“It was an invasion!” Her fingers bit into his arm. “Tribes of monsters, horrid and scaly, revolting and tentacled, brandishing weapons of strange design but sharp enough to hew our people in half! Behind them rode armies of humans on mounts obscene and savage, warriors driving the monsters onward to conquer our land! Nay, not simply to conquer, or even to rape and loot and pillage, but to slay and slaughter each and every one of our people!” She broke into sobs again.
Even as she spoke it, her mind leaked fragments of the nightmare—giant slug-like creatures with vaguely human faces twisted with obscene glee as they slashed with swords held in four arms, creatures that looked like bears become human riding on great horned lizards and slashing about them with battle axes, giant insects with human faces and razor-edged wings. . . Gregory knelt, frozen in shock, his hand stroking her back automatically as his brain reeled with the vision. At last he said gently, “It was a nightmare, nothing more, some deeply buried—”
“It was not! It was a sending!” Allouette glared up at him. “Ask me not how I know, but I do! They have blazoned this vision before them to weaken us with horror, to render us unable to resist them!”
Gregory knelt frozen a moment longer, then spoke with iron resolve. “If it is indeed a sending, then I too must perceive it.”
“No!” Allouette stiffened in panic, then clasped his face between her hands. “Not you, my good and gentle love! ’Tis bad enough that I have had to see this nightmare—I, who have been accustomed to bloodshed from childhood and to murder since I was grown! If it has wracked me so, what will it do to you?”
“I am somewhat more durable than I seem,” Gregory assured her, “but if there is truly a threat to the land, one sentry alone will not suffice to raise the alarm. I shall have to see what you have seen. Accompany me if you will, ward me and strengthen me, but I must witness it.” With no further ado, he gazed off into space, eyes losing focus as he concentrated on the terrible vision he had glimpsed, followed it back into her mind, and opened himself to it, hearing her voice from a distance crying, “Gregory, no!” but following the thought back along a line that reached from her to . . .
To a foggy landscape, a blasted heath with skeletons of trees barely seen through the mist, which gathered into a gray whorl that churned and roiled and opened like a whirlpool, a funnel that spewed distorted nightmare forms hooting and howling with glee as they charged out, waving blades of unearthly design, bloodthirsty and ravenous, seeking human prey.
The vision rippled, and Gregory saw the monsters charging down upon a human village too quickly for anyone to lift even a scythe in defense, saw what those whirling unearthly blades did to the peasants, saw what the warriors who followed the monsters did to the few villagers who remained alive, hooting and calling in mocking tones, “Gregory! Come and join! Come back for slaughter! Come back. . . come back . . .”
Then the vision thinned, separating from his mind, becoming only an obscene picture of turmoil and bloodshed apart from him, away from him as though in a frame, and it was Allouette’s voice that called, “Gregory, come back!”
He followed her voice, followed the pattern of her thoughts, feeling as though he were swimming up through dank and fetid water, away from skeleton-haunted wrecks of ships wrapped in dying weeds, toward light and air and freedom. Then he was clear, back in their sun-filled meditation room, and drew a long shivering gasp, clutching something, anything, so long as it was real and part of the living world.
Looking down, he saw it was Allouette’s hand.
“Speak, love,” she said, her words caressing, soothing. “Was it so bad as to shake even a wizard of your renown?”
Gregory nodded, took another gulp of air, and said, “Worse than anything I’ve ever seen—and I have witnessed some horrors, when my family and I have needed to save the common folk from oppressors.”
“Worse even than you saw in my mind,” she whispered.
Again, he nodded. “Tribes of monsters and armies of ruthless humans advancing not only to conquer Gramarye, but also to slay all who live here. They came spewing out of . . . of a sort of whirlpool, only it whirled in fog, not in water—and what they did to the villagers they found . . .” He shuddered. “Pray Heaven no such thing ever really comes upon us!”
“But it is real, and you and I both know it.”
Startled, Gregory turned to meet Allouette’s eyes and found them sympathetic, but also grave—and very determined. “We must hunt them down, Gregory,” she said softly. “We must track them and send every single one back into their whirlpool, or forever despise ourselves for not saving people whom we could have spared this agony.”
Gregory sat still for a moment, bowing his head and letting her words sink in. At last he gave a single nod and said, “You have it—we must. But let us rest a day first, to rid ourselves of this frightful vision and fortify our souls against worse to come.”
“It shall not take us so harshly again.” Still holding his hand, Allouette pressed it more firmly. “It was the surprise as much as the brutality that shocked us.”
“We shall be inured,” Gregory agreed. “Come, now—let us consider what sorts of phenomena we are likely to meet, and how to encounter them.”
They spent the rest of the day in research and planning, and the night in lovemaking, as much for reassurance as for pleasure. Gregory had promised Allouette that they would have a grand wedding when they both felt ready. She had retorted that he was promising it to himself, for she had no need of it—but secretly in her heart, she didn’t really consider herself good enough to become his wife. It never occurred to her that Gregory was certain he wasn’t good enough for her, and was planning their wedding for the future—at a time when, in his own mind, he had proved himself worthy of her love.
Nonetheless, neither had any doubt about their commitment to the other.
Waking the next morning, Gregory looked up over a steaming cup of tea and said, “Yesterday we held a council of war, did we not?”
“If two people can be said to be an army,” said the former Chief Agent of Gramarye’s anarchists, “we did, yes.”
“I had thought as much,” Gregory said with a grim nod. “Ere we leave, then, I shall tell a warrior where we go, and why.”
Allouette stiffened, for the warrior in question could only be Gregory’s older brother Geoffrey, whom she had tried to seduce away from his fiancée Quicksilver—and the fact that they had not yet been engaged, or that Allouette had failed, did not lessen her feelings of remorse one jot.
Gregory’s gaze had lost focus, and though he sent his thoughts to his brother in the family encryption mode, Allouette had long ago learned to decipher it and heard them as easily as though he spoke directly to her.
Gregory, old son! Geoffrey cried with delight. What moves?
Monsters, brother, Gregory returned. We go to hunt them.
Monsters? Again? Geoffrey said with overtones of boredom. What manner, and where are they?
Not in this world, Gregory answered, and as to the manner, look and see—but brace yourself to hold down your gorge.
So bad as that? Geoffrey’s tone was much more interested. Well, show me, then.
Gregory did.
Exasperated, Geoffrey Gallowglass strode down the hall of the royal castle. The guards at the door of the heir’s suite eyed him askance and didn’t bother challenging him—one simply said, “If you will wait a moment, my lord, we will announce you,” even as the other was knocking, waiting for the response, then entering to announce, “Lord Geoffrey to see Your Highness.”