The Fading Dream (24 page)

“Unusual? Not really.”

It wasn’t Drix she’d been talking to.
I believe you are correct. There are still residual traces of energies on
the doorway … an old ward, broken when it was, well, broken. They likely hoped to find a key charm on the guard, and perhaps they did
.

“Anything else?” Thorn said.

“Nothing you haven’t already figured out,” Drix said. “You’re very clever.”

Isn’t that sweet?
Steel said.
I’m sensing active auras within the building. Nothing specific, especially at this distance, but I’d be careful
.

“Let me go in first. Stay back until I say it’s safe.” She made her way gingerly across the broken glass and slid Steel’s point inside the doorframe.

There’s no glass inside the building
, he reported.
The cold-fire lanterns are still burning. There are bodies, perfectly preserved, but I see no signs of life. Minor auras—the lanterns, environmental cooling charms—nothing threatening
.

Thorn stepped through the door, setting her back against the wall as soon as she was inside. “Whatever happened to these people, it must have been off-peak hours,” she said. There were only four bodies in the lobby. A clerk lay slumped across the reception desk, a slip of paper still clutched in her hand and a few copper crowns scattered across the desk. A man had fallen to the floor before her, a package under his arm, ready to send by Orien courier. And there was a courier, coming out of the main hallway. All three were dead, though without a mark on them.

She leaned out the door and gestured to Drix. “Come in but stay behind me. I don’t think we’ll find anything alive in here. What are we looking for?”

“The main circle chamber. It shouldn’t be hard to find.”

House Orien bore the mark of passage, and transportation was their trade. The greatest minds of the house had developed many tools to channel the power of their
dragonmark, from the saddle that lent speed to a mount to the lightning rail coaches that had become a vital part of the economic infrastructure of Khorvaire. Their most wondrous power was teleportation. Most Orien enclaves contained teleportation circles, and when the proper ritual was performed, goods or people could be transported from one circle to another in the blink of an eye. It was a far more efficient form of travel than the lightning rail or the Lyrandar airships, but the ritual that linked the circles was expensive, and it could be performed by only an Orien heir with a potent dragonmark. Thorn didn’t know how Drix planned to activate the circle without the mark, but it had been his idea, so she assumed he had a plan.

While she’d never been to that enclave, it was a place of business, and teleportation, a service offered. Signs on the walls pointed the way to different parts of the outpost, and it took only a moment to find the path to the teleportation circle.

“I’m the first around every corner,” she whispered to Drix. “You peer around and don’t follow until you see my signal. Do you understand?”

He shrugged. “I suppose. What are you worried about? Everyone’s dead and they wouldn’t have wards on the main chamber, would they?”

“We’re not taking any chances.” The fact of the matter was that the bodies had her on edge. They were too pristine, too clean; she couldn’t help but wait for one of them to stand up or for a hand to tighten around her ankle. She’d fought undead in the past; she still remembered the Koralat case in Karrnath, the madman’s manor filled with the walking corpses of his servants and kin, her own partner reaching for her throat with no sign of recognition in his glazed eyes. Perhaps the people of Ascalin were truly dead. And perhaps they weren’t.

She held Steel to the edge of the passage, tracing a cross on his hilt.

More bodies
, he told her.
I’m not sensing any wards. It appears to be safe
.

“We’ll see.” She slipped around the corner. Something crunched under her foot, and she knelt down to examine it. It was a shard of glass, as long as her finger, loose on the floor. The looters must have brought it in with them, she thought. There were a few other chips scattered around. The air was still, the hall was silent. There was something … a smell, faint but unmistakable: blood.

The source of the scent was up and around the next corner. She moved cautiously, avoiding the scattered shards of glass and making no sound as she slipped across the hallway. The scent grew stronger as she drew closer to the corner. Drix ventured into the hallway behind her, his little crossbow in his hand. Thorn indicated that he should hold his position and slid Steel around the edge of the wall.

Four bodies
, Steel told her.
Messy business … blood on the walls and the floor. No one living. I can sense a few enchanted weapons, other minor magical auras … animated rope, pack of holding, Irian tears
.

“Orien colors?” she whispered.

No uniforms. Dark clothing, painted armor, but no obvious insignia
.

Sounds more like looters than guards, she thought. So what killed them?

The other bodies they’d found had been perfectly pristine. The victims might have simply fallen asleep. As such, the carnage Thorn found in the hallway was a shock.

“Messy business indeed,” she murmured.

Blood was spattered all over the walls and pooled around each of the corpses. There was an elf woman in
dark chain mail, a short bow still clutched in her hand; a muscular half-orc; a human with a wand in his hand and two more tucked into his belt, and a vest covered with pockets that likely held components for spells and rituals. The last body, a dwarf in a long, leather coat, his beard soaked with blood, caught Thorn’s eye. She noticed the dragonmark on his forehead and the scarring around it. It was the Mark of Warding, and the branding was something she’d heard of but never actually seen. A dragonmark heir expelled from a house was called an excoriate; in the distant past, the houses had actually cut the mark from the flesh of the victim. That practice had been abandoned before the rise of Galifar, but she’d heard that there were branches of some houses that still engaged in ritual scarring or branding for excoriates whose crimes against the house were especially severe. The Mark of Warding was used to craft mystical wards, locks, and alarms. But a gifted heir could learn to use the mark to shatter wards or open locks, and Thorn guessed that’s exactly what the dwarf had done.

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.