Marsheila Rockwell - Skein of Shadows

As the blue elemental ring encircling the airship hummed to life, Sabira could just make out the tiny figures moving about the deck. She wondered if any of them could see her-if any of them were even looking.

“Onatar’s cold forge, but I wish I had a spyglass,” she muttered.

Something passed in front of her face, hovering a hair’s breadth from the tip of her nose. She pulled her head back to focus and saw it was the requested spyglass, being offered to her by the red-armored warforged.

“My lady commands,” he said with a bow.

Sabira took the proffered glass and held it up to her eye. Suddenly it was if she were standing on the deck of the Wayfinder’s airship, not on top of a pillar over more than a hundred feet away. She could see Kupper-Nickel standing near the wheelhouse, talking to the Lyrandar pilot. If only there were some way to get his attention…

“Gred-” Damn it, what was she supposed to call him? “Make your sword flame up again!”

“It doesn’t work that way,” the dwarf protested, drawing the blade to show her. “See, first I have to prime it, like this, then I have to hit some-”

Sabira tossed the spyglass back to Jester and yanked the hilt from Greddark’s surprised grasp. Then she whirled, slamming the flat of the blade up against Guisarme’s back with an echoing clang. The short sword erupted in flames, and Sabira pulled it back before it could harm the warforged. Then she began waving it back and forth over her head.

“Jester, the spyglass! Do they see us?”

The red warforged put the glass up to his rubylike eye and peered toward the tower.

“I don’t believe-no! I mean, yes! The warforged sees us! He’s pointing and yelling at someone!”

The airship turned and began heading toward them.

Sabira thumbed the same button Greddark had used to prime the alchemy blade to extinguish the flame and handed the sword back to him with a satisfied smile. Then she turned to Guisarme.

“Sorry ’bout that,” she said with a small, apologetic shrug. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I have no doubt.” The warforged’s tone was noncommittal, but Sabira thought she detected a trace of sarcasm.

“Glad we’re all still friends,” Skraad interrupted, “but do you think we could see about something a little more important, like getting the rest of this crossbow bolt out of my arm?”

As Greddark sheathed his blade and moved over to examine the wound, the orc looked at Sabira.

“Oh, and by the way-that fee we talked about? You’re gonna need to double it.”

Mol, Barrakas 9, 998 YK

Zawabi’s Refuge, Xen’drik.

The sky was just shading from amethyst into rose as Kupper-Nickel’s airship left the ocean behind and began its lofty passage over the sands of the Menechtarun. Even this early, Sabira could feel the heat rising up from the desert below. If it was this bad in the air, she could only imagine how much worse it would be on the ground, once the sun actually rose. She hoped the airship would follow the coastline the rest of the way to the Skyraker Claws and Trent’s Well. The towering mountains, still a good day’s flight away to the west, were already a blue-black smear against the lightening sky.

To her surprise, though, the airship turned south, heading deeper into the gold-orange sea of dunes. She crossed the deck to the wheelhouse and found the Wayfinder giving instructions to the Lyrandar pilot, a half-elf woman who didn’t look too pleased at being told how to do her job.

“Why are we heading into the desert?” Sabira asked. “Wouldn’t it be faster-and cooler-to just keep flying over the ocean until we reach the mountains? Then turn inland once we get there?”

Kupper-Nickel had shown them the map shortly after he’d rescued them from the burning pillar in the Stormreach Marketplace. Trent’s Well was located at the base of the Skyrakers, which formed the northwestern border of the Menechtarun, separating the desert from the Barren Sea. The excavation site was on the southern face of the mountains, so it seemed logical that they would follow the path she’d just described. There was no reason to go inland any sooner, and plenty of reasons not to.

“You are awake.”

Sabira blinked at the warforged’s statement of the obvious, then realized he was expressing surprise at seeing her up so early. Since the living constructs didn’t need to rest themselves, the sleeping habits of other races seemed to be a constant source of fascination for them.

This wasn’t the first day of the trip she’d been awake at this Hostforsaken hour; far from it. Her sleep had been restless ever since they got to Xen’drik, and her dreams had become more vivid and intense the farther south they’d gone. Awful scenes of Tilde being overwhelmed by vague, faceless creatures in some dark cavern, her screaming face made nightmarish in the nacreous glow of fungus that was the only source of light in the depths. Of the sorceress cocooned in bloody webs and strung up over a bottomless pit, her blonde hair hanging down over her face like some ghastly parody of a bridal veil-or a funeral shroud. Of her turning to look accusingly at Sabira, who was incorporeal in this dreamworld and helpless to do anything more than watch as something devoured Tilde from within in the space of a few agonizing moments, leaving only her eyes staring out of a grinning skull-brown eyes that were the mirror image of Ned’s.

And then she was in another cavern, this one in Korran’s Maw in the Mror Holds, and it was Leoned who hung there, not Tilde, wrapped in chains instead of silk and dangling over a pool of scorching magma. He stared at her with that same accusing look, begging her to save him even as the roof collapsed and he plunged to his death in the magma below, his cries of “Save me, Saba!” echoing in her ears, even though he’d never uttered those words in life.

But that wasn’t the worst part. Because, in the dream, as he hit the bubbling surface of the molten rock, his features changed yet again. She’d woken up three nights in a row now with the sight of Elix’s face disappearing beneath the magma, his hazel eyes filled with angry recrimination.

“Yes, I’m awake,” she said, giving herself a mental shake. These weren’t the first nightmares she’d had, and with the life she led, they weren’t likely to be the last. And even if they were some of the worst she’d ever experienced, they were still just figments of an overworked, overtired imagination, and worth no more attention. “Now, why are we going inland?”

“I received word from Wayfinder ir’Kethras in the night. He is not at Trent’s Well, as I had thought, but in Zawabi’s Refuge, a small oasis just south of us. We will meet him there, and you can continue your journey overland.”

“Overland?” Sabira asked incredulously. “Why in the name of Dol Dorn’s notched blade would we want to do that?”

“Traveler’s Curse,” the Lyrandar pilot supplied. “I’m none too happy going as far inland as the oasis, but at least the effects there seem minimal. There’s no way I’d go all the way to the Claws by airship overland. Even flying over the sea to get there was going to cost three times my normal fee.”

Sabira had heard of the curse, of course-you couldn’t travel anywhere in Xen’drik and not know about it. The time- and distance-twisting magic was named not for how it supposedly affected those journeying into the heart of Xen’drik, but for the Traveler, the Sovereign God of Chaos and Change. Though why the god would choose to visit his discord in such a direct way only on the jungle continent and not across the face of Eberron was anyone’s guess. Perhaps it was some remnant of the ancient war between dragons and giants that had shattered Xen’drik so many millennia ago.