“That’s quite some swim.” Shiv handed me a towel and I dried myself roughly, covering myself with the shirt he offered next, rapidly dragging clinging breeches over my still damp thighs.
“Where’s Planir?” I demanded.
“Talking with Arest, over there,” replied Shiv, eyes widening at my brusque manner.
I looked blindly at him for a moment. There was something wrong, wasn’t there? An elusive memory teased me, fragile as a shade. I screwed my eyes shut to try to capture it. The scents of the summer came to me on a wisp of breeze and I smelled the richness of the forest, the sharpness of the dew-damp stone, the faintest suggestion of salt and weed from the exposed mud flats down river.
Forcing a smile to reassure Shiv, I took a deep breath, running a hand through my wet hair, now just about long enough again to curl and tangle. I interrupted the Archmage’s conversation with scant ceremony.
“Ryshad,” Planir greeted me politely enough, but I could see the questions in his eyes while Arest glared at me with frank annoyance.
“It’s not here, it’s not anywhere close,” I said abruptly. “There was never any smell of the sea by the cavern. The forest was different too, more resinous, more aromatic. We’re looking in the wrong place!”
I was nearly shouting as uncharacteristic rage filled me— rage with myself for not realizing sooner, with Temar for taking the tattered remnants of the colony so far afield before finding sanctuary, at all these cursed scholars and wizards for not working things out more readily. It was so obvious, wasn’t it? Heads turned all around and a voice called out from the wall walk, the sentry quickly reassured by Arest.
“Where are they then?” Planir demanded, arms folded, authority undiminished by his breeches and shirt sleeves.
“The mines, that’s where they fled, up river to the sanctuary of the caves up there,” I shook off Temar’s clinging memories and turned to Shiv. “Can you scry at that kind of distance?”
“I can try.” He set his jaw.
Planir raised a hand. “No, Shiv, not this evening.”
We both stared at him, open-mouthed. “It’s late, everyone is tired,” said Planir firmly. “If the colonists have slept for so many generations, a day’s delay to make sure everyone is fresh will hardly make a difference.”
I opened my mouth to object heatedly but Livak slid herself inside the circle of my arm. “Come on,” she said abruptly. “He’s right. We’ve all done enough today. Lend us a hand in the hall and then we can make sure we pick a good spot to sleep in.”
“That would probably be best,” Shiv admitted with ill grace. “I am pretty well drained after helping clear that anchorage.”
I yielded reluctantly, only a little cheered to find Livak taking my hand as we crossed the now busy courtyard. I vented some of my anger in driving uncounted generations of crawlers out of the corners of the ruined hall, but I was still seething inside.
“I think we’ll stake our claim here,” Livak announced, planting her light pack and the heavy bundle of my armor either side of the low remnant of an interior wall that would give us some semblance of shelter and privacy. “This will do us fine.”
“Good.” Fighting for calm, I looked around to see if anything was being done about food and saw Halice handing out bread and stew with her usual air of efficiency.
“So who made you quarter master?” Livak inquired with a grin as we took our place in the line.
Halice greeted us with a thin smile. “This cursed leg has to be good for something.”
I took a hungry mouthful of excellent stew and nodded to Halice. “You certainly have a talent for it.”
“It’s how I started in the mercenary trade,” she remarked, rather to my surprise. “I hired out as a cook, to a merchant train first of all and later to a corps. That’s where I learned to fight.” She smiled at me, more at ease than I could remember her, and not just for having two sound feet again. “What did you think? I just picked up a sword and went looking for adventure? The only thing that’ll get you is dead in a ditch or chained in a brothel.”
That raised chuckles of agreement on all sides. “At least it’s keeping me clear of the real work,” Halice continued with a broader grin. “It’s not bad, taking my ease for a change.”
“How are the scholars doing?” I tried not to envy her contentment too much and looked for distraction toward the intense huddle around Tonin’s fire.
“They seem very pleased with themselves,” Halice replied with a touch of amusement. “Tonin has been drilling Parrail in the incantations they’re hoping to use to revive the sleeping colonists.”
Livak blew through a hot mouthful of meat and vegetables, wincing as she swallowed it. “So now we have to wait until morning?” she asked in a resigned tone. “Before we can finally get all this sorted out?”
“Just so, we wait,” confirmed Halice, her own impatience clear in her furrowed brow.
I stifled a sour desire to ask what in Dastennin’s name they had to worry about with a spoonful of stew. I was the one with an ancient Tormalin lurking all too wakeful in the back of my head, wasn’t I? It was getting so I couldn’t think of anything else, fighting a growing, cumulative exhaustion along with Temar’s increasingly intrusive personality.
Darkness, broken only by piecemeal dreams
At first there was nothing, no sensation, no light, no sound. It seemed that he had never known any existence but this dark enchanted sleep. Painfully, agonizing as warm blood pulsing in a dead limb, awareness returned, old dread, new dismay. Once known and recognized, emotion coursed sluggishly down old paths. Temar awoke to nothingness, blackness pressing down on him. Terror began to scratch at the corners of his mind, gnawing at his determination to withstand this trial. Uncertainty began to grow, spurred on by the sudden realization that he could feel nothing, nothing at all. There was no release in an accelerating heartbeat sending fire into his blood, to kindle a fury to fight off whatever was threatening him. No sweat beaded his brow to cool him, no ancient instinct was raising his hackles to warn of impending danger. He floated, bodiless in the featureless void, and when the urge to cry out could no longer be denied he lost himself in sickened terror at the realization that he had no mouth to shout with, no voice to raise. Pure horror overwhelmed him, screaming soundlessly out to be lost in the suffocating enchantment.
Guilt tormented him, to be swept aside by the motion of a violent sea, tossing and swamping a vessel caught in the teeth of a rending storm. Lightning flashed overhead, sparking eerie phosphorescence from the timbers and lashed-up rig of a skiff with no business out on the open ocean. A man wrestled with the tiller, himself tied to the thwarts with a knot of thick rope; Temar heard the desperate mariner’s thoughts clearly. He would fight his way clear of the storm or sink with the ship; if he could not save his precious cargo, both living and that held in unknowing, enchanted sleep, Dastennin could cast him to drown for eternity with Poldrion’s demons in the river of shades. It was Vahil, Temar realized, some measure of awareness returning to him just before it slid from the feeble grasp of his mind.