The Restless Shore

CHAPTER TWENTY

12 Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One

(1479 DR)

Ruins of Tohrepur, Akanul

Uthalion stood on the edge of the highland, the sun rising behind him as he stared thoughtfully to the glittering west. On that horizon stood a forest of crystalline spires, and in the shadow of that forest lay Tohrepur. A void had settled uncomfortably in his thoughts; the time between falling asleep and waking up was like an empty space, as if he’d been plucked from sunset and placed at the following sunrise with no regard for the normal course of time. He felt out of place, and as Ghaelya crested the edge of the hill, her eyes and boots fixed on the west, his place seemed taken away.

He was no longer a guide, though there was still work to do.

Brindani crawled into the highland grass as if he were a dead man crawling from his own grave. Indeed, he had begun to very much look the part. Though he appeared stronger and calmer after last night’s attack, he was too pale, almost bloodless as he shied away from the sun. He pulled his cloak tight and trudged along in Ghaelya’s wake. He said nothing, sparing Uthalion a slight glance from his over-large and heavy-lidded eyes that were nearly swallowed by blackness.

Uthalion had considered Chevat’s last words to him and wondered if the burden of such a mercy now rested on his blade. It was obvious that silkroot was the least of Brindani’s afflictions, and though it pained him to see the deterioration of the half-elf, the simple fact remained that Brindani could prove useful. They knew nothing of the Choir save that it seemed to be some kind of infection, likely sorcerous, and Brindani’s condition could provide them with answers. He felt ashamed, looking upon his old friend as mere fodder, but the shame of a meaningless death seemed a far worse fate.

Vaasurri stayed close behind the half-elf with a wary eye and a ready blade. Should the killoren sense any sudden change or betrayal, he would finish Brindani’s suffering quickly. Uthalion adjusted his sword belt, whispered a curse to any god that would allow such a killing to become necessary, and took up the rear.

The short journey was uneventful and eerily quiet, save for the distant rumbling of thunder across the Lash. No birds disturbed the sparse trees, and the wildflowers competed for the few pollinating insects that drifted near. It seemed as though nature held its breath as Uthalion passed, wondering if the returning human would somehow unleash another dark storm of chaos.

By midday the ruins came into view.

The silhouette of the city was long and sprawling, a collection of packed buildings, high walls, and narrow streets perched on the steep edge of the former shoreline. Its ancient seas, once teeming with fish and livelihood, were just a dry rocky slope. The swirling storms of the Lash rolled and crashed teasingly, like an ocean turned upside down, a tide across the sky.

A thick, deep green carpet of silky grass rippled around their boots like water, the tip of each blade disappearing in a tendril of smoky mist. Uthalion recalled a soup made from the grass, bowls of the stuff having been offered by the disconcertingly kind citizens of Tohrepur as he’d marched behind the banner of the Keepers of the Cerulean Sign. They’d made use of the people’s unusual hospitality, and within moments Uthalion had found himself standing guard outside a small shop. Inside, the Keepers had interrogated a young boy, painful and terrifying roars that should have come from a far more monstrous creature shaking the windows and walls as the suddenly quiet and blank-faced population dropped whatever they were doing to gather around the interlopers.

A sudden chill tore Uthalion from the memory, and he looked upon the ruins the city had become. Rusted gates of worked iron hung loose and tangled with vines that roped and snaked across every surface. Deep cracks marked the crumbling walls, filled with more of the encroaching green vines. The mist-grass lapped at the city walls, giving it the impression of an island trapped in an emerald sea. Multi-colored flashes of light glittered from the tall forest of spires that pressed down against the southern end of the ruins.

Ghaelya stood at the gates, fearlessly tugging at the protesting hinges. Uthalion and the others rushed to keep up with the genasi lest they lose her in the labyrinthine streets. The image of her fighting to get in struck him as horrific given that she had fought so hard to escape the grasp of those who might have brought her to the same gates. He had a sudden urge to pull her away and shake the mad gleam from her eyes, but knew the effort would be wasted-she might have cut him down just as quickly as anything else that stood in her way.

He let her slip through the gates without a word, his heart pounding in his chest as he stared into the familiar cobblestone streets beyond. As Brindani entered behind her, he laid a hand upon the gate. A thin web of nearly transparent skin stretched between the half-elf’s long fingers. Uthalion shared a horrified glance with Vaasurri and placed a hand on his sword as an ominous wind howled down the narrow avenue.

Cursing quietly and catching his breath, Uthalion pulled the rusted gate wider and entered the ruins.

Ghaelya stepped cautiously over vines and broken stones, turning as if she expected monsters to come pouring from every shadow and crevice. Though nothing appeared, she drew her sword anyway, descending down the empty lane of hollowed buildings, wide-eyed and tense with every careful step. Twisting vine-trees grew through cracks in the street, swaying hypnotically alongside the seaweedlike greenery that choked the walls and slowly squeezed them into dust. Old stone was weathered and discolored, and shafts of shimmering light played upon every surface and shone into every open doorway. Dragonflies hovered in flashing swarms of silver, darting one way, then the next, disappearing into windows curtained in green.

“Where are you?” she whispered angrily through clenched teeth. “I’m here!”

She fought the urge to cry out, to hear something besides the endless murmuring of the wind and the creaking of twisting vine-trees. Her footsteps echoed loudly, her breath seemed to rumble like thunder, and her heart raced in her chest like a charging army. She moved faster, nimbly prowling through the narrow streets and searching for any sign, any clue that might lead her to Tessaeril. Becoming frantic, she worked her way from building to building, peering into doorways and finding naught but vines and dragonflies.

She stumbled into an intersection, cursing and catching herself on her hands amid a braided web of vines. Halfway to standing she paused; a flash of red on the ground caught her eye. Parting the vines she saw a streak of crimson splattered across the stones accompanied by the shape of a red, long-fingered handprint. She looked up, studying the surrounding buildings for anything similar or any trail she could follow.

“Too red to be blood,” Uthalion said over her shoulder, and she nodded thoughtfully, though she glanced at Brindani who had leaned against a nearby wall, shivering in his cloak.

“It’s always blood,” she said quietly. She chose the steepest avenue out of the intersection, following the direction indicated by the handprint and trying to trust to her instincts as she called over her shoulder, “We should go south.”

“You know this?” Vaasurri asked.

“Would the direction matter if I didn’t know?” she said.

She didn’t stop for an answer, driven to accept even the slightest clue. She was tired of wandering aimlessly. With a direction, even if it were arbitrary, she felt somewhat in control, though briefly she shamefully wondered where she would find her sister’s body. The sudden idea spawned a hundred others, a myriad of possibilities assaulting her as she pressed on, unable to stop the course of her thoughts.

Overgrown buildings fell into a darker shade near the center of the city. Leaning dwellings, held up only by the wild nature that had broken them in the first place, leered at her like the empty skulls of fallen giants, titans that had laid down to rest and had never woken up. Yawning doorways moaned as the breeze picked up, funnelling like a cold river through the tight streets.

Despite the wind, an ominous silence seemed to vibrate in every part of the city, resting it on an edge between peaceful sleep and all-consuming nightmare. The vines grew thicker, bridging between the buildings and creating a thick canopy pierced by tiny shafts of orange light. The glow played along her arms and shoulders, a harbinger of a sunset that grew closer and closer. Dried vegetation and loose rocks crunched under her boots as she raised her sword, and the shadows squirmed with a hundred different shapes as her eyes tried to adjust.

Uthalion crept closer, his sword drawn as the narrow street opened into a circular intersection of old shops and shattered architecture. The air grew warmer and humid, clinging thickly to Ghaelya’s skin as a heavy scent wafted through the intersection. It smelled of unwashed bodies, death, and other things she did not want to contemplate. Her stomach turned, and bile burned in the back of her throat as she struggled to keep her composure.

At the center of the intersection they stopped, the sudden silence of their footsteps lasting only briefly as Ghaelya heard something else filling the spaces between one heartbeat and the next. A swift and rhythmic huffing sound like a thousand miniature forge bellows emanated from every shadowed doorway, every darkened window. Once heard, Ghaelya swore she could feel it, blowing hot on her cheek like the wind at a summer funeral.

“What is it?” Uthalion whispered. “Just wind through the leaves?”

“Not just leaves,” Vaasurri answered from Ghaelya’s right. The killoren was kneeling, inspecting something on the ground, turning a small object over in the palm of his hand. He held it up in a shaft of red-orange light. “Teeth.”

The shadows deepened, and the huffing grew louder, little breaths in unison all around them. Ghaelya blinked in the the dim light, squinting at what appeared to be pale fingers clasped over windowsills and feet lying close to open doors. They were just far enough away from the entrances to make her doubt her own eyes. As she stepped closer to the other end of the intersection, dreading the reddened light beyond the canopy of vines, she winced at the crunching sound beneath her boot.

Shadows moved along the tops of the buildings, blocking the shafts of light and prowling just out of sight. Occasionally a soft, raspy whimper would echo through an open window, sending chills down her spine.

“I hear it,” Brindani whispered, the words carrying loudly in the enclosed space. The half-elf grew more animated, dropping the edges of his cloak and walking toward the southern edge of the intersection. Silhouetted in red light, he placed his hands on his head as if in pain. “Can you hear it?” he asked in a strained voice.

He stood still a moment before following the street with an easy stride, shielding his eyes when a shaft of light fell on him from an empty alley. Ghaelya watched him go, hesitating for half a breath as the occasional whimpers increased and the ghostly breathing intensified, becoming faster and faster.

“Let’s go,” Uthalion said, his voice breaking through the fear that threatened to leave her frozen in place. Despite the cacophony of crushed teeth and leaves that seemed to thunder beneath them, Ghaelya made out the muffled sound of heavy forms thudding against old wood, of fingernails scratching at stone, and tortured throats groaning as some unseen host was awoken by the dying light of day.

Her step quickened as they climbed higher into the city, keeping Brindani one block ahead. He led them inexorably closer to the glittering forest of crystal spires. Faintly, as the shadows lengthened and the eastern sky turned a bright shade of purple, she could hear the slightest whisper of a distant singing.

For the last block, deep in the thick shadows of the dark, crystal spires, she ran as fast as she could. Tessaeril was calling for her.

Uthalion followed as quickly as he could, though the half-healed wounds on his leg had begun to ache with the steady climb of the street. He’d been relieved at first when Ghaelya chose to move south-the lair the Keepers had sought six years ago had been hidden beneath the northern edge of the city. But as they drew closer to the spires, and he heard the first murmuring strains of beguiling song, his relief quickly faded.

At the end of the street he stopped short behind Ghaelya. They stood in a large clearing between several buildings. It might have once been an open air marketplace, or perhaps a stable, but it seemed a gateway only to the encroaching bulk of the spire forest. The towering spears of rock and crystal had crumbled the city’s southern wall and pushed forward mounds of dirt and weeds. A passage sloped into the darkness between the spires.

Brindani sat at the center of the clearing, on his knees amid the vines and clutching the sides of his head tightly. He trembled violently, locked in a struggle that Uthalion could not imagine. Ghaelya stepped toward the half-elf, and Uthalion stopped her, shaking his head and placing a finger to his lips. He raised his sword, uncertain if Brindani could fight the song or the infectious influence it had over him, and ready to cut down his old friend if necessary.

Bathed in the crimson light of the dying day, the clearing seemed stained in blood beneath the jagged spires. Veins of onyx ran through the massive crystals, reflecting a thousand setting suns at once like a bizarre timepiece winding down. As the city grew darker, it grew more and more alive with the distant and unnerving huffing, like a thousand breaths merged as one beast, awakening in the dark of a thousand different windows and doors.

The wind picked up as the breaths increased. It whistled through the spires then changed into a whispering melody that rushed through the city streets like an army of keening ghosts. The thousand mirrored suns were halved by the dark silhouettes of their horizons, and Uthalion found himself breathing as hard and as fast as the unseen host in the city below.

“What in all the hells?” he whispered, slowing his breathing, though unable to calm the pounding of his heart. The song slid around him like an old friend, blowing softly in his ear as if it greeted him alone. Bits and pieces of the melody took on the form of the old wedding song it had sung to him in the Spur and in his dreams at the old farmhouse on the edge of the Wash. Alarmed, he looked to Ghaelya and cursed himself, recalling the song’s last words.

Bring her to me.

Bring her to me.

Brindani cried out suddenly, pounding his fists into the ground and inhaling sharply. Control of his faculties seemed to return as he sat still. As he stood, his trembling muscles slowed and his bloody knuckles dripped thick crimson on the dirt and vines. His tortured features calmed, though he stood against the shining columns as if he challenged them, drawing his sword and stretching his neck. He looked sidelong at Uthalion, his eyes reddened and ringed with dark circles.

“It’s coming,” he said. The words chilled Uthalion to the bone.

The reflections of the thousand suns were mere slivers now, thinly sliced by their horizons and broken in places by the city’s mirrored skyline. The haunting song grew stronger, flowing around Uthalion and then wailing past him into the city’s depths. Yet despite the eeriness of the singing, he mourned losing its attention, if only for the moment.

Low growls echoed from among the spires, and Uthalion turned, his sword leveled, as wolflike forms prowled through the crystals, their glassy eyes gleaming red and purple. The muscular dreamers appeared, pawing at the dirt threateningly and baring their tusklike fangs. They formed a wall of pale fur and flexing claws at the edge of the forest. Several snapped at the air, gnashing their teeth menacingly, but beyond their threatening postures, Uthalion could see several staring at him almost curiously. They crowded and nosed through the snarling pack, never leaving the edge of the stone forest, but trying to get a look at the newcomers. Those beasts sprawled on the ground, holding their noses low as they sniffed the air and regarded him with quizzical expressions.

He and Ghaelya backed away, forming a semicircle with Vaasurri. Brindani never moved, staring down the growling beasts from only a few strides away.

“What’s he doing?” Ghaelya asked quietly. Uthalion could only shake his head. He felt confused, as though he were caught up in someone else’s nightmare, a dream he might only escape by waking an unknown dreamer.

He flinched as the ground shifted and buckled, adjusting his footing as the network of vines writhed between his legs. They tightened like deep green muscles, and the broken wall at the clearing’s edge cracked a little more, spilling dirt onto the cobblestones. The tremors spread through the ruins, the stone splitting and crumbling as the vines pulled and twisted like a single living thing. An ear-splitting rumble shook the ground as some distant building gave way, crashing into the streets and sending clouds of rolling dust through the long avenues in waves of choking debris.

Amid the destruction Uthalion could make out tiny screams and wailing cries. But they were cut off swiftly, dying away as the dust settled and the vines relaxed. A hush fell over the city like a held breath, and Uthalion tensed. The dreamers had ceased their posturing and sat stoically at the spires’ edge as the last thin measure of sunlight dipped below the horizon.

“There,” Vaasurri whispered and pointed with his sword. “A path between the spires.”

Uthalion squinted in the deepening shadows, just able to make out, between the lithe bodies of the dreamers, a rough-stoned walkway through the crystals. Ghaelya started forward anxiously, and Uthalion grabbed her shoulder.

“Are you mad?” he asked as she wrenched away from him. “There’s too many of them!”

“Tess,” she whispered, fixing him with a determined gaze. “I can hear her.”

As if in answer to her, the tall crystals shook, hairline cracks forming in a few as the ghostly song thundered through the forest again. Wordless and haunting, it sang all around him, unleashed in a flood of tumultuous, screaming melody. At the core of the song was an unmistakable femininity that rippled with unseen fingertips over Uthalion’s skin, pushing and pulling him as he fought to remain standing. With soft, resounding whispers it clawed a deep pit in his mind, like a watery grave that promised peace if he would only lie down and submit.

He cried out and fell to one knee, swearing loudly, his voice swallowed in the maddening torrent of song. Vaasurri and Ghaelya remained standing, covering their ears as best they could and turning away from the crystals as the roaring melody shook the city anew. Brindani weathered the song, seemingly unmoved. His black hair was blown in a powerful breeze as he turned; his eyes as dark as a cold forge.

“Can you hear it?” he asked casually.

Vines writhed and twisted around them, erupting small nodules that grew and burst with flashes of crimson. The buds cracked open at their centers like sickly flowers, and the fleshy, red petals they bloomed throbbed and puckered like living tissue. They pulsed rhythmically like little heartbeats, tiny veins pushing to the petals’ surface as sweet scents filled the air. The flowers spread throughout the city, almost glowing in the deep twilight. As the blooms appeared, the dreamers growled and whimpered, their long mournful whines blending seamlessly with the song’s tempest.

Uthalion fell backward, catching himself with his free hand. He cursed as he looked across the nightmarish ruins, at the shadows of Tohrepur erupting with renewed life. The dark gaping maws of windows discharged sluggish, pale bodies that flopped into the night air. Doorways were crowded with white, slack-jawed faces that peered out into the bruised light of the day’s end. Twisted and hairless figures crawled languidly from their hiding places, huffing loudly as they awoke from strange slumbers to gather in the streets. They bared needlelike teeth and dark eyes to the sky, crawling over one another in a sickly mass.

Uthalion picked out several races among the throng, noting the bloated abdomens of large white spiders amid the groaning crowds.

“The Flock,” he muttered, horrified as they knelt and tore at the crimson blossoms. Red juices ran through their fingers as they stuffed the petals into their mouths and fed hungrily, the sticky red nectar dribbling down their chins and staining their thin lips.

“The Choir brings us,” Brindani said, a bizarre quality in his voice buzzing through Uthalion’s skull. “The Song calls us … The Lady dreams us … And her blood feeds us.”

“Blood,” Uthalion whispered, staring at the enthralled Flock. The bodies grew slick with bloody nectar, blending together as they slid and pulled themselves deeper into the restless press, the streets disappearing beneath them. Long fingernails caked with dark pulp scratched at the sky, as the bodies swayed with the terrible song.

Reluctantly, Uthalion studied those he could see clearly, moving from one to the next. He dreaded the sight of a bared breast or a curving, feminine hip, afraid of finding Maryna. But he did not see her-did not want to see her-and slowly convinced himself, for the sake of his own sanity, that she was not among the Flock. She couldn’t be.

He turned away, unable to look at the pitiful faces or contemplate such a horrid existence. The song had lessened somewhat, and he stood on shaky legs, his sword in a grip so tight he feared his fingers might break.

“Not here,” he whispered under his breath, willing the words to be true. “She’s not here.”

Vaasurri stood close by, his eyes darting between the wailing Flock and the strangely quiet dreamers. The beasts had lowered their heads, sorrowful expressions on their faces as they pawed at the dirt and paced back and forth at the clearing’s edge. Ghaelya edged closer to the crystal forest cautiously, earning threatening growls and toothy snarls from the dreamers, though they did not leave the glittering perimeter of the spires.

Brindani had lowered his sword. His dark eyes still gleamed with some alien presence, a gaze that seemed to switch continuously between the half-elf Uthalion knew and something else that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

“Uthalion,” Brindani said, his voice wavering discordantly with strains of the beguiling song as he looked out across the ruins and the reveling Flock. A flash of fear crossed the half-elf’s features, and behind him the dreamers flinched, whining low in their thick throats. “The Choir is coming.”

A distant, monstrous roar echoed through the streets, answered by others from different parts of the city as Uthalion turned, glaring and searching for the monsters amid the bloody, wailing figures-searching for Khault.