The Dreaming Hunt (2 page)

The high matriarch and Aurelius slipped out of the common room and into a small office. In quick decision, Will made his way unobtrusively to the kitchen and, when no one was looking, darted into the pantry beside the office. He climbed on a barrel and pressed his ear to a thin spot high on the wall.

Lenora was speaking. “Just how dangerous is it?”

Aurelius answered carefully in the tone he used when he was avoiding a subject, “—am worried that both of their spirits are unstable. You do not know much of Will—”

“I have a good idea exactly who he is, old man.”

Will was shocked to hear her take that tone with his guildmaster.

“You cannot possibly—” Aurelius started.

“You forget that I am an Imperial genealogist. By his skills alone I could guess who Will Cobb really is, even if he were not the spitting image of his father at that age. For that matter, I know who his mother was, as well.”

“You do?” Aurelius sounded shocked.

A pause. Then, her voice low enough that Will had to hold his breath to hear her, Lenora murmured, “The Heart has tracked the pastoral line of Serica's family for generations for the same reasons we have tracked the Delphi line.”

Will all but fell off the barrel. Lenora knew who he was? And she had not turned him in to the Empire? Could she be trusted with this knowledge or not?

Aurelius hissed in a sharp breath. “We must have a long chat about this after tonight's ritual is concluded. I will be fascinated to hear what else you can tell me of young Will's parentage.”

A lengthy silence stretched out. Will heard noise behind him as if someone might be headed for the pantry, and he scrambled down to look busy. The footsteps retreated across the kitchen, and he hastily resumed his listening post on the barrel.

“—about the piece of Rosana's spirit that is trapped within the boy?” Lenora was asking.

A heavy sigh. “He collects too much of others' spirits within him. I am concerned that Will is becoming a vessel. I have seen this before with Tarses, and it did not go well. Will is no more meant to carry around these energies within him than the general was meant to hold that ice elemental.”

He'd heard of General Tarses, of course. Everyone had. The bards sang tales of his conquests all the time. Tarses conquered the elemental continent, Pan Orda, for Koth and was attacked in his moment of victory by the lord of ice, an elemental creature called the Hand of Winter. The general had survived the attack and returned home in triumph, only to die in battle soon after, if the songs were to be believed. A tragic end for a great man.

The high matriarch was speaking again. “—you have any idea the potential of the children you've thrown together?”

“That would be the point,” Aurelius replied dryly. “Who else could possibly succeed at the task we have set for them?”

“Do they have any idea?”

“No. And it must stay that way. They must continue to believe they are just normal youths. They must not in any way call the wrong attention to themselves. Everything depends on it.
Everything
.”

“You have put a great load on young and untried shoulders, Guildmaster.”

“Believe me, I wish it were not necessary. But there is no one else up to the task.” A pause. “We need to get that shard of Rosana's spirit out of Will before we send them into the wilderness once more. Otherwise, he risks losing himself to the alien spirits within him. It is the only reason I am allowing this ritual to proceed.”

Lenora sounded amused when she answered, “The last time I checked, this is my house.”

Will heard footsteps retreating from the office, and he hurried out of the pantry, as well. He slipped back into the kitchen just as one of the Royal Order of the Sun guardians poked his head into the room. “There you are, boy. High matriarch's looking for you.”

Will grabbed a sausage roll off the long table and followed the big man docilely back into the common room, but his thoughts whirled. What was a pastoral line? Who had his mother really been before she'd become the humble wife of a cobbler in a muddy little village on the edge of nowhere? He knew she was a talented scout and a skilled archer. And unfortunately, he'd seen firsthand that she knew how to use alchemical gas poisons. She'd used a fear gas to force him to flee his parents the night they'd died at the hands of the Boki. Of course, his father had been the greatest battle mage in Dupree and leader of the colony's Celestial Order of the Dragon before he'd fallen afoul of Anton Constantine and become a fugitive.

What of the coming ritual? Would the piece of Rosana's spirit inside him ultimately harm him? So far it had done nothing but improve his health radically. But would it stay that way if this ritual failed?

As he moved to stand beside her, Rosana shook her head at the bun in his fist. “You're hungry at a time like this? My stomach is doing flips and flops. I could not possibly eat.”

Not far from the circles on the floor, Aurelius took a seat in a comfortable chair someone brought for him. Will had argued heatedly with the guildmaster—also his adopted grandfather—over this ritual, insisting instead on returning to the Forest of Thorns to seek a solution less dangerous to Rosana. But Aurelius had been adamant that he was not going to risk his only grandson's life, nor the gypsy girl's, on the questionable hospitality of the Boki. Aurelius believed the Boki would just as soon kill Will and cut Bloodroot's disk off his chest. Truth be told, he reluctantly agreed with his grandfather.

“How dangerous could a ritual backlash be?” he asked Rosana low as a waiting quiet settled over the room.

She winced. “If we were lucky, you and I would only die and have to resurrect. But with both of the casters' experience, I'm sure we will be fine.”

“Both?” he asked, surprised.

“Well, yes. Raina will assist Lenora. She can perform high magic and summon more magic than everyone in this room combined. The high matriarch would be silly not to let her help with the casting, just in case…”

He finished the thought in his own mind. Just in case something went terribly wrong and they needed to power through the ritual by brute force—or in case Raina had to restore them all to life. A deep sense of foreboding washed over him as he stared at the overlapping circles on the floor. This wasn't even foolhardy. It was insane.

The high matriarch called from across the room, “We are ready, Will and Rosana. Let us begin.”

*   *   *

Raina stepped reluctantly into the small area where all five circles overlapped. This moment represented everything she'd tried so hard to avoid in her life. Ever since she'd shown massive talent as a healer, other people had been trying to fashion her into a tool for their own uses. She'd run away from home, given up her noble rank, her family, even her identity, for a chance to forge her own path in the world.

Ending up in the Heart had not been ideal, but landing in the White Heart had been a stroke of luck. It was the pacifist, diplomatic order within the healer's guild and enjoyed close protection by the Royal Order of the Sun. Her White Heart colors allowed her to move freely and in relative safety wherever she chose to roam.

The White Heart was known for dabbling in politics, which suited her purposes, as well. And it had the added benefit of making her untouchable by those who would have co-opted her power for their own ends. The downside was that she nominally served the Kothite Empire, which she despised. It was an uncomfortable arrangement at best. But life was turning out to be fraught with arrangements that left her less than thrilled.

“Get comfortable,” the high matriarch instructed her, Will, and Rosana. “This may take a while.”

Will sat on a narrow stool a Royal Order of the Sun guardian brought forward. Rosana perched beside him on another. On a small table between her and the high matriarch, Raina carefully laid out the magical items whose energies would be drained to help fuel the ritual.

“What's all that?” Will demanded suspiciously.

Raina answered, “Distilled essencia. Etherium manacles. Spinneret of a veilweaver, threads of an aethercloak. And of course you know this one: sap of an ancient bloodthorn.” She gestured at a small glass tube of liquid, so dark a red it looked nearly black.

The high matriarch pulled Aurelius's scroll tube out of her sleeve, carefully unrolled an age-stained parchment scroll upon the tiny table, and weighted down its corners with the small stones. Raina read the first few lines and was impressed. It described how to cast a nature circle from an extremely rare form of magic.

Lenora glanced at her. “Shall we begin?”

Raina was not clear on why the nature circle was necessary. She could see logic in using spirit and curse circles. Rosana could cast both types of magic, and as such, they would be intrinsic to her spirit. The time and glamour circles had more to do with powering the ritual than with specifically helping fix Rosana. But nature? Did it matter to the gypsy somehow? Or was that a nod to the Bloodroot spirit within Will?

One by one, Lenora activated the circles, blending their energies into a dome of magic encompassing all four of them. It would serve to contain the otherwise wild and uncontrollable high magics.

“Once I draw forth the magic from the items on the table, I will begin adding my own magical energies to it. That is when you will start adding your magic to the ritual, Raina.”

“Yes, High Matriarch,” Raina murmured dutifully, privately amused. As if she didn't know how this worked. She'd been casting high magic since she was a child. She might only be sixteen, but her home in Tyrel seemed a lifetime away. She missed them, her bossy older sister, her little brothers and father, even her domineering mother, who had ultimately driven her to run away from home.

A prickle of energy passed over her skin as the spirit circle activated, adding its energies to the shell around them. Will glanced over at her, and she smiled reassuringly at him. He returned the smile, but the expression did not reach his eyes. She saw his fingers squeeze Rosana's.

She secretly envied them their young love. It had always been her fondest wish to marry and have a family, but joining the White Heart had pretty much made that impossible. Her childhood sweetheart was still in Tyrel, but she was expected to go wherever the Heart sent her, healing whenever and wherever her skill was needed. It would be hard to settle and have a family while roaming the width and breadth of a continent the size of Haelos.

“Let the magic flow into you as it builds, Will,” Lenora murmured.

He looked as if he sincerely tried to do so. But all of a sudden, the ritual magics were twisting and writhing wildly, whipping around all of them like the tails of angry cats. Not all the circles were activated yet! Would the existing circle magics be enough to contain whatever was going wrong inside them?

Will clawed at the disk upon his chest with his fingernails, even though he knew full well that he could not pry it off his skin. “Bloodroot,” he gasped. “Stop this ritual.”

“We risk a backlash if we stop it now,” Rosana replied nervously.

“He doesn't want the spirit shard removed. He's fighting it,” Will panted, obviously in searing pain. “This isn't right.”

“Heal him,” Lenora ordered Raina, her concentration fully upon the magics she was trying and failing to corral and calm.

It was too dangerous to use common magic inside a shell of ritual magic, so Raina made do with spreading a healing salve on Will's chest just where the disk attached, its red scars streaking outward from the disk more angrily than usual.

Understanding broke over her as rage flowed out of the disk and into her fingertips as bright and strong as the magics flailing around their heads. “Bloodroot does not wish for this ritual to continue. He wants the shard of Rosana's spirit to stay where it is.”

“I would have my healer whole,” Lenora snapped.

She didn't think Bloodroot gave a care for Rosana's wholeness or for the high matriarch's desires, which meant this ritual was doomed to failure before it barely got started. All that remained to be seen now was how bad the backlash would be.

 

CHAPTER

2

Gregor Beltane, landsgrave of Lochnar, huddled on the hard bench in the prow of the rowboat as two of his most trusted men rowed him across the great lake to the island that marked the center of his land holdings. The oars dipped into the black water silently with only thin trickles of dripping water marking their rhythmic lifts from the water.

A muted rumble of thunder in the west announced that more rain would be forthcoming momentarily.

It had been a while since he'd made this secret journey. With Anton Constantine ousted and replaced by Lady Syreena Wingblade, he'd been forced to stay in Dupree for weeks to get a read on the new political environment of the colony.

This was a good night to check on the hidden tower. The miserable weather assured that no one would be abroad and spot him sneaking off to the island where the White Tower was hidden. It had been painstakingly smuggled here stone by surreptitious stone hidden in the ballast loads of Black Ships from the continent of Koth far across the Abyssmal Sea and reassembled here on the island with utmost care. The tower had been magically camouflaged behind trees and foliage with just as painstaking care.

He wondered sometimes who on Koth dared work against the Empire to send the tower here. Those nameless souls must have been very brave, indeed, to suborn the Emperor under his very nose.

Gregor had never been inside the tower, but that was not his purpose as Keeper of the Tower, a secret position that had passed down through his gypsy family for generations. His duty was to safeguard it until its ancient magics were finally released. Sometimes, he dared to wish he knew when that day would be and what the magics would actually do. On other days, he wished himself well clear of anything that might be perceived as a threat to His Resplendent Majesty, Emperor Maximillian the Third, the ageless and immortal ruler of the Eternal Empire of Koth.