The Restless Shore

CHAPTER SEVEN

8 Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One

(1479 DR)

The Akana, North of the Wash, Akanul

Something fell to the ground, but Uthalion did not hear it, nor did he care to glance. The woman’s voice, soft and warm, like the glow of a star and sounding just as distant, trapped him in its ethereal notes of whistling wind and deep, echoing tides. The voice seemed to hang in the air like the pitch that followed the ringing of a bell, humming in each long breath he took, buzzing in his ears. It reminded him of home, of the smell of rose petals scattered on a new bed, of a wedding night so long ago it pained him to think about it.

As the song faded, he gasped, feeling a moment of sudden panic. His hands clenched into fists, as though he could grasp the fragile tune, keep it and hold it to his chest. But it left him alone in the silence of the Akana. The lack was painful and he blinked several times, realizing where he was in alarm.

Dawn had not yet blemished the eastern sky. The soft, steady breathing of Ghaelya and Brindani soothed him. Sleep not being an issue for him, he’d been on watch when the song came and stole his senses. Faintly he could hear the distant howls of the dreamers, still searching, still hunting, and still far enough away that morning would arrive before they did. He sighed and swore under his breath, turning to prepare his pack when a patch of darkness shifted and caught his eye.

Vaasurri crouched nearby, staring at him through eyes as black as the night sky. The killoren’s cloak was pulled tight over his shoulders; his once-brown hair, now dark as coal, fluttered in the predawn air. His hands rested on the drawn bone-sword as he tilted his head suspiciously.

“What were you thinking about?” the fey asked, a note of accusation in his voice.

“Nothing,” Uthalion answered, the lie coming quickly to his lips.

He was accustomed to the killoren’s shifts in mood, and the corresponding shift in his features. Vaasurri’s appearance reflected different aspects of nature like a mirror and responded to his preternatural instincts. Uthalion had seen many faces of his old friend, but the one that greeted the dawn with black eyes, like nature’s wrath, caused his soul to shudder-the fey sensed great danger in the day to come.

The dark gaze looked over the sleeping forms of Brindani and Ghaelya, narrowing slightly before returning to the human. Uthalion defied the look, possessive of the secret song, while at the same time frightened by his need to keep it hidden, lest someone try to wrench it away from him. Guilt wrenched at his insides as Vaasurri nodded and prowled away into the night, likely to scout out the southwest trails to the Wash.

At his feet Uthalion found his old notebook, the pages splayed open where he had dropped the journal, a thin stick of charcoal lying beside it. He collected these in a daze, the powerful urge to flee coming over him suddenly, casting his thoughts to safer, quieter places. No power had ever haunted him as this song did, not even the sorcerous voices of the aboleth at Tohrepur or the thundering rage of the krakens swimming through the storm clouds over Caidris.

His stare fell upon the sleeping form of Ghaelya, the genasi stirring in her sleep.

Is it her? he thought. Did she bring this?

He pondered the idea for long moments, considering the possibility and what he might do if it somehow proved true. Brindani had been acting strangely as well, and had accompanied the genasi far longer than Uthalion and Vaasurri. He wondered what effects the song might have upon him, given enough time-but his thoughts soon turned to envy, coveting the song’s beauty for himself …

“No,” he whispered, taking hold of his emotions and shaking his head, fighting against the confusion of thoughts at war with one another.

Breathing deeply, he resolved to keep a cautious account of himself and a careful eye on the genasi and the half-elf. He made his pack ready for travel and waited patiently for the return of Vaasurri. It was a long time before he realized he hadn’t yet honestly thought about turning back to the Spur. Though the late evening breeze was not overly cool, he shivered anyway.

Ghaelya had lain down, staring up at the stars, dreading sleep and the dream almost as much she looked forward to it. Her eyes had grown heavy several times, but to no effect. The stars still remained before her, wheeling slowly in their endless circles.

Uthalion stood watch nearby, his blank eyes turning slowly from north to south in the moonlight. Turning over, she stared into the tall grass on her right, a newly made campfire warming her back. She wondered for a moment why Uthalion had changed his mind about keeping a cold camp. But the fire’s warmth soothed her aching muscles and made the thought of eventual slumber a bit more attainable.

The grass swayed in the evening breeze, disturbing tiny beetles that had gathered upon it. They crawled and massed together in frenzied clumps, the imperative of spring summoning them one to another. The buzz of floundering wings filled her ears, seeping in and gathering behind her tired eyes. Scrambling on the ground, some of the insects rolled onto their backs, frantic struggles weakening as the singular missions of their brief lives were performed. Competition expended the last of what energy reserves they had, and they slowly died, small and unnoticed in the deep grass until morning brought birds to find them and carry them home.

Looking past the beetles, deeper in the fire-born shadows of the grass, Ghaelya watched a glimmer appear and grow closer. Two pinpoints of dancing flame spied upon her from their hiding place as the familiar whisper of a song began to form in the buzz of dying beetles. Alarmed, she tried to sit up, but found herself paralyzed, rooted to the ground. She tried to speak, but her voice was nothing but a dry hiss as the grass shifted and parted for the hidden watcher.

Long slender fingers pushed gently past the beetles, and they scurried away from the contact, climbing higher or flying away to settle elsewhere. The hands were pale and well formed. They parted the grass as the flickering pinpoints neared, half revealing a face in the firelight. The scent of her sister-always a soft fragrance of lavender-found her, and she tried to cry out, to reach for Tessaeril. But she could only watch.

The flames in Tessaeril’s eyes grew, consuming the familiar, crimson-tinted hazel that had differentiated her from her twin. The fire reflected in those eyes looked upon Ghaelya as well, a burning guilt from which she could not escape.

The pale hands pushed more grass and beetles aside, revealing the image of a small farmhouse, an illusion formed of twigs and dead grass, dirt and errant bugs. She could see inside the tiny windows, past the outstretched wing of a dying beetle, and saw movement, shadows on the walls in tiny candlelight. A half-ruined windmill stood nearby, torn fabric glistening as a patchwork of beetle wings stretched on sharp little legs.

The hands swiftly withdrew, and the farmhouse fell apart, dissolving back into the components that had constructed it. The whisper of the song faded, but the face of her sister pushed forward. The burning eyes turned a deep, velvety red. Little petals pushed from between the lids, slowly at first, but then bloomed from her sockets into blood red flowers. They opened wide as if to embrace the night sky, their petals pulsing like muscle tissue. Ghaelya stared into their depths, horror drawing her in to the squirming centers where miniature figures writhed in thick red nectar-a bloom and its blood.

Tessaeril’s mouth opened, and the song came screaming forth. The wind of it blew across Ghaelya’s face, and the sound of it sent shockwaves through her body. A beautiful terror sank in her heart, sublime and enveloping, warming her soul in the wailing terror of her sister’s dreaming song. As tears sprang to her eyes and Tessaeril’s bloomed yet more of the flowers on long roping vines, she felt the ground give way beneath her and heard her own scream as it swallowed her.

Ghaelya awoke, slapping her hands on the ground and digging her fingers in the dirt for purchase.

The song was gone. The stars still turned overhead, and the grass showed no sign of being disturbed, though she could still smell the lavender scent of her sister. The campfire of the dream was gone, and she shivered as the sensation of the false warmth faded from her back. Sitting up and rubbing the smooth skin of her scalp, she fought to contain all that she’d seen, memorizing it before it could escape.

Quickly, she looked to Uthalion, who watched her in the moonlight, his eyes unreadable in the dark.

“Did you hear it?” she asked, finding her voice.

He stared at her for what seemed an eternity, as if he held an answer she was afraid to hear or one that perhaps he was afraid to say out loud for fear of believing it himself. But at length he blinked and turned back to his watch before answering.

“No. Haven’t heard a thing,” he said, then shouldered his pack. “Wake Brindani as well. We’ll be on the move again soon.”

Lowering her head into her hands, she sighed in frustration and relief. Though she hoped for validation of what she feared was some kind of madness, she was somehow happy that the truth of it was still her own, a secret thing that she didn’t yet have to share with anyone. She turned to Brindani and found a lazy spring-beetle crawling across his leg, its little wings fluttering as it attempted to fly, as though it no longer had the strength.

Picking it up, she cradled it in her hand, committing more of the dream to memory before releasing the insect in the grass. Far away howls interrupted her thoughts, and she shook Brindani, rousing him from sleep before readying herself for the day to come. The image of an old farmhouse was foremost in her mind.

Dawn did little to banish Ghaelya’s sense that she was still asleep, lying on the ground, dreaming of Tessaeril. Behind every white cloud and patch of blue sky, she imagined a night full of stars, still wheeling toward sunrise as her sister sang to her from the tall grass.

By mid morning they had reached the steep edge of the Wash, and by noon the broken lowland was all she could see to the south, a stilled ocean of ridges and valleys. Where water had once flowed across the Mere-That-Was, now the waves were stone and rock, a tide of browns and greens moving so slowly that only mountains might still see them crash upon a shore. Bright flowers topped the frozen waves in light blues and whites, their scent heavy on the wind.

The land was cracked and shattered into a labyrinth of forested valleys and towering spires. Its only water fell from large forest-motes. The forked streams gathered into rivers, flowing west into the Lesser Mere-all that remained of the vast inland sea.

Spiked formations of stone stood like mockeries of the towns and villages that had once dotted the shores of the mere. Ghaelya’s gaze sought the heart of every shadow among the valleys and the high grasslands between, and she listened for the call of birds, but found none. The silence of such a vibrant place was deafening and unreal, further keeping her mind in the state of dreaming wakefulness which kept her stride slow and uneven.

She fell back from the others though they didn’t seem to notice or care, still forging the path onward to the southwest. Uthalion kept the lead with the much-changed Vaasurri at his side. There was a predatory look in his deep black eyes where once she had seen curiosity and understanding, but at least he was on their side. The human remained a mystery to her, personable one moment and cold the next, though it seemed he was getting colder as time passed.

Brindani, once constantly at her side, had grown distant since Uthalion had joined them, spending more time alone, lost in his own inscrutable thoughts. Ghaelya was curious about what had passed between him and the human and the secret they shared about Tohrepur, but she had not broached the subject with either of them just yet. She had hoped once they were closer to the place, one or the other might speak up, unburden himself of their past together. But the more she observed their silence, the more she suspected their secret would be tightly kept.

Her steps slowed as a deep droning buzz echoed through the shadowed valleys on her right. When the sound came again, starting and stopping quickly, a chill ran down her spine, bringing to mind the spring-beetles from her dream. She imagined them swarming over the rocks, building little houses with the empty shells of their dead among long ropes of pulsing red flowers.

When she finally caught up to the others it seemed the day had passed her by in a blur lengthening shadows and half-heard, furtive noises, leaving her to find yet another evening encroaching on the precious light. The winding path of the cliffs lay at her back and before her descended a long slope that led into what Uthalion called the wash. The sky was darkening, fading from red to purple in the west and casting the ravine below into rusty shadow. In the east, a second sunset seemed to mirror the true one, flashing red and splitting the sky into two identical halves.

“Long twilight,” Vaasurri muttered, turning his dark gaze east and west. “The Glass Mesa in the east reflecting day’s end. A bad omen.”

Ghaelya had heard tales of the Mesa, a massive plateau of translucent quartz left over from the days of Blue Fire. Though no one knew from where or why it had appeared on the Akana, it was a forbidden place, and those who dared approach it faced execution in Airspur.

“I don’t think signs or omens are needed to doom this little journey,” Uthalion replied and gestured to the end of the slope. “We can use the extra light though, make some headway across the Wash before-”

“We should cross at dawn,” Vaasurri interrupted, his black eyes flashing in the twin sunsets with little red flames that sparked Ghaelya’s memory-so much like the fire in Tessaeril’s eyes.

“There’s no need,” Uthalion replied. “The Wash isn’t very wide at this point, we just-”

“Listen to me, Uthalion,” Vaasurri said, his voice deeper, insistent, and soon drowned out by a thunderous wave of buzzing from the south that silenced all argument. Ghaelya wandered closer to the slope’s edge and stared into the shadows at the edge of the ravine below with ominous realization. The buzzing faded, and Vaasurri continued, “We should-”

“Cross at dawn. Fine,” Uthalion said quickly, though an edge of anger had crept into his voice. “But we’ll need shelter. The dreamers will catch up, likely find us out in the open this time, even if we set a fool’s fire.”

“It’s settled then,” Ghaelya said, surprising them both. She strode past them down the slope, the seemingly shapeless shadow at the edge of the ravine coming into focus as she neared. Each step felt like a forced march as the shape of a dilapidated old farmhouse came into view, a hollowed out and overgrown windmill, almost reclaimed by the tenacious grassland, standing at its side. She tried to hide her shaking hands as she stared down the dark, eyelike windows of the upper floor and spoke over her shoulder, “We’ll rest here.”

“Careful,” Uthalion said and drew his sword. “We don’t know what might be holed up in there.”

Vaasurri prowled closer, sniffing the air and crouching in the grass, his bone-sword half drawn from its sheath. Brindani simply stared, his dark-ringed eyes blearily taking in the house and mill as Ghaelya tentatively took the first step on the creaking porch.

“Nobody’s home,” she said, not quite knowing how she knew, but trusting to the dream to prove her right. A single spring-beetle beat its wings mercilessly on the front windowsill, righting itself and rolling on its back over and over again as she turned to Uthalion. “Not yet,” she added.

She climbed the stairs to the porch and looked into the deep shadows of the house. The front door had been torn from its hinges long ago. Motes of dust swirled in the crimson rays of sunset that illuminated the jagged edges of broken furniture and patches of dirty walls. She set her jaw and lifted her chin almost challengingly, daring the madness of the dream to be real, until a faint scent of wildflowers drew her gaze to a split floorboard, where tall spiky blooms of lavender had broken through.

She crossed the porch with a whispered curse and entered the farmhouse, letting shadows and beetles and sweet lavender take her into the unfolding vision of her dream.

Brindani let night fall upon him like a thin shroud, dark and cold. Only then could he hide the trembling anxiety that crawled beneath his skin. He sat on the floor of the farmhouse’s common room and waited for a quiet moment alone, staring out the window as the green grasses dulled to rusty reds and deep purples. Shiny brown beetles crawled over the walls and buzzed through the open door, bouncing in lazy arcs against the ceiling, looking for a way out.

Uthalion had paced the house up and down cautiously, searching for any sign of habitation, but found nothing save insects and the occasional spider. Ghaelya had walked the house as well, but more slowly, her long footsteps measuring the creaking floorboards as though she were touring a gallery of fine art and not the crumbling remains of someone’s home. Neither of them had paid much attention to the half-elf, leaving him to sit and stare in silence. But the other one, the fey, had kept close watch upon him since sundown.

The killoren was barely more than a crouched lump, wrapped in his cloak outside the house, refusing to come inside. But the black eyes, ever watchful, never strayed far from the window where the half-elf sat. Brindani avoided the ebony eyes and the humorless, tigerlike grin of Vaasurri, fearing that the fey hunter might somehow prowl into his mind and track down the secrets hidden in that dark, cloudy realm. Brindani scratched his arms absently, comforted by the sensation of flesh growing numb as his stomach slowly tightened into a tight knot of needling pain.

“Can’t sleep?” Uthalion said as he strode into the room. His heavy footsteps on the old wood startled the half-elf. “You should get some rest while you can. You’re not looking as well as you did last night.”

The human spoke casually enough, but Brindani detected the barest edge of accusation in Uthalion’s voice, and felt the passive air of suspicion that surrounded his old friend leaning close to the open door. Brindani cursed quietly, feeling two sets of eyes upon him, and thought frantically as to how he could escape their scrutiny. Laying his head back against the wall, he managed a brief grin, and made himself appear as comfortably casual as possible. The pins of pain in his stomach complained as his back straightened, but the ache subsided when he was still again.

“I’m usually not an easy sleeper,” he said at length, sighing. “And out here …”

Uthalion nodded as if in agreement, but his stare was out the window and lost somewhere else far beyond the Akana. Brindani pulled his pack close and raised his right knee nonchalantly, prepared to make good his escape to a more secluded spot when the time was right. The human seemed not to notice the motion at all.

“It’s like she knew this house was here, just waiting for us,” Uthalion mused, his eyes narrowing as he turned to the farmhouse’s interior. He watched the ceiling and the walls as though they might come to life.

“Maybe she did know,” Brindani replied. “But, at this point, does that really matter?”

“Actually, I think it matters more now, the further we get into this,” Uthalion said, returning his endless stare to the empty view out the window. “The further it pulls us in …” he added in a hushed tone.

Us? Brindani thought, a flash of covetous rage briefly tightening his hands into fists, but he let it go as quickly as it had come. He’d not heard the song the last two nights, not since Uthalion had decided to guide them across the Akana. Though he feared the missing song had been his own fault, Uthalion’s words left him wondering.

“She’s dead, I imagine … Ghaelya’s sister,” Uthalion continued, his stone cold face split by moonlight and shadow.

“I don’t recall you having the best imagination,” Brindani replied, easing himself up into a standing position against the wall, still measuring his actions carefully and attempting to seem casual. “But I do remember you as being more of an optimist.”

“Well, live and learn,” Uthalion shrugged, grinning slightly. “The more you hope, the harder the fall. Better to just keep expectations low.”

“You don’t think we’ll find Tessaeril,” Brindani said, more to himself than Uthalion. He was unsure of how the idea sat with him after so many nights traveling with Ghaelya, with little to go on but her mysterious dreams.

“On the contrary, I’m certain we will find her,” the human replied. “And I’m sure we’ll do our best to deal with her remains respectfully, and then we’ll … be on our way.”

Uthalion’s pause caught Brindani’s attention. He sounded unsure, as if the human hadn’t yet thought of much beyond finding Tohrepur. The half-elf edged closer to the door, his breath coming quick as he ignored the growing pain in his abdomen. Pale moonlight lit the cracked boards beneath his boots as he tasted the night air and let it cool the fine beads of sweat on his brow.

“It’s a long way to walk just for a funeral isn’t it?”

Ghaelya’s voice startled them both, but Uthalion did not turn to look at the genasi standing in the hallway. The energy lines of her skin flared in the dim light, and her arms were crossed. Brindani had known her long enough to judge the slow boil of anger that steamed in her blue-green eyes. Uthalion merely heaved a deep breath and grinned a bitter smile as Brindani quietly excused himself and stepped outside.

His darting eyes could not find the stealthy Vaasurri, and he breathed a sigh of relief, swiftly hopping down off the edge of the porch. Waist-high grass and weeds surrounded him as he studied the weathered and overgrown exterior of the old stone windmill. Despite his pain, he crossed the distance to the darkened mill as silent as a ghost, leaning on the stone and listening for any sign of life within. At the sound of raised voices from inside the farmhouse he ducked inside the narrow tower, pushing through cobwebs and thick ivy, searching for enough dark to shelter his secrets.