Dream Magic (43 page)

“I was saying
I’ll make you a bargain. Right here and now, I’m taking the Sunstone. It’s for the best, for reasons I’ve just made abundantly clear.”

This last statement penetrated Trev’s shock. He wheeled and saw
that Old Hob was stooping over the body.

“But I don’t dare carry it, you understand. Not directly.
It can’t make contact with my skin. I’ll leave it around her neck and take the body with me. Then I—”

That was as far as
Old Hob got. His next sound was a loud, squawking one, a noise that reminded Trev of a chicken’s cry of surprise. Trev had grabbed an axe from the hand of a stunned Kindred warrior and place it against the small of Old Hob’s back.

“Leave her body alone.”

Old Hob lurched away and straightened. His manner had changed, and he backed away quickly. Trev advanced, holding his weapon ready to strike.

“Now see here,” Hob said, “there’s no need for anger. What kind of gratitude is this? I saved you all. I made you
r dragon invisible, and gave you the boost of aid you needed at the critical—”

“Shut up, Hob,” Trev said. “Or I’ll take your head now. Leave us be. You’ve done your work. Be glad it was her blood spilled here and not yours.”

Muttering and scoffing, Old Hob walked away through the awakening Kindred. It seemed to Trev that he found steps where there were none, and climbed these invisible stairs into the air over all their heads. Then he slowly faded from view.

Long after he’d left, Trev stood guard over the fallen form of Morgana. Killing her was one thing, desecrating her body and stealing the
White was quite another. He had no doubt in his mind that Hob would have been just as vile of an overlord as Morgana had been—if not infinitely more clever and wicked.

Trev himself eyed the
White, which was slung around Morgana’s neck. He had to admit, he felt a tug toward it. Could he wield two? Brand had done it, however briefly…

No!
He chided himself, such greedy thoughts were dishonorable. He’d already killed her, and he felt bad about that, even if his hand had been forced and she’d richly deserved it. Robbing the dead on top of that wasn’t a thought worth having.

Around him, the Kindred revive
d, groaning. As a group, they wondered where they were and what they were doing. They had only the faintest memories of the battle, thinking that perhaps they’d dreamed the entire affair. Upon learning the truth, of the terrible deeds they’d done in service to the wicked Witch of the Wood, their confusion changed to anger—and then, when they found their broken Queen Gudrin, to sadness.

* * *

The battle at the gates of the keep fell apart. When the witch’s mind was silenced, Oberon was stricken, as were all his elves. The abominations tottered and reeled drunkenly, suddenly without direction. Brand and his men set upon them and quickly cut them down, removing their legs first, then began the grim butchery of killing things that should not be capable of life in the first place.

When that was done, Brand and his remaining men turned dark eyes toward the elves, who lay here and there as if knocked senseless. They all—even Brand himself—thought of massacring their enemies while they were able. But there was no honor in
the act, and they managed to stay their hands.

Instead of removing their heads, they removed their weapons instead. Slet took this time to marshal his Dead army into two companies of lurching, mindless corpses
. They stood still when he commanded them to, and were utterly silent in their ranks.

Brand turned to him, and their eyes met. After a moment of tension, Brand lifted his empty hand and extended it. The two men shook, and Bran
d could see gratitude in the other’s eyes for the act. Few would willingly clasp hands with a necromancer, no matter what good deeds he’d performed.

“Well done, man,” Brand said. “I would call you comrade again. I would forgive your crimes this day, for you have helped save my castle.”

“Thank you, Lord Rabing,” Slet said. His smile widened.

“But,” Brand said, looking at the ranks of Dead. “Those who saved us today now pose a problem—I mean, they
are
the bodies of our fallen. What will we say to their widows—their mothers? What kind of proper burial can we provide a man who stands staring at nothing?”

Slet looked at his army, which he had worked so hard to create, and frowned. At last, he nodded. “I understand what you’re saying. You want me to destroy them.”

“No, not exactly. I think they deserve proper respect, as any fallen warrior should be accorded by our people. What would suggest, Slet? You once suffered the loss of your wife. What would you have us do with her body after we’d used it in this fashion? How would you make things right?”

When Brand mentioned his wife,
Slet looked up sharply. He appeared troubled.

“I hadn’t thought of it that way…I hadn’t thought of them as having loved ones. But of course, they must. I recognize some of
them myself. We went to school with them. It must be hard, Brand, to do what you do. To order your friends to march, knowing they may well die because of your words, your decisions.”

Brand nodded. “It is hard.”

“All right,” Slet said, “if this is over and we’ve won, I will march them down into the crypts. There, I will have each find a place to rest. There are many shelves and alcoves down there, more than enough for ten times this number. When they’re settled, I’ll touch each and release them from service. They will slumber in death as they should be doing now. And by the River, I hope we’ll never need them again.”

“An excellent solution. I too, hope we’ll never need them again.”

Brand noticed then that something under Slet’s robes was moving—something that was wrapped around his waist. Could that be the troll, latched onto him like a suckling beast? He tried not to think about it, and looked away quickly lest he be caught staring.

When the elves were disarmed and began to awaken, Brand had Slet stand guard over them with his army of Dead. He then moved down to where the Kindred had gathered.

It was an unexpected scene. He’d never seen a Kindred crowd of mourners. In their midst was Gudrin, borne on a litter. At the fringes of the group Brand saw Tomkin and Trev. They approached Brand when they saw him.

“Gudrin calls for you, Brand!” Trev said. “She wishes that you speak with her.”

“Can she be healed?”

Trev
shook his head. “I doubt it. Maybe with the power of the Red, but Oberon has only just reawakened.”

Brand turned to Tomkin. “Have my men bring Oberon. He might be able to help.”

Tomkin bounded off, and Brand went to Gudrin’s litter. She looked terrible. Her body had endured great hardships. It was a mass of wounds and blackened areas from where she’d been dropped to the earth by the Rainbow. Brand wondered if the mindless giant had perhaps stepped upon her and crushed her bones with its fantastic weight.

The Kindred were not like humans. They were far less frail. Sometimes
however, this fact didn’t work out to their advantage. Injuries that would cause a man to pass out from pain left the Kindred awake and raving. They struggled on even when their bodies were sliced apart, as the Dead often did.

But as tough as she was, Gudrin was very old, and it was immediately clear that her wounds were mortal. Brand touched her forehead, and felt a great heat there.

“Hold on, milady,” he said, “I’ve called for help.”

“No,” she said in a ragged breath, “not the Red. Do not bring him. He will ruin everything. Listen to me, Brand. This is the moment I’ve worked for since I learned the
White had resurfaced.”

Brand frowned down at her. He did not understand her
and suspected she was raving.

“Just lie still. We’ll do all we can.”

Her hand darted forth and gripped his wrist with surprising strength. One eye that still operated angled up to meet his. The other hung out of the socket and was lifeless.

“
No!
Listen, man!”

“All right. Tell me your tale. What do mean, this is what you worked for?”

She chuckled, coughed, and winced. “Did you think I was entirely in the power of the witch? No. I was influenced, but I had some of my wits with me the entire time.”

Brand nodded, not sure he believed her, and not sure that it mattered. He listened intently nonetheless.

“This is an opportunity. A rare one. It is the time, I’m sure of it.”

“Tell me what you mean.”

“I mean it is time for this cycle to end. For the Jewels to sleep again.”

Brand frowned in incomprehension. He looked around for Tomkin, but he had yet to return.

“Brand, fetch Pyros,” Gudrin said. “The witch had it on a stick.”

Surprised by this, but not by the fact Gudrin wanted her Jewel back, he sought the Orange and lifted it carefully. It dangled from a forked stick, as she had said. Brand did not dare to touch it. The Jewel w
as known to have a vile temper. He’d dared carry two of the Jewels at once long ago, and had vowed never to repeat the trick.

He brought the Jewel to Gudrin
, still dangling from the forked stick. He lowered it to her, offering her beloved stone to her. He thought it might possibly give her some comfort in her final moments.

Gudrin
shook her head. “No, I don’t want it. Take it to the White, which lays upon Morgana’s dead breast. Touch the two together.”

Brand stared at her. “Why?”

“Just do it. For me—as my dying wish.”

Brand shrugged, and carried the stick with Pyros hanging from it to where Morgana lay forgotten in the dust. She had been an attractive, but power-mad, woman. He could ha
ve mourned her passing if she’d not done so much harm to his world.

He dipped the Jewel on the stick down, lowering it closer to the other. When the two were very close, he thought to see a spark pass between them.

Immediately, the air around him seemed to
stiffen
, as if charged with lightning.

He glanced at Gudrin. “Are you sure about this?”

She nodded faintly. “It is the only way.”

Brand touched the two Jewels together, and the world around them shifted forever.

Chapter Eigh
teen

The Consumption

Up until the moment the two Jewels touched, Brand had believed the worst of the day was over. He’d seen the witch fall to Trev’s blade, and he’d seen her army crum
ple with her passing. But when contact was made between the White and Pyros—a reaction began.

It was not a natural event, nor was it a magical happening such as he’d become
accustomed to. He’d seen the Jewels flash, almost as if the Eyes of two Dragons winked. He’d seen them glow in recognition of one another when they drew close. He’d always thought the Jewels were strange things; alive, dead, and neither. They were spirits of a sort, beings that had passed on but which could still affect the world around them.

When the two siblings touched, they transformed, taking
the shape of a rising, swirling cloud. At first, the cloud was white, like fine mist. It loomed high within seconds, filling the sky overhead. But as it grew taller and broader it took the shape of a funnel and the cloud darkened.

All the while it did this, a terrible roaring sound grew. It was wind—the howl of a growing storm.
Brand’s locks were flung about and struck his face.

Most alarming of all
was the disappearance of the White and Pyros together. They’d both vanished before his eyes.

“What’s happening?” Brand demanded, having to shout over the growing storm.

He stared up in shock at the strange thing he’d accidentally created. He thought, in the very center of it, to see a circle of sky as blue and pure as any summer sky could be. But all around that, growing every second, was the storm.

He rushed to
the fallen Queen, and despite her state, he grabbed her tunic and hauled her close to his ear.

“What have you made me do, Gudrin?”

She looked at the storm, then at him with her one good eye. At last, she smiled. Her lips worked, and he had to put his ear close to them to hear her.

“I did what had to be done. I tricked the witch even as she thought she tricked me. It is better this way, Brand. You may not understand today. You may come to curse my name before the hour is out. But I’ve ended this cycle—this round of the Teret. The Jewels will leave Cyrmu, hopefully for a hundred lifetimes.”

Brand stared at her in horror. In his hand, he still held the Axe. As he’d not been certain the trials of the day were over, he’d not dared to put it away. He knew that when he did, he would lose consciousness. So long, so hard had he fought this day, he’d drained his aging body of every ounce of strength it had, and more.

He lifted Ambros now, seeing the Golden Eye in the midst of the twin blades. Could it be true? Could he be witnessing the end of his beloved Jewel
along with all its siblings?

The thought almost broke his mind. He wanted to rage, he wanted to weep. His hand tightened on Gudrin’s tunic, and he felt a blind urge to strike her head from her shoulders. Maybe, just maybe, i
f he struck this old witch down he could stop her spell.

Sensing his mood, Gudrin’s warriors closed around him. They laid hands upon him, showing great daring. Brand ignored them. He knew that if he should desire it, he could lay about him with the twin flashing blades and slay them all before they could stop him—including Gudrin.

For a long moment, the matter hung in the balance, but in the end he controlled himself. If the Axe had been hungry for blood, he probably wouldn’t have been able to—but it had drunk deeply this day. At least a hundred times it had slashed apart flesh and bone. It was sated and almost sleepy. It always became torpid after a battle.

Gudrin watched him with helpless, resigned eyes. He shook his head. How could she have performed such treachery?

“You started all this for me, Gudrin,” he told her. “You sought me, and when you found me, you gave me this Axe. Why would you want to take it away again?”

“I’m sorry, Brand,” she said. “It is time.
The Jewels are all here now, all close by. They can’t escape the storm. They will fade together, forming a single mass. When they are one, they’ll fly apart to haunt some future place when they’re found again. Tell me, do you think our world is better with them, or without them?”

Brand tried to think, but it was difficult. “I don’t know,” he said, “but I know my people are stronger with them. We can compete with the other folk when we have Jewels to threaten them.”

Gudrin nodded, but before she could speak further, she had a coughing fit. Brand felt a pang of worry for her. She would not live to see the morning.

There was a flash then, behind him and over his shoulder. It was a green flash—a release of energy like green lightning.

Brand stared and he was stunned to see a figure running toward him. It was his own wife, Telyn.

In her hands she held the Green, Vaul. He saw the light in her eyes, and knew it to be madness. She’d grabbed it from where it had fallen, and taken it without training, much as Brand had taken Ambros years ago.

“Telyn!” he cried.

She ran to him, but
veered away. He caught her arm and she snarled at him like a beast.

But, when their eyes met, she blinked and seemed to know him. Her eyes changed quickly from savage anger to wonderment.

“I did it, Brand,” she said. “I took it for my own.”

She fell then, at his feet. The Jewel in her hands throbbed, flashing rapidly and filling the region with green light. Brand knew the flashing was in perfect rhythm with his wife’s own heart.

“You see?” Gudrin croaked. “Evil, greed, lust and rage. They bring out the worst in us all.”

“What can I do to save her?”

“Step back, and let the storm do its work.”

“Will Telyn be harmed?”

“I don’t know.”

Brand didn’t leave his wife. Instead, he took up the forked stick that the Kindred had used to carry Pyros without touching it. He used the stick to pry away Vaul from her fingers. Even though she was senseless, she moaned and grasped at the Jewel.

He finally had it loose, and lifted it high, offering it to the cloud.

A
silver spindle came down and touched the Green. A flash of blinding light was released, and Vaul vanished.

Tomkin arrived
soon after and joined them. “What’s going on? Did you release some kind of Sunstone magic, Brand?”

“Yes,” he said, “I guess I did. T
hat was Vaul, Myrrdin’s Jewel. The storm consumed it.”

“What?” shouted Tomkin, greatly alarmed.

His small hand leapt to his breast where he wore Lavatis on a chain. The Blue Jewel was pulsing, as if excited.

Brand told him
some of what Gudrin had said. Tomkin did not take the news well. He leapt upon the old woman and stood upon her broken form, gripping her hair and her tunic at once. He shouted into her ears, raving.

Brand reached down and plucked him away as gently as he could.

“What did she say?” he asked Tomkin.

“She said what’s done is done, and that it would all be for the best in the end. I could kill her, Brand. I really could. Don’t you want to?”

“Part of me does. I love my Jewel as much as the next man. Why—?”

Brand was unable to finish his thought, however, because Oberon arrived at that moment. He stared at Brand, Tomkin and the fallen Queen.
Then his eyes went up to the spinning cloud above them all.

“What have you done?” he cried. “You
’ve touched them together, haven’t you? You let a Jewel of color touch the White? Have you no sense?”

“Gudrin told me to do it.”

“And if a fallen crone in the dust told you to eat a horseflop, would you get out a knife and fork? What a kind of a cretin obeys a half-dead hag like this?”

Brand tried not to
lose his temper with the elf, but it was difficult. There had been too much blood spilled today already.

That said, h
e could not recall ever having seen Oberon so upset before. He was showing true emotion today—more than he had when his own children had died at his feet. Brand supposed that in the end, the old elf loved his Jewel more than he did his kin.

“Shut up, man,”
Brand told the elf. “Try to think constructively. Can we stop it?”

“
Stop it? Are you witless? How many idiots were whelped in the Haven before your mother had the misfortune to—”

Oberon
broke off when Brand struck him. It was a measured blow of his fist, and it ended Oberon’s raving.

The elf
did not strike back. He stared instead up at the storm, which was moving westward now. It seemed bigger than it had been before. Brand suspected that each Jewel increased its size and strength.

“
How many has it consumed?” Oberon asked.

“Three. The Orange, the
White itself and I fed it the Green just now.”

Oberon
stared at nothing for a moment, as if thinking hard. “There is a chance. We could all run in various directions. It would not give up easily…I don’t think it’s ever been evaded successfully before—but we could try.”

Brand straightened and turned his head toward the others, who milled about in confusion
. There was Slet, not far off. He signaled him to come closer.

“Brand?” he heard a weak voice ask. He turned and found Gudrin had lifted her hand and was making beckoning motions.

He knelt beside her again. “What is it?”

“Don’t try, Brand. Let it happen. Let the storm do its work. It will cleanse the world, and everything will look brighter in the morning.
The Jewels have brought all of us nothing but grief and strife. Let them go.”

Brand wasn’t sure what he should do. But when he looked up, he saw Oberon had fled. He’d headed toward the river, sprinting fast.
In his arms, held as mother might hold a wailing babe, was the bloodhound.

“We should all run,” Tomkin said. “I’ll head for Snowdon, you go to Riverton. It can’t get it us all—can it?”

“I don’t know.”

Slet, who’d come near and grasped the situation, now parted company with them. To Brand’s surprise, he did not run away, nor try to hide. Instead, he was walking to where the storm danced in the west.

“You don’t think…” Tomkin said.

Brand nodded. “Yes. He’s brave
—and I think he loves his Jewel less than any of us. It is a vile thing. My guess is he never wants to cause the Dead to walk again.”

They watched as the Storm flashed again with lavender lightning. This time, it did
so at a height. Brand frowned.

“W
hat could—” then he broke off, laughing.

Tomkin who stood at his side, laughed uproariously.

“It’s found Old Hob!” he shrieked with amusement until tears ran from his eyes. “The old bastard has been hanging around in the skies, invisible. I hope he fell on a pitchfork.”

“I wondered what it was doing over there,” Brand said.

The storm shifted, swirling and darkening. It came closer and closer to Slet, who lifted the Black up to it like an offering. The Jewel was consumed like the rest, with a strange explosion of darkness. It did so with an
absence
of light and sound. A silent void bloomed and then was gone.

It was then that another arrived
: Trev.

Brand turned to the lad and his jaw dropped.

Trev spoke to him, but Brand did not hear the words. For all the rest of his days, he could never recall what the boy had said to him. Because all he could do was stare at his long silver locks.

Trev
was
the Quicksilver. He was also a friend, and a hero, and a boy of the River Haven. He’d been at Brand’s side in times of need even as a child, helping to halt the Storm of the Dead. He’d even slain the witch who’d threatened to enslave them all…

And now he was about to be consumed. So young, so early in a life that could be a millennia or more in length. Brand felt his eyes stinging, and Tomkin at his side had stopped laughing.

“You talk to the boy,” Tomkin said. “I’ll distract the storm.”

Tomkin ran off, heading toward the swirling tornado that had now grown stronger than ever. He held aloft Lavatis and made the Blue flash in the face of the
spinning cloud. After a moment, it took the bait and began to follow him. He led it toward the river, following the path Oberon had taken.

“
What’s going on?” Trev demanded. “I beg you to explain, Axeman!”

The sounds of the storm died down somewhat, making conversation easier. But the words did not come to Brand.

He heard a rumbling sound behind him, and realized it was Gudrin. They both knelt to hear what wise thing she might say. Brand felt relief. He did not want to tell the boy that his ending was near.

“Trev,” Gudrin said, “do you know what you are?”

Trev looked confused for a moment, then his face cleared. “You mean, about being the Quicksilver? Like the hound? Yes.”