A Dagger of the Mind (The Imperial Metals) (17 page)

Book
4

Truths Revealed

Chapter
31: Life Is But A Dreamscape

“Say that again,” Vye insisted.

“You’re dreaming,” Frost said. “Right now. And ever since you collapsed holding up the North Tower of Hartstone Castle.”

“So, I’ve been imagining all of this?”

“No, no, no. You’re ignoring everything you’ve learned. You are dreaming all of these events, but you’re not imagining them. I am real. But we’ve only ever met in your dreams.”

“So that bald woman-- Selene-- never attacked me in my bed?”

“No. She attacked you in the Dreamscape. She thinks your body is dead, so she wants to make sure your mind is destroyed as well. If they knew your body was still breathing, they would attack it in the real world as well.”

“Why attack me in the Dreamscape at all?” Vye said. “If they think I’m dead, does it matter if there’s some part of me in here?”

“It matters. Because of me,” Frost said. “Let me finish the story.”

Frost waved his hand and they were were in a frozen tundra. They were standing outside the same cave Vye had seen in her dream. Well, her first dream. The dream before the dream in which she thought she was awake.

There was snow everywhere, but Vye was not cold. She knew not to be cold. From inside the cave, voices shouted at one another. Frost led them through the entrance, into the darkened cave.

“It had taken a lot of secret planning,” Frost said, “And I had to become good at Dreamscaping, to protect my secrets from Grimsor and the others of my order. Eventually, I tricked the demon into this cave.”

Vye followed Frost through a short tunnel in the cave until they came to a huge, open room. The dome. Just like the one Landora had seen in the Turinheld, though, of course, Vye didn’t realize that.

Grimsor was there, fighting off a half dozen mages, including a younger Frost. On the ground, another two dozen men lay dead.

“We fought down to the last man,” Frost said. “We finally had him where we needed.”

Grimsor stepped into the middle of the platform, and the younger Frost called out, “Now!”

Immediately, four of the remaining mages cast different spells on different corners of the raised platform. Grimsor cried in anguish, looking to the sky and howling. But as he seemed to be at his most enraged, he started turning to stone. His skin lost all pigmentation, and the fire between his horns went out.

The four mages who had cast the spell recoiled, shocked by magical backlash. Dead. Only two people remained. The younger Frost, and another man. But no matter what angle Vye took, she couldn’t see the other man’s face. It was just as Frost had appeared at the beginning of her dream. This man was there, but Vye wouldn’t have been able to testify to any aspect of him.

“It took thirty people to imprison Grimsor,” the elder Frost said to Vye. “Everybody only knew a small part of the plan, so that none of us could compromise the others if we were ever Turned. Only two of us knew the whole plan. And we were the two that survived the battle.”

“Everyone else died?”

“Grimsor was just that kind of enemy. You had to know you were going to die in order to defeat him.”

“Am I going to have to defeat him?” Vye asked, but Frost did not answer. Instead, he waved his arms, and the cave disappeared. Instead, they were on a wind-swept hilltop. Vye could tell it was a foreign land by the unfamiliar vegetation. All of these events had happened far from her home.

Vye spotted movement down the hill. The Mystery Man dragged an injured young Frost across a ravine. Vye focused on the faceless man, but still she couldn’t learn anything about him. He was just there.

“I can’t even remember his name,” the older Frost said, as though he knew what Vye was thinking. “My last companion on this earth. My last friend. It was he who came up with the ingenious idea. It was he who now gives us a chance.”

Suddenly, the younger Frost and his colleague were beset by Selene, Helios, and Argos.

“Let’s be careful,” the elder Frost said, pulling Vye behind an outcropping of rocks, “We can’t let them see us right now.”

The three villains attacked the younger Frost and his faceless friend. Frost was severely wounded, falling over. The Mystery Man opened a smoking door, prepared to escape, but Frost was too badly wounded, and even the faceless man didn’t have the strength to carry him.

“This is when my friend saved the world,” Frost said. His friend grasped young Frost’s head and put both hands on his temples, even as he dodged more attacks from Selene and the others.

“What’s he doing to you?” Vye asked.

“Making me forget,” Frost said. “He erased my memories. Not all of them. Of course, I was allowed to keep my memories about my companions, and Grimsor, and how we captured him. But he’s erasing the last part of the plan. The way to defeat Grimsor once and for all.”

“Why would he do that?” Vye asked.

“Because I was about to be captured...” the elder Frost said, his voice bitter. He waved his hand again, and they were back at the fireplace.

“I can’t show you the last part,” Frost said. “Mostly because I don’t want to experience it again. But also because Selene and the others factor into it a great deal, and we can’t expose you to them. But what happened was this:

“I was brought to the Allanha Se’Tai, the Tower of the Sun. Only now it was called Medinoch Se’Tai, the Tower of Midnight. It had been twisted into a bastion of corruption and hate. There, they tortured me for days and days. And they found out how to release Grimsor. My friends and I had devised such seals as could only be broken by epic events. Four events for the Four Seals. The return of the exiled to their home soil after 1000 years. An island sinks. A King buries his son on foreign soil. A mortal kills an immortal in combat.”

“Wait! A thousand years?” Vye commented. “How long ago... How old are you?”

“Ah, yes, the events we have witnessed until now all happened two millennia ago. By that measure, I am more than two millennia old. But, I also died when they tortured me, and this is the important part. Helios, Selene, and Argos kept torturing me for one last piece of information.”

“The rest of your plan,” Vye realized.

“They knew that capturing Grimsor was only half of a plan. There must have been another part, wherein I banish him from this world. But my friend erased it from my mind, so they could never find it.”

“But they still tortured you.”

“Yes. And I kept hiding in the Dreamscape. Finally, I made my ultimate escape. I somehow transcended. I left my mortal body behind me and existed purely in the Dreamscape. So they hunted me there, trying to kill my spirit. That’s why they were afraid of you in the Dreamscape. They feared you could be a danger to them in here.”

“So, you’ve been hanging out in people’s dreams for two thousand years?”

“Not quite. Having those three chasing me through nightmares was wearing me down. So I hid. In the Land of the Dead.”

“Sorry?”

“The Dreamscape is connected to the Land of the Dead. Sometimes, in our dreams, we remember a loved one, or we see something from before our time. These memories rarely last, and they’re difficult to control. Even more so than normal dreams. But I was able to hide there to evade my former friends.”

“Why haven’t you tried to stop them before now? Why wait until they were on the move again?”

“Well, I had to come back from the Land of the Dead, and since I didn’t have a body anchoring me in the real world, there was only one way. I had to travel back with someone who died and then came back to life.”

“Me.”

“Exactly. And the beautiful part of the Dreamscape is that time doesn’t work the way we think of it in the waking world. So with enough concentration, I was able to see ahead. I knew a great warrior would die and then return. And I followed you back into the Dreamscape.”

“And now you’re living in my head?”

“Kind of. Not really. I’m living in the Dreamscape. But you’ve been spending a lot of time here yourself, so I’ve been keeping you company.”

“How chivalrous.”

“But we must keep training. I sense Selene and Helios have already released Grimsor from his prison.”

“But the Four Seals…”

“The people of Rone have been their wooden soldiers,” Frost said with a dark and ironic smile. “It was Grimsor that first sent the people of Rone away from their old homes. They fled across the sea and landed on the continent you now call home. But when the Argosian War looked lost, some of your citizens fled back into the sea. One of those ships landed on the original shores from whence they had fled.”

“The return of the exiled from their home soil after a thousand years. That’s one.”

“Yes,” Frost continued, “The Island of Losmourne was sunk by a great Spell just a week ago.”

“They can sink islands?”

“I guess so. I mean, even for them, it sounds improbable. But either way, the task is done.”

“So that’s the Second Seal. The sinking of an island…” Vye said.

“The King burying his son on foreign soil wasn’t that hard. They took care of that centuries ago, in Sourna.”

“What about…” Vye began, but stopped before she finished the question.

“You figured it out, huh?” Frost said. “A mortal kills an immortal in combat. If it’s any comfort, it was supposed to have been Michael. In some ways it was, since if he hadn’t stabbed Argos with the Saintskeep, you wouldn’t have been able to kill him.”

“But Argos was one of your group,” Vye said. “He volunteered? He knew what was going to happen?”

“Goodness no!” Frost chuckled. “But he had lost his way, according to the others. He was starting to associate more and more with the Turin. He was starting to legitimately hate the Rone, in a personal way. He wanted to keep the Turin as his own, instead of turning them over to Grimsor, when he was awakened.”

“So they had him killed,” Vye said. “And they used us to do it.”

“Yes,” Frost said. “Your King Michael was visited in a dream, not dissimilar to this one. In it, Helios convinced him that Michael would be capable of defeating Argos if he had the Saintskeep. They knew that the Historian was on his way to finding it, and they tricked Argos into hiding Sarah in the same Caves. They wanted Michael to get the sword and use it against Argos.”

“So now what?” Vye asked. “We need to defeat Grimsor, but you can’t remember how.”

“No,” Frost said. “I can’t. We’re going to have to figure it out. We have time, and there’s one more thing you need to be able to do before I can trust that your training is complete.”

“You want me to talk to the dead, don’t you?” Vye asked. She was standing again, though she didn’t remember getting up. Fucking dreams.

Chapter
32: The Vanishing People

The Regent shut the thick oak door to her quarters. She dropped the bar across the frame, locking it. The day had been long and wearisome. Though except for the Queen’s outburst in the room with the Statue, all had gone well. Sarah had been on her best behavior when she returned for the banquet. The Festival would continue to be one of Peace.

Rajani stepped across her vast room. This was only a guest suite, and it was already more spacious than her own accommodations at her own stronghold. But she did not feel shame at this. She was not a Queen. She was a Regent. She didn’t need a Castle. She just needed to keep her people safe.

The thick oak door gave her a sense of privacy she had never quite experienced before. In the Turinheld, where she slept in what amounted to a cave, and where a deerskin acted as her door, she was at the mercy of any guard or messenger who wanted to speak to her. Here, she was in solitude. If someone wanted to disturb her, they’d have to make quite a racket.

She collapsed onto the bed, each of her muscles unwinding as they sunk into the cushions. This bed was softer and more comfortable than anything she had ever slept in. She had argued, when they were negotiating the terms of the Festival, that she and her retinue should return to the Turinheld at nights. The idea of spending three days in Anuen seemed ridiculous, when Eric’s Shadow Portals made travel fast and convenient.

But
now that she was experiencing the comfort of a feather bed, she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to leave. She knew she should get out of her ceremonial robes, and put on something more night-friendly, but at that moment, it felt like she was lying on a
cloud
.

“It’s good to be Queen,” she mumbled to herself.

That was wrong. She knew it as she said it to herself. She was not a Queen. She was a leader. How dare she think such thoughts?

And then she heard footsteps. Footsteps inside her quarters. She sat up, wrapping the bed sheet around her, suddenly feeling exposed, even though she was still dressed. Who had come into her room? And how?

“Rajani,” a man’s voice said. It was Eric, of course. He could Shadow into her bedchambers without a sound.

“What are you doing here?”

“Regent, I think we should strike now.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. But before Eric answered, he sat on the foot of the bed, close to her. He brushed his hand through her raven hair.

“My Queen,” Eric said.

“I am not a Queen.”

“You are the Queen of May. And you are a Queen to me.”

“Eric, please, this is inappropriate.”

But even as she said it, his hand cupped around the back of her neck and pulled her forward. And she could put up no resistance. They kissed...

“Eric,” she gasped, pulling away. “We can’t. I cannot rule our people if you we are too close. The Turin-Guarde must always answer to the Regent.”

“But together, we could rule the forest. And together we can destroy the Ronish brutes.”

“They are not brutes.”

“You know they are. They killed our ancestors for sport. They build Castles instead of respecting the land. You know that this peace cannot last. Eventually, they will try to conquer us again. You know we must strike first to protect our people.”

“These are the lies Argos told us,” Rajani protested.

“It is too late. For look what I have done in your name.”

And he lifted her to her feet. And suddenly she was in another room. And it was daytime. It was then that she understood she was dreaming.

The room was identical to hers, for in her mind, she only knew what one room looked like on the inside. And on the bed was the Queen. Her body was laid out nicely, hands folded in front of her. She would have been the picture of peace if it weren’t for the puddles of blood on the floor, the red-soaked bedsheets, and the gruesome wound in her throat.

“What have you done?” Rajani demanded, for though a part of her understood this was a dream, another part felt it as though it were real.

“I have brought us a lasting peace,” Eric said. “Look.”

He turned her shoulders, and she was in the Hall of Saint Michael. It was as she remembered it, except the Statue had been beheaded. And the sword had been removed. And Landos lay on the ground, impaled with the prop weapon.

“Don’t you see?” Eric said. “My love for you. Your secret longing for me. We can be King and Queen of all the Realms.”

And with a sweep of his hand, they were on the balcony, overlooking the courtyard. And Rajani beheld all the Rone people she had ever met, dead on the ground before her eyes.

“No, this is wrong.”

“But you want it.”

“Perhaps, in some dark part of my mind. But I know it is wrong.”

“You fear the end of our people, too,” Eric insisted. “Don’t deny that fear.”

“I don’t. But if our people must fade, we will do so honorably. Not with slaughter.”

“But the slaughter was started long ago. And not by us.”

“We are not innocent. Nobody is.”

“Then it doesn’t matter who wins. We must take the initiative.”

“No!”

“What would your father say?”

And Rajani found herself on the battlefield of Hartstone. She had never been to the city in real life, so she only knew it by the painting in the Hall of Saint Michael. So she imagined herself there, in the painting. The earth was made of puddles of brown paint. The sky was a flowing sea of midnight blue. Painted people fought and died all around them. The echoes of battle rang all around them.

But Rajani’s eyes were fixated on just one point. A body on the ground before her, with a Rone soldier spearing him in the heart. She didn’t know the specific circumstances of her father’s death. But she knew he had died at the Battle of Hartstone. And his face was now brushed onto this soldier’s body.

“How can you search for peace with such brutes?” said the voice behind her, but it wasn’t Eric. She turned to the voice, and found herself once again in her own quarters, standing before a creature. The tall beast with leathery skin.

“Who are you?”

“I am Grimsor,” the demon announced himself. “I am the only one who can free you from the chains of your responsibility. So that you may pursue the path of vengeance.”

“I seek only peace.”

“Your mind seeks peace. But your heart cries for revenge. And that war has raged in your soul for too long. You are crippled by it.”

“I wish no harm...”

“You lie. You are not as pure of heart as you wish to be. I see your true desires. You have been Turned.”

And he clasped his hands, one over each ear, and her hair singed as the fire burned through her mind and her soul...