accept the disintegration of his family, acting among his friends as though all were normal.
She thought of these things and caught herself avoiding the idea of what she could find in the cavern that issued a music so sweet she’d heard it in her dreams and followed it beyond all reason for the brief hope of finding her sister again. She feared the blood her last dream had prophesied. Swallowing her fear, she took, a step into the clearing.
“I’m coming, Tess,” she whispered.
I know.
Her sister’s voice stunned her; gliding along inside the singing, it filled her mind. She took another step, her boot disappearing in the smoky mist-grass that filled the clearing. The sudden sense that she was walking on air twisted her stomach with vertigo, but she continued, ripples radiating out from her boots and lapping at the edges of the spires.
“Tess?” she said hoarsely. lean hear you.
Screams split the night air. The ground shook, and she crouched defensively, her sword turning in a circle and shining in the moonlight. It reflected in the eyes of a figure sitting on the opposite side of the cavern. Rising hope quickly faded as she made out the crouching form of Vaasurri, his black-green gaze fixed with a solemn sorrow.
“It was her song that called us here, a song of the Feywild, I should have known,” he said, staring down into the shadows of the cavern and shaking his head. “The song of a sirine, transformed by the Spellplague into a song of ruin, of nightmares made flesh.”
“No,” Ghaelya blurted out, disbelieving. “It was Tess… I know it was her.”
“An accident, perhaps fate,” the killoren said, his dark eyes rising, “Your sister, she must have run away from the Choir, tried to make her way through the crystals and… Well, I will not stand in your way.”
Just a bit farther.
Tessaeril’s voice pulled at her, drew her closer to the cavern with a gentle tug that threatened on the edge of near desperation. Hesitantly she continued, looking between the dark and the killoren, realizing that the worst of her imagination over the past tenday could become horrid reality in the next few heartbeats. She took a deep, calming breath as the fear in the song passed, giving way to an almost undetectable sorrow.
She gripped the edge of the cavern, and looked down to a rocky path leading into an ethereal, glowing pit of shadows and reflected light. The wet rock walls glistened and smelled of brine, and flowers bloomed inside. She lowered herself over the side, hanging by the fleshy vines as Vaasurri appeared over her.
“Do not touch her, no matter what,” he warned. “I suspect that’s what the Choir wants.”
Mystified and unnerved by the emotion on the killoren’s features, she merely nodded-and continued her descent. The son? was focused within the cavern, almost visible as a wavering haze that eddied around her and gushed outward into the sky. She slipped on the vines a few times, her nerves causing her to make simple mistakes as she felt for the cavern floor with the toe of her boot. Setting down on the rocks, she crouched and crawled forward into the ephemeral, glittering light.
Vines squished wetly beneath her hands and led her to a viscous mass that dominated the large cavern. About to search the waters for the source of the song, she noticed a network of branching veins that spread and pulsed rhythmically through the mass. Sluggish waves roiled through the giant, watery body that was curled up before her, rippling like an underground pool. The vague shape of limbs, creases and folds suggestive of a lost anatomy, gave an impression of femininity, of soft curves and once delicate features.
The air hummed, distorted and dreamlike around the slumbering form, a constant song. Or perhaps it was the memory of a song once sung, still repeating itself over and over until fixed in place, a force flooding from the soft blue flesh. Vines fanned outward from the back of the cavern, a network of tangles and knots that crawled the walls in thick, ropey strands. They lay across the surface of the being, framing a large face that stared sightlessly toward the ceiling, occasionally shifting left or right in languid movements that shook the entire mass. Watery eyes, deep blue-black pools in the blue, rolled and turned, lost in a dream.
Ghaelya was frozen, trying to take in the sight of the creaturethe sirine she decided, for Vaasurri’s word for it was as close as she might imagine could fit. She realized she had stopped breathing and gasped a long breath, the sound echoing in the chamber. The sirine took no notice, the radical changes in her form too extreme, the changes too great to support consciousness. The buzzing air vibrated across Ghaelya’s skin in a quick tempo of sound. She was reminded of the cavern outside Caidris, I and the deep temple in the warrens of the araneaplaces of bones and savage beauty.
The memory struck her with such force that she stumbled backward and leaned against a rock as she realized what she had truly seen. Few bones decorated the walls that she could see, but the handful or more that were visible made familiar patterns. They adorned the walls of a sirine’s home, once deep beneath the waves of the Akanamere, waters stolen by the land-shaping earthquakes of the Spellplague.
“She was trapped,” Ghaelya whispered, wide-eyed as the long years of the sirine’s imprisonment became apparent. She shivered, feeling eyes upon her even as she turned to the rising shadow on her right.
The gUttering blue-black eyes caught her and held her still as Teseaeril’s face appeared in the ethereal light of the cavern. The bright orange energy lines of her sister’s fire were gone, replaced with jagged designs. of pulsing green. Fleshy vines wove in and out of her pale blue flesh as she pulled herself along the rocks at the sirine’s edge. Her blue lips trembled, mouthing silently, the song an unstoppable torrent flowing from between them. A knot formed in Ghaelya’s throat, both relieved and repulsed by the sight of her sister, but she leaned forward, shaking her head slowly in disbelief.
Tessaeril’s torso, unclothed and bound by dark tentacles of vine, was cut off at the waist. Beneath the almost translucent flesh of the sirine, Ghaelya could make out a faint silhouette of bone, perhaps the shape of lost legs. Shock kept her from crying, left her eyes dry of tears as she fought to understand what she was seeing. Tessaeril supported herself with a wet hand upon the rock, her long, webbed fingers straining with the effort as she tried to speak. Her teary eyes were unbound by the shock that held Ghaelya in thrall.
She spoke softly at first, her voice an undertone to the song as she found the will to form words in its haunting tune. The song lessened for several heartbeats, as if being drained by Tessaeril’s Use of its spellplague amplified power, but it bore no compulsion, no demands beyond the ability of her will to resist. The sounds gathered, fighting their way through melody until the words formed and stole quiet shock from Ghaelya’s mind, hurling her headlong into nightmare.
Kill me.
Before Uthalion could react to Khault’s sudden rage, Brindani charged forward. His sword flashed through Khault’s reaching arms, stabbed at tentacled growths, and drove the broken farmer back to the edge of the clearing with a vengeance. Uthalion circled the blur of writhing limbs and quick steel, the whistle between his teeth, keeping Khault effectively blind. But Brindani was too close, too easy a target for the singer’s fury.
Khault roared, the force of his voice slamming into Uthalion’s chest like an anvil and throwing him back to the edge of the crystal forest. He fought to regain his breath, and was scrambling to get back on his feet when Brindani landed nearby, slammed into the low wall of the clearing. Khault, bleeding and growling, slithered back into the shadows of the city, crouching low as he shook his scarred head and spat sweet-scented blood on the ground.
Brindani’s black eyes rolled as he sat up, leaning forward on his arms like an animal waiting for a challenger to reappear. His skin had grown paler, and arcing blue veins raced in thick knots through his wrists, creeping up along his arms. The half-elfs muscles bunched and twitched uncontrollably as he raised his sword; blood ran across his fist from new and old wounds alike.
“Brin?” Uthalion asked, sitting up and cautiously pulling away from the infected half-elf.
“I’m fine,” Brindani answered. “Now go find Ghaelya and finish this.”
“I won’t leave you here,” Uthalion replied, cursing as he realized he’d dropped the aranea’s whistle. “Not while those things are”
“You will leave me here!” Brindani growled, his voice rumbling dangerously as he flashed Uthalion a black- eyed stare. “I’ve run from this place a thousand times. This is where I should be, and while I still have the ability to choose, I choose to fight!”
“Brin”
“Go!” the half-elf snarled, his eyes softening for a breath. “She’ll need you more than me. Get her out of here.”
