MARBLE 6.2: WHO IS THE DREAMER
“What are we to do with them? They are not like the Rebels, not anymore! They cannot be reasoned with. You must surely all remember why we accepted that puerile designation, ‘Srol’? That is the meaning of their new philosophy! To reject all paradigms that may serve as shared foundations. They are too dangerous to even be interred in Zyger. Will you permit them within a courthouse? Will you give their demented brethren opportunity to further antagonise the public by causing riots, attempting rescue? This publicity is all they most desire! No, there is only one answer: eradication, at the earliest opportunity. We hereby propose the Srol Justice Bill. Let those who gainsay it explain themselves at once!”
– the Lady Malice Rhaegel, in session before the High Council, Urdara 995 NE
The owner of the house completely ignored the ghost – if I thought she looked terrified before, that was nothing. She fled across the room to the other wall and hid her face against it, sobbing.
“So, you really couldn’t tell it wasn’t one of ‘em?” Dreamlaughter asked, as if we were just old acquaintances stopping for a chit-chat. “Cos I’ve been working on this for a while now, and it’s – it’s just,” the darkmage almost choked-up and fanned herself, as though she thought she might burst into tears of joy, or was at least acting that way, “it’s just really meanin’ful, you know? To have someone like you ‘preciate me work like this.”
“I –”
“You got some pretty cool defences, don’t you?” She went from ridiculously-overjoyed to ridiculously-curious in the span of a breath. “What is it? Your mask? Why can’t I see inside your gorgeous li’l head, I wonder… Can’t even chip it! All you champions, all the same, ain’t you?”
I considered my options. She might’ve been able to pick up what I said over the glyphstone… No, better to do it in her face.
“Stormsword!” I cried. “Dreamlaughter!”
Dreamlaughter’s eyebrows raised. “Now that’s the even newer one, innit? She the one you was with at the Square, with them spiders? Eurgh, man, dunno how you managed that one. Gives me the creeps.”
Spiders… gave Dreamlaughter… the creeps…
What was more, Dreamlaughter could link Em with Stormsword. That wasn’t good.
A moment later I heard a crash from downstairs as Em smashed her way through the door, the rush of a gale hurtling through the house –
“Upstairs!” I yelled out of instinct, in case of the one in a million chance she didn’t know whereabouts I was –
I saw her emerge from the stairwell behind Dreamlaughter, saw her eyes widen as she halted, staring at the darkmage. Lightning took root there in her steely irises, dancing white-blue and flickering; mist thickened around her without seeping across the landing.
“Well, well,” Stormsword murmured.
I could tell she was trying her utmost to keep her accent from coming through – I wondered whether she’d been listening in when the darkmage revealed she’d figured out an important part of Em’s identity already.
“Hiya! Stormsword, right?” The enchantress extended her hand in Em’s direction. “I love your mask, phoenixes are soooooo cool. Ah, you’ve been protected by the same person as him. No wonder he called you in.”
“Stormsword,” I did my best to keep my voice level, “somewhere within a short distance there is a top-tier bounty just begging for us to come collect it. Can you sense anything nearby that’s just started running, moving frantically, now I’ve said that? I don’t know her range, but its outside my biggest shield.”
“Oh, golly,” Dreamlaughter squeaked, lowering her hand. She looked back at me. “You know I’m not really here?”
I tapped my temple knowingly. The browny, violety sight I’d blinked into my left eye the moment she’d announced her name had seen right through her. A glance at the ghost told me it was no different.
They could move through my shields. She’d try to terrify me, or –
“Well – best be off then,” she huffed. “Lovely meetin’ you. We’ll have to do this again sometime. Say, I know a neat trick…”
Dreamlaughter vanished in the blink of an eye, and not a second later absolute, impenetrable darkness fell.
To my right eye only.
Satyr-reflexes screamed at me to take a combat posture, lean to one side –
The ghost-illusion had vanished along with its creator’s illusion, and the woman – the poor woman was now possessed.
She was racing across the room at me, her feet pointed outwards in an unnatural posture – her fist bunched, she swung at the side of my head as if to dislodge my mask, clobber me in the ear.
“Stay put, Storm, nothing to worry about!” I shouted, seeing Em react to her sudden blindness with more lightning.
Instead of dodging away from the old woman, giving Dreamlaughter the pleasure of watching me defend myself against an inept, mind-controlled victim, I simply let the fist swing right through my head. She overbalanced, probably due in part to the fact the arch-enchanter didn’t have a complete grip on the woman’s motor controls; I rematerialised behind her, using a touch of my enhanced strength to hold her arms so that she couldn’t escape, couldn’t swing at me again.
I hadn’t realised until now that it worked this way. No wonder those demons in the Incursion had seemed so successful when they’d taken control of the magisters – their spells must’ve penetrated the shielding. The perpetrator bore no malice – this woman, kicking like a mule and frothing at the mouth, held me no ill-will. She was only a reflection of Dreamlaughter. Her body could get through, and the shield did nothing to stop the willpower of the distant archmage.
Daaaaaamn.
Ultimately, I supposed, I was glad to have seen this. The darkmage had tipped her hand for the sake of having the last laugh.
So puppets can get through my defences, assuming they don’t actually want to hurt me… Should I even ask the others about this?
I was loath to start divulging secrets that could get back to other dark enchanters once they’d seen the feat performed in front of them.
“Feychilde? What is this?” I heard Em call. “My light can’t clear it.”
“It’s on our minds. Come my way.” I exerted Zab’s power, but I could only clear a small section of the sphere of darkness the enchantress had put upon the building.
With my illusion-piercing vision I could see that Em had let her mist and lightning dissipate, and then the relief came over her features as she entered the cleared area. The confusion that swept over her face as she saw me holding the woman, replaced in an instant by understanding.
“What are we going to do now?” she asked, disappointment in her tone. “I can’t sense the darkmage. I could bind the woman, in stone perhaps, but this wouldn’t be very pleasant for the poor thing…”
Her opinion was obviously the same as mine, then.
“I don’t know…” I kept a carefully-controlled grip on the possessed resident while I thought it through. “Can you send a message? To Lovebright, Glancefall, Spiritwhisper… Dancefire, Wilderweird, Voicenoise… whoever’s closest might be able to get here in time, help us trace her.”
Em reached into the folds of her robe –
“Golly golly golly!” the woman moaned, in Dreamlaughter’s voice, then slumped in my arms – she would’ve fallen in a heap if not for the grip I had on her.
The darkness-spell lifted as suddenly as it had first fallen, and we could see our surroundings again.
I manoeuvred the darkmage’s victim to the bed, plopped her down; she rolled on her back, breathing heavily and sweating.
“What in Tw-Twelve Hells was that?” She shuddered, bringing her hands up under her chin and curling into a ball, looking around with wet, frenzied eyes.
“I think you were being used as part of an experiment,” I said by way of shorthand explanation. “Darkmage wanted to test fake ghost; darkmage found someone grieving. The man – your husband?”
She shook her head, but said, “Araldo. My sweet, sweet Araldo.” She gazed up at me imploringly. “Can – you – you can bring him back for me? For real?”
I drew back. “That’s not what I’m about, sorry. I mean –“ I licked my lips, remembering Morsus’s body “– my condolences, madam. But I can’t. I really, really can’t. The woman you just saw – Dreamlaughter – she was toying with your mind. How long have you been seeing this ghost?”
Her face contorted in waves of denial and frustration and confusion. “I think – it was, on Waneday – yeah – Waneday night…”
Em had floated into the room, then stepped down to the rug as she moved towards the bed, all the overt signs of her power now fully faded.
“I doubt she’ll be back.” Stormsword sat down, placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “You should try to get some rest. My friend is going to pop a shield here around your bed – is this okay? We aren’t going that far, and we’re going to send someone here with something that can protect you properly, really soon. You’re safe now.”
I smiled.
“Is it – really you?” The resident smiled, looking between the two of us. “Stormsword, is it? And Feychilde? Is it really you?”
“It’s really us,” Em said, floating back up off the bed.
“The Liberator of Zadhal.” She said the words dreamily, and closed her eyes. “Liberated me. Liberated old Keyla. Hah! Who’ll believe me?”
I exchanged a glance with my fellow champion.
“I think someone spotted me coming in, to be honest, but I may be able to help with that. How’s an autograph sound?”
* * *
“We don’t even know what she looks like, you know,” Spirit confided, wiggling his fingers over the leaden amulet. Its face was covered in the runes he’d placed directly into my mind, immensely speeding up the process of carving the correct glyphs, and I’d scrawled my signature into the other side for the sake of Keyla’s neighbours. I watched his spells moving my force-lines, traced the patterns with my eyes.
“Dreamlaughter looked like a tiny woman, to me,” I said. “Silver robe, like Fang’s only, you know, richer… brown hair…”
He nodded. “That’s what she looked like to me, too, last time she popped up. But she could be a he, or, ya know, a dwarf…”
I eyed the enchanter, Bor. His face was drawn in concentration, the kind of concentration that still let you talk. But he had this morose distance in his dark brown eyes whenever he looked away from his work for a second that didn’t fit his brazen, chiselled features somehow. The way he’d looked when we’d discovered him in Zadhal, after Rosedawn’s death.
“You still mad about Neverwish? His betrayal?”
I hadn’t tried to put any mockery into what I’d said, but the tall, burly archmage straightened as if I’d slapped him.
“Nah, man!” He didn’t sound as offended as he looked, and cast his gaze back onto the amulet. “I just mean – if it was me, I’da made my seeming nothin’ like me, ya know?”
A ‘seeming’ was what he was calling it, then?
“I’ve heard of that,” Zel said quietly in confirmation.
“Yeah – but you’re smart,” I replied. “She’s unhinged – not even that – she’s, like, a door the carpenter busted that never left the shop…”
“She never even got a hinge in the first place,” he belaboured the joke in a distant-sounding voice, wiggling his fingers now in a particularly convoluted-looking pattern.
“Right. So, you really think she thinks that far ahead? Dreamlaughter?”
He broke off his spells, looked at me again. “I know she thinks far enough ahead to try makin’ illusions that can trick sorcerers. Never occurred to me.”
“Sure, but neither did forcing people to cackle while they sleepwalk into the Greywater, did it? It’s not like making illusions that can trick sorcerers is a good idea.”
“I know I wouldn’t have minded something like that once or twice. Heretics suck.” He glanced back down at the amulet, then to my eyes again. “Want me to add something so the woman starts a conga line whenever someone mentions frogs?”
He smiled tightly, and I grinned.
“Look, if you want to be able to drop the shield you said you put around that woman any time soon, you’re gonna have to let me finish up my part, Kas.”
I nodded, muttered, “Thanks, man,” and broke eye contact, letting him go back to it without making him feel he was being rude.
Truth was, he was right. Making illusions that could trick sorcerers, check. Using puppets to pierce sorcerer’s shields, check. What was next in the darkmage’s repertoire? Which would be the trick that would snare me, lay me open to a decisive strike?
I repressed a shudder. How someone so clearly in need of a brain-fix could come up with such ingenious ideas was beyond me.
I looked around. Timesnatcher’s ‘drawing room’ was far too big. Why anyone would want or need such an expanse in which to do a bit of drawing, I had no idea. Sofas lined with soft leather and suede dotted the area, seemingly with no purpose, no direction. There was no one focal point – over here, me and Spirit sat on high-backed chairs that wouldn’t have been out of place around a dining table, leaning across the small pine-carved table that stood beside the wall, beneath a lantern-lit mirror. Twenty feet away, Timesnatcher and Em were on a turquoise leather couch, talking in low voices – I could tell from the tension in Em’s arms as she sat forward, gripping her knees in her hands, that they were trying to iron out their differences. I didn’t want to eavesdrop, and it was difficult to mind my own business when Spirit stopped talking to concentrate on his enchantments.
Tanra – Killstop – completed the scene, wandering around the edges of the room. If the place had deliberately rejected the notion of centralisation, a focal point, Tanra had evidently found fifty. She studied every portrait, every landscape depicted in the pretentious paintings dotted around. Busts of Timesnatcher’s ancestors stood under some of the lanterns – but there was no bust of Irimar himself, he who would surely be the most illustrious, the most impressive of his line. Even in death, he might choose that his identity be kept secret, and the history books would never record that this scion of a lesser house was once the most influential man in Mund. His descendants would have little by way of great deeds to ascribe him, and he would be forgotten.
That was, if he lived long enough to have descendants. He’d probably have to retire, like poor Leafcloak had done, if he wanted to have a family. Hells, maybe me and Em would have to, one day… That was a long way off and far too far for me to even imagine, though. And I’d probably have nieces and nephews, my brother and sister’s kids, to hear about me from their parents, remember me. I couldn’t see any traces of siblings anywhere in Timesnatcher’s house. No one but him and the absent servants.
Now Lightblind was gone, would he find love again? Would the Nemmeneth line end here, as hers had ended?
It was strange, seeing his face again. He had aged, since that day I saw him on the edge of Hightown when he’d directed me towards the Diamond Mare. I imagined the changes had all taken place in the last two days, though. The thin face was thinner, the watery eyes waterier, the wavy hair unbrushed.
And it was even stranger, having him introduce himself by name. What did it portend, having us meet him here, having his mask off when he answered the door? (Tanra and Borasir – Spirit insisted we call him ‘Bor’ – were also unmasked when we arrived.)
I suspected, feared, that the arch-diviner was resigned to his fate, his vendetta, now. The smile on his lips wasn’t cold, exactly, but it was a mask of another kind, a mask of geniality to hide the unfeeling void within, the rage-horror that would only take one whisper of Duskdown’s presence to take spark, ignite into a conflagration of stupendous, unbelievable violence.
As much as I found myself caring about him, what would happen to him, I knew I couldn’t trust him.
It wasn’t the fake smile. It wasn’t the overblown gesture of revealing his identity.
It was the way he’d hidden the book from me. It was the way he would invariably lie to me to get me to do what he wanted, needed me to do.
Spirit had been right about Dreamlaughter – and Em was right about Timesnatcher.
I stared across at him, and saw the killer sitting there beside my girlfriend. And if he was willing to lie to better himself in my opinion, how could I even trust his explanations of events? What he’d done to Rosedawn – what he’d done to set up Redgate – did I even know Redgate was as bad as he’d said, really? Direcrown had certainly been different to the caricature of him I’d built up in my head based on Timesnatcher’s words. Perhaps Redgate was an innocent-enough arch-sorcerer… Perhaps Rosedawn hadn’t even been plotting to destroy the Maginox, enchanting the guards, any of that stuff.
Could it be that Timesnatcher was dark? Even without knowing it?
Could it be I was immeasurably lucky to have an anti-mind-invasion amulet that stopped my suspicions getting back to him somehow?
But when he turned his face to mine, his discussion with Em having drawn to a close, I looked into his shining blue eyes, and I saw only the friend whose beloved had been broken, stamped to the wall by a killer a thousand times worse than he was.
“Patience, Kas,” he said quietly, as if taking my probing gaze for a show of frustration. “You won’t find him without a druid’s help, I’m pretty damn sure of that.”
That was another thing entirely, and the whole purpose of us meeting here tonight.
We’d all searched for Nighteye in our own ways. Yesterday I’d sent out imps with descriptions to scour the city, but they’d turned up nothing. The diviners had been retracing his steps, trying to puzzle out where he might’ve stepped off the path destiny carved for him. Druids whispered to the grass and rats, enchanters plumbed minds, and I knew for a fact that Em had spent four hours straight last night just sitting there in the air above the city, drawing sounds to her ears, listening for a scrap of conversation that might lead somewhere. (I’d been sitting in the air opposite her for most of it, reading my sorcery textbook, waiting for her to send me off on another wild goose chase.)
Individually, we’d turned up nothing, but Timesnatcher had appeared in the glyphstone this morning requesting my presence at five. When I got back in touch and had a conversation with him, it transpired he wanted us to pool our resources, head out in force tonight.
I understood his motives, or at least thought I did. With Shadowcloud out of commission – the deaths of Lightblind, Leafcloak, Rosedawn, Dustbringer, Smouldervein – the loss of Neverwish – the ranks of the champions had drawn perilously thin in the last weeks. Only one champion had arisen since Tanra to help replace the lost archmages, a gnomish wizard of Hilltown named Copperbrow, who’d apparently met up with Mountainslide on two occasions.
We couldn’t afford to lose Nighteye, one of our most adept healers, a fierce fighter… that was how Timesnatcher would be thinking.
Would he think of all the young druid’s admirable qualities? His enthusiasm, his steadfastness? His care, his worrying nature? Would he see a person, or a pawn to be moved here and there as fate decreed?
I checked Spirit – Bor – was still engrossed in his work, then stood up wordlessly and walked over to join my girlfriend.
“So are you two best buddies again?”
I took a seat on the other side of Em from Timesnatcher and leant forwards so that I could look at them both.
“It may be that I was a little hasty the other night,” the arch-diviner said. “It’s good that you brought Emrelet with you today.”
“Well, you knew I would.”
He gave a minute nod. “I apologise, for my frustration –“
Em raised a hand to halt him. “You don’t need to apologise to Kas – only to me, and zat has been done. You have been forgiven.” She turned to face me, smiled wryly. “He trusts zat I’m not just about to – vot is it? – blab his secrets to Zakimel.”
Timesnatcher spread his fingers and affected a pained expression, as if to proclaim his innocence.
Too much pain in it.
“Irimar,” Tanra said suddenly, halting right by us, garish robe flapping, “would you like me to get the door again?”
He nodded to her. “If you please.”
She nodded back, but didn’t leave the drawing room as I’d expected. She just folded her arms across her chest and stood there smiling, facing us.
“I’ll still get there in time,” she chided me, catching my gaze.
Timesnatcher went on, “It’s not that I mistrust Emrelet, you understand – it’s only certain… individuals,” he gave his own wry smile, “and we’ve come to an agreement that, providing Emrelet keeps her amulet on at all times, I can permit a magister into my confidences. She is a champion, after all.”
“I voz hardly planning to remove it in any case,” she complained.
There was a flash, a whip-snap of colour I saw out of the corner of my eye as Tanra vanished – less than a second later she was back, nose waggling in irritation.
“How did you do that?” she moaned at Timesnatcher.
I looked from him to Tanra, back again.
He moved too?
I shuddered. I’d been looking right at him.
“Practice,” he demurred with a one-shoulder shrug.
I smirked despite myself.
“If that’s all it is, I’m so gonna move faster than that one day.” She smiled sweetly. “I’ll show up all the new arch-diviners one day, just you watch me. Oh, except you won’t be able to.”
Her superior just shook his head, but he wore a mysterious smile on his narrow lips.
Once Fangmoon and Lovebright arrived, wearing their coverings just like me and Em had been, they strode purposefully into the drawing room – both of them would be able to sense us in here, surely – and stopped when they saw us, unmasked, staring at them.
They stared back in obvious shock.
“You knew it was coming,” Timesnatcher said into the stunned silence.
The women turned their heads to regard at each other in unison, then Lovebright sniggered softly.
“Well – it’s about time!” she said.
* * *
I’d seen the slim, exotic Fang (Soleine, or ‘Sol’) without her huge silver wig and bestial mask before, but Lovebright was new to me. Her name was Jo, short for Joceine, and I was surprised to find her as captivating as she was. Many Northmen simply didn’t do anything for me; with their tendency towards freckles and reddish hair, they just weren’t my type. But Lovebright cut an elegant figure, blonde-brown hair pulled back in a simple ponytail, skin marble with nary a freckle in sight: her face was roundish, with a cute, stubby nose and a warm smile, eyes bright and intelligent… My mind repeated her curious name, Joceine Tamaflower, and I blinked before averting my gaze.
“You all know what’s happening,” Timesnatcher said after the introductions were over and we’d all gathered round. “Nighteye is absent from all vision. Those predictions concerning him which had previously been hovering around the hundred-percent-accuracy mark have dropped to below ten percent. Yesterday evening Tanra and I,” he gestured to his accomplice, “visited his home.”
Tanra seemed to pale, avoided meeting anyone’s eyes.
“I knew that he’d had a troubled upbringing, but little did I realise the extent to which he’d hidden the reality from us,” Timesnatcher went on. “In truth I always thought I did best by my friends, retreating from those visions which would expose their identities… in greater detail than had already been made plain to me…”
“You don’t have to say sorry for not spying on everyone all the time,” Lovebright pointed out.
“The main thing is, Nighteye was being abused by his brothers, and his dad too,” Tanra said, glancing up and around at us. “A Lord of the Arrealbord. They kept him, like he was a dog. They knew what he could do, what he could do to them, and it never stopped them for a moment. Even when he tried, he couldn’t bring himself to follow it through, and…”
I saw her clench her jaw, looking back down at the floor, and I felt a surge of intense harmony flood through me, a concordance between us.
It must’ve been bad. He’d lied to us, lied to me about everything.
“What were they doing to him?” I asked her directly.
“You don’t want to know,” she said hollowly, flicking her eyes to mine only for a moment.
My hand gripping the arm of the couch was about to start deforming the wood beneath the leather – as though I were ungritting my teeth upon waking, I slowly unclenched my fingers, moved my hand to my knee.
I couldn’t crush my own knee; it was too wraith-y.
“Are you saying that in your professional capacity as –“
“I’m saying it, Kas, because I don’t want you to start torturing people. I know Nighteye saved you, I know you feel you owe him. Don’t ask, please.”
I drew a deep breath and slowly nodded to her.
Zel?
“I’ll get right on it. No idea what she’s talking about, but if you want to know…?”
Please.
Em spoke. “So let me get zis straight – you think zat he has run avay from his life, his role as a champion? Nighteye? Ze guy who came into ze demon’s lair viz us?”
“There’s no way!” Fang hissed.
Timesnatcher – Irimar – held up a hand. “Just… think in terms that he has been kidnapped.”
He paused, allowed that to sink into everyone’s heads.
“There’s three ways it could’ve happened,” Tanra said after a moment.
“You know my thoughts on that,” Irimar cut in instantly.
“The chief thinks it’s Duskdown.”
“I know it’s Duskdown.”
“I think it’s not. I think it’s heretics.”
“No one can hide something like this from me. No one.”
“That’s what you think. That’s what they’d want you to think. How is it we’re able to predict fewer than five-sixths of their movements?”
He met her eyes for the first time.
“I’ve read between the lines,” she went on, undeterred, “and I think you’re committing a serious error of judgement. For the record!”
She looked around for support.
I nodded. “Shouldn’t we keep all the options open? Time- Irimar…” He looked at me. “If you want to hunt Duskdown, then feel free. No one’s going to stop you. We’ll help you.”
I drew a shuddering breath, and prayed to Yune that the darkmage really truly couldn’t scry that I was saying this. I’d heard he’d scrawled ‘ROSEDAWN’ at his latest murder scene, and I couldn’t imagine a world in which that was a good sign for his sanity.
“But,” I pressed on, “if there’s even a slim chance Tanra’s right, and we don’t investigate? I – I can’t really imagine, what the Srol might do with him. What would they want with him?”
I caught Tanra’s wan smile of gratitude before she swiftly hid it. “It could be Facechanger, too. We know they can hide from us.”
“I hope – whoever it is has him – they don’t hurt him,” Lovebright – Jo – said worriedly.
“Can you sense your amulet?” Em asked the enchanters, looking from Jo to Bor. “Could ve not track him through zat?”
“He’s wearing one of mine,” Jo replied. “And, no, not unless certain other spells were invested in it. Even if I had invested those considerable energies, there’d be ways to hide its signature from me.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Fang said, her frustration plain to hear in her voice. “I… I think, if they took him – surely he must have been…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence, and we all knew how it was supposed to end.
Surely he must have been killed by now, whatever they wanted him for.
I licked my lips, not knowing what to say, how to break the sudden silence that had descended.
“We won’t give up on him without a reason,” Irimar promised her. “But before we go too far, I should let you all know that I met with some of the elders this morning. They’ve agreed to allow me to continue to lead, and Springsun is going to be taking over coordination of the druids –“ Fang nodded, even more morose-looking at the reminder of Leafcloak’s passing “– and he wanted to make an entrance, so…”
I stared in surprise as the transformation occurred.
“Did you know I’d landed in your hood all along?” asked the gnome now sitting astride his shoulders.
“Me?” Irimar put on a shocked voice. The smile at the corners of his lips didn’t quite reach his eyes, though.
“And what do you mean, ‘elders’? I’m only a hundred and twenty-four – that’s, as they say, what, sixty-three in your years –“
“Sixty-two,” Tanra supplied.
“Sixty-two!” the gnome cried in a tremulous voice. “I’ve got a good thirty years left in me yet, let me tell you!”
“I meant – would you like to get down from there? Look – ow, Sunspring, that’s my ear, not a ladder-rung – oof –“ the gnome’s pointy little boot caught him in the ribs “– thank you… I only meant the champions whose careers extend back further than mine –“
“That’s enough about my age!” For all his protestations of youth, the gnome’s voice was that of a wizened old man, if a little on the squeaky side. His face was deeply-lined beneath the mop of jagged hair, slightly greyer than the thick, whiter whiskers covering his cheeks, lips, chin, neck. Having found his footing on the couch beside Irimar, he promptly plopped himself down on his backside. His head hadn’t even been on the same level as Irimar’s when he was stood on the padded leather, but now he was truly reduced to childlike proportions.
I hadn’t known any gnomes. I’d seen a few when crossing the city every now and again, but they were rarely found in Sticktown, and certainly there’d never been a gnome in the Gold Griffin in my lifetime. The top of Sunspring’s head wouldn’t even come up to my hip. He wore a robe of autumnal colours, oranges and browns, with yellow bursts of sun-rays scattered across one shoulder and down the front and back, like an embroidered sash.
“Now, before you all start screaming, let me just say…” He held up a finger. “I’ve left my mask off, as a gesture of good faith. You want to remove my memory of this meeting once we’re done? Fire away. You had this sin sprung on you, so to speak, ah-ha-ha.” He chuckled at his own joke, gave a tight grin, and then removed a ring from one of his fingers, lifted it up for everyone to see. “You can keep your memories of who I am – Neko Contellimas.” He dipped his head in salute, looking around at us all.
“Sunspring!” Fang murmured, seemingly instinctively.
He turned his smiling face to her, and the smile faded away; within two seconds he was regarding her gravely. “It’s been awhile since we last chatted, hasn’t it, child? You should come with me, later. We’ll start at his family lands. Fly, talk, while we search.”
Fang – Sol, damn it – lowered her head deferentially and nodded.
I had to admit it – for all that he’d surprised us with his intrusion into our unmasked assemblage, I kind of liked the gnome. I wanted to trust him, and if Timesnatcher had foreseen this meeting, had it go ahead in this manner…
But I didn’t trust him, did I?
I bit my lip, looked around at the others.
“How long has he been zere?” Em asked, her voice hard.
“After we talked,” Irimar replied at once, understanding her concern. “Before Jo and Sol arrived.”
The gnome druid nodded confirmation, with a questioning look on his features beneath the mass of white hairs. “You aren’t suggesting I’m rude, now, are you, young lady? How… how rude!”
His bushy white eyebrows crinkled, wagging as he looked her up and down, face drawn in consternation.
Even the sceptical Em had to laugh after that, and as I glanced around at the faces of the others I realised I was alone.
And so it was that we ended up including a stranger in our exclusive little club.
* * *
We landed in the Oldtown street, Tanra in the lead, me and Em slightly behind. The cobbled road was wide enough for four wagons abreast, and the gardens in front of each house were small, incredibly colourful. Night had fallen, but the lights were on in the windows, and I caught several people gawping at us as we settled down to earth. Perhaps word had already gotten around.
I knocked on Keyla’s door again, and within ten seconds about forty people were on their doorsteps, many just staring at us, some cheering and punching the air. As much as I didn’t feel that we deserved this level of fanatical response, it made me grin, feel like myself again.
“Feychilde!” screamed a fat little seven- or eight-year-old on the other side of the road.
I made an ‘F’ with my index and middle fingers, held them up for him in salute and he just screamed louder: “Mum! Dad! Did you see that! Did you see it!”
“Liberator!” at least five people were calling, along with incredulous shouts of, “How did you do it?” (and one confused chap muttering to his neighbour, “What did he do, again?”).
All of our names were being mentioned. “Killstop – she’s the one that saved that baby!” “Who in the Twelve Hells designed that robe?” “Wow – look at Stormsword!” “Hey Stormsword, you can storm my sword anytime…”
I met Em’s eyes through the slits in her mask. I could see that she’d heard the drunken guy’s lewd comments from the level stare, the slight twist of a devious smirk at the corners of her mouth.
“This will just take a minute,” I said to her as Keyla swung open the door. “Don’t do anything… dangerous.”
“Oh, I think we’ll be fine, Feychilde,” Killstop said in an amused tone.
Shuddering, I stepped inside the hallway.
I didn’t even close the door behind me, or accept any of the various, many-faceted refreshments offered. (Was it an offer, if it sounded like a threat? The phrase “You will take a biscuit” had never sounded so terrifying, especially when, after I politely refused, she followed it up in a level, unheeding voice with “A biscuit with icing”.) All in all it couldn’t have taken me thirty seconds to get the necklace on the old woman, get my shield taken down, and ensure she understood she couldn’t afford to lose or even take off the amulet (at least not until Dreamlaughter was caught).
Yet in that brief interval, things had clearly escalated. When I returned to the doorstep, Em was floating in the middle of the street, a solid thirty feet up, with an incredibly green-looking drunk dangling by his ankle in the air in front of her, emitting the occasional shriek. She wasn’t taking much care with him – his pants-legs had fallen down to the knees, his long, greasy hair was hanging straight down, and he was pivoting from the single foot as he helplessly swung his arms.
The crowd were still cheering and laughing. She hadn’t managed to turn it into a horror-show by disintegrating him yet, at least.
“You’ve got icing on your chin,” Killstop pointed out.
I cursed and pawed at myself.
“Nope, missed it.” Within a split second she was there in front of me, spit-wet thumb raised, sliming up my jaw. “Come here.”
“Sweet Nentheleme, gerroff me!” I barked.
Killstop laughed, backing away as she stuck her thumb beneath her mask again, then twisted to look around me, behind me. “Hey, these are nice – can I get a biscuit? I know I wasn’t here when the darkmage was after you, but I totally helped make that thing Feychilde just gave you – well, I was totally there when he made it – I answered the door…”
As the arch-diviner wandered into the house with an incredibly pleased-looking Keyla leading the way, Em hailed me.
“Feychilde! I’m sorry, but I’m leaving you for this fine figure of a man –“
“P-put m-me d-down!”
“When it is a choice between the Liberator of Zadhal and the… the…”
Em looked down at a teenage girl about our age standing in the crowd, casting her a ‘help me out here’ gesture; the girl grinned and cried: “The Liberator of Drop!”
(The cry very quickly got repeated across the younger members of the audience, going through several versions before seeming to settle on “The Droperator of Droptown!”)
“Pleeeease, I won’t say any-anything, I prom-”
Em shook him up and down in the air violently and he stopped talking very suddenly. My hand shook spasmodically as if in response, and for a moment it almost felt like the skin on my palm was coarse, papery.
“But you said you had a weapon hot for me, did you not?” Em pouted, then bit her lip. “Don’t you want to fly with me?”
She doubled their elevation as swiftly as I could draw a breath, which was taken as a fine piece of uproarious humour by our observers; once Em took pity on her heckler and lowered him to the cobbles, quivering like a newborn calf, he darted into his house and slammed the door.
“Justice well served!” cried one of the heckler’s neighbours, an old, robed man.
“Hail Stormsword, Liberator of Ekenrock Road!” someone else cried.
Killstop emerged, hands filled with stacks of biscuits coated in coloured glazes. At the exact same time, I coughed, suddenly choking on something small and chewy that appeared in the back of my throat.
Too late. Swallowed.
Did I just swallow a fly?
I deliberately, and pointlessly, coughed into my hand.
“I don’t know…” Zel murmured.“Wait… that was weird…”
I shook my head. This was all just too good. It couldn’t stop.
“Bring out your wine-glasses and mugs, folks – I think this requires a toast!”
Nighteye had been missing for days. Five minutes wouldn’t hurt, and I had a tasty bit of fly to wash down.
After Flood Boy had filled their vessels to the brims and I’d reassured everyone as to both the wine’s wholesomeness and its veracity, the faun tottered towards me, little hooves clattering on the stones, and cast me a strange, almost wistful look.
“I like you, Feychilde,” he said.
I gulped my drink, lowered the borrowed cup. (The owner of said cup was lingering nearby, watching me – out of reverence, or fear for the safety of a beloved bit of crockery, I was unsure.) “You say that like there’s a ‘but’ coming up.”
“Why would there be a butt coming up?” he asked sharply, casting about as if suddenly reappraising the situation.
“Erm…” I gathered that there was some confusion. “It’s an idiom. I mean, you said it as though you were about to say, ‘I like you, Feychilde, buuuuut…’ You know?”
“I – a ‘but’ – no, ha-ha… It’s just – well… You know how to summon a faun. This…” he gestured with his chalice with tears in his eyes, “this, to me, is a little bit of otherworld on earth, if you follow me, lad. Where’d you find these people?”
I grinned, patted him on the shoulder with my biscuit-less hand. “I think you’re drunk.”
He lowered his head, teetered on his narrow hooves.
“Aye, lad.”
I sent him back to Etherium, an uneasy feeling in my stomach.
“Twelve Hells, Kas, is there anything you’re ever not feeling queasy about?” Zel snorted.
Hey, Miss I-Don’t-Want-To-Talk-To-You-Around-Arch-Diviners…
I looked over at Killstop, shoving a biscuit into Em’s half-protesting, half-laughing mouth, while the uneasiness continued to grow. It wasn’t the way Em was keeping the wine in her cup, even at the unnatural angles she tipped it while recoiling from the arch-diviner. It was something else, something ephemeral, forever changing before I could grasp the nature of it…
“Sooooo anyway,” Zel continued, “speaking of feeling queasy – that fly you swallowed? Not a fly. Something a diviner did.”
A diviner? A diviner made me swallow a fly?
“Not – a – fly! And before you ask, I don’t know who – I’m checking for illusions right now – the thing could be demonic, or –“
I get it Zel.
Forever changing before I could grasp the nature of it… like a dream…
I produced a meagre illusion on my outstretched palm, an oversized flagon of ale overflowing with snowy foam. Those nearest me stared in wonder, and I ignored their cries.
I went with my gut.
Yeah, illusion; that feels right. Find the way through her seals or whatever you call it, Zel.
“Give me time.”
Terror slowly, coldly building inside me, I shook away the illusory flagon, pressed the unfinished cup of wine into its surprised owner’s hand and half-raced, half-flew to Killstop’s side.
“Killstop, can you slow us?” I asked her quietly. “Someone’s messing with us.”
The very same moment, just a few feet away, Em started spluttering.
“Swallow something?” I asked her.
She nodded, staring at me, and I saw the real mask appear over the lower features – the mask of professionalism, the same face she’d worn on the night of our very first meeting. It was scary how quickly she came to attention, realising something was really wrong without having an onboard observer to confirm things.
“Zel’s checking for illusions.” I tapped the side of my head on the outside chance Killstop’s power hadn’t quite caught up to informing her of my occupant. “We may need to drink our healing elixirs, Storm, if we start to feel unwell. They got me first – keep an eye on me, and if I need mine, drink yours.”
It was annoying – I’d only replaced it this morning.
“You think Dreamlaughter is back?” Killstop asked, sounding worried, glancing around at the people, the houses.
“Maybe, but there’s a diviner putting things in our mouths. Could it be… you know… him?”
She cocked her head at me, shrugged. “Him… he could do… anything?” She said it like it was a question.
“Have you swallowed anything unusual?” Em asked her.
She didn’t reply. I looked at my girlfriend.
“They aren’t getting to her mouth, not through the mask. Even if it’s him. She’s way too fast for that.”
“Hm,” Em demurred. “Perhaps you are right…”
I did my best to grin at her, the way she was tacitly leaving the other option open like that. Did my best to keep my spirits up.
It was difficult, not knowing if someone had made us swallow something disgusting – something lethal…
Anything, Zel? I asked internally.
“Feychilde!”
What the hells, Zel? Why do you sound like Spirit?
Then when I heard Killstop’s voice, I realised; it really was Spiritwhisper, linking us up.
And I realised in the same instant that the Killstop standing in front of me wasn’t really her.
“Damn it, Feychilde, Stormsword, can’t you disbelieve it yet? She sent most of them off to drown in the Whiteflood six minutes ago. It’s proving difficult to stop them jumping in and administer antidotes to the poisons you both ate in the biscuits and find an enchanter to link us so I can dropping-well tell you all this without her stealing the feel of the gods-damned piece of paper out of your hand and –“
I stared into the mask of the arch-diviner standing in front of me.
“Dream.”
Em instantly took flight, calling on her lightning at the same time as she spread a tornado through the surroundings, surely searching for anyone moving conspicuously.
“I’ve almost got it…” Zel said. “Damn it, damn it, damn it! She’s good, really good!”
If Graima had done something like this to us, back under the Green Tower, we might never have been able to escape.
Fake Killstop didn’t need to remove the fake mask – she could’ve just changed – but for the sake of theatricality Dreamlaughter did it anyway. The Tanra before me lifted her face-covering and she was the maniac again: short of stature, silver-robed, the giant grin masking the lower face…
Standing well within my shields.
Another illusion.
“Oh, sweetie, you came back for more,” she tittered. “Well, you’ve got it all figured out – why don’t you go save ‘em? While you’re there, I’ll start cooking up a fresh batch of bickies, and cook up some more, ya know – ideas.” She tapped her temple knowingly.
I looked up at Em, and Dreamlaughter used the momentary lapse of concentration to put a dagger in my chest.
I barely felt it, being part-wraith, but the continued lack of pain depended on my willingness to actively disbelieve what I could see, what my flesh was doing its best to respond to – so I sneered in her face, and cackled at her enthusiastically.
“Nyahaha! Come on, Storm – she’s right!” I cried, leaping into the air, deliberately dragging the dagger through my torso as I did so.
“Got it!” Zel crowed, and my left eye filled with brown-violet colour. There were only three of the residents of the street still hanging around, and they were stumbling, dazed, beneath the illusions that hid their true actions and expressions.
I could speed through the houses down the nearest streets, enwraithed, to see if I could find her – her seals could change before our next encounter, if I understood Zel right –
“Yep,” she supplied.
But she could be in a loft, or hidden in a box, and my illusion-breaking sight wouldn’t let me just see her outright – or if she was just sat there eating dinner, how would I know it was her? ‘Her’, even…
And lives were on the line, in the here-and-now.
“We’re on the way!” I called over the link, increasing my speed to match my competition.
We sped towards the river, and I instructed Em where to place her walls of wind and stone – I had Flood Boy place barriers of wine in certain locations, funnelling the stragglers into the arch-wizard’s net – but all the while I could hear the laughter carried on the air Em brought to bear, drowning out the excited yelps of the sleep-runners and only increasing in volume and maniacal intent as we flew farther from its source: Dream’s shrill, taunting titter, seeming to echo from every surface we passed.
Two points to you – but this isn’t over, I promised her silently, leaving the witch behind as we went to work.
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