Something was wrong.

Mulin held up a hand in signal, making a broad circle with it; he followed the same motion, banking away from his approach and sweeping around.

The Sachi city was below them now, a collection of terraces carved into the rock, forming walkways and buildings. It was also utterly vacant. There wasn’t a single being to be seen on any of those walkways, not one plume of smoke rising from any building’s chimney.

Their charts hadn’t indicated anything about this.

He circled over a broad plaza, which seemed to be near a cluster of warehouses; that was where Kisa had said they should land, and it certainly looked like the best place to do so. But where he’d have expected to see a bustling market – maybe a little less bustling than usual, with a wintry chill in the thin mountain air – instead he saw not a single soul.

Over his shoulder, he saw two figures drift together, holding a quick discussion. Hark passed the stoutwing’s lead to Vhish and then dove, catching up with Mulin in his circling inspection. The Stonekin had his sword drawn, he noticed.

It was also the right idea. He flicked his wrist, loosening his spear in its clips, and pulled it free the rest of the way.

Together, the two of them descended, touching ground on the plaza amidst a light dusting of snow.

Nothing moved except them. Not as they paced around the plaza, not as they inspected the nearest buildings. There had been people here recently, that much was plain – and they hadn’t left things very neat; though there wasn’t much in the way of food left behind, still there were signs that the people had left in some hurry.

“I don’t like this,” Mulin said, rather unnecessarily.

“Neither do I,” Hark replied, “but unnerving as it is, it looks safe, at least right here.” He opened a pouch, peered into it, closed it; from the next one he drew a smokestick, a green band wrapped around the stone at its tip. Mulin followed him back to the plaza, and there he rapped the stick sharply; a plume of green-tinted smoke started to billow from it, and he waved it in the air.

One by one, the others landed, except for Kisa; she signalled that she was going to look around, and banked over, sweeping along the streets.

“This is unreal,” Vhish said, and shivered.

As usual when she spoke, she was dead right… and that thought brought something else to mind. Something that was mercifully missing, at least here. “There aren’t any dead here,” he said. “Not that we’ve seen. But something must have scared these people away.”

“Within the past turn of the moon. Some of the foodstuffs left behind would’ve been long rotten after any more time than that,” observed Hark.

“Not that there’s much food to be seen. They residents must have taken most of the food with them – but they didn’t want to waste any more time grabbing anything that wasn’t essential.” Mulin’s tail tried to coil behind him. “What could have spooked them that badly, without leaving a sign?’

“We haven’t seen much of the city yet,” Hark pointed out. “I’d rather have waited to know it’s entirely safe before letting the stout land, but… well, better that we’re on our feet; this is not good air to be flying to a fight in.”

He was in his element, now, him and Srin; they lead the way, peering in buildings, weapons held at the ready. Home after home lay empty, yet mostly pristine. Shop after shop had been abandoned with most of its inventory; the only places that looked like they had anything missing were the sort of places that seemed to hold useful supplies for travelling.

“Do you think this is related to… what we’re after?” Kralin asked at some point, as they trudged along a lane.

“I’d lay odds. It’s simply too much o fa coincidence otherwise,” Mulin replied. “There’s something about the air, here…”

“Something magical?” asked Hark.

“Yes, there is,” Kralin said. “It feels… as thin as the air. Stretched out. It’s strange. I feel more potent here, but only because there’s so little magic around that trying to light a candle would turn it into a fireball.”

“It would seem that Sachi shaman was right, then,” Hark observed, with a wry, fang-baring smirk at Mulin.

“Please let me never be right like this again.” Mulin shivered. “This is frightening.”

They walked on in silence, checking buildings here and there, occasionally calling out. Nobody ever replied, only the echoes of their own voices from the terraces.

They ascended to the next tier and swept along it again. It seemed to be a better district, the homes larger, with fewer businesses among them, and those dealing in more luxuries. The silence was a constant, though.

Until the time Mulin eased a door open and saw what looked like a fine hall, and suddenly found himself with a blade at his throat.

A blade swiftly withdrawn, but a blade nonetheless. Its owner moved into view – a Sachi, yes, but quite different from the one they’d encountered a week and a half ago. That one had resembled a plains ferret, writ very large, with a pair of extra legs halfway along. This one was a bit larger, but looked much more so for a coat of long, dense fur, pitch black save for a white blaze that started on the brow and ran all the way back, splitting into three over the very lengthy back, converging at the base of the tail, and then splitting out again over its entire fluffy length. The legs were thicker, yet not quite as short and stocky.

This one was a little harder to see the pattern on than might have otherwise been the case, because glittering chain mail covered the whole body, but a few others were present as well, not quite so well-armoured, and they all followed that aesthetic.

“Vhark,” said the one who’d accosted him, and turned, chittering and warbling at the others. One of them loped across the mosaic floor, lifting his front section – Mulin wasn’t so good at telling their sexes apart, but he had glimpsed that this one was quite male – up off the floor and peering at him, arms crossed.

“Ah. So I did hear someone searching. Told them, I did. Why are you here, wind-folk? Do you come in peace?”

“We came to trade,” Mulin blurted, immensely relieved first that they were talking to him, second that at least one of them spoke his language. “But…”

“Not many left to trade with,” the Sachi finished for him. “Well, come, fetch your people, bring them out of the cold. What hospitality we still have, we can offer to those who come in peace. Come in, sit by the fire, be warm.”

It took a few moments for Mulin to reassure his distressed companions; they’d been about to burst in after him, delaying only when Srin had heard his voice. Another smoke signal brought Kisa down to join them, and they went into what had once been the foyer of a fine manor, now with mattresses laid down and supplies stockpiled to turn it into a barracks of sorts for a dozen varied Sachi.

The one who’d spoken to Mulin made introductions; Mulin, embarrassingly enough, couldn’t remember any of them except for his own, Sharliss. He wore oddments of leather armour, none of which seemed particularly well-fitting; the fur made it hard to say for sure, but he didn’t seem as solidly built as any of the others. Bits of bone and ivory jewellery adorned his armour and his person, and his dark eyes were intent, clear-seeing. Another shaman, though he styled himself a journeyman.

“We’ve heard little from your confusing kind for months,” Sharliss informed them, passing around a bottle of red wine and some wooden chalices. He’d arranged for some empty casks to be set near the hearth as makeshift chairs; he himself lounged directly on the stone floor. “And none of that has been good. But Mar Drerrasett knows you of old, yes; your people have always dealt fairly with ours – sometimes more fairly than ours with yours. So.” He cocked his head to one side, whiskers waggling. “For that past unfairness, I give you the first answers. You do have questions, yes?”

It still seemed fair to give some indication of why they’d come. “Where is everyone? We were hoping to get some supplies, maybe a guide – we need to head toward the peaks; there may be… something going on there, something that’s affecting magic for many days’ flight around.”

“That, we do not know.” Sharliss lapped at the wine in his chalice a few times. “But where the people have gone – that I know, yes. They have fled, left for the lowlands. They fled the dreams. We few remain here to warn any who come here; my art shields us from the dreams, but I can only do so much.”

“Dreams?” Hark asked, suddenly that much more anxious.

“Dreams, yes. Bad dreams. Dreams that linger in the day, dreams that haunt the waking nights. Dreams that warp the world, make up down, black white, and wrong right. Evil dreams.”

Despite his liquid accent, there was a cadence to the shaman’s voice, even in the Vhark language; it was arresting, compelling. “Evil?”

“Deadly evil, wind-folk. They fed our fears, our unreasoning dreads and worries. If a merchant is abrupt with you, maybe he is very busy, maybe he must pay tithe soon. But when the dreams come, those little thoughts you put aside – maybe he does not like you; maybe he is not fair to you; maybe he cheats you – those thoughts get bigger. Petty revenge that wouldn’t be worth the time to even think about becomes all-consuming.” He stared down into his wine. “Many have died. And there their killers stood with knives and claws and teeth all bloody, and there was a mania in their eyes, a strange fervour. The deed done, it left them swiftly – and when the dreams fled, they awoke to horror. Some threw themselves from the cliffs when they knew what they had done.”

He gave that a moment to sink in – and as well he did; it took that moment for Mulin to remind himself that these people couldn’t fly. Every Vhark had been warned against flying in too heavy a wind; everyone could imagine, though few these days knew anyone who had gone through, the terror of snapping a wing-bone up on high, of plummeting to the ground far below.

It was a new sort of terror entirely to imagine someone so stricken that they sought such a horrifying end.

And yet the grimness in those dark eyes spoke of worse.

“There’s more?” Mulin asked. It seemed too horrible to contemplate.

But Sharliss nodded. “Oh, yes, there is more. Some of the killers fled, vanished into the hills or the mountains. Some of them we’ve not seen again. Others we did… to our loss. They came, and they killed again. Sometimes they were caught. Others… we do not know for certain who struck those people down, but we can think of no others it could be but those who fled into the shadows.” He shook his head. “The dreams are strong in this place; all our arts could not guard more than a handful from them, out of every hundred souls. Lower in the hills, it is easier. And so we took what food we could, and left the forsaken city, leaving only the few of us to keep vigil over the empty places, to give the warning to any whom the word cannot reach by our own messengers.”

Four Winds and stormy skies. Druumat had thought it a disaster when magic simply stopped working for a few minutes. This was true calamity.

“And you’ve been here since?” Kralin shivered.

“Bless you for your concern. No.” Sharliss drew a deep breath. “The words you do not say are true – this duty is harrowing even for those who did not encounter the deaths themselves. Every few days, a new group comes up from the camps, and those who were here return to their loved ones. A night and a day we’ve been here, yet.”

The Vhark exchanged glances. Everyone was tense; everyone knew what they wanted to ask, but nobody wanted to be the one to do so.

Mulin forced himself to do it anyway. “You said there was some little news of the Vhark,” he murmured. “And that it wasn’t good.”

For several breaths Sharliss did not reply. He sighed, and lapped up the last of his wine, and reached for the bottle to fill his chalice again. He lifted it up, swirling it gently, gazing down into it as though searching for clues there. Finally, he spoke: “He was the grey of a sullen sky, grey as the promise of a storm. Three times his horns curled ’round, and his raiment was well-made, but worn and oft-mended. He came to us when the city was full of fear. He said he was working on a great construction, a thing of stone and magic that could cleanse the dreams of the city, of all the world.

“But he is old, he said. His back is only so strong. He could supply craft and magic, but he still needed to move much stone to make his great work. He needed help. Some few of us believed him. Three dozen left the city, bearing tools and supplies. I only saw him as they left.” The shaman’s bushy tail quivered, tucking around his paws. “His spirit was one vast scream of pain and indescribable loss.”

He shook his head. “I thought, and my master agreed, that perhaps he had suffered from these dreams as well. But in my heart of hearts, in my own dreams, I knew – that one wears despair as the mountains wear their snowy caps, and with consequences just as dire should one be too close when it shakes loose. No good could come of following him.”

He lifted his head now, gazing at each of them in turn, his eyes resting on Mulin’s last. “Five nights later, a half-score of those who had gone returned to us. They did not come to speak, nor to meet their loved ones, nor even to take more supplies.

“They came for the living. They went about in pairs, and they took five more of us. They said not a word. Any who fought were subdued; one who fought too much was slain, and another taken in her place.

“Their spirits shrieked for release, but their minds were blank and unknowing. As a child’s puppets, they marched to the tug of strings held by a distant hand. Each had the strength of three; against two such, none could hope to resist without suffering Darven’s fate.” Pain cracked his stoic mask; he stared down into his wine again, and even when he went on, he did not lift his head.

“The very next day, the first caravan of refugees took food and blankets of thick wool, and fled Mar Drerrasett.”

“A Mentalist,” Liri hissed.

Mulin felt a shudder chase along his spine. The mental arts were an obscure thing among the Vhark; they were mostly spoken of among mages, as an example of what Vhark could not do. Unfamiliarity bred wariness, and wariness bred fear; those races who gave rise to that talent were viewed with some unease, and discussion of the art itself was always full of dread. This was why.

A Mentalist could heal a fractured mind, soothe the unreasoning troubles, restore lucidity to the mad, at least for a time.

They could also torture minds until they broke. They could even rule minds directly – though even the worst tales had never mentioned one being able to dominate ten others, all without being anywhere nearby.

“Sharliss, did you… sense anything behind the dreams? Some glimpse of their intent, maybe?”

The young shaman’s head snapped up, dark eyes again seizing on his. “Even my master did not ask me that,” he breathed. “I think he worried to consider them too closely, lest he fall victim to them himself. I was more confident – perhaps foolishly.

“You are right, however. These dreams are as the spines of the porcupine. They are meant to drive people from this place, and in that they are quite, quite effective.”

“This place? Just this place, or… or did they come from somewhere else?” Somewhere like the peaks to the southeast…

“You know much that touches on our troubles, it would seem. Yes, I felt that the dreams came from elsewhere – that they swept down the slopes of the Daggerfists, an avalanche of fear and suspicion. They come from the very place that stranger took our kin – the deeps below the peaks, south of the rising sun.”

“The high deeps,” Kisa breathed. “It seems that plains shaman was right, Mulin, and you to trust him.”

“Again I say, let me never be right like this again.” This was most literally a nightmare.

“A shaman? From the tribes where the grasses wave?”

“Yes – uh,” Mulin struggled to say the name right, “Shriffisharret.”

“Ah. Yes, I know of that name,” said Sharliss. “Many are the differences and disagreements between our tribes and theirs, but all the shaman know that Shriffisharret knows the pulse of the world. There is none, even among those with thrice his years, who does not consider his words with utmost care.”

“And we need to find wherever this is happening,” Hark growled. “Find it, go there, and somehow, put a stop to it.”

No wonder he was agitated. Dreams were an enemy he couldn’t fight.

“You are pledged to stop this thing?”

“With our lives, if need be,” Vhisha breathed. “But we have to be sure, somehow, that our lives aren’t spent for naught.”

“You came in search of a guide, of supplies for the mountains.” Sharliss drew his forequarters up straight, eyes narrowing. “I can guide you; I can ward your dreams, even as we draw nearer the evil place. What aid we can offer shall be yours. In my youth, not so many years gone, I explored the high places; I know the use of climbing-tools, I know my way to even the highest peaks. I know where to find a few of the deeper caves, though I do not know their depths; I know where this strange Vhark said our people needed to go.”

“And we might be able to tell where the flow of mana is going,” said Mulin. “Or coming from. At some point it must well up and spread wide, even if in this place it’s been depleted.”

“So be it. What aid we can offer shall be yours.” Sharliss glanced over to where his companions were gathered, one of them gazing out a narrow glass window. “I ask only that you wait here two days, that my companions not be left with only what talismans I can craft for them to shield them until new watchers arrive.”

“We’ll need to learn how to use your tools at any rate,” noted Srin. “Now that we know it’s going to be dangerous, we’d better prepare as best we can.”

“And we can come to know each other,” Sharliss agreed, and flashed his teeth in a grin. “And you can come to know truly that my arts will shield you. No, do not worry.” He waved one black hand at Liri, who looked rather guilty. “You do not understand our ways; of course you cannot know, in your heart of hearts, that they can chase away these phantoms. A few days will give us time to come to trust one another. Then, together, we can put a stop to this wayward kin of yours.”

“And whoever he’s helping,” Hark grumbled. “That one has a great deal of blood to pay for.”

Solemnly, Sharliss extended his hand; in the same spirit, Mulin gripped it, saying, “To victory, then – and rest for the fallen.”

Sharliss stared deep into his eyes; into, he fancied, his very soul. And the shaman replied, “So mote it be.”