The Restless Shore (7 page)

Tessaeril dropped the coins and stood over Ghaelya. She pulled a blanket over her drunken sister’s shoulders and knelt down to catch her half-lidded gaze. Ghaelya stared back into eyes that mirrored her own; the face, framed by tongues of dancing flame, was her twin, though the person behind the stare was a far away day to her deep night.

At one time they’d shared everything; often it seemed even their thoughts and dreams were mirrored in one another.

“I worry about you,” Tessaeril said. “I worry that some night you won’t come home, and I’ll be left here alone.”

“Well, I worry every night that I’ll end up back home and become stuck here,” Ghaelya replied more angrily than she’d intended. She noticed the thin chain of blue silver around Tessaeril’s neck, a present Ghaelya had bought from a Branestrian merchant. But dangling from the end was a small metal seashell, the symbol of the Choir. Ghaelya reached out, tapping the shell clumsily. “And if you had any sense at all you’d worry the same thing. By the gods Tess! Leave me be or sing me to sleep! No, wait, don’t sing… Please don’t sing….”

Her vision faded. The last things she saw were her sister’s eyes, filling with tears and turning away. As darkness

claimed her, Ghaelya weakly promised that she’d apologize in the morning—a promise broken before the sun rose.

“**-** s

7Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR) The Spur Forest, South of Airspur, Akanul

Ghaelya cursed as they pressed into the thicker trees, feeling like an ogre among her more surefooted companions. Thorns gripped her leather armor; bushes snapped loudly as she pulled free. Her footfalls were so loud, the whole valley might have heard them. Several times, lit by the glow of Vaasurri’s lantern, Uthalion cast an annoyed glance her way. Though he said nothing out loud, he truly didn’t have to.

She breathed a sigh of relief when they crossed a swift stream, following its current. The cool water flowed soundlessly around her calves, carrying her along as though she were a part of its course. Soon back in the forest, with long vines brushing her face and spiderwebs glowing in Vaasurri’s light, she shivered and watched expectantly for the Spur to end. Trees shivered in a sudden breeze, bringing the forest to brief life. Stars glinted through the leafy canopy and danced in a multitude of sparkling reflections.

Uthalion stopped, holding up a cautious hand as Vaasurri turned in a slow circle and lowered his lantern to the ground. Brindani joined them, kneeling around the edge of a circle of freshly churned soil. Roots jutted from the edges, saplings had been torn from the ground, and pale worms squirmed through the soft earth. The look on the killoren’s face was not encouraging when he stood away from the sunken area.

“We need to move faster—” he began, then his emerald gaze shot forward, widening in alarm.

A splash echoed through the night, a deep, heavy splash as if a boulder had been dropped from the sky. Ghaelya whipped around, trying to remember just how far back the stream they had crossed was. Her hand drifted to her sword, and she felt foolish even considering the tiny weapon against whatever had caused the sound.

Something rumbled and cracked from the direction of the stream, growing deeper. Another splash thundered the water, the same vibration shaking the trees. It was followed by a heavy breathing like the bellows of a hellish forge. The ground shook again, and Uthalion stood, breaking his stunned silence.

“Run.”

The struggle to tread quietly was forgotten as Ghaelya sprinted wide-eyed behind Uthalion. After several long strides, the massive breathing from the stream became a deafening growl, the sound of it raising gooseflesh on her neck and arms. Her reflexes heightened by fear, she had no trouble keeping up with Vaasurri and the pale light of his lantern. Brindani kept close behind her, and behind him came the snapping of trees and the dry scraping of rough skin over leaves and dirt. Ahead of it all came a labored breathing, filled with a whining wheeze that threatened to drive her mad. Unseen claws pulled at the earth, ripping trees from their roots as some massive bulk lurched through the forest.

She didn’t dare turn to look, imagining its hot breath washing over her, her thrashing legs caught in an unbreakable grip as the thing keened in victory. Childhood stories flashed through her mind, and she cursed at the memory, knowing the Mother of Nightmares had found her and knew her name. The pale serpent of her old fears, with its long fangs and madly rolling eyes, would devour her and forget the taste in an instant as it clacked its teeth and whined for more.

Upturned dirt, thrown high by the kaia’s thrashing, rained down on her from behind, and she tried to grasp at the pouch on her belt, at the flint and steel she’d carried to light the torch. Her toe caught on a root, and she fell forward, jarring her knee against the ground and rolling onto her back. The end of an exhale shuddered above her, a sickening sound of relief making her want to draw her sword, but her shaking arms froze above her.

Giant jaws creaked as they opened in the dark, blotting out the winking stars as though the gaping maw of night itself would devour her.

Little nightmare let me be, leave my name from off your tree. Tell your mother I am brave, with many years before my grave.

As flint and iron clicked, she flinched and a new star birthed before her eyes. More trees cracked and snapped in the distance as the thing thrashed and pulled away from the brilliance. Strong arms pulled her to her feet and drew her away from the retreating beast.

Squinting, she caught sight of pale flesh and clusters of shining eyes pulling back into the shadows. She shuddered as she turned and ran, plunging into the woods alongside Brindani. Uthalion remained in the rear, brandishing the brilliant torch. The circle of light he carried kept the monster at its barest edge, whining and wheezing to be let back in, begging wordlessly to be fed.

At each brief clearing, Ghaelya convinced herself they had cleared the Spur. Yet more trees pressed in upon them from all sides, killing hope at every turn. Uthalion’s torchlight glimmered in the leaves, and Ghaelya would glance at the light, begging that glow to be sunrise. But dawn did not come. The ground still shook, and the beast lumbered in the dark, crawling along and waiting for the light to falter.

In one clear stretch of ground, she managed to grasp

the pouch at her belt, found the flint and steel wrapped in cloth within, and gripped it hard enough to hurt. She welcomed the brief pain, and was comforted by its presence. The press of trees broke again, and she skipped down a sudden drop into a wide stream. Slipping into the water, she felt its speed fill her with strength, and she chanced a look over her shoulder, just in time to see Uthalion stumble down the bank.

The torch fell from his hand, spinning lazily through the air. She held her breath and stopped. Water rushed around her ankles, and a knot of cold filled her throat, spreading into her chest. Uthalion rolled cursing to the water’s edge as the torch hissed in the stream. It’s loss plunged the forest into a growling darkness. A huffing breath and a single clack of teeth preceded the pounding crawl of the beast as it descended on Uthalion.

7 Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One

(1479 DR) The Spur Forest, South of Airspur, Akanul

Rim arced through Uthalion’s wrist as it twisted beneath the water of the stream. Rolling his weight to the right, he splashed onto his back, already mourning the last of the guttering light behind him. It flashed once on the mass of the kaia, glittering in dozens of eyes, shining on countless teeth, before leaving him to the long horrible moments before death.

He cursed the moment he had left the grove, the impulse that had carried him away and the ghostly song that had inspired his decision. Though the kaia loomed over him, his mind still picked at the half-heard tune, unable to let it go even in the face of the beast that would devour him. It thrummed softly, a piecemeal melody that ran from him like a well-kept secret, teasing him with unspoken promises;

Dirt rolled against his boots, pushed forward by the kaia’s bulk, burying his lower legs. A low gurgling growl washed warmly across his face, bringing the coppery scent of old blood and the unmistakable decay of flesh. Uthalion smelled wet fur, too, like the pelts his grandfather would lay out after a hunt. Bits and glimpses of his life came and went, as if the contents of his soul were being displaced by the descending beast.

Maryna’s face—in the better times before he’d left with the Keepers for Tohrepur—came to him smiling in the long dreamlike spaces between one pounding heartbeat and the next. He cursed the man that had left her, the man he’d not seen in a mirror in many long years, the husband and father he might have been.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, willing the words to reach his wife and daughter somehow.

Quiet waves rippled against his back, lapping at his right arm as something moved with terrible swiftness to his side. Trailing a faint glimmer of water, an arm shot forward, producing an audible click and a minute spark that birthed a brilliance of light. He squinted as the scent of burning reached him, and he stared into the face of the thing Ghaelya had called the Mother of Nightmares.

A storm of roaring rage thundered from the kaia’s gaping jaws, leaving his ears ringing. The stream’s bank exploded into clods of mud and dirt. He felt the size of the beast more than he saw it. A humanlike arm, gangly and pale, shielded a lipless, tooth-filled snout. Long tentacles writhed and whipped as the kaia threw itself back from the hated light. Clear yellow eyes swirling in loose, fleshy sockets ringed the vague shape of its skull. It crashed back into the safety of the forest, away from the blazing torch in Ghaelya’s hand until the forked end of its lashing wormlike body disappeared from the edge of the torch’s burning glow.

Uthalion exhaled slowly, rising carefully to his feet with Ghaelya’s assistance. Her eyes never left the gap in the trees where the kaia had fled, her face a mask of defiance though her hands shook with an unstoppable tremor.

“It’s gone,” he said. She blinked, her jaw unclenching for a moment as she turned, a fluid quality in the movement that slowly faded as she focused on him.

“It’ll be back,” she said shortly.

“No,” he replied, gesturing to the eastern end of the stream where the dim glow of dawn graced the sky. “It won’t.”

Hesitantly, she nodded as her breathing slowed, and they turned toward Brindani and Vaasurri on the opposite bank. Before the sun even crested the horizon, they had cleared the edge of the Spur and found a suitable place to rest. Uthalion sat listening to the forest for a long time as the others fell into slumber. The howls of the dreamers left them in peace, the haunting voices of their masters never sought him out. But, like an unreachable itch, he came back to the unknown song in the cave again and again, turning his attention to the south as though he might catch it across the wide expanse of the Mere-That-Was.

***§)* O—

Gray fog surrounded Brindani as the slow process of waking up brought him to the forefront of a half-remembered dream. He could feel the cool grass of the Akana on his cheek, but could not open his eyes, still trying to grasp the edges of consciousness that would release him from the border between dreams and reality. The familiar, quiet fog was a comfort, though it had grown thinner, billowing slightly to reveal the silhouetted images of the dream beyond. He recoiled from the figures that shambled through the mist, tried to shut out the barking orders that echoed from the ghostly little town that was usually hidden in the dream.

He found a sword in his hand, and blood covered his dusty armor.

A deep breath filled his lungs as he awoke with a start and cracked his tired eyes open in the bright light of the noonday sun.

He pressed his hands against the grass of the Akana, inhaling its refreshing earthy scent, and sat up to survey the land of the Mere-That-Was. Wide fields stretched as far as he could see, rising and falling in a tide of deep green. Long grasses flowed in the light wind, rolling like the waves that had once lapped these shores. Spiraling whorls of crystal dotted the landscape, the sculptures of a mad god, turning sunlight into blinding rainbows that dappled the fields with color. Small birds flew among the prismatic reflections, with translucent feathers and long trailing tails, almost invisible as they hunted flies and beetles.

Shivering despite the day’s warmth* Brindani turned away from sight of the Akana, only half-remembering the last time he’d crossed the Mere-That-Was. He was not particularly ready to recall the other half A soft moan drew his attention to Ghaelya, turning in her sleep, her eyes twitching beneath their lids. She seemed lost in dreams of her own. He leaned close, wondering if he might somehow hear the things she heard in her dreams, but her lids fluttered open, and her hand immediately slapped to the hilt of her sword.

He leaned back nonchalantly as she sat up, shielding her eyes from the sun and peering out across the Akana. The whirling energy lines on her skin flared until she calmed somewhat and rolled back to her side with a sigh of relief.

“Where are the others?” she asked.

“Scouting the area, I suppose,” he replied, squinting east and west for Uthalion and Vaasurri, even though their trail would be hard to pick up. “They’ll be back soon.”

“Any sign of the dreamers?”

“No, but I heard them howling, just before I drifted off to sleep,” he answered, shuddering at the memory. Like wolves howling at a rising moon, the dreamers had heralded the sunrise with their own song from deep within the Spur before falling silent. “I think we’re safe from them for now, until nightfall at least.”

“Not surprising,” she said and stood, stretching in the sunlight. “Their eyes never close. I don’t think daylight agrees with them much. What about the Choir?”

“Nothing of them either, though I’m not sure I’d know them if I saw them.” Brindani looked back to the edge of the forest, wondering if they were watching from the shadows, waiting for the dark. Looking askance at her, he asked, “Why do you think they chase you?”