Whispering Blade Chapter 15

#15# 

Nota Bene: Patreon has broken italics, so I'm now denoting italics with an underline, my apologies for the inconvenience.

They come in the darkness and they carry us whither they will. Untamable. Unrelenting. Unreal? Night's mare is the merger of dream and shadow. Mine found me in the dim cave of my room and bore me willy-nilly across the plains that lie between Hove and the Wastes and there it threw me, and I fell out of the world into darkness.

Or so it seemed, and later events make me think there is more to that creature of dreams than metaphor and trauma. The ride was vivid and wild and I could neither dismount nor rein in my racing steed, and when it flung me from its back I fell and fell and fell, and waking did not bring surcease.

My eyes flicked open, or so I thought, but naught but blackness met my gaze. I wanted to sit up then, but even as I tensed muscles still aching from days on the road I felt a gentle pressure on my chest as though a hand were holding me in place.

Do not move. Do not speak. Breathe if you must, but slow and shallow if you wish to live.

Thiussus? What's going on? Where is Triss? Was I awake or was this still part of the nightmare? And ever the feeling of falling persisted.

Bide, I'm working on it.

Time passed. My eyes adjusted. Or, rather, my mind did. The subtle differences of shade and texture that defined the Everdark differentiated themselves and I came to recognize that I was on my back in…call it a field or a veldt for lack of a better description. Around and above me things like long grasses turned and twisted in a wind I couldn't feel. Or perhaps I lay on the back of some impossibly huge anemone-like beast as it sieved the deeps of shadow's dimension with millions of mismatched tentacles.

Then, with a glad suddenness, I was no longer alone, and it was only the return of my awareness of Triss as a sleeping presence in the back of my mind that made me recognize that I had been missing it all this time, and that lack more than anything was where the nightmare feeling had come from. A few times over the years when Triss was badly injured or overtaxed I have lost the ability to communicate with him, but even then I have been able to sense his soul where it is bound to mine. This was different, more like the feeling you get when your arm goes to sleep. You can, if you look, see that your limb remains attached, but from within there is no sense it's still a part of you.

Aral? Triss's mindvoice was dim and foggy. Where are we?

Ask Thiussus.

What!?

Hush, both of you. Aral, I am trying to restore you to your world in one piece and it is NOT as easy as it sounds. Triss, sullshth-srith-asshtra!

What does– I began.

Hush. This time from Triss. A moment later I felt him gently running a tendril of shadow along my skin where the dragon brand colored it. His touch was cool and soothing, yet intense, like peppermint oil on a burn, and the feeling lingered long after the tendril moved on. Please.

If it were just Thiussus, I would have argued, but whatever was going on, Triss agreed and he sounded very concerned. So, I waited and I worried, and then as suddenly as it had all started, I was elsewhere.

I remained on my back, but instead of a million shades of black, the vault of night above was brilliant with a myriad of stars, and other, stranger lights played a flickering game of tag beneath the familiar western constellations. By their position, I judge it was not long after sundown and that I was in my own world once again. Though in the near distance, real veldt grasses mirrored the shadowy fronds that had surrounded me in that other place, giving me a sense of déja vu, as did the cool heat on my skin where Triss had traced the outline of my shadow brand.

"Triss?" I spoke aloud this time. "What just happened?"

"I don't know. You went to sleep in that room in the caravansary and I settled into the shadows beneath the table to watch over you. For a long time nothing changed. The hours ticked away and I felt the sun reach its zenith and then slowly creep into the west and drop beyond the horizon. I was about to wake you when I sensed a tension in the shadows, as though something were stretching them tight across every surface in the room. I rose up onto the ceiling so that I might get a better view, and then…" Triss fell silent and waited for several long slow beats of my heart before I spoke.

"And then…?"

"I have no idea. The world went sharp and tart and there is a blank space in my memory that ends with Thiussus dragging me through the interface between this world and the Everdark. After that, you were with me and know as much I do."

I didn't think the last part of that was true, but I let it slide for the moment. "What did Thiussus say to you?"

"It's a quote from one of our…sagas, maybe? Histories? Epic poems? In any case, it doesn't translate well. Neither the words nor the form of the idea from which they were drawn. A literal phrasing might go something like 'be still, sweet mouse', if you were a mouse and I was defending you from the cats of fire who hunt the void between the worlds."

I moved to sit up, but the world seemed to tilt and spin in response and I let my head fall back. "You realize that makes no sense, right?"

The silhouette of a dragon rose between me and the stars and shrugged its wings. "I told you it didn't translate properly."

I was pretty sure there were things he was not telling me, but I didn't think pushing would change that. "And this?" I touched a finger to the place on my chest where the image of Triss's head had been burned into my skin. "Why does it feel so strange?"

Triss sighed. "Aral, I don't know, but look around you. We aren't in the caravansary where you went to sleep anymore. If I'm reading the terrain aright, we're at the edge of the Mage Wastes a hundred miles or more from where you went to sleep, but we didn't get here through this world. We came through the Everdark."

"All right. That's weird, but we've traveled that way before. Why are you upset by it this time?"

"We've never gone anything like this far. And I am upset because I didn't move us through or into the Everdark. You did it, and without accessing my powers in any way I can detect. I have no idea how you did that."

"But Thiussus–"

"Thiussus is with the Kitsune in that region of the Everdark that corresponds to Zhan. She has enormous power and skills I don't begin to understand, or she wouldn't be able to speak across the distances between us, but there's no way she could have drawn you through the wall between the worlds. Which leads me to conclude that this"—and here he touched the shadow brand on my chest—"has given you the power to move between the world of the solid and shadow, and that you somehow accessed that gift unconsciously. And that is a very dangerous ability to use even in the most careful of fashions."

"But then, how did we get back over the line to this side? Wasn't that Thiussus?"

"No. Or, not directly. She is connected to you in a way I don't understand at all, though it is tied up in the existence of this." He touched my shadow brand. "Unless she chooses to extend the link through you to include me, I can only infer what she's doing. In the instant before we crossed back, there was a surge of ssoothssasstra through the brand. That, I think, is what brought us back, though I cannot be sure. I do know she didn't send us across directly through her own power over shadow."

"Oh." I was feeling a little stronger now, so I decided to take another shot at sitting up. Placing my palms on the rug, I levered myself upright. …wait, rug?

I glanced down. My room at the caravansary hadn't been a fancy one, little more than a cubby containing a low table and a raised platform with a thick rug on it along with a couple of carpet pillows. Whatever mechanism of magic or the elements had brought me here, it had brought the platform and all of its contents with me. I blinked and pushed the blankets aside, exposing my sword rig—a huge relief. As was finding my saddle bags still tucked beneath my pillow.

"I don't suppose the horses came along for the ride, too?"

Triss snorted. "No, just the bed, and how even that much happened is beyond me."

I pivoted and put my feet on the ground as I started buckling on my sword rig. "So, the next question becomes…" A thought struck me. "Hang on a beat, why wasn't I freezing to death in the Everdark before you showed up?"

Triss did his equivalent of a shrug. "No idea. Add it as one minor mystery to the heap of more serious questions and move on to things we can actually address."

"Like: where are we? Beyond 'somewhere along the edge of the Mage Wastes'."

"That's top of the list," he agreed.

I frowned and pushed myself to my feet. "Speaking of which, how do you know even that much?"

"It's not so much knowing as a highly-educated guess. As for the how, turn around."

"What do you…" I trailed off as I finished my pivot and faced west.

The grasses of the veldt continued normally enough for perhaps thirty feet on the other side of the low bed. Beyond lay…phantasmagoria.

If I live to be a thousand, I will never forget that first sight of the Mage Wastes. On one side of a line as neat as a cut throat stood the world I had always known. On the other, the landscape absolutely seethed with spell light in every shade of the rainbow and beyond. Impossible colors were splattered over everything in a profusion only a mad prophet might hope to descry or describe.

Mortal magic casts a light for those with the eyes to see it. It might register as a simple splash of red or gold or green for simpler spells of the sort you could use to open a lock or heat your tea, with rarer hues and more complex combinations created by a greater ward or sending. A fancy bit of high magic might depend on a three-dimensional diagram containing a dozen shades. The light of the wastes was the light of magic, but there was no rhyme or reason in its distribution and intensity. Or, at least, none that I could detect.

Here stood a great limestone mesa threaded through with light like the graining of a great tree. There, a patch of sand was painted in a garbled mix of colors as if every tenth grain were possessed of a different enchantment. Off to one side lay a thicket that looked as though someone had splashed it with luminous paint drawn from random buckets. On the other, a thick patch of darkness curled—apparently untouched by the magic that lay all around it. In the near distance, a stream poured down the face of a low stone wall in a waterfall braided with colors like shining ribbons. Above, great streamers of light rose to form an aurora like the reaching fingers of a giant the size of mountains.

It was beautiful and alien and utterly terrifying. I no longer doubted the stable-master's account of nomads twisted out of human shape by their sojourn in that place of raw and wild power. Rather, I marveled at the idea someone might live there for any length of time and retain even the faintest seeming of their original nature. There was enough free-flowing magic in that place to transform a city into a rain of flowers or remake a dragon into the wild laughter of a god. I wanted to turn away, but found myself incapable of movement.

"Are nightmares real?" I whispered.

"What? Where did that come from?"

So I told Triss about my dream of being carried across the plains and how it had ended in the Everdark.

When I finished, he canted his head to one side. "I…not that I know of."

They're real enough to kill. The voice spoke into my mind, but it was clear from the way Triss jerked that he had heard it too.

Thiussus? I had thought she left me when I crossed back into our world.

Obviously.

If nightmares can kill, what are they?

Less than gods, more than elementals. Beyond that? The animate fragments of infinite possibility? Living dreams of a sleeping universe? The curdled edges of the interface between imagination and reality? She laughed then, the eerie cackle of a nine-tailed fox. Most of all, they are.

Riddles and nonsense, thought Triss.

Exactly, agreed Thiussus. Though I know mockery was your intent. Nightmares are. Have been. Always will be. They contain something of all the elements, though the mix differs from one to the next. Strongest they are in shadow, but light and life run bright in their veins and with death they walk hand in hand. Fire and water, earth and air. These serve them more than define them. Whither they came and where they are going no one knows.

I shook my head at that. I don't understand.

Take a coin. Make a tail of shadows and of head a light. Or pick two other elements if that suits your fancy. Slice the coin through from edge to edge so the two faces can be separated. Nightmare lives in the line of the cut. Thought. Memory. Imagination. These are the things that define the sapient mind, but what are they on their own, alone in the void?

I don't know. I felt my brow furrowing almost of its own accord. I'm not even sure the question means anything.

Again, the laugh of the fox. And that is the nightmare. I am a thing of shadow, but I can manifest myself as something solid in your realm. You are a creature of flesh, but you also contain shadow and, for now, the sea. A nightmare is born of shadow and fire, light and air, and all the other elements, but it manifests in dream, which grows out of the actions of the thinking mind.

That almost made sense. Do they have a purpose?

No more and no less than you do. Some serve clarity, some serve fear, others act as messengers of the gods, or provide windows through the walls of time.

Could one have brought me from my room at the caravansary into the Everdark and then on to here?

If it wanted, certainly. Imagination pays no heed to the walls between the worlds. Imagination travels where it wills. That said, I've never heard of anyone traveling via nightmare before.

Interesting… I mused.

Triss reentered the conversation then. Aral, I know that tone. What are you thinking?

I'm not sure yet. Which wasn't entirely true, but neither was it false. I could feel wheels turning in the dark places of my mind in that way they do when someone asks you a question and you know you know the answer but you cannot yet bring it out into the light.

I was still groping after whatever it was when I felt Thiussus withdrawing from the more direct connection we currently shared. She departed like a swiftly receding rider heading for the far hills, and I was glad to have her gone. But, just as reached the vanishing point, she turned, and I heard her fox cackle echoing faintly across the distance. Until next time, Kingslayer.

I hate that.

What? asked Triss.

Her laughter.

I didn't hear anything.

It's probably for the best. She upsets him even more than me. We haven't the time for her riddles anyway.

At least, I hoped we didn't. Much would depend on where exactly we were. In service of learning the answer to that question, I drew one of my sword and held it up before my eyes. "Udar, can you hear me?"

There was a long pause, and then a sound like shallow waves on a rocky beach. Over the latter, Udar's voice finally spoke, though faint and far away and with weird gaps. "B•rely. Bid• a •om•nt. You•• awf•lly clos• to ••• Wa•tes. ••• lot of •agical •urbula••. •••s hard •• hear •ou." There was another pause, and the wave sounds shifted to something more steady, like wind through a mountain pass. "How•• that?"

"Better," I said, though I had no way of knowing what was coming through on his end. "I have a problem."

"Swords went in•• Wastes al•ead•, I ••ow. •een ••inkin• how • ••• •elp." There was a surge in the noise like a sudden gust, that completely overrode Udar's words for a moment. "•••••••••••••••od•stone. ••• •••• •• ••• ••• •••• •old ver• •ery still, •ll right?"

"No, wait, what?"

"•on't •ove!"

"Why? How long what? What are you doing?"

"••ybe •hour? •ot ••at? ••ooting •ow!"

"What now? Wait."

The noise coming through the sword went back to waves on a beach for perhaps two hundred beats of my heart, then smoothed out again. "•ouldn•• jud•• •indag•e. Stay ••ere! Wi•• check in •••• ••• •••••• •••'s there." Followed by silence.

"Dammit! Triss, did that make sense to you?"

He shook his head. "Not really. I think he's going to do some sort of sending, and he needs us to hold here for an hour or so.

"Here here?" I pointed at the ground beneath my feet. "Or, here here?" And I indicated a much wider circle.

"I don't know. Better opt for the more restrictive choice just to be sure."

I sighed. "That's what I was thinking too. I had hoped you'd talk me out of it."

With a sigh, I lowered myself into a crosslegged position on the cold hard ground. Moving carefully and deliberately I placed my swords in front of me with the hilts at my knees and the points together, forming a triangle. Taking a deep breath, I settled in to meditate with the darkened steel as my focus. It was an old discipline and one that I had performed frequently in my youth, but it had been a long time since I'd felt capable of summoning up the inner calm necessary to doing the thing properly.

Time passed. I resisted the urge to scratch my nose or the myriad of other itches that I always developed in such moments. More time went by. I forced my breathing into the old rhythms, felt my heart slow to match, brought my stresses and my worries to the front of my mind one at time, let them go in the same carefully measured way. Time faded away.

I simply was.

Then I was not.

…

Aral, come back!

What? I felt light and clear in a way that I hadn't for years.

Look up. There in the northeast, what is that?

I turned my head to the right, leaned back. It looks like a giant spark. If it wasn't holding steady, I'd say it was a falling star… Wait… Old lessons about catapults came to mind. If something doesn't appear to move relative to your position except to get bigger, it's aimed at you. I grabbed my swords and rose to my feet. We might want to get ready to duck into the Everdark….

Yeah.

The spark expanded into a point of fire. It was definitely getting closer, but I couldn't get a good read on how close it was. Sheathing my blades, I drew a deep breath and reached into shadows, opening the way. The point became a ball the size of a sling stone, a fist… I was just about to slide into the Everdark when the shape changed, becoming something more like a short-tailed comet. I waited another dozen heartbeats. The tail lengthened. A fireball the size of my head passed over me trailing a thirty-foot ribbon of flame. I spun to keep it in view.

It struck perhaps two hundred yards to the south with a flash bright enough to make me close my eyes and turn my head. An instant later, the ground beneath my feet flexed like a boat rolling in light surf. That was followed by a wall of sound and pressure that staggered me, and I threw a forearm in front of my face and went to one knee as loose dirt and other bits of debris peppered my face and chest.

"Ouch." Triss's mindvoice sounded shaky and I could barely hear it over the ringing in my ears. "Should have ducked behind you faster. That stung."

I blinked my eyes open, though I kept my arm up at first. But the action seemed to be over and I soon dropped it back to my side. The intense light had faded, but I could still infer where whatever-it-was had struck, as it centered a wide area of fitfully burning grasses. I waited a few minutes to see whether the fire was going to grow into something bigger. When it didn't, I headed for the point of impact. I suppose I ought to have checked in with Udar before moving, but I just assumed the fireball was his sending.

After a short walk with a few brief pauses to stomp out patches of burning vegetation, I found myself standing on the edge of a crater perhaps thirty feet across and seven deep. A yard-long shaft of iron stood in the center of the pit, glowing a dull red-orange. The surface of the dished area was firm but a little slippery, so I carefully tested my footing with each step on my way down to the center. The shaft was tilted at an angle perhaps thirty degrees off vertical and pointing roughly northeast. The upper end had a trio of iron flanges arranged like an arrow's flights.

Drawing my righthand sword, I went around to the other side and squatted so I could poke gently at the small mound where the "arrow's" shaft met the ground. Depending on where I tapped, the point of my sword made either a metallic "tink" or a dull "tock" sort of noise, which suggested the head of the thing was of a different material. The heat radiating off the shaft made a pleasant contrast to the cool night air as I worked to free it.

After a couple of minutes of careful prying, the thing abruptly tipped over, exposing the head, which resembled a war arrow's, though it appeared to be shaped from granite and was about four times the size I would have expected from the length of the thing. I looped one of the straps from my harness around the shaft just below the flights. It sizzled when I pulled it tight, but didn't burn through the leather. I picked it up and started back toward the place I'd left my saddle bags. I was just stepping over the lip of the crater, when the load shifted and I heard a gentle thud. The head had fallen off.

"Now what?"

A muffled hiss came from behind me, followed by faint words, "••• yo• break •• open."

I blinked and it took me a moment to realize Udar was speaking from the sheathed swords on my back.

"The arrowhead?"

"•es!"

"All right." Drawing one of my swords I spun it in my hand and delivered a sharp blow to the rock with the back of the blade. It shattered easily, exposing a much smaller arrowhead shape within, this one of watered steel grained in shimmering blue and light-devouring black. Kneeling, I held a fingertip an inch or so above the metal to check its temperature.

That's when it spoke to me. "Don't worry, it's quite cool."

"Udar?"

"Yes." The voice was clear, though I could still hear a faint susurration in the background like wind in the leaves of a winter oak. "This is a piece of Vak's heart metal, with a leavening of the shadowed meteoric iron Namara brought me—no more than a needle's worth of the latter though. That was all I could find in amongst the forge scraps, and it's probably a better mix for this purpose than the original would have been."

"And what purpose is that?"

"It should work like a lodestone for the swords of your goddess. But only over relatively short distances. No more than a mile or two for a single sword and probably no more than fifty for even as large a group as the caravan is carrying."

"Will it work in the Mage Wastes?"

"I believe so, but the only way to know is to try it. You'd better hurry, the caravan crossed beyond my ability to see them some hours ago."

"How close am I to where they entered the Mage Wastes?"

"Within a stone's throw." There was a pause. "I assumed you knew that. How else did you come to be there?"

"Interesting question. If my perceptions are to be believed, a nightmare brought me here through the Everdark. Though Triss thinks I managed to do it myself somehow, using the shadow brand. Thoughts?"

The silence stretched out so long I would have thought we'd lost contact were it not for the faint hiss and crackle that continued to come from the arrowhead. Finally he spoke again. "You might want to start sleeping in a warding circle."

"What? Why?"

"If the nightmares have taken an interest in you, they could carry you off to many a worser place."