The Darkest of Dreams

by Emigh Cannaday

  “Perhaps she couldn’t have survived as a human, but if she came from a powerful druid family, then I wouldn’t doubt that she could turn into an animal without much trouble,” Merriweather pointed out. “What if she was strong enough to shift into a wolf or a lynx? She could’ve waited out the storm and then written to her brother as soon as she had a chance. If Stephan and Denalia are indeed brother and sister, and their parents taught them some of the most powerful magic we’ve ever seen, anything is possible.”

  “Precisely,” Cyril agreed. “We know that she’s the daughter of powerful druids, we don’t have proof of her death, and now you’re saying that Stephan’s sister contacted him shortly after Denalia escaped. It has to be her.”

  “If Denalia escaped and was able to contact her brother Stephan, and if he knew that Talvi was responsible for the death of his parents, he’d have every reason to help her seek revenge for it,” Merriweather said. Her eyes widened as the puzzle pieces began fitting together. “What better vengeance could there be than to go after Talvi and his family?”

  There was a knock on the door and one of the many interns came in with a file.

  “I have the autopsy report straight from the forensics lab,” she said, and set it down in front of Cyril before scurrying out of the room.

  “Would you like me to leave?” Merriweather asked.

  Cyril shook his head.

  “I’d prefer that you remain exactly where you are,” he said while skimming through the pages. The longer he read, the more he shook his head in disbelief. He went back to a paragraph that was essentially a giant red flag and read it again. Finally, he read it out loud to Merriweather.

  “There are a high concentration of irregularities visible upon the periosteum of 87% of subject’s skeletal bone mass, including an abnormal amount of hyper-elastic perforating fibers found underneath the endosteum. Epiphyseal lines on the epiphyseal plates (growth plates) are grossly atypical of normal adult bone structure. Quantity and quality of hyaline cartilage separating the marrow spaces of the epiphysis and diaphysis is highly concentrated and is clear evidence that the subject’s skeleton has shifted in size, shape, and overall composition too many times to be reliably counted. For all intents and purposes, these results indicate that the subject has shifted a minimum of ten times, although this is a conservative estimate. Actual number could vary as high as twenty times, if not more.

  DNA collected from tooth and bone marrow samples indicate that subject is a human male, approximately twenty years of age. Margin of error: 2 years older or younger. While samples are primarily human, traces of elven DNA have been found, along with DNA which belongs to the following mammals: reindeer, wolf, and eagle. This wide selection of DNA within the tooth and bone tissue would be easily explained by the subject shifting into those animals on at least one, if not multiple occasions.”

  “A human male, approximately twenty years of age…and a shifter to boot. Then it appears we have our man,” Merriweather said with a healthy dose of cautious optimism. “Does this mean we have enough evidence to get Talvi out of prison?”

  “I certainly hope so,” Cyril said as he reached for the phone on his desk. “I’ll ring his attorney right now and see what we can do.”

  “What about my information regarding Director Slichter secretly promoting the Pazachi agenda?” she asked as she rose from her chair. “What about the Pazachi girl whom we presumed to be dead?” Cyril gave a sigh, but it was a sigh of relief.

  “Between Marinossian, Denalia, and Slichter, I can only put out one fire at a time,” he said, beaming at her with pride as he picked up the telephone. “Which is why I need you to continue your internal investigation, by whatever means necessary. I need hard facts, Ms. Narayanaswamy. Not a list of convenient theories.”

  The unexpected news made Merriweather grin in pleasant surprise.

  “I’m honored to serve my empire, sir, but as a junior agent, how do you propose I go about doing that to the best of my ability?” she asked.

  “Simple,” he said, and pressed the phone to his pointed ear. “You are officially no longer a junior agent, effective immediately. I’m reinstating your former security clearance level to the same as all the directors. However, you will not be a director.”

  “Oh? Then what am I?”

  “You’re my ace in the hole,” he said with a grin. “Although you won’t be forced to do it all by yourself. I’m giving you a team of your very own. Will that do?”

  “Oh yes,” she agreed, and gave another salute. “That will do nicely indeed.”

  18

  My Brother’s Keeper

  “On your feet, TM00769,” shouted a male voice that was harsh enough to make Talvi cringe. It was one of the prison guards—the one he liked least. He knew within milliseconds that something wasn’t right. It wasn’t mealtime, he hadn’t behaved badly, and the odds of having the metal wires removed from his jaws were slim to none. He had zero chance of being taken into the yard for exercise, and he wasn’t allowed to be part of the somnomium mining crews. “That’s not a request!” shouted another voice.

  Talvi’s mind swung wildly from panic to paranoia, and back to panic once more. Why were they here for him? What did they want? Aside from the occasional delousing baths, he hadn’t left his cell in months. What if they came in there and saw what he’d drawn on the wall? Would he return to find that they’d doused her with soapy water and scrubbed her from existence? Another chill ran through his body, and he began to tremble at the thought of losing his wife yet again. He’d already lost her three times, and in his eyes, that was three times too many.

  Remembering how he’d been ‘accidentally’ dropped and slammed into walls the last time he’d been transported to and from his cell, he quietly obeyed his orders and rose to his feet. Although Talvi was outnumbered four to one, the guards still kept a safe distance away from him…just in case. He observed them in silence while they shackled his wrists and his ankles and then ran the heavy chains through them.

  “Where are you taking me?” he cautiously asked. He forced himself not to look anywhere near his mattress, where all of his soap figurines had been stashed. One of the guards shook his head and shot him a dumbfounded grin.

  “Today’s your lucky day, princess,” he said. His voice was laden with sheer mockery. “Your daddy’s upstairs with your big brother. They’ve come to take you home.”

  Talvi’s eyes widened in disbelief, and he stared across the dark hallway at the cell on the other side. He caught sight of Nillin’s shadow passing across the slot at the bottom of his door. He seemed to be moving about more frantic than usual, pacing as much as one could pace in a room that was barely wide enough for him to stretch out his arms.

  Talvi kept waiting for a punchline that never came. He didn’t believe the guards for a second. Finn was dead—he’d killed his brother with his own two hands and confessed to the crime. Even if by some miracle his brother was still alive and this tale the guards were telling him was the honest truth, he felt conflicted about leaving his friend behind. Nillin’s discerning attitude, sharp wit, and morsels of wisdom had reminded him so much of his cousins and his brother. It was because of Nillin that Talvi hadn’t gone completely insane after spending the past four months in solitary confinement. Fate had brought them together, and destiny had allowed them to become friends.

  “Talvi!” he called through the somnomium-coated door. Those two syllables were crammed full of desperation as he continued to pace around in anxious circles like a caged animal.

  “Shut up, RS00483!” yelled the second guard.

  “Talvi, I need you to find my father and tell him where I am!“ Nillin blurted out in a desperate tone that Talvi had never heard before. Even though his hands were chained to his waist and his legs and being pulled out of his cell like a stubborn dog from its kennel, all of Talvi’s attention was focused on that dark, blank door and the tortured prisoner who was now pacing on the other side of it. “Tell him I’m sorry and
that I want to come home!”

  “I said, shut up, you Ellunian bastard, or we’ll give you something to howl about!” the guard hollered again, and hit the door with his metal baton. He jerked Talvi’s chains to force him to take a step forward, then another. His heart was beating too fast to feel the metal shackles digging into his wrists. Knowing that it might cost him a crack upside the head with the guard’s baton, he turned to catch one last glimpse of his friend’s shadow, which was trailing out of the slot in the cell door.

  “Tell me your father’s name!” he called back to Nillin.

  “I can’t!”

  Talvi braced himself for an assault against his face, whether it be his cheekbone or against his lip, yet the batons were left in their holsters. Nevertheless, the guards were yelling at him and dragging him away, but Nillin’s voice echoed against the damp stone walls, carrying his words to Talvi’s ears with chilling clarity.

  “The golden helmet that I told you about—it was mine!”

  Uncertain if he was in a dream or possibly hallucinating, Talvi’s thoughts were racing a million miles a second as he was led through the dark tunnels that made up the bowels of Bleakmoor. His wandering eyes had become hyper-vigilant as they took in everything around him; every turn of a corner, every set of doors he passed through, even the number of steps he was escorted along. Then he was escorted down the hall to the inmate property clerk, where he waited a quarter of an hour for a pair of bloodstained black jeans to be returned to him. They were his only personal possession. He was bewildered when a clerk handed him a small bundle of envelopes tied together with string. Not only were they all sliced open at one end, they were all addressed to him as well. He recognized the handwriting as that of his family, mostly his mother. None of them were from Annika. Before he could investigate their contents, he was nudged forward again.

  Finally he was brought into a secure room that was so brightly lit that it hurt his eyes to look around; then he was promptly locked inside. He squinted to watch as the guards removed his restraints. It was eerily quiet to not hear the constant sound of his chains rattling with every step he took. It was also a strange sensation to not have his stride limited by them, either. It was a taste of freedom that he didn’t dare trust to last very long. It was still too new of a sensation, and he found his feet shuffling along in the only way he'd walked for the past four months.

  He heard voices speaking in hushed tones, and he forced his eyes to find where they were coming from. They burned from the intense light, and his eyes were narrowed so much that he couldn’t tell who was in there with him. Two tall elven men were standing at the other end, along with two men in suits who stood slightly in front of them, as if prepared to protect the other two if anything should go wrong. The men in suits wore a gold pin on the lapels of their jackets. The gold sword with a halo around the hilt identified them as trustworthy, but Talvi couldn’t afford to trust what he was seeing. It didn’t make sense. The elven men stopped speaking and looked at him from across the room. He knew their faces and their voices, and he knew their eyes, but it had to be another one of his countless hallucinations. This illusion simply could not be relied on to be real.

  “Talvi?" Finn said, hoping to jar his brother from his stupor. “Talvi, it's me. Your brother Finn.”

  Talvi said nothing. It couldn’t be his brother. His brother was dead. Besides…this man’s hair was too short. In all of his three hundred and one years, he’d never, ever seen his brother wear his hair like that. Talvi studied him so quietly and for so long that the guards hesitated to leave him alone with these people. Unable to read a single one of Talvi’s thoughts, and unable to read any of his body language, Ambrose frowned and stroked his beard in frustration at his son’s reaction.

  “You’re being released. Did they not tell you?”

  Talvi glared at the guards, who remained silent, even as he and his father cast their angry eyes upon each one of them.

  “You’re not our problem anymore,” one of them finally said, and they filed out of the room.

  Talvi turned back to stare at his brother and father, although his eyes were now squinting because of suspicion, not because of the intense light. He heard the words that came out of their mouths, and he knew what they meant. They simply didn’t register as applying specifically to him. The words only had meaning in some abstract sense of their use. This couldn’t be real. He’d had too many dreams that began like this one did. They all turned out the same—with him waking up on a lice-infested mattress that lay on a hard slab of stone. He couldn’t afford to waste hope by investing in this particular dream. It did seem unusually vivid compared to his other ones, however. Even the black denim blood-stained jeans and the small bundle of envelopes in his right arm felt real.

  “We’ve brought a letter straight from the courts,” his father said from his place beside Finn. “No one else has seen it yet, aside from the warden. Not even your mother knows. Talvi…” He stopped speaking so he could focus on blinking back the tears in his blue and green eyes. “Talvi, you’ve been exonerated. You didn’t kill your brother. See? He’s standing right here.”

  Still, Talvi said nothing. He didn’t move a muscle, except for a twitch of the fingers that hung at his side while he continued to stare at his father and brother in disbelief.

  “After I arrived at the embassy and they verified my identity, the Department of National Security had the body exhumed from our property,” Finn tried to explain. “They brought it back to their laboratory for genetic analysis and they confirmed that the man you killed in our kitchen back home was without a doubt, born a human. He’s not related to either of us in the slightest. Nor is he a doppelgänger. He’s a druid…but instead of only being able to shift into an animal, this one was powerful enough to shift into one of us!”

  Talvi continued to stare as his father took a step closer.

  “The minute that Cyril received the forensic report, he personally filed for an emergency court order to have you freed. The department can’t release the man’s name to the public, but they’re quite certain that he was related to the Pazachi you dealt with last winter. Cyril has declared him to be an enemy of the state. That means you can’t be re-tried for his death!”

  “On the contrary—” Finn cut in, clearly too happy to bother with conversational etiquette, “you’re going to be lauded as a hero for protecting your family from a vicious killer! The Home Secretary’s office is drafting an official statement for the press as we speak!”

  Talvi’s blue-green eyes were finally starting to adjust to the amount of light in the room, and the longer he gazed at his father and brother, the more he realized they were exactly who they claimed to be. The impossible had actually happened. He was going home, and his name would be cleared.

  A single tear rolled down his sallow cheek and disappeared into the reddish-tinted hair that now covered his face. He brought his hand to his mouth, but it wasn’t enough to smother the broken cry of relief that escaped from his dry, chapped lips. He clutched his handful of possessions against his body as Finn stepped closer to him. Talvi stared at his brother’s overjoyed face and the faint scar on his jaw. It was definitely his brother, without any shred of a doubt.

  “I’m a bloody hero now? Well…bully for that,” he choked through his clenched teeth. Upon seeing the light reflecting off the staggering amount of metal in Talvi’s mouth, Finn drew in a sharp breath.

  “Why haven’t they removed the wires from your jaws? They should’ve been taken off months ago!” he gasped, and took a few steps closer, reaching out towards his brother. The moment his hand touched Talvi’s shoulder, he recoiled like a cobra ready to strike. Finn immediately took a few steps back and lowered his eyes down to Talvi’s chest, hoping that this universal display of submission would convince his brother that he meant no harm. Within a few seconds, Talvi’s erratic breath grew deeper and steadier as he began regulating it, although the intensity of his eyes and the trembling of his muscles continued to
betray him.

  “What have they done to you?” Finn asked in a trembling voice. Ambrose stepped off to the side of the Marinossian brothers, making a point to position himself somewhat between them.

  “Nobody’s touched him in months, Finn,” Ambrose reminded his eldest son. “And the last time Talvi saw you, you were dying in his arms. Give him a damned minute to adjust, will you?“

  “I don’t want a damned minute to adjust,” Talvi grunted, and glanced over his shoulder at the door he’d entered through. Part of him wanted to run back through the network of hallways and ask Nillin more questions about his cryptic confession and his desperate last request. But another part of Talvi wanted to run in the opposite direction and get as far away from Bleakmoor Island as possible, and the thought of freedom quickly won him over. He turned back to his father and brother. “I don’t want to be here a second longer than absolutely necessary.”

  Talvi refused to leave the deck of their transport ship as it carried the three of them away from that awful island in the icy waters of the Northern Sea. Even though the ocean was freezing cold, he relished the sprays of mist that quenched his thirsty skin, and the fresh air that filled his nose and lungs. But most of all, he focused his eyes on that dark, miserable prison, absorbing the image of every wall, every window, and every rock into his brain. Even the sewer drains failed to escape his sharp and hateful gaze. He studied every nook and cranny of its architecture until it faded into the watery horizon. Compared to the number of years he’d been alive, the handful of months in solitary confinement had been relatively short. But the impact of the experience had been felt deep in his soul, leaving him altered forever.