The Dreamer Stones (23 page)

“Not so fast,
Margus,” Tymall’s voice whispered through the impenetrable dark.
“We need to talk.”

The Darak Or
was not afraid. After his humiliation at this creature’s hands only
anger remained. “I know your plan now, Tymall.”

“Obviously you
know my plan! Did you not attempt to rehash the past? When it was
unsatisfying the first time? We are alike, you and I.”

“I am more
like your father.”

“Then you
infer I, too, am like my father. Would you not agree? A compliment,
I might add, as well as an insult.”

Tymall emerged
from the smog wearing his finery. The destructive drops of black
rain fell short of him, running to earth as if sliding along
something slick and slanted. He leaned against the boulder Margus
used as cover.

“I saw you
last night and thought it amusing to have a witness present.
Curious little spy. You’ve discovered my plan, but it remains an
uncertain certainty, and that’s a threat all its own, not so?”
Tymall gave a twisted smile. “Much can go wrong, right? And you
think you know, but do you? How do you counter a set precedent? By
planning for every eventuality? Naturally, and guess what? You’re
spread too thin. The gaps you leave become inviting.”

“Gaps herald
change.”

Tymall smiled.
“And there you have it! Set the stage as it was and then use the
gaps to alter precedent. A challenge, and an opportunity to rewrite
history.”

“Your father
is no fool, Ty.”

“Warlock. Only
my bride-to-be calls me Ty.”

Margus burst
out laughing. “Spare me!”

“You find my
imminent marriage funny?”

“No, that I
find terrifying, for her. Your arrogant insistence on your
makeshift title is the amusing bit.”

“Makeshift, is
it? Continue to think thus …
that
will amuse me.”

Margus
shrugged and smiled, eyes taunting.

Tymall
mimicked the shrug. “I have pressing business elsewhere. See you
soon, Darak Or.”

Margus feigned
disappointment. “What, no carrot? No promise of enrichment?
Nothing? How very disappointing.”

A still moment
and then, “Margus, you’re as much to blame for this as my father is
and
you’ve thrown your lot in with him - insult to injury. I
wouldn’t attempt to bring you over to my side. It would disappoint
my sense of fair play, as twisted as you believe that to be.
Imagine I managed to turn you against the Enchanter - what glory is
there? More of the same, for everyone expects it of you. No, the
greater achievement is causing my father to believe I have turned
you and then to watch you squirm, protesting your innocence. What
happened to make you my father’s lapdog? Are you not disappointed
in yourself? Where is your sense of adventure? Surely this is tame
for you, one ever in charge, spearheading destruction?”

“Neat, Tymall,
neatly done. And I thought you would not attempt a turning?”

Tymall,
silenced, stared at his one-time mentor, and then, “Touché.”

“I believe you
had business elsewhere?”

Tymall sucked
at his teeth, irritated. “Indeed, but before I go I’d ask this of
you - why?”

“Which why,
Warlock?”

“Again,
touché. You haven’t lost your wits, despite our pleasurable time
together.” That taunt brought no response. “Why the bonding to the
Enchanter.”

“It was either
that or find a way through the netherworld paths.”

“Too
simple.”

“Perhaps, and
yet the greatest incentive. Your father has power over realms. Any
other consideration aside, had I not bound myself, I’d now be in
the misted lands, much like this Corridor at present, I suspect,
and there is no escape.”

“Granted.
That’s why he took you with him in the destruction, but what
happened to cause you to offer word and sword and power? Did you
not hate him enough to accept the netherworld over this new
existence?”

“I hated him
once,” Margus shrugged.

Tymall’s eyes
darkened with irrational fury. “Are you telling me you love my
father?”

“Me, the Darak
Or, love?” Margus laughed aloud. “Now you insult me, Ty! Love has
nothing to do with it, but it’s also more complicated than mere
hate. You should know. You do not merely hate your father. Too
pure, too simple.”

A long silence
in which they stared at each other and then, “I must go.” Tymall
stepped back and vanished.

Ah, yes, Ty,
too pure, too simple, but you are not as complicated as you
think.

Margus
shrugged and left the doom-laden Corridor.

Chapter
Twenty

To grant
absolution in a dream means something will be taken

from you, and
to receive absolution in a dream means you will be scorned.

Dream
symbology

In the realm
between the spaces of reality Torrullin faced his past with Lowen
at his side.

The joy of
seeing his son again was short-lived, for his past assailed him
anew before he could fully draw breath.

A battlefield
with thousands of troops twisting under the terrible sorcery of the
Three Voices, the same sorcery to fell Margus at the Pillars of
Fire, and the trick Tymall sought to learn and master. He would not
find out, for in the seeing Torrullin understood it would remain
hidden. There was no forgiveness due him for the terror on that
battlefield, for it was eternally unforgivable, but there was
acceptance; he had to move on and let go.

A child stuck
in the bottom of deep, narrow pit, with him looking down. He was
unable to save her, for the use of magic would have him revealed.
In silence he asked for understanding of that ghost and it was
granted. The child, mangled and crying, transcended into a little
angel of light and touched his shoulder before vanishing.

Lowen,
watching, cried.

Torrullin the
pirate coming across an old, shipwrecked man, an island in the
west, staying until the man died, learning from him survival,
focus, the will to live, yet knowing unending guilt for not taking
him back to the mainland. He let go, and found it easier with every
step. He cleansed from the inside out, throwing aside the baggage
of millennia.

The innkeeper
Torrullin turning away a couple needing shelter, they could not
pay, a couple ostracised by the townspeople of Farinwood, hearing
later they died of exposure. A terrible anguish, yet he was afraid
to reveal his true nature.
To be all that you can be
, the
governing phrase of his being would only come later, with
Quilla.

There were
innumerable incidents. Small, not worthy of great attention, yet he
harboured them as if they were the most important factors to his
soul. He was not wrong, although only Lowen understood that. One by
one, a painstaking and hurtful process, he released them. Pain,
guilt, ghosts.

The greater
incidents, profound occasions, happenings of note, they too marched
by one after the other, and were harder to say farewell to, though
they had less impact on the state of his soul.

Again, only
Lowen understood the contradiction.

Death rained
on evil, yet the mark was there and had to go.

Death rained
on the innocent, the mark darker, yet the man then was someone so
angry he was not aware of what he did.

His loud cry
of anguish rent the desert air as he realised what he forgot
deliberately. Women and children, old people, men in the prime of
their lives, felled by an undiscerning hand. He shed tears until he
had no more to give, watching the rest come in dumb fascination,
resignation, only his eyes showing life.

A day, a
night, another day, another night, but time was irrelevant and the
ghosts came for the final haunting unabated.

Lowen sat
nearby, sleepless, without sustenance, watched, touched him when he
appeared about to pass out. Only her periodic touch kept him
going.

He was unaware
of her as a person, she was a presence, a support, and he could not
speak or look at her or react in a normal way. He was spellbound to
his past. Frightening, and incredibly fascinating. He had forgotten
much, whether deliberately or due to the march of time, it did not
matter - he watched, felt, discarded.

And then came
Rayne and he jerked to full awareness, and his eyes animated
anew.

Lowen’s heart
pounded. This would reveal the making of the Immortal Enchanter.
Did she want to know?

She had no
choice.

Rayne, as a
child, the image of five-year-old Torrullin, holding Aven’s big
hand, led to his first magic lesson, frightened. It was the fear he
needed acknowledge, for in Rayne, from the beginning, Torrullin was
close.

He had to
acknowledge how he, Torrullin, shaped the innocence of Rayne,
causing an early duality that would reveal in full glory and horror
in Rayne’s thirty-fourth year, the age of Immortality Ritual. He
had to forgive himself, and he had to understand Rayne, so mixed-up
and angry and hateful of sorcery he almost drove the inner
Torrullin away.

Rayne as a
teenager, berated by his adoptive father as a dreamer, a
ne’er-do-well, unable to say anything, believing it himself.
Understanding now, he could forgive that father and realised Rayne
had been waiting for him.

Rayne with the
Maghdim Medaillon in a chamber of silver candles. Aven’s house,
with Lycea and McSee, days before the Game commenced, the one that
would reveal to him Taranis, his father.

The golden
coin nestled in his palm and McSee, red-haired giant, shocked and
out of his depth. That was the day Rayne began to accept his power.
Torrullin’s power. What was it he had to put behind him here?
Rayne’s silent fury.

Torrullin
doubted he was ever so angry in his entire life as he was that day,
as Rayne. He acknowledged it was the first step taken on his
fatidic path. No choice. All choice. Fate. Choice. And he let that
fury go reluctantly, for it fuelled him for a long time.

He looked at
Lowen for the first time in days, his eyes unreadable.

She witnessed
what drove him, what shaped him. When done, he would no longer be
that man. She would know him not at all. Was it that simple? Or
that profound? The future was a smoky mirror into which nothing
reflected.

He turned away
with the tiniest of smiles. One forgot, sometimes, what he was
beyond the man.

The next scene
brought Vannis, Torrullin’s beloved grandfather.

Vannis and
Rayne in Vannis’s subterranean Throne-room at the time of his
release, when Rayne showed he was above prophesy. He accompanied
Averroes the Changeling to free the Vallorin. He carried the
Medaillon, the tool to Vannis’s freedom, in her stead.

Torrullin’s
guilt over this was intense.

Not the
release, but the delays in doing so, for it came after Ardosia’s
Valleur were annihilated. He continued to believe, had they
affected Vannis’s freedom even a day earlier, something could have
prevented the catastrophe, although he knew no one,
no one
,
foresaw it.

He closed his
eyes to banish the images, but when he found the courage to reopen
them, they waited for him. He had to let go, and did with great
difficulty, and saw the ghostly image of Vannis grin. The familiar
teasing grin, and he knew then it was all right, at last.

The third day
drew to a close and so, too, the Hounding.

In Torrullin’s
actual time, his personal time, a mere twenty-six or -seven years
remained to rise up as ghostly reminders. Surely not much left,
Lowen thought, and was wrong.

Saska. Lycea.
Cat.

And herself.
Lowen, the child.

Saska in
Mantra’s courtyard with Rayne. He could feel the hard chessboard
tiles under his elbows, Saska’s heat under him, as he looked upon
the entwined bodies in the vision. He misused her that day and
never asked her to forgive him. He asked for other erring, but not
this.

Did he want
to? It was the basis of their relationship, a love-hate obsession.
To let it go negated what they were, but had that not changed, when
circumstances forced it?

Rayne was
confused, but Rayne was gone, absorbed into his persona, or
personas, therefore why hold on? Saska gave measure for measure and
had not apologised.

A smirk as he
realised. It was Rayne requiring forgiveness, not Saska. He nodded,
asked it and let go.

Galilan in the
grip of winter. Galilan after destruction - a sea of tents, snow
platforms, food rationing. Lycea. As he had not seen her.

He left
Valaris after Saska repudiated him. Torrullin by then, not Rayne.
Lycea was left to discover her pregnancy alone. He recognised he
saw her through Vannis’s eyes, sitting in a winter park. Her face.
Radiant. Hope. For a shared future. Torrullin and Lycea. It would
never happen. Terror, hopelessness, raw pain.

Dear gods,
Lady Mother, send my message on the wings of all your magic to her.
Lycea, forgive me.

Cat, the third
woman. Cat, human, sexy, an adventurous spirit, who fell in love
with an Immortal. Images of them together flitted by with a
rapidity to signify the many were one. Then it stopped in the
Lifesource Temple. The day he told her to never tell him she loved
him. As he asked that cruel thing he saw it in her eyes, had not
needed her words to tell him how she felt. Still he said it,
causing deliberate pain, on the back of the pain he caused Saska by
being with her.

Cat, I shall
be sorry always, as I am sorry I never told you that you were
pregnant. In our child lay your happiness.

No image came
of that, and yet he begged redemption for her death, her
suicide.

Lowen drew a
breath when she saw herself, a child, confronting the Enchanter.
No, not confrontational. Comfort.

Tymall’s
bedroom at the Keep. She asked Torrullin to recall something good
about his son, and he said Tymall told him he loved him. A good
day, he said, and Lowen smiled. A child’s smile trying to be adult.
Dear lord, what point in this
?
What does he have to let
go?