There was a smell in the air. A scorched smell. Magical, not mineral or wood. Auum held out a hand to stop Rebraal approaching further.
‘Ryish,’ said Auum quietly. ‘What are you doing?’
The High Priest of Shorth raised his face to the TaiGethen leader. The rims of his eyes were bright red, bloodshot in the whites. His pupils were tiny despite the gloom.
‘What I have seen,’ he whispered. ‘She is dead but she is returning. The mana fires burn our resting place.’
‘You may not place the living on the altar of Shorth,’ said Auum. ‘You must remove her.’
Ryish showed no sign that he had either heard or understood. He was a very tall elf, looming over both Rebraal and Auum from his elevated position on the dais. His large, oval face was partly turned away from them now but Auum could not fail to see the confusion written there.
‘She will attempt travel again. I must prepare.’
‘Ryish.’ Auum’s tone was sharp, cutting through the priest’s rambling and startling him. ‘She will travel nowhere. She is not dead. Remove her from the altar or we will be forced to do it for you.’
Ryish stared at him once again. ‘Do not let her movement fool you.’
‘You are our friend,’ said Rebraal. ‘Trust us. Trust Shorth who will not turn away from you. You are the High Priest of Shorth. What you are doing cannot be allowed.’
‘Shorth is already hidden from us,’ whispered Ryish. ‘Before you denounce me, behold my torment.’
The priest stooped, grabbed the woman’s legs and swung them onto the altar. Before Auum could move to stop the sacrilege, the smell of burning magic flooded the temple. Deep green flames engulfed the altar. The two warrior elves backed away, leaving Ryish bathed in the fire, chanting prayers and exhorting Shorth to hear him. His skin was beginning to blacken where the burning mana breached his natural defences. His robes were ablaze. Yet he did not flinch nor cry his pain. Ryish’s agony ran deeper than fire.
‘Hear me, Shorth. Find a path for your daughter. Let her rest; do not—’
The priestess sat bolt upright. Green flame writhed and twisted about her body. Her clothing ignited yet her skin was untouched. Pale and delicate as the morning to which she had awoken. Her eyes opened slowly, revealing orbs black as night, destroyed by mana fire. She turned to face Ryish. Her mouth opened and she uttered a wail that shattered glass in the roof of the dome and shivered through Auum’s body like a plunge into an icy pool.
‘O Shorth, find a path for your servant. Ease her passing to your embrace.’
Ryish’s cries boomed into the temple above the priestess’s wail. The stench of mana fire, burning cloth and scorched flesh grew stronger. Smoke billowed up around the beams supporting the dome. The heat compressed the chests of the elves and brought sweat to their brows.
The priestess fell back, body contorting, hands reaching towards the sky. The flames deepened in colour, gained intensity and then were gone, leaving nothing but a flare in Auum’s eyes when he blinked. Still, the priestess trembled. Her mouth closed, opened once more and a single word was whispered.
Ryish slumped to the floor. Auum and Rebraal ran to his side, Rebraal dragging him into his arms, trying to comfort him.
‘Rest, my priest,’ said the Al-Arynaar. ‘We will tend to you.’
‘Nyluun!’ shouted Auum. ‘Healer mage inside now. No one else.’
Ryish’s burns were extensive but he would live. Though when he turned his eyes to Auum, the TaiGethen wondered if living would be a mercy.
‘Now you see,’ Ryish said, croaking through a cracked throat. ‘We are lost.’
‘I don’t know what I saw,’ said Auum.
‘There is no path for the dead to travel,’ said Ryish. ‘Nowhere for the soul to rest. Shorth deserts us.’
Auum glanced at the priestess, whose body was quivering on the altar.
‘She is . . . ?’
Ryish was nodding. He grabbed Auum’s arm. His fingers, red raw and black from the flames, gripped hard, smearing the TaiGethen’s ritual camouflage.
‘She cannot walk the rainforest yet she cannot rest with Shorth. Her doom is the doom of any who now die. Neither dead nor alive. No end to pain. Only fear.’
Ryish broke down and Rebraal rocked him in his arms as if he were a child in distress.
‘Her soul will find rest.’
‘It will not,’ sobbed Ryish. ‘It cannot stay within her body and it cannot find a path to the embrace of Shorth. It will be cast adrift. Lost for eternity, never to know the Communion with the living, never to feel the strength of the dead.’
‘That cannot be,’ said Auum. ‘We cannot exist if we fear to die. There must still be a path to the dead.’
All three were silent for a while. Ryish composed himself and sat up again, nodding his gratitude, wincing his physical pain.
‘And what of the dead?’ asked Rebraal.
Ryish shook his head. ‘My mind is a desert, my soul a dry ocean bed, my will a forest blackened and destroyed. I cannot feel them. I cannot speak with them. The heart of Calaius is rotting away.’
Rebraal wanted to ask more but Auum stopped him.
‘Ryish, what did she say? What was the word she uttered?’
Ryish took a deep breath and swallowed before he spoke. The word was jagged glass dragged through flesh.
‘Garonin.’
Auum and Rebraal shared a glance. Garonin. A word that denied hope.
‘I have not saved my people from the Arakhe merely to lose them to this evil,’ said Auum. ‘We must call a Harkening.’
‘There is no salvation if they have truly seen our hiding places,’ said Ryish. ‘All we can prepare for is extinction.’
‘If there is a way, I will find it. If there is not, then we must seek a new place for our people. A new home.’ Auum turned to Rebraal. ‘Summon the ClawBound.’
Chapter 2
But it was a shifting grey and an indistinct horizon this time. Not like any other time. Yet the same. The abject helplessness still ripped at his soul and the cries for aid speared his head like needles driven into his brain. And the hands reached for him and the faces were of those he loved drawn into pictures of torment. Their desperation bit deep inside him.
He reached out for them as he always did, to help as he always had done and always would. Though when he did he could not reach them. A barrier he could neither see nor sense kept him from them, kept their fingers from locking together. And the more he strained and grasped, the further they were from him. He shouted for them to come back but the smoke engulfed them once more.
Sol was bolt upright in bed. The sweat was slick on his face, on his shaven head and across the powerful chest on which grey hairs had begun to dominate. He knew his eyes were wide, sucking at the half-light, desperate to see. He tried to drag in his breath quietly. Failed.
‘Sol?’
Sol looked down at the shape next to him in the bed. Earlier that afternoon, they had been as close as he had remembered for a very long time. Like a memory of a decade past. Now, the veil of disappointment had risen once more. One word was all she had said. And it carried so much frustration.
‘I’m sorry, Diera.’
‘Same dream, huh?’