Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

  Oran waited, then said, “That’s all?”

  “That’s all I remember, sir.”

  “Hm.” The Kroldon sorcerer seemed disappointed.

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “I had hoped …” After a moment, Oran looked at Contare. “Where are all the stars?” The way he said it, it didn’t sound like a real question.

  Contare nodded. “Maybe. Do you want to tell him about it?”

  Oran stirred his coffee, sipped it, and stirred it again. “Sometimes my prescient dreams aren’t visual,” he told Graegor. “Instead, I wake up with a clear, brief idea. This specific one has recurred every few years since I first dreamed it. The idea is a question: Where are all the stars?” He paused to sip, stir, and sip. “It confuses me, since the same stars are in the sky now as were there before the dream. In the decades since then, I’ve made careful observations of the stars, but nothing has changed.”

  “You discovered another moon around Kriesos,” Contare said.

  Oran waved that away. “The sense of my dream is always that there should be more stars.”

  “‘Where are all the stars’ is the common Mazespaak translation,” Contare told Graegor. “However—and correct me if I’m wrong, Oran—a better translation from Kroldonnai would be ‘Where are the rest of the stars?’”

  “Yes, yes,” Oran nodded impatiently.

  “It’s important,” Contare insisted. “It’s the chief reason that this prophecy’s validity was rejected by the L’Abbanist Theocracies.”

  Early in his apprenticeship, Graegor had learned that the twelve prophecies of Oran that he had known since childhood, and had memorized from one of the holy tracts, were actually only a chosen few from a much longer list. “This is one of the prophecies that the Hierarch rejected?”

  “A series of your Hierarchs rejected it,” Oran shrugged. “This is all beside the point. Tell me about your third vision, from yesterday.”

  Graegor nodded. “Yes, sir. This one happened after Ferogin threw a rock at me.” He was still irritated that Ferogin had been able to surprise him with that. He should have been prepared for it. “It hit me in the stomach, not the head, but it still made me lose consciousness. When I was … aware of myself again, it seemed like I was moving through cracks in the ground.” He stopped, and backed up. “During the fight, earlier, more than once, I struck the ground, and it cracked. Really cracked, the cracks seemed to go all the way across the dueling ground. In the vision, I followed those cracks, and they led to more cracks. I couldn’t tell how big the cracks were until I saw a fossil—at least I think it was a fossil. The passageway kept going down, further and further, until I saw a cave filled with crystals. And water, it was filled with water.”

  “How big were the crystals?”

  “They were long and thin. I don’t know if I’m right, but some of them seemed to be taller than buildings.”

  “And you sensed the earth magic here?”

  “Yes, sir. I sensed that the earth magic was trapped in the crystals, and that was why we can’t tap earth magic at the dueling ground.”

  Oran let out his breath in a long, quiet hiss. After a moment he asked, “Did anything happen after that?”

  “I kept going further down. I saw melting rock—magma. It was moving, turning over itself. Red and orange and yellow, but then it all faded to black, and I woke up.”

  Oran’s eyes were distant as he asked, “You cracked the stone? The crack wasn’t already there?”

  Graegor opened his mouth to agree, but then closed it, forcing himself to think about it first. “It was where the water covers the dueling ground, sir. I can’t be absolutely sure that the cracks I saw weren’t already there. Each time, I pushed all the water away when I struck the ground, but it all happened fast, and I don’t remember how clearly I saw the ground before I struck it.”

  Grimacing, Oran stirred his coffee again and took another sip. Contare said, “We can go out there and look. If the crack is new, the edges will look sharper.”

  “It could have cracked the day before from other pressures,” Oran said, but then nodded. “But it’s important enough that I should take a look.”

  “I’m … not sure where it would be, sir. The first time, I hit it right in the middle of the dueling ground. I could probably find it …”

  “No, no, I’ll go without you. I should inspect the area without prejudice.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Now Oran’s gaze grew hawkish, and he leaned over the table. “Let me tell you what I saw in my dream last night,” he said. His voice was lowered, and his accent was stronger. “I dreamed of crystals glowing white with earth magic, and then shattering into fire. I dreamed of a wave of destruction across the land and the sea.” He stared at Graegor with harsh glints in his dark eyes. “You will do this. You will burn the world.”

  Graegor stared back. He had had more than his fair share of shocks in the past few months, and he was getting better at absorbing them. The overwhelming revelations about his heritage and his power had hit him far harder than this one was hitting him now.

  But nothing before had made him feel quite this sick.

  Finally, he looked at Contare, who said quietly, “Remember what I told you about changing the future.”

  “Don’t choose the duck,” Graegor murmured. But Oran’s dream had not been about what to have for dinner.

  “Remember that this is not what must happen.”

  “If it happens, it will be because of rage,” Oran said, and Graegor looked back at him. “Rage against pain.”

  “Pain,” Graegor repeated. “What … kind of pain?”

  “Personal. I don’t know if it will be physical or emotional. But only personal pain can feed this kind of rage, from the depths of the heart. This will not be a reaction to an abstract injustice, or to a distant injury.” The sorcerer settled back in his chair. “The last impression the dream gave me was that something can be done to take the first step off this path. I feel that you can do something now.”

  “Now?” Contare asked before Graegor could. “Do you mean this moment? Or today, or this week, this month?”

  Oran shook his head, clearly frustrated. “I don’t know. But it feels like a specific, current opportunity.”

  Contare narrowed his eyes. “Like your other dreams, sixteen years ago?”

  Oran paused, then nodded. He looked at Graegor, and Graegor expected him to explain what they were talking about. “You are powerful,” the Kroldon sorcerer said instead. “Your rage is powerful. You must guard against it.”

  Confused, because this advice didn’t seem to apply to a specific, current opportunity, Graegor said, “My control is better. In Chrenste I didn’t—”

  “No, no. What I saw in my dream was power being directed to destroy. What was uncontrolled was the rage. You must control your emotions. Control your attachments.”

  “Yes, sir.” He had no idea what else to say.

  Oran looked at him, then shook his head. “Hamid’s boy didn’t understand either.”

  “Arundel?” Arundel was prescient, Graegor knew, though he’d heard very little about Arundel’s prophetic dreams. It wasn’t surprising that Oran was instructing Arundel in this ability, since Hamid didn’t have it. “You had a dream about Arundel too?”

  “No, no. I meant that he didn’t understand when I told him he needed to stay in control.”

  “It’s a lot to ask of a young person,” Contare pointed out.

  “What is, sir?” Graegor asked him, with deliberate, polite calm. It was not a lot to ask that he control himself. He was well in control of himself.

  Oran made a mockingly deferential gesture to Contare and said, “Please.”

  “Lord Oran believes,” Contare said, speaking to Graegor but still eyeing Oran, “that deep friendships and intense romances—that is, personal attachments—are dangerous for people of our abilities.”

  Graegor knew that Contare did not agree with this belief, considering his c
enturies-long personal attachment to Sorceress Josselin. Arundel wouldn’t agree with it either, not with how he obviously felt about Ilene. “Why is that, sir?”

  “Such attachments affect our judgment, and they intensify our feelings. Lord Oran would much rather have us all remain at a … ‘comfortable distance’ from other people’s lives.”

  “It would prevent many problems,” Oran muttered into his coffee.

  “I, however,” Contare went on, “believe that friendship and love make life worth living.”

  Oran seemed ready to dispute this for a moment, but then shrugged and looked at Graegor again. “I’m not telling you to be celibate. I’m telling you to be careful. If you give your entire heart to Natayl’s girl, the entire world will suffer when she breaks it.”

  Graegor controlled his reaction to this, saying nothing, not letting his expression change, but Oran shook his head anyway. “Exactly what I’m talking about. The very idea that she might break your heart makes you angry.”

  “It’s a lot to ask of a young person,” Contare repeated, more firmly. “It may very well be useless to ask of a young person. In any event, the first step in avoiding a possible future is to know about it, and now he knows.”

  Oran glared at him. “So my work here is done? I should go?”

  Contare heaved a sigh and reapplied himself to his breakfast. Oran glared at Graegor next. “Are you taking this seriously, at least?”

  “Yes, sir.” If this dream had rattled the Kroldon sorcerer this much, it would be ignorant and arrogant for Graegor to disregard it. But he wasn’t going to give up Tabitha just because of it. “I … I wish I knew more.”

  “About?”

  “About prescience, sir. Since I don’t have it—since we don’t think I have it,”—he darted a look at Contare—”we haven’t discussed it, at least not in depth.” Then he added, “Do I have it, sir? Do you think that’s what these visions are?”

  Oran let out his breath, a frustrated sound. “I don’t know what your visions are. I can’t rule out prescience, but it’s not like any prescience currently documented.”

  “How does it usually work, sir?”

  Oran looked at Contare. “What did you already tell him?”

  Contare swallowed his bite. “That prescience is the ability to glimpse what might happen in the future, and that the future can be changed by choices and actions.”

  Oran reached for his coffee again. “I’ll tell you what I told Hamid’s boy. Understand that I’m oversimplifying.”

  “Yes, sir.” Graegor was used to that. Contare did it all the time.

  “The source of prescience is knowledge. What people know. Not just think to be true, but know to be true. Your own actions, your own words, what you personally witness, are the things you know most deeply.” He studied Graegor. “Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Pieces of knowledge can be associated with other pieces of knowledge to build a prediction of the future. Everyone does this, all the time. If clouds are on the horizon and the wind strengthens, a man knows that it will probably rain.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A prescient sorcerer can see, in his dreams, those pieces of knowledge that people deeply hold. His dreams bring different pieces together from many different people. The dream assembles those pieces into a prediction.”

  “So, it’s always in dreams? Sleeping dreams?”

  “Yes. It’s logical. In dreams, the brain sorts through connections and make new ones. Dreams usually don’t make sense because the connections that the dream is making aren’t valid. But a person struggling to make sense of a problem often finds the answer after he’s slept. Through dreams, his brain sorted through his knowledge and found hidden links.”

  Graegor had never thought about dreams that way. But then, his own dreams slipped out of his head so soon after he woke, he seldom thought about them at all. “How does people’s knowledge get into the dream?” This was the part he really didn’t understand. “Is it telepathy?”

  “It might be. There is debate.”

  “Much debate,” Contare murmured.

  “If it was just telepathy, then only knowledge from telepaths would be available to prescient sorcerers. But many of my dreams involve knowledge from non-magi, so clearly, the method of the transfer of knowledge can’t be telepathy, or only telepathy.” Oran’s tone was speculative, and his dark eyes had grown distant. Obviously he had thought about this countless times, but had never reached a solid conclusion. “Rather than centering solely on knowledge held by magic-users, it seems to center on knowledge held by important people. People who know they are important, important enough to change history. Kings. Merchants who control commodities. Sorcerers, of course. Many more of my dreams are about such men than about farmers.”

  “It’s self-reinforcing,” Contare added. Oran nodded, still thoughtful, and Contare went on in a prompting sort of way. “Another common trigger is a change caused by random chance. A small event with huge consequences.”

  “Yes.” Oran nodded again. “An accidental death. A small earthquake that shakes a vase off a shelf. One misspoken word in the middle of the jungles of Toland, and suddenly I’ll dream about people and places that were never significant before.”

  A slightly less confusing idea broke through the tangle in Graegor’s head. “Sir, you said that you dream about things that are known. Does that mean you can dream about what’s already happened, too?”

  Something in Oran’s lined face suggested a smile. “Nice insight, son. That’s the other side of prescience. We can put together pieces of the past.”

  “Many prescient sorcerers’ dream journals explore this,” Contare noted. “Zaharia’s are good examples.”

  “As they say, the more people who know a secret, the less safe it is,” Oran said, still with the hint of a smile. “That’s particularly true when it comes to prescient sorcerers. You don’t have any dark secrets, do you?”

  “No, sir.” Except that he’d almost killed Ferogin yesterday. He hadn’t told anyone about that. Just like he hadn’t told anyone about when he’d nearly lost control of himself with Jolie.

  “We can also read physical cues to determine if people are lying,” Oran said, and his smile had vanished. “Do you have something to tell us?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You saw nothing else in your vision?”

  Relieved that Oran’s guess was nowhere near the truth, Graegor shook his head. “No, sir. I’ve told you everything I remember seeing.”

  Contare looked at Oran. “Have you ever heard of this method of extending our sight?” he asked, and Graegor appreciated the deliberate effort to divert Oran from the subject of secrets. “It wasn’t line-of-sight. The cave was below him, probably hundreds of feet down.”

  “The extended senses produce strange effects,” Oran shrugged. “That’s a question for Pascin. For my purposes, it doesn’t matter how he knows about the crystals. He knows. That’s enough.”

  “But sir,” Graegor said, “I don’t think I do know. I’m not sure that what I saw wasn’t some kind of dream.”

  “The fact that I had a dream because of it means it is known. I don’t dream about dreams.”

  Graegor stared at him helplessly. Contare chuckled. “We need more prescience about prescience,” he said wryly.

  “But sir,” Graegor asked Oran, “what if I really didn’t see the crystals, but just believed I saw them? I just don’t feel like I know, deeply, like you were saying, that what I saw was real.”

  “Maybe not.” Oran’s gaze was direct and piercing. “But you can change history. You have. Maybe everything you experience will be fodder for my prescience, just because it’s you.”

  That was an uncomfortable thought. Graegor looked at Contare, mainly to avoid looking at Oran, but his master was busy scooping up egg yolk with his toast. “Have you had dreams about me before?” he reluctantly turned back to Oran to ask, not certain he really wanted the answer.
r />   “A few. I’ve dreamed about all of you.”

  For some reason, that made Graegor feel a little better. “Even when we were children?”

  “You’re still children.”

  “You walked into that one,” Contare murmured to Graegor.

  “Children are wild cards,” Oran said, rather irritably. “Since they think they’re important, and they believe things so strongly, their ‘knowledge’ can be part of my dreams. It’s clutter I have to pick through.”

  “Like the Fool-Wolf,” Contare added, seeing Graegor’s confusion, “or the Tiny Apothecary. Children believe they exist, and even believe that they have seen them. So sometimes Oran dreams about them too.”

  “Really?” Graegor looked back at Oran. “You dream about bedtime tales?”

  “Do you have any clue how many children there are in the world?” Oran asked dryly.

  “No …”

  “You don’t see it in this city, but everywhere else, they’re one-third of the population. And they’re certain of what they know.”

  Graegor caught hold of another thought. “In the whole world? No matter how far away?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “But we don’t know how?” Graegor thought it would drive him insane to have an ability based on all the knowledge in the world, but to not know how it even worked.

  “No, we don’t.” Oran looked at him steadily. “Does it matter? Prescience is real.”

  “Of course …”

  “You saw the crystals. I had the dream. I intend to go to the dueling ground and investigate. If I verify that the crystals are there, and that earth magic is trapped in them, what are you prepared to do to change the future I saw?”