by Cindy Dees
Not that the lizardmen had done anything to earn the enmity of the locals—or the Kothite regime, for that matter. They were just … alien. Technically, Raina supposed they were nothing more than simple animal changelings—part animal and part human, but their reptilian features and scaled bodies unsettled even Raina at a visceral level. Strange appearance aside, though, Sha’Li had been as loyal and supportive a friend as Raina had ever had. No matter how hard Sha’Li would have protested if she said it aloud, Raina thought the girl had a deeply noble soul.
“Hey, look who’s here!” a familiar voice boomed behind Raina, shaking her from her ruminations.
What was Thanon doing here? She swiveled on the bench, scowling to see the military officer and a half dozen of his men piling into the pub. Had they followed Will? Or worse, her?
“The hour grows late,” Raina announced in disgust. “I’m going back to the Heart. Rosana, do you wish to come with me or have Will bring you back later?”
The other healer answered, “I’ll come with you and your escort.”
The two girls piled out of the corner of the pub, and Raina pressed a few coins into the hand of the bartender. “Keep the ales flowing for my friends, if you will.”
“Consider it done,” the fellow replied, grinning.
Raina stepped out into the evening, and two Royal Order of the Sun guardians emerged from the shadows beside the pub, falling in behind her. It had started to snow while they’d been in the pub, a fine, crystalline dusting coating every horizontal surface and hiding the usual mud and muck of the cobbled streets in early spring.
“Wait up!” Thanon called from the doorway of the pub. “I’ll walk you home.”
She sighed and summoned a smile. It was not as if she could tell him not to bother. He was a high-ranking Imperial officer, and the way she heard it, he was also the governess’s favorite. He fell in beside her, sparing a nod and grin for the Royal Order guards.
“You’re incorrigible,” she muttered as he held out his forearm expectantly, forcing her to rest her hand on it or else be openly rude to the man.
“Irresistible, aren’t I?”
“And modest, too,” she replied dryly.
“My finest quality.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes. Then Thanon commented, “In Koth, everybody talks about how squalid and filthy Haelos is, but seeing it like this, quiet and covered in a coat of new fallen snow, it’s actually rather quaint. Pretty.”
Raina considered the half-timbered buildings jostling for space on the cobblestone street. Dupree was by far the grandest place she’d ever been in her life, born and raised as she’d been at the very westernmost edge of civilization in Haelos. With Dupree sprawling up the sides of two great hills and sloping down to the expansive Bay of Dupree, close to five thousand people lived in the city’s tall, narrow buildings and winding streets.
“Where’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever been?” she asked Thanon, whose many badges and blazons on his uniform spoke of a long military career and travels all over Urth. No matter that the man looked to be no older than his mid- to late twenties. It must be nice to age at the rate of a long-lived race like the paxan.
He glanced down at her. “The most beautiful place I’ve seen is wherever you are,” he answered. One corner of his mouth lifted in a grin.
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Truly. Incorrigibility is your gift.”
The slate roofs and black-painted timbers around them wore their fluffy coats of sparkling snow with quiet dignity. Their footsteps melted behind them, leaving a trail of footprints to mark their passing through the still streets. The evening was serene, as if a blanket of peace and calm lay over the entire world this night. The past several months of life-threatening danger and never-ending stress fell away, leaving her feeling as weightless as the flakes settling gently around her toward earthly rest.
The avenue they trod spilled into the large square in front of the towering House of the Healing Heart, a sprawling, four-story-tall structure taking up most of one side of the square. The tall dome of the central Heartstone tower in its private courtyard within the Heart headquarters peeked above the main building’s roof. It was an elaborately carved and gilded rotunda as befitted a place where people could magically be restored from fully dead to alive.
Thanon escorted her across the broad expanse of pristine snow covering Heart Square and stopped at the foot of the wide, shallow steps leading up to the glowing front doors of the blond stone edifice.
“I shall leave you here and wish you sweet dreams, my lady.”
“Safe travels and a good night to you, Commander Thanon,” she replied formally.
“I have spent part of it with you. It is already a good night.”
Stars, that man missed no opportunity to lay on the charm. Were all courtiers like that? She would not know. Funny, but the past year had taught her a great deal about just how much she did not know of the world. An urge to travel, to see more and learn more surged through her.
“C’mon. I’m cold,” Rosana muttered, starting up the broad steps.
Raina followed the ever-practical Rosana inside, out of the snow and out of the night’s quiet magic.
* * *
When the girls left the pub, Eben ordered a round of ales for himself, Will, and Rynn. He was surprised and pleased when the barkeep informed him that their White Heart friend had covered their tab for the rest of the evening. That was good of Raina. Beneath all that deep thinking and political maneuvering she lived for, she was a decent sort. Good heart.
“All right, boys. I need your advice,” Will declared. “It’s about Rosana.”
“Give her whatever she wants and don’t cross that gypsy temper of hers, man.” Eben laughed.
Will punched him playfully in the upper arm. “No, you fool. I want to propose to her, but I have to figure out just the perfect way to do it.”
Eben grinned. “About time you got around to it.”
Everyone had known the pair was sweet on one another and would end up together for much longer than the two of them had known it. Rosana smoothed out the rough edges of Will’s temper, and he helped her be braver and more confident.
Will turned to Rynn. “I figure a pretty fellow like you has lots of experience with women. How do girls like to be proposed to?”
Rynn squawked. “How should I know? I’ve never proposed to anyone!”
Will groaned, and Eben declared to him, “You’re on your own on this one, my friend.”
Rynn piped up jovially, “Good luck with it.”
Will scowled and downed the entire contents of his mug, then stared morosely into the remnants of foam clinging to the sides of the tankard, which frankly amused Eben to no end. Not that he would tell Will that and risk rousing Will’s formidable temper.
Rynn emptied his mug and slammed it down on the rough, board table. “A gift,” he declared.
Will looked up, frowning.
“Give her a gift. Something significant to both of you. Something that will make her cry and feel all emotional. Then spring your proposal on her, and she’ll be swept away and say yes.”
Eben frowned. “Isn’t that trickery?”
Rynn shrugged. “Either he wants the girl or he doesn’t. All’s fair in love and war.”
The barkeep brought them three more brimming mugs, and Eben sipped this one a bit more temperately.
“What gift would make her cry?” Will wondered aloud.
Eben and Rynn both shrugged, their limited store of wedding proposal advice exhausted.
“What of you, Eben? Any young women in your near future?” Rynn asked.
This last mug of ale was hitting Eben hard all of a sudden, and he had to concentrate to form an answer to his friend’s question. “No time for love. I have to help my sister, Marikeen. Get to the dream plane. Protect her from whatever goes on there.” He asked Rynn abruptly, “Can you help me? You’re good with all that dream plane stuff, right?”
&
nbsp; Rynn nodded modestly.
“I know you can take me there. You did it when I first saw my sister on the dream plane. Can we do that again? Watch me sleep or whatever it is you do, and take me to Marikeen.” Whew. The pub’s dirty plaster walls and low, blackened ceiling were starting to spin.
Rynn mumbled, “Sure, fine. Are you all right, Eben? You look like you want to pass out. Maybe we should go back to Hyland House…” The paxan started to push to his feet but collapsed back to the bench, blinking hard. “Whoa. I’m a little dizzy.”
“Can’t hold your booze?” Will teased, jabbing Rynn with an elbow, but half missing and tipping himself partway over.
Rynn gave Will a shove back upright and then grabbed Eben’s hand across the table. “I’ll help you find your sister. I promise, my friend.”
“You’re a good man. No matter how many eyes…” Why were words so hard to enunciate clearly all of a sudden?
“Thanks. Not so bad yourself for a jann,” Rynn mumbled, frowning and appearing to work hard to focus on Eben’s face.
Rynn’s brilliant blue eyes whirled like a kaleidoscope, and Eben grinned stupidly. “Look … funny…”
“Feel … funny…” Rynn sighed back.
Eben felt himself starting to tip over and pulled against Rynn’s hand to right himself. Rynn was leaning at an odd angle, too, and he did his best to prop up the paxan, not that it helped one whit.
A new voice intruded from somewhere above Eben’s head. Eben squinted and made out the barkeep, flanked by two burly young men who looked like his sons. The fellow’s words only sluggishly formed meaning in Eben’s sotted brain. “Too bad the girls left, but ye three’ll still bring me a pretty penny from Anton and his boys. He’s got quite the bounty out on ye. Sweet dreams, then.”
Eben glanced across the table at Rynn in dawning horror. The paxan stared back blearily, looking appalled. Will toppled sideways into Rynn just as Eben and Rynn fell forward in unison and passed out.
* * *
Raina hurried up the Heart’s front steps behind Rosana. She loved how the broad stones were worn a little in the middle, testament to the thousands of feet that had trod these stones in search of healing over the years.
The glow around the front doors blinked out as someone inside removed the key from the wizard’s lock for them. Raina followed Rosana inside, and the wizard’s lock went back up behind them, the magically protected doors glowing once more.
Raina shook like a dog, giggling as Rosana did the same and they pelted each other with melted droplets of snow.
“A moment of your time, Emissary,” High Matriarch Lenora said from near the big hearth across the room.
Raina crossed to where the woman sat in a deep armchair, a quilt spread across her lap. Raina sank into the matching chair, relieved that the common room was empty of sick or wounded supplicants for a change. She supposed most people stayed at home on a night like this, tucked into their warm beds, rather than venturing out and getting hurt.
“How may I serve you, High Matriarch?”
“I hear Commander Thanon and his men escorted you and your friends out this evening.”
“They did.”
“And that young Thanon brought you home?”
“He walked with me, yes.” She did not correct Lenora for calling Thanon young. The high matriarch knew as well as anyone that a paxan could be hundreds of years old and look one-tenth his or her age.
“Tell me something, Raina. Why do you choose to move about Dupree in the company of Imperial soldiers rather than entrusting your safety to the Royal Order of the Sun?”
Caution surged through Raina. The high matriarch was as subtle as anyone she’d ever known. Even the simplest question had the potential to be fraught with layers of meaning.
“Has the Royal Order complained?” Raina asked.
“They would never dream of complaining about such a thing, but it does bother them that you do not seem to trust them.”
Raina forced herself to take a moment to honestly consider the question. Clearly, there was import to the matter or else Lenora would not have brought it up. Perhaps Raina was unknowingly committing some grave breach of Heart etiquette and the high matriarch was too polite to say so outright. Or maybe the Royal Order of the Sun was embarrassed that the new emissary shunned them in favor of an elite military unit.
Or perhaps this was a deeper gambit by the Royal Order of the Sun to position itself as Raina’s primary source of support and advice going forward. They had already managed to become her sole guardians and advisors once she went north to the Dominion.
She knew herself to be an extraordinary mage and was moving quickly into a position of unusual power compliments of her relationship with the Dominion. Of course, others would see her as a political tool to be possessed and wielded.
But as she considered the question, the truth was rawer and uglier than she’d realized. She was afraid.
Raina admitted reluctantly, “When the Dominion kidnapped me and my friends, I was utterly helpless. They gagged and bound me so I could not cast magic, and they did not acknowledge the neutrality of my colors. They showed me just how weak I truly am in hostile situations. I understand now that healers who wear White Heart colors are exquisitely vulnerable to the violence and cruelty of a wild place like Haelos.”
“Make no mistake, child. Everywhere on Urth is rife with violence and cruelty. Haelos has no special claim to either.”
“And because of my White Heart vows, I am as a babe in the woods, completely unable to defend myself should anyone wish me harm.”
Lenora remained silent, studying Raina intently.
At length, Raina continued, “Thanon and his men make me feel safe. They’re heavily armed, highly skilled warriors, and travel in packs. They display their lethality without apology. They’re formidable soldiers whom others would do well not to cross.”
“I would remind you that the reputation of the Royal Order of the Sun is no less formidable. You can trust the Order, Raina. Lord Justinius chooses and trains his men and women with great care. They will lay down their lives for you to the last one of them.”
“But that’s the problem! I don’t want anyone to die for me!”
“Are you saying that you value Thanon and his men’s lives less than Justinius’s and his men’s? Is that why you choose to travel with the Talons? You would rather see them die for you?”
Raina stared into the sluggish fire, shocked. Was that what she had been doing without even being aware of it? Stars, this business of being in the White Heart was hard. Apparently, she must give everyone around her an equal opportunity to die on her behalf in addition to healing those around her evenhandedly.
“It is the nature of your work that others will leap to protect you from harm, Raina. You may not like it, but you must not stop them.”
“And yet my colors force me to try. It goes against everything I stand for to let others die protecting me.”
“Then I must counsel you to do nothing nor go anywhere that will put your life at risk.”
Hah. As if that was going to happen anytime soon. She and her friends still had to find a way to wake the Sleeping King. And that path was fraught with immense danger.
Her thoughts must have shown upon her face, for Lenora murmured, “You cannot have it both ways. There are consequences to all our decisions, all our actions. The course you have chosen is perilous in the extreme. You must be prepared to lead fine warriors to their deaths on behalf of your colors. And, I might add, on behalf of the quest you have chosen to undertake.”
She got the feeling Lenora was warning her of more than a Royal Order guardian dying someday. Did the high matriarch know of some new threat to Raina and her friends as they searched for the means to wake the Sleeping King?
“Furthermore,” Lenora continued, “you must accept that those warriors freely chose their path. You must let them walk it.”
Raina stared at the older healer, who stared back. She was missin
g some hidden message Lenora was trying to convey.
The high matriarch said soberly, “Sometimes the things we do are larger than our small lives.”
CHAPTER
2
Eben blinked awake and looked around, disoriented. Why was it so smoky in the pub? No, not smoke. Fog. White, choking fog everywhere. Thick enough that he barely saw Rynn lying on the ground at his feet. He bent over to help the paxan and was struck by the strange weightlessness of his body. As if he’d become a ghost or some other noncorporeal being in the time he’d been passed out.
He shook the paxan, who thankfully woke quickly.
Rynn sat up and looked around curiously for a moment, then his face took on a distinct look of disgust. “Of course,” he grumbled.
“Where are we?” Eben asked.
“We’re dreaming. And this is the dream realm. Where else?” Rynn replied.
Ah. That explained why Will wasn’t here, then. He hadn’t been hanging on to him or Rynn for dear life at the moment they passed out. That ale had really packed a punch. Snuck up on him, it had.
Something wasn’t right about how they’d gotten here, but Eben didn’t much care. He was where he’d needed to go, and Rynn was here to guide him. “How do I find my sister?”
Rynn sighed, sounding aggravated. “Think of her. Concentrate on some specific thing about her—the shape of her face or the sound of her voice, or mayhap some small trinket she always wears.”
Eben knew all those things about his sister. They’d been orphaned young and taken in by Leland Hyland, and it had always been the two of them against the world, and they’d been very close. He focused on Marikeen, and gradually the fog around them thinned, drifting away on unfelt currents of moving air.
A massive encampment sprawled away from him and Rynn in a long valley whose far end could barely be seen, so grand was the scale of this place. Rynn ducked sharply, yanking Eben down behind a rather scrawny bush.
Yet again, Eben was struck by the odd, weightless feeling of his body. When he looked down at himself, he appeared entirely like himself, though, solid and whole.
