“Tess?” she muttered in her sleep, a musty scent, of old wood and faint lavender, surrounding her.
A groan escaped Brindani as he awoke. He rolled onto his side and clutched his stomach for long moments before breathing again and carefully sitting up. His entire body trembled in the rain that had become a thin misting, little more than a damp fog. Dark clouds still hung overhead, occasionally growling with soft thunder, and he sighed in relief. Though he was glad the sun hadn’t risen to blind his sensitive eyes, he dreaded the day to come and the day after that.
Dreams of Caidris, still fresh in his waking mind, were more detailed than they had been in some years. He recalled standing in the dusty road of the town square, shaking as the horde from Tohrepur had come shuffling into town from the south. Fellow mercenaries had stood with him, their swords ready and fear on their faces. Their names, forgotten for so long, came back easily enough. There had been Faldrath, a talkative soldier who’d been speechless that night, and Efra, a skilled young woman with old dueling scars. And the farmer, Khault, who’d bravely given them shelter in a deep basement after the first long night of bloodlettiner.
He shook them away, banishing the old faces and the horrible town along with them. He stretched, rising to one knee. Uthalion still lay nearby, mumbling occasionally, but breathing more evenly. The human’s eyes were half-open, not entirely asleep, but seemingly unaware of his surroundings. Ghaelya mumbled incoherently in a fitful sleep, but did not wake, passed out after the night’s exertions. And Vaasurri Brindani looked around curiouslyappeared to be gone.
Alarmed at first, wondering what had happened to the killoren, Brindani slowly realized he was alone. Shaking quietly, his hand drifted to the small lump hidden at the bottom of his pack, a single bit of silkroot the pilfering Vaasurri had missed. He sat still for a long time, longer than he might have several days before. The small piece of his will that desired freedom had grown stronger, a little louder in his thoughts, and enough to be heard within the screaming pangs of his need.
In the end though, no matter how much he wanted to listen, that piece of him was powerless. He cursed himself for not throwing the drug away-‘-for not having the strength to get rid of it. It made him weaker rather than stronger in denying it when temptation was so close.
Quietly he stood, leaving the others and winding his way carefully through the vine-trees to hide himself in the twitching forest and the drifting mist. The early morning scents of rain and grass were sharp to his nose, more vivid, though sickening as a sudden nausea gripped him. He stopped, squeezing his eyes shut and choking down the bile that rose in his throat. In that brief darkness behind his eyelids, he imagined the road north out of Caidris, remembered bidding solemn farewells to those soldiers who had chosen to stay in the little town. He and Uthalion had promised to return one daythey never had.
Opening his eyes, he stared at his boots, willing them to remain still, forcing himself to endure the growing pain in his guts as he contemplated turning around. For the first time in years, he feared finding that quiet, lonely place where he could sit and lose himself in the drug’s fog of buried memories.
“Are the leaves helping?”
Brindani gasped as Vaasurri shifted slightly, revealing himself amid the mist and greenery several paces ahead. The killoren’s eyes had returned to a deep green, their darkness drained away sometime during the night, though they held hidden mysteries that still chilled the half-elf to his core. He exhaled slowly, almost relieved at the interruption.
“Some,” he answered hoarsely. “Enough to get by.”
The lie slipped out so casually he almost believed it, like a reflex to protect his need. He considered for a moment taking the words back, apologizing and telling the truth but he didn’t, still not yet ready to let go. “A brave thing that,” Vaasurri replied and stood straight, comfortable among the vine-trees. He ignored their stinging thorns, and it seemed they somehow recognized him as one of their own. “Few have the strength to abandon the silkroot so readily.”
“Few have good reason,” Brindani said. “I couldn’t risk leading those things, the dreamers, any closer to Ghaelya than I already did.”
As he said the words he felt himself die a little inside, wishing he could be the kind of person to say such things honestly. A sudden flash of pain ripped through his stomach, and he could almost feel the tiny holes in his gut, eroded by use of the drug. He slipped to one knee, accepting the punishment for his lies, as he fumbled at his pack for one of the leaves Vaasurri had given him. Stuffing it into his mouth, he chewed hard, as if the extra force would expedite the soothing effect of the balm.
“The pain will pass in time,” Vaasurri said quietly, laying a hand on his shoulder before moving to join the others.
“Perhaps,” Brindani whispered through clenched teeth as stars erupted before his eyes, leaving him dizzy for several moments. He looked to the south and could almost feel the nearness of Caidris. He knew they would pass through the town, knew it was inevitable, a marker on his and Uthalion’s journey back to Tohrepur. Standing slowly as the pain faded, he wavered a moment before turning back to the little camp.
He made an effort to keep his hands away from the little lump in his pack, folding his arms and wondering who they might find in Caidris, if anyone. He wondered if he could face them, wondered what he might say, what lies he might invent under the dark of yet another storm in a place that had seen one too many.
Coughing and hacking, drops of blood staining his lips and filling his mouth with a coppery taste, Uthalion rolled onto his side and clutched at his chest until the fit subsided. Rubbing his eyes, he blinked, trying to bring the cool morning into focus as memory of the night returned. A broken stone wall was at his back, wind whistling through a hole that had once been a window. The small camp before him was empty save for a discarded cloak and a couple of travel packs.
Ignoring the pain in his chest, he reached for his long sword and found it gone, taken away at some point during his delirium. Wincing, he sat up, braced his boots, and pushed up on the old wall. His eyes darted wildly around for any sign of his companions or, he dreaded, the shaedlings. A stabbing pain accompanied each breath as he staggered forward, spotting his sword near Vaasurri’s pack. Gripping the cold hilt, he recalled a half-remembered dream of black wings and vicious flames, screams mingling with the recurring images of his old nightmare.
The silver ring sat secure upon his finger, though he wondered briefly if its magic had failed him} letting him sleep while the others fought.
At a slight noise he whirled, leveling his sword at the intruder, only to find Vaasurri staring at him curiously down the length of the blade. Breathing a sigh of relief, he lowered the weapon, as Brindani appeared in the killoren’s wake, confusion in the dark-ringed eyes of the half-elf. Vaasurri scanned the area swiftly, seeming alarmed before looking to Uthalion with a grim knowing stare.
“Where’s Ghaelya?” Brindani asked quietly.
Relief faded, and Uthalion stood with a groan, shouldering his pack and sheathing his sword. His body ached, feeling several seasons older than his modest thirty-six, but he was ready to move as Vaasurri studied the ground just outside the small circle of the makeshift camp.
“Vaas?” he asked as Brindani gathered his cloak, wringing the rain from it. Unsurprisingly, the killoren gestured south through the forest of vine-trees. Uthalion nodded. “Let’s go. If we’re lucky, I know where we’ll find her.”
“And if we’re not lucky?” Brindani mumbled.
“Same place,” Uthalion replied and followed the killoren into the thin, twitching forest of thorny trees. Though he held onto a moment of hope, suspecting they might stumble upon the genasi simply answering the call of nature, he quickly discarded the idea as time passed.
He grew accustomed to the popping and creaking of his aching joints, the growing knot of pain in his back from prowling stooped through the low branches of the vine-trees, but the constant stabbing pain in his chest was much harder to discount. The chalky, bitter taste of the wyrmwind filled each hacking cough, bringing with it memories of the ochre wave washinsr over and around him. It curled above him. breaking against the rocky wall of the cliff, blinding him, filling his lungs with burning, and somewhere deep inside he wondered if, just for a moment, he’d let it in.
Choking back another surge of bitter bile, he buried the morbid idea and focused on attempting to find Ghaelya’s path, though his skill at tracking was nothing compared to Vaasurri’s.
Breaking through the edge of the writhing grove, lightning illuminated the pale blue morning, flashing across a
