The Gates of Night: The Dreaming Dark - Book 3 (31 page)

“This is insane,” Daine said, reaching out and taking her hand. “Lei, I’m sorry. I’m not good with words. None of this has come out the way I want. You’re not a monster. And that’s just it. You’re not … you’re not warforged. You’re human. This woman is playing games with you, like Lakashtai did with me.”

“No, Daine,” Lei said. “Someone’s playing a game with me, but it’s not Thelania. You heard that serpent. I said that I was born in my mother’s womb, and it told me I was wrong. And it showed me the truth.”

“It showed you
something,”
Daine said. “How do you know it was true?”

“I just do,” Lei said. “It all adds up. That sahuagin, Thaask. Harmattan. The visions from the river. That time I almost died … I could
feel
my wand of healing, even while I lay dying. I should have been unconscious, but somehow I activated the wand. I brought myself back.”

“You don’t know that.”

Lei looked at her hand. Her little finger, removed by Harmattan in the jungles of Xen’drik. “Give me your dagger,” she said.

“What?”

She reached out and pulled Daine’s dagger from his belt. Before he could stop her, she drew the edge across her palm.

Blood welled from the wound. “See,” Daine said. “Blood. You’re—”

Once again, Lei shut out the sights and sounds
around her. This time it wasn’t Pierce she was looking for. This time she looked within. Once she’d had a dream of her mother, in what she now knew to be the hidden workshop in Blacklion. Aleisa had stood over her, studying Lei and comparing her to a pattern she held in her hand. Now Lei reached out for that pattern …

And she found it.

It was like no lifeweb she’d ever seen before. The warforged contained matter in the form of wood and roots, but they were inanimate objects given life through magic. This pattern … the body was flesh and blood, but the magic was still there, spread through every vein and every muscle.

How did this begin? she wondered. I was a child. I grew within the house. Was I born? Or did they
make
me from raw matter? She remembered the words of her mother, in the final moments of her river-spawned vision:
Let my blood flow into you once more
.

She studied the pattern more closely.
There!
It was so small she could hardly see it, but there was the cut on her palm. Concentrating, she sought to restore the design to purity. Repairing such minor damage to Pierce would have been the work of a moment. This was a struggle. The web was stranger than anything she’d every dealt with. Yet slowly, ever so slowly, it came together.

She opened her eyes. “… bleeding,” Daine was saying.

The cut was gone, with only a few drops of blood on her palm to show that she’d ever been injured.

“Lei,” Pierce said. “How did you do that?”

“It’s all true,” she said. “I’m not human.”

The words felt empty. Her anger had faded away,
and all she felt was exhaustion. She fell to her knees, wildflowers brushing against her chest.

“I don’t care.” Daine dropped to the ground next to her, turned her chin to face him. “Warforged, human, dragonmarked or not … I don’t care if you’re a goblin, Lei. I doesn’t matter what you are. I only care about who you are.” His hands were on her shoulders. “I love you, Lei.”

She kissed him, and in that moment, he was the world. When they broke apart, she felt tears welling. “I don’t know what this means,” she said.

“We’ll find out together,” Daine replied.

She nodded, and the tears flowed freely. She looked up at Pierce and held out her hand. The warforged pulled her to her feet. “Pierce, I don’t know what to say.”

“Nothing need be said. Daine is correct. It seems we both have mysteries to unravel. Whatever the future holds, I will be by your side.”

Lei nodded, wiping at her cheeks. “Thank you, brother,” she said to Pierce. She turned to Daine, and the words of the dryad came back to her.
You have life. You have love, if you have the courage to seize it
.

“This is very touching, but the future won’t hold much of anything if you all stand here blubbering,” Kin said. “The bier is just beyond the hill. Lords and ladies, do you think you can contain your emotions until you’ve saved your world?”

Lei ignored the guide, her gaze still on Daine. He was smiling, and there was a joy in his eyes she’d never seen before. “Daine …” she said.

“Hush,” he said, taking her hand and leading Lei to her horse. “There’ll be time for us later. Right now, Riedra awaits.”

For the first time that day, Lei felt as if her burdens were truly lifted. Yet even as her heart soared, a memory rose to the surface, sending a chill through her mind. Her father, deep in the heart of Blacklion.

She is the most dangerous thing we have ever created
.

What did he mean?

X
u’sasar hated riding.

She had seen horses before. The outlanders who came to plunder her homeland usually brought these creatures as mounts or beasts of burden, and she knew from tales that horses ran wild in other parts of Xen’drik. Xu’sasar was naturally fleet of foot, and when she stalked explorers the magic of the spirits allowed her to match the speed of the outlander mounts. But these faerie horses of Thelanis were another matter. This came as no surprise. These were surely spirits of speed, the inspiration for the mortal creatures she had encountered in the past, and she could hardly expect to keep pace on foot.

Fortunately for Xu’sasar, her horse was both friendly and responsive. He seemed to know the path, and all Xu’sasar needed to do was to hold on. She’d tried talking to the horse, but if it had the power of speech it chose not to speak with her, and she was left alone with her thoughts.

At the moment, those thoughts were gloomy. She did not understand this interaction between Daine, Pierce, and Lei. All Xu’sasar knew was that it didn’t
involve her in any way, and that there was now a stronger bond between Lei and Daine. This was made worse by the knowledge that she would not be able to join Daine in this struggle against the forces of darkness. Here was an epic conflict, a chance to battle spirits of legend, and she was left to watch others sleep. Alone.

As her horse trotted across the meadow, Xu’sasar took a second look at the amulet she had been given as a gift. It was a locket made from pale silver, bound to a wide strip of black leather. A symbol was carved on the face of the amulet, but it held no meaning for her. Opening the locket, she found a shard of chitin, a piece of a scorpion’s shell. When she wrapped the band around her neck, she could feel a tingle along her skin. Surely the amulet was a gift from Vulkoor, passed down to this Queen of Dusk. Xu’sasar wore little armor, relying on her speed and her vambraces to deflect attacks. If this amulet gave her skin some of the strength of the scorpion’s shell, that was a blessing indeed. And with the Tooth of the Wanderer in her hand, she had been given sword and shield. She was prepared for the challenges that lay ahead—yet it seemed that she was to be denied the chance to fight in the greatest battle of all.

Perhaps luck would be with her. Perhaps an army would strike while the others slept.

She turned her attention to Kin. The fey envoy troubled her. For all that he had human teeth, his smile reminded Xu’sasar of the innkeeper Ferric. Xu’sasar was a child of the natural world, and there was something fundamentally unnatural about Kin. His features were handsome enough, but looking at him, she was certain that another face lay beneath the warm mask.

“There it is,” Kin said. “The Bier of the Sleeper.”

They had crested a hill. In the small valley below, Xu’sasar could see a ring of trees surrounding a pool of still water. As they rode down the hill, Xu’sasar caught sight of a stone slab next to the pool—the bier from which the grove took its name. At first Xu’sasar thought that a man was laid out upon the stone, but as they drew closer, she saw that the figure was a statue carved from black marble. Kin dismounted at the edge of the trees, and the others followed suit.

Xu’sasar darted forward to examine the statue. It was the figure of a warrior, clad in chainmail, with a longsword by his side. Muscular arms crossed over his chest. Strangely, she found that she couldn’t see his face. At first she thought it was unsculpted, yet the longer she studied the statue, the more strongly she felt that some force was turning her eyes away, that the detail was there, just beyond her grasp.

“Who is this?” she said.

“The Sleeper’s far older than I am,” Kin said. “I’m afraid I don’t know the full tale. A soldier of your world, favored by the queen. When he died, the monument was erected to honor his memory and guide future travelers.”

“Where’s his sword?” Daine said, examining the bier. Only now did Xu’sasar see that the scabbard lying next to the warrior was empty. For a moment she thought of her own empty sheaths, and the daggers given to her by her mother, lying next to the corpse of her father in the monolith of Karul’tash.

“A fine question, Master Daine, and one I will explain. Please gather around the pool and bring your horses.” Kin produced a pouch from his own pack, and proceeded to sprinkle a sour-smelling dust over
the companions and himself. “Now, Daine, if you will touch that empty scabbard—”

“What?” Daine said. “Why?”

“A gate can take many forms, as I would think you’d have learned from your time beneath the Hunter’s Moon,” Kin said. “The scabbard is the portal.”

“You’re going to make us small enough to walk through it?” Daine said.

“Not at all,” Kin replied. “Please, just do as I ask.”

As Daine laid his hand on the stone scabbard, Kin threw another handful of powder into the air above the water, and suddenly they were
falling
. The earth rose up, tumbling them down into the pool …

… and just as quickly, flinging them out onto dry land. They were standing by a pool of water. The trees were gone. The bier was gone. And there was no sun. Four moons could be seen in the sky, along with the faint glow of the Dragon’s Ring. They had returned to Eberron, although the stars and the Ring told Xu’sasar that they were far from the land of her birth.

“Was this supposed to happen?” Daine said. The others turned to look. Daine was holding a scabbard in his hand, and it wasn’t made of stone. The sheath was black leather, studded with purple dragonshards and chased in silver.

“Fascinating!” Kin said. “I wonder what effect that will have on the journey back. No matter.”

“I thought you said we’d go through the scabbard,” Lei said. “It seemed to me the pool was the portal.”

“Yes, it did,” Kin said. He shrugged. “We appear to be in the proper place, and that’s all that concerns me.”

“Are we?” Lei pointed to the sky. “I’ve never seen
that
before.”

There was a new moon in the sky, and it was a moon Xu’sasar had never seen. Or was it? It seemed hazy, indistinct, and Xu’sasar felt that she could see the stars shining through its heart.

“That’s your moon, Lady Lei,” Kin said. “Let us move swiftly before it arrives in full glory. Mount up while I change into something more appropriate to our new surroundings.”

With that, his face
rippled
. Darkness flowed out across his hair like smoke across a fire, transforming golden blond to coal black, and his hair pulled in on itself. A tan spread across his skin. His clothing followed suit, as the velvet and silk of the courtier turned into a black robe hemmed in silver, with a silver veil beneath a deep hood.

“What manner of creature are you?” Xu’sasar said. She held the bone wheel in her hand, ready to throw, and the points were sweating venom in response to her anger. She
knew
Kin was a trickster. This power alone was no proof of treachery, but she held herself ready to strike.

“Oh, did you not know?” Kin said. His voice was deeper, slower. He pulled back the hood, and now his skin faded to dull gray, and his eyes became as white as Xu’sasar’s own.

“You’re a changeling?” Lei said.

“Yes,” Kin replied. “I was born in the land you know as the Eldeen Reaches. The people of my village follow the ways of the Greensinger druids and have close ties to the faerie court. As a child, I caught the eye of my mistress, and she brought me to Thelanis to serve as her envoy.” As he spoke, he resumed his Riedran guise.

“Wait,” Lei said, considering this. “So you’re a … changeling?”

“I suppose so,” Kin said. “Yet what I am now is your guide. The monolith we seek is a few leagues to the north. The lords of this land have impressive supernatural powers, and I suggest that we move quickly.”

“What about this?” Daine said, gesturing with the scabbard.

“Keep it, if you want,” Kin said. “Otherwise, I’ll hold onto it.”

“Fine.” Daine tossed the jeweled sheath to the changeling and mounted his horse.

“What dangers can we expect?” Xu’sasar said.

“The people of this land prefer not to travel,” Kin said. “With luck, the only challenge will be the guards at the monolith itself. If we do encounter anyone, let me speak on our behalf. I can be quite convincing, when I need to be.”

“I don’t think any of us speak Riedran anyway,” Lei said.