Brindani’s body through the song. Their exquisite pain ran through him, though it was nothing compared to what he’d done to himself over the years. He endured, but in their chanting exultation, he was shown their shared secret, the source of their reasonless fanaticism and the infection that ruled their bodies. He glimpsed a deep chamber in their minds, adorned with bones, filled with a soft blue glow that glistened like water. A massive blue eye turned sightlessly in the murk as he was torn away from the image and left panting, on his knees before the nightmarish things she had dreamed.
“She,” he whispered.
The creature of the depths, the whisperer of songs and the seductress of drowned sailors. A collector of polished bone, torn from the ocean by the death of a goddess, changed by the blue fire of the Spellplague into a living scourge of dreams. Unbidden tears sprang to Brindani’s eyes as he looked upon the fools that drowned in madness for her now.
It had been a sirine’s song that had called them to Tohrepur, and he’d been as much the fool as any of them.
Uthalion stood strong as the Choir approaehed. None were so bold as Khault; the rest hid among their Flock, excitedly gibbering to themselves and twitching in the shadows. The singing had faded somewhat, though Uthalion could still sense it as if it were intentionally eddying around him, leaving his mind clear and his old sword at the ready. The captain’s blade gleamed sharply, returned to the place where its first wielder had fallen. It again threatened the flesh of abominations, though there were no proud banners to hang over its singular purpose.
Khault stood at the head of the misshapen congregation, his arms bent at odd angles, and his legs lost in a mass of fleshy tentacles that writhed beneath his robes. Deeply stained bandages covered the scarred place where his eyes had sat, though he seemed no blinder than those who looked upon him with disgust and pity. The others, beyond simple descriptions of race or gender, shambled on limbs that only played at being legs. Eyeless faces rose and fell among them, peering over Khault’s shoulders. They murmured, licking torn lips with doubled tongues and absently picking at deep gouges in their flesh.
Uthalion did not flinch at their appearance or waver beneath their eyeless, horrible gazes. He’d had a thousand nightmares far and beyond more terrible than those of the Choir; he had fought such pathetic beasts before. It was what he’d waited for, what he’d foreseen coming all those nights sitting at the window while Maryna slept alone.
This is my place, he thought sadly, I’ve always been here.
“Where is she?” Ghaelya demanded Of Khault. “What have you done?”
The Flock growled and hissed at Khault’s feet, baring sharklike fangs at the genasi. Gasps and sighs filled the tortured throats of the Ghoir as they pointed and craned their necks to hear the genasi’s voice, tasting the air with their long tongues.
“Hush,” Khault intoned. The quiet word buzzed like a swarm of spring-beetles yet crackled like flame with a force that pushed on Uthalion’s chest challengingly. “Save your steel, child,” Khault said and raised a clawed finger to the spires with a growl that parted the assembled dreamers. They revealed a cobblestone path through the crystals. “Go, embrace your twin. It is all that we have ever wanted for you.”
“No!” Brindani spoke up, straining to speak and sweating with the effort. His nose began to bleed, running over his lips and clenched teeth. “Not all that you wanted”
“Quiet,” Khault boomed, and Brindani fell back, gasping and clutching his stomach in pain. Khault turned to Ghaelya. “She calls for you… Can you hear her?”
She hesitated for just a moment, looking between Brindani and the spires. The half-elf shook his head wordlessly, reaching out for her, but even Uthalion could hear the oddly familiar voice whispering through the crystal forest. He saw a woman who’d crossed half the wild frontier of her homeland to find a sister taken. The brief stare between the genasi and the half-elf was heartbreaking, but Uthalion knew her expression, had wOrn it himself onceshe wasn’t coming back, not until things were sorted out elsewhere.
She dashed into the spires without a word, lost in the dark within a heartbeat.
“You will be the first, Captain,” Khault said, stretching his misshapen body sinuously. He grew taller, and more hideous, puckered scars opened and closed, some bearing sharp spines. Uthalion stepped back, turning sidelong to the old farmer and presenting his sword. “When she returns from our Lady’s chamber,” Khault continued, “She will be the Walking Prophet, her sister the Dreaming Voice. Twins blessed by the song. And you will be the first to hear their sineine and to live at their whims.”
“Madness,” Uthalion muttered. But as he looked out across the ruins, the Choir, the mindless Flock, and recalled the power of the song he’d heard for several nights, a song that had drawn him here as surely as many of the things before him, he felt a twinge of fear.
His heart quickened into an even cadence of battle as he turned his wrist in a circle and set his stance solidly. He eyed the gathered host of nightmares, feeling himself once again the madman at the stormfront, the butcher before witless horrors. He glanced at Brindani who had risen, though dark-eyed and ghost-skinned, to stand with sword ready. And when Uthalion looked for Vaasurri, the killoren was gone, having slipped away quieter than a specter’s breath.
“Keep watch over her,” he whispered, and Khault’s head cocked like a bird’s, his blind senses reacting to the slightest noise. Uthalion narrowed his eyes shrewdly and swung his blade in a whistling flourish as his left hand reached back stealthily, hidden from Khault.
“You should have died in that basement, Captain,” Khault thundered, arching his back like a snake preparing to strike. “Leaving you there was the last of my tender mercies.”
The beasts in the streets moaned and growled as they drew away hesitantly, gnashing their teeth and beating — the ground with their fists. Uthalion saw past their fangs and claws, their tentacles and stinging spineshe saw the simple people they’d been and, more importantly, the warriors they had not been.
“You should have died with your wife, Khault,” he replied. “I buried the last of my mercy alongside her.”
Khault’s features twisted in rage. His mouth gaped wide, showing the grips of a very human emotion on an anatomy more suited to the dark depths of a gods-forsaken sea than land. Uthalion smiled cruelly, seeing the man Khault had been still hiding in the beast he’d become. As Khault rose higher, several appendages rose like broken wings from his back, flat growths with tiny barbed mouths at their tips swiftly descending.
Uthalion skipped backward, batting one of the whipping tentacles away as his left hand rose to his lips, a wooden whistle between his fingertips. The tiny instrument, given to him by Chevat of the aranea, blew a single piercing note, barely more than a slight keening in Uthalion’s ears. But its effect on the hordes of Tohrepur was immediate.
Shocked screams spread through the infected assemblage, and thunderous frightened roars shook the ground as the slippery bodies slid back from the piercing whistle. Ears, heightened by exposure to the beguiling song and suddenly cut off from its soothing melody, ran with tiny crimson streams. Chaos reigned as the Flock abandoned their Choir, clawing their way past the pained beasts to seek refuge from the terrible shriek. Khault flinched in pain, stumbling backward, his head turning blindly in confusion for a moment. Then he lurched forward, ignoring the whistle with a rumbling growl.
The air grew thick as Ghaelya ran through the glittering spires, early stars shining in countless reflections all around her. Shapeless fingers breezed over her skin, dug into her flesh with tendrils of ice, and a voice sang to her of fear. A powerful scent of lavender washed over her coldly, and she paused wide-eyed as the vines that led her on twisted and changed. Their deep, rough green became a smooth pale blue that squirmed with life, pulsing with veins and gently writhing in the dirt. The roping stalks slowly converged toward a single point as she followed the broken stone path. Ghostly beams of early moonlight stabbed brightly through the spires, illuminating a laree clearing ahead.
The vines knotted and entwined themselves together, disappearing beyond the edge of a wide cavern in the center of the clearing. The constant song took on a hollow, echoing quality, rising from the ground in waves. She stopped at the perimeter of the crystal forest, trembling, unable to look away from the mouth of the cavern and the web of vines spidering out from its depths.
Approaching slowly, she managed her racing heart, suddenly uncertain of herself. She glanced back the way she’d come, seeing more than just the darkness or the long journey behind her, or even her companions facing the Choir without her. She imagined Airspur and her mother sitting alone in their dark family room, weeping and worrying over the disappearance of her daughters. She pictured her father busying himself with work and unable to
