Keith Baker - The fading dream

Drix took the lead, and Thorn let the rope play out to give him a little room. The ground shifted beneath her feet: sand. Once she had a hand free, she drew Steel.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” she said. “But I’m thinking Drix had the right idea.”

I can hear you perfectly, Steel said. The world around Thorn was silent, but his whisper was still clear in her head. Are you having difficulty?

“Thank Onatar for the smith that made you,” Thorn said. After the endless silence, the familiar voice was an anchor. “I can’t hear a damned thing.”

Fascinating. It must be some sort of mental effect-an illusion of sorts, affecting your ability to perceive your surroundings. Have you been experiencing other delusions?

“You might say that.” Although she couldn’t hear them, she felt twigs crack beneath her feet, and in her mind’s eye, they were bare ribs, bones picked clean and strewn across the beach. The stone she knocked out of her path felt like a skull. Flashes of sorrow and anger flowed through the back of her mind, and she wondered if that was what Drix meant by his emotional winds, if the feelings were literally moving across the landscape.

Perhaps you can’t see it, Steel said, but you are walking across a field of bones. I’m sure that’s not the best thing for your mental state.

While his voice was a comfort, Thorn found it hard to focus on it. Drix was just ahead of her, a shadow in the mists. And once again, that figure began to change. Thorn could see only the silhouette, but she remembered the woman from her dreams. Her own reflection, wrapped in red leather and silk.

“You’ve had your time, Nyrielle.” It was Thorn’s own voice, cold and cruel. “Now it’s my turn.”

For a moment the mists around her shifted. She could see the tunnels deep below Sharn, the chamber where she’d killed the Son of Khyber. She remembered that struggle in her mind as the spirit within her fought to get out…

Then she walked into Drix. He’d stopped moving, kneeling down as if to lace a boot. And still the voices whispered in the back of her mind. Was it truly him? Was he possessed? She couldn’t hear a thing, could barely see him, and she held out her hand just in time to keep Cadrel from walking into her. Yet there was no sign of tension in the shadow, no fear. And for a moment she saw the faintest pulse of light-the stone in his chest. Had he stumbled? She reached out to take his hand, to help him to his feet. He pressed something into her palm, a small disk of metal. She couldn’t see any details through the mist, but it was thicker and larger than a coin. He closed her fingers around it and disappeared into the fog, drawing out the rope again.

“Steel?” She touched the tip of the dagger to the disk, using her thumb to trace a cross on his hilt. It was a signal: threat analysis.

The mists themselves are charged with magical energy, he said. If the object you are holding has any mystical aura, it’s being hidden.

She closed her eyes. “Just keep talking, Steel,” she whispered. “Tell me what you see.”

And he did: a beach covered with bones, a long passage up the hill. Thorn could feel her enemies all around her. She could feel the shard embedded in her neck as it began to burn against her bone, hot and angry. She ignored it all, just concentrating on Steel’s voice, on the give and tug of the rope, and on the object in her hand. It was slightly warm, a faint echo of Drix’s touch. She could feel engraving on the surface, a hinge. A moment more and she found the latch, and the disk split open. It was a locket. Running her fingers along the edges, she imagined what might be inside. She knew her father had carried an image of her and Nandon into war, though he’d fallen far from the place she found herself. Was it a child? A lover? A parent? She thought of all of the people she wanted to remember, the people whose faces mattered to her, and between those thoughts and the calming voice of Steel, all the despair and the fear faded away.

Then she stepped out of the mists.

The return of her senses was staggering. In the mist every sense had been dulled, but outside she was flooded with sensation: the scuffing of her feet against the ground, the sound of a hinge squeaking as a door swung in the wind, Drix’s voice, the breeze against her skin, the smell of dirt and sweat and rotting wood. She closed her eyes and ground her teeth together, trying to drive it all away. Steel was whispering, Drix was talking, and it was all too much.

“Be quiet!” she roared. She took a deep breath and pushed it away, slowly drawing in each piece, one sensation at a time: Essyn Cadrel, stepping out of the mists behind her, the scent of damp soil, an utter lack of any animal sounds-no birdsong, no scurrying rodents-Drix just ahead of her, wood structures channeling the wind. They were in a town. The faint breeze blew, cool and carrying an all-too-familiar scent.

She opened her eyes and tightened her grip on the rope binding her to Drix and Cadrel. A quick slash with Steel severed the connection. “Both of you. Back. Hide in the mists if you have to.”

“I wouldn’t.” She’d heard that voice only once, but Thorn remembered it clearly. “My soldiers are already in there, waiting for you.”

Cazalan Dal stepped out from the shadows of a shattered building, into the light of a cold-fire streetlamp.

“Welcome to Seaside, my lady. I’m glad you could make it.”

The scar running down his face bent with his smile, and his dark sword took shape in his hand.

Seaside, the Mournland B arrakas 23, 999 YK

Once upon a time, the streets of Seaside had been filled with life and laughter. It had been a resort before the Last War, and even during the war, it was a favored destination for Cyran sailors seeking to forget the terrors of battle. The people of Cyre had always been proud of their unbreakable spirits, their ability to sing and laugh even in the darkest times.

No one was laughing in Seaside that day.

Thorn had heard of places in the Mournland where the dead wouldn’t rot, where you could find soldiers whose bodies were perfectly preserved, still bearing the wounds from a battle fought five years past. Not so in Seaside. They’d crushed bones on the beach, but there were no bones to be seen in the city, only clothes. A dress was spread across the cobblestones in front of Thorn, its bright blue and yellow pattern muted in the dim light. A colorful parasol lay a few feet away, the handle wedged between two stones. Even as she was evaluating the threat, Thorn realized that there were clothes spread all around the street, gowns, uniforms, even the gleaming mound of an abandoned chain mail shirt. There were boots and gloves. It was as though the people had vanished completely, leaving only their clothes behind.

Cazalan Dal stood in the center of the empty street. A silk scarf was caught beneath his boot, crimson folds fluttering in the faint breeze. The soldier was dressed in the same black uniform he’d worn in Wroat. He held his dark sword in his right hand, and a wand in the left, leveled at Thorn and her companions.

“Well, this is a surprise,” Thorn said, keeping her tone light. It wasn’t entirely. Ever since Zane had told her that the bodies hadn’t been recovered in Wroat, she’d had an uneasy feeling about the Covenant of the Gray Mist. Right then she needed to keep him talking. She traced a cross on Steel’s hilt as she spoke. “Are you saying that you tracked us through the mists?”

“Your boy is good,” the man said. “But this is our calling. Spend enough time in the shadow, and your eyes adjust to the dark.”

Gray hair, gray eyes, Thorn thought. The color of the mists.

“You talk a good game; I’ll give you that,” she said. “But surely you don’t expect us to fall for ‘I’ve got friends hiding in the mists.’ What’s next? A dragon behind the building?”