The Dreaming Hunt (28 page)

The apothecary shop reminded her of one like it back in Tyrel with its dusty sweet smell and rows of large jars filled with seeds, dried leaves, powdered roots, and the like. A girl maybe five summers younger than Raina in age stepped out from behind a leather curtain as an older woman, probably the grandmother, weighed the herbs Raina needed and recounted the silver coins she'd laid on the work table.

No sooner had the girl slipped into the front room than Raina noticed something odd about the child. A vague glow surrounded her entire body like a nimbus. It was not the glow of magic; Raina knew the look of that all too well. Rather, this light hovered right at the edge of her ability to perceive it, so faint and transparent that if Raina looked away and looked back, it took her eye several seconds to readapt and find the light again.

For her part, the girl stood stock-still, her gaze glazing over as she stared at nothing. Her face paled, and a sheen of perspiration abruptly made her skin glisten. Sir Christian, a big, bluff Royal Order of the Sun knight who was Lord Justinius's man but who had been drafted to act as her escort since Sir Hrothgar was out of town, jumped forward to assist the younger girl.

Raina's healing training quickly diagnosed some kind of seizure. But that odd glow strengthened until she became half-convinced the light was in some way confining the child. Which was crazy, of course. Confining magics were high level and readily visible to even the most untrained eye. They looked nothing like this.

The girl began to mumble. Except her lips did not move. And the whisper of sound was unlike any human voice Raina had ever heard. It tickled her brain without ever seeming to pass through her ears. How was that possible? Was this some sort of psionic communication directly from the child's mind into hers?

The sounds took shape, forming words. Although joined together in seeming haphazard fashion, Raina could not find any actual meaning in them. They were gibberish.

“What are you trying to tell me?” Raina asked urgently. Had the whispers finally found a human outlet for their insistent message?

“The child said nothing,” Sir Christian declared, looking back and forth between Raina and the young girl.

“But—” Raina broke off. “Did she glow for a moment?”

“What nonsense is this?” Sir Christian growled. “Of course she did not glow. If she had, my sword would not be resting quiet in its scabbard. I would be standing between you and yon child.” In fact, he took several quick steps forward to place himself between Raina and the girl. Although who was being protected from whom, Raina could not say.

She leaned to one side to peer around the big knight. “Are you all right?” she asked the girl. “Do you feel ill?”

The child shook her head, although she was starting to look frightened.

“Never mind me. I'm sure you're in perfect health.” Perplexed, Raina took the folded paper cone of herbs from the grandmother and left the apothecary. She stopped at the Mage's Guild to recount the odd occurrence with Will, but he and Aurelius were busy in some sort of training session with Captain Krugar.

Raina satisfied herself with penning a short note to Will describing what she had seen and heard. Mayhap in his Mage's Guild training he had run across something similar to explain the odd incident. Disappointed, she left the guild and turned her steps toward the Heart building.

What was afoot with all the Imperial training Aurelius was cramming into Will? It was as if the solinari did his best to distract Will from his true purpose, to pull his attention off the quest to wake the Sleeping King. Mayhap Aurelius attempted to lead his adopted grandson away from the dangers of continuing with the search. No doubt an urge to be like his father must run strong in Will. And she supposed Bloodroot's bloodthirsty streak must be loving all the weapons practice.

But it felt as if their little party was being torn apart, as if their quest was slowly but surely being forgotten, subsumed in the day-to-day demands of their individual training.

Even Eben and Sha'Li had been convinced by Aurelius and Selea to suspend their search for a few weeks, to properly provision themselves, to train some more, and wait for a solid lead to come in. Aurelius was teaching more of elemental magic to Eben, and who knew what Selea was teaching the rogue lizardman girl.

Did some greater force, invisible to them but powerful nonetheless, drag at their feet, holding them back from completing their quest? Or mayhap some malevolent force worked more subtly, confounding their path and turning their footsteps aside.

Who wished for them to fail? It was not a question she had ever really considered. Obviously, the Emperor would not be thrilled at the appearance of a rival for his throne. The former governor, Anton Constantine, had been no fan of their quest, although she suspected his objections had more to do with his insatiable greed than any great care for protecting the Empire.

If only Hyland were still alive. What she would not give for one more hour seated next to him in front of a roaring fire, sipping mead, talking out such matters with him. Feeling lonelier than she had in a long while, she trudged back to the Heart. An exhausting afternoon of stirring a steaming pot of brewing potions over a hot fire awaited her.

And so it went. She studied healing, ran errands, worked around the Heart, and healed a steady stream of people wherever she went. The constant drain upon her magic left her continually fatigued and ravenously hungry. The voices were always with her now, lurking in the background of her mind, waiting for an unguarded moment in which to surge forward and drive her mad with their incessant babble.

At least she had become highly proficient at diagnosing common illnesses and injuries over the past few months and at fixing them with a quick burst of magical energy. Her sleep deprivation gradually deepened into a state of complete exhaustion.

Stars knew, she had begun to imagine that her name had morphed into “White Heart.” The symbol on her tabard was starting to feel permanently imprinted upon her flesh.

She missed her friends. They would have teased her about the odd experience with the girl until she laughed over it. She barely saw any of them anymore. Will was immersed in his daily lessons with Krugar; and when he wasn't jumping around trying to kill the soldier with some weapon or another, he was busy with magic casting lessons. As a result, Rosana was grumpy and out of sorts most of the time.

When he wasn't taking magic lessons of his own, Eben lurked around Hyland's old house, by turns tense and depressed, waiting for a scout or bounty hunter to send back word of a sighting of Kendrick or Marikeen. The muscular young elemental grew more morose and antisocial than ever as the days passed with no news of his friend or his sister. Even Sha'Li began to seem like a ray of sunshine by comparison.

If the gorgeous three-eyed paxan, Rynn, was still in Dupree, he was lying extremely low. Not only did Raina never glimpse him, but not even a breath of rumor about a handsome open-eyed paxan was to be heard.

She had to get out from under the heavy thumb of the Heart and continue the quest to wake the Sleeping King. But how? She dared not try it alone. Of course, it was not as if the Royal Order of the Sun ever left her unattended for more than a few seconds. As she searched for a way to escape her constant bodyguards, the days continued to slip away one by one as summer aged toward fall.

*   *   *

Anton scowled at the dripping black trees around him. He hated the great outdoors, and he hated being alone like this with no one to guard his back. He felt vulnerable and small. And he despised both of those sensations. He did not even have the benefit of a slave, loyalty ensured by one of his special enslavement potions. He was a kothite noble, or at least he should be one, and here he was toting a pack containing all his worldly goods upon his own back and
walking
like a common peddler. It was a travesty.

Thankfully, the plentiful gangs of greenskin bandits he'd encountered out here had left him alone as soon as they realized his identity. As well they should. He was financing their marauding. He had to admit they were not doing a half-bad job of it. He'd run across multiple burned-out homesteads and ransacked villages in the past few weeks. It was gratifying to see the havoc he'd wreaked.

Too bad they hadn't managed to sack Dupree, though. Now
that
would have caused chaos the colony would never have recovered from. At least not until he took control again and brought back order. He did have the satisfaction of having eliminated three of his most annoying foes. And even if Jethina Delphi had survived, she was too weak without the support of the other three landsgraves to cause any trouble. She was an old woman. She would die soon enough of her own volition.

Frankly, he was disappointed that the guilds and minor landholders under the dead landsgraves had not demanded his return to power already. It would have been a heady thing to ride a wave of popular support back to the governor's palace.
His
palace. Ungrateful louts, all of them. Before he was done, they would yearn for a return to the peaceful days when he'd been governor. They would
beg
him to come back and rule them all.

A few more minutes of hiking brought him to a beautiful waterfall in a lush forest glade. Had a bevy of slaves gone before him to lay a picnic feast, and a half dozen musicians provided entertainment while another half dozen dancing girls did their best to seduce him, he might have enjoyed this spot. But as it was, he curled his lip in distaste for the
green-ness
of it all.

He suspected his associates were amusing themselves at his expense, choosing these out-of-the-way meeting places with nary a building nor human comfort in sight. He would take note of every veiled insult, every small jab they leveled at him. And he would have his revenge tenfold for every pin they stuck in him. Nay. A hundredfold. If not today, then someday. He could be patient. Particularly when sweet revenge lay in the balance.

The steady roar of water plunging over a precipice and crashing to the pool below gave him a minor headache and put him in an even surlier mood. By the time movement across the clearing announced the arrival of his associate to this unholy meeting, he had achieved a truly foul state of mind.

Anton moved over to the water's edge where the noise was loudest. “About time you got here. You're late,” Anton declared irritably.

“I am so sorry to have inconvenienced you, Governor.”

He could not tell if the man was being sarcastic or not. Either way, he was mollified by the title that was rightfully his. “I need you to place an agent with the Boki in the Forest of Thorns. If my contact there does not do as he is told, I'll have him killed.”

The contact nodded. “We have traders who pass through that area regularly.”

“No simple traders will have access to Ki'Raiden. I need a spy-assassin among them.”

“Ki'Raiden? I thought we were done with him.”

Anton snorted. “He gains influence among his kind. If I can bring him to the Empire as an ally, like I did with the Kithmar—who were royalty among the rakasha—Maximillian will have no choice but to reinstate me.” He added avidly, “With full honors. And maybe even an apology. Or maybe he will declare Dupree a kingdom and crown me its first king—” He broke off. No need to reveal his long-term schemes to this peon.

The man frowned but bowed his head briefly. “I shall put an agent in place, m'lord.” He asked unhappily, “And the other thing?”

“I need information.”

The fellow visibly relaxed. “Ahh, well. That is easy enough. We have informants in every corner of the colony and beyond. What do you wish to know?”

“Not so fast with your smiles and promises of success, my friend,” Anton retorted. “A group of young adventurers traveled into the Forest of Thorns several months ago. They found something that belongs to me. I want them captured. Questioned—no, tortured—until they sing like birds. I want to know everything they saw. Everything they heard. What they found. What they learned. And what they
took
from me. I want it back.”

The black serpent tattooed on the Coil contact's forearm writhed and twisted as the fellow clenched and unclenched his fist. “What you ask is somewhat more difficult than I anticipated.”

“I need it done quickly. Quietly.”

The black snake wiggled uncomfortably. “Is there not something else we could do for you instead? Our expertise lies more in commerce. Intelligence gathering. Financial transactions.”

Anton leaned in close, forcing the man to lean back from the waist. “I require
this
of you. And I require it
now
. I will do whatever it takes to rule this colony again.”

The fellow stared, then shook himself, saying carefully, “Of course you will, my lord. And the Coil will do everything in its power to help you regain your position as governor.”

Of course they would. The Coil profited immensely when its leader controlled the purse strings of the entire colony.

“How will we let you know what we have learned?”

Anton's reply was swift. “I'll be watching you. I will contact you.”

 

CHAPTER

16

Will could not remember what it was like to wake up in the morning and not be sore from head to foot. He ought to be grateful for the grueling training to which Captain Krugar was subjecting him. But the soldier kept talking in terms of years of this intense practice before he would master any one weapon, let alone a wide array of them.

At least Krugar had started teaching him how to cast wind magic. It was devilish hard to get the hang of calling power from the moving currents of air instead of from that easy, instinctive place within him from whence force magic came.

Today, he trudged along reluctantly behind Aurelius to the Heart to be introduced to the Heartstone. His grandfather had been appalled to discover by chance that Will had never undergone the Ceremony of Introduction. It was an ancient ritual that most people performed as children to become familiar with Heartstones and know what to do should they ever need to resurrect.