The Gates of Night: The Dreaming Dark - Book 3 (20 page)

And what destiny do we share?
she’d said.

What would have happened if she hadn’t asked? Now, there was no way to know. She could only sit in the gray room, watching the humans dream and preparing for the battles tomorrow would bring.

T
ell me, shaper, and tell me truly, where did your journey begin?”

Lei’s thoughts whirled. The others had crossed without incident, and part of her wondered if this was all simply a formality, if a wrong answer existed.

The staff whispered in her hand. The words slipped away before she could grasp their meaning, but she felt fear. There was power here, and danger.

Where did my journey begin? Which journey?

She sifted through a dozen answers, thinking of riddles she’d learned as a child, of tales told of trickster spirits. Finally, she chose her answer.

“My journey began in my mother’s womb,” she said.

Her heart skipped a beat as she spoke, then the serpent lowered its massive head. Lei slid her staff into her bag. She wanted both her hands for this, and the last thing she needed to worry about was dropping the staff into the deadly water. She made her way up onto the creature’s back and stepped out onto the scaled span. She was halfway across when it spoke again.

“You have much to learn,” the serpent hissed.
Though she was far from either head, the voice seemed to echo around her.

The bridge rose up beneath her, flinging her into the air. She reached out with her thoughts, trying to weave an enchantment that would slow her fall, but it was all too sudden and sharp. The wind roared, blood rushed through her—

And then she hit the water.

The light was blinding. Lei’s eyes had grown accustomed to the dim moonlight of the forest, and now brilliant light flooded the world.

Sunlight.

The air was warm, moist, but it was
air
. Where was the water? Lei reached down, or tried to. She could feel the warm breeze, she could smell the rich soil. But she couldn’t move. No, she simply wasn’t
there
. She could see the world around her, but she was trapped, a disembodied presence.

Where am I?
she thought.

Wait
. It was a woman’s voice, low and liquid, filled with deep sorrow. Lei had never heard the voice before, and yet it was immediately familiar to her. Despite the mournful tone, Lei found she was comforted, as if she’d just seen an old friend.

Who are you?

Wait
, the voice said, and now Lei realized that it was a thought, more like a memory than a voice.
Watch. Learn
.

Lei’s vision cleared, and she knew where she was.

Xen’drik.

She didn’t recognize her exact surrounding. She hadn’t been in this particular clearing, she was sure
of it. But there was no mistaking the land. The foliage around her was painted in vivid orange and yellow, colors so sharp that the trees and shrubs appeared to be on fire. This was the jungle where they had first encountered the drow, the region surrounding Karul’tash and the obsidian city Daine had spoken of. As she studied the ground, she saw a patch of darkness, a circle of smooth, black glass half-hidden beneath fiery orange moss. She heard sounds coming from behind her, people moving through the undergrowth, but try as she might, she couldn’t turn toward the sound.

Wait. Watch and learn
.

The sounds drew nearer, closer with every moment. A figure stepped into her field of view.

It was Lei.

She was wearing her green and gold jerkin, and holding a wand of white wood in her hand—a wand Lei herself had never seen. Her eyes were hidden behind goggles, a complex array of crystal lenses bound to leather straps, and she was studying the ground. She stopped when she spotted the patch of black glass, and pointed her wand at the earth. The moss shriveled away, turning to dust, and a wide patch of black glass was revealed. “Here!” she cried out. Something was wrong. Her voice wasn’t Lei’s voice.

Another figure came forward from the jungle. It was a man, a tall young man armored in deep blue chainmail. He held a long gray staff in one hand. His skin was pale, his short, wavy hair brilliant red. Lei knew this man. She had seen him in a dream only days earlier. It was her father.

“Excellent, Aleisa,” he said, pausing as he reached the edge of the glass.

Aleisa!
This wasn’t Lei at all. It was her mother. The sahuagin guide, Thaask, had told Lei that he had met her parents decades earlier, that they had come to Xen’drik in search of knowledge. Was this a vision of the past? It made no sense. House Cannith certainly had an interest in the secrets of the shattered land, but why would her parents have come alone? Surely Cannith would have sent a full expedition if there were knowledge to be claimed. Xen’drik was a land of many dangers, and if this could benefit the house, it would look after its own.

Watch and learn
, came the voice.

“There’s immense power in the glass,” the woman said, and now Lei recognized that voice. “Are you sure of this?”

“Beloved, are you questioning my faith?” The man’s voice was cold, accusatory, but Lei could see the hint of a smile playing around his lips. Lei remembered her father as an intense, driven man, utterly dedicated to his work. He rarely smiled. “Do you distrust the gifts of our lord?”

“Of course,” Aleisa said.

The man—Talin d’Cannith—nodded, and now he truly smiled. “You are as wise as you are beautiful, my dear,” he said. “But I do trust in the grand design. I won’t die today.”

He reached into a pouch on his belt and produced a massive gauntlet, longer than the pouch was deep; clearly this was an extradimensional pocket, like Lei’s own bag. As he drew the object into the light, Lei could see that it wasn’t simply a glove but the hand of a warforged soldier. The design was unusual. Sharp points rose from each joint, and the tips of the long fingers ended in vicious claws. The wrist
had been hollowed out, and Talin placed his own left hand into the socket. He began tracing patterns along the metal, whispering to himself. Lei couldn’t hear the words, but she could tell that he was calling on his skills as an artificer, weaving a magical pattern into the metal.

There was a
hiss
, and her father clenched his teeth. Aleisa rushed to his side, her hand on his arm. “Talin!”

His face twisted in pain, but intense concentration soon pushed away the agony. He opened his eyes, staring down at the hand, and the fingers flexed. He was controlling the hand as if it were his own. “Success,” he said. “Now give me the key.”

Aleisa rummaged through her own pouch and produced a flat metal disk. “I just hope you can remove it when this is done,” she said. “Luck has been with us this far, but I think Merrix would notice that.”

“It would be just the way of our guide to leave me bound to this thing,” Talin said. He pressed the disk against the palm of the warforged claw; when Talin removed his hand, the disk remained fused to the gauntlet. “But it is too early in the game, beloved. We will not be sacrificed so soon.”

Talin turned and embraced Aleisa. Lei wasn’t sure she could remember ever having seen them kiss, and the sight was both heartwarming and disturbing. For all his calm words, she could sense her father’s fear, something else she had never seen. Finally Talin pulled away from his wife and knelt next to the patch of glass. He looked up at her and smiled once more, then he pressed the warforged hand against the glass.

The air above the glass
rippled
with energy. The
glass grew red with heat, collapsed in upon itself, and cooled. Now, in place of the obsidian circle, a set of glass stairs descended down into darkness.

Talin raised his hand, and cold fire wrapped his staff. In silence, the two began the descent into the passage, and Lei found herself drifting forward to follow them. The enormous steps and the height of the ceiling left no question as to the origin of this place. This was a compound of the ancient giants.

The air was still and silent. Aleisa took the lead, and she drew a different wand, darkwood bound with strips of red gold. Her goggles shimmered in the shadows as she studied the floor, and she flinched. “There,” she said, pointing at the floor ahead. “I’ve never seen a glyph with such power. Ah! It’s blinding!”

Talin came forward, the warforged fist held out like a shield. He stretched out his hand, palm first, as if pressing against a physical force. Once again, there was a
ripple
in the air. “Clear?” he said.

Aleisa nodded, and they continued through the hall. Soon the corridor came to an end, a tall archway opening into a vast chamber. Aleisa walked through the doorway, glancing.

The blade missed her by inches.

Watching from the hallway, all Lei saw was a section of the obsidian sword. Her mother saw her attacker just in time, and threw herself to the side as the blade came crashing down. As the sword rose again, Talin charged into the room, and Lei’s vision followed with him.

A giant, a tall warrior with jet-black skin and glistening ebon armor, towered over Talin. The giant held a glass sword in two hands. The blade flashed toward Talin, breaking the man’s staff and scattering glowing
shards of wood across the chamber. Talin didn’t hesitate. Stepping forward and under the sword, he placed his human hand against the giant’s leg. A crackling filled the air, and Lei saw fissures run across the giant’s armor and skin. That was when she realized that the giant was a statue—an animated warrior. Her father struck at the magic that empowered the creature, as Lei had when she had fought warforged.

The giant emitted no cry of pain, just as it had given no warning when it launched its attack. It simply struck at its foe, and this time Talin couldn’t get out of the way. The force of the blow sent him flying through the air, into the shadows and out of Lei’s sight.

Aleisa howled as she threw herself forward, catching the giant’s leg in a lethal embrace. The creature shattered in her grasp, and chunks of obsidian rained down around and upon her.
“Talin!
” she howled into the darkness.

“I am here.” Pain filled Talin’s voice, but he kept his composure. Cold fire filled the room, surrounding Talin’s fist. His left arm hung limp at his side and blood flowed from a corner of his mouth. His armor was unbroken; clearly there was magic at work, and it had likely saved his life. “And behold, my love. We have found the treasure that was promised.” The glow surrounding his fist grew even more intense, filling the room with the light of day.

Corpses were scattered around the chamber, armored bodies affixed to the walls and spread across the floor. There were bodies of all sizes, from halflings to a few that must be ogres. Some were intact, while others had been dismembered. Lei drew closer to one of the corpses, her vision adjusted to the light, and she realized that these weren’t the corpses of men.

They were warforged.

She could see the fibrous roots emerging from the stump of a wounded soldier, the cold fire reflected in crystal eyes. There could be no question what these were, but the designs were unfamiliar. As Lei tried to examine the bodies, a terrible vertigo swept through her. Her vision blurred, and the light faded to darkness.

Mother!
Lei tried to speak, but she had no body and no voice. She tried to resist the force that was pulling her into the shadows, but she couldn’t. As the world dissolved around her, her father’s words echoed in her ears.

“Our work can begin at last.”