Uthalion fell backward, catching himself with his free hand. He cursed as he looked across the nightmarish ruins, at the shadows of Tohrepur erupting with renewed life. The dark gaping maws of windows discharged sluggish, pale bodies that flopped into the night air. Doorways were crowded with white, slack-jawed faces that peered out into the bruised light of the day’s end. Twisted and hairless figures crawled languidly from their hiding places, huffing loudly as they awoke from strange slumbers to gather in the streets. They bared needlelike teeth and dark eyes to the sky, crawling over one another in a sickly mass.
Uthalion picked out several races among the throng, noting the bloated abdomens of large white spiders amid the groaning crowds.
“The Flock,” he muttered, horrified as they knelt and tore at the crimson blossoms. Red juices ran through their fingers as they stuffed the petals into their mouths and fed hungrily, the sticky red nectar dribbling down their chins and staining their thin lips.
“The Choir brings us,” Brindani said, a bizarre quality in his voice buzzing through Uthalion’s skull. “The Song calls us … The Lady dreams us … And her blood feeds us.”
“Blood,” Uthalion whispered, staring at the enthralled Flock. The bodies grew slick with bloody nectar, blending together as they slid and pulled themselves deeper into the restless press, the streets disappearing beneath them. Long fingernails caked with dark pulp scratched at the sky, as the bodies swayed with the terrible song.
Reluctantly, Uthalion studied those he could see clearly, moving from one to the next. He dreaded the sight of a bared breast or a curving, feminine hip, afraid of finding Maryna. But he did not see her-did not want to see her-and slowly convinced himself, for the sake of his own sanity, that she was not among the Flock. She couldn’t be.
He turned away, unable to look at the pitiful faces or contemplate such a horrid existence. The song had lessened somewhat, and he stood on shaky legs, his sword in a grip so tight he feared his fingers might break.
“Not here,” he whispered under his breath, willing the words to be true. “She’s not here.”
Vaasurri stood close by, his eyes darting between the wailing Flock and the strangely quiet dreamers. The beasts had lowered their heads, sorrowful expressions on their faces as they pawed at the dirt and paced back and forth at the clearing’s edge. Ghaelya edged closer to the crystal forest cautiously, earning threatening growls and toothy snarls from the dreamers, though they did not leave the glittering perimeter of the spires.
Brindani had lowered his sword. His dark eyes still gleamed with some alien presence, a gaze that seemed to switch continuously between the half-elf Uthalion knew and something else that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
“Uthalion,” Brindani said, his voice wavering discordantly with strains of the beguiling song as he looked out across the ruins and the reveling Flock. A flash of fear crossed the half-elf’s features, and behind him the dreamers flinched, whining low in their thick throats. “The Choir is coming.”
A distant, monstrous roar echoed through the streets, answered by others from different parts of the city as Uthalion turned, glaring and searching for the monsters amid the bloody, wailing figures-searching for Khault.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
12 Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One
(1479 DR)
Ruins of Tohrepur, Akanul
Muscles rippled and undulated in waves as the gathered masses of the Flock shifted and wailed at the coming of the Choir. Booming voices trumpeted in eerie whale-song echoes. Misshapen limbs grasped and clawed for purchase on the streets, their flesh in flux even as they answered the call of the song. The ground shook at the Choir’s approach, and their sonorous bellows seemed to shake the very air, as if the fabric of reality shuddered to expel such abominations from its firmament.
Brindani staggered, at last released briefly from the will of the song to fall and gasp for air. The singing remained a constant force in his body however, pain and pleasure ripping through him in fine threads of bittersweet melody. Resting on one knee, he endured the scent of the crimson blooms that summoned his unnatural hunger, but as his stomach twisted in agony, he tempered his addiction with the thick taste of blood that flavored each breath in salt and copper. Somewhere between song and addiction he found a balance, a precarious perch upon which to hang his sense of self.
A feminine screech tore through the air, parting the red and white sea of the Flock with thrumming, destructive tones. Almost visible at the end of a steep avenue, a beautiful, angular face rested like a mask upon stretched and pockmarked flesh. Red lips, pierced with barbed, hooklike teeth parted in a deep sigh that rushed through the clearing like an autumn breeze. The Flock swarmed at the thing’s feet, fawning over and caressing the Choir, their singing angels in a temple of ruins.
Brindani gripped his stomach tightly, his heart pounding as he drew back his sword. He was prepared to defend himself to the last even as the powerful song lessened his pain. Sweetly, it whispered wordless charms to him, the tendrils of enchanting melody so strong that he imagined he could even see them, wrapped around him in an inescapable embrace. He trembled as the song touched upon his mind, fearful of again losing his will and giving in to his temptations. But deep in the song’s core, a strangely familiar voice reached him. Gently it pulsed outward, the tendrils sweeping through the ruins, its touch connecting him to those it found.
He gasped in horror as the minds of the Choir brushed against his thoughts, assaulting him with madness. Wants and needs and unimaginable lusts left his skin crawling, though their singular attention was focused just to his left. He glanced to Ghaelya, an unhallowed image flashing through his mind with a stab of fear for the genasi. The song softened in her presence, becoming a low hum of sorrow, unconditional love, and primal terror.
“Khault,” Uthalion muttered as a figure in tattered, dirty robes distinguished itself among the nightmarish horde.
Brindani barely recognized the old farmer, hidden as he was in a twisted body of rippling limbs and warped bones, but the half-elf knew him nonetheless. The song fairly screamed at the sight of the man, filling him with a boundless rage that he fed upon, using it against the pain in his body and holding it tight in the hilt of his sword.
“Captain,” Khault replied in a thunderous voice, shaking the ground as the dreamers whined, pawing at the ground. “You bring to us the twin.”
The grisly host responded savagely, their voices and hands raised to the sky, each note feeding into Brindani’s body through the song. Their exquisite pain ran through him, though it was nothing compared to what he’d done to himself over the years. He endured, but in their chanting exultation, he was shown their shared secret, the source of their reasonless fanaticism and the infection that ruled their bodies. He glimpsed a deep chamber in their minds, adorned with bones, filled with a soft blue glow that glistened like water. A massive blue eye turned sightlessly in the murk as he was torn away from the image and left panting, on his knees before the nightmarish things she had dreamed.
“She,” he whispered.
The creature of the depths, the whisperer of songs and the seductress of drowned sailors. A collector of polished bone, torn from the ocean by the death of a goddess, changed by the blue fire of the Spellplague into a living scourge of dreams. Unbidden tears sprang to Brindani’s eyes as he looked upon the fools that drowned in madness for her now.