“How they have savaged my dear friend,” he said, the sound of his voice pouring over the body in ripples, echoing and reporting Sefir’s injuries in greater detail as Khault blindly studied each cut and swollen limb. “Beaten. Impaled. They even stole your voice in the end, but it was always meant to be, I suppose.”
A thin, roping tentacle unfurled from beneath his voluminous, dirty white robes and lifted the serrated blade of his fallen brother from the mud. He turned it over curiously as other growths reached out, stroking and studying the weapon, even tasting the rust-marked steel.
“The warrior that presents the sword to his enemies must always find its twin presented back upon him. They could not have known your mercy, dear Sefir,” Khault intoned somberly as he stood back from the body. He cast the blade into the mud angrily, overcome with a primal urge that caused him to gnash his many rows of teeth. He calmed himself after a moment, a sliver of reason still strong in his mind. “But you have succeeded, though you sacrifice your flesh to do so. They shall come to us, ushered to Tohrepur by one of our blood as our dreams foretold. The Lady shall have her twins, and their song shall be carried far and wide, a glorious crusade of Voice and Prophet.”
With a wide, fang-filled smile of sharklike, uneven teeth beneath his scarred, eyeless visage, he turned to the south, imagining the simple mortals escorting the girl to her destiny. The idea of the brutish, blood-thirsty men gawping at her and protecting her as if she were as low as they, turned his stomach, and his smile faded to a jagged scowl.
“I should like to sacrifice them myself,” he growled, envisioning the deed and the ease with which he might steal their pitiful wills and wits, forcing them to slay one another for his Lady’s glory. “But I shall not disobey the Lady’s will.”
He stretched, his changed body writhing, defying the physical limits he had once known and filling with a power far beyond the farmer that had known Uthalion. Sensitive tentacles lashed the mud, cooling themselves and tasting the soil even as Khault shifted his weight forward, half walking, half slithering away from Sefir’s body.
“I must be swift and greet them upon our Lady’s shore,” he said, then added over his knotted shoulder, “I shall report your service and make your name well known to your … successor.”
With a swift, rolling gait he made his way through the shadows of Caidris, sparing little attention to once familiar places. He paused as he turned curiously to a small tree and the rounded stone placed by the trunk. A glimmer of memory flashed among his thoughts, as quick as the storm’s lightning and gone in a blink, bringing with it a strange sensation of sorrow. He hissed warily and pressed on to the outskirts of town, some part of him vaguely aware of the once oft-visited grave-that of his wife, a place where he’d spread the ashes of his two youngest sons.
Brindani had turned away from the fire and stared out across the highland in troubled wonder. The thick veil of night retreated, drifting away from him to reveal gently swaying grasses and insects taking wing. As he traced the wandering path of a large moth, he shuddered and closed his eyes. He rubbed them fiercely, afraid to open them again lest they show him even more of what should be hidden by the dark. Even with his eyes shut he could hear the moth, rapidly beating its wings, swooping closer, and fluttering over his left shoulder as it was drawn to the fire.
He imagined that if he’d needed to, he could have deftly plucked it from the air without looking. Gingerly he opened his eyes, stared at his hands, and wondered what would become of him-and what he was becoming.
The image of Sefir, writhing in the mud like a landed fish, gasping for air and gurgling as the wound in his lung denied him breath, was burned in Brindani’s mind. He recalled peculiar details the more he thought of it-the set of the singer’s jaw, the remaining pale eye and its dimmed blue iris, the smooth curve of an earlobe, and the tendons of Sefir’s throat, stretching taut above the hollow of a malformed collar bone. Despite the teeth and scars and squirming tentacles, Brindani could see the man within the beast.
A part of him wanted to dash out into the Akana, lose himself in the broken landscape, and just wither away, to find some end to the waking nightmare in which he found himself. It was the part of him that feared for the others more than he feared for himself, the nobler voice which he had always heard, but rarely acted upon.
The stronger part of him, however, kept him still, hugging his chest and clenching his cloak tight across his shoulders. Even as he clung to the hope that his addiction had led to delusion, that it lied to him, cajoled him into a fear that would lead him back to the silkroot, he knew the truth was nothing to do with a simple drug-his need had been surpassed by more dominant and mysterious desires.
He could feel a gentle tug on his spirit, pulling him south and poisoning his reason. It itched across his skin like ants, though he refused to scratch for fear it would grow worse. It pained him like an aching tooth, swelled beneath his flesh like a cancer, and promised to end his misery if only he would follow its sweet song. The unbidden want to keep going, to find Tohrepur at all costs, needled at his every thought and overrode his better instincts.
He glanced at Ghaelya and thought of warning her away, the words rushing to the tip of his tongue though his throat refused to give them voice. They fell apart, overtaken by a maddening, irrational panic.
Clasping his hands together, he laced his fingers over one another tightly, as if he could hold onto himself, keep his flesh from betraying him and melting away into something else. He might have prayed, but he had never given much thought to the gods-they’d never seemed to take any interest in him or his fortunes, unfortunate as they were. He considered his own sword and the release he might find upon its blade, but lacked the conviction and courage to take his own life.
Overcome by exhaustion, he leaned over and lay on his side. He hoped the morning light might spare him, awaken him to baseless fears and the long road ahead, nothing more. He closed his eyes, covered his ears against the thunderous crackling of the campfire, and quietly gasped as the whispering song came to him, keening softly as it slowly carried him to sleep.
He resisted for a moment, raising his suddenly heavy arm to grasp at a bending blade of grass as if it might anchor him, but the enchanting song was far stronger than his ability to defy its call.
It rolled through his body in ceaseless waves, soothing the itch upon his skin and the pulsing pressure in his muscles. He was drawn into a dark well of sweet oblivion, of haunting dreams where pain was a blessing and flesh was as malleable as clay, shaped to the will of an alien mind to which he was nothing more than a figment. Though he drowned in a thick blackness full of singing and shifting half-formed beasts, he breathed evenly and did not resist sinking further.
As he slept and gave himself over to the dreaming song, that nobler part of himself, a small and tinny echo in the endless black, wished that he would not wake up at all.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
10 Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One
(1479 DR)
South of Caidris, Akanul
Uthalion blinked.
He sat cross-legged on the curl of rock, his hands at his sides. A deep ringing filled his ears as he narrowed his eyes and tried to recall what he’d been doing. He had no measure of how much time had passed, though the campfire had burned itself down to a glowing pile of orange embers, casting the campsite below in an eerie light. Alarmed, he felt for the silver ring upon his finger, fearful that he’d lost it and fallen asleep while on watch. Though it remained, he was not reassured that all was well.