The Fading Dream (11 page)

It was one thing to hear the effect described, another to actually be caught within the isolating gloom. “Cadrel?” she said. “Drix?”

There was no response. We’re moving forward, so they must both still be there, Thorn thought. If Cadrel stopped rowing, we’d be going in circles.

Just to be sure, she reached out to where Cadrel had been. She felt the pressure of his body against her hand. Still there. Nonetheless, there was a disturbing numbness to the sensation, a slight chill in her nerves with no sense of the warmth in the old man’s body. Another vision flashed through her mind, of the mist clearing to reveal the rotting corpses sharing the boat with her, Drix’s dead eyes staring straight ahead.

Just keep rowing, she thought.

With no sight and no sound, there was no way to know how close they were to the shore and only the vaguest sense that they were moving forward at all. At times the mist clung to her skin; it was more like thick cobweb than fog, and she could feel it tugging at her arms, trying to reach beneath her gloves and caress her skin. She clenched her teeth together and kept rowing, and the sensation passed.

It might have been hours. It might have been minutes. The hardest thing was holding on to hope. She
told herself that every stroke was bringing her closer to shore, but she couldn’t really believe it. More and more, she found herself thinking that she’d never see the light again, that they’d never find their way out, that she’d be rowing until the oar rotted away and she was left alone to drift in the mist.

Was it beginning to fade? She could see Cadrel next to her, his silhouette becoming clearer with each moment. Or was it Cadrel? The shadow seemed too lean, a younger man, lacking Cadrel’s beard. Then he spoke.

“So you still don’t remember. You still think you’re Thorn.”

It took all of her will to hold to her oar, to continue rowing. She knew she was imagining it. But she remembered that voice and those words.

Drego Sarhain.

When she’d met him, he was serving as an agent of Thrane. In time, she’d discovered his true nature. He was a demon of deception, an ancient fiend engaged in a shadowy war she still knew nothing about. And in their last meeting, he’d claimed to know things about her she still didn’t want to believe.

“You’re Sarmondelaryx. The Angel of Flame. The Devourer of Souls. Condemned by the Conclave of Argonnessen, yet they need you, if the prophecy is to fall as they wish it. Embrace the dragon within you. Embrace her power. Let us be together and mock dragon and tiger alike.”

“No,” she whispered. She
knew
the voice was only in her imagination. But in the utter silence and gloom, it was easy to drift into the memory, to have something to hold on to. She remembered that gleam in Drego’s eyes as he looked at her.

“Every time you draw on her power, she grows stronger,” he whispered. “It’s only a matter of time.” She could
see him, lying on the ground and looking up at her, her dagger against his throat.

And the boat ran aground. The jolt shook the vision from her mind, and she was back in the utter silence of the mists.

Setting down the oar, Thorn reached out, finding Drix and Cadrel. Fears lingered at the back of her mind as Drix’s hand closed around hers, but she pushed them away. The water was cold and silent, and a moment later, they were on dry land.

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.

O
nce 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?”

“No dragon. And I didn’t say they were my friends. But they are here, nonetheless.” He raised his sword, and two arrows emerged from the mists and whistled down the street to either side of him. “Only a few can see so well as to shoot in the mists, but I assure you, they aren’t alone.”

He’s using the same equipment as before
, Steel reported.
Shifting blade. Shiftweave clothing. Evocation in the wand and charged for use—the blast of fire, unless I miss my guess. I don’t know about his friends in the mists; I still can’t penetrate it. Beyond that, there’s something about him I can’t
put my point on. A faint aura that surrounds him and infuses him, not unlike that of the mists themselves
.

The wand’s the problem, Thorn thought. If it was the same as the one he’d carried in Wroat, a single blast could engulf all three of them. And while fire might not hurt her, she didn’t have any sort of special immunity to arrows in the back of the head.

“Covenant Dal.” Essyn Cadrel hadn’t spoken since they entered the mists. He took a step forward, a slight smile on his face. If the passage through the mists had left him on edge, he didn’t show it; he seemed perfectly at ease. If anything, his voice was stern, almost reprimanding. “You swore an oath to our king, soldier. You swore to lay down your life for our nation. Explain to me what could bring you to break that vow. What could possess you to threaten the last heir to Mishann’s throne?”

“I swore an oath to our nation,” Dal said. Thorn’s eyes were fixed on the wand, but Dal’s attention never wavered. “And I spent my years here.
This is our nation
. Look at it! I have seen it. It’s touched my heart. I know our land better than you, old man. And I will give our people what they need.”

“And what is that?” Thorn said. She shifted her grip on Steel, watching and waiting.

“I’m afraid you’ll never know,” Dal said. “This ends—”