"The Spell of Invaded Dreams?"
"Yes, Mistress."
"And you thought of that yourself, instead of rushing out on foot?"
"Yes, Mistress."
"Then you really arc starting to think like a wizard, finally!"
Kilisha smiled. "Yes, Mistress," she said.
Yara picked up the knife and went back to work. It was several minutes later that Kilisha heard her mutter, "Good!"
That night Kilisha gave the spriggan careful instructions, laced with the most terrifying threats she could think of, then went to bed early.
The spriggan obeyed, awakening her around midnight- though she wished that it had found another method, rather than jumping up and down on her head shrieking, "Wake, wake! You said wake!"
"Shut up!" she hissed, grabbing for the creature in the dark but missing it as it danced aside. "You'll wake the whole house!"
"You said wake," it insisted.
"I said wake me," Kilisha said, sitting up. "Just me, nobody else!"
"Sorry, sorry," the spriggan replied.
Kilisha yawned, blinked, and then reluctantly said, "Thank you. You did well."
"Happy happy!"
"Now shut up and go downstairs." She knew she shouldn't tell even the tiniest part of her master to shut up, but the spriggan could be so stupid and annoying.…
The spriggan bounced away, and she groped for her robe.
A few moments later she was in the workshop, preparing the Lesser Spell of Invaded Dreams, which would let her send a message to one of her chosen assistants as he slept, a message that the recipient would, at least in theory, remember clearly when he woke up, without the fuzziness of ordinary dreams.
Unfortunately, she would have no way of knowing whether the spell had worked properly. If Kelder had been given late-night duty, or Adagan had sat up late working on his witchcraft, then her message might not go through-the recipient had to be asleep. If that happened she wouldn't know it until they failed to show up in the morning, so for those two she intended to use the much more difficult Greater Spell of Invaded Dreams-or at least at tempt it. For her brother Opir, who always liked his sleep, she could use the Lesser.
It took half an hour of ritual with her athame, incense, and a pinch of dust, but she was fairly certain it had gone properly and her message had been sent.
That done, she started on the Greater, directed at Kelder, which called for blood and silver as well as the other ingredients. For this one, by the end of over an hour of preparation she had worked herself into a trance, and although she knew she was still sitting cross-legged on the workshop floor she felt herself standing in a strange stone room where half a dozen men lay sleeping on narrow cots. This, she supposed, was a barracks room somewhere in the city, and the men were presumably soldiers.
One of them was Kelder. She called to him.
He sat up, startled, knocking his blanket aside, and she saw he was naked. She blushed, and almost let the spell break, but caught herself at the last instant.
"It's me," she said. "Ithanalin's apprentice, Kilisha. I'm in your dream."
"Well, that's nothing new," he said, pulling up his blanket.
"No, I…" Then the meaning of his words sank in, and she blushed again. She gathered herself up mentally, then decided that she needed to assert her power a little more obviously. She waved her hands, and the barracks room disappeared. Kelder's uniform appeared, and the two of them were standing side by side on the city wall, looking out over the farms to the southeast.
Kilisha had never been on the city wall, though she had levitated high enough to see over it; she supposed she had somehow pulled this scene from Kelder's memory.
"This dream is magic," she said. "I'm using the Spell of Invaded Dreams to tell you that I want your help. I've learned that the couch is in the Fortress, and I would be grateful if you could meet me at the north door tomorrow morning, two hours before noon, and help me retrieve it."
"Two hours before noon? I think I have collection duty-"
"Tell your officer that Lady Nuvielle sent for you," Kilisha interrupted. "She's the one who found the couch and will be letting us into the Fortress."
"The treasurer herself found it? The overlord's aunt?"
"That's right," Kilisha said. "Please be there!" She twisted the spell's magic, and the two of them were standing at the north door of the Fortress, with the sun two-thirds of the way up the eastern sky. "Here, at this hour."
"I'll try," Kelder said. "If I remember."
"You'll remember," Kilisha told him. "That's how the spell works. That's how you'll know it was magic, and not just an ordinary dream."
"I think I've heard about that," Kelder said. "I'll be there, if I can."
Kilisha smiled at him. "Good!"
He smiled back. "Now what?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I mean here we are, in a perfectly good dream, and you've delivered your message-what do you want to do next? I see you can change the scenery, and make clothes appear and disappear; how long will the dream last? What else can we do?" He stepped toward her.
"I-I need to get some sleep," Kilisha said, pushing him away. "I'll see you in the morning." She broke the spell.
Then she sat there on the floor as the smoke dissipated and said, "Stupid. That was stupid. I should have…"
But she didn't know what she should have done. The thought of spending more time with Kelder was certainly not unpleasant, but really, she had far more urgent things to deal with. And he had been dreadfully forward.…
But it was a dream, not real, and she couldn't decide whether that made his attentions more or less acceptable.
She sat there a moment longer, trying to forget about Kelder and concentrate on preparing a final iteration to contact Adagan. Finally she said, "Oh, to the Void with it. It's late and I'm tired and I'm not even sure it's his real name. I'll go down there in the morning."
"We go together?" the spriggan asked.
"Ask me in the morning," Kilisha said as she got to her feet and headed for the stairs.
She slept later than she had intended, and rushed through her breakfast. As she ate she tried to plan out the rest of the morning. Should she talk to Adagan first, then come back and get herself ready, or should she make her own preparations and then stop at Adagan's shop on the way?
Adagan, she decided, might have his own preparations to make. She would talk to him first.
She had just decided this when Yara asked her, "Did you reach everyone last night?"
"I talked to Kelder," she said, "and I sent Opir a message. I didn't get to Adagan."
"I'll send Telleth, then," Yara replied-and that, Kilisha saw, was the best solution all around.
When she had finished eating she went to the workshop, and as she began gathering supplies she heard the rear door slam as Telleth left on his errand.
Her athame was in the sheath on her belt, but everything else she needed would have to go in her belt pouch. She took a quick inventory of the little leather container.
There were the three potions she had prepared, with their smudged labels. She frowned, pulled them out, and found a pen, planning to make new labels.
Then she paused. Each vial held seven doses, all she had of each spell. What if one of them were to be spilled? She wanted to plan for every eventuality, for once. Maybe there was such a thing as being too cautious-but then she glanced over her shoulder at Ithanalin, crouching in the corner.
Things could go wrong. Things often did go wrong. Best to be ready when they did.
Accordingly, she found three more vials, smaller ones, and wrote new labels for them: strength, v'S LEV., t's LEV. Then she poured part of the contents of each of the original vials into the appropriate new container, so that she had, as best she could tell, four doses of each spell in the old vials and three of each in the new. She capped them all securely, wrapped them in a soft cloth, and tucked them back in the pouch.