At the other end of the room was a fourth door, leading to a balcony that overlooked a courtyard. The same courtyard Loren had seen below, on the other side of the dining hall.
Standing in front of the door was Gregor.
The giant faced out into the world beyond. But now he noticed Loren, and he closed the door as he turned to her.
Loren turned and threw the tapestry aside, desperate to escape. But the passageway had vanished. Now she faced a wall of solid stone. She could not get out.
“This is the only way,” said Niya.
She stood just beside Loren. Wounds covered her body, and her throat was cut—because, of course, Chet had cut it in Feldemar. But her voice did not rattle, her words did not rasp. She looked at Loren with tears in her eyes.
“It is the only way out,” she said again. “Even the Elves told you.”
Gregor stalked towards Loren in the darkness.
THE DREAM RELEASED HER.
LOREN woke in their room in Sidwan. For a moment she panicked, clutching at her thick blanket.
But she did not scream. She kept still and silent, squeezing the blanket, feeling the rough wood floor upon which she lay. In a moment the terror passed. A long sigh rushed out of her, and she closed her eyes.
She gained greater control of the fear each time, much to her relief. The terror of her dreams had been awful in the beginning, and she did not miss that in the slightest.
The others still slept, and she heard no noises from the inn downstairs. Slowly, quietly, she dressed herself and went to the common room. The innkeeper gave her barely a glance as she walked by him to the front door. Outside, the sky had just begun to grey. Dawn would come in an hour or two. Loren went to the innkeeper and bought breakfast—bread and water only, for she did not trust the meat they served here.
After eating, she went for a brief visit with Midnight in the stables. Modest though the inn was, the staff kept the horses well supplied with oats. Midnight nuzzled Loren’s shoulder, as though offering comfort against the fear of her dreams. Loren fed her an old apple she had saved.
She returned to the room and waited for the others to wake. It did not take long. Shiun and Uzo stirred before dawn, and Chet and Annis rose from their pallets soon after. Only Gem remained asleep, curled in the back corner and snoring loudly.
“Shiun, Uzo,” said Loren. “We will ride out today. Go into town and replenish our supplies. Get a new waterskin for Gem—his has nearly fallen apart.”
“We shall need some more coin,” said Shiun.
Loren’s gut did a turn. “Of course,” she said lightly.
She went to her saddlebag and pulled out her coin purse. A few forlorn weights fell into her palm. Loren handed two of them to Shiun.
They were near the end of their money, and she dreaded having to fetch more. Loren served the High King; by law, she could fetch more gold from any Mystic stronghold. But Loren had feared to turn to the Mystics thus far, and she still did. The redcloaks would have to report the transaction to Kal of the family Endil, and that might cause a reunion with the grand chancellor that Loren would rather put off.
Kal had sent them chasing after Damaris in the first place. He had once mentored Jordel, and now the High King had placed Loren under his command. But Loren had been overzealous in her pursuit of Damaris, and Kal would be furious. Strictly speaking, Loren had not disobeyed any direct order. But Kal had not granted permission for her rash course, and Loren had not even captured Damaris. Now her best hope was to find the merchant before Kal found her, and hope her belated success might earn some forgiveness.
She cast her thoughts aside as Uzo and Shiun left the room. The Mystics knew nothing of her dreams, and she meant to keep it that way. Once she was sure they were out of earshot, she went to the corner and roused Gem by shaking him hard. He came awake with a start, swatting at her with his scrawny arms.
“Wha—what?” he groused. “What is it? I am resting.”
“Yes, and overlong,” said Loren. “Get up, for we must all take counsel. I have had a dream.”
“And so have I,” said Gem. “In it were many beautiful young men and an overabundance of food. I wish you had not dragged me from it.”
Loren fixed him with a look. Gem glared back for a moment, but then his eyes widened.
“Oh. You mean that sort of dream.”
Soon he had dressed himself, and then he, Chet, and Annis gathered around Loren in a little circle on the floor. For a moment she felt a rare nostalgia—she knew they must look similar to when the old storyteller, Bracken, would gather the children in her village and tell them tales.
“What brought the dream?” said Chet. “Was it something that happened yesterday?”
“I have never known what causes the dreams,” said Loren. “It is nothing I can control, nor has the waking world ever had much influence upon it. It is as though some unseen force jerks on my strings, dragging me this way and that like a puppet.”
“Yet whatever this force is, it seems to want to help us,” said Annis.
Chet stared at his hands. “If the dreams were meant to help, they might have warned us about Niya.”
They all went silent at that. Chet drew his knees up to his chest. His right hand scrubbed at his left arm, though he was already immaculately clean.
One by one, Loren held them in her gaze. “I mean to tell you everything,” she said. “Everything I saw. No more half-truths. If I had told you everything from the beginning, we might have avoided much sorrow—and then again, we might not have. But I think now that avoiding the truth helps no one.”
But even as she said the words, she winced inside, for there was one thing she could not say. The magestones. Gem knew she had them, and he knew something of their power. And Loren had told Annis not long ago. But she still had not told Chet. He worried too much about her as it was, and he was still too righteous. He held a greater respect for the King’s law than any of the rest of them. The urchin and the smuggler’s daughter took her use of magestones in stride, but she knew in her heart of hearts that Chet would not do the same.
But the magestones had not been an important part of the dream in any case, and so it was easy to avoid mentioning them. She told them all the rest, about the mysterious lover in blue, the cruel man in black, and Mag. Gem wept a bit when Loren mentioned her. Loren told them every strange place she had visited, the ones she had seen in the waking world and the ones she had not.
Then she came to Chet’s part in the dream. Loren paused. She heard his words again as though he spoke them now: I am leaving you. You cannot follow me anymore.
Loren repeated the words exactly. She neither avoided Chet’s gaze, nor looked at him too closely. Then she paused, while Gem and Annis shifted uncomfortably where they sat.
“Of course, I have seen many things in my dreams,” said Loren. “It means nothing, as we all know.”
“Naturally,” said Annis. Gem nodded eagerly.
But Chet met her gaze for a moment. He quickly looked away. But in that moment, she saw an aching sadness within him. As she carried on with the story, he refused to look at her.
The dream spoke true, thought Loren. Sky save me. He is going to leave.
It made her pause, her voice faltering to nothing. In the moment’s silence, Chet glanced at her by reflex. They looked at each other quietly for a long moment.
How could Loren blame him? He had never wanted to go on this mad quest in the first place. Chet had only ever wanted to return home with Loren, there to build a quiet and happy life, letting the world’s troubles pass them by. But he had followed Loren out of love, and he had suffered a fate worse than Loren could imagine. Auntie had bedded him without leave. He would bear the scar of that always. It was what made him sit in the corner staring past the walls, what made him scrub at his too-clean skin.
It was why he could no longer stand to have Loren touch him.
She forced herself to go on. When she finished the tale, Gem shook his head.
/>
“It is an absolute mess. How are we supposed to read the tale of it? Can you not make any of it a bit more clear?”
Loren frowned at him. “And how do you think I should do that? I do not control the dreams, Gem. They come when they wish, and they show me whatever they will.”
“I can control my dreams,” said Gem, sniffing. “Most often I turn into a firemage and roast my enemies with flame. Can you imagine me as a wizard? No doubt fate kept the gift of magic from me because I had been given such a long list of exceptional qualities already.”
“Who could doubt it?” said Loren evenly.
Annis had been sitting in thought after Loren finished her dream-tale. Now she tapped a finger on her chin. “The city you described … it sounds like one of the great cities of Dorsea. And the palace you described sounds very like the king’s palace, in the capital of Danfon.”
Loren frowned. “But I thought you said your mother would never go there.”
“I thought not,” said Annis, shrugging. “Too much power is concentrated there—and therefore too many agents of the King’s law. She could be seen by any constable or Mystic, and then she would be in grave trouble. King Jun and his royal senate have been seeking a way to appease the High King. They could hardly think of a greater gift than to capture and turn over the merchant Damaris, one of the most renowned traitors in the nine kingdoms.”
“Then there you have it,” said Loren. “Damaris could not have gone to Danfon. It is no more true than the idea of her sitting at a fine table in a snowy courtyard.”
“Yet the dream showed her in Danfon,” said Annis. “Did you not say that you saw Hewal in Dahab? And that is where we found him.”
“I did,” said Loren. “But I saw Damaris there, too, and we know now that she never went to Dahab.”
“This is still the best clue we have,” said Annis. “And your example only proves the point. Even when your dreams are unclear, they bring us to Damaris in time.”
Loren shook her head. “I am not sure. Fetch your map. Let us at least see where Danfon is.”
Annis hurried to retrieve it. She laid it out on the floor and began to point out markings. “This is Feldemar to the north, and here is Sidwan, where we are now. To the northeast is the Moonslight Pass that leads to Danfon. If we faced no delays, we could reach the capital in less than a week.”
But Loren’s eye was drawn, almost against her will, to another part of the map. She saw the Greatrocks where they bent south, and little drawings of trees that marked the Birchwood. But to the west of the mountains was the name of a place. She could not read it, but she could not draw her eyes from it.
As she studied the name in silence, something appeared. A small building, almost like a model built of little sticks. At first she did not recognize it, but then she saw that it was a smithy. Its door was plain wood, but above that was a blue sign with a yellow hammer.
Loren shuddered. The building she had seen in her dream. The smithy in the mountains.
Her visions had only ever come to her in dreams, never in the waking world. Was this the same thing? Some effect of whatever magic she had? Or did her imagination play tricks on her now?
Loren put her forefinger on the map. To her eyes, her finger seemed to pass right through the little smithy. That sent another shiver of fear up her spine.
“What is this place?”
Annis frowned. “That is Bertram. A sizeable city, and very important to Dorsean trade. Why?”
Bertram.
She had heard the name before. Xain had told her of it in past days, when they had conspired to sell the stones. He had mentioned it again just before Loren left the High King’s Seat. A smuggler named Wyle lived in Bertram, buying and selling goods beyond the King’s law. In particular, Xain said the man trafficked in magestones.
“I think we should go there,” said Loren slowly. “There is a man in Bertram named Wyle. Xain told me of him. He is a smuggler, like your family, though I am sure he is less well connected.”
The others frowned at each other. Loren knew she must appear mad.
“But Loren,” said Gem, “what does he have to do with Damaris?”
Loren shook her head. “I do not know. Only … only I …” She swallowed against a suddenly dry throat. “The smithy I saw in my dream. I see it again, sitting there on the map.”
A long silence stretched. Gem leaned in to peer closely at the name of the town, as though he expected to see the smithy drawn there.
“That has never happened before,” said Chet.
“No, it has not,” said Loren. “But it is happening now. And Xain told me of Wyle. This cannot be a coincidence.”
Annis shook her head. “I still do not see how it would help. Wyle may be a smuggler, but he is not the criminal we seek.”
“Yet he may be a valuable man to know,” said Loren. “He must have friends and contacts across Dorsea. He may know something of the family Yerrin’s activities. Damaris is gone, and we do not know to where—not for certain. I do not think we will find her by relying on Shiun’s skill as a tracker, considerable though that skill might be. Mayhap Wyle has information that can help.”
“If what Annis says is true, your dream showed us the capital, not Bertram,” said Gem.
“It could have been Bertram,” said Annis, pursing her lips. “They are both great cities. Bertram has at least one palace that could have been the one Loren saw.”
“And even if my dream showed me Danfon, the visions are not always clear,” said Loren. “In Feldemar I saw you turn feral and rip out my throat with your teeth.”
Gem sniffed. “I would use a dagger,” he muttered. Then his eyes widened. “Not that I would ever do such a thing at all, of course.”
Loren flipped one of her throwing knives from her belt and pointed it at him. “You had best not try it.” But she smiled at him.
Annis tilted her head side to side, her expression thoughtful. “In any case, Bertram is a good deal closer to where we are now than the capital is. Even if our search there reveals nothing, we will not have wasted much time.”
“Then it is settled,” said Loren. “We go to Bertram, and then, mayhap, to the capital.”
Gem gave a long sigh. “More riding for endless leagues,” he groused.
But Chet sat silently, his arms folded across his knees. His left hand still idly scrubbed at the skin of his right arm, and his gaze looked at something far away.
“Chet?” said Loren. “What is it?”
He jumped. “What? Nothing.”
“Your thoughts seem to be elsewhere.”
“They are,” he said, shaking his head. “But they are of little consequence.”
“Not to me,” said Loren quietly. Almost she put a hand on his arm, but she stopped herself just in time.
“I …” He frowned. She could see some battle taking place behind his eyes. “I do not think this is a good idea.”
Annis arched an eyebrow. “What? A journey to Bertram?”
“Yes,” said Chet. “I think you are wrong about it.”
Annis’ voice took on an undercurrent of annoyance. “I was not aware you knew much of the great cities of Underrealm. What gives you doubt?”
Chet’s cheeks flushed. “I think … I think we should carry on the way we are going.”
“But we have run out of ideas,” said Loren. “We do not know what to do, if not this.”
“And do you not think that odd?” Chet spoke quickly now, his words pouring as though through a widening chink in a dam. “That we have pursued Damaris this long, and you dreamless, only to finally have a vision after she has evaded us entirely?”
“But that is a gift,” said Gem. “Whatever force has granted Loren these visions, they have given us another just when we needed it most.”
Chet snorted. “Forgive me if I doubt the kindness of whoever has infiltrated Loren’s mind. But it seems no one else is even curious why the dreams come at all.”
And would you feel th
e same, if the visions did not reveal that you plan to abandon me?
The thought came before Loren could stop it. She hated herself for it, biting her own tongue to keep the words from escaping.
Gem opened his mouth to speak again, but Loren stopped him. “Enough,” she said, quiet but just sharp enough to halt his words. “This is the only plan we have. If we think of a better one, we shall act upon it. But in the meantime, we cannot remain in Sidwan until we rot.”
Chet’s gaze darted to her. For a moment she thought he would argue, but then his shoulders sagged. “Very well,” he muttered. “If that is your wish.”
She gave him a smile, and after a moment they began to pack their things for travel. But Loren glanced at him as they worked, and her thoughts gave her no peace.
ONCE SHIUN AND UZO RETURNED, Loren told them she meant to ride for Bertram. They accepted the news with silent nods and readied their packs for travel. Loren wondered what they thought about this sudden change in tack. Thus far in their travels, the party had relied on Shiun’s tracking. This new course must have seemed strange, but the Mystics neither complained nor questioned her.
In truth, she had begun to question herself. The visions in her dreams were strange enough, and she drew no closer to understanding them than she had ever been. But the vision of the smithy on the map … that was something new, and it disturbed her even more. What else might she see in the waking world? When something from her dreamsight appeared in true life, a great unease and disorientation came over her. Sometimes it left her almost unable to act. Now she feared that, in a moment of danger, she might see something that was not there at all. The thought discomfited her. As the day wore on, she caught Chet and the children stealing glances at her from the corners of their eyes, and she wondered if they thought the same thing.
Loren decided to spend one night more in Sidwan before setting out. Damaris’ trail had grown stale, and one more day would make no difference. Since entering Dorsea, they had never spent more than one night in the same place. They needed a rest, and they more than deserved one.
A short while before going to bed, Loren caught Chet’s eye. “Our quarters grow stuffy. I could use a walk in the fresh air before sleep. Would you come with me?”
Yerrin: A Book of Underrealm (The Nightblade Epic 6) Page 4
