Faith Of The Dragon Tamer (Book 2) (20 page)

Neki turned to him with a troubled expression. “You know something about Druids, don’t you Galvin? Do you think Ren will be all right?”

Galvin was about to relay Agamonium’s story when he decided a long explanation was unnecessary. Galvin stared into the night where Ren had gone. It was almost dawn. He had been standing there for some time.

“No, I don’t think Ren will be all right.”

“Then we need to hurry,” Neki said, starting toward the graves. “Let’s bury the men and be after those damnedable Druids. I just don’t know what possessed Ren. He reacted with the sense of a toad.”

Galvin remained silent. Who was he to question the orders of the Oracle?

They worked in silence, eager to finish so they could follow the Druids. Galvin thought his haste disrespectful of Bentzen and Markum but he knew both his friends would tell them to forget the burial and follow Ren. He worked faster.

With each click of the sun his worry grew.

Without Ren the camp seemed desolate and hope seemed lost. After what seemed like days, they placed Bentzen and Markum in the earth.

When they stood before the graves the finality hit again. Bentzen was gone. Markum was gone. The kota whined beside Galvin, looking between him, the graves and the direction Ren had gone. She seemed to understand the Druid horses unearthly swiftness and hadn’t tried to follow, but if they didn’t saddle up soon the kota would leave without them. Galvin put an arm around her neck in silent reassurance. Neki began to push the mounds of sod over the bodies.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Galvin drew his broadsword and whirled to the new voice. A man with long, dark hair peered past them into the graves. His silver-gray cloak was unlike any Galvin had ever seen. Pockets and silver clasps littered its length, concealing multiple inner compartments. Beneath it, a midnight-blue robe swayed with a life of its own. Silver swirls careened through its uncanny texture.

Coal black eyes holding far more knowledge than could be possible given the man’s age, looked at Galvin and winked. Reaching into one of the compartments the man brought out a handful of silver dust.

Galvin’s eyes veered to the man’s widow’s peak and pointy eyebrows.

The man flung the dust over the graves.

Markum’s eyes flew open.

“Not dead!” the One said, laughing gleefully. “Only sleeping!”

- - -

Markum opened his eyes. He felt strange. Sensing cold stone beneath him he sat up and tried to focus. It was useless. Complete darkness surrounded him. His ears rang the way they did when it was far too quiet, as if they were trying to compensate for the stillness.

The stone underneath him felt unfamiliar. He wished for a torch and almost bolted up in alarm when one appeared in his hand. It took all his energy to remain calm. Had he slipped into the unknown? He blinked at the torch, trying to rationalize its appearance.

Images of the Adderiss stole through his subconscious. He jumped to his feet and swung the torch around him, feeling the snakes on his body. And then he saw the doors, thousands upon thousands of doors.

The prophecy came back to him with crashing speed.

The dreamweaver will remain in death

When magic will choke his mind
.

And he must choose only one

Door to open wide
.

For if the wrong one he chooses,

The darkness will settle in

And the Chosen’s heart and soul

Will be forever cold
.

Remain in death. Remain in death. His breath caught. The Adderiss had come, the snakes had encircled his body, and right before they bit he jumped.

It was the only way he knew to describe it.

He had leapt from the scene. He had never felt the snakes’ bite. He rubbed his eyes, trying to force himself to wake. He did not. Panic threatened to claim him. His chest constricted into a scream.

And then with a flash of realization he calmed.

He wasn’t dead. He was dreaming.

A nervous laugh escaped his lips. Somehow he had jumped into a dream, and somehow the dream had saved his life. He breathed a sigh of relief and looked at the torch in his hand. Was the torch something he dreamed into existence, or could he use magic in his dreams?

He remembered back to the times he had tried use the Quy. He had never been able to feel it, not even a flicker. But he had made the torch appear.

No, that was a fluke. He was dreaming. In a dream you could command anything into existence. He had just dreamed the torch. If he wanted to see in the darkness without the torch he could. It was his dream.

The torch disappeared.

Markum waited. After a dragon’s breath of grueling darkness, the torch reappeared. He shrugged. So his dream didn’t want him to see without a torch. He would accept it and go on.

He looked around again. Below him, above him, beside him, in front of him and behind him was door after door after door. The stone landing was only a small circle in a vast expanse of blackness. Markum stepped to its edge, expecting to see a walkway that would take him from the landing to one of the doors.

But only darkness greeted him. The doors just floated in the air with no path to them or from them. How was he supposed to choose the right door when he couldn’t even reach them? He searched for anything that would help, but there was nothing.

Sighing in frustration, Markum sat down. He had to reach the doors! He had to discover the meaning behind the prophecy. What did the doors hold? Lands? People?

His eyes flickered to the torch. He could feel the heat of the flames as if the flames were real. Where they? He had wished for a torch and a torch had appeared, but when he had wished to see in the darkness without the torch he couldn’t. Was the darkness reality? Markum shivered as he studied the torch.

“I wish there were walkways leading to every door.”

Within a blink of an eye walkways began forming in the darkness, falling and rising, entangling each other until nothing shy of a stone spider’s web swirled around him, each tortuous thread leading to one of the floating doors.

Markum grinned. At least he could do what he wanted here. He took a walkway leading to a large cluster of doors. Each door had a symbol or phrase etched on its surface. Now he had to discern why he had to open a door, why it would help Ren, and what, if anything, lay behind it.

He thought about the prophecy.

Remaining in death meant leaping into his dream. Somehow before the adders’ poison took hold he had jumped here.

The dreamweaver part was understandable. He was a seer. He could read prophecy from his dreams.

Markum straightened and turned to the tangle of stone webbing he had constructed. It was a dream weave of webs.

Each door was an entrance to someone’s dream!

He wasn’t in his own dream. He was in the catacomb of dreams!

And he had to open Ren’s dream at the right time.

Markum collapsed on the pathway. How would he recognize Ren’s dream? He looked around again. There were thousands upon thousands of doors!

“May the Maker have mercy.”

Markum drew a wavering breath and walked to the first door. He held up the torch and inspected the symbol on the knotted wood: three wavy lines below the spiral of fate.

“The symbol of prophecy,” Markum whispered. His voice resonated off the wooden frame as he fingered the deep grooves of the lines, hoping he could sense something from the inscription. He felt nothing besides the intricacies of the wood: no foreboding, and no allure.

How could he choose one way or the other on “prophecy?” He could see where it could be the right door or the wrong door. He had to think. Why would prophecy be right or wrong? He thought back to all he had read. One truth kept entering his mind: prophecy was right in its context but could be wrongfully interpreted. Prophecy sometimes clouded the truth and clouded judgment. No, prophecy wasn’t the right door. It was far from the right door.

He studied the next door. It displayed a saying in the old tongue. Markum searched his mind, trying to recall all he had read about the language of the first people and how it had transformed over the years. Then he remembered his very first dream.

It had haunted him for years and it was the very reason he had become an erudite. Beasts had surrounded him, but he hadn’t fought the beasts with ax or sword or any other weapon. He had fought them with books. And every beast he touched with a book disintegrated before his eyes.

He wondered if the beasts were doors. He wondered what would happen if he didn’t open Ren’s door in time.

Would the beasts win?

His determination deepened. There was no time to waste. Ren needed him.

Markum sat down. A full glass of burgundy wine appeared in his hand. He drew a long swallow. This was going to take a long time. He might as well get comfortable.

- - -

“Dreamers can live if they reach the catacomb of dreams before death takes hold,” Zorc said, unable to disguise the pride in his voice. It had been a long time since he had used magic to help someone. Stopping these men from burying the poor boy alive made him feel as light as air. This was what wizards were born to do. He felt the love of the Lands building inside him again. He rocked forward to his toes and then backward to his heels, praising the Maker he was at last out of that damnedable cave.

“Now get him out of there and tell me what happened.”

“Ah,” the blond one stuttered, looking as if he had seen the gossamers of the Fates themselves.

“The Adderiss,” the tall one said. “Her snakes bit him.”

Zorc knitted his eyebrows together. “Oh dear. I held hopes she wouldn’t be reborn. Very well,” he said, waving his arms in a flourish and turning to the woods. “I need one of you …” Zorc pointed to the blond.

“Galvin, and this is Neki.”

Zorc nodded to each in turn. “Yes, pleased to meet you both. I need one of you to boil water while I go in search of some thistleberry. Thistleberry will kill the poison in his system. It will take some time, probably weeks, but the lad should be able to heal, physically that is. The rest is up to him. He’ll have to find his way out the dream world and back into this world. Nothing can do that for him. Some have been able to do so, others haven’t.”

The men had gone pale.

Zorc looked between them, fearful he had revealed too much too fast. Perhaps these men knew little about what had occurred in the Lands. He made a note to watch what he said in the future. Zorc studied the duo. They were an odd pair. The blond appeared acutely serious while the tall one appeared not far from a jester in a passing parade.

Zorc decided to look at them through wizard eyes.

When he did he drew in a sharp breath.

Galvin was strong internally, not unlike a wizard or a twin. Although Zorc sensed a trace of the Quy in him, it had died long ago. Neki was young, far too young to have the Quy emit from him with the force it did. An uncontrolled, chaotic pattern spewed out of the boy like an inclement tempest without direction. Neki was trouble, not as a person but because of his lack of training. The coy grin he wore caused Zorc to scowl. No one with that much power needed to be glib. But the easy manner in which Neki leaned on his sword calmed Zorc’s reaction. Neki was someone who was intelligent, if not wise. He was a victim of the times, nothing more.

There would be many more like Neki, some perhaps even stronger. Zorc needed to warm to that and set his mind to train them, after he found the Chosen.

He nodded to each in turn, hoping his wits were still true and he didn’t like them only because they were the first people he had come across since leaving the hideaway.

“My name is Zorc Val Vincent. I’m grateful to meet you.” He bent forward and put a hand behind his back, as a proper Calvet would do. It felt strange. He was used to bowing completely, with back parallel to the floor, but he was the last of the wizards, hence the Calvet, the leader of the Alcazar, or what was, or was not, left of it.

“I don’t suppose any of you have seen a man,” Zorc paused, brow furrowing with self-reproach, “or I think he’s a man. He could be a woman for all I know, although I have never considered the possibility.” He mumbled under his breath, scratched his chin and chastised himself for not thinking of it sooner. The Chosen could be anybody: boy or man, woman or girl. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he find him or her.

Zorc whirled to Neki. The boy took a step back, eyes widening under Zorc’s glare.

“You,” Zorc said, stepping closer to the power he had sensed heartbeats ago, fearful he might have missed the obvious. The Chosen would be strong. Neki was that, much more, but Zorc would have thought …

Thought what? He chastised himself. Older? More rounded in feelings? More intense in desire? More handsome? More ugly? More muscular? More serious? What?

Zorc stepped in front of Neki and had to look up slightly. What he saw in Neki’s dark eyes scared him but didn’t convince him.

“Something isn’t right,” he murmured more to himself than to anyone else.

“You’re the One.” Galvin said, eyes vacillating between fear and hope.

Zorc lost his smile. How would they know him? He looked at each in turn and then down at the dreamweaver in the grave. The boy bore an uncanny resemblance to Galor, a very uncanny resemblance.

He spun to Galvin, almost screaming. “Where’s the Chosen?”

Galvin glanced at Neki before he replied. “Druids.”

“What? What’s he doing with Druids?”

“They said they had the One. They convinced him you were with them.”

Zorc listened as the two pieced together the story. The Druids were going to put the Chosen behind the door. They were going to destroy the world. Ista had gotten to them. The thorn had pricked – the same thorn that had taken his Christa.

He would destroy her.

“What does this mean?” Galvin asked as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

“It means we have to find him before the door is closed,” Zorc said through gritted teeth. “The Chosen is too strong to remain behind the door. If they shut it and Ren doesn’t die, he’ll be a shell of a human.