James Davis - The Restless Shore

“Is that him?” Ghaelya asked, sheathing her blade. “The man you spoke of?”

It seemed Brindani looked right through her for a breath before he blinked and nodded at her question. He motioned to the retreating human, seeming out of sorts as he followed the guide they had sought.

“And he knows the way? He will take us to Tohrepur?” she asked, keeping up. Yet he did not turn to her; he avoided eye contact and appeared lost in some other thread of thought.

“He knows the way.” Brindani muttered at length.

Ghaelya paused at his answer, narrowed her eyes at his back, and shook her head for a moment before continuing, cursing herself quietly. Once upon a time she’d known better than to take a promise at face value; but, she reasoned, she’d taken a chance on the half-elf-it fairly followed to allow him his gamble on the human. Whatever occurred, they were moving south again, and that would serve her well for the time being.

She could hear the dreamers giving chase in the distance, their growls and whines echoing hauntingly. Uthalion guided them through the forest as if he’d lived there all his life, turning swift corners and avoiding sudden drops or hidden patches of thick thorns. His knowledge of the Spur kept them safely ahead of the monstrous pack, but with the dreamers’ speed Ghaelya doubted their distance would last forever. She followed carefully and quietly, keeping a safe distance from the strange human and a close eye on Brindani.

Her attention was so focused on spying any suspicious action from Uthalion, that she almost drew her blade on him when he stopped suddenly and turned with an upraised hand. Brindani approached Uthalion’s position, and both men looked down the edge of a sheer cliff, its bottom lost in darkness.

“After me, count to three,” Uthalion said, looking up at the pair. “Then follow.”

With that he jumped, falling into the black. Ghaelya held her breath, waiting for the sound of an impact, though none came. Brindani looked to her and nodded as if it were perfectly normal.

“You cannot be serious!” she whispered. He placed a hand on her shoulder even as howls erupted close by. Placing a finger to his lips, he secured his sword and dagger and jumped into the dark.

Ghaelya had never been afraid of heights. Airspur was a city of towering structures, some of them suspended freely in the air. Many a thrill-seeking genasi knew how to leap from one district to the next, arresting one’s fall by a window ledge here, a banner-pole there. She had imagined herself as a single drop of rain, flowing and changing, as she had navigated the soaring heights of the city. As graceful and as brave as she might have seemed at home, she always knew where and how to land.

She stepped closer to the cliff’s edge, one foot hovering over the bottomless gulf and her neck stretched, finding her center of balance. She closed her eyes and shook her arms out, loosely hanging her fingers like rolling drops of rain collecting on the petal of a flower. The weight of the inevitable fall flooded her senses and rushed chillingly through her arms. Muffled growls drew nearer; claws scratched at bark and dirt.

Somewhere in the dark below her she felt the singing again, though she could not hear it. It tugged at her, pleaded with her, and for a moment she swooned in its power. Bending her knees slightly, she cursed.

“I’m coming for you, Tess,” she said.

Brindani hit the dirt hard, rolling over the thick roots of a tree and tucking into a crouch. He turned to stand across from Uthalion, watching for the descending form of Ghaelya. He tried not to look at the human, still dazed by the indistinct memories racing through his mind. He kept his eyes skyward, the moonlit dark little more than thin shadows to the sharp eyes his elf mother had given him. The hands he held at the ready-perhaps, he had often mused, the hands of his unknown human father-bore the scars of too many battles.

Born in the battlefield, Brindani thought. Why bother fighting it? You’ll die there too.

Ghaelya appeared falling gracefully through the darkness, her arms outstretched, the pale swirls of energy on her skin burning. He and Uthalion caught her arms. She broke free of Uthalion’s grasp and they rolled across the ground in a tangle of limbs and curses. The roots he had missed before were lodged in the small of his back, the genasi’s weight on top of him. For the briefest of moments he welcomed the pain, until her eyes flashed in anger, and she stood.

The forestmote they had landed upon floated peacefully between the high cliffs of a deep valley in the Spur, drifting eastward so slowly the movement could barely be seen. Brindani looked to Uthalion, surprised and realizing just how long the human had lived in the forest. The skills Uthalion had gathered would be useful.

“Was that really necessary?” Ghaelya asked, leaning against a tree and rubbing her leg. “I won’t be able to run on this now.”

Uthalion glanced at her, annoyed, before turning back to his perusal of the cliffs above, watching for signs of pursuit. Brindani held up the gore-splattered blade of his dagger, the smell of the dreamer’s blood overpowering.

“Smells like an abandoned fish market at high noon,” he said, turning his nose away. “If we’d gone around the cliffs, we might as well have carried torches and sang tavern songs at the top of our lungs. Uthalion just broke the trail.”

Ghaelya raised an eyebrow and nodded in understanding, but was unsatisfied by the answer. “How do we know they won’t follow?”

“We don’t know,” Uthalion answered, turning to face them with his arms crossed. “If they show up again, you can tell them I made a mistake and share a joke at my expense. Until then, I don’t see them making that jump, and the trail is broken.”

“You could have broken my leg,” Ghaelya responded hotly.

“Better than breaking mine,” the human replied as Brindani stood to get between the two. “Besides, people I don’t know break legs every day. Why should I make an exception and care about yours?”

“Uth,” Brindani said, holding up his hands and gesturing to the genasi. “This is Ghaelya. We didn’t come here for a fight, but the last few days we’ve just been … a little on edge. Thank you for helping us.”

“You’re welcome,” Uthalion replied, eyeing the genasi for a moment before facing the half-elf. “Why are you out here Brin? It’s been three years since I told you not to come back.”

Brindani sighed and lowered his hands, having dreaded the moment since entering the deep woods.

“Yes, that you did,” he answered, trying to think of how to continue, how to put into words the insanity he’d been dealing with for the last tenday-not to mention the last three years. A cold sweat had broken out on his forehead, and he quickly brushed it away as a familiar headache returned with a dull throb behind his eyes. Taking a deep breath he forced his trembling hands to his sides, balling them into fists. “I-no, we , came here looking for you. We need your help. There is-”

Howls rang from the forest, increasing in frequency as the dreamers closed the wide circle of their hunt. Uthalion turned back to the edge of the forestmote, and Ghaelya ceased cleaning the blood from her sword to listen. Following the eerie howls was the soft chanting of a powerful voice, its song drifting from sweet and ethereal to the harsh scream of metal scraping on glass. Old pain stabbed at Brindani’s stomach, and his headache grew stronger, but he fought to conceal his discomfort.

“Quick,” Uthalion said, facing him with a look of urgency. “Long story short.”

“We need a guide,” Brindani replied, studying Uthalion’s eyes and ignoring the dim screams trying to escape the recesses of his mind. “A guide … to Tohrepur.”