Dreams of Darkness Rising

by Kitson, Ross M.

  “Now it stands desolate. The Archbishop decreed that the residents were best cared for out of the city. That’s my home country, Hunor. Once it is hidden it ceases to be a problem for the decent folk. It is a nation of deceit.”

  Hunor shrugged and began to walk out onto the street.

  “All the more reason to keep our heads down and get across to the port. We’ve not got much choice have we? Thetoria would be far too risky with that description circulating.”

  “I don’t quibble with the consensus. But we can trust no-one, Hunor, other than one another.”

  “No change there then,” Hunor said. He watched while Jem checked his pack again. The pair walked down the street, glancing at the townhouses opposite the abandoned poorhouse. Their visit had gone unnoticed.

  Jem stopped in front of the grey building.

  “I used to lay awake petrified that I would end up in there. Now I look at its hollow halls and at the rubble of my house and I wonder in years to come whether our deeds will be rocks strewn about in the ruins of history. Will we be faded memories or will we be sung of in ballads, defined forever by these coming months?”

  Hunor slipped a pipe out of his pouch and carefully lit the tobacco. Taking a good drag he stared at the empty building.

  “Well I’m aiming for wealthy obscurity at present. Come on, let’s go.”

  The two ambled down the tranquil street towards the markets of Parok.

  ***

  The black-hawks swooped towards Emelia, dark eyes glittering. She stood on the rooftop, slowing her breathing and focusing her mind.

  A shimmering wall materialised in the air, a condensation of pure ego. The black-hawks screeched in fury as they battered against it and exploded in a shower of dark feathers.

  Emelia smiled: she could feel his frustration and his anger. It hung in the air like the threat of rain. A few short days with Master Ten and the dreamscape was hers to control now.

  The stained frescoes of the Dead City began to fade away. The dream was changing around her. Emelia remained vigilant; Vildor was a cunning foe.

  Purple stone was rising all around, pushing skywards as it erupted from the ground. It flowed and twisted, weaving into a convoluted cityscape before Emelia’s eyes. In the distance she could see a hill, covered in purple stone buildings and surrounded by a halo of light.

  Her heart was racing now. She had not had this dream for weeks, since they were captured by the knights. There was something behind her, she was certain, something terrible and malignant.

  Emelia ran. She slid down the side of the building and into a narrow street. The presence pursued her. She could hear its feet clattering on the cobbles; hear the scrape of its metallic body; hear the grate of a blade sliding from a scabbard.

  She stumbled and scraped along a wall, painting a smear of blood and skin on the purple surface. An alleyway appeared from the left and she hurtled into it. A flash of déjà-vu brought her stumbling to a halt.

  It was the alleyway from Cheapside: the same alley that Utrok had chased her into, on the night of the carnival in Coonor.

  Emelia felt her way through the darkness. The presence was nearing her but she had escaped once from here, and that was before she knew how to use her Wild-magic. Her hands pressed against the wall at the end of the alley. She began to phase-shift through the stone.

  She couldn’t remember the spell.

  Terror choked her as she turned to face the presence. The dark shape moved towards her. It couldn’t be Vildor, she had repelled him. Was it Utrok? Did he still live? Had he found a way through her defences?

  The presence stepped into a faint beam of light. Emelia screamed.

  Its face was an amalgamation of Orla and Marthir, flesh welded together and glistening in the half-light. It wore armour on its legs but its torso was tattooed and bare. Emelia saw the light reflect on its sword before it plunged into her chest.

  There was a searing pain, ripping through her lungs and heart.

  She sat upright, clutching a blanket to her like a shield. The night was silent. In the red moonlight she could see Hunor stood watch with Orla. Her heart crashed in her ears. Emelia bit her lip and began to calm her breathing and her pulse.

  Orla glanced towards her and even from this distance she could see the animosity in her eyes. Emelia shuffled across the grass towards the slumbering Master Ten but it was a long while until she returned to sleep.

  ***

  Emelia slowed the pace of her breathing and began to empty her mind. Sequentially she removed each distraction: the cackle of the crows in the nearby trees; the splashing of the stream as it bound over the rocks; the banter of Kervin and Hunor as they argued over the ideal way to cook venison. Soon the sole sound was the steady timbre of her heart in her ears.

  It was as if time had paused. A drop hung suspended from a leaf. A bird’s wings were transfixed in mid-flight. Then the petrified world around her began to warp, like a reflection in a pool disturbed by ripples. She saw figures, perhaps priests, heads shaved and faces tattooed. At their side were warriors, dressed in ring mail, pinched faces like Jem’s. Around them the walls were no longer ruined but were new stone, clean and pristine. A door splintered as a dozen soldiers entered; curlier hair sprouted from beneath their dark bronze helms. She saw a battle, swords clattering in the echoing halls. Screams ripped at her ears as the priests fell beneath the assailants’ swords.

  She jerked back to the present, the sound and light washing over her senses painfully. A sudden urge to flee came upon her as thoughts flooded her mind: Lady Orla was going to bound and gag her and steal away in the night, Kervin laughed to Marthir about her; Jem despised her.

  Get away from this place, Emebaka was screaming.

  Mek-ik-Ten grasped her hands. His skin was rough and cold like rock but his black shining eyes were warm.

  “Gain control of the chaos, Emelia. Harness the wild thoughts. Throw up the wall around your mind and cement it with calm.”

  With a grunt of effort Emelia did as she was bidden. Sweat ran in tiny rivulets down her face. She could sense the Web around her, taut with potential energy, beginning to ebb as she relaxed.

  “What did your Loretouch show you, Emelia?” Jem asked.

  Loretouch: the ability through Wild-magic to read the essence of an object. Such was the intensity that Emelia had been practising its craft—coupled with endless meditation to strengthen her defences—that she could not believe it had only been a week since she had first become aware of the term.

  “I saw a monastery with priests and two groups of soldiers chopping each other apart. In the end the priests lost out. Does that sound the right sort of thing? What happened here?” Emelia asked.

  “This chapel was torched on the run up to a famous battle. But that was over a thousand years ago. That’s fascinating: most who Loretouch can only go back a few hundred years,” Jem said.

  “Lucky me. So I can get a few millennia worth of misery at my fingertips. When was the battle?”

  “At the start of the First War of the Brothers, also called the Great Split. It marked the end of Trimena, the great kingdom that Gilibrion had formed as High King after our friend Vildor’s death.”

  “Well we know how permanent that turned out to be. He doesn’t seem to be able to enter my dreams at the moment. Shame, I almost miss him.”

  “Emelia! How can you say that? He is evil incarnate.”

  Emelia scowled and said, “I was only jesting, Jem. You’re not my bloody father, stop acting like it.”

  Jem paled and rose, bowed to Master Mek-ik-Ten, and stomped off towards the campfire and the food. Emelia caught Hunor’s eye as he looked over across the ruins. She shifted irritably in the starched cloth of the neobalt; even without the headscarf it was still stifling and claustrophobic.

  “The past tears at Jem’s soul like an angry tiger,” Master Ten said softly. “In many ways he feels his country’s dangers reflect poorly on his character.”

  “That doe
sn’t make sense. In fact this whole country is nonsensical. Did we take the right path?”

  “The wisdom of our path will only be apparent once we have trod it.”

  “Lets hope we get chance to look back. Can I ask what drove the Goldorians to hate magic so?”

  “Religion, what else?” Hunor said as he wandered over to the pair. Emelia hid her smile at his atypical appearance. He carried his sheathed sword in his hand—his baldric and back scabbard were felt to be too foreign and during the day he had been forced to secrete the sword in the small wagon they had bought for their disguise.

  “The kings of Palox and Tomorian, the lands that would become Goldoria, had a disagreement with the Trimenan High King Holden III about the benefit of wizards to the realm,” Hunor said. “Rather conveniently a prophet, the ‘revered’ Trall, had come up with an alternate version of the Nine Sacred Scrolls. Same god, but different outlook. Top of the list of changes was not suffering a wizard to live or something.

  “Well Holden wasn’t too impressed and so he marched up this way and nipped the whole thing in the bud by chopping both their heads clean off. He left the two queens in charge, Elanor and Anna, and marched off back south to what’s now Thetoria.

  “Elanor turned to Trall’s teachings in a big way and the story goes that one night she was stood on the cliffs where Goldoria City is now when she had a visitation from Miria—the Mother—Goddess of Time. Miria thought old Elanor had been hard done to. So She told Queen Elanor about some ancient chalice far to the north, way past Aquatonia and Corinth.

  “Well the queen sent four knights on the quest and a year later back they returned, minus a few limbs, with this chalice. Elanor took it back to the spot where she had the vision and placed it in the spring that bubbles from the rocks there. Well there’s this big old flash and the chalice became bonded with the stone and, would you believe it, the water that came forth was magical.”

  “And was that Goldorian Pure Water?” Emelia asked.

  “Damn straight. Well the queen anointed the four knights and they formed the Knights of the Gilded Pool or the Goldorian knights as they’re called now. They crafted some weapons using the water in the process and it was payback time. So that’s what kicked off the First War of the Brothers, seventeen hundred years ago.”

  Emelia smiled, feeling her belly rumble. She made to walk towards the fire. Hunor lightly touched her arm.

  “I know it’s difficult for you as well, love. But go easy on Jem, eh? It’s tricky for him being back here, especially when we were in Parok last week,” Hunor said in a low voice.

  “Then perhaps he should seek some solace with his wife then, Hunor,” Emelia said and pushed past towards the fire and food.

  ***

  Emelia regretted her earlier mood as she sat that night on the middle watch. She had been partnered with Hunor on most of the nights, though when she thought about it only Kervin would be decent company at the present. Over the past week she had grown very fond of the easy going Artorian’s nature.

  Her head hurt like fury from repeated meditation and loretouch. Emelia had the pressure of knowing that the whole group would be looking to her for some idea of where this quest was taking them. In truth she had her own doubts about whether what they were doing was the right thing. She felt much like Hunor did: this was not their problem. Beyond her, Jem and Hunor and, well perhaps Kervin, the world could slip into the Pale for all she cared. She could feel a dark mood, as ominous as a storm cloud hovering at the fringes of her mind. Emelia shuddered; it had been years since the melancholia had taken hold of her.

  Her new sword was sat on her lap, the ember light flickering orange on the steel. She had had little opportunity to test the balance. For the prior week she had been obliged to adopt the role of Lady Orla’s servant, attired in the morose neobalt popular amongst the middle classes of Goldoria. The neobalt covered all exposed flesh save the face and was stitched to flatten all wanton curves of the female body. It was a slim consolation that Marthir, disguised as Kervin ‘the merchant’s’ wife, had breasts not readily or comfortably flattened.

  The night sky was overcast and the Pyrian moon was concealed, giving only a faint glow behind the clouds, like a scrape of rust on the iron grey. She glanced at the slumbering forms of the two women as they lay by the side of the wagon. Orla and Marthir: such strong women in such diverse ways. She found their company difficult. She had said little to Orla since the day they had quarrelled in the Silver Mountains. Every so often she was certain that the knight was watching her and Emebaka whispered caution in her ear. It would take one word at the wrong time in this damned country and they would all be writhing on a funeral pyre. How could the others trust the Eerian not to betray the group?

  She could not see Jem and in truth she was glad. The last week had been a nightmare. She’d had the impression from Hunor that whilst she had been incapacitated Jem had not left her side. Yet as they journeyed down from the Silver Mountains and into Goldoria she had sensed a change in the dynamic between them. It could only be Marthir, Emebaka had said, and as she looked at her she could see why. Vibrant, vivacious, sensual and confident Marthir laughed and joked much of the day with Hunor and Kervin. But Emelia wasn’t fooled: Marthir had a hidden agenda. Whether that was to reclaim Jem or whether it was to procure the blue crystal for the Druid council Emelia wasn’t certain as yet.

  By Torik, she was exhausted but she was too petrified to sleep. With her mind so weary she was concerned that dreams of the purple city would return. She longed for the days when she dreamt like others did: fragmented random images, pieced together with no rhyme or reason. She craved dreams of simpler pleasures, splashing through the surf and swimming with the dolphins in the sun.

  Hunor returned from his quick scout around the ruins and the small copse of trees that ran up to its edge.

  “Coast’s all clear, love. Can’t see far enough to pee with those clouds though.”

  “Right,” Emelia said.

  “Look, love, lets drop the surliness eh? You’ve a face like the arse of an Azaguntan rent boy. I’ve got Jem all morose on one side and Orla nagging me about the bloody blue stone on the other. I’ve got a continual bloody itch from the razor and an outfit that makes me walk like I was dropped repeatedly on my head as a baby. I’m sorry we’re in this mess, alright?”

  “Damn it, Hunor, why didn’t you tell me Jem was married?”

  “How in the Pale was I supposed to know we’d bump into Marthir all the way out here? I know, I know, we should have told you. But we’ve all got skeletons in the trunk, love, even you.”

  “That’s still not the point. You always go on about the three of us being a team yet I know next to nothing about you pair and you know almost everything about me. I felt so…so…stupid not knowing.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Look, it was Jem’s place to tell you not mine. At the end of the day it was part of his past he wanted buried. We were both very different back then and so was Marthir.”

  “Kervin said that Jem and Marthir were married before she was a druid,” Emelia said. “Wasn’t she a tracker?”

  “Aye, Jem and I were with Master Ten and Hü-Jen then. We’d gone over Artoria way to nose around for some goblin coin when we’d fallen into a bit of bother with a band of ogres. Anyhow long story short we met up with Marthir, Kervin and some others when we were tearing away across the mountains towards Keresh.

  “Well it all worked out better that we stuck together as a big bunch and so we dotted around Artoria for a few years, between Keresh and Belgo. Marthir and Jem got especially close, if you get my meaning, and Jem being all Goldorian and honourable felt that they should get hitched because they’d been frisky under the bear skins.”

  Emelia flushed and hoped the night masked her discomfort. This was not a subject she had wanted to wander onto, for she was naïve in such matters.

  “Yet now they are estranged?” she asked, a tremor in her voice.

  “True enough. It was
good for a few years but then, well, the old gang sort of fell apart when my master died. Marthir took it bad, as hard as me in many ways. Then out of the blue she headed off to the Great Forest.”

  Emelia looked at Hunor. She could see the discomfort Hunor put himself through to talk about that time. What had happened with Hü-Jen?

  “I can see why Jem is in such a strange mood then,” Emelia said. “He’s hardly said two words to anyone. He’s biting people’s heads off for the tiniest thing. I’ll be frank—I don’t trust Marthir at all. She’s really twisting the knife in him.”

  “I think it’s more than that, love. It’s being here again.”

  “Goldoria? But we travelled through it a few weeks ago in Blossomstide. And the three of us did that church job the other year in Port Multir.”

  “It’s not just Goldoria. It’s Parok. Where his parents were killed.”

  “Another secret? Are you alright telling me this?”

  Hunor nodded though glanced over at the slumbering companions before continuing.

  “No, it’s fine. Jem told me one night when we were drunk on Artorian mead in Belgo. Anyhow, Jem was brought up in Parok. The city was always a wealthy place, from all those mines in the mountains. His old man was a clockmaker, one of the best in the city. Clocks are a big love of the Goldorians, you see.

  “Jem’s father brought him up to take over the business. Jem delivered the clocks across the city for all the rich priests and bishops. This made his mother happy too, because—like most Goldorians—she spent her days learning passages from the Book of Trall. She was especially pleased when Jem got offered patronage by one of the bishops, some right hand man of the Archbishop who was high up in the running of the Godsarm.

  “All went well until the dirty old bishop started getting a bit over-familiar with young Jem. I mean it happens in loads of places; the Pyrians are buggers for it if you’ll forgive the pun. But the Goldorian priesthood? Ooh no.

  “As bad luck had it Jem had started to grow a few hairs on his chest and with the deeper voice along comes his magic,” Hunor said.