Game of the Ancients Vol I: Chapter 10

[masterghandalf]

Chapter 10: Lost Dreams

After Thyra finished explaining what her mentor had told her about ir’Sarrin – which, unfortunately, wasn’t much more than what she’d described back in Sharn – the company returned to their rooms to try and wait out Valyria. Thyra and Havaktri had been in one room, and the three men in another, leaving the last for Len and Yhani. Once everyone was gone, Len sat on her bed heavily, while Yhani sat beside her.

“Sovereigns and Six, ‘Hani,” the captain said finally. “Well, we were right about the girl hiding something, weren’t we? It just came with a twist I never saw coming. Who’d have thought the kid’s got the blood of some ancient demon in her veins, or at least she thinks she does? I just figured she was using us as a quick way to get rich or something.”

“I did not anticipate the rakshasa situation,” Yhani admitted, “but I had a feeling it was something more than what you suggested. When we were talking on the rail, I made some rather pointed comments about the Prophecy, and it seemed to unsettle her. Now I have some idea why.”

“’Course, this also means she’s got us stealing something she has no right to in the first place, if ir’Sarrin really didn’t steal it from her family first.” Len shook her head. “Kid better be thanking the Flame and every saint she prays to that I’ve got no love for the Karrns, and that we desperately need her money, or I might’ve gone ahead and turned her in just for that.”

“If ir’Sarrin is connected with the Emerald Claw, it is doubtful his hands are clean,” Yhani said, and there was venom in her voice, something Len heard from her only very rarely. “Whatever he has planned for this map and the artifact it leads to, I think it best for all Khorvaire that it stays out of his hands.” The Aereni priestess typically didn’t judge other religions or beliefs, finding value in them all – all, that is, save for the Blood of Vol and especially that faith’s militant wing, the Emerald Claw. Len had asked her about that once and gotten what felt like a whole book’s worth of elven history dumped on her, but the important thing she’d taken away was that this was a very old, very personal grudge on the part of the entire Aereni priesthood. Apparently the Undying Court and the Blood of Vol had sprung from the same root, and as always, the bitterest feuds were between family.

Len leaned over and kissed Yhani on the cheek. “Don’t worry about it,” she whispered. “I don’t care how scary this guy is. We’ve been through worse together, and we’ll pull through this one too.”

Yhani smiled faintly. “I do admire your confidence, my love.” Then she paused, a distant look in her eyes. “There is one thing that bothers me, and that is the fate of this Silver Flame priest. Valyria assured us he was murdered, and that her divinations had revealed Thyra’s involvement. But Thyra claims Brother Nalin was alive the last time she saw him, and Havaktri said her shock and grief were genuine. So how, then, did the good Brother die?”

Len whistled. “That is a very good question. I suppose we couldn’t rule out a sudden heart attack, but from the look on your face, that’s not what you’re think.”

Yhani shook her head. “No. I have been considering both Entarro sisters’ stories, and one thing that is clear to me is that they both contain truth, but slanted towards very particular ends. I think Valyria was made to think her sister had been overtaken by a monster she had no choice but to destroy, and that Thyra was similar made to fear her heritage and flee from it. The one sister is placed as a goad to move the other forward.”

“What are you saying?” Len asked slowly.

“I am saying that there is another party involved in this matter, one whose hand has, until now been hidden. Thyra and Valyria are both caught in a web of this person’s devising, and now, so are we.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do about it?” Len demanded. “Just let this… whoever have their way with us? I don’t think so. By the Traveler, whoever this person is, they’d better be praying I never get my hands on them.”

“I doubt they are particularly frightened of us,” Yhani said. “I fear that we have stumbled upon a long-laid plan. But now that we know of that plan, we have a key advantage – we are not walking into it blindly. We must go forward with our eyes open, and perhaps we can unmask our adversary before it’s too late.”

“You’re damn right we will,” Len muttered. “I don’t suppose you have any idea who might be behind this?”

“I have many, each more outlandish than the last,” Yhani said. “My instinct is to suspect a rakshasa, but that may well be no more than misdirection. Eberron is an old world, and there are many forces in it capable of playing such a game.” She hung her head. “I can say no more. Do you remember the promises we made to each other, that first night you told me you loved me?”

“I do,” Len said quietly. “I promised you that I wouldn’t pry into the sacred mysteries of the Undying Court, and you promised that you wouldn’t make me talk about my past. I guess this touches on the “sacred mysteries” part, right?”

“Yes,” Yhani said. “I am sorry, my love. I hate keeping secrets from you, but I have made promises I should not break, for anyone.”

“I understand.” Len leaned against Yhani’s side, resting her head on the elf’s shoulder. “Hold me, ‘Hani. If we can’t talk, maybe we can at least do that.”

“I can.” Yhani wrapped her arm around Len’s shoulder and leaned her head against the captain’s; their hair, silver-blonde and black, mingled together in a single tide. They sat there together as the sun slowly shifted outside their window, taking silent comfort in one another’s company.

///

Ghazaan lay back on his bed with hands folded behind his head and feet dangling off the end, staring at the ceiling. Most things in Khorvaire, were made with humans or elves in mind and were ever-so-slightly too small for him, a problem he’d long ago made peace with. Last night he’d slept on the floor where he could spread out, precisely to avoid this situation, but at the moment that wasn’t an option, as Rinnean was pacing back and forth across it with a vengeance, seemingly determined to wear a hole through it and down into the common room.

“Would you stop that?” the hobgoblin finally said. “That noise is getting on my nerves, and you’re starting to make me dizzy.”

“Dizzy?” Rinnean asked. “That doesn’t make any sense. You’re not even watching me!”

“No, but I’m imagining it,” Ghazaan shot back. “And I’m going to keep imagining it as long as you’re at it.”

“Fine.” Rinnean dropped into the plain wooden chair that sat in the room’s corner. “Forgive me for being slightly agitated over the fact that our client turned out to be some sort of fiendish creature who’s been lying to us all week and hired us under false pretenses and apparently has the Church of the Silver Flame out for her blood. It’s the sort of thing that tends to get under a man’s skin a little.”

“She’s not a ‘fiendish creature’,” Harsk said from the other bed, where he was oiling one of his daggers. “My ancestors turned into wolves and bayed at the moon; that doesn’t make me a werewolf. And she’s less a rakshasa than I’m a lycanthrope. I know some druids back home who wouldn’t like her, but that’s because she’s got magic; from the sound of it, she’s almost entirely human.”

“So she says,” Rinnean muttered.

“And so Havaktri says,” Ghazaan put in. “I don’t like that the kid lied to us any more than you did, but if Havaktri’s right she’s probably not going to kill us all in our beds or anything. Besides, she hired us; she doesn’t have to be our friend, just to pay us when the job’s done.”

“Havaktri’s moon-mad and you know it,” Rinnean said, but didn’t follow up on it. He sat in silence for several long minutes before speaking again. “Well, if there’s one thing I can’t fault her for, it’s wanting to avoid getting entangled with family. By Dolurrh, if it was my family in the common room, Sovereigns know I’d be running as fast as I could in the other direction. That’s just common sense.”

“Well, I don’t like being stuck in here,” Harsk said. “I’m glad that this stop will be our last city on this trip. I’m looking forward to being back in the countryside.”

“That’s because you’re an unsophisticated barbarian,” Rinnean replied, though there was no malice in his voice. Ghazaan knew he teased Harsk simply because the shifter was so different from himself, and Harsk would, on occasion, respond in kind, but when push came to shove, the two of them would have each other’s backs. Harsk was one of the original members of their team, and Rinnean a relative newcomer, but they’d quickly managed to find a rapport when there were enemies to fight.

Ghazaan himself had been with the captain back during the War, when she’d been a young officer thrust into a command position by the death of her superiors, and he’d been a mercenary fighting for Breland. He’d known her longer than anyone, though probably not better – Yhani, who’d been attached to their unit as a medic not long after, had that distinction. After the war ended and they’d been politely but definitively discharged, Len had decided to start her mercenary business – Ghazaan, Yhani, and Harsk, who’d been a scout with their army unit, had been with her. Rinnean and Havaktri had joined later, when the captain had decided to diversify their skills.

Ghazaan trusted Len with his life, both to lead with a clear and level head and have his back when the fighting started. He knew her well enough to tell that she was still uncomfortable with the situation, but determined to see it through. Well, then, he’d help her see it through – and he’d keep both eyes open in case any more unexpected wrinkles got thrown into things before the end. Somehow, he had a feeling they hadn’t seen the last of those.

His ears twitching in annoyance, the hobgoblin did his best to block out Rinnean’s increasingly emphatic rambling about the wonders of city life. If they weren’t going to leave the inn until the night, the least he could do was get some more rest. Ghazaan was heir to a race of disciplined soldiers who had once conquered an empire; that nation was dust, but its heritage remained in his veins. When his team needed him, he’d be ready to give his all.

///

Thyra lay on her bed with the sheet wrapped tightly around herself, staring at the wall. She might have thought that finally telling the truth about what she was and why she’d hired Len’s team would have lifted some of the weight from her shoulders, but somehow it had just made things worse, more real. Admitting it out loud made the fact that she had fiend’s blood in her veins a much more tangible thing, and that wasn’t even considering the fact that she half-expected Val to come bursting through the door at any moment, eyes hard and an arrow nocked.

Rolling over, she regarded Havaktri, who sat cross-legged on the other bed. The kalashtar girl was meditating, and occasionally quick snatches of what sounded like a mantra in some alien language escaped her lips, though this was overshadowed in strangeness by the group of small objects – including a comb, a small case of some sort, and, inexplicably, an advertisement for last year’s Race of Eight Winds in Sharn – that were hovering in a circle around her head.

Apparently, Captain Len roomed with and only with Yhani, and Thyra had no desire to share with any of the men or waste any more of Taras’s money on a private room, so she’d been stuck with Havaktri. A part of her still wished she’d managed to find someone – anyone – even slightly more normal to share with.

“You seem troubled, Thyra,” Havaktri said suddenly; she opened her eyes, and her halo of small objects drifted down to the bed. “Would you like to talk about it?”

“Not really,” Thyra snapped. “Forgive me if I’m a little on edge, but we’re getting ready to assault a warlord’s fortress to steal a map so I can hopefully get rid of my sorcerer powers before they turn me into a monster, and my sister is probably marching up the stairs right now to haul me off for probable execution. I’m not really in the best of moods.”

Havaktri appeared thoughtful. “But aren’t you at least pleased to see Valyria after all this time? I have two sisters myself, and sometimes I miss them terribly.”

Thyra shot the kalashtar a flat look. “I take it neither of your sisters have ever tried to kill you,” she said. “My situation’s not exactly normal.”

“Oh,” Havaktri said. “That would be a problem. And no, my sisters and I usually get along quite well, although there was this one time Kirvaktri and I were sparring and she got mad and threw me across the room with a mind blast. I thought it was very rude.”

Thyra rolled her eyes. “I don’t think this conversation is going anywhere useful,” she muttered. “So if you don’t mind, would you please leave me alone?” She rolled back over, and for a long moment Havaktri was silent. Then the kalashtar spoke again.

“I’m sorry if I’ve been bothering you,” she said. “I’m not very good with human emotions, sometimes. My people communicate mind-to-mind in most cases, and without that bond, it’s difficult for me to tell what’s appropriate and what isn’t. I’ll try to do better. But I think I understand why you are so ashamed of what you are, why you kept it a secret and why you want to change this about yourself. You think that because you are, however distantly, descended from a monster, that you are doomed to become one yourself unless you act. But I don’t think that’s true.”

Thyra sat up and turned to face Havaktri, glaring viciously at her. “You don’t know anything about what that’s like,” she spat. “How could you?”

Havaktri merely looked sad, and then she sighed. “Maybe it would help if I told you a story,” she said. “This isn’t something we typically tell to outsiders, but I think you would benefit from hearing it. Long ago, there was a realm of pure dream, inhabited by creatures of thought and memory and passion. This realm is called Dal Quor, and its inhabitants are the quori. But the realm of Dal Quor is a nightmare, and the quori are terrible monsters who feed on the darker emotions of mortals. But, in this long-ago time, there was a quori who realized that this need not be, that Dal Quor could become a realm of beauty and light. Her name was Taratai, and she gathered followers about her who shared her beliefs.

“The followers of the nightmare hated Taratai and her people, and sought to destroy them. And so Taratai fled into mortal dreams, where she met a man, a monk from the land of Adar in Sarlona. He offered the rebel quori safe haven, and so to escape Dal Quor they mingled their essence with that of the human monks, giving rise to a new race – human in body, but here,” she gestured to her head, “something that was a little bit of both. That was the origin of the kalashtar. We are each descended from one of the original quori rebels and the human who sheltered them, and though we cannot dream – for we remain exiled from the realm of dreams – instead we share in the memories of our ancestors. I am Havaktri, of the line of the quori spirit Vaktri, and her presence moves in me and in all of my family until our line perishes from the world.”

Havaktri smiled sadly. “So you see, Thyra, we’re more alike than you think. I, too, am descended from both humans and from terrible, immortal monsters. And because of that, I know that even immortals can change. Angels can fall, they say – but demons can also rise. I am not bound to be a servant of the Great Darkness that Dreams, and I don’t think you are bound to the rakshasa’s fate either.”

Thyra rocked back on the bed, uncertain of what to think. Was Havaktri right? Was it possible for her to change her destiny, even without finding a way to remove her fiendish heritage? Then she shook her head. “No, Havaktri,” she finally said. “”From your story, the human monks and the quori rebels merged together to make something new. I don’t want to be something new – I want to be me, human, like I was before this madness started. Your path can’t be mine.” She sighed. “But… thank you anyway, for at least trying to help.”

Havaktri shrugged. “That’s all I could hope to do,” she said, rather wistfully. “I can’t solve your problems for you – only you can do that.”

“I hope so,” Thyra said, laying back down on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. Something was tickling at the edge of her mind, and finally she looked back over at the kalashtar. “There’s something bothering me about your story,” she said. “The other quori, the ones who didn’t rebel. What happened to them?”

“That,” Havaktri said carefully, her eyes suddenly guarded, “is a story for another time.”

///

Not a lot going on in terms of action this chapter, but it did give me a chance to have some more character interaction between the team, including our first Ghazaan pov (he hasn’t had much to do so far besides supporting Len, but I like him and this won’t be the last we’ll be getting of his thoughts and character). I did enjoy having Havaktri tell an abbreviated version of kalashtar history (its parallel to Thyra’s story suggested itself) and we learn a bit more about Len and Yhani’s relationship. They’ve both agreed to respect one another’s privacy, but for somewhat different reasons- Yhani has things she’s literally not supposed to talk about with laypeople, and especially non-Aereni, while Len has parts of her past she’s ashamed of and doesn’t want to talk about with anyone. Both of those are going to be significant down the line (and Havaktri’s allusions to the Dreaming Dark will bear fruit in the next fic in this series, assuming I ever get there).

-MasterGhandalf