He broke the surface of the river pool, sputtering and gasping for breath. The river was carrying him farther away from the torusk encampment, but was rushing toward an ominous roar downstream. He churned through the waters, desperate to keep his head above the waves and find some way back to shore.
At last, one of his feet smacked painfully against riverbed stone. In several bounding steps he managed to push himself into shallower waters of the opposite shore.
Then, over the sounds of the rushing river, he could hear shouting. He could not understand the indistinct words but he understood their intention, that the voices were upstream and getting closer.
Galen, dripping wet, launched himself once more into a full run down the riverbank. It was the clearest way out of the woods and the easiest landmark for him to follow in the darkness. The cut of the river gorge soon opened into a wide, wooded slope.
The roaring he had heard earlier was getting louder as he ran. He suddenly knew where he was! This was the Whethril River after all and he was just above the falls! There were caves at the base of that cliff—the dark hiding places of his youth. He knew them well, the woods were full of food, and fresh water would not be a problem. He could hide here as long as necessary, then make his way back to Benyn and find a way to put his life back together.
The crest of the Whethril Falls was suddenly in sight. Galen could make out the Sentinel Rock jutting up from the top of the falls. Mirren Bay glittered beyond in the moonlight. There was a narrow trailhead next to the Sentinel that ran down the steep cliff. He had never navigated it in the darkness before, but he would find out if he could now.
He was within ten steps of the Sentinel when he noticed the darker figure standing before the jutting rock.
Galen tried to change direction, but he skidded across the smooth river stones on the shoreline. His feet slid out from under him, and he fell backward into the shallow water.
“Wait!” the shadowy figure called.
Galen knew the voice. He slowly stood up, dripping freezing water.
“Who are you?” Galen huffed through labored breaths.
“Someone you have met before, I think,” the hooded man replied. He held up both of his empty hands. “All I want is to talk with you.”
“I don’t have much time for talk.”
“Then we should speak quickly,” the shadow said.
Galen considered for a moment. “Am I dreaming?”
The shadowy man slowly lowered his hands. “No . . . not unless I am dreaming.”
“Or unless we’re both in someone else’s dream.” Galen sighed.
The shadowy man drew back his hood and laughed nervously. The face, the cropped, light blond hair, Galen had seen them so clearly in his mad dreams. He had wondered if he were somehow dreaming that same face in his shop just before the Election. Now he was standing here at the top of the falls, talking to a man from his nightmares.
The waterfall rumbled in the night.
“We really haven’t much time,” the Inquisitor said, his eyes flashing in the moonlight. “It is the most extraordinary thing . . . us talking here like this.”
Galen drew himself up from the riverbank and stood. His rose doublet was soaked and ruined but he barely noticed. “Yes . . . yes it is. I dreamed about you just the other night. Odd, it was in this same spot where you and I met in my dream.”
“Perhaps not so odd as you think,” the Inquisitor replied carefully. “I dreamed that same dream, except that there was a woman standing by that stone . . .”
“Yes!” Galen exclaimed. He took a step closer to the priest. “Yes! A woman with wings . . .”
The Inquisitor smiled. “She floated above the ground . . .”
“Yes! And her voice sings the most exquisite pain . . .”
“. . . And joy,” they finished together.
Galen took several anxious steps closer to the monk. “Please! I don’t understand any of this. What has happened to me . . . what is happening to us?”
“It is simple: you . . . you’ve heard the call of the Elect,” the Inquisitor said sadly. “You are insane. You are a threat to the church of Vasska and a danger to the faith that keeps the peace throughout Hramra.”
“No, please!” Galen cried. “I’m not insane . . . no more than you are, Father! I’m no danger to the faith! All I want is to go back to my old life. I wouldn’t harm anyone or bother anyone . . . especially the church, Father!”
“I am sorry, my child,” the Inquisitor intoned.
“But you were there!” Galen begged. “You were in the dream and you knew that it was real . . . real as anything here!”
The sounds of the pursuing monks rose in Galen’s consciousness for the first time. They were near now.
“Come back with me,” the Inquisitor intoned quietly as he took Galen by his shoulders. “We’ll take care of you.”
“No!” Galen screamed. He grabbed the monk and tossed him aside, knocking him to the ground. “No! I don’t want your care! I want my life back!”
There was a whirring sound somewhere behind him and a blinding thump at the back of his head.
Galen pitched forward. Darkness closed over his mind as he fell for a seeming eternity into unconsciousness. His final thoughts were of the beautiful winged woman at the top of the falls watching him tumble into the darkness with tears in her eyes and his own words rattling through the blackness . . .
“But you were there!”
8
Dwynwyn
Once upon another time, in a distant land of myth . . .* There was a Seeker faery by the name of Dwynwyn. Seeker Dwynwyn floated toward the top of Brideslace Falls, a puzzled expression on the delicate, sharp features of her face. She preferred solitude to the crowded halls of the royal court, where she felt constantly reminded of the differences that separated her from every other caste in the kingdom. Even if she were of a more common caste, she knew that she was not the most desirable of the faerykind. Her nose was too short, turned upward at the end slightly as though someone had come along and pushed it there. Her skin was a deep chocolate tone, the darkness considered very becoming in a faery of the Qestardis, but her large eyes were set too far apart for the likes of most of the faery suitors at court. Her hair was brilliant white, carefully accented with two blue streaks at each temple denoting her rank and her calling at court.
She hovered at the top of the falls, considering. Perhaps it was her calling at court that drove the male faeries away. Seekers were always thought of as being set apart from the majority of faeries. It was the Seekers’ job to search the face of Famarin—their world—and find new ways of bringing things together. Combining truths into greater truths: that was the calling of a Seeker. It was a calling which was utterly required in the faery courts and completely frowned upon by any potential in-laws.
Yet despite the discomforts of those differences, she would never have considered her station as anything but her fate dictated by Grand Truth that governed the lives of all the Fae. She was Dwynwyn, simple as that.
Dwynwyn spread her wings—a glorious pattern of deep violets and cobalt blue whirled through a transparent expanse—and floated silently over the crest of the waterfall. Next to the falls, a tall pillar of rock jutted toward the darkening sky. Alighting, she curled her wings about her protectively, shielding her from the night that was falling over the shore.
“He is gone now,” she said to herself, the whisper of her voice echoing beautifully among the trees.
“Who is gone, m’lady?” spoke an impatient voice into her ear.
Dwynwyn turned toward the sound. In all her deep reveries, she had forgotten her sprite that came to perch on her shoulder. Cavan was a good and loyal assistant, one of the brightest of the third caste servitors she had ever met, but his impetuousness often tested her calm. His nose was long and pointed. His wings favored the mothlike patterns of his kind. He had already started to glow in the twilight.
“You well know who I am speaking of,” she re
plied.
“Ah, the strange man-creature!” Cavan spoke quickly. Cavan, like every other caste of the Fae, found the ways of all Seekers to be an unfathomable mystery; therefore anything out of the ordinary gave him hope. “Does he still trouble your visions?”
“He does trouble my second sight, Cavan,” Dwynwyn replied. “Not just my sight but sounds, tastes, and smells.”
“Unique!” the sprite cried out in excitement.
“Unique, yes,” Dwynwyn said calmly, considering the light of the setting sun as it sparkled across Estarin Bay to the southeast.
“Then perhaps he is the key—the key to the new truth* that you seek?” Cavan replied quickly. “He must be the answer! There is so little time left to us . . .”
“I am well aware of the time, Cavan.” Dwynwyn glanced sideways at the sprite. “You cannot rush a Seeker. New truths are not uncovered with each hour of the day. They come to us; we do not go to them.”
“But you’ve said yourself that everything depends upon discovering a new truth.” Cavan’s voice spoke with an annoying whine. “Without it, the fate of all Qestardis is sealed to our doom!”
Dwynwyn held her anger carefully in check, just as she did so often with the rest of her emotions. Icy calm had served her well in her calling. Her voice was glacial. “No one is more aware of my responsibilities to the queen than I am, Cavan. This man of my vision may well be the key to the new truth that I seek—but he also may not. A Seeker cannot dictate when or where a new truth may come.”
Cavan lapsed into an uncharacteristic silence. Dwynwyn could see that she had offended him.
“Would it delight you to learn that I saw him in my waking hours as well?” she said quickly.
“Here?” The sprite leaped from her shoulder, flitting anxiously before her face. “Tell me! Tell me the truth of it!”
“I walked the woods today for reasons that I cannot say in truth,” she replied. Indeed, Dwynwyn knew that she could not speak her motivations as a fact, for she herself was not sure of them. It was always like that for her; she never quite understood the deep forces within that drove her toward uncovering new truths. Those few other Seekers she had spoken with found it as much an unknown as she herself. What had brought her to the woods this day and why this particular path? What causes had foreshadowed and destined her to this place at this time? She could not name the causes of her coming, nor could she fully ascribe the fortuitousness of her journey to strictly random events. It was an undiscovered truth, and as such, should not be voiced. “I was compelled by forces which I do not recognize or explain. Yet I did come here and I did bring my tatting lace. As I sat in the glade near the river, I spied the man from my dreams in the eye of my mind, as a memory of fact experienced for the first time.* There, floating in the air above the glade, this man knelt weeping. His voice called to me from the lace in my hands, as though the lace itself were holding us apart.”
“Did you understand him, m’lady?” Cavan asked, eyes wide. “Did he tell you a new truth?”
“No.” Dwynwyn looked to the ground. “His words sounded harsh, like rocks tumbling down a hillside. I knew that the voice came from beyond the lace. Somehow my lace was hurting him, though how I could not say. Unbidden, I pulled apart the tatted lace, opening up the pattern in my hands.”
“Did you relieve his suffering, m’lady?”
Dwynwyn smiled slightly. “I am not sure, Cavan, for as I pulled a hole in my lace, he fell from the air.”
Cavan flashed with surprise. “You plucked this creature from the sky!”
“I did not pull him,” Dwynwyn repeated. “He suddenly fell.”
“Through a hole in your tatting lace?” Cavan arched his brows at the thought.
“I cannot say in truth,” Dwynwyn replied. “But he did fall in the eye of my mind. In this strange memory, I thought he traveled down the River Sandrith to these falls where I have seen him before.”
Cavan darted about the top of the falls, his light reflected in the rushing waters. “I do not see him, m’lady!”
“Nor do I, Cavan.” Dwynwyn folded her arms. The night was deepening. She should return before she was missed. “He is out of my mind once more.”
“Perhaps that is his gift, then . . . to disappear?”
Dwynwyn shook her head. “I do not believe he has a gift, Cavan.”
The sprite stopped in midflight. “No gift? All the creatures of Famarin are known to have a gift . . . a gift of the gods! Perhaps he had wings?”
“No wings, Cavan. He does not fly.”
“Gills, then . . . perhaps he is of the merfolk?”
“No. He walks the land.”
“Serpent, then?”
“No . . . and the time has come for us to return.”
The sprite landed once more on Dwynwyn’s shoulder. “It is not possible. All creatures of Famarin have a gift.”
Dwynwyn looked down the coast to the northeast from the falls. The shoreline curved around gently from the cliff below. In the distance, she could make out the crystal towers of Qestardis, the greatest city of all the Sine’shai lands. Its broad avenues radiated inland from the shoreline of the bay. Its magnificent, delicate towers reached toward the stars emerging in the sky above, aglow with their pastel, inner light.
“Please, Seeker,” the sprite asked, his voice anxious once more, “is this creature the answer you are looking for?”
“No, Cavan, he is not,” Dwynwyn replied, her eyes still gazing on the incomparable beauty that was the center of her nation. “Would that he were! For unless I discover some new truth . . . some unique combination of truths that has not occurred to us before . . . then I fear that all we hold dear will be destroyed before the season is out.”
With that, Dwynwyn spread her wings gracefully and floated up into the night sky. Her eyes never left her home.
Qestardis was older than the oldest of the faery—and that is old indeed. Its foundations stretched beyond memory of any living faery. Its roots reached deep into the Seven Lords and all the trouble those origins implied.
The memories of the Fae—as they often refer to themselves—are long indeed. The faeries’ histories tell of the eternal nature of the Fae and of their immortality. It is one of their gifts from the gods, spoken of in the ancient texts. They spend their lives on Famarin moving from one truth to the next as they attain their different levels of enlightenment—all strictly held within the bounds of their castes. The search for truth is the center of all the faery existence. Indeed, it is generally known that when a faery reaches an understanding of the absolute truth, then that faery passes into the Grand Truth wherein the spirit is dissolved from the body and the faery becomes one with the gods.
This aspect of enlightenment, however, is a rare event in the recorded annals of the Fae, for only a few legendary members of their kind actually lived long enough to achieve that blessed state, and none within the direct experience of any living Fae. Death visits the delicate faeries often and in many forms. The roc of the air hunts them both for sport and for their meat. The barbarian kraken—wild nomads of the Qe’tekok Sea and wanderers of the De’Phenith Ocean—regularly attack the faery ships that cross whatever waters they inhabit at the time. Disease, illness, and accident all take faeries long before their enlightenment. The Fae have long been hunted by creatures of nature and have hunted them in return with greater effect.
Such dangers, however, were nothing when set against their two greatest enemies: the Famadorians and their own brother clans.
The Famadorians were of the lowest caste—the fourth caste as reckoned by the Fae, a large group which included races as diverse as mermen, selkies, centaurs, satyrs, and minotaurs. The Fae considered all of them to be of a single caste: barely civilized, barbaric, uneducated, and incapable of much learning. Each of these races considered themselves to be the true eldest of the elder races—and despised the faeries for asserting otherwise. The unshakable belief in the superiority of the Fae over the Famadorians—which es
sentially included any race that was not Fae—made relations with Famadorians occasionally strained and far more lethal.
Yet deadly as the continuing wars and conflicts with the Famadorian races were, they were nothing compared to the wars among their own kind. In the elder days, the Seven Lords ruled the Fae with a unified voice. They banded together millennia before, defeated the Famadorians, and established the supremacy of the Fae over all of Sylani’sin—the Fae lands. Yet not a hundred seasons passed before the Seven Lords fell into bitter dispute over the true path of the Fae and their destiny. The Seven Lords shattered the Circle of Truth and prepared for war, each knowing with absolute conviction that theirs alone was the true path for the future of the Fae, that the gods were on their side, and that they were destined to establish their truth, by force if necessary.
And force, of course, had been necessary.
The War of Seven had ground through the centuries like an endless millstone. Its grist had been the bones of successive generations of faeries from all the Kingdoms of the Seven and the various castes and families of which they were a part. Its harvest had yielded only a precarious and deadly balance, with none of the Seven gaining supremacy over another.
It was a balance that had sustained Qestardis, her faery queens, and her castes for over a thousand years.
It was a balance that was coming to an end.
Seeker Dwynwyn smiled softly at the sight of her beloved city as she approached it through the evening sky.
The seven towers of the encircling wall glowed with brilliant light in the evening. Each spire had been drawn up from the foundational rock beneath and compelled into its spindle shape. The towers were each meant to honor the Lords and the hope for reconciliation of the Seven, for which successive queens had long given up hope. The circular outer wall was formed after the ancient tradition of the faery, reminiscent of a time when the faery ring was both an enticement and a trap for the Famadorians who should cross one. Now this great wall of smooth-shaped granite protected the Qestardan Fae. It reached out from the slopes of the Forest Basin into the waters of the Estarin Bay. Here, above the long docks of the city, rose the tallest of the towers. At its peak shone the light of Qestardis, a beacon to the returning fleets and a light calling all the Fae of Qestardis home in the deepening night.
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