Waking was floating to the surface of a soft world of water, not what Kai had expected. Reaching out in that darkness, he found a cold, black sea ebbing and flowing, dropping away like a tide rolling out. Something was wrong with his body, everything was impossibly distant. He stretched out a thought and called, Ziede? She was slow to answer, her voice low and strange. He couldn't see her. She whispered, I'm sleeping, Kai. You're not sleeping, you're talking to me. He should know where she was, he always knew where she was, she had a drop of his blood hardened into a red pearl buried in her heart. I told you not to wake. She stopped. Her languid voice turned alert and urgent. Kai. Where am I? I can't move. None of this made sense. He reached out as far as he could stretch, searching for something, anything solid. He made his inner voice sound calm, though a sinking sensation told him he wouldn't like the answers to any of his questions. I'm not sure where I am, either, he told Ziede. Some terrible revelation loomed but he kept it at bay; better to just focus on finding her. He pulled in the parts of himself that drifted in the dark water that perhaps wasn't water, to concentrate his being back into his own body. Except his body wasn't there. Kai squelched a spike of panic. Panic had to be postponed. Her mental voice astringent, Ziede said, Take your time, Kai. Wherever I am, I can't see, I can't move. I'm breathing, but I can't feel. I can't feel my chest move. He could hear the suppressed fear as she added, I can't find Tahren, she doesn't answer.
Something had cut them off from the outside world. He told her, Don’t try to move. Just wait. If Kai could think, he wasn’t helpless.
He pulled all his focus in until the black sea yielded and resolved into dark stone walls, a large circular chamber, water running down from the upper shadows. Mossy weeds furred the gaps between the stones, light crept in from somewhere behind him. He needed to move, but swimming around in the air as an amorphous cloud was new and deeply disconcerting. He imagined his body around him, pulled his arms in, and spun himself to look down.
At his own body.
It lay on a raised plinth in a glass coffin box. His face was visible, the rest wrapped in dark fabric. His cheeks, the flesh below his eyes, were drawn and sunken but still recognizable. It’s been months ... maybe a year? If someone had done this to him, what had they done to Ziede?
Ziede, you said you can’t move, can’t see. In this terrifying, unfamiliar place, there was no other box, nothing large enough to conceal her. The water drained away through diagonal vents in the floor. Water. It must have filled the chamber to keep Kai inside his inert body. When the level dropped he had been able to drift out and wake. Insubstantial, he had no sense of motion, so was the chamber lifting up out of the water? And what did it matter when Ziede might be entombed alive and he had no way to release her. He groped for some way to get more information.
What do you smell?
Nothing but fabric ... Like old silk? She added, Kai, what is this? Where are we?
I don’t know. She was sealed inside something, possibly a silk-lined casket. He would have closed his eyes in despair if his eyes hadn’t been rotting in the glass coffin below. Ziede, I’m afraid we’re ... He hesitated. Something had caused the water to run out of this bizarre burial chamber.
Something was coming.
Soundless, the curved wall across from the plinth split, allowing in a narrow column of muted blue light. Figures spilled through, dim and distant. It was hard to focus in this insubstantial form. Five human shapes, who dragged two bundles—bodies—behind them.