Since Sister Simona was deranged, that was to be expected. The question was, why wasn’t it working? Verna recognized the shield around the door as simple one used to keep young wizards confined when they were being mulish.
Verna opened herself to her Han and stepped through the shield. Warren followed as she knocked. The flickers of light coming from under the door cut off.
“Simona? It’s Verna Sauventreen. You remember me, don’t you, dear? May I come in?”
No answer came, so Verna turned the knob and eased the door open. She held the lamp out before herself, sending its yellowy glimmers ahead to break the darkness within. The room was empty but for a tray with a pitcher, bread, and fruit, a pallet, a chamber pot, and a filthy little woman cowering in the corner.
“Leave me be, demon!” she shrieked.
“Simona, It’s all right. It’s only me, Verna, and my friend, Warren. Don’t be afraid.”
Simona blinked in the light, as if it were the sun just risen. Verna set the lamp behind, so as not to blind the woman.
Simona peered up. “Verna?”
“That’s right.”
Simona kissed her ring finger a dozen times, gushing thanks and blessings on the Creator. She scurried across the floor on her hands and knees to snatch up the hem of Verna’s dress, kissing it, too, over and over.
“Oh, thank you for coming.” She scrambled to her feet. “Hurry! We must escape!”
Verna grasped the small woman’s shoulders and sat her down on her sleeping pallet. With a gentle hand she smoothed back the shock of gray hair.
Her hand froze.
Simona had a collar around her neck. That was why she wasn’t able to break the shield. Verna had never seen a Sister wearing a Rada’Han. She had seen hundreds of boys and young men wearing one, but never a Sister. The sight of it turned her stomach. She had been taught that in the dim past, Rada’Han had been put around the necks of Sisters who had lost their minds. Having one with the gift afflicted with insanity was like loosing lightning in a crowded market square. They had to be controlled. But still…
“Simona, you are safe. You’re in the palace, under the watchful eye of the Creator. No harm will come to you.”
Simona broke into tears. “I must flee. Please, let me go. I must flee.”
“Why must you flee, my dear?”
The woman wiped tears from the dirt on her face. “He comes.”
“Who?”
“The one from my dreams. The dream walker.”
“Who is this dream walker?”
Simona shrank back. “The Keeper.”
Verna paused. “This dream walker is the Keeper?”
She nodded so hard Verna thought her neck might come unhinged. “Sometimes. Sometimes, he’s the Creator.”
Warren leaned in. “What?”
Simona flinched. “Is it you? Are you the one?”
“I’m Warren, Sister. A student, that’s all.”
Simona touched a finger to her cracked lips. “You should run, too, then. He comes. He wants those with the gift.”
“The one in your dreams?” Verna asked. Simona nodded furiously. “What does he do in your dreams?”
“Torments me. Hurts me. He…” She kissed her ring finger frantically, beseeching the Creator’s protection. “He tells me I must forsake my oath. He tells me to do things. He’s a demon. Sometimes he pretends to be the Creator, to trick me, but I know it’s him. I know. He’s a demon.”
Verna hugged the frightened woman. “It’s just a nightmare, Simona. It’s not real. Try to see that.”
Simona almost shook her head right out of its skin. “No! It’s a dream, but real. He comes! We must run!”
Verna smiled sympathetically. “What makes you think that?”
“Told me, he did. He comes.”
“Don’t you see, dear? That was just in the dream, not when you’re awake. It’s not real.”
“The dreams are real. When I’m awake, I know, too.”
“You’re awake now. Do you know now, dear?” Simona nodded. “How do you know, when you’re awake, if he isn’t there in your head to tell you, like when you dream?”
“I can hear his alert.” She looked from Verna’s face to Warren’s, and back again. “I’m not crazy. I’m not. Can’t you hear the drums?”
“Yes, Sister, we hear the drums.” Warren smiled. “But that’s not your dream. It’s just the drums announcing the impending arrival of the emperor.”
Simona touched a finger to her lip again. “Emperor?”
“Yes,” Warren comforted, “the emperor of the Old World. He’s coming for a visit, that’s all. That’s what the drums are.”
Her brow creased in worry. “Emperor?”
“Yes,” Warren said. “Emperor Jagang.”
With a wild shriek Simona leapt into a corner. She screamed as if she were being stabbed. Her hands flailed. Verna rushed to her, trying to catch her arms and calm her.
“Simona, you’re safe with us. What is it?”
“That’s him!” she screamed. “Jagang! That’s the dream walker’s name! Let me go! Please let me go before he comes!”
Simona tore away, careering around the room, sending flashes of lightning flicking everywhere. It raked the paint off the walls like glowing claws. Verna and Warren tried to calm her, tried to catch her, tried to stop her. When Simona could find no way from the room, she began bashing her head against the wall. Simona was a small woman, but she seemed to have the strength of ten men.
In the end, and with great reluctance, Verna was forced to use the Rada’Han to gain control.
Warren healed Simona’s bleeding forehead after they had quieted her. Verna remembered a spell she had been taught to use on boys newly come to the palace, when they were having nightmares from being taken from their parents, a spell to calm fears and let the frightened child sleep a dreamless sleep. Verna clasped the Rada’Han between her hands and sent a flow of her Han into Simona. At last, her breathing slowed, she went limp, and she slept. Verna hoped it was a dreamless sleep.
Shaken, Verna leaned against the door after she closed it on the dark room. “Did you find out what you wanted to know?”
Warren swallowed. “I’m afraid so.”
That wasn’t the answer Verna had expected. He didn’t offer anything more. “Well?”
“Well, I’m not so sure Sister Simona is insane. Not in the conventional sense, anyway.” He picked at the braiding on the sleeve of his robe. “I’ll need to do more reading. It could be nothing. The books are complex. I’ll let you know what I find.”
Verna kissed her finger, but felt the still unfamiliar touch of the Prelate’s ring under her lips. “Dear Creator,” she prayed aloud, “keep this foolish young man safe, for I may snatch his head bald and then strangle him with my bare hands.”
Warren rolled his eyes. “Look, Verna—”
“Prelate,” she corrected.
Warren sighed and at last nodded. “I guess I should tell you, but understand that this is a very old and obscure fork. The prophecies are clogged with false forks. This is doubly tainted, because of its age, and its rarity. That makes it suspect even if it weren’t for the rest of it. There are crossovers and backfalls galore in tomes this old, and I can’t verify them without months of work. Some of the links are occluded by triple forks. Back-tracing a triple fork squares false forks on the branches, and if any of them are tripled, well then, the enigma created by the geometric progressions you encounter because of the—”
Verna put a hand to his forearm to silence him. “Warren, I know all that. I understand the degrees of progression and regression as they relate to random variables in bifurcations of a triple fork.”
Warren flicked his hand. “Yes of course. I forget what a good student you were. I’m sorry. I guess I’m just rambling.”
“Out with it, Warren. What did Simona say that makes you think she may not be insane, ‘in the conventional sense’?”
“This dream walker she ment
ioned. In two of the oldest books there are a few references to ‘dream walker.’ These books are in bad shape, hardly more than dust, but the thing that worries me is that because the books are so old, the mention of dream walker might only seem rare to us because we have only two of the texts, when in fact it might not be rare at all for back then. Most of the books from that time were lost.”
“How old?”
“Over three thousand years.”
Verna lifted an eyebrow. “From the time of the great war?” Warren confirmed it was so. “What about the dream walker?”
“Well, its hard to understand. When they mention it, it’s not so much a person, as a weapon.”
“A weapon? What kind of weapon?”
“I don’t know. The context is not exactly that of a object, either, but more of an entity, though it could be a person.”
“Maybe it’s meant in the way that a person who is so good at something, like a blade master, that they are often described, with respect, or reverence, as a weapon?”
Warren lifted a finger. “That’s it. A very good way to describe it, Verna.”
“What do the books say this weapon did with this skill?”
Warren signed. “I don’t know. But I do know that the dream walker had something to do with the Towers of Perdition that finally cut the Old and New Worlds apart and kept them separated for the last three thousand years.”
“You mean the dream walkers built the towers?”
Warren leaned closer. “No. I think the towers were built to stop them.”
Verna stiffened. “Richard destroyed the towers,” she said aloud, not intending to. “What else?”
“That’s all I know, so far. Even what I’ve told you is largely conjecture. We don’t know much about books from the time of the war. For all I know, it could simply be tales, and not real.”
Verna rolled her eyes to the door behind her. “What I saw in there looked real to me.”
Warren grimaced. “Me, too.”
“What did you mean about her not being insane ‘in the conventional sense’?”
“I don’t think Sister Simona is having deranged dreams and imagining things; I think something real happened and that’s what made her the way we see her. The books allude to instances where this ‘blade master’ of sorts slipped, and left the subject unable to separate their dreams from reality, as if their mind can’t fully wake from the nightmares, or slip from the world around them when they sleep.”
“That sounds like insanity to me, not being able to distinguish what’s real from what’s not.”
Warren turned his palm up. A flame ignited just above the flesh. “What is reality? I imagined there was a flame, and my ‘dream’ became reality. My wakeful intellect governs what I do.”
She pulled on a brown curl as she thought out loud. “Just as the veil separates the world of the living from the world of the dead, there is a barrier in our minds that separates reality from the imagination, from dreams. Through discipline and our force of will we control what is reality for us.”
She looked up suddenly. “Dear Creator, that barrier in our minds is what keeps us from using our Han when we sleep. If there were no barrier, then the person would have no intellectual control of their Han while they sleep.”
Warren nodded. “We have control of our Han. When we imagine, it can become real. But the conscious imagination is overlaid with the limitations of the intellect.” He leaned toward her, his blue eyes intense. “The sleeping imagination has virtually none of these limitations. A dream walker can bend reality. Those with the gift can bring it to be.”
“Weapon indeed,” she whispered.
She took Warren’s arm and started down the hall. As frightening as the unknown was, it was a comfort to have at least one friend to help. Her head swirled with a confusion of doubts and questions. She was the Prelate now, it was up to her to find some answers before trouble visited the palace.
“Who died,” Warren asked at last.
“The Prelate and Nathan,” Verna said absently, because that was where her thoughts were.
“No, they had the funeral rite. I mean besides them.”
Verna came back from her mind travels. “Besides the Prelate and Nathan? No one. No one has died in quite a while.”
The lamplight danced in his blue eyes. “Then why did the palace hire the services of gravediggers?”
19
Richard swung his leg over his horse’s flanks, landed on the trampled snow of the stable yard, and tossed the reins to a waiting soldier as the company of two hundred soldiers galloped in behind him. He patted his footsore horse’s neck while a tired Ulic and Egan dismounted right behind. The still, cold, late-day air steamed with drifting clouds of breath of man and horse alike. The silent men were frustrated and discouraged; Richard was angry.
He pulled off a thickly padded glove and scratched the four days’ growth of beard as he yawned. He was tired, dirty, and hungry, but mostly he was angry. The trackers he had taken with him were good men, General Reibisch had told him, and Richard had no cause to dispute the general’s word, but as good as they were, they were not good enough. Richard was a keen tracker, too, and several times he had found telltales the others had missed, but two days of fierce blizzard made the job impossible and in the end they had failed.
It shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place, but he had let himself be duped. His first minor challenge as a leader, and he had botched it. He should never have trusted the man. Why was he always thinking people would see the side of reason and do the right thing? Why did he always think that people had good in them and, if allowed the chance, it would come to the surface?
As they slogged through the snow toward the palace, its white walls and spires mellowing to a dusky gray in the evening twilight, he asked Ulic and Egan to go find General Reibisch and to inquire about any other disasters that might have transpired while he was gone. The Keep watched him from the gloom in the shadows of the mountains, the snow a dark, moody, steel blue shawl drawn around its granite shoulders.
Richard found Mistress Sanderholt busy with her covey of workers in the din of the kitchen and asked if would be possible for her to find him and his two big guards something to eat, a chunk of dry bread, some leftover soup, anything. She saw that he was in no mood for conversation and offered a silent squeeze of his arm as she told him to put his feet up while she saw to it. He headed for a quiet study not far from the kitchens to sit for a rest while he waited for the others to return.
Coming around the corner to the study doorway, Berdine stepped in front of him. She was wearing her red leather. “And just where have you been?” she asked in an icy Mord-Sith tone.
“Chasing phantoms in the mountains. Didn’t Cara and Raina tell you where I was going?”
“You did not tell me.” Her hard blue eyes didn’t budge from his gaze. “That is what counts. You will not wander off again without telling me where you are going. Do you understand?”
Richard felt a chill run through his marrow. There was no mistaking who was speaking: not Berdine, the woman, but Mistress Berdine, a Mord-Sith. And it was not a question; it was a threat.
Richard gave himself a mental shake. He was just tired and she had been worried about the Lord Rahl. He was imagining things. What was the matter with him? He had probably given her a fright when she woke to discover he had taken off after Brogan and his sorcerous sister. She had an odd sense of humor, maybe this was her idea of a joke. He forced a toothy grin, and thought to lighten her concern.
“Berdine, you know I like you the best. I thought of nothing the whole time but your smiling blue eyes.”
Richard took a step toward the door. Her Agiel came up in her fist. She planted its tip against the far side of the doorframe, blocking his way. He had never seen Berdine unmask such a sinister countenance.
“I asked you a question. I expect an answer. Don’t make me ask again.”
This time there was no excusing her tone or he
r actions. The Agiel was right in front of his face, and it wasn’t there casually. He was seeing for the first time her true Mord-Sith persona, the personality her victims had seen, the core character of her vicious indoctrination—and he didn’t like it. For an instant, he saw through the eyes of those forsaken victims she had had at the end of her Agiel. No one died an easy death as the captive of a Mord-Sith, and none but he had ever survived the ordeal.
He suddenly viewed his faith in these women with regret, and felt the sting of disappointment in his trust of them.
Instead of a chill, it was the heat of anger that surged through his bones this time. He realized he was about to do something he might regret, and immediately took control of his temper, but he could feel the rage powering in his glare.
“Berdine, I had to go after Brogan as soon as I found out he had escaped, if I was to have any chance to find him. I told Cara and Raina where I was going and at their insistence took Ulic and Egan with me. You were asleep. I saw no need to wake you.”
Still she did not move. “You were needed here. We have many trackers and soldiers. We have only one leader.” The tip of her Agiel swept around, stopping before his eyes. “Don’t disappoint me again.”
It took all his willpower not to reach out and break her arm. She withdrew her Agiel, along with her blistering glower, and stalked away.
Inside the small, darkly paneled room, he hurled his heavy hide mantle at the wall beside the narrow fireplace. How could he be so naive? They were vipers with fangs, and he had allowed them to drape themselves around his neck. He was surrounded by strangers. No, not strangers. He knew what Mord-Sith were; he knew some of the things the D’Harans had done; he knew some of the things the representatives of some of the lands here had done; yet he was foolish enough to believe they could do right if given the chance.
He leaned a hand on the window frame and stared out on the darkening, mountainous landscape as he let the warmth from the low, crackling fire soak in. In the distance the Wizard's Keep looked down on him. He missed Gratch. He missed Kahlan. Dear spirits, he wanted to hold her in his arms.
Blood of the Fold Page 25