The Gates of Night_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [65]
Lei gaped. “Who are you?”
The dryad smiled, but it was a grimace of pain. “I am the Heart of the Darkwood Grove, the last of the Darkwood Daughters. You stand in my hour of night, in a realm that once echoed with my song. I sought to escape my destiny, and I paid for that folly with all that I had.”
Curiosity warred with Lei’s self-pity. “What destiny?”
“I was to wed Torenas the Woodsman, youngest of the Nine Brothers of Night. The land beneath the Deepwood Moon was his as much as mine, and only in our union would he gain his true dominion. But I sought to escape this destiny. I wished to be more than a wood-wife, bound to live beneath a single moon. She promised to help me, and I, fool that I was, believed her words.”
“Who?” Lei said.
“She has many names, almost as many as she has faces. Thelania, the Queen of Dusk and Shadows. She is one of the mightiest spirits of this plane. I knew she would not act out of kindness, that she would help me only if it served her own goals. But I was impatient. She promised an escape, and I thought she might free me from my tree, give me the freedom my kind cannot have.”
“But she betrayed you.”
“She tore my tree from Thelanis, taking me from my beautiful night and binding me to your dry and colorless world. Worse yet, she gave me to Jura d’Cannith. I don’t know what dealings she had with him.” She looked away. “And that is where I failed. Perhaps I could have found some way to escape my prison, some way to redeem myself. But I gave in to despair. I surrendered to anger, and I turned that hatred against Jura. Perhaps, if I’d done things differently, I could have found the light within him. Instead, I drew out the worst within him, his own dark heart. And it cost me all I had left. I underestimated him. I pushed too far. He felled my tree and bound me within the staff, with magic I still don’t understand. And I cannot help but wonder if this was Dusk’s plan all along.”
“I … I don’t know what to say,” Lei said.
“Say nothing. It is my folly, and I brought it upon myself. But now you must make your own decision. Look down.”
The white void was no longer eternal. A black spot grew beneath them.
“The decision is upon you,” Darkheart said. “Fight for the sky above. Fight to rise through the waters and break the surface. Or surrender and fall forever into the darkness below.”
“And you?”
“This is your battle, and I have done what I can. You must make your decision alone, and you will need both hands to swim. Farewell, Lei. I hope that one day I will hold your hand in truth, and we will gaze together on the moon above.”
The dryad released Lei’s hand, and the instant wood left flesh she was gone. Lei was alone, falling toward the spreading shadows. The visions flashed through her mind once more, and she felt a sick sense of loss and betrayal. But there were other memories.
Jode’s laughter.
Daine giving orders in the camp at Keldan Ridge.
Pierce carrying her through the streets of Sharn after she’d been driven from Hadran’s house.
Daine holding her as their boat was tossed about on the waters of the Thunder Sea.
Whatever she was, whatever these awful visions meant, her life lay above her. Daine. Pierce. She would not let them go.
Struggling at first, then with increasing strength, she began to swim upward, away from the darkness and moving up through the light.
Daine was growing used to his nightmares. Ever since Lakashtai entered his life, sleep had become a battleground. Monan the changeling. Lakashtai and her trickery. The horrible visions of Kelden Ridge. He had come to expect terror in the night. It was strange to have normal dreams … a night where his visions drifted from place to place.
Daine was at a party. A masquerade, at the Metrol manor of Alina Lorridan Lyrris. Dressed as a bodyguard, he watched the revelers,