He drew his blade and held it high. Byrne, Nald, and Eldris did the same. Shadows snaked from Vasen’s flesh, spiraled around his forearm and hand, but he channeled the power of the Dawnfather, and his blade glowed with a bright, rosy hue. It fell on the pilgrims, on the Dawnswords, its power steeling their spirits, amplifying their hopes, even while painting their shadows on the ground. Vasen felt both the warmth of the light and presence of the shadows. The glow elevated the pilgrims’ expressions. Many made the sign of the rising sun and bowed their heads.
“We walk now into darkness on a journey toward the sun,” Vasen said. “A common faith binds us, a common purpose. We are each warmed by the light that’s in our fellows. In faith we’ll hold the darkness at bay. His light keep us.”
“And warm us,” the pilgrims answered.
Vasen and the Dawnswords lowered their blades, the glow faded, and Sembia’s darkness once more crept close. Everyone awaited Vasen’s order to begin. Before giving it, he turned and called Orsin to his side.
The other Dawnswords eyed him strangely, but Vasen did not care.
“Vasen?”
Vasen raised his eyebrows, nodded at the ground, at Orsin’s staff.
“Lines signify new beginnings, you said. Maybe draw one?”
Orsin smiled. “Very good. Very good, indeed.” He dragged a line in the mud.
“We go,” Vasen called, and the column moved, crossing the border Orsin had drawn.
The sky relieved itself in a drizzle as they walked the labyrinthine pass, navigating its switchbacks, its hidden paths, its deadfalls. Orsin hovered near the front of the column, near Vasen. The other Dawnswords assisted those who stumbled or bore the packs of those who sagged under the weight.
The air thickened with moisture as they moved. Mist gathered around their feet, rose to their knees. Ahead, a wall of swirling gray, within which lived the spirits of the pass. Vasen did not understand what the spirits were. He only knew they had been harvested from elsewhere by the blue fire of the Spellplague and deposited in the pass. Perhaps they couldn’t leave. Perhaps they didn’t wish to. They seemed to answer to the Oracle in some way that Vasen did not comprehend. They let Dawnswords and pilgrims pass unmolested. Others, they led astray. From time to time through the years, the Dawnswords had found errant wanderers in this or that switchback, dead for lack of food or water, their eyes wide with fear.
The mist swirled around him as they neared the fog, climbed up his thighs. His flesh answered with shadows. Muttering filled his ears, whispers, a meaningless chatter that threatened to cloud his thinking.
He touched the holy symbol at his throat, uttered a prayer, drew upon Amaunator’s power, and channeled it into his shield. Energy charged the metal and wood. It began to glow with light, grew warm in his grasp. The voices in his head fell back to distant whispers.
Behind him, Nald, Eldris, and Byrne did the same, and soon Amaunator’s light hedged the pilgrims.
“Stay within the glow,” Vasen said. “It will be as it was when you came through the first time. You’ll hear the spirits, perhaps even see them, but heed nothing. They won’t harm you directly, but if you wander in the pass, it will be hard to find you again. We won’t stop until we’re through. Hold hands with the person nearest you. If one of you stumbles or cannot keep up, shout for aid immediately.”
Grunts and murmurs of assent answered his words. A child whimpered. A cough, cleared throat.
Vasen led them into the wall of the fog and it enveloped him immediately, deadened sound, attenuated his connection to the world, to himself. He felt cocooned in it. Even with the light from his shield he could see only a few paces. But he’d known what to expect, so he kept his wits.
“Stay together,” he called over his shoulder.
Behind him he heard the footsteps of the pilgrims, the soft crunch of sandal and boot on rock, but the sound seemed distant, and he seemed separated from them by more than mist. The reflected light of his shield glowed white on the whorls and eddies of the mist. He sought the markers as he moved, boulders with glowing sigils etched into the base. He found the first, the glowing rose of Amaunator’s dawn incarnation scribed into the stone.
“We’re at the first marker,” he said. “Nald? Byrne? Eldris?”
“With you,” they all answered.
Two more markers and they’d be clear, the way etched into Vasen’s memory as clearly as the markers were etched into rock.
In the churn of the mist he saw ghostly faces outlined, mouths open and full of secrets, eyes that were holes into which one could fall forever. Whispering from all around him, the sound like the hiss of falling rain, the words hard to distinguish, an eerie sibilance.
A bearded face before him, mouth open in a scream.
A woman’s visage to his left, eyes wide with terror.
A child’s gaze, forlorn, lost.
He kept his mind focused, his feet on the path, same as always.
Snippets of phrases rose out of the inchoate storm of whispers.
“The City of Silver,” said a man’s voice.
“Elgrin Fau,” hissed a woman.
Vasen ignored them, as he had countless times before.
“You must free him,” said a boy’s voice.
“You’re the heir. Write the story.”
The words halted Vasen in his steps. They recalled to his mind the dreams he’d had of his father, the words of the Oracle.
“Byrne?” he called. “Nald?”
No response. Had he gotten separated? Had he lost his charges?
“Eldris?”
He turned a circle, realizing immediately that he’d made a mistake. The mist had scrambled his senses. Dizziness seized him. The world spun and he stumbled on a boulder, nearly fell. The light from his shield dimmed. Shadows poured from his flesh, mixed with the mist. He put his hand on the holy symbol at his throat, held onto it as if his life depended upon never letting go.
The whispers intensified. The mist closed in on him, a funereal shroud. He muttered a prayer, tried to drown them out, but they grew closer, louder, a rush in his ears, the cascades of the valley falling all around him in a foam of voices.
“Save him,” said a deep voice.
“You must.”
“Save him. Then write the story.”
“Save who?” he shouted, but he already knew the answer.
The air around him grew cold, freezing, knives on his flesh. His teeth chattered. He tried to speak, to call for his comrades, but frost rimed his lips and prevented speech. The wind picked up, pawed at his cloak with frozen fingers. The whispers of the spirits gave way to screams, prolonged wails of agony. He smelled brimstone, the stink of burning flesh.
“What is happening?” he tried to shout, but no words emerged, just a croak and a cloud of frozen breath.
The mist parted before him to reveal distant mountains larger than any he’d ever seen, jagged ice-covered towers that reached to a glowing red sky. Smoke poured into the sky in thick columns. He stood on a precipice overlooking a plain of ice. Below, he saw a mound of ice, like a cairn, alone in a flat frozen plain. Shadows curled out of cracks in the mound. A river of fire cut through the plain, veins of red in which, in which. .
“By the light,” he whispered, and sweated darkness.
Souls burned in the river, their screams rising into the air with the smoke. Towering insectoid devils stabbed at them with long polearms, lifted them from the fire like speared fish.
“Cania,” a deep, powerful voice said to his right.
He turned but saw no one.
“Is that where he is?” Vasen called. “In Hell? Tell me!”
No answer. He turned back to look upon the horror once more, but the vision of Cania, of Hell, had faded. Warmth returned, as did the mist, as did the dizziness, the whispers.
“Save him,” said another voice. “He is cold.”
Vasen stumbled on legs gone weak, but before he fell a hand closed on his shoulder and pulled him roughly around. He brought his shield to bear, readied his blade.