Dreamwielder (7 page)

Caile couldn't help but respond. “Sargoth Lightbringer himself was a sorcerer, though.”

“Indeed, as were Vala, Golier, Pyrthin, and Norg. But times have changed, young prince. Mankind has evolved. Civilization has evolved. The New World was a wild land then, populated by shiftless savages, and our forefathers were hardly more than savages themselves. They needed sorcery to conquer the New World and set us upon our path, but sorcery has outlived its usefulness. We needn't the help of stormbringers now that we've mastered irrigation. There's no use for beastcharmers when beasts themselves aren't needed. Those who support the old ways—men like your father and brother—stand in the way of progress. During your stay here, Caile, I hope you'll come to see things correctly. Men who share my vision stand to inherit much. The day of the Five Kingdoms is over. We've evolved. This is the Sargothian Empire now, an empire where all may live without fear of sorcery.”

“And what of your servant Wulfram?” Caile asked.

The Emperor turned from the window to face Caile. “He knows as well as I that when his job is done, I must kill him. Believe me, he longs for the day I will finally put him to rest.”

Storm clouds surround a lone farmstead, and a woman looks up from her garden where she pulls weeds. Soldiers approach, led by a dark, shrouded figure. The woman yells for her husband, but by time he steps out of the barn, the soldiers are there.

Where is she, the shrouded figure asks. Where is the dreamwielder?

The woman shakes her head, and her husband tries to step forward protectively, but one of the soldiers clubs him to the ground. The soldiers crowd around, kick him savagely.

Stop, please, I don't know what you're talking about, the woman cries.

Liar! She was here. Where has she gone?

I don't know. Please, leave him be.

Kill them both, the dark figure says. They're of no use.

One soldier steps toward the woman, knife in hand. The others beat the husband with their clubs. His head cracks open and everything turns red…

Taera woke with a gasp and scrambled to her feet expecting to find herself surrounded by soldiers. She was in her own room though, standing on her bed, wearing her own nightclothes, soaked in sweat. It took her several seconds to realize it had all been a dream, but even with the realization, her heart did not calm in her chest because she knew it was more than a dream. It was a vision, and somewhere soon, if not already, there would be soldiers approaching a lone farmstead.

Makarria stared into the distance from the bow of the skiff. The view had been the same for five straight days—endless ocean as far as the eye could see and an occasional puffy cloud in the sky—but now dark clouds loomed on the horizon. She'd pointed them out to her grandfather when she first noticed them several hours before, but he'd merely told her not to worry about it. He'd been saying that a lot since they set voyage, but Makarria couldn't help but worry. Parmo had told her what she was when the sun had risen on that first day: a dreamwielder. He hadn't meant to tell her much, but she was relentless with her questions.

In the days before Emperor Guderian, dreamwielders were the most revered and powerful of all sorcerers, Parmo had told her, but she didn't entirely believe him. She'd heard him mention the Dreamwielder War often enough in the stories he used to tell her. She knew how the dreamwielders had created horrible monsters by melding humans and beasts together. Parmo assured Makarria that she wasn't capable of doing anything of the sort, that what she'd done to save him was entirely noble, but still, here they were running away. People would be scared of her if they knew what she was. Particularly the Emperor. No wonder her mother had continually told her to not have any dreams. A pang of guilt shot through her at the thought of her mother.
I didn't even say goodbye to her or Father.

“Grampy,” Makarria started to ask, but her grandfather interrupted and corrected her. “Parmo,” he said. “You need to call me Parmo from now on.”

“Right,” she complied, sitting up and turning to face him where he sat manning the rudder at the stern. “Parmo, won't people in the East Islands be scared of me too when they find out what I can do?”

“Perhaps scared, yes, but they won't try to harm you like back home. Besides, we're going to work on learning to control your dreams, right?”

Makarria nodded. She didn't have the foggiest notion how, nor did Parmo for that matter, but it seemed a reasonable notion. When Parmo had told her about her ability, she was not surprised. It was as if she'd somehow known all along she was a dreamwielder and that her grandfather had just put into words something she never knew how to say before. She could think of a half-dozen times when her dreams had seemed so real that she had awoken and thought them to be true, and in a way she had made them true because she really wanted them to be that way. The castle, the dresses, the ponies, the flowers. But what about the dreams she didn't want to be true? What about nightmares? Did she have the ability to make them come to life?

“Makarria!”

“What?” Makarria asked, realizing Parmo had called out her name several times.

“You best secure the yard arm to the bow and tie yourself in,” he said, and she could see he had a look of concern on his face.

The wind was whipping her hair about, and she turned toward the bow to see that the storm was rapidly approaching. The sky was nearly black before them, and the first of the huge ocean swells swept the skiff up onto its crest, then back down into a trough so deep the clouds were blocked from sight for several seconds. Parmo lowered the sail, and as he furled it away, Makarria lashed the diagonally-angled yard arm to the bow of the skiff, so it wouldn't swing about wildly on the mast and knock one of them overboard. Once Makarria had the yard arm secured, she turned her attention to the rope belt she wore and tied the loose ends at either hip to the extra oarlocks at the front of the skiff so that she was securely tied-down in her seat, facing her grandfather at the stern of the skiff. Parmo had made herself tie-in every night while sleeping, but this was the first time she had to tie-in on account of bad weather.

“Alright,” Parmo said, grabbing up the oars, “You're tied in now and you have the bucket. When water starts coming over the sides, you bail out water. If it gets really bad, you'll have to wait until we're in the troughs between waves. Don't look behind you. I'll steer us with the oars and make sure we crest the waves safely. You just bail water and keep your eyes on my back. Understood?”

Makarria nodded.

Seeing that she had the bucket in hand and seemed unperturbed, Parmo sat himself down facing the stern and tied himself in. He secured the oars in the oarlocks and made sure everything was in place. The rudder was fastened secure—he'd steer using the oars now—and he'd mounted his convex navigating mirror at the starboard corner of the stern so that he could see where they were going. It wasn't a pretty sight in the mirror. The waves were big and the sky dark.

They rode up the steep incline of one of the first big waves, and from Makarria's position in the bow it seemed the mainmast and Parmo were directly below her. Parmo leaned heavily into the oars to propel them over the crest of the wave, and suddenly the bottom dropped out beneath Makarria and Parmo was above her as they plummeted down the backside of the wave. Sea spray splashed up and around them, and rain started coming down, slowly at first but increasingly heavy as they started climbing the next wave.

“Have you ever sailed through a storm like this before, Grandpa Parmo?” Makarria yelled over the howling wind.

“Of course, don't worry about it!” Parmo yelled back over his shoulder, but he neglected to mention that the last time he'd navigated a storm like this it had been in a much larger ship and the ship had nearly been torn to pieces in the process.​

Natarios Rhodas shivered and tightened his black cloak around his shoulders as he strode through the streets of Kal Pyrthin toward the castle. A storm was fast approaching and he desperately hoped his business with King Casstian would be brief so he could return to his tower before the rains started. He knew such would not be the case though. King Casstian Delios always argued about the decrees the Emperor and Wulfram sent to him, and if the previous days' events were any indication of how things would turn out, the business with the King would be unpleasant. Natarios grimaced inwardly at that memory of what had transpired at the small farmstead on the coast. Wulfram had sensed that the dreamwielder was there at one point, but the farmer and his wife hadn't been cooperative. With Wulfram it was always best to be cooperative, and the farmers had learned that lesson the hard way. Not that it had helped Wulfram in the least bit; all they learned was that a skiff was missing from the farm. The dreamwielder was still out there somewhere, and she could have sailed anywhere along the coast: south toward the warmer waters of the Sol Sea, west toward Pyrvino, or to Kal Pyrthin. Natarios had left some of his men in Pyrvino to keep a look out for her, and Wulfram had flown south to skirt the coast all the way to Sol Valaróz in hope of tracking her down. That left only Kal Pyrthin to tend to, hence the unsavory task Natarios now had before him.

The people in the streets scurried out of his way, recognizing him as a houndkeeper, and he reached Castle Pyrthin without a single person hailing him or barring his way. He was immediately granted entry and audience with the King. Once inside King Casstian's study, Natarios unbuttoned his cloak to let the warmth from the fire seep into his bones.

“To what do I owe this displeasure?” King Casstian asked, taking a seat in the larger of the two chairs beside the fireplace.

Natarios smiled thinly and sat down in the smaller chair across from him. “There's a sorceress about it seems. The hound detected her a few days past, and Wulfram thinks she may be heading here, to Kal Pyrthin. The Emperor has decreed that a reward of one hundred crowns be offered to the person who turns her in.”

King Casstian sighed. “How many times do I have to tell you, these methods don't work. The only thing you get when you offer a bounty is a bunch of paranoid people and fearmongering. If I offer a reward of a hundred crowns, common folk will be turning in their neighbors because they heard a strange noise in the night. Ruffians will be bringing me the heads of every spinster and crone this side of the highlands, demanding reward for killing some innocent old woman. It's madness.”

“It's the decree of the Emperor,” Natarios remarked. In actuality, the decree came from Wulfram, but it amounted to the same thing.

“It's madness,” Casstian said again.

“I'll do you a kindness and not mention to Wulfram you said that. You know as well as I do that the Emperor wants what's best for all. We can't have a sorceress running loose in the city.”

“I don't need any favors from you, houndkeeper. You're a blight on my kingdom. What do I care if a sorceress is running about as long as she keeps her business to herself? This reward you want me to offer will do nothing but cause panic. My soldiers will be running around on wild goose chases for weeks, chasing nothing when they should be standing ready to protect Pyrthinia from pirates or an attack from the Old World. You want to put my vassals in harm's way. I'll not allow it.”

Natarios wrinkled his nose and scratched at the mat of hair beneath his hood. Even when he was trying to be cordial, Casstian showed him nothing but disdain. “I didn't come here to ask your permission,” Natarios said, continuing on quickly before the King protested, “and you needn't worry about distracting your troops—my men will handle all investigations. Anyone with information about the sorceress is to come to my tower.”

King Casstian narrowed his eyes. “That's beyond your realm of jurisdiction, houndkeeper. The Emperor and I clearly came to an agreement that you had no authority to carry out investigations, try criminals, or punish them. I have it in the Emperor's own writing that—”

“The scenario has changed,” Natarios interrupted. He stood up, hoping to give the impression he was unconcerned and aloof of the King's protest. “I'm not asking your permission,” Natarios continued, “I'm merely here to inform you of what I'll be doing. As a courtesy. If you take issue with the Emperor's decree, you can discuss it with Wulfram when he returns from Valaróz within the week.”

With that, Natarios turned and hurried out of the study. Casstian wordlessly watched him leave, then turned to glare into the fireplace. For over thirty years he had been fending off the Emperor to maintain control of Pyrthinia, but he was slowly losing, he knew. Every day it was something—some new decree that left Casstian powerless to protect his people. He sighed deeply. It was a helpless feeling, and each day more so. There had been a time when he contemplated standing up to the Emperor, but he'd foolishly thought he could persuade the Emperor to see his way with reason, or if nothing else, he could keep Pyrthinia isolated and out of harm's way if he stayed quiet and didn't draw attention to Pyrthinia. It was clear now he had been wrong. Casstian had known for a long time but was reticent to admit it to himself. He had been whittled down to nearly nothing—a figurehead. That's all he was, and the little resistance he had posed over the years had been in vain. It had already cost him the life of one of his sons, his other son was in the lions' den, and now, he feared, the Emperor was after his daughter.

Caile downed his third ale and called for a round of spiced grain spirits from the tavern keeper. At his side, Meinrad tried to follow suit but spilled most of the ale down his chin. Meinrad was Caile's officially appointed liaison to Col Sargoth, but Caile hadn't been fooled for a moment by the title. Meinrad was the Emperor's agent. Whenever Caile wasn't attending court sessions pertaining to Pyrthinian trade matters, it was Meinrad's task to watch over Caile; Caile literally could not go anywhere beyond his private chambers in the keep without him. More importantly to Caile's mind, Meinrad had also been Cargan's liaison and witnessed Cargan's death at a tavern several blocks east of where the two of them now sat drinking. Caile had been in Col Sargoth for nearly a week now and had learned little more than that from Meinrad. The man was taciturn and rigid, but Caile had been showering him with praise and mock adoration for days, pretending to be a spoiled prince looking for nothing more than debauchery and easy thrills. The ruse seemed to be working, and each day Meinrad let his guard down a little more. It had taken a good amount of pleading and prodding to get Meinrad to escort him out of Lightbringer's Keep and to a tavern, but Caile had won out in the end, and here they were, mingling in the noisy tavern like any other city folk. While the mood on the streets of Col Sargoth by day was somber, the people inside the dim, low-roofed tavern seemed to be having no shortage of merriment and mirth.