The Dreaming Hunt (29 page)

Will was always intrigued by people's reactions to his grandfather. They were fascinated by his glittering golden skin but wary of getting caught staring. Will gathered that the solinari race in general was strongly supportive of the Empire, considered to be loyal citizens. The Sunset Isles, native home to most solinari, was considered to be a rich enclave of kothite loyalist sentiment.

Not that any place under the rule of Koth admitted to anything else. At least not publicly. To even think treasonous thoughts was a crime punishable by death. Speaking them aloud meant death to the speaker's entire family, both close
and
extended, and likely death to friends, acquaintances, and possibly, the traitor's entire village.

The elemental continent, Pan Orda, and the changeling continent, Kentogen, were said to have mostly repelled Koth. Both had been invaded in the past few decades by Imperial legions and temporarily conquered. But the moment the bulk of the invading legion had withdrawn, both continents had risen up against the Imperial occupations attempting to gain permanent footholds. Rumors abounded that Koth was preparing to return to both continents and invade again. But then, rumors had been floating for as long as Will could remember that a full Imperial legion was bound for Haelos at any minute to conquer the rest of it, too.

They arrived at the Heart, and his grandfather led him to the ornate central dome built in the central courtyard of the Heart compound. The structure was several stories tall with an elaborately carved façade and a tall spire over the center.

They stepped inside, and he was galled to see the domed edifice filled with children ranging from perhaps ten to twelve summers and their beaming parents. He towered over the other initiates, which had the one benefit of allowing him to glower at his grandfather unimpeded.

Aurelius refused to acknowledge Will's silent disgust.

The high matriarch came into the room in full, formal Heart regalia, all white clothing with a beautifully embroidered Heart tabard edged in gold thread to indicate her rank. She stopped at a large stone altar draped in white cloth.

No less than eight Royal Order of the Sun knights stood around the altar, and Lord Justinius himself, commander of the Royal Order of the Sun in Haelos, moved up beside the high matriarch. Another half dozen Royal Order of the Sun squires ringed the room, and Will had noted at least that many more just outside the Heartstone cupola.

Lenora gave a short speech about the wondrous gift of Heartstones to the peoples of Urth and how grateful she was that all people could live full and complete lives, free from fear of premature death, thanks to the miracle of resurrection. He listened more closely as she launched into an explanation of how resurrection worked.

“If you die, your spirit separates from your body and spends some time wandering this plane before it finds its way beyond the Veil to the spirit realm. During that drifting time, you may see bright points of light and be attracted to them. Don't be afraid. Go to them. Small lights are healers trained in helping spirits return to their bodies. A big, bright light that shines across the land is known as a Glow. It comes from a Heartstone. The larger the stone, the farther its Glow is cast. All you have to do is step into the Glow, and the stone will do the rest. It will draw you back to this realm, reform your body, and send you back into it. You will wake up in a Heart chapter as if you've woken from a nap.”

The children nodded in wonder, but Will frowned. He wanted to question her closely about how the stone magically re-created bodies, how spirits returned to bodies, and most importantly, where the stone drew its magic from. But Lenora did not solicit any questions from the children. Rather, she had them line up and one by one, stick their hand down into an opening in the top of the altar, and touch an actual Heartstone. So
that
was why all the Royal Order of the Sun knights were present.

He hung back until all the children had touched the stone and their attention turned to the tea and cookies laid out on tables across the room. Lenora smiled encouragingly at him as he pulled a face and stuck his hand into the box. The stone felt like any other stone at first, cold and hard, carved and polished into a smooth sphere. He splayed his palm across its surface, and that was when its magic jangled up his arm painfully.

He jerked his hand back.

“What is amiss?” Lenora asked.

“Is it always painful like that?”

“Painful?” she echoed.

Lord Justinius challenged, “Painful how?”

Aurelius materialized beside him, frowning. Will answered the knight slowly. “It felt like … saw teeth zinging up my arm. Not as if it wished to hurt me, but as if it did not like me touching it.” He didn't add that the energy shooting up his arm had actually felt sentient. And that it had communicated dislike for him.

“Touch it again,” Lenora ordered, placing her hand in the box before him.

Reluctantly, he reached inside the box. The stone felt warm this time, vibrating in … agitation, maybe? His discomfort at the contact was more pronounced, not just a physical pain but a soul. In spite of his resolve not to, he yanked his hand back again.

Lenora observed, “This is a Heartstone from Koth. But Bloodroot is native to Haelos.”

“So did it not like me, or does Bloodroot not like it?” Will asked.

“More to the point,” Aurelius interjected, “can Will resurrect through it or would it reject his spirit?”

He stared at his grandfather in horror.

Lenora spoke slowly. “I think it would resurrect him. The experience might be unpleasant or even painful, though, since Will's energies and the stone's are not synchronized with one another.”

She
thought
he could resurrect? But she was not certain? Splendid. Just splendid. He'd always assumed that, should his adventures go terribly awry, he could at least resurrect somewhere and then disappear like his parents had and start a new life. But now he might not be able to come back from death
at all
?

Well, that certainly cast the whole quest to wake the Sleeping King in a new light.

Was starting a rebellion worth risking his permanent existence?

Or more accurately, how badly did he want to live in a place where the Empire held no sway? He honestly could not envision such a place. Through the summer's calm in Dupree, the idea of waking the Sleeping King and fomenting a rebellion to throw Koth out of Haelos had begun to seem completely absurd. Maybe they would all be better off just getting on with their lives and forgetting about childish quests. The new governess was proving to be a great deal more reasonable than her predecessor and had already reversed the worst of Anton's excesses.

Even his grandfather seemed in no rush to have him continue the quest. Aurelius kept arranging for more and yet more training sessions stretching out for months or possibly years to come.

Rosana and Raina were safe in the Heart. Eben had taken over many of Hyland's trade dealings, Raina's friend Cicero had returned to some remote forest in the west that he called home, and stars knew where Sha'Li was or what she did with her days. She'd earned the Tribe of the Moon mark on her cheek, though, and seemed content now that she had it. They were all in good places and their lives were stable. Perhaps abandoning their quest was for the best.

But no sooner had the thought crossed his mind than a dark and terrible sense of foreboding rose up, starting at the soles of his feet and climbing through his belly. Something bad approached. It was time to move on from this place if he did not wish to be crushed by it.

Whether or not the feeling was Bloodroot's doing, he could not tell. But the warning lay heavy on his heart and would not lift. Trouble was coming for him. And soon.

*   *   *

Endellian looked down at the list of summons her father had issued for today. It was far below her station to act as his personal secretary; however, the position gave her priceless insights into the inner workings of the court. She was privy to every detail of how Maximillian ran his Empire, and she saw every thread he tugged in his never-ending game of manipulating his web of power.

High Hunter Lovak, Master of the Hounds, was due to arrive in Maximillian's trophy room any moment. Nobody dared to be other than exactly punctual with her father, of course. The location of this meeting was somewhat unusual; Maximillian usually preferred to receive his subjects in one of his throne rooms. All of them were designed for maximum intimidation, built as impressive displays of the limitless wealth and reach of the Kothite Empire.

Not that her father's trophy room was any less overwhelming to the uninitiated. Every corner of the vast space was crammed with one priceless artifact after another. The entire history of Urth and its peoples could be told in that one room.

Lovak was the breeder and trainer of a line of magical hunting hounds who could track unusual trails. They had successfully been trained to hunt individuals with specific magical gifts, to hunt psionicists, even to hunt mystical creatures.

She wandered over to the dwarf encased in amber that stood just beside the adjoining door to her father's small golden throne room. She'd always found the awareness shining in the fellow's eyes fascinating. What must it be like to be eternally trapped like that? Never moving, never speaking, never dying? Truly, it must be a fate worse than death to be trapped inside one's own mind forever.

“Ahh, there you are, daughter. I require your grandson for this next audience.”

Her grandson, Broccar Gyrkin, was the only son of her daughter by Tarses, Jaelanna Tarses. Both Jaelanna and Broccar had inherited the general's jann race. She bowed her head in acquiescence and spoke over her shoulder to her foster sister, 'Nandu. “Fetch Broccar to us immediately.”

The blue dragon, trapped in human form, bowed low, managing as she always did to infuse the gesture with a certain irony. 'Nandu was a source of private irritation to her. She understood why her father had hatched a dragon and hand raised her at his court but that didn't mean she had to enjoy sharing his attention with a foster sibling. Particularly when Maximillian had set 'Nandu to watch over her in case Endellian should ever contemplate seizing the Golden Throne for herself. The dragon was also a reminder—intentional or not, she could not tell—of her inability to master the awesome power her father had used to hatch and control such a being. Maximillian held the dragon's leash, and Maximillian only.

A door opened to admit High Hunter Lovak. The fellow had mostly finished his obeisances to the Emperor when Broccar joined them. Endellian watched her grandson fondly as he displayed a pleasingly muscular leg to Maximillian in a bow. Trained practically from birth by Ammertus in the arts of combat, Broccar was a magnificent gladiator of a young man, proud and strong and brave. He took after his grandsire Tarses.

Maximillian was speaking. “—would have you train four new braces of hounds, Lovak. One to hunt totems. Another to hunt Great Beasts. And the last two—I would have you send one to Pan Orda and the other to Haelos.”

Lovak asked, “What will the last two be trained to hunt, Your Resplendent Majesty?”

“Jann.”

Lovak frowned faintly at that. Hunting beings of a common race was well beneath the superior abilities of the magically enhanced canines descended directly from the Great Mastiff, a Great Beast of Koth. “We already have elemental hounds and hunters proficient at hunting similar beings.”

Maximillian smiled slightly. “Ahh, but I seek one jann in particular.”

Endellian's heart leaped in her chest. The only jann her father would take a personal interest in finding would be his favorite general, none other than Tarses. Was that why Broccar's presence was required? Could the hounds catch the scent of a bloodline, mayhap? She would not put it past Lovak's hounds to be capable of such a thing.

Maximillian touched the intricately carved helm mounted on a table beside him. The piece was the pale, translucent blue of glacial ice, cold and wet to the touch, but it never melted. Not a single drop of moisture ever fell to the table below. Moreover, a faint blue glow emanated from the helm as if light shone through it from behind. “This vessel contains the essence of the Hand of Winter. Or at least a portion of him. Unfortunately, it is too bulky for your purposes.”

The story went that, after his conquest of the elemental continent of Pan Orda, General Tarses had attempted to absorb the power of the Hand of Winter, an ice elemental lord, into himself. Why he would try such a thing, she could not fathom. It was apparently some sort of jann ritual.

At any rate, the Hand's spirit had been too much for Tarses to handle, and he had begun to lose himself to the ice elemental who, instead, began to absorb Tarses into himself. A mage standing close to Tarses, a solinari … what was his name? She cast back in her memory … ahh, yes. Aurelius.

Aurelius, correctly realizing what was happening, had dived forward and absorbed some of the energy of the Hand of Winter into himself in a heroic act. He had used the solinari race's unique ability to absorb magic and hold it temporarily before recasting it to absorb the energy of the ice elemental, hold the elemental's power, and then cast it into this helm, which had been made specifically to contain the spirit fragment of the Hand of Winter.

Aurelius had siphoned off enough power that Tarses was able to regain the upper hand and absorb the remainder of the ice elemental's spirit without incident. Supposedly.

Endellian had to wonder what having the spirit of so great a being inside oneself had done to her lover. She was one of only a few people who knew that Maximillian had worried about how the ice elemental changed Tarses. It made the general unpredictable. And Maximillian could not tolerate such a trait in anyone. Not so close to the Golden Throne.

Maximillian broke her train of thought. “Broccar, can you absorb a portion of the essence contained within this piece and then pass it into another object? Say, this crystal bottle?”