Show me the truth, I ordered.
The stone responded immediately, None but my master can command me.
He is gone. I am his descendant and inheritor of his will, I told it, and then I put my hand against the stone door, lowering my shield and allowing the stone to come into full contact with my flesh.
Suddenly the illusion vanished, and I could see the room within, while simultaneously the door itself slid aside so that I could enter.
The room was twenty feet in diameter, circular and empty, except for the object in its center, an open stone sarcophagus. The scene was intimately familiar, for I had known what I would find here, just as I knew that the object in the middle of the room was no sarcophagus, it held a living creature.
Stepping closer I looked down upon her, Lyralliantha, the last of her kind, trapped eternally within a stasis enchantment. The woman inside was the most beautiful I had ever beheld, barring my encounter with the goddess Millicenth, and I discounted that immediately. The gods cheated. Her hair was silver, not simply white, but possessing an almost metallic shimmer, and while her eyes were closed, I knew that if they had been open they would have been an icy blue, just like all the children of her grove.
She was clad in a soft white gown that reached past her knees before revealing the smooth skin of her lower legs. Her hands and feet were slender and graceful, with short well-kept nails. Other than her unusual hair color and exceptional beauty, there was nothing that might have indicated her alien nature, except for her delicately pointed ears. Her eye color was slightly unusual, but it fell within the normal range of human color, in fact it was similar in hue to my own eyes.
Illeniel’s promise rose up in my mind, the words of my long dead ancestor, “This is the only way I can save your people. Rest here and I will return to release you… once it is safe again. I give you my word, I will return for you.” Except that he hadn’t.
A feeling of terrible sorrow fell over me as I gazed upon her, and I spoke without premeditation, “Lyralliantha, last of the She’Har, you are alone in this world. It was never meant that you should endure thus for over two millennia. Your husband waits for your return… and your forgiveness.” The words arose from someplace deep within my heart, and I knew as I spoke them that they were the key, the words that would release the stasis enchantment that held her in that timeless moment.
Yet nothing happened.
Puzzled, both at my sudden words and at their lack of effect, I bent my attention to the enchantment that surrounded her. In form and structure it was similar to the stasis enchantments I had created in the past. If anything, it was slightly less refined, lacking certain safeguards that I would have included. In particular it was constructed in such a way that if it were broken or forced, the backlash might kill the occupant. That was deliberate, answered the voice in the back of my mind.
As I studied the enchantment with my magesight, it became readily apparent why the spoken key had not had its intended effect. Woven around the enchantment was a second magical structure, something alien, while at the same time familiar. She’Har spell-weaving, I thought, recognizing it even as the phrase from my dream made sense. I had seen magic like it once before… when I had fought Timothy, the leader of the shiggreth.
“Starting to realize why you can’t release her, animal?” said a voice close to my ear.
A jolt of fear and pure adrenaline ran down my spine, and if it had been possible I might have jumped out of my own skin, instead I reacted defensively. With a word, I created a new shield around myself while stepping sideways. I had fought enough battles that my reactions were more practical than panic stricken. Fear might drive me, but it was a foe I was used to dealing with.
“Who’s there?” I asked, somewhat stridently.
The voice came again, though it seemed to have moved, and now it reached me from somewhere ahead and to my left, “Forgotten your old friend already? How sad.”
I scanned the room frantically with my magesight and still found nothing. Whoever was there was invisible, not just physically, but to magical sight as well. There were only three people capable of such a thing, assuming the voice belonged to a person.
“Wondering why you can’t sense me? Surely you’ve heard the phrase before, ‘when a Prathion doesn’t want to be found, a Prathion isn’t found’.”
The voice now seemed to be behind me, on my left side, as though the person taunting me was circling. The dissonant song of death was strongest in that direction as well. In a flash I realized that whoever this was they had been shadowing me, not just for weeks or days, but for months, possibly years. My entire life had been visible to them, and I had never even known they were there.
“It’s taken you long enough to reveal yourself,” I answered as calmly as I could. “You’ve been watching for a long time. I had begun to wonder at your sanity.”
“Still lying, Mordecai? You should know better. Your ignorance betrays your bluff. If you had known I was there you’d never have turned off the lights to lie beside your wife, you’d never have left your children alone in my presence. How many nights did I lean over you while you cried like a babe from the night terrors, never knowing I was close enough to smell your fear? How many nights did I wait, wishing I could kill you and put an end to your accursed line?” said the voice from directly behind me.
Turning to keep my hidden opponent in front of me, I struggled to identify the voice. It was familiar and yet I still was unable to place it. It had already claimed to be a Prathion, but I knew all three of the living Prathion wizards intimately, and this voice belonged to none of them.
“If you wanted me dead so badly, why didn’t you kill me?” I asked.
The dissonance, the voice of death that I had been hearing for months, continued to move, so… trusting my instincts I turned to keep it in front of me, even before its source spoke again, “I’ve learned patience,” came the reply. “You surprise me with your movement, it’s almost as if you can sense my location,” it added.
“I can… now that I understand what you are,” I replied.
“So… have you figured out my name yet, animal?” it asked curiously.
“Only the name that you’ve given me in the past, Timothy, but I’m certain that isn’t your real name,” I declared. As I did, it shifted and moved in a different direction, silently and without warning, I changed directions as well, keeping it before me.
“Interesting,” it said, stopping for a moment. “It seems you really can detect me. I suppose there’s no need for this then.” A small figure appeared in front of me, resting its hand casually on Lyralliantha’s resting place. “A pity your small mind can’t remember my true name. She will recognize me,” it added, glancing at the woman in stasis.
The memories in the back of my mind had returned to their former reticence, though the shiggreth’s taunting kept hinting at secrets I should know. He’s a Prathion, yet in the past he said that the shiggreth were created from the spirits of the She’Har that died, I thought, mentally reviewing what I knew. Perhaps he’s a shiggreth created from a dead Prathion? Walter’s uncle?
Even as that thought occurred to me, I knew it to be nonsense, for the body that the undead thing in front of me was using belonged to a small boy from Lancaster. A boy named Timothy, a boy that had been entirely normal as far as I knew. Besides, I told myself, the Prathions were golden haired with ebon skin and red eyes. The thought shocked me into stillness, as the implications of that statement ran through my mind. Prathion was the name of a She’Har grove.