Surfacing Ch. 31

Alright, I admitted it. It was quite different. Something had definitely changed.

The ceiling was gone, the sky was overcast, and while a soft light permeated the clouds I could detect no Sun nor Moon for certain to be the source. Gavin was gone, and I sat on a small island of stone and dirt in the midst of a calm Lake of blue.

Unlike when I had intruded on the meeting between Gavin and Willven after all of us had gone into the sacred pool at Manalar, here was no slap of water against stone, no wind, and absolutely no sound of crashing waves. Picking up the candle in its holder, so that I didn't knock it over and extinguish it prematurely, I stood up to turn around, noting how small this bit of land was. In the distance other islands seemed to be floating, shrouded in a gray fog. I carefully edged to look where the water met my little bit of land.

I was almost sorry that I had looked. I could discern no bottom, but that actually wasn't what got to me. Any deep water obscured its floor. No, it was that the island simply stopped at the water's edge, there was no shore extending outward to connect to an implied underwater floor. The land somehow floated upon the surface of the water, and I could have no assurance there even was a bottom of the Lake to be sought.

Raising the candlelight over the water and keeping a firm hold, I saw no creatures in the water either, nothing swimming. After a moment I thought I saw a pale face or a limb, as if a body may be floating under the surface with no scavengers to eat it.

*Fuck!* I thought, stepping back from the shore as my heart jumped and I waited for the body to surface.

It didn't, and when I took that careful step forward again, I saw nothing, as if it was just an illusion.

The candle itself did not drip onto my hand; it burned slow and clean—but it was still burning. Gavin had said it marked my time here. What was I supposed to do? Where was I, anyway? It wasn't bitterly cold, but there was a palpable chill in the air. Was this some distant place on Miurag, quiet and otherworldly like the sacred grove, or something close to the red sands? Or was it a place in the Greylands?

"No, child. We are somewhere private."

I jumped and spun around, the blue flame flickering with my movement.

"Oh," I breathed. "Nyx."

The Grey Maiden stood near the island's center, once again in the form of a cracked-mask Woman shrouded in tattered robes, as I had first seen her. That was somewhat of a relief, I realized, as the Crow Woman's voice would have been absolutely nerve-racking in this supernatural stillness. The voice coming from the eyeless, emoting, bone-white face had been barely more than a whisper.

"Wh...where are we, then?"

She tilted her head slowly to one side, appearing to be studying me even as she had no gaze.

"We are tucked to the side of the journey to the crossroads. We are in a place that never quite broke away, flotsam in the aether of creation. Many such places come into being and vanish, not to be found again." She indicated the candle I held, made of Gavin's and my blood. "That candle will burn faster than you think."

I blinked. Implying there was a connection between the two: the candle and the island? Or was she suggesting that I speak first? Wasn't she the one who requested my presence?

"I am glad the Ice Lord welcomes your influence at the crossroads," I said with a bow of my head. "We were not prepared for him, if he had decided to challenge you for it. Did you not see the possibility in order to warn your Deathwalker?"

Nyx smiled a little bit. "Sarilis was a leering gargoyle placed at the back door to dissuade others from wandering. That was the Ice Lord's intent. No warning was needed."

One corner of my mouth tightened but I let that go. "Who is he?"

Now she tilted her head in the other direction. "Ally and antagonist. Visitor and native. Guardian and challenger."

I pressed my lips together. "Alright. How does that compare with the Tilabil? Lethrix implied there was some competition between them. So did Indrath himself."

"They are the same," she said, not really surprising me if I was honest.

I sighed and let that go. It wasn't like this Greylord was known for giving only straight answers. I had been lucky enough so far.

"Forgive me for leading the conversation with this," I said. "I have accepted your invitation and now stand in your audience, Grey Lady. I am ready to ask your purpose, however you will reveal it to me."

The Greylord nodded once and set to her task, though if I had expected more talk, even a simple and clear "thank you" or "ask me for a boon," as Gavin had implied, I didn't get it.

She stepped as close to me as she had been when the Crow Woman was feeding Graul's soul shard to Gaelan, but now I had no crying, writhing body to hold between us and use to distract myself. If I have been able to see any aura clearly right then, Nyx's and mine would be overlapping. I expected the chill I felt, which in her case was really just a lack of body heat such as I was used to, and shored up my nerves to remain still where I was. Backing up would only send me stumbling into that lifeless Nowhere Lake, anyway.

We were of a similar height, she was just a few fingerwidths taller but not towering over me like Gavin did. I both expected and saw—very close to my face—a black beetle once again crawl out of her eye socket onto her flawless cheek. She reached up to pluck it away and hold it between us on an upturned, flat palm.

"Summon your spiders," she said, "those two that remain. Allow them to attack the scarab."

Were they with me...? I could hear my own heartbeat as I slowly tugged at the pouch on my belt with my free hand, loosening it up enough for the two guardian spiders to come out. They climbed onto my hand.

"Attacking death seems a foolish thing to do," I commented, an obvious show of concern at the instruction as the spiders got their bearings on my bracer.

Nyx smiled slightly, as if just acknowledging the jest but nothing more. She waited, her smooth palm still holding her beetle.

My eyes flicked to my babies, and I hadn't even given them the command when they scurried immediately to lunge at the scarab, and I watched them worked together to try and turn it over onto its back, biting at the head but not wasting their time with the armored body. Some webbing came out to hinder its kicking legs but it never really tried to run away.

Nyx pulled all three small creatures away from me and allowed my spiders to feed within her palm as she kept it open. Just as I confirmed that my guardians weren't shriveling up before my eyes, she spoke once again.

"The methods by which you recognize family are many," her voice that rasping whisper again. "Which is the one you trust most?"

At first those seemed oddly straightforward, a statement and a related question. Then I realized I had no hint of just what she meant by "family." Recognizing them. Did I recognize family at all, particularly those who shared blood, or was it just those I was told were my family as a child in House Thalluen? I hadn't trusted any of them; I hadn't even liked them.

Yet I had memories, experiences of realizing that perhaps I knew or understood someone else, someone in front of me but not of my blood. I could even be glad to see them, after recognizing them, trusting at the very least the instinct that they were somehow interesting to me. They were those at Court, within the Sisterhood, from the Sanctuary...

And quite a few on the Surface.

I shook my head once, a bit helpless. "When I...know. I trust that, I trust myself that I know when they answer something unspoken."

Nyx somehow looked pleased—without eyes, and barely moving her face, she looked pleased. "Is it in the eyes?"

"It can be," I said. "It can be in the words, too. Or the body."

A slight nod. "The scent?"

"That's confirmation. I have to get much closer, or allow them closer, to smell."

Nyx stepped that bit closer; I leaned back slightly but did not take that step toward the water. I noted that the candle was half burned down already.

"And the taste," she said, "it is confirmation as well."

I nodded. "Definitely."

"What scent do you have now, Sirana?"

I blinked. What?

"Do not decide," she nudged. "Simply answer."

"I-I...Gavin, I believe."

"Why?"

"Because he's always channeling your presence. I can't really be this close to you, it is always through him."

"Good. Now stop talking, Sirana. What do you taste?"

I closed my mouth and tried not to think. Just taste. Taste and smell. Whatever I had heard or seen, I already knew. We weren't going to touch. I looked up briefly toward the overcast and closed my eyes, willing my mind to be both as empty and as bright as that.

What I tasted was...crystalline.

No color. Not even grey.

"I will answer you one question as your boon," she whispered.

What had come to me had me shivering, and I exhaled in gratitude. I tried to speak then but the words wouldn't seem to come. I began a few times and stopped after one or two ill-chosen words. Right now, words felt so clunky.

I had to think my question to convey it. *Why did you accept to be Steward of the Winter Throne of Miurag, but not Queen?*

Nyx's smile was tinged with some sad emotion; I could tell even without the eyes. She answered me clear.

*Because a mother might wish to keep one room in a childhood home cared for and timeless, in case her child can one day come back to claim it.*

Somehow I stayed standing after tasting that Truth; had I a true body right then, I might have collapsed and rolled off the edge of the earth. It wasn't even complicated; there was no one involved here that I didn't already know about, yet I was stunned motionless.

After the Broken One needed to be contained, they had asked its creator...its "mother"...to fill the gap it left behind. Family once, family again. I did not know how many Greylords had ever created anything wholly separate and self-sustaining from themselves, given the nexus at best merely "borrowed" all life and energy as it passed through and they constantly fought over that.

The Grave Mother had felt the desire to create at some distant point in time. She must have. This world, my world, was born the way it was because of it. She had borne a child of pure thought, untethered, completely free in a way none of Nyx's servants were, and she released it to find its own way. Even with her eyes, she might not have seen it being pulled into a living world along with Miurag's Brother and the Sisters...

But that was why Nyx was here now. Why she even cared whether or not this world died prematurely. She knew family.

I swallowed. Musanlo was so much younger than her. How tolerant she'd been thus far of his...his growing pains, of how he's treated her. But then, with the Broken One in their shared past, how could she lay blame on anyone, exactly?

Was...was this the type of Truths Gavin saw sometimes when he communed with her? No wonder he had changed so rapidly since I'd met him.

While I was still, Nyx stretched out her hand to me and my spiders had finished their meal. They jumped from her palm to my shoulder, leaving behind the husk of the scarab, which she closed in her hand, crushing it but not dropping the remains. My babies were content, I could tell, their bellies full. They would not be hungry again for quite some time.

*Lolth wishes to claim the Winter Throne,* Nyx said, gently touching my mind.

"She can't have it," I replied aloud. Then I swallowed and stopped talking. My eyes flicked to the candle again. Three-quarters gone.

The Greylord nodded, approving, and continued. *She is the first, among many others seeking, to find one of those paths leading to Musanlo's family. She has found my child accessible to her at last. In you.*

Uh-oh.

Although my own stomach wasn't calm hearing this, I could not really tell if the Grave Mother was upset about this, if she was warning me, resistant to let me return... None of those emotions seemed to be there. She seemed only to be stating something she has seen within the void of her eyes.

*The brothers answering the Sisters hold something Miurag would see returned to it," she said cryptically, "though that is for the betterment of a garden yet to be. Retrieve them if you will, bring them to the Surface as the Godblood wishes, but they will not be safe anywhere near you as long as Lolth still has her High Priestess searching inside the Broken One's tomb. For you, the Spider Queen may well be tempted to send many more demons creeping again to the light, as she has not done in millennia after your race took over the Dragon's View of the Tomb. They all see it now: the stone has cracked, the seal has shifted.*

*They all see it? Who was 'they'?*

Abruptly, I saw Shyntre's angry, frightened face again. *All of them, Sirana. All of us! The Valsharess, Auranka, the Priestesses, Phaelous, D'Shea, the Prime and the Red Sisters, the Illithids, that fucking Dragon, and me! *

Of those who might actually sense anything of the Broken One, I would alter that list to just Lolth, Lethrix, Ishuna, the Elder Mind...and...?

*As long as Lolth has her High Priestess?*

Nyx nodded confirmation, saying nothing.

Shyntre hadn't mentioned Roshenthanon, the formal "High Priestess" at present, whom Wilsirathon had been planning to supplant to take that title. But that title didn't mean anything to Shyntre right then; she was just lumped in with "the Priestesses." I'd always thought that temporary and swiftly-shifting position had been something just to appease the Priesthood since the Sisterhood had a Prime. High Priestess, yes, whatever.

But my wizard had mentioned Auranka by name. If the High Priestess wasn't the Valsharess, and if it wasn't the forgettable Roshenthanon...

Nyx smiled, again looking pleased. *Be careful you do not look too long into the Abyss, my child. Its gaze can swallow you just as easily as the mouths of its denizens.*

Now I felt every moment of this lack of heat as my fingers ached with the cold clutching to the candle, which was at this point almost nothing more than a puddle of black blood with a tiny blue flame trying not to drown on the short wick. My spiders hurried into the relative warmth of their pouch.

*I see,* I spoke to her, bowing my head as it felt heavy. *I see, and I hear you.*

Nyx nodded. *My Grey Priest will always help you as he can, my child. He has recognized you as family for much of your journey.*

Then the Greylord leaned forward, forming her mouth into a small "o," blowing out the last of the blue flame.

Everything went dark.

*******

"She made it," I heard Gavin say before I had managed even to open my eyes. "You may touch her now."

Fuck, my ass was sore, my legs nearly asleep. If Mourn wanted to draw me close and warm me, he was going to have to do most of the work. The most I could do was hold onto his shoulders as he dragged me backward a bit, allowing me to stretch out again. I was cold again and Mourn was almost burning up. The contrast was bone-melting and I inhaled deeply of the scent at his neck, centering myself that much more quickly back in my true body.

"Is all well?" he asked, and I paused to consider before I nodded.

"I trust that you will consider," Gavin said as he was cleaning up the items of his floor, "whether anything that was said to you is best shared, or not, before speaking it,"

"Did you hear any of it?" I croaked.

"No. This audience was for you alone."

I nodded. The Grey Maiden had said that little island had been private. I lightly touched my pouch, feeling my spiders move and confirming they were well enough sight unseen. They couldn't tell me if they "remembered" seeing anything or doing anything strange, like eating scarab that crawled out of Nyx's eye, but at least they weren't stressed. I considered, as Gavin had suggested.

"There is one thing that is best shared right away."

None of the three males present asked me what it was, but they were all paying attention.

I turned my head to look at Vesram. "You want to see the Priesthood destroyed, right? The Drae-goet freed."

The half-blood blinked his yellow eyes at me and nodded carefully.

"You realize that if we succeeded in that, we would cripple Lolth's connection to Miurag."

Vesram tilted his head, drawing back his black lips to expose a few fangs. "Rrrealize, yess."

"Cripple, but not cut off entirely," I said. "To do that, we also need to destroy her High Priestess."

"The Valsharess?" Gavin suggested.

"I'd always thought so, but no. The Drider Mistress, Auranka."

The Draegloth rumbled in his throat, sounding concerned - as he well should be - and I heard the Dragonblood's tail sliding along the stone behind us.

Turning my head, I looked directly at Mourn. "I asked you something once before, but you never answered."

"What did you ask?" he prompted.

"I asked you whether your... concern with the Valsharess and her City was your idea, or your sire's? She never did anything to you, from what you've told us. You were born outside the City, you grew up, you escaped and came to the Surface. What is the reason for your interest in my City, and specifically my queen?"

Mourn blinked slowly. "My sire may not cull legitimate divine links to other planes at his whim. No To'vah can."

That was a giant, leading statement with a big piece missing.

I narrowed my eyes. "But you can."

The Guild Leader smiled at me, fully. He looked predatory. "I can. If I survive long enough to try."

"That is what your sire has fucking wanted from the start!" I accused.

He was unapologetic. "Now...or later, yes."

"Why you wanted to bargain with me for details about the City. He gave you the task and you had to start somewhere."

"Correct." He held me a little closer, sliding a very warm hand down my back. "And the opportunity came to me better than I could have imagined."

I glared at him. No jesting. Lethrix could probably barely contain himself when he got that close look at Jael in addition to taunting me, teasing me to come back to the Underdark.

"Do you owe him this?" I asked. "What does he have over you?"

Now Mourn did not look quite as open about the details, but at least he nodded and said, "This is the only objective I have remaining from him."

"What objective? Say it aloud."

He was ready to talk or he wouldn't look so amused. "Challenge Lolth's High Priestess. See how strong the Spider Queen's connection to 'her people' really is. Like you, I assumed it to be the Valsharess, since she is the reason the Baenar went underground."

I nodded, feeling somewhat better having some straight answers about his motives. "And this is the last objective, you said. Implying you had others before."

"A few."

"Why follow them?"

"Why did you follow objectives given by your Elder D'Shea as a Red Sister? Why will you still, if she can convince you to try?"

Point.

"Because I'd learn something from an Elder to help me survive," I said.

"Exactly."

That fucking Dragon, indeed, and the Deathwalker was pondering something deeply when I looked at him. I could tell.

"What do you want to ask me, Gavin?"

He nodded slightly at me, choosing his words. "Can you say why your own mission has suddenly solidified into something no small bit grander than to retrieve Auslan and Shyntre and evade the Illithids long enough to return to the Surface?"

I found I could not answer immediately, but nonetheless I answered.

"Yes. What Nyx showed me..." I swallowed, feeling that sober weight again. This was also necessary to share. "Auslan...the Life Priest, he won't be safe even coming to the Surface if Auranka and the Valsharess live, and neither will our son if he's born. Not ever."