The echo of steps in a lofty hall was the next thing he knew, a purposeful stride, crisp with determination.
“Have you considered our petition?” A female voice rang out from some unseen direction, Temar struggling to register anything beyond a dull grayness swirling all around.
“Do you have any idea what you are asking?” It was a Sieur’s reply, confident enough to make a refusal with comforting eloquence. “Even if such an expedition could be organized, we could not sail before the latter half of spring, and Saedrin only knows what we will find. With the Empire falling asunder on all sides, you are asking me to risk men and material on a quest to find a new and most dangerous foe, doing nothing more in all likelihood than giving these marauders fresh encouragement to sail to encompass our own destruction!”
“We cannot leave them like this!” Elsire was weeping now, Temar realized distantly, a longing to comfort her welling up inside him.
“May we have your permission to contact the Shrine of Ostrin in Bremilayne?” Vahil’s voice was rough with emotion, his pain a bright goad in the leaden mists that wreathed around Temar.
“You may, of course,” the Sieur replied wearily. “The Healer grant that they might be able to help you, though I should warn you they have troubles enough of their own just at present.”
Temar’s awareness shied away from the heavy weight of the Sieur’s despair and dissolved into the dullness of the haze.
The scent of thyme crushed under the hooves of a galloping horse mingled with the acrid dust of the road and the sharp reek of the beast’s sweat. A scream rang out and Temar heard foul curses spat from all directions as the clash of swords struck sparks from his sleeping mind. Harness rattled and creaked, the swish and snap of a whip with its promise of pain to spur on the already desperate. A dire sense of urgency possessed him, a desperation mingled with an arrogance that soon shifted to fear, uncertainty and pain. The bite of the sword was as deep in the mind as into the body and Temar struggled in a futile effort to rid himself of the panic that was flooding him, its tendrils dragging him down as surely as weeds would drown a swimmer. Sudden agony overwhelmed him to be replaced by an emptiness even more horrible, until the darkness claimed him once more.
“So what exactly are you and how do I unlock your secrets?” Temar awoke with a start to see a hawk-faced man with flaxen hair stooping over him. Terror filled him but in that same instant he realized the man with the piercing blue eyes was not looking at him but at something to one side. He was himself still disembodied, no more than a shade crying to Poldrion for passage to the Otherworld, Temar realized. Who was this man? Memory struggled to knit together the tangled skeins of recollection and a distant echo of pain and terror sounded dimly in Temar’s reason. Pale heads in the dawn sunlight flashed across his mind’s eye and a terrible sense of danger began to build in Temar as the blond, cold-eyed man began a low murmur of enchantment, a tainted miasma overlying the image Temar was seeing. This time Temar reached desperately for the mists of the enchantment that concealed him, diving into the concealing depths to evade the poisonous touch of the sorcerer.
Light seared him like a burning brand.
“Come on, Viltred, move! They’re nearly on us!”
In a gateway, the speaker stood, intense eyes in a pale face, reddish hair streaked with white swirling in the biting wind. His companion hurried after him, burdened with a motley collection of jewelry, weapons and trinkets. The first man ran, long legs spurning the short grass while his companion, shorter and more sturdy, dark of hair and beard, plunged after him, the long skirts of his azure surcoat threatening to trip him at every stride. Temar was silent in helpless anguish as trifles slipped from his grasp to be lost in the uneven ground.
Quarrels thudded into the turf on all sides, but as Temar despaired of the two men ever escaping the arrows were snatched out of the air by unseen hands, blue light streaming from the bearded man’s hands, brilliance startling against the overcast.
“Here, Azazir, it’s here!” Suddenly they were at a cliff’s edge, black basalt columns forming a perilous stair to a tiny coracle, which bobbed seemingly untethered in the tumultuous foam of the breaking seas.
“Watch your step,” the red-headed man shouted, an insane exultation in his voice as he skipped lightly down the treacherous rocks, sure-footed as a cat. The younger man picked his way down more carefully, testing his footing at every step. Spray lashed him, bitter cold biting deep into flesh and bones as he made the long and hazardous descent.
Yells from aloft signalled the arrival of pursuit but as black-clad warriors gathered at the cliff-top and a few bolder than the rest began to edge down the slick and treacherous rocks, the red-headed man reached the flimsy leather boat. Standing easily in the frail craft, he raised his hands and green light gathered around him, casting an unearthly light on his thin face. Where the sea spray landed on the rocks, it began to cling, to pool, to draw together, drops making rivulets that joined to stream down the black stones, pushing at feet and hands. As the younger man reached the sanctuary of the tiny craft, he dumped his burden and wove his own skein of blue light, gusts of wind snatching at heads and shoulders, sharp blasts of icy air tugging at legs and feet. The first to fall shrieked in utter terror as he fell to his fate in the icy foam, the second clawed frantically at his neighbor, only to drag him down too, smashed on the unforgiving rocks before the seas claimed the bodies as their own. A wild exultation filled Temar, but before he could seize it the swirling mists swept over him as surely as the icy seas of his vision.
A longing filled Temar with an intensity beyond anything he had known. Guinalle. She was gone, not lost but hidden, a jewel buried deep in the earth as surely as the finest gem Misaen ever minted, not rough and unpolished but sleeping in peerless beauty, waiting only to be revealed to those that sought her. He shook off a sudden image of green eyes, dark with passion against unbleached linen in a tumble of auburn hair and determination filled him. He had to escape this, whatever this was, to reach out and find some way to rescue Guinalle. Nothing less would do.
The ruins of the Den Rannion steading,
Kel Ar’Ayen, 43rd of Aft-Summer
“Are you awake?” Livak propped herself on one elbow to look curiously at me, her eyes huge in the light of the moons, both at the half, greater waning, lesser waxing to the full that would signify the arrival of For-Autumn.
I nodded and heaved a long sigh. “I am now.”
“You’ve been dreaming?” she asked with that uncertainty that I was truly coming to hate in her voice.
“Dreaming someone else’s dreams, as far as I can make out.” I sat and stretched to work the stiffness out of my shoulders. Temar might have suffered terrors made worse by his bodilessness, I thought to myself, but I’d wager I was suffering enough for the pair of us with the knots his memories were tying my sleeping muscles into. “I think I’ve been seeing something of what Temar’s been perceiving over the generations, when someone’s emotions have been running sufficiently strong to make some kind of connection with him, if that makes any sense.”
Even in the modest moonlight, I could see Livak looking both dubious and confused. A qualm of fear chilled me in the midst of the warmth of the night as it occurred to me to wonder what might happen when Temar’s dreams included me. Would I see myself through his eyes? Sitting up, I looked across the gloomy enclosure to see a faint green glow betraying Shiv’s magelight. I ruffled Livak’s unbraided hair with an affectionate hand. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep again for a while,” I whispered. “I’m going to stretch my legs.”