Unlike her vision in Immil Vale, this dreamscape was familiar. The rock walls, lit by luminescent mushroom rose high around her. Inset into the wall were Imaskari runes. And the smell, the rot of centuries left alone for so long it had ceased to reek and had been muted into a general mustiness that, while not pleasant, was not enough to trigger her nausea.
"The barrow where you awoke," Gann observed for he, in his inimitable fashion, had followed her to this dark place, "I can't imagine you're thrilled to return here."
Adahni shook her head, "Not particularly, but... I trust that there is something to be learned here. Follow, I sense a presence down the corridor."
They followed the corridor down and down, until they reached a broader chamber. In the center of it, his face in the shadow, stood a man with flowing white hair. Adahni did not know him, did not recognize him, but something within her told her she had met him before.
"Adahni?" he asked, pronouncing her name with a Thayan accent that swallowed the entire second syllable, "Adh-ni? Is that you? I feared you'd come too late, or not at all. I've found something, kept it safe for many long years. But the Faceless Man may be close on your heels. We need to make haste."
"Should I know you, uncle?" Adahni asked. Something about the words "the Faceless Man" brought terror to her heart, and she resisted an impulse to look behind her.
"Surely not," he replied, "I died before you first drew breath. I fear that I am little more than an echo... a memory of what was." He headed out of the chamber, down a dark corridor further on, "Quickly now, follow!"
"I think we should go with him," Gann said.
Adahni nodded, and followed his retreating back into the darkness. He moved quickly for such an old man, and by the time he reached a second chamber, this one the twin of the one she had woken up in, she was breathing heavily. The old man stood between the columns on the close side. She saw the sight that Safiya must have beheld shortly before they had first met. Across a stone bridge over a chasm of indeterminate but frightening depth, on a stone platform in the middle of the cave lay the place where she had awoken. And in her place, stood a boy.
"Look there," the old man said, "Do you see him?"
"Yes, Someone is inside the cavern... in the place where I awoke." She had no energy for guile or wordplay in this dreamscape. And something about this old man made her trust him.
"He created all you see here - or it formed about him like an island, a hidden fortress in limbo of dream. I only drifted here by chance. The caverns came later, after I arrived. This sanctuary reshaped itself for me - what little remains of me, that is."
"Why did it reshape itself in the form of Okku's barrow?"
"This cavern is where I died," the old man said, "Lord Okku swore an oath when I spared his life, on the shifting floes of Tirulag... swore it in that hell of cracking ice and screaming, drowning beasts. He would help me end my curse, whatever the cost to himself or his tribe. His barrow would become my tomb, and he my guardian, that no mortal should go near my corpse. And when the hunger fled my remains, it would find no new mask to wear."
"Who is in the cavern?" asked Adahni.
"A remnant perhaps. A piece of a larger whole. There were many such remnants once, but the hunger has gradually devoured them all."
Adahni suppressed an awful thought - a thought worse than her glimpses of the Wall of the Faithless. Would it be better to rot away to nothing in this barrow?
"I have come to believe that he is a memory, like me, of a previous spirit-eater - or of something that came before," he continued.
"What is your name, uncle?" asked Adahni.
The old man stopped, as though surprised by her question. "You know," he said, "I don't know. But my name is not important, not for you, and you are why I am still here. All that really matters is this - I know something about your path because I once walked it myself."
"I don't remember you from the Red Lady's garden," Adahni said, "But you were a spirit-eater as well?"
"For some time, yes. In death, I am little more than a memory, though I am not sure whose. We are discarded, we who bear the hunger. One after another, we are used up, burned out. But the hunger lives on, and passes to another. I tried to break the chain, but the proof of my failure is standing here before me. What I never did was think to look within, I never thought to learn what the hunger truly was..."
"Let us enter the cavern," Adahni said, "Perhaps answers - answers for the both of us - lie within."
"Forgive and old fool, that would seem to be an easy thing, but it is not. I set wards to guard him when I was far stronger than I am now. Beasts await you there, spun from your own darkest memories. Dreams they may be, but if you are slain, you may never find your way to us again..."
Adahni looked back at Gann for guidance. The shaman was clearly fascinated by the entire exchange. "I think we have no choice but to go forward," he said, "Lead on. I have looked upon your pleasant dreams. I suppose the price I must pay for that is to fight your nightmares by your side."
A horde of shadows assailed them as they crossed the stone bridge into the runic prison where she had awakened. She beat them back, as she always had, but in their center, a figure she had not seen for years. A Shadow Reaver, the shade of one of the Hosttower mages that Black Garius had roped into his sick little ritual - a sick little ritual that had begun the war that had culminated in the Battle of Crossroad Keep and the destruction of the Guardian of the Illefarn. She fought back the bile at the back of her throat. You are my nightmare. It is my mind that has called you forth from the darkness where you dwell. She concentrated, and the Shadow Reaver and its minions shrank to the size of mice. She stomped them underfoot, feeling a satisfying crunch as each one perished beneath her boot.
"You never cease to impress me," Gann said, "Now look, who is there?"
Adahni approached the center of the platform. There, where she had once lain, was a small boy, no older than seven or eight years old. He was dark-haired and olive-skinned, and dressed unlike the children of Neverwinter. She was sure she had never seen this child before, but his eyes lit up when he saw her.
"Do you remember me, child? I've brought someone to meet you," the old man had evidently found a way to enter the chamber once Adahni had done the work of dispatching its guardians.
"Have you seen my brother?" the boy asked, "I think he's forgotten me."
"No," Adahni said, "I haven't seen him. What is your name?"
"Eveshi," he said, "That's the name the priests call me, but my brother calls me Ahrraman."
"It means laughter in the old Mulan tongue," the old man said.
"My brother says I laugh enough for the both of us. He says I'll never make a very good priest if I can't stop giggling during service."
"I've heard that name before," Adahni said. She searched her recent memory. Aharraman. Araman. A name uttered during the wizard's duel between Khai Khmun and Safiya at the playhouse. "That's the name of a wizard from the Academy."
The boy shrugged, "I'm not a wizard. I'm going to be a priest." He reached into his pocket. Adahni flinched, prepared for him to thrust a live spider or frog into her hand, as was her experience with little boys. Instead, he handed her the fragment of a mask, similar to the one she had received in the Red Lady's garden as she slept beneath the Mosstone. She looked at it, and handed it to Gann who examined it closely.
"Thank you,"she said to the boy, "But what do I do with this?"
"We are what we remember... what we dream. Nothing is gone while pieces remain. This is the piece that is me. But, I'm only a part... part of the whole..."
The boy's voice was becoming hollow as he spoke, and as he finished his sentence, the world had begun to twist and whirl around him, and Adahni found herself being sucked up and up, much as she had felt herself falling previously. She landed, this time, on the edge of the pool. Gann had picked himself and dusted himself off.
"This is fascinating!" he exclaimed, handing the fragment back to her. She examined it closely. It, like the fragment she had gotten from her nap beneath the Mosstone, was not of one color - nor indeed of one shape. "Another fragment! We will learn much from this once the mask is complete."
"I hope you're right," she said. She sat, and lit a smoke, not ready to go to bed yet. From the position of the stars, barely five minutes had passed since they had drunk from the Wells of Lurue. She sat silently, her mind wandering first to the odd shard of mask - so much of her life seemed to revolve around collecting pieces and putting them together. Masks. Swords. People. Then they sprang from the mask and Sword of Gith to her experience of the Wall of the Faithless, back when the curse had seized her. She wondered, her eyes falling on the hagspawn, whether it would be possible to travel in dreams to places she could not in life, and whether answers for her might lie there. And then, her mind settled on a question that had been pricking her for the better part of the day, "Tell me, what is it you meant back at the farmer's house, that you could not help Anya now? Did you see the state of her?"
"Ah, yes," Gann said, "I thought you might be wondering about that. She's in a waking dream. She was conscious, it's a different level of dreaming. So, say that you were to sit by this pool and let your mind drift, perhaps you think of the adventures you've had, the glory you've gained. Just now, for example, I saw that faraway look in your eye. But no matter how intricate and detailed your fantasy was, it is not accessible to me. The minute you fall asleep, when that flight of fancy you've taken takes you in its grip, that is when I may come along. For good or for evil…."
"What happened with her?" she asked.
"It was all quite innocent, I promise you," he said, "As much as I brag about the dreams of maidens and farmer's daughters, I did not… I did not seduce her, I promise you that. I but wandered into her dream as she slept that night. I explained to you about me, how I always have to be in someone's dream, if I am to get any rest. I suppose I could have gone to her father, but it simply never occurred to me that…"
"That what?" Adahni asked.
"That she would get entirely the wrong idea," Gann said, "She's a simple girl, reared in isolation on this farm, the only young men those she would see on market days, months in between those. The only young men she knows are the ones from fairytales. Knights errant, princelings who rescue fair maidens from towers. She fixated on me. I should have seen the signs…I never thought it would become like… this."
"She projected on to you everything she had ever learned about men," Adahni said.
"Precisely," Gann said, "Trust me, the state she is in now, this singular obsession… it is not me she is obsessed with, it is all of the years of repression and reading that she's molded into a fantasy that wears my face. I know that Safiya and Kaelynn would not understand, but you… you must know what it is to not be a real person, just an amalgamation of another's fancies and desires?"
"I do," Adahni said, "Though it's never quite driven any of the unfortunate men to that state of decay. I worry that she won't live long, rocking in her own filth day in and day out like that. We must find a way to undo whatever it is…"
Gann nodded. "I take no pleasure in it," he said. "i know my tongue tends to the boastful, but it was never my intention to have such an effect."
Adahni nodded, "I can try with what magic I have, but if there's a way you know to help her, you should tell it to me now."
"If anyone knows the magic of dreamwalking, it is the Hags of the Slumbering Coven."
"Where we needed to go anyway," Adahni said, "For there are pieces of another puzzle, another mask, another sword…"
"All of it would be much better after a night's sleep, don't you think?" Gann asked.
"You are correct, though it pains me to admit it," Adahni chuckled, "I will attempt to rest these eyes of mine."
The two of them entered the tent to find Safiya and Okku. Okku was curled up by the hearth, and Safiya was lounging on one of the beds, smoking something exotic. Adahni lay down next to her and put her hand out. Safiya obligingly passed the smoke to her. It was sweet and spicy, though it burned her throat on the way down. Also, she realized, it was more potent than the pipeweed she was used to. Gann perched himself on the next bed over. Adahni passed it to him, and he put himself into a fit of coughing after taking a drag.
Whatever drug was in Safiya's smoke made her mellow and buzzy, but she could feel her mouth and eyes grow dry. She took a slug from the flask she kept stashed in her pack - this time full of a Rashemi liquor made from potatoes of all things. She found herself wondering why, with the abundance of potatoes that grew in the moist climate of the Mere, nobody thought to ferment it. The three of them silently passed the flask and the smoke around until they were both gone, and each of them was a bit sloppy.
Without prompting, Adahni began singing. It was the last call song from the Cuckoo's nest, sung when the stars had gone down and the promise of morning was beginning to leak through the dirty windows of the pub.
Landlady's called the law in
The day is near the dawnin'
Yer all blind drunk me boys
And I'm a jolly fool
Well may we always be
Hell may we never see
God bless the Lord
And his company
There was more to it, and a chorus, but Adahni found her mouth so dry she could not sing, and her eyelids too heavy to keep them propped open a second more. Within seconds, all four of the companions were snoring, glad to be safe in the pocket plane, outside of the world.
"