Dreamwielder (37 page)

Flames suddenly spurted past Caile and Wulfram leapt back with a yelp as his black fur took flame. Caile had no idea where the fire came from, but he didn't care. He scrambled up from the mud and darted around the wagon to grab up his sword. When he looked up, he saw before him Taera, surrounded by seven mad-looking vagrants. A pack of coyotes rushed past one of the men and fell upon Wulfram, who had already extinguished the flames in his fur. Rain and wind swirled over the top of one of the other women and she flung it forward to send three Sargothian cavalrymen flying back into the mess of war wagons.

Sorcerers!
Caile realized and rushed away from the wagons to join his sister. “Fire, fire,” he yelled. “Set the wagons on fire!”

One of the women at Taera's side raised her hands and fire belched out from above her to bathe the wagons in flames. The naphtha hissed and took flame even in the downpour of rain.

“Again!” Caile shouted in triumph.

Another firewielder joined the first, and the two of them struck together. The whole line of wagons near the tank tower went up in flames.

Wulfram was still there though, in wolf form, and he tossed aside the coyotes harrying him.

Now's your chance!
Caile realized, and he ran yet again to the tower of naphtha.

“Make it stop!” Emperor Guderian yelled.

Makarria looked at him through her blurry eyes but kept the vision of the throne room and the Dark Queen firmly in her mind—half dream, half reality. It took all of her strength to hold the vision at the brink of the hilltop. “You make it stop,” she whispered. “You have the ability to stop magic.”

Come to me, my son,
the Dark Queen said, beckoning him.

Guderian screamed in fury and clenched his eyes closed.

Caile opened the valve and aimed for Wulfram. The torrent of naphtha washed over the giant black wolf and knocked away the remaining two coyotes.

“Fire!” Caile yelled.

The firewielders lashed out at Wulfram, but he was too quick. He leapt away from the flames and bolted. Even as he ran, his body began to change into that of a raven. Caile cursed and grabbed up a bow and arrow from one of his fallen men as he sprinted after Wulfram. The dark sorcerer was already flapping his wings, and he took to the air. Caile skidded to a halt at the first burning wagon he came to and lit the tip of his arrow. He notched it quickly into the bow string and pulled back with all his might.

Wulfram arched up and away from him through the rain.

Caile took aim and let the arrow loose. The flame at the tip sputtered as it cut through the rain, but it stayed alight and flew true. It struck Wulfram in the breast, and instantly his naphtha-soaked feathers burst into flames.

Wulfram's half-human, half-raven cry carried over the battlefield. His mighty wings flapped twice more, then he began to plummet from the sky. His burning body shifted and changed as he fell, at one moment a man, the next a wolf, the next a raven. Down and down he fell, then stopped with a thud as he struck the muddy ground. The impact snuffed out the flames, but Wulfram's body was already burned and broken beyond repair. He took one last breath then died.

Emperor Guderian shook his head and looked away from his mother, who he knew was not real. She had been dead and gone for fifty years.

“You will die for this,” he told Makarria and moved toward her. He raised his sword and even as he did so he reached inward to feel Makarria's magic and stint it.

Makarria felt the image in her mind suddenly yank free from her grasp. She screamed out in pain and felt her mind tumult back down the mountain of resistance.

Around them, everything flitted away: the throne room, the Dark Queen, but also the floor beneath Guderian's feet. Makarria had turned the floor to nothing before she had created the image of the throne room, and now when Guderian stripped Makarria's half-realized vision away, the half-dream floor was stripped away with it.

Guderian bellowed as he plummeted downward between the spiraling staircase at the perimeter of the tower wall. His claymore slipped from his grip and he dropped sixty feet to the ground below. Body and sword hit the ground simultaneously. The sword shattered. Guderian died with one last blood-filled gasp in a broken heap.

When the echo of Guderian's yell finally died, Makarria forced her eyes open. She saw her parents across the room, hanging from their wrists the same as she. Darkness tugged at her mind, and she felt herself drooping into unconsciousness, but she fought it off. She reformed the floor in her mind and made it so. She dissolved away the shackles binding her and her parents and made them gone. Her parents slid limply to the ground, and when she saw that they were finally free, she too collapsed to the floor and fell into unconsciousness.

In Emperor Guderian's study, Talitha broke her chains and stood. She yanked the barbed scold's bridal from her head, then strode out the doors, erect and uncaring of her nudity. The guards at the door tried to stop her, but she struck out at them with her power, and they were hurled back to shatter against the far wall like dried twigs.

She walked down the steps from the Emperor's tower and killed all who tried to stop her. She made her way through the keep, then to the base of the torture tower where she found Guderian's broken body. She nodded with satisfaction and strode up the stairs, sixty feet up to the bottom-most torture chamber, and there she found Makarria, deathly cold and breathing in shallow gasps. Talitha sat down and put Makarria's head into her lap, then closed her eyes. Very slowly, she pushed life energy and warmth back into Makarria's body.

“You've done it, Makarria,” Talitha whispered softly. “You've done it.”

Makarria looked out from the balcony to watch the sun rising over the white city.
Sol Valaróz.
She'd heard much of the city from her grandfather over the years, but even his stories did not do it justice. In contrast to Col Sargoth, which was enormous but rigid and menacing, Sol Valaróz was a beautiful, sprawling mess of ancient buildings covering the mesa, each and every one of them different from the others.
I suppose I'll have plenty of time to explore it now,
Makarria mused, but she was cheered little by the thought. All she could think about was her grandfather.

“It's nearly time,” Prisca said from inside their room in the Royal Palace. “Here, I have something for you”

Makarria went to her stiffly, still unused to walking in a gown and heeled shoes.

“It's your grandfather's ring,” Prisca said, taking Makarria's hand and slipping the ring onto the thumb of her left hand. “He left it for me to find when the two of you left. It's yours now.”

Tears filled Makarria's eyes at the thought of the day she fled with her grandfather on the skiff, seemingly a lifetime ago.

“Don't be sad for him,” Prisca told her. “His time had come. He knew that long before you ever made him young again.”

“He's one with Tel Mathir now,” Makarria replied. “That's what he told me would happen.”

Prisca smiled and kissed Makarria on the forehead. “Come now, it's time to go. You have a kingdom to rule.”

Makarria sniffled back the tears in her eyes and nodded. “Alright.”

Outside in the corridor, Caile stood waiting for her. “Are you ready for this?”

“I guess so.”

Caile grinned and ushered her forward. “It'll get easier and don't worry, I'll be there right beside the throne with your mother and father. Once the coronation is over, take your seat on the throne and wait. Today's business will be simple enough, just a bunch of aristocrats, ambassadors, and guild masters coming to swear their fealty to you. Just thank them, and I'll fill in any necessary formalities you might miss.”

Makarria nodded wordlessly and followed after him toward the throne room. It was as if she was walking in a dream. The last two weeks had been such a whirlwind she could hardly keep track of it all. With the death of Guderian, the Sargothian advisors had surrendered, along with King Lorimer of Golier. Talitha called for a council of all the highest Sargothian officials and together they began the long process of choosing a new ruler. The Sargothian Empire was officially dissolved. By then, Siegbjorn had arrived in Col Sargoth, along with Caile. Caile brought news of Wulfram's death and the surrender of Sargoth's generals. Taera, he explained, had gone back to Kal Pyrthin to be anointed queen now that the war was over. At hearing this, Talitha urged Makarria to go to Sol Valaróz with all due haste. “You are needed there,” is all she would say. Caile offered to accompany her, seeing as how he knew as much about Valaróz as anyone, and so they set sail with Siegbjorn on the airship: Makarria, Prisca, Galen, Caile, and Lorentz, who had been freed from the torture tower along with all the other prisoners.

When they had arrived in Sol Valaróz, they learned of Parmo's assassination. Makarria was devastated. She cried and cried and could not be consoled for days, but Prisca finally put an end to it. “There's no time for crying like a little girl anymore,” she had said. “You're to be queen now, and a queen must be strong.”

“A queen?” Makarria asked incredulously. “Me?”

“I've renounced my claim,” Prisca told her. “I am a farmer and a mother—that's what I've been my whole life. You are young and already stronger than I've ever been or ever will be. Valaróz is your responsibility now. Prince Caile has promised to stay here as your advisor, and your father and I will be here… to be your parents and to help you.”

The weight of it all had pushed all other thoughts aside. And now, here Makarria was in the throne room of Sol Valaróz, standing before hundreds of Valarions, all of them staring at her adoringly. The crown Vala herself once wore sat on a cushion beside the throne, waiting for Makarria to place it on her head.

Nothing will ever be the same again,
she realized.
I'm a queen now. More than that—I'm a dreamwielder. Grandfather would be proud.

In the shadow of Emperor Guderian's fallen empire, young Queen Makarria finds her throne—and her life—in grave danger. The Old World Republic has come, demanding that Queen Makarria bring order to the struggling Five Kingdoms by forming a new empire, one she would rule as the Old World's puppet. When Makarria refuses them, the Old World threatens war and unleashes a nefarious spy to sow discord in her court. Before she knows it, Makarria's budding romance with Prince Caile has been exploited by the spy, and Makarria finds herself embroiled in a complex game of power and lies in which she can trust no one.

Betrayed and lost, Makarria is forced to shed all pride and discover the true nature of her power as a dreamwielder in order to recreate herself and face the sprawling threat that is the Old World Empire.

Khal-Aband, the underground prison, was four hundred miles south of Sol Valaróz, shrouded in the broad-leafed rainforest that clung to the jagged, mountainous terrain of the Spine. There was no path, no gate marking the entrance, only a spire of rock known as the Finger to find one's way, and even then it was only visible in the waning hours of the evening, when the setting sun over the Ocean Gloaming backlit the angular, straight lines of the Finger in stark contrast to the undulating silhouette of the forest. It was no wonder it had taken Makarria so long to discover it.

It was nearly a year since Makarria's coronation, and Emperor Guderian's fallen empire still cast a shadow over her every action as Queen of Valaróz. Don Bricio, the usurper Guderian had placed on the Valarion throne, had turned Valarion politics into a knot of corruption, and even with Don Bricio and Guderian both dead and gone, their reign of terror had scarred Makarria's people. More than anything, they were apprehensive about sorcery. Guderian had all but exterminated sorcerers in the Five Kingdoms, so what were people to think of Makarria, a dreamwielder, when the only sorcerer they had ever known was Guderian's shape-changing monster Wulfram? At best, they were grateful to Makarria for having liberated them from tyranny, but distrustful of the changes she tried to bring about. At worst, they openly questioned her ability, saying sorcerers couldn't be trusted and that a fourteen-year-old girl didn't have the strength to rule.

That's why this trip to Khal-Aband was so important.

Inside—locked away in the secret prison where Emperor Guderian and Don Bricio had sent the enemies they hated too much to kill—was a man who could make the people of Valaróz trust the throne again. Assuming he was still alive.

Makarria tore her gaze away from the Finger and glanced to the far side of her encampment where four scouts emerged from the forest, having returned at last. “Well?” she asked, striding forward to meet them in the middle of the encampment. “Is the perimeter clear?” Patience was something she was working on, but not today, not when she was so close to her goal. Not when Caile was off searching the prison without her.

“Yes, Your Majesty, the perimeter is clear,” the lead scout said. “My team searched the forest a mile to the north and south, across the entirety of the Spine. There is no evidence anyone has been here in months. All we found was an abandoned skiff in a cove along the western shoreline.”

“Abandoned?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. It appears someone tried to sink it. The hull was shattered and someone filled it with rocks. If the tide hadn't been out, we wouldn't have noticed it at all. By my estimation, it's been there a year or more. There's not much left of it.”

Makarria frowned, not liking the sound of someone purposefully sinking a boat. “Don't be so sure it's been there as long as that. The sea is harsh to sunken vessels, particularly on rocky shores. What do you think, Lorentz?”