Raidon checked the map. Some previous traveler called the meadow Cyric's Table. According to the legend, their route required they leave the bridge and pass through it until they reached the roots of something labeled Grandmother Ash. Glancing up, the monk spied a fantastically tall tree in the misty distance. Its topmost branches bore a canopy of blue fire.
He motioned with his head to the bridge terminus.
Finara stood rooted in place, morose and muddy-eyed. She clutched her own copy of the map in one hand; the other held tight to the burro's reins.
"I can't do it, Raidon. I can't step off the bridge. Hadyn was… The odds are against me."
He nodded.
She looked at him, her eyes beseeching him for words of encouragement. He had none. He replied, "Perhaps this is not your day."
Tears broke from her left eye, but she nodded as relief struggled with anguish and fear.
"Gods willing, I will see you back in Ormpetarr in three days," she said. "If you return with a spellscar, then I know it is possible and not merely a tale told to bilk the incredulous."
Raidon clasped her shoulder, then turned to regard his path. He excised concern for her safe trip back from his consciousness.
A drifting cube obscured "the distant tree for a moment. Above, a jagged trail of blue lightning split the sky, sending a flash across the plain. Blinking away the after-image, Raidon left the bridge and entered the plain of red grass. He did not look back.
The long-bladed, crimson grass crunched beneath his feet. The boulders drifted like tiny versions of the earthmote he'd seen west of Nathlekh. Unlike that massive air island, these moved and left wakes of bluish radiance. He wondered if the masses were solidified spellplague. He avoided the darting masses with the diligence they deserved.
He left the unmoored rocks behind and reached the edges of the exposed, tangled root mass. The field of burrowing roots, stretched perhaps a mile, maybe more, surrounding the tree in the distance. He'd misjudged the tree's size. It was larger than he'd thought. At least no grass grew between the great, fingerlike roots that clutched at the earth so fiercely. He studied the roots for a time. It seemed they slowly twined and churned the earth, moving, but only as quickly as earthworms through soil.
He moved out across the root field. They offered solid footing and did not react to his weight. He quickly reached that which the roots all supported.
The bole of the tree was more like a cliff face than an ash trunk. No limbs offered access for several hundred feet, but those above were as thick as roads. The sound of the wind in the roof-like leaves high above was like the roar of a distant cataract. Each leaf gleamed like a tongue of sapphire flame.
Raidon scratched his chin, and then drew out his map. The Pilgrim's Path led to the Grandmother Ash's base. A dotted arrow led away from the tree into the heart of the discontinuity, as if the cartographer had lost confidence in the route in this final leg.
He decided to scale the tree, if he could, to get a lay of the land from on high.
He placed one hand against the tree's grayish, deeply grooved bark. It was sun warm and pleasant beneath his fingers. Raidon mused, "You've survived this Plague-wrought Land well, it seems."
Intense gladness washed across Raidon. It came without warning and smashed through his focus as if it were nothing more than rice paper.
The monk snatched his hand from the tree, and the sensation was gone.
Raidon studied the tree several long moments, considering.
He ventured, "Are you conscious?"
No voice answered, nor unwarranted feeling. He laid his palm again across the tree.
Acknowledgment suffused the monk from his crown to his toes.
"I greet you, Grandmother Ash. I am Raidon Kane. I am sorry to disturb your solitude, but if you please, I have a question, if you will hear it?"
Curiosity prickled up Raidon's arm.
"Thank you. I seek an old friend, an elf woman, who may have ventured past you some years back. She would have carried with her a powerful sword and had a dwarf as a traveling companion. Does that sound familiar?"
A "green" feeling of assent settled upon him, and then… fear.
"What makes you afraid, great one?"
The tree shuddered. A blue flame ignited beneath Raidon's hand. The monk snatched his hand away, leaving a trail of fading flame. He anxiously regarded his palm for several heartbeats, and then let out his breath in relief.
The point of flame on the bark remained, grew into a line that quickly traced the outline of a humanoid figure. The shape bulged, and then stepped from two dimensions to three. It was a woman, perhaps, but she was bark and leaves, stem and bough, with hands of knotted root. Thick strands of moss made up her hair and her eyes were twin forest pools limned in blue flame. Her bare skin was the ridged, grayish bark of an ash tree.
"Who says I am afraid?" the woman asked him, her voice vibrant with the music of a major chord. She wasn't much taller than Raidon, though he had the feeling she wasn't fully unfurled.
He resisted the urge to retreat a step. He replied simply, as if women emerging from trees was nothing less than what he expected, "Perhaps I misspoke, madam."
The woman examined her digits, wriggling them as if checking to see that they all functioned. Satisfied, she glanced back at Raidon. She asked, "Why do you seek those three in particular? Many more pilgrims have traveled the Plague-wrought Land since them."
"The elf s sword, Angul, has duties to perform in defense of Faerыn."
"You do not seem a swordsman," the woman said, somewhat critically.
"I am trained in their use: fist, foot, sword, sling, and more I have studied. Regardless,"-Raidon waved away the topic, surprised to find himself extolling his own virtues-"Angul is required. Have you seen him, or his wielder, Kiril the elf, or her companion, Thormud the dwarf?"
"I saw those you describe. I manifested a form much like this one so that we could converse. I attempted to dissuade them from their goal. They sought the Chalk Destrier, a fiend of white stone who was empowered the same time I was awakened."
"In the Year of Blue Fire? You are a spellscarred… tree?"
"The few creatures that survived full contact with the most virulent wave of spellplague are more than merely scarred, but utterly transformed. Plaguechanged. They are monstrous entities of rage and destruction. The world is lucky most of these creatures are bound to one location. Of course, I am an exception. I am prone more to philosophy."
Raidon suppressed the urge to explain that he too had been touched and changed by the initial wave of spellplague. Did that mean the Cerulean Symbol bound to his soul was more than "merely" a spellscar, as well? He looked down at the massive root field surrounding the ash tree, then back into the woman's burning eyes.
"I am bound, yes. But unlike the Chalk Destrier and others, my mind remains uncorrupted. Perhaps it is because I had no mind before I was awakened by the touch of unleashed, wild magic."
"Yet you have a shape like mine." Raidon pointed at the woman. He flirted with the idea of asking if she were a dryad. Some instinct made him refrain.
"I am an avatar only, a seedling," she replied. "In this form, I can move within the bounds of this changeland, but not beyond. Not yet."
Raidon frowned but chose to ignore the last.
"Can you direct me to this Chalk Destrier?"
"It will prove your death, as it did your friends."
"They have perished, then? You know that?"
"In time, I can taste all that occurs on the surface of the Plague-wrought Land. That which rots is absorbed into the earth, even soil as unstable as that found in this region. My roots spread even farther below ground than is visible above. I tasted their essence diffused into the loam some years ago. True, my subterranean tendrils cannot reach all the way into that creature's lair. Perhaps they were only wounded. But my knowledge of the Chalk Destrier leads me to believe otherwise."
Raidon nodded. "We suspect the same, but we think th
e sword remains."
"We?" inquired Grandmother Ash's avatar.
"My advisor, Cynosure. He is not with me now." Raidon looked around wondering if a voice out of thin air would prove him wrong. But a few more moments proved that hope false.
"Ah," said the avatar, her head cocked in a human fashion, indicating her uncertainty.
"I must retrieve the sword Angul. Events outside the borders of your land require him. Angul is a relic of vanished Sildeyuir. He has the power to oppose the Abolethic Sovereignty."
The woman brushed her hair back with a delicate, bark-skinned hand. She said, "I am unfamiliar with this Sovereignty."
"It is a group of creatures who are like the plaguechanged you described-fiends from the deep earth that must be opposed."
"And it is given to you to oppose them." "The task has fallen to me, yes."
The woman clapped her hands, making a sound like two planks slamming together. "A hero! The pilgrims' tales sometimes described such. You're my first."
The avatar smiled.
Silence stretched.
"Will you help me?" Raidon was suddenly weary. "Usually pilgrims must give me a story in return for my aid. But for you, a hero brave and true, I require only that you allow me to accompany you. When you meet the Chalk Destrier, my old foe, perhaps I can distract him long enough for you to look for your lost sword, if it's there."
Raidon bowed his head slightly. "Thank you, Grandmother Ash."
"This way, hero." The avatar touched his elbow and turned him to face a new direction. South. Southeast, perhaps. The strength in her root fingers was incredible, and the gnarled wood abraded his skin.
Releasing him, she pointed. "We must pass into a maelstrom of greater activity to reach the heart."
So saying, all the individual tendrils composing her form were sucked into the ground, like a plant growing in reverse, until she was gone.
Confused, he looked back to the great tree. Hadn't the woman just indicated she'd accompany him? The vast shape provided no answers.
Raidon glanced in the direction the avatar pointed. A stormy cloudscape hovered on the horizon, somehow half familiar. Blue lightning played within it.
A hundred paces from where he stood, a stem burst from the earth, followed instantly by dozens more. They twined and condensed. An eye-blink later, Raidon recognized the avatar.
She called, "Come along, hero. This way!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Taunissik, Sea of Fallen Stars
Anusha screamed the worst profanity she could ever recall hearing, something her half brother once said to a servant. The darkened cabin aboard the Green Siren absorbed her outburst, and quiet returned.
Japheth had moved too far for her dream to follow. Just when he needed her most! With Nogah killed, how would he ever find what he looked for? How would he ever find his way back out again? He could retreat to his castle-but there he risked dying at the hand of a Feywild witch with murder in her heart. If he didn't kill himself first with his tin of traveler's dust.
Think, she commanded herself. Panic won't help, girl.
Easy enough said, hard to follow through. But she attempted to calm her breathing. She concentrated on the sound of her too fast heart. She willed it quieter, until she could no longer hear it beating in her ears.
Her body was too far from the island's center. How could she get it closer without risking detection? Did it matter anymore? With Nogah dead, perhaps the great kraken already knew the ship lay at anchor off the seamount's coast. Slimy kuo-toa swimmers and the ink-trailing aerial sentinels could be turning their attention this way even as she imagined the possibility.
She pushed those thoughts away. They made her heart race. She wouldn't be able to fall asleep again.
That thought alone signaled it was already too late, she knew. When one is most desperate to fall into slumber, sleep is furthest away. Awake or tired, she knew she was in for a long period before she could relax enough even for a nap. Worse, it seemed the more she used Japheth's potion, the less she was able to fall asleep naturally. Concern puckered her brows at the thought.
She was becoming just as addicted to that silver vial as Japheth was to his damned dust tin. "No," she mumbled.
Maybe, she thought. It didn't matter. She could leave Japheth to his fate or try to help him. Simple as that. She pulled the stopper from the silver vial and drank.
Even as she lay back and closed her eyes, her dream pair opened. Anusha stepped from her slumping physical body clad in the plate armor of dream.
She stowed the silver vial carefully back within a pocket in her sleeping body's skirt. She vowed she wouldn't use the vial again. As she had told herself last time.
"Stop it! You've got more pressing issues, now."
She took what seemed like a real breath. "A dream I am, and so I perceive the world about me," she affirmed, trying to convince herself.
Anusha closed the lid on the traveling case, her body still snug within. She reached into the interior, and slid home the latch from the inside.
"Now the hard part. Maybe."
She bent, arms wide, and grasped the brass handles on each side of the carrying case. She heaved. The chest moved' slightly, no more.
Anusha frowned.
"In my dream, I am as strong as I need to be," she asserted.
She heaved again. Another inch of movement.
She relinquished her grip and said the profanity again, but this time it was only half-hearted. She plucked a crumb-laden trencher from the sideboard. This she could lift easily as her waking form could. Why should limitations of the waking world shackle her dream?
Because, deep down, she expected the rules to be the same. Despite the fact they manifestly were not the same-she could walk through walls and move invisibly. Why should her ability to affect the world remain the same when everything else was different?
Anusha grabbed the handles again, new certainty firing her. This time, she did not heave. She concentrated. Then she merely picked up the entire travel chest by the two grips. Part of her knew its full weight, but in her determination she tried to imagine it as heavy as a trencher, at least in this dream.
Her sleeping self snored within. Hearing it, she realized again how much she carried and nearly dropped herself. One edge rapped hard against the floor. She let down the chest, not quite dropping it. Her drugged body didn't respond to the rough handling.
She realized she was probably at her limit. It would be hard to focus enough to lift more than this. Why pick it up, she realized, when she could drag it?
Anusha kicked open the door to the cabin and stepped out, the chest in tow behind her. Lucky snorted his pleasure on seeing her.
"Want to help me out, boy?" she whispered to the mongrel. The dog's ears cupped forward, and its tail wagged. If she managed to convey her body to the island, a sentinel would be required to stand watch over her sleeping self.
Rushing water sucked Japheth into an all-encompassing embrace. He tried for a last breath and instead inhaled a smothering gulp of sea. The rough water twirled him around and knocked his head against stone.
After that, he wasn't quite sure what happened. Perhaps someone grabbed his ankle and towed him. His cloak flared around him in the water. An object slipped from the hem. He saw his tin of traveler's dust spin out into the turbid water. He reached for it, but it tumbled down, down, until darkness claimed it. He cried out as if struck, finally forcing the water from his lungs. Coughs wracked him.
He found himself on a damp expanse of stone, just beyond a torrent surging by on both sides. Seren lay near him, looking as battered and half drowned as he felt. On the other hand, Captain Thoster appeared unharmed, if hatless. His long hair was swept back, and his skin glistened with beaded water. A slight smile dimpled his expression as he turned to regard Japheth.
"You going to live, bucko?"
Japheth nodded, tried to reply, but instead released another body-convulsing cough.
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Seren said, "You swim like a seal, Thoster."
The slight smile became a grin. "Something like that, wizard."
"Why so lighthearted?" Seren snapped. "We lost our guide and main protector. Now we're lost below the seamount. How long before the great kraken comes by and collects us?"
"We ain't dead yet," the captain replied.
"I can't swim," Seren replied, her tone robbed of its usual vindictiveness. She glanced at the rapids. The turbulent flow foamed along the narrow track just a few feet beyond their perch, then fell away onto a steep slope, becoming a cataract falling who knew how far.
"You're addled, lass. Look there." Thoster pointed to his left. Across the breadth of water, Japheth could barely make out the edges of what appeared to be a stairwell, leading up. "No need for us to swim just yet."
The torrent was narrow enough even the wizard had no difficulty leaping it. They took to the steps. The stair was a spiraling tube leading upward. Fifty paces saw them into a new cavity.
Seren exclaimed, "How interesting."
Tiny points of gold-green light flitted over domes and obelisks of shaped coral. The drifting points illuminated a subterranean vault whose size seemed, at least by the fey light of the drifting star points, equal to the breadth of the isle above.
They stood in silence, looking for kuo-toa or any other sign of malign attention. Silence lay over the space like a swaddling blanket.
"What's this place for?"
"Nogah would have known," replied Thoster.
The wizard sniffed. "She's dead, Thoster. I'm asking you."
He shrugged. "For us, let us hope it provides an exit."
Seren actually smiled. "Now you're talking. Let's get out of here and leave the Dreamheart to its new owner."
Thoster paused. "Nay, lass. Despite this setback, we need to try for it. I wouldn't leave without it, now that we're so close. Which way do you suppose we should go to find the big squid, Japheth?"
"I don't know." He was so bedraggled he wondered if Seren didn't have the right of it. Events had obviously proved too much for Anusha.
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