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

by Alan Ratcliffe

  “I remember,” she said.

  “Some of what she said has come to pass. He’s confirmed what I am, or at least he believes it as well. I think we can both agree that the part about a nation of slaves seems to be occurring. But much else did not happen. I wasn’t given a choice of paths to take, not that I saw. The mention of a black sun confuses me just as much now as it did then. And, if I may say, you’re a terrible champion.”

  “Hey!” Raven tugged his arm sharply, but smiled as she did so. “I guess that’s a valid criticism,” she admitted. “So what are you saying?”

  “I think all that is still to come. Maldonus thinks he has won, but he doesn’t realise that the game is still being played.”

  “I wish I could take comfort from that.”

  “Me too.” He looked at her, all traces of levity vanished. “I won’t lie to you, Raven, it’s going to get bad. Very bad. But we need to keep going until the end.”

  She saw the pain etched on his face, and nodded. “I’ll see it through, Cole,” she told him. “It’s what I do. I told you, that day we met: I hunt monsters.”

  He seemed satisfied with that. They continued a while longer, before he suddenly came to a halt on the sand. “What is it?” she asked.

  “We’re here.”

  She looked around. The patch of sand he had chosen appeared indistinguishable from all the others they had trekked across. In fact, given the lack of landmarks she could almost have believed they had not moved an inch. “Wow, another bit of desert,” she said sardonically.

  He grinned. “I thought we’d walked far enough.” He reached up to the sky and waved his hands. The balls of light circled down towards them. They weren’t as small as she had thought. She stood amongst a number of white orbs that shimmered like pearls. Cole waggled his fingers, and the orbs flew past them in a blur, spinning and spinning until she began to feel dizzy, even though her feet remained planted firmly on the ground. “Cole...” she moaned.

  “Ah, here we are.” His hands suddenly halted in front of his face. Between them was an orb indistinguishable from the others.

  “What’s so special about this one?” she asked.

  “I found it a long time ago,” he replied. “Before I met you, in fact. It looked quite different then. It was tiny and red, like a hot coal at the bottom of a furnace, and burned my fingers when I tried to touch it.”

  Her eyes ran across the surface of the orb. It appeared serene, at peace. “What happened to it?”

  “I think that back then this person was a ball of rage, turned in upon himself until nothing remained but his anger. It almost looks as though something recently happened to him to set him free of all that, doesn’t it?”

  She stared at it, confused. Then the realisation hit her. “This is my father?”

  He nodded. “Would you like to see what he dreams about?”

  The notion both attracted and appalled her. “I don’t know,” she replied. “Would it hurt him?”

  “Not at all.” Cole frowned. “If we stay far enough back and don’t approach him, he won’t even notice we’re there.”

  “Then why go in at all? It feels like spying.”

  “I think we might find something important,” he told her.

  Grudgingly, she agreed. She took Cole’s hand again, and at his suggestion she closed her eyes. There was a strange sensation of moving at speed, and then Cole’s voice. “You can open them now.”

  They were standing upon grass. The sky above was bright and clear, and she felt the warmth of the sun upon her skin. In the distance she could see the thatched roofs of cottages, and plumes of smoke rising from chimneys into the air.

  “Do you recognise this place?” Cole asked.

  Raven felt tears sting her eyes and fought to hold them back. “It’s home.”

  They walked towards the houses of her village, across a field of waist-high stalks. Neither one spoke; they really didn’t know what to say.

  Ahead of them was a road. More of a track with delusions of grandeur, really, she thought. A group of people marched along it away from the village, a familiar figure at their head. “Is that...”

  “The Archon,” Cole agreed. “But a lot younger, I would say.”

  The man they had confronted earlier that day was striding along the road towards a destination unknown. In her father’s dream, the Archon seemed happier. He was even whistling. Her eyes took in his companions. They weren’t members of his Order, she realised. They appeared to be carrying loads of luggage – cases of books and clothes, pieces of unknown equipment wrapped up in cloth. “It looks like he leads an expedition,” she said.

  A flash of movement in the corner of her eye made her head turn. It took a few moments to see it again, but then she found its source. Trailing behind the Archon’s party crept a woman. She kept her head low, behind a wall. Where the wall ended she darted behind a tree. That she was following the Archon was obvious. That she did not wish to be observed doing so was equally clear.

  “Who is that?” she wondered aloud.

  When the woman’s progress brought her closer, Raven saw that her hair was black. Is that me? she thought. How can that be?

  But when the woman turned her head, Raven saw that her eyes were chocolate-brown, not blue like her own. Her clothing was as strange as her manner, cut to a fashion that she had not seen anywhere in the Empire. When she moved again, Raven started. On the woman’s chest was a prominent emblem. A dark circle, with tiny triangles of the same colour around its edge. A black sun.

  “What is this?” Raven demanded, turning to Cole. “What is going on?” He merely shrugged in reply. Whatever they were watching, it was the first time he had seen it as well.

  Suddenly there was a commotion from the direction of the road. A group of villagers was shouting at the woman. They hurled stones and insults at her with equal fervour. “We don’t want your kind around here,” cried one. “A bad omen,” screeched another. “Gerrout of ‘ere, crow, afore we snap your wings.”

  Raven tried to go to her aid, but Cole held her back. “This isn’t happening now,” he reminded her. “It’s a memory, a dream. We mustn’t interfere.”

  “Why are they doing this?” she cried.

  There was a loud shout that drowned out their own, and another figure emerged from the direction of the village. Raven watched as a tall man, his powerful shoulders bulging out from the top of the thick leather smith’s apron he wore, strode into the fray. He stooped to pick up a stout stick from the ground, and starting laying about him, thwacking the villagers’ backs and legs, roaring at them angrily. After a few moments they fled, racing past him back to their homes.

  As she watched, the tall man tossed the stick over a wall, then went to the woman. She had been injured by the stones, and lay panting on the ground, moaning but barely conscious. The tall man bent to pick her up, and then started back towards the village himself, carrying her in his arms.

  “I’d like to go now,” Raven said, her voice quiet. She felt as though her heart would break.

  “Yes,” Cole agreed. “It’s time.”

  He put his arms around her then, and she hugged him back. “I’m sorry if that was painful,” he said. “I didn’t know exactly what we would find here, but I hope it was helpful.”

  “It was.”

  “It’s time for us to say goodbye,” Cole told her, when they pulled apart. “You can’t come back with me to that... last place. You need to journey onwards.”

  She was confused. “Where?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. At a click of his fingers, a hole yawned open in the air beside him. “All I know is this will take you to where you need to be.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “I’m... not sure,” he said. He seemed at a loss. “The truth is that I still don’t know exactly what I’m capable of in this place.”

  Trying to ignore the ominous sound of that, Raven stepped through the portal.

  Her fe
et touched sand. Not again, she thought. She turned around to look for Cole and admonish him, when she realised that she had indeed ended up somewhere very different.

  The sand was hot and warmed the soles of her feet. The sun was high in the sky, just as it had been in her father’s dream, but here it was an unforgiving disc of fire. Already she could feel the skin beneath her thick, dark clothing become slick with sweat.

  In front of her stretched endless, golden dunes, unbroken by any building or landmark. “Oh Cole,” she muttered, “what place have you brought me to now?”

  At her feet was a large shadow, and she turned to look at what caused it. Rising up from the sand was an enormous statue; the figure of a man, raising a sun above his head.

  Raven stared at it for a long time, uncertain how to react. And then she started to laugh. Her laughter echoed across the sands, rising up into the deep blue sky. The statue continued to smile at her, as if joining in with her merriment.

  When her laughter dried up, she fell down onto the sand. She sat there for some time, staring at the figure, as the sun crawled across the sky towards the horizon.

  “Well, what do I do now?” she asked the statue that somehow, inexplicably and impossibly, bore Cole’s face.

  The statue kept its own counsel.

  Coming in 2017:

  SHADOWS OF THE

  DREAMSPIRE

  Book two of

  The Raven’s Tale