Thassak Pass
٣٤ Kovsykli: ٥ Years prior to the Red Storm at Westsong
Methias wondered if any of his company still lived. His mind kept trying to drag him away from conscious, cogent thought, but he fought against it. There’d been no warning—had been no chance for one, but…
If they’re fighting, I have to do my part. I have to get up. Jannon and the others may need… Jannon may… Jannon…
But it was no good. Everything was numb. Even his eyelids refused to obey.
The newly minted Syr Jannon Saysh had stood a watch while the rest of them slept, but he couldn’t have known about the creature. Perhaps there had even been more than one. In either case, it didn’t much matter. The attack had come without a word of warning, like a sudden summer storm.
No, wait. That can’t be right, can it? There was a warning, wasn’t there? He recalled Jannon shouting his name, didn’t he? He was almost certain of it. Jannon had cried out, calling him … by name. That was what’d struck him.
He almost never uses my name—hasn’t done since he first found me. Unless he’s introducing me to someone, it’s nearly always Lamlith (Little Fire).
He’d been asleep, though something had been gnawing at the edge of his senses. He’d been fighting to dive back down into Hämärä Meri—the Twilight Sea, where the mind usually wandered during sleep. Then came the jolt of sound, as if he’d been walking atop a frozen pool, and the ice had unexpectedly cracked beneath him.
“Methias! Methias!” Jannon’s voice, and he had never sounded so afraid. “No! No, Lord, not him! No! I swear to you I’ll…”
After that, he’d felt that smothering numbness and fallen back into the Twilight Sea once more.
Now Methias drifted in dreams. Oh, there were moments of lucidity, but they were horrid things where he knew he was dreaming… could recall why he was dreaming.
A line of lore—just a fragment of poetry, really—snagged his mind out of the strange, floating dimness that carried him. It hurt to hear, though even that pain was muted and distant. With a mingled sadness and joy, he allowed himself to focus on the stony, fireside tones of his fallen master, Emil.
Adrift in the dark where all things seem still,
Alone, without spark to fight dark or chill,
When light and soft wind come to tempt you away,
That gift is not hope, but the gift of the Grey.
The Grey? Where did that come from? He felt himself sliding toward the left—felt his hand break out into the open air as if rising above the surface of a pond. He groped with that hand, distantly delighted to feel anything at all. A moment later, he felt his dim-side ear tingle as it, too, found freedom.
…Gift of the Grey? What am I not seeing, Master?
Was he speaking? Had he felt a sense of warmth and movement near his throat? It may have been his own voice. It might also have been their healer, Elliata, working to rouse him. Hells, it may just as easily be my mind playing tricks on me. He did his best to ignore the sensation, trying to pull himself toward the open air—toward wakefulness.
“The Grey. The Grey. I’m missing something, Emil. The Grey?” He did his best to force his mind back down the Scholar’s Road, as his master had taught him. “Sconces on the wall. Sconces down the hall…”
His musings were cut off suddenly as his left eye finally cleared the surface of whatever numbness held him. There was a delicious flash of cold along his nerves. Then came a new sensation—as if a swarm of angry ants crawled beneath his exposed skin. It reminded him of the prickling of a foot or leg after it had fallen asleep and was forced to move.
Again, his mind tried to dive back into the Twilight Sea. Again, he heard his master’s voice, and though he couldn’t make out the words, the cadence and tones matched that same fragment of half-remembered verse.
With an effort, he opened his newly freed eye and cast about. It was dim, but there was enough light to see by. He was in a clearing that seemed much like the one in which they’d camped.
But no tents… no fire pit. No sign that there’s ever been an encampment here. There’s light enough to see by, but … there’s no source. No fire, no torch…
A line from a much-loved song came back to him, though the situation gave it a rueful sheen. It’s full-moon-bright on a clear Byt night, so our songs won’t wake the dreaming. He tried to shudder but couldn’t quite tell if he’d succeeded. It’s too bright, somehow. The moon’s only a crescent. I saw it rise as we finished making camp. So where…
He heard a low, not-quite-animal noise from somewhere behind him, then another from his left. It sounded like a hawk’s call trapped behind a wooden door or down a shallow well. That’s almost right, but the size is off. Make the hawk the size of a mastiff or a young pony. That might be about right to match the sound. Perhaps if he were on his feet, he could face down a single predator that size, but in his current state? And there isn’t one single beast. There are at least two of them, whatever they are.
This realization was followed by another, more immediate one. His slow slide toward his left—toward apparent freedom—was speeding up. It felt like the very ground was being tilted to one side as if to roll him off. Emil’s voice was all around him now, echoing, stacking upon itself, though it never changed its timbre or varied its delivery.
“…gift of the Grey, gift of the Grey, the Grey, the Grey, gift, Grey, Grey—”
Perhaps a dozen yards away from him, Methias saw something slide up out of the ground. Its insectoid, triangular head ended in a serrated beak. The creature’s scales were a dim, shimmering dun color, contrasting the pale grey stones that served as its eyes. If the head were any indication, the creature would, indeed, be the size of a small horse. It hadn’t dug its way free of the soil and scree. It had simply … emerged.
It’s as if the ground were the surface of a lake. Why is that familiar?
The creature saw him or perhaps scented him. It cocked its head to one side, gave another of those horrid, trapped-hawk cries, and began swimming toward him. The beast charged through the ground, leaving no disturbance in its wake, widening its beak as it came on.
It’s grinning at me! I’m sliding toward it, and it’s grinning at me in triumph! The inexorable horror of it nearly unmanned him until he saw its eyes once again.
“Grey! The Grey Between!”
The realization was a hammer-blow that brought all the fear and wonder of his earliest lessons back to the fore. The Grey Between was the closest of the Realms Beyond—where haunts were forged out of pain and wrongs done to them. The place where the dead lingered until they at last passed on. And that meant…
“No!” He wasn’t sliding toward freedom. He was sliding toward his death.
I refuse! I will not end here! I…
But what could he do? Nothing. That sensation of being dragged toward his left was his sense of self—his actual soul—shuffling loose from his body. He could try to pull back into himself, could will himself not to die, but that wouldn’t heal him.
“I have you, little wizard.” That was Jannon’s voice… but changed. It was fuller, projecting an almost physical force. He’d made a simple statement, yet he spoke with a ringing sense of command. Methias saw the creature’s head come away from its neck as if it’d run directly into a swinging axe.
Jannon’s voice came again, still speaking with that strange resonance. “Here, boy. A gift from the House of Saysh.” This was followed by a wave of heat so utter and all-consuming that Methias couldn’t breathe. Blessedly, it faded almost as suddenly as it had arrived. His left eye snapped closed, though he hadn’t meant for it to. The numbness was fading at last, and while he couldn’t move, he could sense the world around him once more.
Jannon spoke anew, some feet farther away from where Methias lay. “Wake. Time is short.”
A grunt, then a groan. A soft, clean voice spoke one of the world’s oldest questions. “What … happened?” It was Elliata, their Eodenth healer.
“The encampment was attacked by Isbryd Drayag.”
“By … what?”
“Wraith Dragons, girl. There isn’t time to explain, nor does it much matter. I’ve given you what you need. Heal the others. The boy Methias has already been seen to.”
He heard Elliata get to her feet. “You’ve given me what I… I don’t understand.”
Jannon’s voice came from farther away as he answered. “Concentrate your will, girl. You must cleanse their bodies of the blight they’ve put into it. If you don’t, they die, and any Isbryd Drayag I didn’t kill will feast on them, spirit and shadow alike. Now, to it.” For all the weight his words carried, his tone was calm, approaching casual. It was as if the matter of the company’s potential death was of no real concern one way or the other.
Elliata went about doing as she’d been told. She spoke in low, murmured Eodenth—a tongue he could recognize but knew almost none of. He did hear her speak the names of their companions, each in turn. She’d finished her work on Naeadne, Wois, and Hakim before Jannon spoke anew.
“Lus rhex. Misda rhex. Taul rryn, t’len sdraliana.”
He spoke this vile incantation with calm confidence. The ground shook as if thunder were trapped beneath it. That thunder raced toward them, making the horses scream, to say nothing of the recently awakened men and women.
A moment later, the air was split by a trumpeting sound that was at once pitiful and bone-chilling. A lone horse had loosed a single haunted note as if it were being flayed where it stood. That note shifted, becoming graveled and guttural, full of obvious excitement. It also bore a note of clear affection, despite the sense of unnatural dread it projected.
“I’ve missed you,” Jannon crooned. “Come. We have work.” He sounded as if he were swinging up into the saddle.
Methias wept and screamed inside. He recognized the tongue, understood the words, and knew at least some of what they meant for Jannon.
(Change, blood. Awaken, blood. The Champion calls you to corrupt this shadow.)
Methias willed his body to respond, trying to force his now throbbing limbs into motion. His fingers danced listlessly amid the grass stems, but he could manage nothing more. Both noise and the noisome rose to meet his misery. There came the sound of what was once a mortal horse pawing at the ground, accompanied by a strong wind full of sour smoke.
“Lord Saysh?” This was Hakim. His normally calm voice was several notes higher than usual. His fear had made it thin and brittle. “What…” He swallowed and tried again. “Why do you mount up when we have wounded to treat? S-surely we should guard them until they can be moved.”
For one awful moment, there was silence. Then came what were all but certain to be the last words Jannon Saysh—the true Jannon Saysh—would ever utter. Hearing them shattered what remained of Methias’s hope. And it was Jannon who spoke. The voice Methias had heard every day for more than five years. The voice that had saved him when all others had either betrayed or abandoned him. His words were quiet at first, but as he made his answer, his voice rose full and clear.
“My thanks, Lord Haunek.”
Jannon paused after speaking that strange name. Strange, yes, but familiar somehow. It gnawed at the back of Methias’s mind, teasing out strands of deep dread that went beyond the horror of this miserable moment. He’s entered into a pact with a devil. And that devil’s name is Haunek.
“Look after them, Hakim. This is the end. Our fellowship, our plans… all of it. I … have to go. I have to hold up my end.”
“Jannon! Wait! Jan-non!” Naeadne voice rose, even as, by the sound of it, she did. She called after him, her voice betraying anger and fear. Both tones sounded alien in her throat.
It made no difference. With an eruption of hoofbeats, Jannon Saysh, or the devil he had sold his future to in order to save them, was gone.