There was a flash of brilliant white light, a sunburst spilling blinding radiance over the field. Daine’s last thought was that this was wrong … that this hadn’t happened.

  “Fool!” Lakashtai was standing over him, her eyes burning like emerald coals. “After all you’ve faced today, you would give yourself to dreams so easily?”

  The room slowly came into focus. Lakashtai stood by the bunk, and Daine could feel her concern as if it was a physical force pressing against his thoughts. Pierce and Lei were standing to either side of her—Lei, worried and weary, Pierce as impassive as ever.

  “Hnh—What?” he said, trying to make sense of her words.

  “Your dreams are the path our enemies use to enter your mind. With Tashana in hiding—it is best that you do not dream for now.”

  Lei snorted, and Daine pushed himself up into a sitting position. “Oh, is it?” he said. His thoughts were still muddy. “Just … stop, just like that?”

  Lakashtai nodded, as if this was a perfectly ordinary request. “I must be present when you are going to sleep. I can divert your spirit, and keep the gateway closed. As long as I am here, I can shield you from this foe and protect you from the attacks you have been suffering … at least, for a time.”

  “That’s enough,” Lei said, her voice cold. “I’ve had it with all of this mysterious nonsense. This isn’t the first time Daine’s ever been asleep. If his head was going to rot away, why didn’t it happen yesterday? All I see is you showing up, threatening Daine, and then this other creature joining the fight … A woman who looked rather remarkably like you, looking back on things. Why don’t you tell us exactly what’s going on?”

  “Daine has been at risk these last few nights. You have been losing consciousness during waking hours. When did this first occur?”

  “Four days ago,” Daine said.

  “This is when they first found your dreams. With each night, the bond grows stronger, and if you let them into your dreams, they can track us … and then all will be lost.”

  “Them,” Lei said. “What ‘them?’”

  “Il-Lashtavar,” Lakashtai said quietly. “The darkness that dreams.”

  “Oh, well, that makes everything clear. Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?” Lei said.

  Lakashtai looked at her, and as before the intensity of the kalashtar’s gaze silenced Lei. “We do not speak of this to those we do not know. This is our war: the battle of the kalashtar, the struggle we were born to. You and all those creatures who dream when the night comes—I would spare you from knowing of the horrors that await you.”

  There was no trace of a smile on her lips, and though her voice was music, it was a cold and chilling tune. For a moment, no one spoke. Then Pierce’s voice filled the room, deep and calm.

  “You may have chosen this battle, but we have been drawn into it, and a soldier who cannot identify his foe—one who knows nothing of the nature of the battlefield—cannot expect to triumph.”

  Daine nodded. “I can’t avoid making mistakes unless I know what I’m fighting, and damn it, it’s my mind!”

  Lakashtai studied each of them, then turned and walked toward the far corner of the room. When she looked back at them, the light had faded from her eyes.

  “You are correct, of course,” she said softly. “I cannot say what lies ahead of us, and you must be prepared. Please, Lei, be seated. This will be a long tale, and I know that you have had a trying day.”

  Lei glanced at Daine, and he gave her a slight nod. Grumbling, she sat on the bunk next to him. Pierce stepped back away from Lakashtai, creating as much space as possible in the small room.

  Lakashtai turned to face them. Despite her torn clothing, despite the dried blood on her skin, she carried herself with the dignity of a queen. Her beauty was breathtaking, but it was the cold beauty of a marble statue—human perfection, yet fundamentally unnatural.

  “I am kalashtar, born of two worlds. Over a thousand years ago, my ancestor bound her bloodline to the spirit Kashtai, and I am a child of that union. Kashtai moves within me. Her memories come to me as dreams, and at times her voice whispers in the silence of my mind. As long as at least one of my sisters is alive, Kashtai will survive—and as long as she lives, she will fight il-Lashtavar.

  “While I can tell you of this struggle, it is far better if you see it for yourselves. Relax. Let your thoughts wander. Open your minds, and let me show you the nightmare that lies within.”

  Her voice was soft and lulling. She continued to speak, but her words seemed to blur together in a warm, relaxing song. Eventually Daine closed his eyes and dropped into another world.

  A glowing halo lay before him, a wreath of light hanging in a field of utter darkness. As he studied it, he saw that it was composed of glittering particles. There must have been billions, yet somehow he could see each and every one; his eyes were unnaturally sharp, and though each particle was no larger than a grain of sand, with every passing second they became clearer.

  Where was he? He tried to turn his head and found that he couldn’t. It was then that he realized he had no body. He could sense his surroundings, yet there was no he there; he simply knew what was around him. It’s like a dream, he thought.

  It is a dream. It was Lakashtai’s voice—or her thoughts. But it is more than that. It is all dreams. Every point of light is a dreamer, drawn from the waking world into this realm of Dal Quor.

  Daine struggled to grasp the concept. So this is … another world?

  Your sages would call it another plane of existence. It is a shadow of the material world, a place that exists in the minds and souls of all living things. It is always there, always a part of you, but it is when you sleep that you open up that gateway, forming your own world in Dal Quor—the fortress of your dreams.

  You’re saying that when I see Lei in my dreams, it’s really Lei, Daine thought.

  No. You create your own dreams, shaping them from memories, hopes, fears. As does Lei. You are two different points of light, two different worlds, each as deep and rich as Eberron itself.

  Daine pondered. What does this have to do with us? Or this Tashana?

  Dal Quor is a mutable realm, a place where thought becomes reality, but the mortal spirit only has the strength to shape its outermost regions. Those lights that you see are the distant edges of the region of dreams. Look deeper.

  Daine directed his attention toward the ring of lights. At first he saw nothing beyond the glittering halo. Then he realized … the darkness within the circle of lights was deeper than the void that surrounded it. Both were jet black, but the darkness within—it was more than just empty shadow. There was something there … a presence.

  Look closer.

  Then he was falling toward the shadow, the ring of lights becoming larger and larger with each passing second. He now saw that each glittering speck, though they had seemed like grains of sand, were the size of worlds—that he’d been watching from an almost unimaginable distance. He began to see details within the central darkness. Textures. Shapes. A vast landscape stretching out around him. A river of tar flowed through a wasteland of jagged black marble. An orchard of skeletal darkwood trees swayed to a ghostly breeze. Tendrils of dark smoke crawled along the surface, as if driven by a conscious mind, then it all changed. The marble plain dissolved into a desert of black sand, and the trees were consumed by flames that seemed to draw in the darkness instead of releasing any light. Faces emerged from the surface of the desert, visages of sand twisted in silent screams. Daine tried to look away, but he couldn’t; he had no eyes to close.

  This is the heart of Dal Quor. It is a living thing, though not in a way we understand the word. It is a spiritual force that dwarfs worlds, a hungry god that yearns to devour the hopes and dreams of all mortals. It is the cradle of nightmares, and it lurks just beyond your dreams, just beyond the edge of your mind. This is il-Lashtavar.

  So this is what’s been attacking my mind, Daine thought.

  Not exactly. Il-Lashtavar is the source of all darkness. It is the force that shapes Dal Quor, but it is too vast, too alien, to focus on your mind directly; it is a whirlwind, and you are a mere mote of dust. So it spawned children to do its bidding. Look again.

  The dark desert rose up in a massive sandstorm. The sand turned to mist, which drifted away, revealing a citadel of black glass. Shapes were swarming around the tower, and as before, Daine’s vision grew closer and closer. The creatures were strange, impossible things—beings that could not exist in any rational world. A maelstrom of eyes and wings drifted by, equal parts human, insect, and avian. A circle of cloaked figures were engaged in conversation, but as Daine drifted closer, he realized that each creature was actually formed from a mass of fleshy tendrils, woven together in a crude approximation of human form.

  These are the children of this dream. They are darkness incarnate—the worst aspects of the mortal mind made manifest. Fury, fear, the lust for power or pleasure. Every dark impulse lives among the quori. They are immortal, and their minds are beyond your understanding. They are pure, driven, unburdened by empathy or personal ambition. They exist to serve the Dreaming Dark, and that is all that they do.

  Even amid this darkness, there have been a few who have found a path to light. These rebellious spirits sought to incite the others against il-Lashtavar, to find a way to transform this world. There in the circle, two of these agents of change are pleading their case, but it is a futile cause. They are the aberrations, and no amount of reason will persuade the others.

  A host of horrors emerged from the citadel, charging toward the unearthly council. There were creatures formed of dark fire, swirling clouds of raw emotion, and far stranger things. Daine spotted a serpentine creature in the mass, eyes and cilia running along its length. Two oversized arms extended from its headless torso, tipped with massive claws; a vicious stinger lay at the end of its long tail.

  Tashana, Daine thought.

  No, but one of her siblings. A tsucora, a spirit of terror that feeds off of mortal fear.

  Suddenly Daine found himself in the midst of the circle. Suddenly he was the speaker, trying to show the others that there was a cycle to existence, that the transition from darkness to light should be embraced, not feared. The shadowy figures said nothing. The army of terrors spread around the circle, the venomous clouds drifting overhead.

  You are flawed. Embrace the gift of destruction, so your soul can be reforged in the depths and brought back to il-Lashtavar.

  The storm descended, and claw, tentacle, and raw hatred tore into his soul.

  Daine’s eyes flew open. His breath came in gasps, and he could still feel icy tendrils of shadow sinking into his mind. Lei was pale, and she closed her eyes and slumped against the wall.

  “This is what my ancestors faced,” Lakashtai said. “Those who sought the light were hunted down and destroyed, absorbed back into the core of il-Lashtavar. They were hopelessly outnumbered, and fighting was useless; those killed would simply be reborn. The only hope was flight, so they fled into mortal dreams, searching for some form of sanctuary. The forces of the dark hunted them through the borderlands, through the dreams of elf and dragon. When all hope seemed lost, their leader stumbled into the dreams of a human monk from the land of Adar, a place that offered sanctuary to those in need. Together, monk and quori found a way for the spirits to abandon their physical forms—to leave Dal Quor forever and find refuge within mortal lines, so the first kalashtar was born. Kashtai lives in me and in my sisters, and should I have a daughter, Kashtai will guide her as well.”

  Pierce seemed the least affected by the experience. “None of this explains the woman who attacked us or why she was interested in Daine.”

  “Kashtai only touches my soul; she is spread throughout my lineage. Tashana—she is a dark spirit, utterly dominating the mortal vessel bred to hold her. The Dreaming Dark has agents spread across this world, and destroying the kalashtar is but one of their goals. In time, they hope to dominate the waking world as they do Dal Quor—to create a stagnant world where nothing ever changes, where there is no light to threaten the darkness.”

  Daine massaged his forehead. “Yeah, and we all know I’m the key to conquering the world.”

  Lakashtai did not smile. “I do not know what it is the darkness wants from you, Daine. Some secret has been locked within your mind. These memories are from the night before the Mourning, are they not? That alone should give you pause. Perhaps the secret of that terrible power is hidden within you.”

  “Why me? Why now? Jode was with me; he must have seen everything I saw.”

  “You have seen Dal Quor—the billions of dreams that swirl around the edges. Most likely, some spirit stumbled into your dreams recently and saw some hint of what was contained within. By that time, Jode was already dead.”

  “I suppose,” Daine said. He thought about the blue vial hidden in his pouch.

  “Whatever mystery is hidden in your mind, il-Lashtavar cannot be allowed to claim it, and I will do whatever is necessary to prevent it.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Lei said. “It seems to me that if it wasn’t for Daine, your innards would be decorating the docks of Sharn.”

  Daine glared at her, but Lakashtai seemed unruffled. “Tashana is a powerful warrior, and her presence is a sign of the importance of the secret within Daine’s dreams. We are stronger together than apart, and all that strength will be required if we are to survive the days ahead.”

  Daine yawned. “Well, now you’ve got me scared to close my eyes, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep them open. So you said you can do something that will allow me to sleep safely?”

  “For now, yes, and you as well, Lei; they may not have found your dreams yet, but they may try to find Daine through you; we must be cautious.”

  Lei shrugged. “Are you going to tuck me in, too? Or make a cold fire candle for me? I’ve always been afraid of the dark.”

  “Then there may be hope for you yet,” Lakashtai said, as she lowered the shutter on the lamp, filling the room with shadows.

  Pierce emerged on the deck of the Kraken’s Wake. The ship was entering the waters of the Thunder Sea, and the coast of Breland was falling behind and disappearing into the night. Pierce had never seen an ocean before, and he was fascinated by the scope of it—water stretching across the horizon, as far as the eye could see. To the southwest, occasional flashes of light suggested the presence of one of the storms the region was known for, but for now the waters were calm. Pierce gazed down along the side of the ship, watching the prow cut through the water. He could sense the spray and the moisture against his skin, and as he often did, he tried to analyze these feelings, to justify them. He had no nerves, and his “skin” was steel and mithral, so how was it that he could feel the drops of moisture rolling down his arm?

  Most warforged had been created with the capacity to read so that they could convey messages and read maps and instructions. In the past, the warforged had no time for leisure pursuits, but recently Pierce had taken to reading while the others were asleep. He was particularly intrigued by the subject of spirit binding, and the creation of the warforged, though he could find little reliable information on either subject. Much about the warforged was a mystery—either secret knowledge hidden away in the vaults of House Cannith or simply unknown. From what Pierce had learned so far, the process leading to the creation of the warforged was as much luck and chance as it was skill. House Cannith had produced magical constructs for many centuries. These golems were powerful creatures; they had the strength of stone or steel and felt neither pain nor emotion, but they lacked true awareness; they could follow simple instructions but could not adapt to unexpected situations, display initiative, or learn from their experiences. When Galifar collapsed into civil war, Cannith artificers sought to improve their golems, to produce sentient constructs with enough intelligence to employ strategy on the battlefield—tireless soldiers that could be sent into enemy territory with only general instructions, who could devise their own plans based on the tactical situation. The early stages of the project met with limited success. The warforged titans were living siege engines, and possessed a basic intelligence and self-awareness—but this was little better than that of a human child. A generation later, an artificer named Aaren d’Cannith led the team that made the critical breakthough, creating a truly sentient soldier with the skills of an elite warrior. Somehow Aaren’s soldiers had gained more than just human intelligence. They could feel pain. They could smell, and even taste, despite the fact that they could not eat, and they possessed the capacity for emotion. An ideal soldier should be able to ignore pain and act without being influenced by emotion, but somehow, these things were magically bound to the warforged sentience: with the ability to think came the power to feel.

  While the artificers could not remove emotion entirely, House Cannith at least worked to suppress it. Every aspect of the warforged consciousness that could be shaped was directed toward its chosen path, and the warforged were given minimal information about anything besides their purpose. A warforged soldier didn’t need to know the reason for the battle: all that mattered was that he was built to fight it, and for as long as there was war, that was enough.

  Now the war was over. The treaty that had secured the peace had also freed the warforged, recognizing their rights as sentient beings, not just weapons of war.

  What did freedom mean for the warforged?

  Pierce turned away from the horizon to study the ship. Beyond the sail that billowed even on this windless night, there was little to distinguish the Kraken’s Wake from a mundane vessel. A tall, muscular human was minding the ropes, and as he looked at Pierce there was an unmistakable charge of hostility. Pierce instantly evaluated the threat presented by the sailor. Size and build were taken into consideration, along with the cudgel hanging from the man’s belt and the leather jerkin he was wearing. Scars surrounded his filmy left eye, and Pierce had already considered ways to take advantage of this handicap in close combat. It took only a second for Pierce to decide that the man presented little threat to him—and that despite his apparent hostility, he lacked the resolve to act on his aggression.

 

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