The Path of Dreams (The Tome of Law Book 2)

by Matthew W. Harrill

  As Zya contemplated this, the door opened and Ralnor stepped in, a look of satisfaction on his pale face. “I see that you have chosen wisely,” he said with a look that showed he was impressed with her choice. “How did you go about it?”

  Zya frowned pensively as she thought of the best way to put her answer. She would never jump to words, she had learned that much with the wise woman. There was always time to form an answer. “I felt my way there,” she said, and saw his face drop just a fraction.

  “That was not the best way to do it. That could be construed as the easiest way out.”

  “Nevertheless, that is the way that I solved the problem. If it is the easiest way to the answer then there should be no problem with that.”

  Ralnor wasn't fazed by her answer, sticking stubbornly to his point. “Do you not see? The easy way out makes for bad habits. Here at the guild we aim to prove everything that we do. We do that by results.”

  Her recent triumph seemed almost as hollow as the stone now gripped tightly in the palm of her hand, feeling it as if it were a part of her. “How do you quantify magic?” She demanded. “How do you put a figure to instinct? I closed my eyes and concentrated on the stones, and felt the difference in this one. It drew me to it, as a lodestone attracts rust. All of the others gave me nothing. Nothing! This stone was the one I was meant to find. Now if my method is all you are prepared to argue about, then forget the whole thing. I have accomplished the task. I have found my stone.”

  Ralnor appeared unruffled by her verbal attack. “Pray tell, Zya. How did you end up with all of the stones on the floor when you were told that you could only touch one of them?”

  Zya appeared sheepish at this question. “I tipped the table up, so that they rolled off.”

  Ralnor broke into sudden fit of laughter at this, surprising Zya so much that she jumped, her face coming alive with momentary shock. “Did you indeed?” He said. “That will be noted and written down in the guild history. If you can believe it, never has an initiate passed the test by such a method.”

  “I have passed it?”

  “Why yes.” Ralnor seemed surprised that she had not caught on quicker. “You have the correct stone, otherwise you would not feel its pull. I selected stones at random, as I do for every initiate. Most do not make it either because they do not have the skill to focus, or because their stone is not drawn. We believe that there is a reason people join the guilds, and the focus stones are shaped to fulfil that. Ilia in her divine providence has seen to all of our needs, including sorting those that will benefit her from those that would cause nothing but detriment.”

  Zya missed most of what Ralnor had told her. As soon as he had mentioned the word 'focus', she had withdrawn into herself as if prompted by a command. “I can focus,” she said out loud finally, after much thinking about events past and present.

  “Yes you can, my dear,” Ralnor replied proudly. “Why else do you think that you are here?”

  Zya looked up at Ralnor's face. His wandering eye was off in a different direction, but he was still giving her his full attention. “Why here? Why not another guild?”

  Ralnor sat down on one of the chairs in the room, bidding Zya to sit in another. “Perhaps luck, perhaps fate. The guilds have different methods of recruiting. Some will hawk their wares, so to put it, in the open, announcing that they are taking on new members. Others will do it in secret. Some are completely secular, only initiating the offspring of guild members.”

  “How would such a guild continue to exist?”

  Ralnor shrugged, as if the question was not really worth an answer. “If one were to say that all of the current members are related by blood, that should suffice for an explanation.”

  Zya's mouth dropped open in shock at what she was hearing. “Brothers and sisters?” She implied.

  Ralnor nodded. “Indeed.”

  “I hope this guild is not one of those,” she replied quickly, seeking the most honest of answers from him.

  He smiled in response, finding her statement amusing. “The way we recruit new members of this order is part luck, part guidance. I just happened to be nearby when I felt you attempt to focus your mind through the building.”

  “Through the building?” Zya exclaimed.

  Ralnor nodded. “You might not have known what it was that you were doing, in fact I am sure of the fact that you were unaware. You were attempting to use the stone structure of that building to focus, to what ends only you can say. It overwhelmed you, as it should do, because the building is not one single stone, but a collection of thousands. Nobody has ever attempted to focus through so many. To be honest, it is a miracle that you survived, but saw it I did, and sought you out I did. Someone who can survive that magnitude of focus must be worthy of training. It just so happened that on that day, the head of this order had me scouting near the mercenary guild because we do not like the signs that are coming from that place. It is too secretive for that type of guild, and more come in than go out.”

  “That is what I had heard also,” Zya replied. “There is more though. Before I came to Bay's Point, I believe that myself and my companions were being followed, or tracked by a man.” Zya took a breath before she continued, for she was unwilling to discuss her traveller past, or the time she had spent with the tribe in Upora. She had to get her thoughts straight. “When I was passing the mercenary guild, I felt the presence of this man, much as I had done in the past. He is part of something spreading westwards. Something bad. I could feel it through the very ground.”

  “A true Earthen Cleric you are, my dear. Only those in tune with the bounty that Ilia herself provided this world would be able to sense such a thing. It was lucky that we found you before anybody else.”

  Zya thought that was a strange thing to say. Surely if somebody had certain skills, they entered a certain guild. Her intuition told her that something she had said had affected Ralnor in some way. When she had mentioned 'the man' his face had shadowed, albeit very briefly. Or perhaps the intuition she had gained from the tribe was clouding her ability, and she was meant for another order. Perhaps she had only imagined Ralnor's interest perking up at the mention of the mercenary guild. What had he really been doing so close to the building? Zya kept those thoughts to herself. “I guess,” she said out loud, not meaning to sound so unconvinced.

  Ralnor picked up on this. “Do you disagree?”

  “Well I do not know about fate, or destiny, but perhaps luck has had a role to play in getting me here. I once was advised that perhaps an earth-related guild would benefit me.” Zya looked down to her hands, the very same hands that had once stitched under the tutelage of Anita. It was not Anita that had suggested the course of action to her though, it had been Ramaji. Faces phased in and out of her thinking, faces that were so recently familiar, saved from the fate of prisoners. The mothering she had felt from the two women and especially Venla, the mistress. The camaraderie of the two guards. The wit and experience of Gren the cook and the practical and sure handedness of Layric. Gwyn and Jani forever tinkering. Zya even missed Mavra and her new-found power of command. This was a different world she now lived in, one that had remained largely undiscovered. Zya only hoped that she had drawn the danger away from them by returning here. She could not bear to think that her family would ever be in a situation as perilous as she could possibly face.

  “What is it?” Ralnor asked, concern written on his face.

  “Nothing much,” she replied, trying to dismiss the faces in her mind. “I was just reminiscing.” She composed herself and sat up straighter, looking into the good eye of her tutor. “Are we done here? Are you convinced that my solution was in fact the best one?”

  “That remains to be seen, Zya.” Answered the wizard. “There is just one more thing. Can you show me what is so different about your stone?”

  Zya held up the dull grey egg between her thumb and middle finger, using the other fingers to spin it around on its axis. She regarded it dispassionately. Her sto
ne had no obvious signs of what was within, not unlike herself in many respects. After gazing at its muddy swirls and flaws beneath the shiny surface, she used her index finger to pry the top loose and caught it in her other hand. She tilted the stone so that Ralnor could get a view of the inside.

  His eyes widened and he gasped as he saw what made her stone so special. “That is a wonder indeed. I have never seen its like before. A hollow focus stone filled with a layer of white-tipped purple crystals. Zya, you must come with me at once.” Ralnor did not give her time to answer, but stood up, and bade her do the same. He led her out of the room and through the hallways of the guild, until they reached a room she had seen only once before. The central chamber of the head of the order. It was surrounded by columns of stone that looked as if they had grown out of the floor, and joined at their tips all of their own accord. A convenient doorway was filled with light, but no door, for stone could not grow hinges.

  Zya peered inside. “Where is he?” She asked. “I can see only light.”

  “Step inside,” Ralnor urged, his bad eye twitching nearly closed with excitement.

  Not seeing any problem with doing so, Zya complied. The room grew brighter as she crossed the threshold, and as she stepped towards the middle, the stone in her hand began to grow warm. “I cannot see anybody,” she called to the outside.

  “Do not worry,” came the voice of Ralnor from a distance. “All will become clear soon.”

  The stone felt as if it were tingling, desiring some kind of release. Zya looked at it, drawing the stone close to her face. She could have sworn at that moment that it was twitching. The white light remained constant and pure, to the extent that all she could now see was herself. “Where is he?” She cried out loud.

  “Use the stone to see him, Zya.” Came the voice of her tutor in the form of a distant echo.

  “Of course.” Zya understood why the stone felt as it did. It needed the release. It needed her to focus. Now that she had to do it consciously, the process was a different matter. How was she supposed to get inside the structure of the stone? She looked at the twitching piece of rock in front of her, and flipped the end off with her thumb, revealing the crystalline structure beneath. In the white light it was dazzling, the crystal points catching the luminescence, and making the inside of the stone look like the night sky, with a million tiny stars contained within it. Zya closed her eyes, to take away the glare of the light. That was a start. She knew from what she had learned during her time in the guild that she needed to work her way into the very fabric of the stone. But there was no way it could be done that she knew of. Beginning to worry, she tried to forcibly enter the stone with her mind, thinking of the crystals and the dull grey rock surrounding them. It did no good. It allowed her to do nothing with it. A sinking feeling in her stomach made her panicky. Her arms tensed and her palms became damp with nervous sweat. In her mounting desperation, Zya opened her eyes to look at the stone and instantly regretted it. White light burned across her senses like a sheet of flame, forcing her to close them. Truly panicking now, and oblivious to the encouraging calls of Ralnor from outside of the chamber, Zya forced herself to take deep breaths. “Think about what I had been doing the times when they said I had focussed.” When she had fainted, she had surrendered to the pull of the stones both outside the building and in her chamber. “That is the secret,” she whispered in triumph, “not to go against the stone. Not to force myself into it, but to be drawn in.” The knots in her stomach disappeared as if they had never been there, and the cold down her neck became the tingle of excitement. She relaxed, releasing her breath slowly, a trickle at a time. She searched the area around her for that warm feeling, and found it. The pull of the stone was there in front of her, enticing, warming her hand. Just as she had done before, Zya moved her attention away from the source, and it vanished. The stone would not suffer violation and the forced entry of a mind, but it would accept a willing soul. She pushed her senses into the stone, letting herself become drawn along into the subtle pull, and suddenly the light changed. Everything went a deep shade of purple, and Zya felt herself scream out loud. It was exactly the same colour as the dream that she had once had. The dream that had made her decide to leave the caravan and pursue the uncertain danger with only her father and Ju. That the stone chose to reveal this exact colour meant only one thing to her. She had found the meaning to the dream. It had told her that she was meant to come here. For a moment longer the colour lingered, and then it deepened to the violet hue of the crystals inside the stone. As she sought her way in, everything took on the same colour. Visions of past events flashed by, all in purple. She felt that she could do anything and everything, that there was nothing not within her power to accomplish. The feeling of being at the very core of her stone gave her such a euphoric kick that it was hard to imagine she would ever be made to leave. As it was, her thought once again coincided with an interruption.

  “Open your eyes, my daughter,” said a voice so starkly feminine that Zya was convinced for a moment that Venla had somehow found her way to the guild. She did as bidden, and her eyes opened to a completely different type of light. The entire room had turned the same violet hue as her crystalline thoughts. The stone was still nestled in the palm of her hand, fitting snugly between her thumb and little fingers, which held it secure. The room into which she had stepped had disappeared, and the vastness of her mind was opened out around her. The possibilities were infinite, and she had only to stretch out and feel for them. She looked around, seeing tiny points of light floating in front of her. She reached up to touch one, and found that her hand just passed through. Zya looked around, considering the room she had been stood in before, and gazing in awe-struck wonder around her. The contrast was so great it was as if she had stepped into another world. The room was warmer now, as warm as the stone in her hand. There was a pulse beating, sending flashes of brighter purple light around the room, and it took a moment for her to realise it was the beat of her own heart magnified through the crystalline points within the stone. The doorway had disappeared, but from the distant voices beyond, she could tell that it was still there.

  “It is beautiful, so very beautiful,” she breathed out in a soft echo of her normal voice.

  “It is a rare sight,” the voice agreed. “Never before has an initiate managed so spectacular an entry into the ranks of the guild. You should feel proud.”

  “I don't feel anything of the sort. There is no pride to be gained from this, only more wonder into how deep I could go.” Zya realised that as of yet she had not seen the source of the voice. “Where are you?”

  “I am beside you, in the chamber of the guild, guiding your thoughts through the stone.”