The Soul Weaver (16 page)

Gradually, over the next year, the dream landscape began to change, so that one night I might see a barren moor, and the next there'd be a track across it, and maybe a scrubby tree or a boulder. Then, on another night, a mound of stones would sit beside the track, or the track would be more like a road or wind up a craggy mountainside. After two years or so, I started seeing the dwarf with one eye and his two companions, just sitting on a boulder, maybe, or a wall, or engaged in some commonplace activity like sharpening a knife or carving wood or mending a shoe.

Of course those weren't the dreams that had me waking up the household like some bawling infant frightened of bears or snakes. The nightmares had to do with the Lords: waking up blind and knowing I could only see by putting on the gold mask with the diamond eyes the Lords had given me, or feeling myself trapped alive inside the giant stone statue the Lords had made of me, or discovering my mother injured and bending over to taste her blood, feeling the hunger for power devour me.

Though my entire life had been shaped by D'Arnath's Bridge, I had never seen it. Back when I was a child and Ziddari had carried me across, I had been in a stupor from his enchantments. But after the Prince shared his secrets with me that night at Verdillon, and said for the thousandth time how much he hoped I would come to Avonar before too long, my curiosity got the best of me. No matter what the Prince had in mind, I did not intend ever to live in Avonar. The thought of sitting in D'Arnath's palace and ruling the Dar'Nethi turned my stomach. Therefore, I thought I'd take the opportunity to get a look just that once.

A terrible mistake. The journey had been interesting, just as I told my mother, but I had never felt so out of place and so exposed, as if from the moment we set foot on the Bridge my flesh was torn open and my bare bones showing. And from the night I'd come back, my dreams of the dwarf and his world had become nightmares, too.

The terror would always begin with the dream world falling to pieces like a puzzle knocked off a table. The dwarf might be on one fragment, waving his hands at me in a panic, and the road might be broken up across a few others, and a mountain on another, and in between all the pieces blazed searing white fire. The fire burned up the fragments of the dreamscape like dry leaves, and, all the while, I felt like I was being burned up right along with them. When I woke, I felt hollow and dry, as if the white fire had scorched out everything inside me.

If the dreams had burned out the dark places behind the door, it might have been all right. But, instead, they left me wanting to open that door and escape into the cold and the dark. I don't know whether it was the white fire or the cold dark that made me scream the most. Walking D'Arnath's cursed Bridge had twisted my mind worse than it was already, and I didn't know what I was going to do about it.

Then we traveled to Prydina, and a half-drunk sheepherder described the dwarf and the dream world. I'd told Paulo about them, and how I thought they were real, but I never expected anyone else to know about them. I almost took off right then to go see the place where the sheepherder's son had disappeared, thinking that if I saw it, maybe I could rid myself of the dreams or at least learn what they meant. But I couldn't leave my mother until I knew she'd be safe.

My mother had no idea how fiercely the Lords hated her. The only reason she'd lived for one moment after they discovered her in Zhev'Na was their conviction that I would kill her and thus make my corruption complete. What worried—frightened—them most about my mother was that they didn't understand her at all, how someone with no touch of magical power could oppose them so successfully. They hated her after the affair of the Gate, when they chased her and the Prince to the Bridge. Instead of laughing as D'Arnath's last Heir doomed his world, they saw the Bridge strengthened, the Gates opened, and their nasty plan come to nothing.

But that disappointment was minute compared to what they felt when I followed her into the Prince's portal and left Zhev'Na. They were a finger's breadth from everything they had ever wanted, complete victory, utter control over the worlds. If I had become both the Heir of D'Arnath and a Lord of Zhev'Na, the Lords and I could have destroyed D'Arnath's Bridge with one thought, breaking the balance the Dar'Nethi believed it preserved between Gondai and the mundane world. Then we would have set our enchanted brass ring—the big one called the Great Oculus—to spinning, and used it to feed forever on the chaos we made. No one in any world would have been able to stand against us.

But my mother had stopped it, and the Lords wouldn't rest until she was dead. So I couldn't leave her, because I didn't think anyone else could recognize the Lords when they came for her. After crossing the Bridge with my father, I believed it even more strongly. They
would
come.

I worried about the summons from the Leiran King, of course. It could be the first feint to draw her out, but it seemed too obvious for the Lords. They liked the subtler ploys, for there was amusement as well as outcome involved in their games. No matter how much a hunter desires to bag a Cyvernian tiger, taking it while it sleeps away the winter in its cave has little pleasure. It is only in the tracking across the wilds of Cyvernia, and seeing in the trapped beast's eyes the knowledge of its defeat—only in that completeness of victory does the hunter truly savor his triumph and know that everyone else acknowledges his mastery.

And so I raised no protest when she proposed the trip to Montevial, but I planned to stay close throughout her audience with King Evard. The Dar'Nethi watchdog was with us, too, and I was willing to concede that he might be useful if danger was about, but his eyes were focused on me, not my mother or anyone who might be a threat to her. The Prince had set him to watch me—not watch out for me. That was a subtle distinction—subtle—and so it worried me very much more than the summons from the king. And my mother didn't see it at all.

“I'll be damned if I'll stay here with the watchdog. Someone's got to be with her.”

“You oughtn't. She said for you to stay out of sight. I would stay with her—you know I would—if she hadn't told me to watch outside the walls. And it makes sense for me to see what the king's men are up to.” Paulo handed me his gray saddle pack, which held supplies for our return to Valleor.

“And what will you do if they made a move to take us? Yell?” That wasn't fair to Paulo. But I was so tired of Radele looking at me as if I were going to shapeshift into a monster, instead of watching for real danger. And except for the previous night when I had collapsed like a dirt wall, I hadn't slept more than an hour or two a night in weeks. The night's sleep had just made me more tired than ever. My head felt like porridge. Something wasn't right in this cursed place, but I just couldn't see what it was.

Paulo and I were standing in the doorway of the gatehouse at Windham. Paulo glanced over his shoulder to where my mother and Radele were talking. He lowered his voice. “If you would only
listen
, you know—like you could if you wanted—I could yell in your
head
and the Dar'Nethi wouldn't even know.

“I can't do that.” I threw the bag across the floor of the gatehouse, kicking up enough dust and leaves to look like a whirlwind had come through. “Reading your thoughts is sorcery every bit as much as changing you into an elephant. I've got no power worth talking about, and I don't want any, and, what puling little I have, I daren't use. Not ever.”

“Look, why don't you lie down over there in the corner and try to sleep? We won't bother you until we're ready to leave.” I looked up to see if Paulo had suddenly lost his mind, but he was waggling his eyebrows in the direction of the Dar'Nethi who was walking toward us leading his horse. “We'll figure out something.”

“Figure out what?” Radele unwrapped my horse's reins and those of my mother's horse from the dead tree beside the stoop.

“How to get Master Gerick to stay asleep longer than an hour,” said Paulo. “I offered him brandy, but he don't like the taste. Says he'll sleep fine if we'll just leave him alone. Say”—he stepped from the stoop and walked across the carriage park, drawing Radele with him—“I found a place back behind here to leave the horses. Good grass, some water, out of sight. Can't see the gatehouse from the ground, but if you was to climb that elm, you could likely see the gates and the road and the gatehouse, too. I'll show you.” Taking the other reins from Radele, he swung up onto Molly's back and started around behind the gatehouse. I never understood how he could get up so easily. As always, Radele looked at Paulo as if he were dirt, but he wasn't too proud to follow him out of sight. My mother waved and started up the road toward the main house.

Taking Paulo's hint, I quickly piled leaves in the darkest corner of the gatehouse, took off my cloak, and threw it over the pile. Then I slipped out of the doorway into the tangle of shrubs and brush and followed my mother into the gardens.

I almost came back and crawled under my cloak when I took my first look at the main house. Another vision. Two images, one on top of the other. One was the silent, dead shell that stood before me, and the other was a great house ablaze with light, the music of flutes and strings and laughter floating through the gardens. I would have sworn I was dancing, though I didn't even know how. My skin flashed cold and hot; my nose claimed that this weedy thicket smelled like roses and perfume and candle smoke. Anger, joy, excitement, and curiosity wholly unrelated to my own state of mind set up such a confusion in my head, I came near banging it on a tree to stop it. After a few moments, the vision dissipated, leaving me in a cold sweat.

From my hiding place in an overgrown arbor, I heard the queen describe the very creatures of my dream world, come to life in Leire: the dwarf again, and the beast-like man, and the one I thought of as the runner, the dark-skinned one, so very tall and thin, who sped up and down the black roads and the mountain paths in my dreams. These were not creatures of the Lords. I felt nothing of Notole's teaching in their magics, nothing of Parven's strategies in their mischief, nothing of Ziddari's wiles in their interaction with me. They were something else entirely. I just didn't know what.

After the queen rode off toward Montevial, my mother sat on the bridge parapet thinking. I did the same in my hiding place, trying to decide whether to tell her of my dreams about the one-eyed dwarf and his friends. My hesitation saved my life.

 

“. . . He remains as he was in Zhev'Na. But tonight he stands within range of my sword, and I must and will destroy him before he can compound his evil.”

So the Prince of Avonar wanted to kill me. Everything he'd claimed about trusting me and wanting to help me was a lie. He'd almost had me fooled. For the first time since Zhev'Na, I wished for a sword. Well, even without a weapon, I wouldn't go down easily. I knew some things. As the Dar'Nethi watchdog kept reminding me, I had learned from the masters.

But as my father raged, I saw he was convincing my mother, too, so I started listening more closely to his accusations. “The Lords never dirty their own hands . . . some they inhabit . . . insinuate themselves into a man and displace his soul . . . take on his life as their own . . .”

It was true he'd told me of the secrets hidden at the deserted bathhouse, and it was true what he said about the Lords taking on the bodies of others to do their will. I had done it when I was one of them, and pleasure was far too simple a word for it. But I'd not taken myself into any Dar'Nethi, nor had I used even one jot of magic since I'd left Zhev'Na. It was too risky and too painful, and I hadn't power enough, because the passive ways of Dar'Nethi power-gathering nauseated me.

What was happening?

Fighting the Prince would not provide an answer. I had to get away until I could sort out the truth. My mother couldn't save me from the Prince, and I couldn't save her from anyone if I was dead.

So, using everything I'd learned of stealth in my training in Zhev'Na, I slipped out of the arbor and away from the bridge and the grassy ravine, deeper into the trees. I had to move slowly, watching for sticks and branches and piles of leaves. The weak moonlight didn't penetrate the trees. The previous night's rain had left the dead leaves damp, which helped me move quietly, even though the dew coating the shrubs and vines left my shirtsleeves wet and flapping. I headed away from the gatehouse, thinking that with everything so overgrown I would surely be able to get up a tree, over the wall, and out into the forest. I could probably hide longer than they could look for me.

I skirted a weedy thicket and crept toward a grove of alders. As I neared the circle of trees, I stumbled over something thick and soft in the dark, and landed facedown in the damp undergrowth. Whatever had tripped me didn't smell too fine, so I assumed it was dead, until it hissed and pulled away. I resisted the temptation to leap up and run. Instead I slithered silently forward on my belly. A faint greenish light glimmered through the leaves. I scarcely dared breathe. Then, all at the same time, the branches in front of me parted, and a hand yanked at my hair, lifting my face up so the green light glared directly in my eyes.