Dawn of the Dreamsmith (The Raven's Tale Book 1)

by Alan Ratcliffe

  He lay on his back, the charred and smoking skin on his chest rising and falling with deep, slow breaths. Raven jumped and landed on top of him. Quickly, she raised her blade high above his exposed throat. But, just as she was about to strike down and put an end to it, something gave her pause.

  Suddenly, the giant’s eyes flicked open behind his mask. Before she could move, his metal arm shot out and knocked the weapon from her hand. She tried to jump back, but strong hands found her and held her tight.

  Raven struggled as the giant fought to stand, her arms clamped uselessly against her sides. Why did I hesitate?

  When the giant was upright, his mask, which had become warped and twisted by the tempest, fell away. Beneath, his face was hideous; deformed, but not by birth. Jagged scars lined his face, great chunks of flesh cut and burned away. His nose was a hollow stump, his lower lip missing. Above it all, his eyes were a storm of rage and torment.

  He lifted her to his face, and she recoiled from the horror of it. Slowly at first, he began to crush her between his great, strong hands. She felt the air being pushed out from her lungs and began to cough, fighting for breath. All the while, the giant regarded her with silent fury.

  And perhaps it was the stench of smoke and burned flesh. Perhaps it was the pitiful wails of the dying that filled the air. Perhaps it was the feel of those strong hands, or the pain in the giant’s eyes beyond the anger that drove him. Most likely it was a combination of all these things, that carried her far away from that room at the top of the Spire, to a time and place that had never been far from her thoughts. Where it had all begun. At last, as the life was being squeezed from her body, she saw him for what he was.

  Tears stung her eyes. “Papa?”

  The crushing stopped. A moment later, the pressure eased. The giant stared searchingly at her face, radiating confusion. Abruptly, the anger in his eyes died. They widened as they took her in, her face, the colour of her hair. Whatever she had recognised in his mutilated features, it was clear that he saw it too in hers. The strong hands released her, just as they had all those years before, and she knew then that it was true.

  Wordlessly, her father collapsed onto his knees. Looking upon him, Raven no longer saw the giant that had stalked them through the forest and mountains. She saw the man who had carried her upon his broad shoulders, recognised the powerful arms that would throw her laughing into the air and never fail to catch her. Wet tracks ran down his scarred and pitted cheeks, washing away the soot, and she knew that his mind must be racing with the past twenty years, as hers was. She reached her arms around his neck and pulled him tight against her. “Oh papa,” she murmured. “What have they done to you?”

  A strong arm, the one that was still his, looped around her shoulders and squeezed. Not with anger, this time, but love. Despite the destruction all around them, that arm made her feel safe, as it always had.

  She could have stayed there forever in his embrace. But all too soon reality came crashing back down upon them. A shrill cry rang out across the hall and made her turn.

  Where once hundreds of foes had stood against them, now there were none. The Brothers laying in gently steaming heaps; some still moved, but many more lay motionless. The Archon had been felled as well. He sat crumpled near the foot of his precious device. Even at this distance, she could tell that far from lasting the eternity he had envisaged, the emperor’s reign had reached a premature, bloody end. Did we win? she wondered.

  At another cry, she looked up and saw Cole clinging to the surface of the giant crystal. His face was contorted with pain. “What’s wrong?” she called, across the carnage.

  Cole gasped. “I... I can’t stop him.” He grimaced through the pain. “I thought... I could... break... the connection. But... he’s too... strong. He’s...”

  There was a flash of light. Cole’s eyes rolled back in his skull and he fell away from the crystal. His body landed in a lifeless heap at its foot with a thump.

  “COLE!” Raven screamed his name, and then she was running towards him over the heap of bodies that lay between them.

  A tidal wave of emotions crashed through her as her eyes remained glued to his slumped form; anger, fear, hope. Guilt. I should have protected him better, she told herself. I tried, but I didn’t know what else to do but fight. It was all she had ever done.

  One thought reverberated around her skull above all others. Move, Cole. Please move. Yet even this simple prayer went unanswered.

  As she ran, she saw movement from the archway at the base of the Archon’s device. Something was trying to emerge, but moving awkwardly, as if unaccustomed to the operation of its limbs.

  What do I do? she asked, caught between rushing to Cole’s side and dealing with whatever it was the Order had conjured forth. In desperation, she took her blade and threw it, as hard as she could, in the direction of the spinning metal sphere above her head.

  The sword flew from her hand, thrumming through the air as it span end over end. With a clang it found a space between the metal struts, which snapped down on the crossguard. Of a sudden, the spheres stopped spinning, stuck fast. As she watched, the entire contrivance began to judder and shake. Steam hissed from its joints.

  Now unarmed, Raven did the only other thing she could think to do. She rushed towards Cole’s body, hoping against hope that when she reached him her worst fears weren’t realised.

  As she reached the crystal, the struggle between whatever was trying to power the device and the sword that was holding it back ended in stalemate. It exploded gracelessly and with little ceremony, sending large lumps of metal and stone flying in every direction.

  For the second time that evening, Raven was lifted from her feet and thrown, this time towards the giant green crystal. She folded her arms around her face to protect it from the impact, but none came. There was a feeling of great speed, then falling. Everything turned black.

  * * *

  Trying to ignore the pounding in his head, and the red-hot burning in his chest, the Archon forced his eyes open. With an involuntary groan he forced himself up into a sitting position, and stared in disbelief at his surroundings. So much death, he thought. In the back of his mind, he felt his god revel in the slaughter.

  None of his Brothers remained standing. His device was a charred, smoking ruin. The hall was filled with parts of it; twisted metal struts, dented sheets of metal, fractured lumps of stone. A number of brown-robed bodies had been impaled by various components. The fact that they had been already dead when the device exploded was presumably cold comfort.

  At least he had been lucky to escape relatively unscathed. He gathered himself, then attempted to stand. As he moved, a lump of rubble rolled down a nearby heap and came to a stop by his foot.

  The Archon watched as others followed it. From amidst the wreckage crawled a hand. Its fingers were grazed and covered with dirt, and scrabbled at the mound of debris.

  Then, slowly, a bar of twisted metal that lay across the top of the mound was heaved aside, landing with a loud crash upon the floor. A figure raised itself up.

  The Archon gasped, and in his head his god howled in triumph. “M-my lord?” he stammered.

  The being that had arisen from the wreckage looked down upon him, and its lips twisted into a cruel smirk. It bore a striking resemblance to the young prince he had spoken with minutes before, but one eye now burned with an intense green fire. The other was a bloodied wound, blinded by the jagged metal splinter that jutted from the eye socket. Whatever transformation Jarrod had undergone inside the chamber had evidently been interrupted by the explosion; while one arm was human in appearance, the other was withered and covered with pale green scales. The fingers of that arm were twisted and claw-like.

  The figure took an unsteady step towards him, but before it could take another, the Archon caught a flash of movement across the hall. It was that dim-witted oaf Dantes, rising to his feet. The giant charged towards them, lowing like an angry cow. Alarmed, the Archon flinched, but the
giant barrelled past both of them.

  Instead, he stooped to pick up a body lying nearby, near the base of the crystal, and sprinted for the wall. When he reached it, with his metal arm he punched a hole clean through the bricks and dived through. A short time later, there was a faint splash from far below.

  “And then there were two.” The voice was strange. It was as if two entities used Jarrod’s vocal chords; one belonging to the prince and the other cruel and bestial.

  The Archon looked up. The being stood over him, a savage grin on its face. Before he could move, it stretched an arm out towards him and placed a hand against the raw, stinging flesh on his chest. He felt something drain away from his body and cried out, as much from a profound sense of loss as the pain. It was his god, he realised. The presence that had urged him, goaded him on, even controlled his actions for so long, had fallen silent. The being he had discovered deep down in the dark all those years ago had reclaimed its dire gift at last.

  Shorn of any connection to the being looming over him, he was suddenly racked with fear. “W-w-what happens now?” he stammered under the glare of that callous, burning eye.

  The Jarrod-beast began to laugh, a vile, bubbling sound that made the Archon quail before it. “Now,” it said, “the fun begins.”

  EPILOGUE

  When Raven awoke, she let out an involuntary groan. Every part of her body ached. It was as if all her muscles were in competition with one another, vying for her attention. Tentatively, she moved her back and felt the shifting of sand beneath her shoulders. Sand?

  She opened her eyes. Stars twinkled in the night sky above. But her head was spinning, sending the glimmers of light circling and dancing through the air. Then she realised that it wasn’t her vision that was moving, it was the stars themselves.

  Raven sat up. All around her was a grey waste. A desert, stretching out in every direction. She pressed her palm to the ground. The sand was neither hot nor cold to the touch. Well, this is odd.

  “You’re awake.”

  She turned, and saw Cole sitting cross-legged behind her. “Cole?” She remembered watching him fall, how limp his body had looked as it landed. “You’re alive.”

  “I am?” There was a strange quality to his voice. He didn’t quite sound himself. “Well, that’s good news at least.”

  He stood and went to her, holding out his hands to pull her upright. “Where are we?” she asked, gazing at the desert around them.

  Cole smiled sadly. “This is where I come to,” he told her. “The place where the crystals bring me. It doesn’t really have a name, but I think of it as the dream-space.”

  Raven shivered, though the air was not cold and there was no breeze. “You told me of it a few times,” she said. “I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. Why am I here?”

  Cole shrugged. “You don’t know?”

  “No! I saw you fall, I ran towards you... and then I woke up here.”

  He began to walk across the sand, and gestured for her to follow. “It’s probably for the best,” he told her. “The Empire is not a good place to be right now.”

  “We failed, then.” It wasn’t a question. She had known already, the scene at the top of the tower she had left behind had not felt like victory.

  “For now.”

  They walked a while in silence. Almost unconsciously, she slipped her hand into Cole’s. His fingers squeezed hers affectionately. It was a welcome comfort in a lonely place. As they strolled across the wasteland, she stared into the sky. They aren’t stars, she realised. They seemed like it at first, but the little balls of light were far closer. She wondered what they were.

  “So what happened back there, at the tower?” she asked him finally. “I still don’t feel as if I’ve been able to piece everything together.”

  “Plots within plots,” Cole replied distantly. He sounded sad. “People using people, while being used themselves.”

  “The emperor was trying to enslave people, and saw the Order as his means to do so,” she said. “But I don’t understand why.”

  “Fear, paranoia, madness... take your pick,” Cole replied. “It was not his fault, though, not truly. For years a spider sat upon his shoulder, pouring its poison into his ear. He was offered eternal power and took it. I think the rest of it was just his way of justifying to himself the horror of his actions. He was just a tool, though, like everyone else.”

  “With his seal of approval, the Order was free to spread across the land, unchallenged.” She glanced up as a ball of light flew past directly above their heads. In many ways, it was quite beautiful here. “The spider was the Archon, I take it.”

  Cole nodded. “Even he isn’t really to blame. He was a man once. Not good, not bad... just a person, like the rest of us. But he stumbled onto something bad. Very bad and very old. A being of great power, lying dormant. I saw it happen. I didn’t truly grasp the meaning of that memory then. From that moment, he was its servant.”

  The toes of Raven’s boots kicked up puffs of sand as they walked. She remembered what Builder had told them about the crystals when they encountered him in the Spire. “So... the Order gave the crystals to its followers, which they used to take away all the bad parts of themselves... the fear, anger, hate, leaving only the good?”

  “Yes. The columns of fire we saw were all the negative essence collected by the crystals, which were gathered together by the device Builder was forced to construct at the top of the tower.”

  “But why?”

  Cole sighed. “This being I mentioned, Maldonus, wasn’t fully in our world. He was wounded, I think, almost fatally. It required a lot of power to bring him back.”

  “So he used all that energy to punch a hole in our world?”

  “Sort of, but he didn’t just use that energy, it became him. He needed a host body to properly come back, but it’s as if the spirit he used to do it was coalesced from all that negative energy harvested by the crystals.”

  Raven’s head swam. “How do you even know all this anyway.”

  Cole was silent a moment. “I saw it all,” he said quietly. “I joined with the crystal at the top of the tower thinking I could somehow break his connection with it, stop him from coming through.” He turned to look at her. “I saw him, Raven. He was surprised at first, and then started laughing. He showed me everything, his plan. He was crowing at me. Then, when it was over he reached out and killed me.”

  Raven pulled him to a stop and held his gaze. “You’re not dead,” she said firmly.

  “I think you’re right,” Cole said, after a long pause. “If I was dead, then I don’t think I would be here. But I can’t go back. I’ve tried. I can’t feel my body any more.” He sounded scared. “It’s as if whatever anchored me to it whenever I came here has been severed. Maldonus has trapped me here.”

  “We’ll find a way back for you.” She meant it. They hadn’t come all this way together for her to abandon a friend in his time of need. Cole didn’t reply, but squeezed her fingers to show that he was grateful for her words.

  “So, what are the crystals?” she asked after they had walked a while longer. “Did he show you that?”

  “They’re... part of him. Or he controls them, somehow.” He shrugged. “Whichever it is, they’re his. I saw a vision of them running below the earth, like frozen rivers, touching every corner of the land. Growing. I think they go wherever he tells them to.”

  She didn’t really know what to say to that, so for a time there was no sound but the faint crunch of their soles on the sand.

  “I found my father,” she told him as they walked.

  “I know.” Cole smiled and glanced towards her. “How do you feel?”

  Raven tried to find a way to describe the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions that raced through her mind. “I’m not sure,” she replied. “Happy, obviously. But sad as well. I think the last twenty years have been even harder on him than on me. I haven’t really had time to think on it... I had hoped to find him, but
I didn’t expect to do so then, or in that way.”

  His fingers tightened around hers. “A flicker of light in the darkness that Maldonus has woven,” he said. “A tiny part of his works undone, and the world is a slightly brighter place for it. You should take some comfort in that.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked suddenly.

  He smiled. “I have something to show you.”

  “Is it far?”

  “As far as the moon and stars, or as close as the nose on your face.” He laughed. “We don’t really need to walk there, but it seemed like it was the right thing to do. For the moment.”

  “It’s nice,” she agreed.

  As they walked, she pieced things together in her mind. Much of it she found unbelievable, but at least it made sense of a kind. But there were one or two elements that still eluded her.

  “This place,” she asked, “what is it really? How are you able to come here, and why?”

  “This is his domain,” Cole replied, his brow furrowed. “This is where all those who dream come, and he is lord of them all. Those under the influence of his crystals are the easiest for him to enter and mould to his will, taking their essence to strengthen himself. Now that he has regained most of his power, I’m not really sure what will happen here. I fear it will not be pleasant.”

  “I still don’t see how you fit in.”

  “Nor do I.” There was frustration in his voice. “But I think he fears me, because I’m able to come here, to his place. Whatever my ability is, I think it’s the key to stopping him, once and for all.”

  “So we haven’t lost?”

  Cole shook his head. “Not yet. What’s that saying? It’s always darkest before the dawn? Well, right now it’s midnight, but the clock is still ticking.”

  “So what can we do?”

  “We carry on.” He saw the look of irritation cross her face, and grinned. “I don’t know what else to suggest, for now. But I’ve been thinking about what Mother told us, back in the mountains. The Archon called me Dreamwalker.”