… Daggers! Now what…?-Wait! I am in a dream!
Borel dropped the rope and turned to the demoiselle.
“My lady, are you Chelle, daughter of Lord Roulan?”
“Yes, my lord, I am. And you are…?”
“Prince Borel of the Winterwood.”
“Oh, Borel, my love, are you here to help me escape?”
Borel found himself back at the window, the rope and grappling hook in hand. Even as he set the tines against the sill, the daggers darted forward. Borel stepped back.
Daggers! I am in a dream. Why didn’t I remember?
The hook vanished along with the rope.
Borel stepped close to Chelle and took her hands in his and looked closely into her face.
“My lady, where are you?”
“Why, here in the turret, Borel. And please, stand not on formality; you may call me by name.”
“And where is this turret, Chelle?”
Chelle frowned. “On my father’s grounds.”
“Ah, good. Then I am on my way to find you.”
“But you are here, Borel. You have found me.”
She doesn’t remember what she told me when last I was here. ’Tis the vagary of dreams.
“This is but a dream, Chelle. Somehow we are linked.”
Chelle looked about. “A dream? Linked? I do not understand.”
“Neither do I, Chelle. Nevertheless it is true. Do you not recall warning me of the oncoming Goblins, and telling me I must waken?”
Hesitantly, Chelle nodded.
“At the time I was in a prison, unconscious, and you came to me then.-Or rather, I came to you, for it was here in this chamber you cried out the alert that Goblins were coming down the stairs. I wakened in time to fend for myself. Hence, we are dream linked.”
“Are you telling me that I am at this moment asleep?”
“Yes, Chelle. We both are.”
Of a sudden, the room began to waver, and in spite of trying to hold on to the moment, the chamber vanished, and Borel awakened.
Yet sore, he painfully lurched to his feet and stumped away from the camp and relieved himself. Then he stepped to the mere and jerked to a halt, arrested by anxiety, for upon the mirrorlike surface floated the moon, now some three days past full.
16
“She called me her ‘love.’ ”
“Mayhap you merely wished it to be so, Lord Borel. After all, it was a dream.”
The prince fished the rock from the heated water in his hat and dropped in a stone fresh from the fire. “No, Flic, I do not dictate what she says, nor does she control my words. Instead, she named me her love, and yet I know not why.”
“Well, you did say she followed you about when you were on Roulan’s estate.”
“Indeed, she did. Even so, she was but a child.”
“Nevertheless, Lord Borel, that could have been when she forged this link with you as well as the ardor she expressed for you.”
“Ah, Flic, at that age it would have been puppy love at best.”
“If you say so, my prince. Still, dreams are strange and unpredictable things-some are omens, others are true, and some are simply flights of fancy. Yet you say she is now a lovely demoiselle, and so I think more able to forge bonds of love. Would that I could be so fortunate as to have someone I love and someone who loves me.”
“You have never been in love?”
“No, my lord; only liaisons.”
Borel sighed. “ ’Tis the same with me.”
Borel removed the last rock from the now-bubbling water. Flic dropped blossoms in, and Borel stirred with his forked stick. Shortly, after Flic’s approval, he drank the tisane all in one gulp. It did not seem as distasteful as it had yestermorn. Even so, a frisson ran the length of his spine. Setting aside the tricorn, Borel next turned to his makeshift mortar and pestle and began crushing moss. As he did so, he glanced at the nearby twilight border. “I wonder what lies beyond?”
“More flowers, I imagine,” said Flic, smiling at Buzzer.
“I hope the going will be easier today,” said Borel.
“Less painful, you mean?” asked Flic.
Borel shrugged.
“It should be,” said Flic, “for you are healing quite well.”
Borel peered at his exposed skin. “ ’Tis true my bruises have turned from black to yellow. Even so, I am yet tender, and I ache now and again. And I am hungry. The snare caught nothing in the night.”
Flic grinned. “Perhaps we’ll come upon a meal beyond the marge.”
“One can only hope,” said Borel. He looked at the result of his handiwork. The moss had turned to slime. “Is it ready?”
Lightly touching it, the Sprite tested the sludge between thumb and forefinger and said, “Oui, Prince.”
They smeared a thin film upon each of the bruises. When that was done, Borel began crushing herbs for the juice, and a short while later his scrapes had been treated.
He donned his clothes and after quenching the fire he took up his goods and strung his bow and readied an arrow. “Let us hope something lies beyond I can fell and eat.”
Buzzer took to wing and sighted on the sun and then flew in a straight line into the twilight margin, Borel following, Flic again riding upon the prow of the tricorn.
Through the twilight they went, the day growing dimmer as they pressed on, and then lightening again as they came to the far side, where Borel groaned, for they had come into a high mountain valley with towering peaks all ’round. If Buzzer flew up and across a mountain, then this day would not be easier after all.
As Buzzer circled ’round and took a bearing, Borel gazed about at the place they had come into, seeking to see if ought was familiar. Whin grew on the land, and aspen groves dotted the hillsides. Streams tumbled down from high mountain snows, with groves of silver birch clustered along the flow. A long vale stretched out before them, sloping up toward a distant pass.
Borel sighed and said, “I’ve not been here before, and so I still do not know where Lord Roulan’s estates lie.”
“Fear not, Prince,” said Flic. “Buzzer knows the way.”
Even as the Sprite said that, along the rising length of the valley arrowed the bee toward the col.
Panting in the thin air, Borel trudged up the long slope, wending this way and that among the thick hells of gorse, doing his best to avoid the thorny evergreen shrubs, with their sharply pointed leaves and solitary deep yellow cup-like flowers.
“See, I told you that there would be blossoms on this side of the marge,” said Flic.
Borel growled, but said nought.
“And you say the chamber just vanished?” asked Flic.
“What?” said Borel.
“Your dream, the chamber, it vanished?”
“Yes,” said Borel, pressing through a place where the furze spread too widely for him to go around. “When I told her we were both asleep and dreaming, that’s when it went away. I tried to hold on to the chamber, but it faded and then was gone, and I woke.”
“You could not control it, eh?”
“No.”
Flic pondered a bit as Borel trudged on upward.
Far ahead, Buzzer passed through the col and disappeared downward beyond.
Finally, the Sprite said, “I think it is because it is her chamber and not yours, hence it is hers to control. Perhaps when you told her you were both in a dream, the reality came as a shock and she withdrew, and that’s why the chamber vanished. You will have to gently dance ’round her predicament to perhaps discover how she came to be where she finds herself.”
Forgetting that Flic was on the prow of his tricorn, Borel sighed and shook his head. “Hoy!” called the Sprite as he was nearly pitched off.
“Sorry,” said Borel. “I was just thinking if it upsets her that much to know we are dreaming, mayhap I should not try to ask her any more about her predicament.”
“Hmm… Perhaps you are right, Prince,” said Flic. He rode in silence for a while but then said, “There is this to consider, my lord: you must remember that if you are aware you are dreaming, you control aspects of the vision. Perhaps you can change the setting. Take her somewhere she can forget her troubles, and then seek answers.”