his voice. “And not all of us can stay awake for tendays on end.”

“We’re not stopping,” Uthalion said a little louder. “Too far to go, not enough distance behind us.”

“Distance from Caidris you mean,” the killoren replied.

“Not now, Vaas. Let it go,” Uthalion grumbled. His eyes remained firmly on the southern horizon as if glued there, drawn like the needle of a compass. He found, after several tries, that he could not look away from it for long. He couldn’t hear the mysterious song, but its constant pull was unmistakable.

“Fine, keep your secrets,” Vaasurri said and turned off the path, gesturing for Brindani and Ghaelya to follow. “We are stopping. Should you happen to work things out and stop for a moment, perhaps we’ll catch up.”

Uthalion did stop and turned on the killoren angrily, his sword half drawn and a swift rebuke on his tongue, but he caught himself. He let the unspoken words go and sheathed his sword, staring at the leather bracers on his arms, the tired half-elf and the genasi. The storm was passing, and he was no longer the Captain he’d once been. These were not his soldiers.

Vaasurri led them to a growth of rock that curled from the ground like the tail of a burrowing dragon. Uthalion cooled his anger somewhat, though he could not quell the sense of eyes spying upon his back, of beasts crawling through the grass waiting for him to let down his guard. It felt as though they were everywhere, and naught could banish them save reaching Tohrepur and dealing with Khault.

The Choir had been to Airspur at least once, he thought and suppressed a shudder. Might they take my family next?

He shivered and made his slow way to the little camp, not sparing a glance for the killoren as he climbed the curl of rock, seeking higher ground from which to observe the surrounding area.

“I’ll take first watch,” he muttered.

From above he noticed the haunted look on Ghaelya’s face as she cleared an area to lie down, though Brindani, he noted, looked nothing less than a ghost. He pondered this briefly, then looked again to the south, slowly turning the silver ring upon his finger as the muted sun crawled to the western horizon.

Vaasurri sat quietly by the small fire, rubbing the chill from his arms and keeping a worried eye upon Uthalion until well after sunset. The human seemed as though he’d been hollowed out and filled with something else, bearing little resemblance to the man Vaasurri had known in the Spur. Though Uthalion did eventually tend to the wounds on his leg, it was the wounds of an older conflict that the killoren spied in the blank stare of his friend’s face, in the anxious paranoia that started at every sound.

Brindani appeared to have fared little better since leaving Caidris. He was pale and wrapping himself tightly in a wet cloak, trembling with something beyond just the cold. At first Vaasurri had suspected the silkroot, but he had witnessed the addictions of mortals in the Feywild-silkroot having been a popular method of easing the fears and inhibitions of those caught in the fey realms-and the half-elf suffered far differently than he recalled.

The encounter in Caidris had marked both the man and the half-elf in a way that Vaasurri could not fathom, though he suspected both had seen something in Sefir that had been wholly unnatural and yet familiar at the same time. In all his life, even in the fantastic beings of the Feywild, he had never seen anything like the mutilated singer. He had no word for such a thing as Sefir, though he had witnessed sorcerous infections-diseases that affected not only the flesh, but the will and spirit of the infected. Some had worked according to nefarious design; others, occasionally, had spread like wildfire, epidemics attributed to the Spellplague and beasts caught in the terrible blue waves of its chaos.

He shivered, considering their destination, the strange wolflike dreamers, and the thing called Sefir, only one representative of a group Ghaelya had called the Choir. Muttering a curse under his breath, he let the first glimmer of doubt cross his mind. Though he’d been well intentioned when he agreed to help, he doubted one city dweller’s ability to survive for so long, surrounded by such nightmares.

As the idea settled in, darkening his already somber mood, he looked to Uthalion and Brindani. Casually shielding his eyes, he glanced at Ghaelya, dreading what he knew he must attempt. He felt very much alone in that moment, but as the seemingly sole voice of surviving reason, he could not remain silent. Certain that only madness and death would greet them in the ruins of Torehpur, he said what none of them wanted to hear.

“We should turn back,” he said, forcing the words out and shattering the awkward quiet that enveloped them as surely as the darkness of the chill night air.

In truth, he spoke only to Ghaelya, his green eyes watching her reaction closely. She said nothing at first, her expression unreadable as he waited. But it was not her voice that first protested.

“No,” Brindani said, stirring lethargically beneath his cloak, his shadowed eyes reduced to two flickering glints of light in the campfire. “We will not turn back.”

Vaasurri ignored the half-elf, waiting only for Ghaelya to respond. It was her quest he had agreed to, and he would abandon it only by her word. She blinked and looked down, her hands balled into fists as a mix of emotions crossed her troubled features.

“We’ve come too far,” Uthalion said from above, glancing down only for a moment before returning his gaze to the south. “Best to just see it through now, stop these … things … If we’re able.”

Vaasurri glared at the human, wondering what mysterious force had Uthalion in its grip and fearing where it might lead them when all was said and done. He held his tongue for the moment and turned back to the genasi.

“Ghaelya?” he said, and she flinched as if startled from her thoughts. “You heard what Sefir said and saw what he was-or rather, what he had become. I hate to suggest the worst, but your sister-”

“I don’t know,” she said suddenly, fixing him with a hard stare that she quickly broke. She fidgeted with her sword as she prepared to clean the still bloodied blade. “I just … need to think. I need to rest.”

Vaasurri merely nodded, feeling ashamed for broaching the subject. But he knew he would have regretted turning away from what he felt what right, even if it was painful to hear. He sat back, troubled, but willing to wait for the morning light and Ghaelya’s decision. It was some time before he noticed the dark, withering stare of Brindani from across the low flames of the campfire, and he wondered if his suggestion of turning back had already come too late.

In the abandoned, overgrown streets of Caidris, distant lightning flickered in empty windows and flashed in stilled puddles. A soft breeze whispered through the grass and tall weeds, like secrets being shared among conspiratorial ghosts. Water dripped languidly from the rotted rooftops, splashing like soiled tears on the wet ground, as Khault slid sinuously between the empty homes and shops of his former friends and neighbors. With quiet, unnatural grace he approached the battered, broken body of Sefir, and he lifted one of the singer’s lifeless hands, caressing the pale flesh and sharp claws as if comforting an injured child.

“How they have savaged my dear friend,” he said, the sound of his voice pouring over the body in ripples, echoing and reporting Sefir’s injuries in greater detail as Khault blindly studied each cut and swollen limb. “Beaten. Impaled. They even stole your voice in the end, but it was always meant to be, I suppose.”

A thin, roping tentacle unfurled from beneath his voluminous, dirty white robes and lifted the serrated blade of his fallen brother from the mud. He turned it over curiously as other growths reached out, stroking and studying the weapon, even tasting the rust-marked steel.

“The warrior that presents the sword to his enemies must always find its twin presented back upon him. They could not have known your mercy, dear Sefir,” Khault intoned somberly as he stood back from the body. He cast the blade into the mud angrily, overcome with a primal urge that caused him to gnash his many rows of teeth. He calmed himself after a moment, a sliver of reason still strong in his mind. “But you have succeeded, though you sacrifice your flesh to do so. They shall come to us, ushered to Tohrepur by one of our blood as our dreams foretold. The Lady shall have her twins, and their song shall be carried far and wide, a glorious crusade of Voice and Prophet.”

With a wide, fang-filled smile of sharklike, uneven teeth beneath his scarred, eyeless visage, he turned to the south, imagining the simple mortals escorting the girl to her destiny. The idea of the brutish, blood-thirsty men gawping at her and protecting her as if she were as low as they, turned his stomach, and his smile faded to a jagged scowl.

“I should like to sacrifice them myself,” he growled, envisioning the deed and the ease with which he might steal their pitiful wills and wits, forcing them to slay one another for his Lady’s glory. “But I shall not disobey the Lady’s will.”

He stretched, his changed body writhing, defying the physical limits he had once known and filling with a power far beyond the farmer that had known Uthalion. Sensitive tentacles lashed the mud, cooling themselves and tasting the soil even as Khault shifted his weight forward, half walking, half slithering away from Sefir’s body.

“I must be swift and greet them upon our Lady’s shore,” he said, then added over his knotted shoulder, “I shall report your service and make your name well known to your … successor.”

With a swift, rolling gait he made his way through the shadows of Caidris, sparing little attention to once familiar places. He paused as he turned curiously to a small tree and the rounded stone placed by the trunk. A glimmer of memory flashed among his thoughts, as quick as the storm’s lightning and gone in a blink, bringing with it a strange sensation of sorrow. He hissed warily and pressed on to the outskirts of town, some part of him vaguely aware of the once oft-visited grave-that of his wife, a place where he’d spread the ashes of his two youngest sons.

Brindani had turned away from the fire and stared out across the highland in troubled wonder. The thick veil of night retreated, drifting away from him to reveal gently swaying grasses and insects taking wing. As he traced the wandering path of a large moth, he shuddered and closed his eyes. He rubbed them fiercely, afraid to open them again lest they show him even more of what should be hidden by the dark. Even with his eyes shut he could hear the moth, rapidly beating its wings, swooping closer, and fluttering over his left shoulder as it was drawn to the fire.

He imagined that if he’d needed to, he could have deftly plucked it from the air without looking. Gingerly he opened his eyes, stared at his hands, and wondered what would become of him-and what he was becoming.

The image of Sefir, writhing in the mud like a landed fish, gasping for air and gurgling as the wound in his lung denied him breath, was burned in Brindani’s mind. He recalled peculiar details the more he thought of it-the set of the singer’s jaw, the remaining pale eye and its dimmed blue iris, the smooth curve of an earlobe, and the tendons of Sefir’s throat, stretching taut above the hollow of a malformed collar bone. Despite the teeth and scars and squirming tentacles, Brindani could see the man within the beast.

A part of him wanted to dash out into the Akana, lose himself in the broken landscape, and just wither away, to find some end to the waking nightmare in which he found himself. It was the part of him that feared for the others more than he feared for himself, the nobler voice which he had always heard, but rarely acted upon.

The stronger part of him, however, kept him still, hugging his chest and clenching his cloak tight across his shoulders. Even as he clung to the hope that his addiction had led to delusion, that it lied to him, cajoled him into a fear that would lead him back to the silkroot, he knew the truth was nothing to do with a simple drug-his need had been surpassed by more dominant and mysterious desires.

He could feel a gentle tug on his spirit, pulling him south and poisoning his reason. It itched across his skin like ants, though he refused to scratch for fear it would grow worse. It pained him like an aching tooth, swelled beneath his flesh like a cancer, and promised to end his misery if only he would follow its sweet song. The unbidden want to keep going, to find Tohrepur at all costs, needled at his every thought and overrode his better instincts.

He glanced at Ghaelya and thought of warning her away, the words rushing to the tip of his tongue though his throat refused to give them voice. They fell apart, overtaken by a maddening, irrational panic.

Clasping his hands together, he laced his fingers over one another tightly, as if he could hold onto himself, keep his flesh from betraying him and melting away into something else. He might have prayed, but he had never given much thought to the gods-they’d never seemed to take any interest in him or his fortunes, unfortunate as they were. He considered his own sword and the release he might find upon its blade, but lacked the conviction and courage to take his own life.

Overcome by exhaustion, he leaned over and lay on his side. He hoped the morning light might spare him, awaken him to baseless fears and the long road ahead, nothing more. He closed his eyes, covered his ears against the thunderous crackling of the campfire, and quietly gasped as the whispering song came to him, keening softly as it slowly carried him to sleep.

He resisted for a moment, raising his suddenly heavy arm to grasp at a bending blade of grass as if it might anchor him, but the enchanting song was far stronger than his ability to defy its call.

It rolled through his body in ceaseless waves, soothing the itch upon his skin and the pulsing pressure in his muscles. He was drawn into a dark well of sweet oblivion, of haunting dreams where pain was a blessing and flesh was as malleable as clay, shaped to the will of an alien mind to which he was nothing more than a figment. Though he drowned in a thick blackness full of singing and shifting half-formed beasts, he breathed evenly and did not resist sinking further.

As he slept and gave himself over to the dreaming song, that nobler part of himself, a small and tinny echo in the endless black, wished that he would not wake up at all.