“Captain?”
The word was repeated before Uthalion realized he was being spoken to. He was not yet accustomed to the title and eager to be rid of it as soon as possible. A half-elf stood at the end of the porch, his sword drawn and eyeing the southern approach warily.
“Yes, Brindani?”
“The last of the townsfolk have been secured, doors are boarded up, and livestock have been locked away until…” Brindani’s voice momentarily trailed off as both men spied the first pitch black clouds reaching the far end of town “Until the storm passes,” he finished.
Uthalion studied the half-elf s face for several breaths, seeing through the stoic facade to the spark of fear in the soldier’s eyes and the breath he slowly forced from the tightness of his chest. In that moment Uthalion hated the half-elf, but only brieflya flash of malice that urged him to be cruel, to mock the young warrior who’d signed on for glory and story. Brindani’s friends, also brash and eager for the gold a good fight might bring, had fallen three days ago, their bodies broken and left for carrion in the ruins of old Tohrepur.
Growls of thunder drew his attention back to the storm. The black clouds stretched from east to west as if they would swallow the entire world. Uthalion could still imagine the deep well from which they’d burst and flowed into the sky like a geyser of pure shadow. The Keepers of the Cerulean Sign, mystic warriors bound to the destruction of agents of the Abolethic Sovereignty, had stuck their swords in where they weren’t wanted and had gotten more than they’d bargained for.
The unnatural storm was the least of their worries now. The Keepers were all dead as far as Uthalion knew, leaving their underpaid mercenaries to clean up the mess. Three days the black clouds had chased them across the Mere-That-Was; three days and counting for the last defenders of Tohrepur to fall.
“Are the men in place?” he asked Brindani who nodded, speechless. “Well maintain a wide, even circle, closing slowly and converging here.”
Soldiers took their positions in the distance, barely visible in the sudden and early night, their blades flashing in the long streaks of lightning. Beyond their evenly spaced line, shambling over the southern rise and backlit by the lightning storm, the last citizens of Tohrepur, thralls to abolethic masters, crested the hill. They walked awkwardly, many struggling to make their twisted limbs obey basic commands, their bones either horribly changed or gone altogether. The thralls’ throats stretched and distended, producing only gurgling sounds as the servitors tried to speak, tried to find their lost voices.
Brindani gasped, staring as the horde pushed on into Caidris. His blade dipped, and he took a step backward. Uthalion descended the porch steps and grabbed the half-elf s shoulder firmly.
“Just do the work,” he said, shouting to be heard above the thunder and howling wind. “Keep moving, don’t think, and do your job.”
“They’re people,” Brindani said, unable to look away1 from the grisly crowd. “They’re just people.”
Uthalion released the half-elf s shoulder and drew the dead captain’s long sword, stretching his neck and calming nerves that had waited too long for the storm to come, for his work to arrive.
“Yes. And when you order that first round of drinks after all this is said and done,” he replied, eyeing the sorcerous storm with a determined stare, “you remember what you just said before you tell the tale. You remember it very well.”
The thunder in the storm buzzed through the town, an alien voice whispering dark words that tingled like magic on the air. Uthalion could feel that magic descending from the clouds, caressing his cheek with silky tendrils of suggestion. Nausea spun his stomach, matching the racing course of his thoughts. He advanced, ignoring the brief pangs of anxiety that accompanied the start of any battle. The dark swallowed him, leaving him in a black void with only the dusty road beneath his boots to keep him grounded.
He paused several feet from the farmhouse as the babbling voices of Tohrepur’s host grew louder, gurgling screams that chased the thunder and echoed somewhere in his memory. The sudden sense of having done it all before was overwhelming, and he turned, looking back at the farmhouse and the open door banging in the wind. Khault stood on the porch carrying a glowing lantern. Khault, the brave farmer who’d invited Uthalion’s men to stay and rest in Caidris, and who had volunteered to help when he’d heard news of the coming disaster.
With measured steps, Khault descended the porch steps as if in a trance, his eyes fixed on the advancing thralls as they clashed with the mercenaries at the end of the road. In his free hand he held an old axe, its blade glowing dully in the orange light of his lantern.
“You should be inside!” Uthalion shouted over the thunder. But Khault did not answer and did not stop. Panic took the captain in an icy grip, and he strode forward, grabbing the farmer’s shoulders and shaking him, “Why? Why risk it? Think of your family! Why would you leave them alone in this?”
Khault merely stared, the orange light digging deep shadows in the man’s face.
Shouts caught Uthalion’s attention as the soldiers’ circle formation closed, edging nearer to the farmhouse. He shouted back, instructing his men, though the words were too familiar, like a script playing itself out and using his voice without his consent. He stopped and tried to remember, placing a hand on his head as if he could pluck the memory free through scalp and bone.
“We can’t all be heroes, Uthalion!” Khault called out, walking into the dark, toward the flash of distant blades and the shining eyes of Tohrepur’s people. “But you should not judge us for trying!”
“Nonsense!” Uthalion yelled back, blinking in the wind and turning in circles, narrowing his eyes as the struggling memory crawled sluggishly to the forefront of his mind, “Follow orders,” he muttered. “Just do the job.”
“Don’t be naive, Captain,” Brindani whispered, though the half-elf was nowhere to be seen. “Wake up!”
Shadows twisted as a figure shuffled toward him from the right. He raised his long sword, abandoning confusion for the simple clarity of combat. Lightning blazed across the sky, sparkling in the drooping eye of a young boy whose twin mouths opened wide to reveal multiple rows of needle-sharp teeth. “Wake up…”
6 Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR) The Spur Forest, Akanul, South ofAirspur
Uthalion woke with a gasp to find himself lying on the forest floor, staring up into a thick canopy of trees. Moonlight streamed through the leaves as he blinked in a daze, the nightmare slowly retreating into the murky depths of his thoughts. Sitting up, he saw that his knife and the rabbit he’d snared earlier were gone, but his silver ring, plain and unassuming, lay on the ground where it had slipped from his finger. As he set it back in its place, the cold metal soothing against his skin, he breathed evenly and wiped the sweat from his brow.
The soft crackle and glow of the campfire behind him and the smell of cooking rabbit eased his mind, and he sat for a long moment, the drying blood of the rabbit sticky on his fingers, staring into a middle distance that held only the promise of a quiet darkness. He could only have been asleep for an hour or so. His left hand, bearing the silver ring, clenched into a fist that would not soon release the simple loop.
At length he stood up. A small stream ran along the edge of the grove, and he lowered his hands into the cool waters, careful not to lose the ring on his finger.
“Did you sleep well?” Vaasurri asked, and Uthalion closed his eyes.
“You know better,” he said as he focused on removing the blood from his hands.
“I suppose,” the killoren replied. “But I always hold out hope.”
Uthalion nodded with as much finality as the gesture could convey. Despite the magic of the ring, he was tired. It had been six years since he’d walked away from Caidris and nearly three weeks since he’d last had a night’s sleep. The dream. was always the same, carrying him back to Khault’s little farmhouse and the dark basement where he and his men had ridden out the aboleth’s storm. The repetition of the dream, night after night, invading his sleep had given him splitting headaches for monthsuntil he’d found the enchanted ring. Its silver shine was dull compared to the gold band it had replaced.