Midnight tides

They strode towards the mouth of one of the larger caves. Passed into the cool darkness, the rough floor sloping upward for twenty or so paces, then beginning to dip again. Into caverns with the walls crowded with painted images in red and yellow ochre, black outlines portraying ancient beasts standing or running, some falling with spears protruding from them. Further in, a smaller cavern with black stick-like efforts on the walls and ceiling, a struggling attempt by the T’lan Imass to paint their own forms. Blooms of red paint outlining ghostly hand-prints. Then the path narrowed and began a gradual ascent once more. Ahead, a vertical fissure from which light spilled inward, a light filled with flowing colours, as if some unearthly flame burned beyond.

They emerged onto an uneven but mostly level sweep of blackened bedrock. Small boulders set end to end formed an avenue of approach from the cave mouth that led them on an inward spiral towards the centre of the clearing. Beyond, the sky shimmered with swirling colours, like shattered rainbows. A cairn of flat stones dominated the centre of the spiral, in the rough, awkward form of a figure standing on two legs made of stacked stones, a single broad one forming the hips, the torso made of three more, the arms each a single projecting, rectangular stone out to the side, the head a single, oblong rock sheathed in lichen. The crude figure stood before a squat tower-like structure with at least twelve sides. The facings were smooth, burnished like the facets of natural crystal. Yet light in countless colours flared beneath each of those surfaces, each plane spiralling inward to a dark hole.

Udinaas could feel a pressure in the air, as of taut forces held in balance. The scene seemed perilously fragile.

‘Vi han onralmashalle. S’ril k’ul havra En’ev. N’vist’. Lan’te.’

‘Ulshun says his people came here with a bonecaster. It was a realm of storms. And beasts, countless beasts coming from those holes. They did not know what they were, but there was much fighting.’

The T’lan Imass warrior spoke again, at length.

‘Their bonecaster realized that the breaches must be sealed, and so she drew upon the power of stone and earth, then rose into her new, eternal body to stand before the wounds. And hold all with stillness. She stands there now and she shall stand there for all time.’

‘Yet her sacrifice has stranded the T’lan Imass here, hasn’t it?’ Udinaas asked.

‘Yes. But Ulshun and his people are content.’

‘Vi truh larpahal. Ranag, bhed, tenag tollarpahal. Kul havra thelar. Kul.’

‘This land is a path, what we would call a road,’ Found said, frowning as he struggled to make sense of Ulshun’s words. ‘Herds migrate, back and forth. They seem to come from nowhere, but they always come.’

Because, like the T’lan Imass themselves, they are ghost memories.

‘The road leads here?’ Feather Witch asked in halting traders’ tongue.

‘Yes,’ Found said.

‘And comes from where?’

‘Epal en. Vol‘sav, thelan.’

The boy sighed, crossed his arms in frustration. ‘Ulshun says we are in an… overflow? Where the road comes from has bled out to claim the road itself. And surround this place. Beyond, there is… nothing. Oblivion. Unrealized.’

‘So we are within a realm?’ Feather Witch asked. ‘Which Hold claims this place?’

‘A evbrox‘l list Tev. Starvald Demelain Tev.’

‘Ulshun is pleased you understand Holds. He is bright-gem-eye. Pleased, and surprised. He calls this Hold Starvald Demelain.’

‘I do not know that name,’ she said, scowling.

The T’lan Imass spoke again, and in the words Udinaas sensed a list. Then more lists, and in hearing the second list, he began to recognize names.

The boy shrugged. ‘T’iam, Kalse, Silannah, Ampelas, Okaros, Karosis, Sorrit, Atrahal, Eloth, Anthras, Kessobahn, Alkend, Karatallid, Korbas… Olar. Eleint. Draconean. Dragons. The Pure Dragons. The place where the road comes from is closed. By the mixed bloods who gathered long ago. Draconus, K’rul, Anomandaris, Osserc, Silchas Ruin, Scabandari, Sheltatha Lore, Sukul Ankhadu, and Menandore. It was, he says, Menandore who saved me.’ The boy’s eyes suddenly widened. ‘She didn’t look like a dragon!’

Ulshun spoke.

Found nodded. ‘All right. He says you should be able to pass through from here. He looks forward to seeing you again. They will prepare a feast for you. Tenag calf. You are coming back, aren’t you?’

‘If we can,’ Feather Witch said, then switched to Letherii. ‘Aren’t we, Udinaas?’

He scowled. ‘How would I know?’

‘Be gracious.’

‘To you or them?’

‘Both. But especially to your son.’