Keith Baker - The fading dream

Something’s very wrong, Steel said. Their weapons are out, but they aren’t in fighting postures. The wounds… dozens of small wounds.

“What’s that?” Thorn whispered. Something glittered in the neck of the elf: a shard of glass.

A memory rose in her mind. Far Passage. A man falling into a wall of whirling dragonshards. The shards of glass scattered across the hallway suggested an explosion. She studied the area, searching for any signs of danger, any hint of magic or a mundane trap. There was nothing, just blood, glass, and the bodies of the hapless explorers.

She prodded one of the shards of glass on the floor with Steel. There was blood on its edge.

If you’re searching for magical resonance, I don’t sense anything new.

Thorn examined the closest body, the elf woman. From a distance, she’d noticed the glass in her neck; upon closer inspection, she could see that there were other bits of glass buried in her skin, even fragments caught in the links of her chain mail.

Drix stuck his head around the corner. “Can I come in yet?”

Thorn sighed. “Stay there for now, Drix. I think that’s the chamber at the end of the hall. You can follow once I’m there.”

He nodded. “Where’d all the glass come from?”

I suppose if you spend months in the Mournland, an inexplicable pile of broken glass is more unusual than four dead bodies, Steel said.

“I don’t know,” Thorn said. “Just be careful.”

Thorn took a step back, whispering a word of power. Mystical energy surged through her, and she ran forward and leaped up and over the carnage, the power of the spell carrying her farther than muscle alone could manage. It was an easy jump, and she landed on her feet. She paused to examine the hall ahead, searching for any hints of mystical or mundane security, and found nothing.

Then there was a tinkling sound behind her, almost musical. Thorn’s sharp senses warned her of what lay behind her, even as she turned to see with her eyes.

The shards of glass were rising up from the corpses. Fragments of glass floated in the air, spinning and whirling. It was a storm, focused around a central core, and she could see that there were pieces of a fifth body within it-a hand, a head, the rest hidden by the glass. The Orien guard. The man missing from the front gate.

I hate the undead, she thought.

The storm of glass filled the hall, the shards slashing into the corpses scattered across the floor. It flowed slowly toward Thorn. She threw Steel at the heart of the storm, and he flew straight and true, and if the glass wraith even noticed the attack, it gave no sign of it. An instant later Steel was back in her hand. “Any ideas?” she said.

Certainly… send for an exorcist. There’s nothing solid in there to attack. Smashing every shard to powder might render it harmless, but that would be a challenging task.

“You think so?” The storm moved slowly, and Thorn inched back, keeping space between herself and the razor wind. “Could we push through it?” Thorn said, raising Steel.

Not if you want to stay alive, Steel said. You couldn’t possibly survive the passage. The circle chamber is just ahead, and if it follows the typical Orien model, it will have a strong door. Get inside. Seal the portal.

“I think you’re forgetting someone,” Thorn said.

You’re not going to get Drix through.

“We can’t leave without him,” Thorn pointed out, backing slowly away from the whirling glass. “Unless you know how to activate an Orien circle.”

I know that it can’t be done while you’re dead.

Sovereigns and Six, Thorn thought. The glass storm had pressed her almost all the way to the teleportation chamber. There was no more time to think, and none of her tools or spells would affect the spirit.

Even as the thought passed through her mind, she saw a figure silhouetted in the glass. A cry of pain filled the hallway-Drix’s voice. A moment later he stumbled out of the razor cloud. Dozens of slivers of glass were embedded in his skin, and blood was beginning to soak into his rough-spun clothes. A six-inch shard was projecting from his neck, and for a moment Thorn was back at Far Passage, seeing her partner shredded by the whirling dragonshards. Drix should have been dead on his feet. And Thorn could see that he was in agony, barely able to stand.

Thorn caught him as he fell, her strength surging with her anger. She threw the tinker over her shoulder and spun around. The teleportation chamber was just at the end of the hallway, and she sprinted as fast as she could, barely feeling Drix’s weight. The storm was close behind her, and an outlying shard grazed her neck as Thorn launched herself forward. One step… three… ten…

She let Drix fall to the ground as soon as she entered the room. Turning, she threw her full weight against the heavy door, pushing with everything she had. It had been five years since anyone had breached the chamber, and the hinges were stiff from disuse. Thorn strained against the heavy, wooden door, and slowly it began to shift. The storm had just reached the arch as Thorn drove the gate home. A handful of slivers slipped by as Thorn pressed the gate against the frame. As soon as the door was sealed and barred, the glass fell to the ground; whatever magic had brought it to life couldn’t reach through the heavy gate.

She could hear the storm raging outside, tearing into the wooden surface of the door. Seconds passed and it was as fierce as ever; clearly the spirit’s wrath wasn’t about to subside. Thorn held Steel up. “How much time do we have?”

That depends how large of a hole it needs to make in the door in order to squeeze through, Steel told her. Perhaps ten minutes before there’s a breach.

There was a ragged gasp from behind her. Drix’s eyes were open, and she knelt down next to him. It was a ghastly sight. The storm had struck from every side, and his flesh was studded with shards of bloody glass. Something else caught her eye-a pale glow coming from beneath his shirt, by his left breast. A faint radiance pulsed with a steady beat.

It was the crystal heart, keeping him alive.

“Can you hear me?” she said.

He nodded slowly and pushed himself up with one hand. He opened his mouth, and the ragged gasp came out again. Reaching up, he closed his fingers around a shard buried in the side of the neck, pulling out a piece of glass the size of a knife blade. As soon as the glass was free, the wound sealed up. He opened his mouth and closed it again, running his hand along his neck.

“The circle,” he said. “Help me reach it.”

Thorn helped Drix stand and supported him as they made their way across the chamber. The circle, a ring of mystical symbols nearly fifteen feet across, filled the center of the room. They’d been carved into the wooden surface of the floor then filled with some sort of metal that gleamed like quicksilver in the cold-fire light. Maps covered the walls of the chamber. Khorvaire was spread across three walls, with the familiar landmarks of Breland to the left, Cyre straight ahead, and the coastline of the eastern shore to the right. Sparkling points of cold fire gleamed on the map, and Thorn recognized many of them as the locations of the greatest cities of the land-Sharn, Passage, Fairhaven, Flamekeep, Korth. There were at least a hundred points of light spread across the map, and all too few in the Lhazaar Principalities, where they were supposed to be headed.

“There,” he said. There was a podium in the back corner of the room with a mosaic of polished dragonshards set into the top. One large Siberys shard was set into the center of the podium, and as soon as they were close enough, Drix reached out for it. He leaned against the column as he wrapped his hand around the crystal sphere and closed his eyes.