The Dreamer Stones (9 page)

Then there was
nothing left to do but sit in the shade of the pavilion, and
think.

By his
estimate, they had been in this realm a week, though it felt like
one endless day. That first success was lost in the long walk to
nothing. No horsemen, no race, no pounding fear or heart. What was
he not seeing?

Krikian would
be patient back on Luvanor, and also waiting.

Where is my
patience? Time runs out for Valaris. Whatever must happen, must
happen soon.

Valaris. He
had been away about two weeks. The darklings would attack soon.
Tymall did enough to spread doubt, and Margus would launch his
counter-attack. He should be there for that, if only to minimise
the impact on Valarian psyche. Tannil would not like it, but he
would use those measures, and then blame himself for the
aftermath.

Would the
other, the mysterious nocturnal visitor, show himself then, when
horror could not be worse?

Torrullin
groaned and lowered his face into his hands. It was pointless
second-guessing; it was also self-defeating. Finish this and get
back into the fray.

He lifted his
head and stared over the endless plain.

Lowen called
it the Hounding; what, exactly, did that mean? It had to be more
than a physical chase across the desert or it would have begun
before now. If it came now as dreamed, then he was at a
disadvantage. His feet hurt, he was exhausted, had no energy, but,
worse, had not the will to run anywhere for whatever reason. The
horsemen would win by default; he would simply sit here and watch
them come.

And if it was
not a chase? He recalled Rosenroth’s cryptic claims about leaving
his innocence behind to stand empty at the abyss. He wondered what
that implied. How did one leave innocence behind … by running
across a desert?

Innocence was
certainly not a description he would use to describe himself. Yet
the claim was produced. Had there been innocence in the unnamed
fear? Was there innocence in what was to come? Would the Hounding,
whatever it was, make it known to him?

His thoughts
went round and around.

He lay back,
careful not to disturb Lowen.

This was a
fool’s mission. It was time to go home …

He slept.

An hour, a
day, a year?

He awakened
and attempted to hold onto something clear in sleep, an answer
elusive in wakefulness, but it was lost to him.

Sitting, he
drank water, and checked on Lowen. Asleep. He looked over the
desert. No change there either.

Passing out
had returned to him energy and a will to finish it. He threw a
challenge out into the emptiness, begging the chase to come to him,
to be done, but nothing moved out there.

What a scam.
Rosenroth spoke through his ancient and shrivelled balls.

“If you
experience fear and doubt and an unwillingness to perpetrate the
ultimate evil, Enchanter, you retain a shred of innocence.”

He turned his
body around to face her. She was awake and watching him from her
prone position.

“Can you read
my mind now?” he asked, not surprised, but disconcerted.

Her lips
tightened. “No, Torrullin. I merely know at this stage you must be
questioning validity.”

He inclined
his head. “I’ll accept that … for now. What is my ultimate evil,
Lowen? What thing would destroy my so-called innocence?”

She simply
looked at him.

Ah. Tymall.
Killing his son was the ultimate evil, even though that son
deserved to die.

Gods. In
leaving innocence behind, would it mean he could strike at his son?
Was that the point to this? The means not to care, just do what
needed done?

His face was
ravaged when he faced her anew. “No-one can ask that of me.”

She read his
thoughts in his face. “Torrullin, you must trust there’s an answer
beyond the obvious.”

“What answer?”
He hated this uncertainty, this powerlessness. He was a man of
action who spent far too much time talking and reasoning. “Did I
not come to you to ease this for me? Selfish as it may be, why am I
begging to know what comes next?”

She sat. “Then
let me put it plain. You are here to lose your humanity. That is
your innocence.” Her tone was bleak.

After a time
he asked, “Humanity as a concept or humanity as in my
humanness?”

“I think the
latter.”

He nodded
without looking at her. “And I thought I won that battle. How does
that aid me, might I ask?”

“I don’t
know.”

Silence
ensued, and then she reached for the refreshed water bottle he left
for her earlier, and drank. Hearing her, he said, “Prepare me,
please. What is the Hounding?”

She made a
show of closing the bottle. “It is your past.”

The
featureless distance drew his gaze anew. “How? Why?”

“The why will
become self-evident, and as to the how - turn around and face back
the way we came.” She laughed. “I tell you because I don’t want to
walk more. We would’ve walked until your impatience forced you to
turn around, and then it would begin. I find I’m more impatient
than you, and that’s saying something.”

He
acknowledged her with a smile over his shoulder. “Your visions
didn’t do justice to the heat, right?”

“Or the
distance.”

“I have turned
and faced back a number of times.”

“Not
really.”

He snorted and
then, “How does this confrontation of the past work?”

“You have a
chequered past if you think it confrontational. But, yes, it is a
confronting. More than that I can’t say.”

He barked a
laugh. “Always the mystery.”

“I am not the
mystery.”

Again he
glanced over his shoulder. “If you say so.”

“You’ll always
be a mystery to the rest of us, you know that. There’s much you
can’t reveal and will never share. We accept it as part of your
charm, it draws us to you and you’re aware of that also, don’t deny
it. The mystery requiring clarification here is the one you are to
yourself, and if I’m speaking in riddles or sounding cryptic, then
it’s unconsciously deliberate; this is what reaches you through the
layers you have around you. I admit, however, I’m sometimes in the
dark as to the words that leave my mouth.”

“Like
now?”

She grinned
and was the Lowen he knew. “No, this time I know what I say.”

The now
familiar coldness surfaced again, looking at her, hearing her, but
he squashed it.

“You’ll have
to face that fear also.”

He stared at
her profile. “What fear would that be?”

Her blue eyes
clouded. “Me.”

He rose and
then leaned under the canopy. “Lowen …”

“You don’t
have to tell me. I don’t want to know. Do it inside where I can’t
see your struggle.”

“What does
that mean? I fear you, you say, and to function in this so-called
salvation I am here to find, I must face this cryptic fear of you,
and I must do it where it doesn’t affect you? What crap is
that?”

“It will
affect me.”

“Yet you don’t
want to know!” He threw his hands in the air.

“I don’t want
you to tell me, but I’ll know. God help me.”

“I hope this
is one of those times you don’t know what you say,” he muttered,
backing down, and turning to stare over the plain. “By the way, I
have now turned around and around. I faced back the way we came.
Nothing happens.”

“Your mind is
not engaged.”

“My mind is …?
For …!”

With a laugh,
Torrullin ran both hands through his shoulder-length fair hair.
Dust filtered down. The golden tinge to his skin had intensified
under the harsh sun.

“Fine. Let me
engage
my mind then.”

He looked down
at her and then past her. He knew what he feared about her; gods,
he was not simple-minded. He would fight it; he would fight
confronting it, even if it meant no salvation. The real question
was whether she knew what he feared? Or did she merely sense the
fear? He dared not ask; it was the act of confrontation. Some
things were not to be spoken of, and he realised how right she was
to say to keep the struggle to himself.

Cold. Perhaps
she did know.

“We shall not
speak of it,” he said and almost believed it.

She closed her
eyes.

Torrullin
moved then, feeling, in fact, hounded. He was, therefore, in the
perfect frame of mind. Walking further into the desert, he faced
the way they came, marked by two sets of clear footprints in the
dust. Drawing breath, he engaged his mind … and knew it had
begun.

On the
mattress, in the shade, Lowen held her breath. Now she would
witness the hell that was his past, and nothing would be the same
again. She would share in the things he kept hidden, and thus would
commence the process of understanding and she was mortally afraid
of it.

This was her
journey also.

Chapter
Eight

I dreamed a
dream and saw it come to pass.

Unknown

The first
person he confronted was his mother. Millanu.

The boy
Torrullin separated from the man to stand before him, part of him,
yet beyond reach now. A blond boy with large, clear grey eyes, a
child upon whom was bestowed great beauty. Five years old and
quiet, a child who dwelt largely in his mind. Behind him, his face
ashen, stood the man he was to become, looking down on the fair
head.

Then man and
boy together looked up.

Millanu.

She was
extraordinarily beautiful. Long golden hair, wide eyes with a
tragic air, tall, slender, graceful and unaware of her beauty.

The place was
Tetwan on the shores of Ren Lake and it began to drizzle. The
friendly gloom of an overcast sky hung over everything.

She walked in
the surf of the grey lake, water swirling around her ankles and
when she reached the young Torrullin, she knelt, peering into his
face. “Why are you sad, my little Torrullin?”

Lowen, the
witness, saw the man’s fingers curl into white fists.

“I want my
father.”

Millanu’s
smile left. “I’ve told you about your father.”

Earnest and
stubborn then, the child shook his head. “All the boys on the
streets know who their fathers are and some even have them to go
home to. I know nothing, not even his name.” The early elocution of
the man to come, old before his time.

Millanu knelt
deeper in the water and took his small hands in her own.
“Torrullin, your father is a great man and would love you as much
as I do were he with us. He has duties to the universe, which keeps
him away, I’m very proud of him, and you will one day be, too. Is
that not enough?”

The silent man
watching shook his head first, and then the boy. “It’s not
enough.”

Millanu sighed
and the blue of her eyes shone bright. The colour of sadness.

Lowen
understood something. Torrullin was ever drawn to her blue eyes,
often looking at them simply for the sake of looking. She did not
remind him of his mother, but it certainly struck a chord
within.

Millanu rose
and appeared older for a time. Holding onto his hands, she bent to
her son. “Fine, my brave Torrullin, then I shall tell you. I shall
tell you all of it. Come.”

She opened her
arms to him and he climbed up to her, a frightened little smile
playing on his lips over her shoulder where she did not see, but
the man did.

The lake and
rain vanished. Hot, thirsty desert returned.

The man stood
as if bereft.

Then, “Did you
see?”

“Yes.”

Shoulders
slumped. She would know too much soon. “This is not hidden, Lowen.
I told my father about this.”

“Your father
is dead.”

“That, too, is
not something I sought to forget.”

“I meant only
you alone knew of those moments with your mother.”

“What am I to
learn from this?”

“Why did it
come first? Admit the truth to someone, in this case, me.”

“An adult
moment? A child beginning to think for himself?”

“I don’t think
it’s that.”

“This is
nonsense.”

He faced back
the way they came. The same scene began again. Millanu walked the
lakeshore …

“I’ll do it,
for pity’s sake!”

The scene
wavered and vanished.

Torrullin fell
to his knees in the sterile sand, head bowed. Silent, heavy minutes
passed, and then his voice came, muffled, strained.

“I hated her.
I hated her for not telling me. I hated her for forcing me to make
up stories. My beautiful mother, kind, generous, loving, all a boy
could wish for, and I hated her, and not just that day. I did not
know then, but Valleur children are mature from an early age, and I
was aware of the differences. I had no history, not even a lie to
believe, and I could not hold my own when the street kids taunted
me. I was a bastard, they said, and told me what that meant. It
meant my mother was a whore and I hated her for that.”

“Oh,
Torrullin.”

He looked at
her, his head askew. “And I was frightened to hear the truth from
her. Was she a whore? Was I a bastard? All she told me before was
my father was a hero, a great man, something the kids would laugh
heartily over. Most of them were bastards too, but they knew who
their fathers were. They had history and did not have to apologise
for their existence. Bloody Valleur and their blood, particularly
father to son.”

“Did you tell
Taranis this?”

“No.”

She said
nothing, but her silence told him what it was he had to face. A
hidden hatred for his beloved mother, something he never forgave
her for. His freedom lay in that forgiveness.

“She told me
everything over the next few years and out of that truth emerged
the acceptance of a barely perceived future.”