James Davis - The Restless Shore

“Nothing of them either, though I’m not sure I’d know them if I saw them.” Brindani looked back to the edge of the forest, wondering if they were watching from the shadows, waiting for the dark. Looking askance at her, he asked, “Why do you think they chase you?”

She looked back at the distant line of trees and shook her head, shrugging slightly.

“I killed one of them, when they took Tess,” she said hesitantly. “Vengeance, perhaps?”

“Why not kill you then? ” he asked in turn, certain that she was hiding something, that maybe she had dreamed more answers than she was willing to part with. “Why would they leave with your sister and then come back for you?”

“I don’t know,” she answered shortly, fixing him with a hard stare before striding away, pointing at the Spur. “Go and ask them if you wish.”

Letting the matter drop, he collected his pack and held it close to his chest. As he squeezed it, water leaked out, soaking his hands and spilling onto the grass. Reaching in, he found the silkroot pouch and placed his hand on little more than a mushy clump. Squeezing his eyes shut, he let it drop and struggled to collect his racing thoughts.

“Ruined,” he muttered. Tremors tried to reclaim his clenched fists.

He had stumbled crossing the wide stream last night, too slow to react when the kaia came. Worse he had dropped his torch in the water. He paused as a cold bead of sweat ran down his brow, chilling him-the first herald of the gut-wrenching pain to come. Carefully he opened his eyes, scanning the grassland and the various flowers that grew nearby.

“Useless,” he whispered, seeing nothing that might help him. He closed his eyes again, the familiar ache already beginning to grow behind them. He tried to clear his mind, hoping he might hear the song again, drifting as it did from the south, soothing him with wordless promises. But it was silent, and he cursed it for hiding from him.

Catching sight of movement from the west, he squinted through the sunlight and saw Uthalion speaking with Vaasurri.

“He will get us to Tohrepur … He has to,” he said under his breath. The first needles of pain pricked at his stomach as his hands shook and absently fidgeted with blades of grass. Ghaelya paced at the edge of the narrow field, the land dropping off steeply beyond her, and he relaxed somewhat. He nodded, knowing the song that had lured him to her outside Airspur would come again, that he would find it wherever she went, and that it would fulfill its promise. Looking back to Uthalion, he whispered, “Of all those we fought at Caidris, of all the graves we left behind … There is one grave left to dig …”

“Do you trust them?” Vaasurri asked.

Uthalion studied the waking pair that had disturbed his mostly quiet life in the Spur. The half-elf sat silently in the distance as Ghaelya paced the edge of the rise, staring out at the southern lands. Uthalion had tried to ignore the spectacle of the Akana himself, unmoved by its savage beauty.

“Not sure it matters now, but I’d be lying if I said yes,” he answered at length. “One’s got too many secrets, and the other one … Well, the other one is due for a reckoning.”

Vaasurri tilted his head curiously.

“Which is which?” he asked.

“Take your pick,” Uthalion answered and eyed the edge of the Spur, still able to feel the moment of death that had loomed over him before dawn. It had been many years since things had been so clear for him, a clarity it seemed only death was capable of summoning. He shifted the heavy waterskins he carried from one shoulder to the other and looked to the killoren. “I suppose we should help them … So far as they deserve our help at least.”

Uthalion tasted the lie on his tongue as soon as he’d spoken it. At dawn, while the others slept, he’d stared into the sketchbook of plants and animals he’d kept up for years. He’d knelt down by new specimens he’d never seen bloom before on the Akana, and he had ignored both, his thoughts traveling deep into the shadows of the Mere-That-Was.

He’d considered leaving them all as the sun had crested the horizon, setting out for Tohrepur alone. He’d told himself it was finally time to go back and face the ruins, had convinced himself he needed to see that nothing had survived the Keepers’ assault. But in the end he feared it was the memory of the song that had driven him to such an impulse.

“Then we’ll need to move soon.” Vaasurri’s voice stirred Uthalion from his darker thoughts.

“Yes,” Uthalion replied. “We should get as close as we can to the Wash before dark.”

“I suspect dark will bring those hounds, the dreamers,” Vaasurri said and caught Uthalion’s eye. “They’re after Ghaelya. I don’t know why, but there’s more prey in the Spur than just one genasi girl … Their pursuit has nothing to do with mere hunger.”

Uthalion nodded slowly, eyeing the shadows of the Spur casually, but seeing far beyond the trees and the foothills of the mountains, looking instead toward Airspur and Maryna.

“I agree,” he said distractedly, adding under his breath, “Beyond mere hunger.”

“Perhaps we’ll find out more when she’s ready,” Vaasurri said and headed toward the waiting pair. But Uthalion barely heard his old friend, torn between two directions: north and south.

When he considered south, he saw only the end of the journey: an unremarkable collection of ruins called Tohrepur, once a small city on the edge of vast inland waters. It had been standing six years before and would stand for many more, crumbling slowly to dust until only the memory of a city remained, not enough to disturb a soul.

As he stared north, another ruin caught his mind’s eye, though that one had been constructed of love. Unlike Tohrepur, the ruins of his marriage might yet be saved, though he did not know how to repair the rifts opened between the two of them. Unlike Tohrepur, he knew Maryna would not grow old waiting for him-and he knew he couldn’t go back yet, couldn’t make the same mistakes twice.

Uthalion needed to see Caidris and Tohrepur, to kick the dust, to see the dead, and bury his nightmare once and for all. He turned south and truly looked upon the southern lands of the Akana.

He recalled a particular flower in the Spur that lured flies into a sticky, foul-smelling trap, drowning them in its green gullet. Such was the northern shore of the Akana, sparkling and pretty, lulling the unwary into a world touched by the throes of a dying goddess. The morning sun never shone on the waiting teeth or the hidden poison, never dulled its shine enough for one to see the razor’s edge of a graceful crystal. The swift little birds never sang of the terrors beyond the north shores, their tiny beaks too full of a bounty of carrion to bother with warnings. The Akana was a perfect illusion, but, he supposed, no more than many other places in the world.

He thought of Vaasurri and recalled one of the sayings of the killoren as he stared through the shine and the glitter of the Akana.

“It is all a road to death,” he whispered and strode toward the others, his mind a bit clearer, his purpose more determined. “And it is all a road to life. It is the blood, and it is the bloom.”

Giant crystals rose from the tall grass, twisted and shining. Motes drifted over the grassland like storm clouds made of glass and greenery, filled with noisome birds and dragging shadows beneath them. Ghaelya had heard the crystals called Mystra’s Tears, and had dreamed of them most recently, like a landmark she was to search for and that she was afraid to look upon. Afraid because if she confirmed where she stood, the dream would evolve, change, and begin to show her other places. It was not the places she feared so much as the things she could only half remember when awake.