A Dagger of the Mind (The Imperial Metals)

by Daniel Antoniazzi

  “No, I can’t,” Eric said. “But I can teach you how to land. I can help you. I can support you.”

  Nuria glared into Eric’s eyes. Her own pupils reflected the sky, like mirrors. And deep inside her, her will reached out, and fought off the fear, only for a second. Only long enough to say...

  “Save me...”

  Eric hugged her, pulling her body in close to his. She shut her eyes...

  ---

  Landora knelt beside Nuria. She held her hand out, causing sparks to fly out of the campfire. They hit the soldiers as they closed in. The burns forced the assailants to back up, but only for seconds at a time.

  Duncan crawled along the ground. The guard he had been chasing was limping to Landora’s flank. And the weary Turin-Guarde wouldn’t know what hit her. She was too distracted by the other attackers.

  Duncan hefted himself to his feet, charging forward, even with the stinging in his ankle, tackling his guard to the ground. The guard, trapped in close quarters, drew his dagger and planted it in Duncan’s ribs. Duncan rolled off, clutching his wound.

  Landora felt the guards close in on her. They grabbed her, and she was so tired, she couldn’t even lift her arms to fend them off. They dragged her away from Nuria...

  ...but the weird part was that Nuria was standing. And Eric was standing with her, his arms wrapped protectively around her.

  “Stop!” Eric shouted in Turin. The guards all froze at the sound of his voice. They let Landora go. She dragged herself to the injured Duncan.

  “What’s going on?” one of the guards asked.

  “We have all been tricked,” Eric responded. “And we have a lot of work to do.”

  Chapter 50: The Lonely Souls

  Emily knocked on Jareld’s door. He kept the same quarters that he had as the Baron von Wrims. They were technically noble quarters, but nobody wanted to reassign him. He had, after all, uncovered Landos’ betrayal. He was, in fact, the Magistrate. And he had, in a few strokes of his pen, restored order to the Kingdom.

  “Come in,” Jareld called.

  Emily entered. The room was the same as when she had left it, but the desk was overrun with papers. Jareld’s obsession with creating a new Kingdom, one with elements of democracy... It had taken over the scholar’s mind and his room.

  “What can I help you with?” Jareld asked, sitting at his desk again. “I’m very busy.”

  “Something’s wrong with you,” Emily said.

  “Nothing is wrong with me.”

  “You don’t seem to be yourself.”

  “You’re confused, Emily. I pretended to be the Baron. But now I’m just me.”

  “No, it’s more than that. The meeting we had last night...”

  “What about the meeting this morning?” Jareld said.

  “We haven’t had a meeting this morning yet,” Emily insisted. “Though... Wait a minute. We should have had one this morning, right?”

  “Would you mind shutting the door?” Jareld waved to the doorway. Emily turned to the door, then remembered that it should have been destroyed. That only a day ago, she and James Avonshire had plowed through it to get to Landos. She turned back to Jareld...

  He smirked. Like he was capable of pure evil. And that’s when Emily realized she was dreaming.

  “No...” she said.

  “It’s too late,” Jareld said, but his voice was deeper. More sinister. “We already have the rest of the Council. We already had the Queen and the Regent...”

  “You don’t have me,” Emily said.

  “We wanted to do something special for you.”

  And then they weren’t in Jareld’s quarters. But instead on the jousting fields, standing below the tents. It was a bright summer’s day. The first day of summer. The day her family died. There they stood, like porcelain dolls. Her Father and Mother. Her Brothers and Sister. Lined up, expressionless, looking down on her with glassy eyes.

  Of course Emily knew that they didn’t all die that day. Her older brother was killed in Hartstone on the same day. Her younger brother would die more than a week later, in an ambush on the road. But that didn’t lessen the blow as the figurine of her father shattered. The crystalline pieces of him crumpled to the ground.

  “Does it ever get exhausting,” Jareld asked, though now Emily knew it wasn’t really Jareld, “Saying goodbye?”

  And then her Mother shattered, falling to pieces. Emily reached out, shrieking as she watched the Queen disappear.

  “Everyone you love,” Jareld said, circling her, “Taken from you before their time.”

  And her two brothers cracked open, like eggs slammed against stone. The shards of them slipped away. Only her sister Helena remained. Emily reached out to her, hoping that somehow her outstretched arm could save her last sibling.

  “Do you ever wonder if you are cursed?”

  “Helena!” Emily called out, but she had lived through this nightmare before. Her sister fragmented, exploding in a mist of dust. Blown away in the wind. Erased from sight and mind.

  “And why stop there?” Jareld said. “Your husband died during the War. You had faith in Michael, but he also left you.”

  “Stop it,” Emily said, “I’ve lived through these things. I don’t need to live through them again.”

  “And then the Council turned on you,” Jareld added. “You will always be alone. Betrayed. Abandoned. The Council all fell before me...”

  And now the Council was standing behind Jareld. And they all had the same blank expressions they had during the meeting. Their wills had been broken in the hands of some terrifying force.

  “But that wasn’t the worst of it, was it?” Jareld said, stopping right in front of her. Staring her down. “I was the worst of it. I vanished. Your curse even chased me away. And when I came back, I wasn’t me. I was transformed...”

  And with that, Jareld began to grow. He became taller, stronger. His muscles tore through his clothes as his skin became scaly and tough. He had become Grimsor, the fiery demon of nightmares.

  “I saved you for last,” Grimsor said, “Because being alone would scare you the most.”

  “Please, take them away,” Emily said, cowering, pointing at the Council.

  “Emily Brimford,” Grimsor said, “You have been--”

  “OK, enough of that,” said Vye. Grimsor and the Council spun around to see Countess Vye sitting in the King’s Pavilion. On the throne, of course. Arms crossed, like she was pissed and impatient with everyone. Emily backed up to stand below the Pavilion. To face the Council with Vye. She spat at Grimsor.

  “You know what I learned from all these tragedies?” she said to Grimsor, “I’m never alone.” She looked up at Vye, “Took you long enough.”

  “Sorry,” Vye said, “I had to make sure they were all in the same place.”

  “What are you doing here?” Grimsor screamed at the Countess.

  “I had a little chat with Emily,” Vye said, “When she fell asleep tonight. We figured out what happened to the Council, and we’re here to fuck up your plans.”

  Vye swept her arms out. A fierce wind howled across the field, whipping against everyone’s skin. Vye glared at each member of the Council in turn, finding his or her own inner strength and will, turning it against Grimsor’s grasp, helping each of them fight off the Demon’s control.

  She found the memory in James Avonshire’s mind, the one where his father was murdered, and he did nothing. Nevermind that he was five years old at the time, Grimsor had twisted his guilt into a cage for his mind...

  She learned that Sir Gaelin of Trentford had once slept with his brother’s wife. Passion and wine had overwhelmed their sensibilities for a night. Not so great a sin, except when his brother found out, he started drinking, and hadn’t stopped for three years now. And he started hitting his unfaithful wife. Was it Gaelin’s fault? Grimsor made him think so...

  Vye found secrets and sins that each of the Council Members held close to their hearts. She saw how Grimsor had manipulated
them. Weakened their resolve with fear. Not the fear of revealing their sins. But the fear we all carry, that we are, at some level, terrible and flawed people. Undeserving. Evil.

  In a dream that lasted only minutes in the real world, Vye’s mind felt like she was contending with Grimsor for days. Weeks. For every two minds Vye freed, Grimsor would retake another. She was going nose to nose with an evil older than the earth itself, fighting for every inch of his slaves’ minds.

  And there was no measurement for their proximity. Two people clasping hands would have been further away than Grimsor was to Vye at that moment. For in the Dreamscape, they were scraping their raw wills against one another. Beating each other up with ethereal punches. Whaling on their souls with roundhouse epiphanies.

  But Vye felt the battle start to turn, slowly. She learned the secret. The same secret she had shared with Emily. She was not alone. And though Grimsor was ancient, he could not contend with living, human souls if they were determined to fight them.

  So she had to show the Council that their fears and guilt were real, but they were not alone. She opened herself up to them, and showed them her last battle with Argos, on the Lunapera, six years previous. And she didn’t just show it to them, like an actress in a play performing a scene. She let them live through it.

  They each felt the sting. The grasp on their hearts. The moment of Rage that Vye had never been able to shake from her memory. The time she had reached into the deep recess of her hate and murdered Argos. He needed to be murdered. He had to be stopped. But Vye knew she had tapped into something dark and carnal when she did it.

  A searing white light burst through the dream. Emily, Vye, and the Council all stood facing Grimsor on the desolate fields of some forgotten war. They had won. They were free. But Grimsor only laughed at their victory.

  “Very well,” he snarled. “Your minds are free for now. But you have spent yourselves on this battle. You have worn out your wills. And I am here now.”

  “Where?” Vye asked.

  “At your front door,” Grimsor said, and vanished.

  ---

  Emily woke. She was disoriented. She had been through a strange dream. It had started with her talking to Vye, even though Vye wasn’t on her mind when she went to sleep. And they had made some kind of weird plan. And then others were there. And then there was a long and tiring struggle.

  She rose from her bed with a sense of urgency. She had to get to the west tower. She slipped into her boots and she scrambled up the flights of stairs until she was on the parapet facing the western sea.

  The rest of the Council was there. None of them could explain why they all felt the need to be there. None of them could fully remember the strange dream they had lived through. None of them had the training in the Dreamscape necessary to hold onto it.

  They all exchanged glances. Like they all knew some secret. Like they had all shared some embarrassing moment. A drunk party. But none of them said a word. Because the sight on the horizon was too startling.

  A fleet of ships. Thousands upon thousands of small rafts. Thousands upon thousands of soldiers. An invasion fleet.

  But even worse than that. Before the fleet. In front of it. The water was rising. A wave was building up. Every second it grew taller. It wouldn’t hit land for another ten minutes, but when it did, it would be a hundred feet high, and it would wipe out the city.

  Doom was coming for Anuen...

  Chapter 51: The Turin Initiative

  Duncan was the first to be healed. His was the only wound that was even close to fatal. Landora collapsed into a stupor, recovering her strength while Eric collected the injured Turin soldiers and fixed them up. Nuria helped when she could, but she was also weak from her dream encounter.

  As the sunlight crept over the horizon, Eric took council with Duncan and Landora.

  “The Regent is still in the grips of this demon,” Eric said.

  “We can rescue her,” Landora said. “We can all go into her dream together.”

  “First, we need to move the troops,” Eric said. “They will have arrived at the volcano by now. And Grimsor knew it was going to go active very shortly.”

  “Do you have the authority to override their orders?” Duncan asked.

  “No,” Eric shook his head. “We would need the Regent’s signature.”

  “Surely this is a time you’d be willing to cheat,” Duncan suggested. “Issue fake orders?”

  “Forgery isn’t one of my best skills,” Eric argued.

  “OK, but you can transport the troops faster than they can march, right?”

  “A Shadow Gate?” Eric said, “For an entire army?”

  “Can it be done?”

  “I’ve never opened a Gate for so long.”

  “We could help,” Landora suggested. “Nuria, too. And you could even bring the twins.”

  “But none of you know how to open the Gate.”

  “We don’t need to open it,” Landora said. “You’ll open the Gate. We just have to help keep it from closing.”

  “Can it be done?” Duncan asked.

  “Desperate times...” Eric said.

  ---

  Nuria caught her proverbial breath, curled up under a blanket by the fire. All around her, the Turin soldiers who had recently been trying to kill her milled around, whispering in their own language. All of them sent unabashedly awkward looks her way.

  But she felt too cozy to care. The wind was chilling across the high plateau. But the fire was warm, and her blanket was snug, and anyway, Vye was sitting across from her. Wait...

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Nuria said. “Am I dreaming again?”

  “You just nodded off for a second,” Vye said. “Figured I’d pop in for a chat.”

  “You know, sometimes I have the kinds of dreams you wouldn’t want to see,” Nuria said.

  “Nothing I haven’t dreamed before.”

  “He got me.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Grimsor. Just for a minute. When we were rescuing Eric.”

  Vye, or at least the dream projection of her, stood and raced to Nuria’s side, wrapping her arms around her pupil. It may have been the most maternal thing she’d ever done, and it wasn’t even in real life.

  “Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “What?” Nuria pulled away from Vye’s embrace. The way Vye had said it made it sound like an accusation.

  “He controlled you. He knows what you know.”

  “It was only for a moment.”

  “A moment in your dream. But your mind was opened.”

  “I wouldn’t have told him anything.”

  “Not on purpose. But any secrets you had, he knows them now.”

  Nuria looked around. Even in her dream, the Turin soldiers still milled around the campfire. And over by the cave entrance, Eric, Landora, and Duncan took quiet council. Nuria stared at Duncan...

  “I’m in love with Duncan,” Nuria said. “He must know that now.”

  “That is not a dangerous secret,” Vye insisted.

  “He knows what we saw. In the cave.”

  “Show me.”

  And they were in the cave. Just Nuria and Vye now, wandering around the perimeter of Grimsor’s cage. Even in the dream, Nuria didn’t place them on the pedestal.

  “It looks so different,” Vye commented. Nuria gave her a strange look, to which Vye added, “Frost showed me his memory of this place. But he hadn’t been here in thousands of years. Your recollection is much more precise.”

  “We found these markings along the walls and floor,” Nuria said, “But I’m not sure they look right in my dream. They were all gibberish to me. Duncan said one of them was about sinking an island. Losmourne, he said.”

  Vye staggered in her steps. Nuria offered a hand of support, but Vye wasn’t really falling, just as she wasn’t really in this cave.

  “What’s wrong?” Nuria asked.

 
; “Something’s happening,” Vye reported. “I was just in a dream with the Council Members in Anuen. And I don’t know what happened after they woke up, but... I think they’re in trouble.”

  “You should go,” Nuria suggested.

  “I will, in a minute. You should see if Eric can send any kind of help.”

  “I will.”

  Vye leaned against the cave wall. She noticed that all the markings kept changing. Every time she turned her head. They were random, shifting patterns. Except for one...

  “What’s this marking?” Vye said.

  “Oh, yeah, that one’s real. Duncan made a point of it. It means something like an unfinished thought. Or an incomplete--”

  ---

  Nuria startled awake. Duncan had nudged her from her slumber.

  “Nuria, how are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I hope you’re well-rested. I need you to come with us and help Eric.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To an active volcano. Leave the blanket. You won’t need it.”

  Chapter 52: The Secrets of the Dead

  Vye sipped her tea. It tasted really good, but that was because it wasn’t real tea. It was dream tea. She wanted it to have a dash of honey and a splash of lemon, and, because it was her dream, it was even the perfect temperature.

  She was back in the room with the fireplace. Her dream vacation home. Her mental convalescence suite. And Johann Frost was there, tending to the fire, even though you really didn’t need to do that sort of thing in a dream.

  “Can you sink an island?” Vye asked.

  “Well, hello to you, too,” Frost retorted.

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize we cared about formalities in here.”

  “Doesn’t hurt to be polite.”

  “Can you sink an island?”

  “No. Why, is there an island that’s bothering you?”

  “Losmoure.”

  “Really? It always seemed so peaceful.”

  “It’s not bothering me. The fact that it disappeared is bothering me. I fought Argos. And I fought Selene and Helios. They were fucking powerful. But I don’t think they could have just drowned an entire island. Not one that big.”