Ashes And Spirit (Book 3) (17 page)

K
ellinar slipped beneath the surface, the water closing over his head without a sound. In the darkness, even his connection to Shryden was lost. A flash of panic charged through him. For over three years the blue had shared his mind. The sudden emptiness was a shock, a vast open spot where his greatest friend should be. His lungs burned with the need for air, and his heart raced at the loss of Shryden.

Then he fell out of the other side and smacked into the ground. The sense of Shryden slammed into his mind along with a warning. Kellinar flung himself to the side. The massive blue narrowly missed landing on him as the dragon tumbled in a tangle of tail and wings from the bright-blue disk.

Kellinar glanced at the lake. It was just as he remembered. A smooth, flat plate balanced on its edge. When he turned to find Taela, the world around him slid. His stomach lurched and he closed his eyes with a groan. That too was just as he remembered.

Opening his eyes, he tried to look around as slowly as possible, even though it didn’t really help much. A nearby tree, shimmering with silver leaves, slid far away; its leaves disappearing as it did so. At the same time, another tree jumped forward and several clumps of grass dashed to the side. Whispering surrounded them as if a thousand souls were talking all at once.

Taela stood with one arm braced against Paki, the scroll still clutched tight in her hand. She took slow, deep breaths and opened her eyes. “You could have warned me it would be like this.”

Kellinar got to his feet and made a careful and unsteady walk to Shryden. “I’m not sure I could have described it well enough. Besides, would it have made any difference?”

“No, but I would have been more prepared.” She reached up and tucked the scroll into one of the bags on Paki.

“Nothing can prepare you for this place.” He ran a hand over his braids and stared at Shryden. “I’ve been here before and still I’m not fully prepared for it. Can we just get on with it?” A glance at the ground showed the silver thread he remembered, though this time it ran off in a different direction.

Taela nodded, turned, and lost her morning meal. Kellinar took a step toward her, but she waved him away. He did as she wished, swallowing the bile that rose in his throat as the scenery continued to move around him.

After rinsing her mouth with water, Taela pulled herself into Paki’s saddle. Kellinar looked up at Shryden.
“Do you mind if a hitch a ride? I’m not sure I can walk a straight line on my own.”

“Of course I don’t mind. This place moves strangely, but it doesn’t affect me the way it does you.”

Kellinar climbed into the saddle, not bothering with any of the safety straps, they wouldn’t be flying anyway.

Shryden trailed behind Paki. Their surroundings changed the farther they followed the silver thread running along the ground. The scenery slid in different directions at a slower rate. When he’d traveled through the lake with Emallya, the mist had been held back by an invisible shield. Now the mist closed in until the moving trees and grasses could no longer be seen.

After what felt like hours, and probably had been, Shryden came to a halt. Kellinar reached for him.
“What are we doing?”

“Paki says it’s time for a rest,”
Shryden returned.

Taela’s exhaustion flowed through the bond and blended with his own. Kellinar dropped from the saddle. At least with the mist pressing in, the Fate-forsaken trees weren’t visible. A few clumps of grass sluggishly zigged and zagged out of sight, only to reappear again. The light remained constant, as it always did here, giving no indication of the passage of time.

Kellinar pulled a bag down from Shryden, surprised he could feel hunger in this place. It could only be attributed to the lack of visibility. It was hard for the scenery to make his stomach roll when he couldn’t see it although the whispering of the dead was louder here. He could almost make out their words now.

Taela rubbed her temples and flopped down to sit on the ground. “I wish they would be quiet for a while.”

He shrugged and sat next to her. “Emallya said it’s been so long since the living walked among the dead that the spirits are curious.” Memories of the journey with Emallya to Galdrilene flowed through his thoughts. Of Bardeck on the night Kellinar had hatched Shryden. He wished they had had more time to learn from them.

Taela pulled the pack from his hands and opened it. Her soft laugh interrupted his thoughts, and he glanced at her. “What?”

“I see you were unsuccessful in reining in Marda.” She pulled several wrapped parcels from the pack.

“When it comes to making sure people have full bellies, there is no holding Marda back. She’s a mother hen and anyone within reach is her chick.”

The pack contained two small, tightly lidded pots, one with honey and another with butter, as well as a loaf of bread. There was also a package of cold roast beef, apples, three different cheeses, roast chicken, and three cabbage and goat meat stuffed pitas. Taela stared at the spread of food. “Is this the only bag like this?”

With a wry shake of his head, Kellinar said, “There are two more bags like this one and five full of traveling cakes.”

“How many people did she think we would be feeding for Fates’ sake?”

He shrugged. “She knew it would just be us. It’s just Marda being Marda. Might as well not let it go to waste. Who knows how long this mist will hide the shadow-blasted scenery? We might not feel like eating this way tomorrow. Or whenever it will be when we awake.”

They ate as much of the meal as they could before rewrapping it and returning it to the pack. Afterward, they pulled their sleeping rolls down and settled into them. The constant diffused light and the total absence of the normal nighttime sounds made sleep long in coming. Kellinar shifted several times as if a new position would somehow ease the discomfort that had nothing to do with the strange, spongy-feeling ground.

When they awoke, he had no idea how long they’d slept or if it was night or day in the real world. They ate the remainder of food in the first pack in silence before finally climbing on their dragons to continue their journey to who really knew where.

Two more days passed in the same fashion. Were they really full days or did they just seem that way? The scenery visible through the mist grew progressively slower until it ceased altogether. Even the whispers stopped. Silence reigned so thorough Kellinar could hear his own heart beating. Even the dragons’ clawed feet made no sound against the spongy grass, the sparse thick tufts now a dense, green mat.

On the third “day,” the mist became so thick Kellinar could no longer see the silver thread on the ground. He glanced ahead, an anxious knot in his stomach. Although only a few steps ahead of Shryden, the mist swallowed Paki and Taela.

Kellinar reached out to Paki.
“Can Taela still see the line?”

“She doesn’t need to see it. The thread of silver is her magic, she is connected to it,”
Paki sent back.

Relief filled him. The last thing they needed was to get lost in this place.
“Shryden, can you still see Paki?”

“No, but have no worry. I can still sense her. We won’t lose them.”

Another concern lessened. As much as he looked forward to seeing Anevay again, Kellinar couldn’t wait until they got out of Maiadar.

The mist or fog—whatever it was—continued to close in until Kellinar could no longer see his hand in front of his face. The silence deepened, pressing against his ears. With nothing to see, time and distance took on even less meaning than it had before. Only endless mist that left no moisture on the skin filled the world around them.

Desperate for something to do besides stare at the thick whiteness, Kellinar reached out with his magic. Were there any air currents at all here? After a long search, he felt something but not the same. Instead, it was more like a distant echo of the memory of air currents. After some time, he gave up finding anything tangible to work with and let his magic go. There was nothing to do but endure.

And then, from one step to the next, the mist was gone. Though it still hung around the edges of their line of sight, Maiadar opened up before them in a series of hills covered in new spring grass. Not a single flower, bush, or tree disturbed the uniform greenness. Directly ahead stood a gate glowing faint silver.

Arranged around the gate were eight people. Two of them, a man and a woman, had wizened faces and white hair that hung to their ankles, though their shoulders and backs remained unbent by the passage of time. The other six, three men and three women, appeared ageless, all with hair to their waists.

A man with black hair and eyes, with an air of reverence about him, pulled strands from a massive fabric comprised of glowing threads in more colors than imaginable. He worked steadily, yet carefully. Some of the threads he pulled were no longer than the space between finger-joints, others were much longer. No matter the length, once he pulled them to the edge of the tapestry, he sliced them with a silver blade.

On the other side of the tapestry, working a never-ending loom, a woman with blonde hair wove more threads into it.

The old couple stood before the gate. On either side were two gleaming pools watched over by male and female pairs. A man with blond hair and his red-haired partner watched one pool, while a man with brown hair and a woman with black watched over the other.

In eerie silence, they went about their work. Only the older pair, their hands folded in front of their flowing white robes, took notice of the two people on dragon back.

At their approach, Kellinar and Taela slid from their saddles to stand on the velvet soft grass. The older couple stopped a few paces from them and inclined their heads. The woman, her pale eyes kind, smiled, revealing perfect white teeth. “We’ve been expecting you.”

Her voice was like the chime of sweet bells on a warm summer’s day. Kellinar ran his eyes over the group of people. The younger six never took their eyes off their tasks, not even a flicker of an eye acknowledged the presence of strangers.

“You are not strangers to us,” the blonde woman said without looking away from the threads she wove into the tapestry.

“You have always been known to us and will always be known to us,” the brown-haired man said.

“And who are you?” Kellinar asked, his own voice sounding rough and rusty in contrast to theirs.

The old man spoke for the first time. “We are the Fates, child.”