Bruce Cordell: City of Torment

Moisture welled in Japheth's eyes. "You're back, Anusha. That's the only thing that matters. You're back."

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Veltalar, Aglarond

She was so cold. Desolate winds whispered around her, jealous of the tiny spark of heat she retained. Yet a moment earlier, she'd been colder still, a horrified scream frozen in ice.

Her eyes flipped open. Light stung them, but the illumination was sweet despite the pain. It had been too long since she'd seen anything but chill darkness.

A shape moved in the light. A man she'd known once.

She said, "What…? I dreamed I was far away..

The man bent down. He wore a cloak black as coal, an ominous counterpoint to his concerned expression. He said, "You're back, Anusha. That's the only thing that matters. You're back." "Japheth?" she asked.

The warlock nodded and took her hand. His palm was warm. His eyes were watery… and red with a recent dose of traveler's dust. He said, "I'm here. And so are you!"

She sat up. Fragments of what had happened since she followed him through the streets of New Sarshel began to assemble.

A black dog jumped up and rested its paws on the opposite side of the travel chest. It stretched out its head, trying to lick her face. She remembered the mutt and smiled, turning her head from Lucky's joyful attentions.

Anusha's gaze wandered, but her attention focused inward as her memory wove itself from past to present.

She'd been dreamwalking in a dark place half drowned 1 with seawater, beneath an island. A tentacled monster had attacked her with a relic like a disembodied eye-an eye whose gaze caught her. She'd tried to flee, to return to the safety of her physical body…

But something had prevented her.

Her gaze snapped back to Japheth. "Your elixir of sleep trapped me in dream form. I couldn't get away. It almost caught me because of you!"

The man's eyes widened and his grip slackened. He nodded and said, "I am so sorry, Anusha. I never meant-"

Heat blossomed in her chest, dispelling the chill. It was the same feeling she felt when she thought of her half brother, Behroun. Spiteful words danced in her throat, eager for escape. "These drugs of yours… you're on the dust right now-I can tell by your eyes! What is it with you?"

The warlock looked away.

She wondered how she could be attracted to him. How could she even think of him like that when he was a drugaddled, Hells-bound scoundrel? A roguishly handsome, sweet, and determined scoundrel, but a scoundrel all the same. Was she the stupidest woman in all Toril? Anyone with any sense would flee and never think of him again. She would do just that…

Which would be easier if the mere sight of him didn't make her heart expand.

Japheth said, "You're right, Anusha. The dust's in me right now. But I had no recourse. You didn't get away. It caught you."

"What do you mean?" He looked back at her, swallowed. "I mean that godsdamned relic sucked your mind into its heart and pulled you down to a city of torment. I've been trying to rescue you for tendays. I needed a pinch of traveler's dust to find and see your dream form. You were one of hundreds caught. It was… the only way I knew to save you."

The heat in her chest cooled but did not burn out. She asked, "If I could have woken up, you wouldn't have had to spend tendays trying to rescue me!"

Then the full import of his words breached her anger. "Wait. You mean I've been… sleeping? For tendays? And you couldn't wake me up, even when the elixir you gave me ran its course?"

Her skin prickled. Memory crashed upon her-an ice cocoon stifling her body and psyche, a void of motionless thought speckled with dreamers trapped like flies in a web. She gasped in dawning revulsion.

"Your mind was ensnared," Japheth said. "But I pulled you free."

The frozen image seemed to solidify around Anusha. Lassitude crawled down her limbs, tying them with strands of returning sleep. She said, "Did you? I don't think so…

The Dreamheart's eye stared straight into her soul. Anusha heard Luckyk frantic barks as if from the bottom of a well, then nothing.

*****

Anusha saw a woman standing in a place shrouded by mist and slicked with luminescent slime. Pillars whose size she couldn't begin to guess faded off into the fogged distance.

The woman was familiar. It took her a moment to recognize herself.

She realized she was dreaming. It was odd to see herself at such a remove, though dreams were often strange like that.

Her image seemed distraught. It beckoned and spoke, but not the least sound emerged. Was she mute? Anusha strained but heard nothing. She tried to sound out the words her lips made. Something about a… Key of Stars?

And a Citadel. Plus something else she couldn't quite decipher.

Horror closed over her head as if she were being pulled beneath a pool of ice water. She tried to scream, to move, to warn the image. But no feeling of flailing limbs, or even breath in her chest, rewarded her effort. She was like a bug under glass, slowly smothering.

Searing pain shattered the dream into jagged shards that exploded outward.

Anusha lurched and fell forward. Several small, hard objects clattered on her back. Silence followed. She coughed.

Cold shards dug into her cheek and prone body. She lay facedown in a scatter of… broken glass? No, too cold.

The shards were chips of ice. She levered herself up and stood.

A rough wall of ice, like a glacier's face, stretched away left, right, and up many tens of feet. It shed wan, bluish light. Even standing only a couple of paces from it, she saw a subtle receding curve to the chill face, as if instead of a wall, the ice were a massive dome. Or perhaps a sphere set in the dark stone floor. Murky blots lay just below the surface, oddly symmetrical.

A rough crater marred the ice in front of her. Anusha reached for the edges of the pit, but paused before her finger touched. The cavity, while broken and jagged, traced a humanoid outline. Something had broken free of the ice.

Had it been her? Probably yes. She shuddered.

A memory jolted her. Anusha recalled Japheth's relieved face, telling her he'd rescued her.

"Some rescue!" she exclaimed, remembering the coiling force that snatched her back down into unconsciousness.

She clenched her fists, hoping to feel a renewed surge of anger, enough to banish the first unwelcome hints of fear. Japheth's mysterious patron and unfathomable powers, his quests and his potions-they all added up to her being here, wherever here was.

But her anger seemed spent. If she was fully honest with herself, it was her initial act of stowing away on Green Siren that set her course and finally landed her here.

And Japheth's ritual had accomplished something good, she mused. He'd pried her loose from the wintry sphere, even if he'd ultimately failed to merge her dream with her sleeping body.

Hold on. Was she in her dream form? Anusha studied her hand. It looked and felt normal. She imagined she wore a glove. A gauntlet of golden, articulated metal shimmered and enclosed her hand.

Yes, she was dreaming. She tried to wake up.

A flicker of blackness, and then… nothing changed. The great globe of ice remained obstinately front and center. She tried again, failed again. Then again. Another failure. She was locked out of her body! And this time it wasn't because of the elixir of sleep.

Hints of the smothering dream she'd just escaped enclosed her.

Where was she? Anxiety made her thoughts come fast.

Japheth said something about her being pulled down to a city of… terror? Torment? She couldn't remember.

Was she in the place she'd imagined, where her image tried to talk but no words emerged? She didn't see any mist or columns.