The Shattered Land: The Dreaming Dark - Book 2 (32 page)

It was like stepping through a curtain. One moment Daine was surrounded by swirling snow and bitter cold. An instant later he was in a forest, lush and green and with the steamy humidity of any Brelish jungle. His skin tingled, protesting the sudden change in temperature. Looking back, he could see a white wall of the frenzied storm, but not only could he no longer feel it, he couldn’t even hear it. The roaring wind had been replaced by the buzz of a thousand insects and the calls of strange birds.

Daine scanned the trees for signs of motion. He glanced at Pierce, and the warforged gave a slight shake of his head. Daine relaxed slightly—if Pierce couldn’t spot a threat, they were either safe or there was no hope for them. Gerrion was pressing through the brush, cutting a path with a long knife. He held a glowing crystal sphere in his left hand, charged with cold fire.

“What’s next?” Daine called. “A desert?”

“If you’re willing to go a few days out of your way,” Gerrion said, “but this region is relatively stable. We just need to find—ah, here we are.”

He slashed through a final patch of dense vines, and they stepped out into a long, natural corridor running east to west. The path was almost twenty feet across; the ground was covered in brambles and vines, but clear of trees.

Daine stepped out of the forest and felt stone underfoot. “A path?”

“A road. Older than your species, most likely. Though if you want a history lesson, I’m sure one of your friends can do a better job than I.”

Daine glanced back at the others. Lei was talking to Pierce, and she was smiling for the first time since their fight aboard the
Gray Cat
. The unexpected conflict had momentarily pushed the tension aside—but for the moment it was probably best to let it lie. Lakashtai was walking just behind Daine, her hood pulled low to hide her eyes. Judging from past experience, Daine was sure she’d heard them—if she wanted to talk, she would.

“I always preferred swords to books,” he said to Gerrion. “You want to tell me where we’re going, exactly?”

“No, not really.” Gerrion spun his dagger in the air, as they walked along the ancient road, deftly catching it and setting it in motion again.

“You’re going to, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

“I hate surprises,” Daine said.

“Give it a chance,” Gerrion replied cheerfully. His dagger was a web of steel flowing from one hand to the next, remaining in constant motion.

“Then let’s talk about something else.”

“Oh, let’s.”

“You want to tell me what a Sulatar is?”

Gerrion froze, and in that moment of shock, he failed to catch the spinning dagger. Daine caught a glimpse of steel flashing toward his eyes, then the blade stopped, suspended in midair. Lakashtai reached up from behind them, plucking the dagger from the air.

“An Elvish word,” she said, handing the weapon back to Gerrion. “It means ‘bound flame.’ In the older dialect, you could interpret it as ‘one who binds fire,’ I suppose. Why is this significant?”

Daine glanced at Gerrion, but the half-elf had returned the dagger to its sheath and picked up his pace, pulling ahead of them. “The spirit on the water called our friend Gerrion a
‘child of the Sulatar.’ Seems to be a touchy subject.”

“Child of the bound flame,” Lakashtai mused. “Child of the firebinders. It is a shame I did not see this spirit myself.”

“How did you manage to meditate through the boat being tipped over, anyhow?”

“It’s … not that simple. My soul was submerged within, leaving the body temporarily unattended.”

“It also mentioned a ‘season of flame.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

Lakashtai ran a finger across her perfect lips. “Interesting. I don’t see why it would be relevant, but it is—”

“We’re here!” Gerrion called. “I told you it wouldn’t be far from our path, and trust me, it will be worth the time.”

There was a clearing up ahead almost two hundred feet across. A long, flat mound stretched across the space, rising up six or seven feet from the road.

“Who built this?” whispered Lei, coming up behind him.

“Built what?” Daine said.

“Look around you.”

He did. A long mound, surrounded by trees. Trees with no branches. Trees with strange inscriptions winding around their trunks.

“Look up.”

There was a roof over the clearing. Nearly forty feet from the jungle floor, it was now falling to pieces—but its original purpose was perfectly clear. The trees weren’t trees at all; they were pillars carved from the trunks of massive densewood trees, set around the mound. The mound itself—dirt and weeds had risen up around it, but it was a platform of light stone.

“Daine, Lakashtai!” Gerrion called down to them. “Come up here—I’ll show you why we made the trip. As for you, Lei, you should study the notched pillar in the corner. For a scholar like yourself—well, I think you’ll be fascinated.”

Daine shrugged and climbed up the steep edge of the platform, then reached down and helped Lakashtai make her way to the top. “What’s so interesting …” He stopped as he saw what he was standing on.

It was a map.

Two hundred feet long, one hundred feet wide, it seemed
to have been carved from a single vast slab of stone—though Daine couldn’t imagine how such a thing could be quarried or transported. There were craters across its surface where chunks of densewood had fallen from the canopy, but much of it was still intact. The serpentine shapes of rivers wound down from the edges toward the center, and mountain ridges rose up a few inches from the base. He could see the spires of towers surrounding tiny cities.

It was as if he were a god, straddling the entire continent.

“Why are we here again?” he called, making his way over to Gerrion. The half-elf was examining a small castle that seemed to have been painted in black enamel. “It’s something to see, I’ll give you that, but I thought we already knew where we were going. It’s too big to be useful anyway—the only way I could make any sense of it would be from thirty feet in the air.”

“I suspect that wasn’t a problem for its creators,” Gerrion replied. “Besides, just think: years from now, you’ll be telling your grandchildren about the time you saw the biggest map in Xen’drik.”

“I trust you have a better reason than that,” Daine replied.

Lakashtai had been studied their surroundings intently, illuminating the map with the eerie light radiating from her eyes. “There,” she said, pointing to a massive densewood boulder a few feet away. “Our destination is in that crater.”

Gerrion smiled. “I hope that’s not a bad omen, but, even if we can’t get there directly, we’ll still be able to save a few days’ travel.”

“What are you talking about?” Daine snapped. “You drag us through the snow to see a map just to show us a place we already know how to get to? How does this save us time?”

“Patience, captain,” Gerrion replied. “Allow me to demonstrate.” He dropped to one knee and reached for the tiny castle.

Before Gerrion’s fingers reached the carved tower, there was a burst of motion on the treeline. There was no sound, no burst of fire or smoke, but a patch of vines vaporized as if caught in an intense explosion. Five people strode into the clearing. Four were identical: warforged scouts, duplicates of the hunched creature they met on the frozen beach. These
scouts were spread in a semicircle around a huge cloaked figure at least nine feet tall and with the build of an ogre.

“Be still.”
The voice was like a rush of sand or metal particles thrown against the wind. It seemed to flow all around them, carrying across the clearing with no need for volume.
“Throw down your weapons, and you may yet live
.”

Daine’s blades were in his hands in an instant, and he was charging, ready to leap from the platform and join up with Pierce and Lei on the ground. Then Gerrion placed his hand on the dark tower, and everything changed.

T
he forest was on fire. The temperature had jumped, and the emerald green that cloaked the trees was a blaze of orange. This sheet of fire had swept forward, and Pierce, Lei, and the strangers vanished beneath the fiery curtain. Daine cried out in wordless anguish, barely halting his progress before he tumbled into the flame.

No. Not flames—tall grass, weeds painted in red and orange. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he realized that their surroundings had completely changed. The trees were draped in the colors of autumn, and the trees and shrubs themselves were clearly different. The clearing was far smaller than the last one had been.

Daine could see Gerrion out of the corner of his eye, and he turned toward the half-elf, his sword still in his hand. Lakashtai was even swifter. She lashed out with her foot. The kick caught Gerrion in the side of the head and slammed him to the broken earth. Lakashtai brought her knee down in the small of Gerrion’s back, pressing him into the ground. Her right fist was poised above his head, wrapped in a halo of baleful green energy.

“Explain swiftly or I will tear the answers from your mind,” she said, her voice cold and hard.

“Helped you …” Gerrion gasped.

“Lei
and Pierce!”
Daine said. “What did you do to them?”

Lakashtai traced one finger across the back of Gerrion’s neck, and he convulsed in pain.

“You’re closer … closer to your goal,” Gerrion said. “The map. Magical … teleportation. We escaped your enemy, moved closer.”

Lakashtai hissed and shoved Gerrion’s head into the ground with a swift blow of her hand. “How
dare
you? Abandoning the others to save your own miserable skin.”

As angry as Daine was, he was still surprised by Lakashtai’s viciousness. The kalashtar was usually so calm, and she’d hardly seemed to care about Pierce or Lei. Now Gerrion was writhing on the ground as the light flared around her fingers.

“Don’t kill him! We still don’t know what he’s done.”

“Nor do we need to, because he’s about to undo it. Aren’t you,
guide?”
Lakashtai released Gerrion and stood up, her face twisted in anger. The halo around her hands slowly faded.

“I can’t,” Gerrion moaned. “Look … down. Ground.”

The stone beneath their feet was just a cracked shard of an ancient plaza. Once it might have been a mirror of the map they had seen before, but if so war and weather had destroyed it long ago.

“There’s no going back,” Gerrion said. He’d rolled onto his back and was slowly catching his breath, and his gray skin glistened with cold sweat. “I thought the others were on the map. I swear. It’s too late. Now it would take us more than a day to get back to the boat, and even if the others survive, there’s no telling where they’ll have gone by then. Just find the Monolith. Do what you came here to do.”

“Unacceptable!” Daine said. “I don’t care what happens to me. We are NOT leaving them behind.” He pondered. “The boat. They’d return to the boat. It’s the only place we all know. They’ll return there and wait for us.”

“If they survived.”

“Pray that they did.” Lakashtai said. She had regained her composure, but Daine could still
feel
her anger, like a burning itch at the back of his mind. “Now get on your feet and show us the way back, and the next time you feel like doing something clever—don’t.”

Gerrion slowly rose to his feet. “I didn’t mean to abandon
them. Truly. I thought they were on the map.” Whether it was pain or sorrow, his voice was still shaking, and he kept his gaze trained on the ground. Daine was still filled with anger, but the half-elf seemed so dejected, so pathetic, that it was difficult to hate him.

But he could certainly try.

“Just show us the path. Now,” Daine said.

“We can’t travel through the night.”

“Can’t we?” Daine said. He glanced at Lakashtai, and a flicker of emerald fire played across her fingertips. “Somehow, I just don’t feel like sleeping.”

“You don’t understand. This is the forest of fire. There are things that come in the night—forces even you can’t fight. We need to take shelter.”

“Even if that’s true, I don’t see many safe havens out here. Don’t tell me there’s a comfortable inn nearby? The Fool’s Rest?”

Gerrion closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Finally he opened his eyes and stared at Daine, trying to keep his voice level. “There is a settlement nearby. Hunter-gatherers. I’ve dealt with them before and I’m sure I can convince them to give us shelter.” His voice finally broke. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, I swear! I just wanted to help. If you want to return to the boat, we’ll go back, but you’ll never make it without me—and I promise you, travel into the night and you won’t live to see the morning.”

Daine struggled with his emotions and fears. In his mind, he saw Jode in the sewers of Sharn, and he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Lei to the same fate, but the voice in the clearing had offered a chance to surrender. Even if they were outmatched, it was possible Lei and Pierce were unharmed—and they knew how to take care of themselves. He had to believe they were still alive, and for all his bravado, he was tired, and a march through the night would leave him with no energy to battle whatever they might find on the other side. He glanced at Lakashtai.