They followed the passageway up and up to what looked to be an old temple, many levels of stone terraces stretching as far as the eye could see. They were not alone. Laughter, mad and wild, echoed from around the stone walls. She saw as they moved that others melted out of the darkness, staring at the newcomers with baleful eyes. They went to go up a staircase to one of the upper galleries, and found their way blocked. A pugfaced hagspawn met them at the top of the steps.
"Look, here! We got some new arrivals!" he bellowed.
"Heh!" the dry laugh of a dark dwarf behind him came, "Looks like they got nice gear. Let's get em!"
A third member of their group, human by the looks of him growled his reluctance, "Hey! Why do we have to attack every one that blighted mistress sends here?"
"Yeah," another echoed, and Adahni saw that a tiny deep gnome had been standing just between the human's legs the whole time. "We don't have many left since the last time Gulk'aush came to feed. We should be welcoming newcomers, not murdering them!"
"It would be a welcome change..." Adahni offered.
"Shut up!" the hagspawn commanded, "The Skein is no place for honeyed words - or for you!"
"Fuck this," the gnome piped up, "I'm not having any part of this."
"I'm with you," the human offered, "Let's go back to the sleeper. Good luck, newcomer!"
They skedaddled, and Adahni sighed, drawing her rapier. The Skein began to glow with magic energies as Safiya wove her spells around them, knocking their foes to the ground. She kicked and stabbed, motions that were second nature, her muscles moving without her thinking about it. They fell, as all of their foes did. She felt as though she'd done a good thing, putting the poor creatures out of their madness and misery.
In the silence after the battle, they could hear a voice. It was female, she thought, the highpitched voice of a woman who'd lost her very mind. It echoed down through the stones, as though the very fabric of that place were speaking. Mocking them.
"Where've you gone, my son, my son? Gone to rot in the sun, the sun?"
"What in the everloving fuck..." Adahni muttered.
"It is as though the very Skein is laughing at us," Safiya sighed, "Should go find what that voice is?"
"I don't know if I want to know," Adahni said.
Gann was silent, but the wheels behind his eyes were turning.
"Bite off the bone! Suck the marrow! Bite off the bone! Suck the marrow!"
"All right," Addie said, "Let's go."
The halls of the Skein were damp, but she didn't have the feeling of sinking to the depths like she did in Coveya Kurg'annis. She tried to keep a mental map of every twist and turn, every staircase and passageway, but she found it almost impossible to keep it straight. A few times she realized they had come full circle. Their path was continually frustrated by rubble, by deep ponds where the waters had claimed the stone beneath it, the light of her creation not stretching far enough to see if there was, indeed, another side or if it were the edge of an underground ocean. Eventually they came to a new room, a place she hadn't seen before. It was further down, deeper than the others, and in the corner, a massive earth elemental was contained in summoning circle.
"Looks like this is who Fentomy wants to enslave… I mean… employ," Safiya observed.
"It also looks like it's essential to the structural integrity of this building," Adahni said, The elemental was, indeed, huge, its arms stretching to the bones of the ceiling.
"Well," Okku said, "If we destroy it, if the stones begin to fall, perhaps the water would drain, and our path would clear."
"Eyes shut, eyes not. I'm not awake, asleep, asleep, a dream!" the voice chanted. It was less hollow, more earthly now. Addie longed to have the keen ears of Bishop and his talent for figuring out exactly where something was coming from. If she were to guess, she would have said that the voice was coming from the other side of the ocean of water that had blocked their way, several hundred yards back.
"We're growing closer," Okku said, "It's coming from deep within the Skein. The closer we get to the heart of this place, the closer we come to finding the source of this maddening voice."
"If there's one thing I never wanted to happen again, it's being trapped in collapsing ruin beneath the water," Adahni said, "But if this is our only means of escape, perhaps…"
Gann silently went up to the summoning circle and cracked the stones keeping it up with a wish and a spell. Safiya began to weave some spells, try to help him, but Adahni put her hand on the wizard's arm. Gann wanted to do this on his own.
And do it he did, forcing his spear between the rocks that made up the elemental and destroying its integrity. As it fell with a rumble and a bang, Adahni felt the floor shake - for much longer than it should have if it were only reacting to the impact of the corpse. "We'd better move."
Okku had been right, the shaking of the building and the earth - or water - beneath their feet told her that the whole thing might collapse within the hour. He was also right that the disturbance drained some of the black water, and they were able to move forward to passages that had been blocked beforehand.
They went on, as the passages became damper and an eerie mist began to rise from the bottom and the collapsing structure shook them to their bones. It trickled up from between the flagstones. The passage became narrower and narrower, and soon it obstructed her view entirely, the light of the Aasimar not cutting through it.
And then they were out. The narrow passage emptied into a expansive room with a low, stone ceiling. The voice, which had echoed around them as though disembodied, now had a body. It was that of a hag, blueskinned and gaunt, her chin jutting out from under a white, feathered, mask. Adahni could not place her age, if she were human, she might have been eighty or ninety, but she imagined that she was quite a bit younger. She paced long, slow circles, pausing to rock back and forth.
"No sleep, sleeping, dream, dreaming!" She cried, and then cackled.
"There is something about her," Gann said, breaking his long silence, "There is something about her... beneath the mask she is wearing is a face I feel I have seen many times before, but..."
He trailed off as the hag turned and fixed them in her view. "Ah, another lucky one - lucky to know sleep - to know dreams. My gift to you, eternal slumber... and yes, you might dream, too, you might!" She reared back, brandishing long claws.
"Wait, I just want to talk!" Addie protested.
The hag just cackled, and fell upon her.
Adahni found herself trying to stave off a flurry of claws - not just human fingers allowed to grow long and sharp - but claws like a raven's, scratching her face, seeking her eyes. It was Okku who pulled her off, getting the hag's thin waist between her jaws, firmly enough to drag her away, but not hard enough to draw blood.
"Tired... tired?" the hag intoned, "Is it possible?" The bear held her there as she struggled, flailing wildly as Okku shook her again and again, trying to get her to calm down.
"Hold!" the hag said, going limp. Okku put her down gently.
"This blood of mine you've spilled as loosened insanity's grip, for a moment. I do not wish to die, though it would bring an end to the punishment I've endured for my crimes, ha!"
"Your crimes?"
"I violated the sisterhood, broke the sacred laws of Kurg'annis. I took a man as my lover... and I loved him," the hag paused. She put one gnarled claw to her face and tore off her mask. Beneath the mask, her skin was a deep blue, her eyes dark and haunted. Adahni tried with all the imagination of a bard to think of her as beautiful, how she could have seemed like an ethereal, unearthly being to a man. The hag looked up, right into Adahni's eyes, and she saw the decades of sorrow like murky waters, the glimmer of the love like a glowstone at the bottom of a well. "Oh, how I loved him. I kept this love hidden, told my sisters I was just toying with him - just toying a little longer. But I let him escape and fooled my sisters with the desiccated corps of some other man. They remained ignorant of my terrible crime until I birthed the product of our love. Then they found my beloved and made me devour him alive in front of his son."
Adahni's eyes slid over to Gann, who was listening in openmouthed revulsion. Something within her body flipflopped as she imagined the horror this poor creature had lived, but thankfully it did not prompt her to vomit.
"Even as they forced chunks of his flesh down my throat, he smiled at me, at our child. So beautiful like his father, was my son Gannayev."
"Oh, Gann," Adahni sighed. She had been expecting something like this, how silent Gann had been since they entered the Skein, the veiled threat from the hag who had sent them there that he would meet her soon.
"Mother..." Gann breathed, "You are Gul'kaush, you are my mother!" Adahni half expected him to throw himself into the hag's knotty arms. But instead, he did something she did not expect. He took his spear from his back and leveled it at her, the nasty barb on the end mere inches from her abdomen.
"My son has returned, and he has brought violence against me. Will you murder your mother?" Gul'kaush cried.
"You abandoned me!" he accused, "Cast me to the wilds of Rashemen!"
"What would you have had me do? Keep you here, in the Skein? Nourished you with milk my body made from your father's flesh?" Gul'kaush countered, "Look behind you to see the fate of a child in the Skein!" She pointed with one clawed hand to the boy, Yuri, still sitting astride Okku's broad back. He smiled at the attention, evidently not catching the tenor of what was going on, and drooled into the bear king's fur.
"I had but one choice, child, to love your father," Gul'kaush said, sounding defeated.
"What does a hag know of love?" Gann sighed.
"More than you do, I think, child. Have you not drifted from creature to creature, spirit to spirit, finding no dream that has touched you? Or have you, with this one you follow?" The hag made a sudden move towards Addie, intending to scare her, but she resisted the urge to flinch. All eyes then turned to her,.
"Is there something going on that I should know about?" Safiya asked.
"Fuck off, Safi, it's not true," Adahni cursed, "She's trying to rile Gann. And even if it were, it'd be over now… could you imagine holidays with her as a mother-in-law?"
"She's lying," Gann said, glaring at her, hurt that she would make light in such a heavy situation, "You speak as if your words are truth, but you know nothing - of me, of my life."
"I know you have dreamed of this city beneath the waves, and your travels have circled it all your life until now... until the time has come to destroy it," Gul'kaush said, looking at Adahni again. This time the light at the bottom of the well was not love, but righteousness, "It was ordained we speak this one last time, my dear Gann. It is the one hope that has cradled me in this prison."
Gann was silent a moment, weighing her words. All of a sudden, he flew into a rage, "You are a creature of lies! Spawned from lies!"
The hag sighed, a long wheezing note."And you, my beautiful child, are far more terrible. To be spawned from the love of a hag - by such things are cities and nations laid to ruins. Do you wish to hear the logic of my claims?"
"It's your call, Gann," Addie said. She would have reached to take his hand in comfort, but considering his mood she could not be sure he wouldn't throw her across the room.
"I want to hear what she has to say," Gann said, his voice calmer, "I may believe none of it, but I still wish to hear her speak."
"My words you should hear. There are others who deserve your hatred far more. The coven who sleep here, they must be awakened. And with violence. Send the Coven to join your father, who drifts in the rivers of the dead. Show them, at least, the horror that the love of a mother and her son can bring to their dreams."
The hag paused, panting, and Addie could see that the poor old thing was exhausted. Trying to remain lucid must have been some effort, after so many years, all alone, in this dank, dark place.
"The voices echo through my mind and the insanity will soon reclaim me. Take from me my eye. I will need it no longer. Use it in your travels, use it against the Coven. Now leave me. The escape you seek is ahead. I do no know how much longer I can maintain my sanity. The voices in my mind are a cacophony."
"Then hear my voice this last time, mother - where I walk, you shall be with me until the end days. We shall be together again."
The hag began cackling, and she took one raven's claw and dug her eye from her socket, handing it to Gann, who looked at it. The eye looked back at him. He looked a bit sick, but looked back up at his mother.
At that, there was a great crack, and the room shook violently.
"We must get out before the whole thing comes down!" Okku bellowed, "Come on, up those stairs!"
They ran as dust and pebbles began raining from the ceiling, hitting the damp ground and turning to slippery mud beneath their boots.
"Beware of love, Gann!" Gul'kaush cried, her voice becoming distorted and mad, "Beware of this one you follow. This being that is not one, but three!"
Adahni stopped dead on the stairs, and turned, straining to see Gul'kaush through the waterfall of dust and stone.
"Yes, you, you corrupted angel, with that honeyed tongue in my child's ear, what would you know of a child conceived in love? Gul'kaush began howling, an unnatural noise, the mist coming up from the flagstones concealing her.
"What are you talking about, hag?!" Adahni cried.
"There's no time!" Gann cried, and grabbed her roughly by the arm, dragging her up the stairs and through a door as the staircase crumbled behind them. She lost her footing for a moment, but he held tight to her arm and she righted herself. They scrambled up the steps, and her heart leapt for a moment, seeing an open doorway behind them, with Safiya, Okku, and Yuri beckoning to her. She pulled all her strength together and ran for it.
She heard Gann cry out behind her, and saw that he'd been trapped by a falling rock, she went back. She put her shoulder under the stone that had knocked him flat and was pinning him by his upper legs. Calling on all the strength the drop of dragon's blood in her veins gave her, she strained.
"It's no use, my lemming, better just leave old Gann in his mother's grave."
"Shut up," she snarled through gritted teeth, and pushed again. The rock gave a bit, just enough to let him slither out and make for the door. They dropped and rolled through just as it crumbled behind them.
She could tell from the smell that they were back, somewhere in Coveya Kurgannis. She sat there for a moment, trying to catch her breath. Was the hag simply dribbling in her madness? But why would both Gul'kaush and Dalenka both say the same thing? They had all spoken of the Spirit Eater curse as though it were an extra being, a sentient entity living inside her. It had certainly felt that way, before she was able to quell it, back at the beginning of this whole disaster. Who was it, then? And why was she not two, but three?
"I guess I'll have to ask the Coven," she said out loud, forgetting her companions had not been in on her previous train of thought.
"Well, we seem to be in the right place for it," Safiya said, "I think they're close by, now."
"I hope I like the answer," Addie said.
"Whether you do or not, it's always better to know," Safiya replied.
"I suppose you're right," she said, "I also rather hope they don't capture us and make us eat each other alive or something."
"I volunteer to do the eating," Okku said. The other companions glared at him.
"A joke, friends," he said, "Lighten the mood. The hag was a bit of a downer."
"The next ones will be worse," Gann said, "Whatever's next is always worse."