The Restless Shore (30 page)

He tried to stand and felt a twisting pang in his stomach. He faltered, confused and trying to catch his breath when the pang returned more forcefully, stabbing his insides with pure agony. A dry scream scratched its way through his throat as he doubled over, rolling in the ash. He felt rough hands grab his arms and haul him up, and tried to keep his feet moving as he was dragged up the hill backward. Rolling thunder deafened him and hid his feeble cries in crashing waves that shook the air. Though his eyes were closed, he could see the Lightning Tide return in bright flashes of red as it scoured the Lash.

His body curled in on itself as pain needled hungrily through his gut. It was not the gentle pain of the song; it did not bring him dreams or enhanced senses and it did not sink through his skin or bear the sweet scent of the red flower that Sefir had fed him. The pain was more familiar, almost forgotten, and it seemed it had returned with a vengeance. As the thunder died, following the Tide on its route around the Lash, he heard the tired grunts and cursing of Vaasurri and Uthalion, heard Vaasurri muttering as they pulled him to safety.

“Silkroot,” the killoren said derisively.

“No…” Brindani whispered, gasping for air and-fighting against the hands that held him. He’d left the silkroot behind him, not having needed or wanted the drug since finding the song and tasting the red flower. But his body was betraying his wishes, filling him with a base hunger that he loathed. He fought harder and found his voice, roaring in defiance of his own addiction, “No!”

He kicked against the ground hard, and he was released in a volley of shocked curses. Hitting the ground he turned and leaped forward, climbing as fast as he could manage, armnincr his hands on the rocks, feverishlv milliner himself

higher and higher. All the while he felt the memory of the summoning song fade a little from his mind, felt his blood grow cold, and wanted to weep. The taste of blood filled his mouth; he huffed it from between his lips to spatter little red droplets on the gray stone as he climbed and scrambled for the top of the foothills.

He blocked out all but the top of the tall slope, enduring the pulsing pain through his abdomen. He listened for the song, but it did not come to him. He wanted to scream, to demand that it return and banish the agonizing remnant of the pathetic man that had wandered Aglarond in a drug-filled haze. Briefly, he considered how high he had climbed, contemplated the long fall over rocks, bits of half-buried walls, and the rotted out hulls of ancient fishing vessels.

“Just one slip,” he whispered, the thought coming through his pain in a rare moment of clarity. The song was missing, the grips of the silkroot were fading, and his more substantial wounds had begun to ache, leaving him for several breaths in between desire and necessity, his own man. “One slip…”

His head began to swim, and he felt faint. Grasping at another handhold, he tried to lift his suddenly wavering legs. His field of vision narrowed, overtaken by a tunnel of smoky black as his eyelids fluttered. His breath came quick and shallow. The scent of blood surrounded him, his wounds seeping through bandages that felt too tight, itching his skin abrasively. One hand slipped on the rough wood of an old fencepost, and he lurched backward, his eyes rolling in his head.

“Brindani!”

He heard his name but could not place the voice. The ground fell away, and a sickening freefall took him in an airy embrace. In the time between falling, bouncing off a smooth rock, and feeling sets of hands grasp his arms and legs, he heard shocked voices cry out in startling detail.

He felt the rough pattern of swirling fingerprints scrape across his skin. His nose was overcome by powerful scents of blood and sweat as he was lowered to the ground. Though a throbbing, needling pain remained in his gut, another, smaller pain began to spread over his skin and sink into his flesh. Again, he wanted to weep.

“It didn’t leave me…” he rasped quietly, grabbing at an arm that supported his head. Though the touch of the song was little more than a flicker, unable to totally banish the grips of his old addiction, it was enough to give him a warped sense of hope. The two painful compulsions warred over his spirit and threatened his sanity. “It didn’t leave me… All will be well…tomorrow I..”

“All will be well,” a voice like Uthalion’s answered, though a coldness in the human’s tone was somewhat alarming as Brindani slipped into the velvety black of slithering dreams and distant singing.

***

On a wide ledge just over halfway up the long, rocky incline, a small campfire burned with a pale brightness next to the flashing plains of the Lash. Uthalion kept his back to the Lightning Tide, his eyes still burning from his last glance at the gray plains. The sun would set soon, and at length they had decided to rest before pressing on, preferring to enter Tohrepur by day instead of night. And, Uthalion had reasoned reluctantly, they shouldn’t leave Brindani behind unprotected.

Vaasurri had been the only one to agree out loud, though Uthalion suspected the killoren’s reasons had less to do with the unconscious half-elf and more with the mysterious ruins. Vaasurri hadn’t said as much, but their proximity to Tohrepur seemed to-be having an effect on him as well. His

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green and shadowy gray, a sign of something unnatural, beyond even the experience of the sensitive fey.

Uthalion stared up the slope, tracing the edge with his eyes and pointedly ignoring the urge to keep climbing. He questioned his own motives and desires as he suppressed the impulses that sought to overcome his good sense. Absently, he twirled the silver ring on his finger, pulling it on and off with his thumb, an old habit of his that Maryna used to tease him over, saying that if he lost her ring she’d find another man who could hold on to it better. His breath caught in his throat at the memory, and he waited as the sudden emotion rose and fell in his chest, exhaling slowly as it passed. He wondered if his family truly had been taken to the ruins, not as sure as he’d been that morning, the strong certainty of his dream no longer as strong. But still, the possibility weighed on his mind.

“Almost there,” he said under his breath and recalled why the words seemed so familiar. “Leave a light in the. window. I’m almost there.”

Over and over, through the Lash, the Wash, and the rising lands of the Spur, he had uttered the phrase as he’d led his men out of Tohrepur six years before, all the while focused on his family. Maryna had been waiting for him with Cienna in her arms, just as he’d imagined, ever since their argument over soldiering and gold. But his experiences had been there too, like a hulking shadow in the corner of their little cottage, casting a pall over their lives. He’d come home a different man, a different husband and father than when he’d left, and Maryna hadn’t known how to deal with him.

She smiled less and less in the days following. He had slept on the floor when exhaustion had taken him and had spent his days and nights by the window, waiting for something to happen, waiting for the world to tumble away into chaos so that the fear he felt might be justified. He wanted

to keep fighting, to keep surviving so that Maryna could have seen what he had seen and know what he then knew— that with the slightest push in the right spot, everything could fall apart.

Nothing ever came. They argued more and more each day until she told him to leave. Eventually he did, promising that he would return, a promise he still intended to keep. With a gentle tug he pulled the silver ring away, reached into a secured pouch, and replaced the band with his wife’s scratched and slightly bent ring, suddenly needing a greater magic than the silver could provide to keep going.

“We’ve been on the road longer than I thought,” Vaasurri said, gesturing at the ring as he joined Uthalion by the fire.

“Too long,” Uthalion replied with a deep sigh. “How’s Brindani?”

“Hell live,” the killoren answered. “Though his withdrawal has only gotten worse. He’s barely touched the leaves I gave him for the pain days ago. I think he wants to die.”

“Hell have his chance soon enough,” Uthalion said, glancing again to the edge of the slope worriedly. “I should have listened to you, outside of Caidris,” he said as he turned his gaze to his old friend. “I’m sorry for that.”

Vaasurri nodded slowly, his gray-green eyes gleaming in the firelight.

“No regrets now,” he said quietly. “Almost there.”

“Almost there,” Uthalion whispered, fearing what the next day might bring.

@-
****

Ghaelya sat in the dark beyond the fire’s light, gazing up to the long divide between the swirling, dark clouds over the Lash and the clear, darkening skies over the

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lands: deep blue and muted to the north, purpled and clear to the south. She rubbed her hands gently, tracing the rough edges of scratches, testing the tenderness of new bruises along her arms. All the while she knew that somewhere, just to the west of where she sat, her sister waited for her, as did the monstrous beings of the Choir and likely the creature that had somehow made them into things of nightmare.

It had proven difficult admitting to the others that she needed rest and stopping herself long enough to consider sitting—even longer to contemplate eating, which she had done sparingly, nibbling at bits of dried fruit and venison. Those were luxuries she felt she neither could afford nor really deserved, though without them she would be useless to her sister. So she sat and waited impatiently for sleep to claim her.

She had thought briefly of speaking with Uthalion, thanking for him for bringing her so far on little more than faith. But at the sight of his haunted eyes, she turned away, feeling foolish. Vaasurri had watched her with a guarded expression, saying little more than was necessary. She could sense a tension with the killoren that she regretted.

Brindani moaned in his sleep nearby, muttering unintelligibly as he tossed and turned. His tortured voice, rasping quietly and rattling deep in his chest, made her wince; the half-elf looked much the worse for their long journey. She pitied him, though she hated herself for doing so, knowing full well that without him she wouldn’t have made it here. Given the chance to do things over again, she still would have accepted his help, despite the consequences.

She had used the last of her water cleaning his wounds, leaving only a small sip to slake her thirst before replacing his bandages. His wrists were covered in spidering blue veins, the skin of his forearms almost transparent. A patch of raw skin on the back of his neck had spread to his

shoulder, taking on a familiar pale texture that caused her to shudder and turn away.

Biting her tongue, she saved her rage, storing it away for Tohrepur. She was angry at herself for caring what happened to the half-elf, but more angry for not wanting to care. She had no room for regret, not yet, not until she found Tessaeril and fixed the rift between herself and the better person her twin had always pushed her to be.

She rested her head upon her knees, staring into the middle-distance until her eyelids grew heavy. Darkness and light flickered before her eyes, and she caught the sound of her own breathing, deep and throaty, bordering on a light snoring. Gasping softly she sat up straight, realizing what she was doing. She was suddenly aware of the profound silence that had fallen around her.

“The dream,” she whispered, lucid and aware. For a moment she doubted that she dreamed at all until the gentle lapping of heavy waves drew her attention to the north and the vast inland sea spreading out across where the Lash had been. The rolling surf of the blue-black mirror of water nearly reached her feet, and a soft, white sand beach stretched from east to west. An eerie singing echoed faintly from the sea, the song sounding like a rusty nail pulled skillfully down the length of a harp string. In the sand, tiny pale figures writhed, sliding over one another and moving in a strange sinuous rhythm to the tune of the song.

She pulled away from the living shore, turning to see Brindani lying on his back, his black glassy eyes reflecting the light of the stars as he quietly gasped for air, surrounded by pulsing-red flowers. He was trying to speak. Uthalion and Vaasurri were gone, and the campfire burned with a green light that rolled and wavered slowly, as if underwater.

Beside the fire she saw her sword, its heavy blade shining dully in the light. A dripping coat of blood covered it and pooled around the point. Crawling closer, Ghaelya reached

out for the hilt and paused, her hands covered in blood as well. She tried to wipe it away to no avail; her fingertips dripped crimson on the ground and each drop sprouted small red blooms. The little flowers spread, leading her eyes in a long string to the shoreline, where she found the familiar bright eyes, bursting with fleshy red flowers watching her. A blue-black silhouette lounged half on the sand, half in the water.

“Tess?” she asked, leaning forward and squinting in the green light of the fire. “I’m coming, Tess. I’ll find you!”

The silhouette slowly withdrew into the tide until only its crimson eyes were visible among the waves. The tiny, writhing figures in the sand bent their bodies toward the figure in the water, their red mouths open wide and their whispering voices joining the haunting song.

“Can you hear the song, sister?” Tessaeril asked from the water.

“I can! I can hear the song!” Ghaelya answered, shouting as the song grew louder. “Is it you? Are you singing?”

“Did you bring your sword?” Tessaeril asked.

“I did,” Ghaelya replied and glanced at the weapon as if in a trance. The blood on its blade began to spread into the green fire, hissing as a sweet scent rose in thin tendrils of smoke, “But it’s covered in blood.”

“It’s always blood,” Tessaeril answered, her eyes disappearing in the depths of the Mere. “One way or another, always.”

Ghaelya turned to Brindani. Hearing his words repeated by her sister sent chills down her arms, and she shuddered. But the half-elf was gone, replaced by a growing mound of pulsing flowers whose crimson nectar ran freely into the sand and mingled with the surf.