CHAPTER TWO

SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF THE SEA OF FALLEN STARS
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

DROPLETS OF SWEAT BROKE ON HIS BROW, AND FEAR COILED so tight in his belly that he gasped.

Burning dominions, how was it possible he didn’t know who he was?

It was like he … it was like … he didn’t know what it was like! A hollow echoed behind his eyes, giving him nothing to compare his situation to, nothing to measure his anxiety by.

He numbered ten full breaths. Each successive mental digit was marginally comforting. Good. More; another ten. And another … and his heart rate came under his control. That was better.

So, what did he know?

First, he was passing fair in a fight, even when caught off guard and pretty much defenseless. That was reassuring.

Second, the creature from his memory had called him Demascus.

“Demascus,” he said aloud, testing the sound. The hard consonants had a faint tug of familiarity to them … Or the familiarity was just a lie he was telling himself in order to smooth over a bad situation. If so, well … good enough for the moment.

“Demascus!” he repeated, this time yelling it so loud his voice cracked.

One of the corpses, a tall genasi with bluish skin, stirred and opened his eyes.

By the gods, a survivor!

The genasi fixed him with a glazed look. He whispered, “Who’re you?”

“Don’t you know me? You brought me here!”

The genasi blinked in confusion or pain, then groaned.

Demascus helped the genasi to sit, and said, “You hauled me here as some kind of sacrifice and in the process, you messed with my memory. Why? Who are you?”

The survivor said, his voice breathy, “I … have no idea who you are.”

“Don’t play games with me. I’ve had a hard morning and I’m on the edge.” Demascus resisted the urge to shake the genasi. A warning voice of conscience whispered something about attracting more flies with honey than vinegar. He settled for asking, “What happened up here?”

The genasi’s head lolled around to take in the carnage. His eyes widened. He screamed, “The Eye! The dreams, they find me even now!”

“Eye? What do you mean?”

“You …”

“Yes?”

The genasi went limp in his hands. It was horribly similar to how the priest he’d strangled had gone loose and heavy when he’d died.

“Oh, come on!”

Demascus felt for a pulse on the genasi’s neck to be sure. Nothing. The man’s body was already cooling. He’d been barely alive in the first place.

Grief, some for the the survivor, some for himself, bent his head until his chin rested on his chest.

He could do nothing. Time seemed to teeter on the edge of stopping. He’d found someone who might have been able to explain the situation, only to have that person die right in front of him, like a slap in the face from Fate. Leaving him with a name he wasn’t even sure was his, a cursed memory, and a dead man’s clothes.

On the other hand, unlike the corpse lying at his feet, he also had his life. That was something.

He raised his chin from his chest. Enough feeling sorry for himself. He closed the man’s lids with a brush of two fingers. The only thing that will accomplish is wasting time.

“I commend your soul to … Kelemvor the Judge,” he said. “May you find peace in what lies beyond …” He stumbled to a stop. He wasn’t really sure what he was saying. The words sounded right, but who exactly was Kelemvor?

He was obviously damaged in some fundamental fashion.

He shook his head. Old news.

Morning light poured like golden honey across the grisly scene, and despite everything, his spirits couldn’t help but rise. Finally, he could see what he was doing. He made a thorough search of the remaining corpses. No pocket was too small to escape his scrutiny.

Demascus muttered a few words of benediction over each body after he finished going through its possessions. Better not to assume anything; maybe these genasi had shown up to save him, rather than sacrifice him in some demonic deal. Though, if he were a betting man, he wouldn’t put coin on their saintly rescue plans.

While he couldn’t find any clues as to his identity, at least he was finally able to establish how many people had died: twelve genasi, plus two humans and one halfling. A total of fifteen, then. Fifteen question marks, plus himself: one brain-wiped enigma with a handful of potential clues and other goodies stolen from the dead.

Demascus laid out the fruits of his search on the stone altar.

His trove included some journeybread and leaf-wrapped cheese. Five wine skins, two almost full. Several generous handfuls of gold and silver coin, which he transferred to a single pouch. A couple satchels. A sheath for the sword he’d found. A lantern and a couple tindertwigs. Cunningly made leather armor that had escaped the conflict without a single cut or bloodstain. Several weapons, though none seemed any better than the sword he’d already claimed. And, the crowning achievement of his search: a bone scrollcase stuffed with a rolled parchment.

Demascus tapped the parchment tube from the case and spread it out on the stone: a map. The sides wanted to roll back into a tight cylinder, so he weighted them with stones.

The map’s most prominent feature was a great inland ocean filling the top of the page. It was labeled, “Sea of Fallen Stars.”

Assuming up was north, the ragged coastline of Akanûl bordered the sea to the south. Three cities were marked: New Breen, Brassune, and Airspur.

Demascus’s heart skipped a beat; he knew Airspur. It was a city of … genasi.

Only one other place was marked on the map, at the northeastern tip of a range of mountains called the Akanapeaks. It was a small circle, near Airspur, drawn in by a hand different than the original cartographer’s. A scrawl of text in the same style read, “Old Shrine,” and then, “Cult activity?”

That was all.

Demascus squinted at the parchment, hoping the names and shapes would jog some additional memory.

No. But it wasn’t too much a leap to guess that he was standing within the very “Old Shrine” noted.

Which would put Airspur—he glanced to the west—over the ridge and some miles that way.

The dead genasi either were the cult activity described on the map, or they had come out to investigate it.

He had a goal. Unless everyone was dead there too, he would find some answers in Airspur.

He rolled up the map, and packed away his trove in the satchels. He collected the armor in a bundle, and examined his borrowed sword. The demonic ichor that had stained it had evaporated just like the dretch. Too bad he couldn’t as easily clean himself. He was covered in mud and blood. Probably not the best appearance to present when he showed up at Airspur’s gates.

He looked around and spied standing water on the other side of the hollow that wasn’t choked in mud and bodies.

Demascus walked to the rain pool, removing his borrowed long coat and shirt. He kneeled at the water’s edge to wash, and froze.

His reflection in the water stared back at him.

He was tall and slender, and his skin was pale. His hair was a shock of white. Tattoos like ashes leftover from a fire traced a single connected, abstract pattern from his shoulders all the way down to his index and middle finger on each hand. It seemed like the design continued across his back, but he couldn’t angle himself properly to see.

He blinked. Did he know this face? Maybe. The stark coloration and designs on his skin were similar to a genasi’s only in vague terms. And genasi didn’t have hair, unless crystal spikes and crests counted.

He ran his hands through his own generous locks, and wondered at its hue. It wasn’t simply white. More like …

“The light that transfixes the hearts of betrayers,” he muttered. Another memory! From where or when, he couldn’t say, but he had a feeling it was something someone had once told him.

He studied his own image awhile longer, examining his profile from the left and then the right. It was a fine face, and graceful. It was possible he was biased.

Demascus snorted, and washed the mud and genasi blood from his skin and clothing. For someone who was apparently a swordsman, his skin was remarkably free of scars. He couldn’t find a single mark to commemorate past conflicts. Even the terrible stomach wound from his second vision had left not the tiniest line or pucker on his skin. It didn’t make any sense.

Unless … was he a supernaturally fast healer? He reached up and touched his temple where the dretch had raked him—Ouch! He sucked in a breath.

It wasn’t bleeding freely anymore, but it certainly wasn’t closing in any sort of hurry. He returned to washing.

When he was mostly clean, he dressed once more, in the clean smallclothes and the leather armor he’d liberated. He feared the armor would prove inadequate for his tall frame, but the material relaxed as he pulled it on, until it fit him just right. Some minor enchantment lay in its stitching. That explained why it had fared better than every other garment amidst the carnage.

Demascus shrugged back into his coat and slung his packed satchels of salvage over his shoulder. He sheathed the sword at his belt, referred to the map one final time, then packed it up with the rest of his new-claimed belongings.

Demascus departed the altar and stone ring. He hiked several paces up the slope, stepping around boulders, ducking under low-hanging branches, and getting his long coat briefly snagged in a stand of prickly bushes. Then he paused.

He turned to gaze back at where he’d awakened.

Sans most of his memory, the shrine and its surrounding stones inscribed with animals encompassed the entirety of his world. He didn’t want to leave it behind, corpse heap, vanished demons, and all. It was all he could claim with certainty. Departing might mean he’d never see it again. And, what if, once he topped the rise ahead of him, the shrine slipped entirely from his mind, just as his life before he’d woken there had done?

Another thought occurred to him. What if it all came back to him … but he discovered a host of memories akin to the one where he strangled the priest? What if he proved to be some kind of insane murderer?

“A tangled skein our fears weave,” he muttered. There was no way to know. Just as there was also no way to know if one of the floating earthmotes above might choose the next moment to hurtle out of the sky and crush him. Nothing was certain. Best just to nod, and see what came next.

He counted the pillars, three separate times, to fix them in his mind. By the time he verified their number was twelve, he found the resolve to continue on his way.

“Good-bye, old stones.”