stagnant water and death. Her skin tingled uncomfortably as she sat up and brushed the filth from her face, a dim memory instinctively guiding her back to the present and the bottom of the pit, though the strange dream sat heavily in her thoughts.
“Something… Something in the water,” she whispered.
“Ghaelya?”
Uthalion’s tirfW? vrvirp pnllaH Hnum 4-n ko*. 44iWMTiTk VtT cloud of buzzing insects, and she hesitated, saying nothing and shivering in the dark. She gripped the sides of her head, assuring herself of the solid reality around her, trying to sort through the course of the dream.
Through it all, she felt a grim certainty.
Through finding her voice and calling back to the human, through climbing out of the pit and breathing fresh air, through each new moment that passed, she was certain that Tessaeril was alive and waiting for her. She dreaded the idea with a quiet shame, however, for she was as yet unsure if simply being alive was for the best.
Uthalion stumbled free of the vine-trees, wiped the mud from his hands, and glanced back across the sea of waving plants before putting a safe distance between them and himself. He collapsed to his knees in the tall grass, wild eyed and breathing heavily. He pressed his hands hard into the ground, pushing dirt between his fingers purely for the sensation, to feel the solidity and find control over his own faculties.
The song had taken him, drowned him in the darkness of the pit, and he had. been unable to turn away, longing to stay forever in its embrace. He spat, repulsed by the idea, violated by a will that was not his own arid yet one that could not be ignored. He could still imagine the surging tune digging into his mind before abruptly ending, leaving an empty space that seemed to shatter his ability to reason the difference between reality and dream.
He closed his eyes as a spinning vertigo threatened to make him sick, but he held on, willing his heart to slow its rapid beating. Only when he had regained some manner of control, a better awareness of his surroundings, did he look to Ghaelya.
She sat just beyond the wide grove, shivering as she whispered to herself, shaking her head and gesturing as though she argued with someone.
“Madness,” he muttered and looked away, leaving-the genasi to herself until he could compose his own thoughts into a coherent order. Night still ruled the Akana, and he suspected little time had passed since he had fallen by the edge of the pit though it had seemed an eternity. He dug his fingernails deep into the palm of his hand as he stood and tested his balance, reassured by the dull pain.
“Tess was down there,” Ghaelya said suddenly, looking at him wide-eyed and wringing her hands. The energy lines flowed over her skin, flaring with a soft light, rolling from one pattern to another like a restless tide.
Uthalion felt an urge to take her by the shoulders and shake her, to slap the faint glint of mania from her eyes. He wanted to say she was lying and that she would find nothing of her sister save bones like those they had just crawled through. But he stepped back, his hands at his side to keep them from betraying his better sense.
“She showed me things,” the genasi continued as she rose to her feet. “Horrible things.”
Uthalion backed away again, as if her touch might infect him, flood his mind with insanity and nonsense, though he suspected it was already too late. He found he could not keep his eyes on her for too long, drawn as they were again and again to the dark southern horizon. The song had left him, but the summons remained, a powerful force that took some effort to delay, much less ignore.
“We should keep moving,” he said and turned back to the camp and the others.
“II don’t know,” she replied, her gaze locked on the south as well. “I’m not sure we should. Not anymore.”
“You do know,” Uthalion said, pausing and ignoring the innatural inarinot tn;-xi-11 shining light and unimaginable music might flood across the Akana and set him free of all worry. “Things like these… nightmares, doubt, fear… They do not just go away because you are afraid to face them.” Absently he made a fist, feeling the cool surface of the silver ring on his finger with a twinge of shame. “In the end it all just depends on what you’re willing to live with… or without.”
He cursed the truth that spilled past his hps, sighing quietly and unable to avoid his own hypocrisy. A solemn clarity had settled back into his thoughts, and though it gave him enough to contemplate and wonder what was occurring, it was net enough to cure him of the song’s memory and the familiar tune of his wedding hidden within its strains.
Ghaelya stood still, intently studying the shadowed distances between them and Tohrepur. Uthalion felt as though they steed upon a mystical border, an invisible point of no ratara. Once they crossed into the land beyond, an elemental plain ef stent and frost known as the Lash, there could be mm se cd-guesaing, no turning back.
TeM me,” Ghaelya said. “Have you lived with or without Tahrepwr?”
UthaKan stiffened at the unexpected question, a shock of alarm running down his spine as if even the mention of ht dealings in Tohrepur might awaken the beasts of his past. When nothing came but a soft breeze hissing through the grass, he lowered his eyes to the ground and considered his answer honestly.
“With, I suppose,” he said and started back to the camp, hearing her fall into step behind him. He dreaded her next question almost as much as he willed her to speak it while the brief calm in his spirit lasted.
“What happened there?”
A breath caught in his throat before he could think of how to answer. He imagined how he might answer the question if it were posed by his wife. He could almost hear Maryna’s voice asking it and wondered if, at some point during the time he tried to be her husband again, she actually had. He pictured the narrow, cobblestoned streets of Tohrepur, the scent of salt-stained stones from a time when water lapped at a small fishing harbor on the north end of town, and the seemingly kind guards that had met them at the gate.
“I… WeBrindani and Iwere soldiers once, sellswords marching to the ruins under the gold-promising banner of a greater cause,” he started in a rush, forcing the words out before he could change his mind. “We were to help them battle an aboleth, ancient and far older than those nightmares freed by the Spellplague.” A phantom smell of smoke burned in his nose as he recalled the trailing plumes across the city, the screams, and the chaos, “Even in death its unsuspecting. thralls… just people, twisted and corrupted… The entire city came for us. I called a retreat and never looked back… until Caidris. We met them in Caidris.”
The last he spoke in a hoarse whisper. The memory of that last day was vivid but lifeless, like the mechanical working of a windmill grinding grain. He had done his job and little elsehis heart had not fought with him, but remained injured nonetheless.
“You killed them,” Ghaelya said flatly.
Uthalion did not respond, focusing instead on placing one foot in front of the other, as mechanical as once he’d been. He rarely missed the heartless mind-set of the sellsword, his wife having cured him of his ways for a time, but it had served him well when work needed to be done. He stopped when the faint glow of dying embers came into view.
“It was a mercy,” he said by way of answer. The truth of the statement was only superficial, only the long considered idea of a clear-minded hindsight searching for an answer to ease his mind. He wanted it to have heen mw hut there had been none of that in his actionsonly fear. He glanced at Ghaelya, unsure if he expected judgment or understanding, but she merely nodded and continued on to the camp, her step a little stronger, and her chin a little higher.
“We’ll go on,” she said in passing, and Uthalion felt a weight lifted from his shoulders only to be replaced by yet another. Despite telling her the truth, he sensed the slow crawl of guilt sliding over his soul like mold. Even his truth had served the echoing will of the song.
Wearily he joined the others and climbed back to the rocky perch he’d held before. At first he was intent on resuming his careful watch until sunrise, but his attention turned to the silver ring, the magic that held sleep and nightmare at bay. It was the one treasure he’d rescued from Tohrepur, and had meant to sell it at Airspur, to make up for the gold he had never received from the Keepers of the Cerulean Sign.
Ghaelya sat wide awake and scanning the grassland, her watery eyes catching the light of a reborn campfire as if flames could not escape her gaze, no matter the direction she turned.
Resigned, Uthalion laid back and secured his sword, stared up at the crimson streaked darkness, and whispered a prayer to whatever benevolent power might be listening. With a slow, torturous pull, the silver ring slipped free of his finger, and many days of lost sleep descended upon him, hungrily dragging him down into a quiet
