The Restless Shore (17 page)

“Tess,” she whispered again, and she assumed.a fighting stance as the shaedlings came for her from the shadows of her singing dreams.

**********

Uthalion’s boots skidded as he ran, loose rocks bouncing loudly down the valley slope. Bushes shook as he passed, and small thorns scratched at his leather armor. His heartbeat pounded in his ears. Rain, pattering through the underbrush, streamed into his eyes, blurring the dark form of Brindani, limping quickly ahead of him. He dared not look back, knowing without a doubt the danger that crept up behind them, slow and swirling on the wind.

Shaedlings buzzed overhead. The bolder ones were still in pursuit, swooping low and spinning their shadowy veils in an attempt to separate the pair. Half-blind already, Uthalion easily weathered the cold darkness the creatures spun, unhindered by them. He was focused on reaching higher ground where he could place steel between himself and death—rather than a brief moment of held breath in the drowning wave of the wyrmwinds’ deadly pollen.

Shadowy spears cracked into the ground around him, shivering in the dirt only a moment before dissolving, filling the valley with a stagnant, sour smell that burned in his throat. With the edge of the Wash in sight, a stone wave crested with green, he drew his sword and cursed the flicker of hope that sprang forth in his thoughts.

“No time for that just yet,” he muttered and dived through a wall of clinging shadow, the smoky black mist enveloping him for a single, chilling heartbeat—enough time for a well-aimed javelin of darkness to cut deeply into his injured shoulder.

He winced in pain and lost his footing, one leg slipping out from beneath him as he tumbled forward into the dirt and rolled onto his back. Blood pulsed from the wound as he raised his blade blindly, struggling to find his bearings and push himself up on one arm. Pain flared through his shoulder, and a thundering buzz filled his ears as a dark figure bore down on him.

Rain crashed into Uthalion’s eyes as he swung his sword,, its edge catching on something he could not determine. Lightning sizzled through the clouds, and thunder matched the pulse pounding in his ears as he imagined himself, prone and helpless before his enemies. There would be no funeral, no missive sent to his estranged family, only a little death in the mud, a body never found nor cared about save by the flies and flowers.

“Blood and bloom,” he muttered.

Shrieks broke through the storm, and a strong arm lifted him from behind. Regaining his footing and favoring his injured shoulder, he stepped back as Brindani loosed two more arrows. A shaedling lay twitching on the ground with an arrow in its chest, its broken wings fluttering madly to a sudden stop. Its companions backed off, seeking refuge from the half-elfs range and shrieking unintelligible curses.

Brindani turned without a word and continued on, the cliff and a dangling rope in sight. The shaedlings gave chase, closing again, but the quick release of a snapping bowstring from above scattered the dark fey back into hiding.

“Go!” Uthalion yelled over the thunder, clapping Brindani on the shoulder and swinging the rope into the half-elfs hands.

“No, I’ll stay!”

“You’ll do me more good up there!” Uthalion yelled, cutting him off and gesturing to his shoulder.

Brindani nodded reluctantly and pulled himself up, hand over hand toward the others.

Uthalion ignored the hidden shaedlings as he waited, leaning against the rocks and watching. In between arcing crackles of light, the undulating cloud of sickly vapor that flooded the valley rolled inexorably toward him. The misty river of the wyrmwinds crashed in slow motion against the walls, breaking like waves through the silent tide. Uthalion raised an eye to the cloudy heavens, considering all the gods to which he had once prayed.

“If any of you give a damn,” he muttered, “Here’s your chance to give me a sign.”
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He took the slack rope and gritted his teeth, pulling the first measure of his weight with his wounded shoulder. He pressed on, the pain numbing only slightly, pushing with his legs when he could and quietly swearing with each gained length of rope. With every breath he expected the”

shaedlings te attack again, ready for the crude javelins that would pierce his back, wounds full of shadow-stuff one moment, then spilling blood the next. The two bows covering his ascent meant they never came. Near the top he could smell the grass, hear the swift whoosh of arrows leaving Vaasurri’s bow, though the beating of shaedling wings was distant.

Then, in a sudden hush, his vision blurred again, and what little he could see turned a sickly shade of yellow, like old bones drying in the sun. The misty river of wyrmwind broke against the wall, surrounding him. His lungs burned with a last held breath, and his shoulder ached anew as he pulled himself up another length. His eyes watered and felt as if they were on fire; he clenched them shut, focusing on the rough rope and the numbness in his hands. Four times his hands passed one another before the pressure in his chest grew too great, and in a panic, he gasped for air.

Thick, chalky pollen coated his throat, filling his mouth with the bittersweet taste of flowers as burning tears streamed from his eyes. One of his hands slipped on the rope, and somewhere he could hear distant voices calling his name as his vision narrowed to fine points of flashing light surrounded by inky darkness.

******

Ghaelya pulled at Uthalion’s arm, yelling with the effort as the human became a dead weight in her grip. Brindani reached down, securing a hand on the man’s bleeding shoulder, and the pair dragged him into the grass and away from the edge of the Wash. Turning him over, Ghaelya paled at the sight of his face covered in pollen, eyes swollen shut and nose running. Vaasurri knelt quickly, letting the rain wash away the poisonous wyrmwind as he raised his waterskin

and forced the human to drink. Uthalion coughed and spat most of it up, but remained among the living, and for that at least Ghaelya was grateful.

She decided she would wait and yell at him later for his foolishness.

The shaedlings had scattered when the wyrmwind drew near, but Vaasurri warned that they’d not gone far and would likely follow. Heeding that, she and Brindani hauled the human to his feet and began a slow stumbling through the grass, the killoren wielding Brindani’s bow and watching their backs. Brindani’s eyes guided her, and Uthalion was able to manage almost one step for their every two as the half-elf pulled them slowly toward the east.

The thin trees they passed seemed fragile, their green-skinned bark twisted like free-standing vines and clinging only to the air for support. They seemed harmless at first glance, but Ghaelya cursed loudly as her shoulder brushed against a low branch, causing it to swiftly whip its sharp thorns into her skin. She crouched as low as she could with the human’s weight at her side, though several more of the vine-trees caught her with their stings as she passed.

With each needling pain, with each slowed step away from the Wash, the old spark within her grew hotter and brighter, unaffected by the cooling sensation of the rain across, her skin.

A low section of broken wall stood in a clearing among the thin trees, a surviving remnant of some ancient village or town. They hauled Uthalion into the wall’s single northern corner and laid him down beneath a glassless window. The human mumbled unintelligibly, raising his voice and gesturing emphatically in a weakened delirium. Ghaelya held him still, even as she tried to get him to drink water again, producing another bout of choking and hacking.

Vaasurri knelt beside him as Brindani took over the watch. The killoren reached for Uthalion’s hand, his fingers

hovering over the silver ring for long moments. Before Ghaelya could ask what the ring was for, Vaasurri pulled away and laid the hand down, patting it softly.

“No, that might be all that’s keeping him conscious,” he said quietly. “Leave it for now.”

“Will he live?” she asked, brushing a stuck thorn from her neck.

“Yes,” Vaasurri said without hesitation, “I believe so. We’ll need to keep giving him water whether he wants it or not, but he’ll live. The pollen of the wyrmwind can kill swiftly and painfully, but only with several breaths’ worth. More than one breath, and we’d be exchanging our swords for shovels.”

“Idiot,” she whispered under her breath, though a tenuous-relief tempered her anger at Uthalion’s foolish heroism.

The rain grew stronger, pouring down in intermittent sheets blown by the wind. Ghaelya joined Brindani by the wall, watching the half-elf and waiting for his eyes to see what she could not. He shivered slightly in the rain, and occasionally his breath would come in a wheezing gasp, but each time he mastered himself and maintained his vigil, his bow at the ready.

“They’re out there,” he said at length, squinting through the rain. “Not sure how many, but a few at least haven’t given up, despite the storm.”

“Damn it all,”-Ghaelya muttered as she peered over the wall, seeking movement in each flash of lightning or the buzzing of wings behind every bolt of thunder. A small glow drew her gaze to Vaasurri, who had produced his small lantern of moss. Its green light revealed the trembling form of Uthalion, muttering and shaking, lost somewhere between dream and hallucination.

The light also shone on the blood blooming through the bandages on Brindani’s leg, a hindering wound at best. Turning back to the clearing, she stared into the glinting

pairs of eyes appearing at the edge of the vine-trees, pressed low to the ground and creeping forward. Ghaelya crouched, caught between storm and shaedling and wounded companions. She clutched at the growing warmth in her mind, let it expand and spread across her body.

“Tess,” she muttered, using the name to focus her spirit and the burning beneath her skin. The tides within her slowly pulled away to expose a smoldering shore of warm flame.

“Ghaelya?” Brindani said in disbelief, though his voice barely registered. A glistening river of molten energy flared with her pulse, feeding her bloodlust, reviving it, changing her flesh into the pyre she felt inside. Her seafoam green skin warmed and reddened to a pale crimson as a scent of smoke filled her nose and mouth. Flickering flames writhed within the energy lines across her body and flowed across her scalp in a long mane of fire.

She gazed over the wall with eyes like glowing coals and waited for the inevitable attack.

When it finally came, no word from Brindani was needed. A shadowy spear cracked against Brindani’s bow, throwing his shot off-aim.Beating wings swooped close, and her reflexes took over in an explosive burst of speed. The shaedling’s sparkling eyes, blank and full of hate, guided her sudden charge. Snarling savagely, Ghaelya placed one hand and one boot upon the wall and hurled herself into the air like a tongue of curling flame.

Her blade flashed as she twisted backward, dragging the edge hard and deep across the dark fey’s abdomen. Shadows poured from the screeching beast, a fountain of darkness that gushed over her as she completed the turn and landed in a crouch. The shaedling fell out of the air as Vaasurri’s lantern flew over the wall, lighting the immediate area in a vibrant green glow. Ghaelya rushed to match the creature’s descent, slicing its throat before it touched

the ground. As a thin smoky mist pooled around her legs, she searched for another opponent.

She sidestepped movement from her right, narrowly dodging a hurled spear of shadow as she charged its owner.
Arrows whizzed by her shoulder as Brindani spotted more of the fey rising in the grass. The creature met her charge, a dark sword appearing in its hand, a leering skull-like grin on its dark, armored mask of bone. She rolled into the duel, her sword clashing dully against the thing’s shadowy blade.

Spinning around its position, she forced it to keep moving, to keep readjusting its stance as she slashed and turned. Her sword edge caught on the dark fey’s wrist, and the wavering blade dissipated as it was dropped. She drove the point through the beast’s chest and pinned it to the ground, somersaulting over its body as she withdrew the blade and spun to meet the next attack, forcing another of the shaedlings into the edge of the vine-trees. The whiplike branches reacted instantly at the contact, striking like snakes and leaving the fey writhing on the ground, its wings broken beneath it.

Vaasurri crawled carefully between the trees, crouching low. He struck precisely against any shaedling that came within reach over the twisting grove. Ghaelya smiled and fought closer to the clearing’s edge, giving the killoren more targets and making the dark fey nutter dangerously near the defensive trees.

As she closed with yet another of the shaedlings, she underestimated the reach of its shadowy spear and received a long painful gash down her arm. Slapping the fey’s weapon aside she jumped and wrapped her arms around its waist, dragging it to the ground as a searing heat built up in the wound it had given her. Slamming into the grass, flames erupted between their bodies, bursting from her broken skin. The beast’s cries of agony ended with her sword through

its throat, and she stood back to face its companions, the smoky smell of burnt flesh surrounding her.

**

Lightning flashed deep crimson in the quiet space behind his eyelids, burning little spots of light that faded slowly as he stirred. Uthalion tried to get up and rolled over onto his side, the motion turning his stomach and making him choke on bitter bile. With some effort he opened his eyes, blinking at a blurry dark world lit by flickering lights and thunderous crashes. Rain splashed onto his face, and he coughed painfully; his throat burned and his swollen tongue ached. Spasms of pain pulsed through his chest as he tried to find purchase on the ground, to dig his hands into wet grass and soft mud, a surface that seemed determined to evade his efforts.

He was not asleep, though somewhere in the haze of his thoughts he was aware of a thin veil where wakefulness hid among blurry shadows. Between reality and dream he fought to rise, clinging to the ground, barely, as though it would escape him, leave him hanging as it spun away.