Dreamwielder

by Garrett Calcaterra

  “Your sister is here,” she told him. “In the caves at the far end of the cavern.”

  Caile felt a surge of triumph and at hearing the news. “Let’s get her then.”

  “It’s not as simple as that. There are sorcerers holding her. Two of them. One is the woman from Col Sargoth, it seems, but the other hails from the Old World. It is as I feared.”

  “Are we safe here?” Caile asked her. “Can these people be trusted? Will they turn us over?”

  “They can be trusted,” she assured him. “They will do whatever I ask of them, though I will not throw them into harm’s way if I can help it.”

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

  Talitha smiled. “Yes, but it’s more than that. I am Trumball’s daughter, Caile. I am their chieftain.”

  Caile stared at her, surprised, yet at the same time not. “Why didn’t you just tell me before?”

  “Because I have been away for decades now and I was not sure they would recognize me or honor my claim to lordship. I did not want to give either of us false hope.”

  “But you said they will do whatever you ask of them now, right? So, let’s go get my sister.”

  Talitha sighed. “These sorcerers are very powerful. The two of them alone have managed to enslave my people. We cannot rush headlong to face them, or we will all end up dead. Even if we succeeded in killing our enemies, they might kill your sister first to spite us.”

  Caile opened his mouth to protest but did not know what to say. The thought of being so close to his sister and doing nothing to rescue her filled him with impotent fury. Equally as infuriating was knowing that Roanna was within his reach. She had used him for his knowledge of his sister, and she had betrayed him. She had tried to kill him. Caile wanted nothing more than to return the favor.

  “We will stay here hidden for the time being,” Talitha said. “Some of my people work in the outer caves as these sorcerers’ servants. We will question them and learn the routine of our enemies so that we may sneak up on them unawares.”

  It made sense. He knew Lorentz would advise him to be patient, too, but Caile could not shake the feeling in his core that now was the time to strike. He felt as if danger was nearer than Talitha realized, that if they didn’t act soon, it would be too late. “I just feel… I feel that—”

  Before he could put his thoughts and words together, there was a commotion at the entrance to the hall. A group of newcomers pushed their way through the doors, although, they were blocked from Caile’s and Talitha’s view behind the gathering of people inside. Caile felt a tinge of warning run down his neck. He pushed aside those around him to meet the newcomers, and as the crowd parted he came face to face with his sister, her face battered and bleeding.

  “Taera!”

  “Caile?”

  Taera could hardly believe it was really him until he grabbed her in his arms. “You’re alright now,” he told her. “Everything is going to be alright.”

  Talitha looked over Taera, and at Makarria standing beside her, for a long moment, then spoke sharply to the man who had escorted the two of them in. “Where are the sorcerers?” she asked in the tongue of the Snjaer Firan.

  “They are fighting one other. I was frightened, so I brought the prisoners here.”

  Talitha pursed her lips and turned back to Taera.

  “They found out about her,” Taera kept saying to Caile. “They found out about her.”

  “Found out about who?” Caile asked.

  “Makarria. He’ll take her away now.”

  Makarria looked away from her hysterical friend to the crowd of people around them. She was able to surmise who Caile was—Taera had spoken of him often enough—but how he had gotten here she had no idea, and of the rest of the people she knew nothing. If only Siegbjorn were here.

  “Please help us,” she said. “Kadar is going to kill Roanna, then he’s going to come for us. He’s going to kill Taera, then he’s going to take me away.”

  “He will do nothing of the sort,” Talitha replied. “If they are fighting each other, now is the time to strike. We can’t let them reach the city.”

  Caile pushed Taera up from where she sobbed and bled on his shoulder and unsheathed his sword. “Yes. I want their blood.”

  “No,” Talitha told him. “This is my task and that of the Snjaer Firan. You must protect the girls. That is your task. Take them back the way we came—through the tunnel. With any luck our horses will have not wandered far. You are their protector now. I will follow you if I survive. If not, take good care of them both. They are the key to everything.”

  Caile swore. “I’m not running away.”

  “Caile. You must.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “Hide at least,” she begged of him. “Go into the southern passage beyond the city and wait. If I do not return soon, if the fighting reaches the city, then you must take the girls and flee. Otherwise, all is lost.”

  Caile grit his teeth and sheathed his sword. “Fine,” he agreed, knowing Talitha was right but not liking it. He wanted nothing more than his revenge but protecting his sister was more important. If he lost her now, he would never be able to live with himself.

  “Go then, quickly,” Talitha urged him, then turned to her own people. “Gather the twelve mightiest warriors amongst us and send them after me into the northern passage,” she said in their tongue. “The rest of you: hide!”

  27

  Trumball's Heir

  Makarria sat huddled up against the cavern wall with Taera’s head in her lap, awaiting Caile’s return. He had left the two of them in the cavern at the south end of Issborg to go fetch water from the lake, and Taera had immediately fallen into a fitful sleep. Her face was swollen and the blood on her face had dried into a black crust around her nose and mouth. Makarria, for her own part, found herself nauseous and overcome with an empty feeling inside her like a great sorrow. Part of it was a sense lethargy from having transformed the wooden spoon into a dagger, she knew, but the sense of loss she could not explain except from having been so scared by what happened with Roanna and Kadar. Her cheek stung where Roanna had slapped her, and poor Taera had faired much worse. The sight of her face made Makarria want to cry. Makarria closed her eyes, fighting away tears and wishing everything could just go back to the way it was before, when she was back with her parents on their farm. She could barely picture her parents’ faces anymore. For that matter, she could barely picture her grandfather’s. The thought of him left behind on Pyrthin’s Flame pained her. She desperately hoped he had somehow escaped the burning ship.

  “Is everything alright?” Caile asked, startling her.

  “Fine, yes,” Makarria said, rubbing the tears from her eyes.

  Caile knelt down and handed her a waterskin to drink from, then turned his attention to Taera. He had dampened a cloth in the lake and he used it now to wipe the blood from her face. She moaned but did not wake.

  “Kadar was beating her,” Makarria said. “He would have killed her, but Roanna set him on fire.”

  “Roanna saved her?”

  Makarria nodded. “She’s mean but not as mean as Kadar. He’s got black teeth.”

  Caile frowned at the thought but said nothing. He rinsed the blood from his cloth with water from the skin and continued to clean up Taera the best he could. When he was done, he sat down beside Makarria and sighed.

  “How is it that you came to be captured with my sister?” he asked.

  “I was stranded at sea, and your sister rescued me,” Makarria said, and she told him how she had been rescued along with Parmo by Pyrthin’s Flame, only to be taken away with Taera by Roanna on the airship a few days later. It felt good to talk to someone and speak her grandfather’s name. She said nothing about the prophecy or Taera’s visions however.

  “Roanna has a flying ship?” Caile asked. “Are you sure you didn’t just dream it up?”

  Makarria laughed at the irony in his question. “Technically, Siegbjorn is
the captain of the airship.”

  Caile thought her laugh odd but wrote it off to fatigue and delirium. She’s little more than a kid, he realized now that he got a chance to look at her up close. Her arms were skinny but well-muscled, and the way she had walked into the town hall holding up his sister, he mistook her to be much older than she was. She had seemed very much an adult the way she carried herself. She was very pretty but younger than Caile by several years at least, by his estimation.

  Makarria blushed under his prolonged gaze.

  “Sorry,” Caile said, realizing he was staring. “I just thought that… I mean—”

  Taera gasped and woke with a start, cutting Caile short. “No!” she cried out. She pushed herself upright, panic on her face.

  Caile grabbed her hands. “Taera. It’s me, Caile. Everything is alright. You were just having a nightmare.”

  Taera took a deep breath and grimaced at the throbbing pain in her face. “Not a nightmare,” she said. “A vision. Two visions at the same time. In one, Kadar stands over our bodies, and Issborg is destroyed. Ice falls from above and crushes the houses, crushes everyone, and Kadar is laughing. In the other, Makarria is standing there, and the city is safe. Kadar is swept away into darkness. I see both visions on top of each other. I don’t understand. They can’t both be true.”

  “It’s a choice,” Makarria said.

  Taera’s eyes refocused as she heard Makarria’s words. “Yes, I think you’re right, but what do I do? What choice must I make?”

  “It’s not your choice,” Makarria said. “It’s mine.” She couldn’t explain it, but when Taera had described the visions, Makarria could see them in her mind too. Two contradicting visions. The choice was simple enough. If Makarria did nothing, Kadar would kill them all and destroy Issborg. Makarria didn’t know how she could stop Kadar, but she knew she couldn’t stand by and do nothing. The people of Issborg had helped her and Taera. They were Siegbjorn’s kin and friends. She would not let Kadar kill them. Kadar is swept away into darkness… Makarria repeated Taera’s words in her mind. She could see Taera’s vision. An impenetrable curved wall surrounded Kadar, and the light receded around him. Panic overcame him, and he scratched at the walls. Makarria knew the feeling. It was the same sense of dread she felt being trapped in her stone chamber day after day. That was it, she realized. She knew what she had to do.

  “I have to go help the Snjaer Firan,” Makarria said, standing.

  “No, you can’t,” Taera said. “Kadar will do horrible things to you.”

  “It’s alright. I know what to do.”

  “Hold on, what do you mean you know what to do?” Caile started to say, but Makarria ignored him and sprinted off back toward the city before the words were halfway out of his mouth. “Get back here!” Caile yelled, but Makarria paid him no heed.

  Taera watched her leave. Her heart ached, but she too knew Makarria was right. The visions represented a choice, and that choice was Makarri’s to make. “Go with her,” she told Caile. “Do whatever you can to keep her safe. She’s the one.”

  “What do you mean, the one?” Caile asked, exasperated that he never seemed to know what was going on.

  “The one prophesied to kill the Emperor.”

  “What? I thought that was you.”

  “No, Caile. It’s her. Go!”

  Caile snatched up his weapons with a curse and ran off in the direction of Issborg. At the edge of the city, he caught sight of Makarria nearly halfway to the other side—the only movement in the entire city. The Snjaer Firan were hidden away in their homes and had closed the shutters over every window. Only the blue daylight protruding through the glacier illuminated the city. Damn it all, she’s fast, Caile swore inwardly as he chased after Makarria. When he finally caught up to her at the far end of city he grabbed her shoulder and dragged her to a halt, heavily winded.

  “Stop. Wait!”

  Makarria pushed his hand aside and trotted on. “Please don’t try to stop me.”

  “I’m not here to stop you. I’m here to help. Now just slow down for moment and tell me what it is you think you’re going to do that two sorceresses can’t.”

  “What two sorceresses?” Makarria asked, glancing back at him.

  “You said Roanna tried to kill Kadar. And now Talitha is going after him.”

  “Talitha is a sorceress, too?”

  “Of course. She’s the one who saved me when Roanna tried to kill me in Col Sargoth.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Makarria said. “But it doesn’t make a difference. It wasn’t Roanna and it wasn’t Talitha in your sister’s vision. It was me.”

  “Fine, but you still haven’t told me what it is you mean to do.”

  They were getting close to the chambers now and Makarria slowed to a brisk walk. “I need to get Kadar into one of the chambers.”

  “Alright, that’s a start. What chambers?”

  “A few hundred yards down the corridor on the right, there’s a bunch of caves with doors.”

  “Does it matter which one we get him into?”

  “No.”

  “Alright,” he said again. “And what do we do after that?”

  “Then I do my work. Quiet now. We’re getting close.”

  Caile bristled at being shushed. “Slow down then,” he whispered. “We don’t want to rush headlong into something if Talitha and Kadar are fighting. Or Roanna.”

  As if on cue, a heavy concussion echoed through the cavern.

  “I’ve heard that sound before,” Caile whispered. “That’s sorcerers fighting.” He left his sword sheathed and instead strung his bow and notched an arrow, remembering what Talitha had told him about trying to kill sorcerers. Surprise them. Be unpredictable.

  The sound of concussions and bellowing flames grew louder and more frequent as they continued on, and before long they could hear voices, although, they could not make out the words. Talitha’s indecipherable shouts were little more than guttural moans, while Kadar’s heavily accented words were taunting in their tone. They heard nothing from Roanna. Suddenly, dark figures appeared before them, and Caile almost let loose his arrow but luckily held it back at the last moment, realizing it was the Snjaer Firan warriors who had accompanied Talitha. There were only four of them, and they all huddled close to the wall at their right.

  “We’re here to help,” Makarria whispered when one of them turned back to see her and Caile approaching. It was the man who had been guarding her room. “Where’s Kadar?”

  “Up there,” the man said with effort, and Makarria and Caile saw that he was badly burned on one side of his face. “Talitha is trapped on the far side, below the glacier.”

  “What about Roanna?” Caile asked.

  The warrior spoke to the other men in their tongue, and they all shook their head. “We saw no sign of her,” the man said. “She must be dead.”

  “Where’s the rest of your men?” Caile asked. “I thought there were twelve of you?”

  “There were.”

  Caile pursed his lips and pushed his way forward past the four men to peer farther down the corridor. A torrent of flames spat forward in the distance, and for a brief moment Caile could make out Talitha’s form huddled behind a stalagmite twenty yards ahead and Kadar a little farther beyond her. Then the flames were gone and he saw only shadows again. Caile stepped back safely out of sight. “He’s got her cornered, and he’s too far away for me to get a clean look at him,” he whispered to Makarria. “How is it you think we’re going to get him into one of those caves?”

  “I’ll get him into the open,” Makarria said. “When I yell, start shooting.”

  “I don’t see how—” Caile started to say, but before he could get the rest of the sentence out Makarria strode forward into the middle of the corridor.

  “Kadar!” Makarria yelled. “Kadar! It’s me, Makarria. Stop, please.”

  “Makarria, no, get back,” Talitha’s voice rang out.

  Makarria ignored her and walked on, fear in h
er belly. He won’t risk killing you—you’re too important to him, she told herself, but now that she was exposed, she wasn’t so certain.

  Kadar peered out from his hiding spot and began laughing an oily, rodent-like laugh. “It is alright, Makarria. Yes, come to me. I would not hurt you.”

  “Leave the woman alone,” Makarria said. “And then you can have me.” She stopped parallel to the first of the caves on the right. She saw in front of her the smoldering bodies of the other Snjaer Firan warriors but quickly averted her eyes and kept her attention solely on Kadar.

  “But I can kill her and still take you,” Kadar said.

  “Not if I’m in the way, you can’t,” Makarria retorted, and she stepped forward to place herself firmly in the path between the two sorcerers. “Go,” she said, looking back toward Talitha.

  “Are you mad?” Talitha hissed. “You’ll be killed.”

  “Just go,” Makarria told her. “Trust me.”

  In the distance, Kadar laughed again. “Go on. Let the little girl save you for now.”

  “Go,” Makarria said again.

  Talitha paused for a moment longer, then sprang from behind the stalagmite and scurried back into the cavern behind Makarria toward the others.

  “My end of the bargain is met now,” Kadar said. “Now it is your turn. Come to me.”

  “I’m right here. Come get me.”

  Kadar stepped forward from his hiding spot, and when he spoke there was menace in his voice. “What is it you hope to accomplish, girl? Do you mean to stab me with a wooden knife? Your dream powers are weak and unhoned still. I could burn you to ash or bring that ice crashing down upon your head before you even close your eyes, let alone dream.”

  “Not if you want me to kill the Emperor, you can’t.”

  Kadar smiled and his black teeth glimmered as he slowly stepped forward. “You are a clever girl. Too clever for your own good.”

  He was almost upon her now. She waited one breath longer, then turned and sprinted away. “Now!” she screamed.