Dream of Darkness and Dominion

by Hilary Thompson

  Nik had sometimes spoken of a cruel master in Rurok. She’d assumed it was a Brujok witch, one of Mara’s minions.

  But could this phantom master be the Lord of Witches instead? Could her own brother be the one Nik had fled, even knowing he would likely end up with slavers again? Coren wanted time to stop and go backward, to make this terrible truth go away. Hoping for a change from Jyesh was starting to sound more and more ludicrous, and anger surged in her heart.

  “Explain!” she commanded Jyesh, stepping close to her twin, ready to restrain him. She could see the glint in Sy’s eyes, too. He would slice her brother in two if given half a reason, and Coren was no longer certain she wanted to stop him.

  How dark could a person grow before the light was lost completely?

  “Nikesh was my... mine. He was a gift from Mara. But I loved him!” Jyesh’s voice held the ferocity and possessiveness of a child whose lost toy has shown up years later, missing an ear and wearing tattered clothes. He looked back to Nik, his eyes pleading. “Your death... when I thought you dead...” He shook his head, his lips opening and closing without further sound.

  “Take me away from him,” Nik whispered, turning his face into Sy’s shoulder.

  And they were gone.

  Coren gaped at the empty place next to her then at Jyesh, whose shoulders slumped. He stared longingly at the maze of tree trunks before them, but not even a leaf was fluttering from their escape.

  “I never knew what to do,” Jyesh whispered. “Mara gave him to me.”

  “You can’t give someone a person, Jyesh,” she snapped. “You know better.”

  “I knew nothing different,” he cried. “Mara raised me when you and Sorenta left me for dead!”

  “That’s starting to be a pitiful excuse. Sorenta raised you until you were eight. You knew better. You let Mara change you. You let yourself be consumed with hate.” She had no more patience for him, and her chest ached with compassion for Nik. So much that she could find little left for her brother.

  “What choice did I have?” he yelled, his fingers curling into fists.

  “Love,” she said, staring him down. “Look at all the tragedy and pain Nik has borne. Yet still, he chose love.”

  Jyesh deflated, all the fight gone as quickly as it had come. “There was never enough light in me to choose love. Not even before I was banished,” he said, turning away and sinking into the sand at the edge of the beach.

  Coren threw her hands up, though a horrible wash of guilt tugged her down next to him. She had no words of comfort, for deep in her soul, she suspected he was right.

  Could a person be born too dark? Was it always possible to overcome the shadows inside?

  Or was Jyesh fated to be this way? She didn’t know what Mara had been like as a girl, but after seeing Rastern’s memories of how Shadow plotted to use her, she wondered if maybe Mara had always been dark, and Shadow used that as a foothold.

  “I regret how I treated him,” Jyesh said after several moments of silence, and his words rang with truth. “I can see it now. I didn’t feel like it was wrong then. But I do now. He loved me, too, you know. Once.”

  Jyesh met her eyes, his twin pools of watery gold begging her to understand.

  “Nik loved you?” she repeated, uncertain whether to believe him. “How did it happen? All of it?”

  Jyesh sighed and began to walk down the beach. Coren followed, and she sensed the elites filing in behind them. “Mara brought him to me. I don’t know why. He was young and beautiful and scared. And powerful. So much power. It was thrilling to touch him. My magic awakened with his like never before.”

  “That was Mara’s reason,” Coren guessed.

  Jyesh laughed, but the sound was bitter. “Likely. Before long, I’d taken to leaving his cage unlocked, so he could crawl into my bed at night.”

  “A cage?” Coren choked out the word. “Jyesh, surely...”

  “I was kept in one once, too, sister,” he hissed. “Mara left me in bars too short to stand tall for weeks at a time when she was training me.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she managed, guilt flooding her heart full to bursting. Jyesh had suffered much, too. She’d been making excuses her whole life, and here she was accusing him of knowing better. Yes, he’d lived with Sorenta and her for his first eight years, but he’d lived with Mara’s manipulation much longer.

  He was still unsteady, but he reached to grasp her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Coren, for all I’ve done.”

  She smiled as tears gathered in her eyes. She wanted desperately to believe him. But he still hadn’t answered her question, and she was afraid. His answer could change her forever, just as it had changed Nik.

  “Nik grew to love you, then?” she prompted.

  Jyesh didn’t meet her eyes, and her doubt grew. “We were two against Mara and her Brujok. We cared about each other because no one cared for us. But then he left. Escaped. Later I found out Mara had orchestrated it all, but by then it was too late. I’d broken him.”

  “How...” Coren began, not sure she wanted to know. “How did you break him?”

  Jyesh made a strangled sound. “Every way they told me. Body, mind, spirit. Mara and her favorite Brujok taught me a lesson each day, and I taught it to Nikesh. When I did it poorly, they demonstrated. First on me, then on him again. Until there was nothing left of either of us inside and barely any outside. But our powers grew,” he added, a dark laugh punctuating the horror.

  Coren turned away. Her stomach threatened sickness, and her heart had nearly pounded its way out of her chest. She didn’t want to let go of her hope for him, but they were fading in her mind. “Don’t speak to Nik again,” she said as she picked up her pace, leaving him behind.

  Jyesh followed her without speaking, the silence between them interrupted every few minutes by a broken, shuddering sob from him.

  JYESH COULD FEEL NIK somewhere ahead. That particular makeup of sources and scents was impossible to forget. Even when he’d thought Nik dead, he’d still thought of him.

  With longing. With lust.

  With a ferocious, angry sense of loss.

  And often, with regret.

  He’d never meant to drive Nik away. He’d relied so long on the excuse he’d only done what he’d been taught to do by Mara. But tonight, he’d seen a challenge in his Sy’s eyes. Caught in the stoic stare of Sy’s accusations, Jyesh knew his excuse looked as flimsy as a new spring blossom.

  Even more, he finally understood that he didn’t have the right to ask for Nik’s forgiveness.

  This realization shook him more than anything.

  He could also feel Coren before him, walking rather than flying. To conserve her precious magic for the Vespa, he supposed. Thinking of all his twin had won, his heart began to turn bitter again. Coren had as much magic as he, maybe more. Yet she had been allowed to stay on Weshen Isle. His jealousy wasn’t rational, but it was there all the same - a Brujok vine twisted around his heart.

  She had lived a plain life without wealth, but a safe one. Jyesh had grown to enjoy the opulence of riches, but when he stopped to admit it, he would have traded his comforts and false privilege as the Lord of Witches for just one more summer on Weshen Isle. He’d even trade it for years of training in the city as a Paladin like Sy.

  His magic was strong, but his physical fighting had atrophied over the years. With his shifting crippled by Mara’s spells, Jyesh was weak and slow, reliant on what Sulit spells he could cobble together without their true power.

  And Coren’s confounded wings. Envy surged in his heart as he added this to her list of advantages.

  Jyesh ground his teeth, dwelling on the injustice of not having a creature shift yet. Mara had kept him so isolated that likely nothing had crossed his path. Yet the Vespa had sought his sister.

  The Draken must have sought Nik.

  Even the Grizzlin had attacked Sy rather than let him leave.

  Jyesh buffeted against the idea that maybe he wasn’t strong enough for a cre
ature shift. How could Mara have ever thought he was strong enough to become the SoulShifter?

  A few steps later, the answer came to him.

  She hadn’t.

  All his life, from the moment his boat sailed away from Weshen Isle, Jyesh had been nothing more than bait.

  Fury built in his chest until it burst forth in a roar of unfairness, ending on something closer to a wail. Footsteps thudded behind him, and he knew Coren was there before she touched his shoulder.

  “Jyesh?” she asked, her voice small and apologetic.

  “Leave me.”

  “No.” Instead, she linked her arm through his. “You’re no animal, Jyesh.”

  “What?” he snapped, wishing she would leave. Her expectations were too much.

  “You’ve been trained like an animal, and you’re reacting like one. But you don’t have to react. You can choose.”

  “Choose what?” he asked, hoping she’d be stumped. He’d never felt so out of choices in his life, except maybe the day of his banishment.

  “Love.”

  He tried to shake her away, but she held him tightly.

  “Choose love, Jyesh. Choose light. Choose someone other than yourself, and choose forgiveness over fighting.” Then she did let him go, leaving him with only the echoing words.

  As he clumped through the Listening Forest, the trees seemed to speak to him for the first time. And of course, they whispered the same word she had.

  Choose.

  Chapter 31

  WHEN DAIN SAW NOSHAYA’S page streaking up the sand, he knew her troops had met with a problem in Rurok. He jogged ahead to intercept the boy, frowning as he read her message.

  His First Commander was not far, and he handed her the message, beckoning to the others.

  “Abandoned! Where have the witches gone, then?” she asked, after skimming the paper.

  “South, I suppose. Though it’s possible they circled around us somehow, then east to StarsHelm.”

  “FatherSun protect us, then,” she said, glancing back to the lake, as though it might suddenly be filled with single-rider boats.

  Dain considered. “I believe Harben and Cusslen could hold the city if there is an attack. Truly, I doubt the Brujok could have moved north without any of our scouts seeing them in the woods. We can send a small scouting party north, though.”

  She nodded. “I’ll organize that now.” Ducking her head in a quick salute, she dodged into the mass of soldiers.

  Dain’s other Commanders had gathered. “We’ll stick with the original plan and follow Noshaya deeper into Sulit. We’ll be at Rurok by day’s end. Keep alert for tricks. And send a page back to the Queen’s party with this note and our plans,” he added, pointing to his Second Commander.

  As he supervised the troops’ continued march down the side of the falls and toward Rurok, Dain wished he were next to Coren, ensuring her safety, and not several miles ahead. But this had been their compromise.

  She would allow the armies to enter battle first, saving her strength and magic until Mara was closer.

  Both wanted Mara dead, above all.

  Finally, the dark towers of the witch city spiked onto the horizon, reaching far above the tree line. Dain scanned the beach and the woods for movement, for smoke, for anything.

  But except for Noshaya’s own evenly-spaced guards, they saw no one as they drew near.

  “Has the city itself been checked?” Dain asked the nearest guard, staring straight up the side at one of the impossibly tall towers.

  “Yes, sir. Lots of dead, no survivors that I know of. General Noshaya believes it was a ‘join or die’ battle within the city walls. Even the prisons are emptied.”

  Dain sighed in frustration. He’d been on many campaigns where he wished for a quick resolution so that he and his soldiers could return home. But there was something in all this quiet emptiness that he didn’t trust.

  It was like wading through still water at night. Everything looked calm on the surface, but anything could be lying in wait.

  He broke off a small rotation of guards to relieve Noshaya’s men and women, hoping that if any witches returned, it would be enough to hold them off. And they continued to march, following the coastline and the tracks left by the other soldiers, farther and farther south into the heart of Sulit.

  Just as dusk began to lower the curtain of navy sky before them, Dain heard it, and his energy surged.

  The shrieks of witches and the clash of metal.

  “Ahead. Ready yourselves,” he yelled, and the order rippled out behind him as each Commander relayed it to their units. The path of the beach was turning west, into an inlet where a river met the MagiSea. As soon as Dain and his soldiers rounded the corner, the sights of battle overtook their vision.

  Shouting a charge, Dain and his men and women began to run. There was no room or reason for their carefully-spaced ranks here. The trees separated the even lines and broke them into groups of two or three, weaving through the growth. He glimpsed Noshaya, back-to-back with her First Commander, blades whirling as they fought off three witches at once.

  The ground was littered with the dead and dying, both witch and Riatan. Blood spattered the bone-white tree trunks, and their leaves shuddered with the cries of attack. Dain leaped over a fallen soldier, hoping Coren and her friends weren’t far behind, and then a witch was upon him.

  His sword flashed as he sliced through her vines, and he admired the advantage he earned with one of Gernant’s talismans welded to the hilt. Parrying a spike of thorns, he thrust at the black-toothed witch, spearing her shoulder. She screamed in fury and doubled her effort, even as another witch whirled to join her sister.

  All around he heard the witches’ cries, just as loud and numerous as his troops’.

  Either they’d poorly estimated the number of Brujok, or the southern Sulit were being more heavily recruited.

  Dain dodged a blast of wind from one, just as the other plastered his face with slimy leaves, blinding him and sealing his nose and mouth shut. He clawed at the sludge, gasping for breath as it peeled away. But by then, one of the witches had wrapped a vine of thorns around his leg, the spikes already gouging through his leather bracers. She began to lead herself toward him on the vine, grinning like it was all just a horrible game.

  He hacked at the vine, freeing his leg just in time to sink his dagger deep into her chest. Her eyes blazed terribly, and then the light flickered and died as she dropped to the ground, her body hitting with a soft thud. Her sister screamed in rage, hurling a branch through the air at him. He dodged, and it speared one of his soldiers through the heart, the woman pinned tight to a tree.

  Dain stumbled backward from the witch, closer to the water.

  That was a mistake.

  The witch cackled, her silky black hair floating out from her dirt-stained face as young saplings at the river’s edge began to grow before his very eyes. She smiled sweetly at him as the trees twisted into a cage of slim branches and rosy leaves. Dain beat at the wood with a pair of daggers, then his sword, but the branches only grew faster, two growing back where he’d sliced one away.

  The water behind him began to rise and leak into the leafy cage, seeping up to his calves. Salty, dirty water stung the slices on his legs. The trees were so closely spaced that he couldn’t see even a hint of the witch who was so intent on killing him. But he could hear the sharp bells of her laughter, and the sound crawled up his spine and clutched at his neck.

  He began to climb toward the shrinking circle of sky above, bracing himself against the trunks and hoisting himself up and up. But the leafy canopy soon arched gracefully over his head, weaving together and completing the cage.

  Dain’s boots slid down the slick trunks and splashed back into the water, his muscles screaming with fatigue. His soldiers weren’t ready, he admitted to himself. None of them were ready. He was going to die in a cage of magical branches.

  The ridiculousness of it renewed his determination, and he drew on every re
serve of energy to hack away the trunk of a tree grown broader than his chest already. The water was waist high now, though, and his sword was ill-suited to the task.

  A thundering pound of steps and a great roar sounded outside his prison, but he still couldn’t see anything.

  Beyond, a witch cried out in pain, and he smiled in grim satisfaction. The water began to seep away, and his hope grew. At least he wouldn’t drown today. He attacked the trees harder, faster, hoping that whoever had killed the water witch would find him.

  And then like wind blowing away dust, half the trees were gone, nothing more than rose and white mist in the air.

  Jyesh stood before Dain, his eyes flat. “You’re welcome,” he said, turning and striding away, dissipating another witch as she rushed him, her blood streaking red through the mist following the First Son like a cloud.

  A flash of golden-brown fur blurred by, and Dain reeled back from Sy’s Grizzlin form. The great jaws closed around the torso of a writhing Brujok, chomping her body in half, and Dain grimaced as the Grizzlin spat out the bloodied middle section, then bounded away to repeat the attack.

  He scanned the area, noting that many of his soldiers still fought, but death was everywhere. He pushed himself into a stiff run toward the nearest man, and together they drove the witch back, plunging their swords through her chest and stomach.

  The man heaved his thanks and jogged away, seeking the next enemy. Dain peered up again, the blue sky visible only when a breeze blew.

  Where was Coren? And the Draken who had joined them yesterday? The tree canopy was too thick, the trunks too dense, for their wings.

  He heard her Vespa shriek, high above, followed by the screams of the Draken. Surely, there was something he could do. His eyes settled on the inlet, where the sun dappled the black sand. There was enough clearing there.

  He gestured to a trio of soldiers to follow him and turned toward the river bank. “Let’s draw them closer to the water - into the open.” Part of him rejected this plan immediately, as he’d almost died in that water. But that was the only place open enough for the winged creatures to help.