Bannor whirled toward the voice. “Ramm!”
Rammal leaned against the porch post chewing a blade of grass. He wore the same broad rimmed hat and leather coat that he had on when he left for the war. His lean face looked unchanged from ten summers ago. His blue eyes still possessed the sparkle of mischief Bannor remembered.
Rammal took the grass from his mouth and tossed it. “You sound surprised. I’m disappointed, SproutBoy. Ten harvests older and not any smarter. Who else would you find here?” He gestured toward the house.
Bannor’s throat tightened. “This is a dream. You’re dead.”
“Guess then I can’t do this?” Rammal doubled his hand and struck.
Pain shot through Bannor’s belly. He gasped and folded around his brother’s fist. He sat down hard on the boards, struggling to take a breath.
“Hit pretty hard for a dead man, don’t I, SproutBoy.”
“Stop—” he wheezed. “Stop calling me that!”
“Calling you what—SproutBoy?”
Bannor growled and clutched his stomach.
Rammal leaned over him. His lanky frame blocked the sunlight. “There ain’t much time. You’ll have to take our word for some things.”
“What things?”
A new voice rang in. “That people never really die. They simply move on to another plane of existence.”
A man dressed in a green leather jerkin and breeches stepped into view beside Rammal.
“You’re that Guilder, Grahm, from Wren’s dream!”
“At least his memory works,” Rammal said.
“This is a dream,” Bannor said. “My dream. How—”
Rammal rolled his eyes. Grahm shook his head.
“What—!?” Bannor demanded.
The Guilder sighed. “Don’t you listen to anything Wren tells you?”
“Of course. What’s that have to do with you being in my dream?”
“You didn’t listen at all.” Rammal hoisted Bannor to his feet. “Savants have a strong presence everywhere. In the astral realm, the ethereal, the world of men—and the world of dreams. Dwelling in your thoughts can make me more real, more material.” He took off his hat and scratched his head. “I didn’t die in that ditch. My spirit is here—in you. It’s an ability all savant’s have—the power of the tao.” He glanced at Grahm. “You can keep the spirits of people who die near you part way in the realm of the living.”
Bannor choked. “You’re a ghost.”
Rammal and Grahm traded looks.
“Close enough,” the Guilder said.
“I don’t understand—why are you in my dream?”
Grahm gripped Bannor’s shoulder. “Wren is my girl. She risked her life for you. Her body won’t live long separated from her astral self. You must do something! I’m not going to see her die when we’re this close.”
“So close to what?”
The Guilder’s dark eyes narrowed. A muscle in his cheek twitched. “Do you want to live, or would you rather ask stupid questions?”
The hold on Bannor’s shoulder ached. He sensed the tension both in Rammal and Grahm. Something about this felt wrong. He searched the cloud streaked sky, and the environs of the family farm. It was so perfect, so real. Each scent was correct, every blade of grass, down to the textures of wood and stone. He never dreamed in this concise detail. Bannor could count the pores on Rammal’s face and see the hairline scar on his cheek he had given him one spring during sparring practice. What was the wrongness?
Play along.
He controlled the suspicion in his voice. “What should I do?”
“Stop leading with your chin for a start,” Rammal said.
A flair of heat swelled in Bannor’s chest. “Oh yes, Ramm, you’re going to advise me about fighting? If you’d practiced a lick, you’d be in the real world and not here.”
Grahm glared at Rammal. “You’ve always known the wrong thing to say to him, haven’t you?”
“His favorite pastime,” Bannor grumbled. “I understand it’s hereditary for older brothers to be louts.”
Rammal frowned. “Can I help it if he screamed like a baby over the littlest thing?”
“Don’t waste time!” Grahm yelled. “I can’t keep us here much longer.”
Bannor folded his arms. Rammal sure acted like his older brother, a Rammal that still hadn’t grown up. “Tell me.”
“Your power—” Grahm started.
Bannor cut him off. “No.”
“But—”
“I won’t be persuaded. Wren’s convinced me that it’s dangerous using my talent. What about my other savant skills?”
Grahm gritted his teeth. “You’re in a metal cage. Trying to pass astrally through iron will kill you.”
Bannor felt a flicker of hope. “That bastard Mazerak thinks so too.”
“What?” The Guilder’s eyes widened.
“It’s painful—” Bannor shook his head. “Still, what good would it do? I can’t get the cages open. If Mazerak traps my astral form, we’re doomed.”
“Can you talk to people in this form?” Rammal asked. His voice sounded weaker. Bannor read disappointment in his brother’s face. The scowl had begun when he refused to use his power. Disappointment over what? What did these two really want?
“People who know me well can see and hear me,” he answered. “Others don’t perceive anything but a specter.”
“You need a body,” Grahm said, rubbing his chin.
Bannor snorted. “I can’t take over just anyone, at least not with what I know now.”
“He’d need a body without this astral stuff in it,” Rammal said. “You just said people die after a few days without it.”
“A live body without its astral self—” Grahm’s voice trailed off.
Bannor stared at him. “Why dwell on this? No one—”
A grin spread across Grahm’s face. He gripped Bannor with both hands. “Wren! Wren’s body doesn’t have its astral self!”
His guts twisted. “What? Wren?”
“Only a savant could host your astral energies anyway. You’d burn out a mundane person. It’s perfect. Her powers are controlled. You can follow Mazerak’s enclave, remove the guards and open the cages.”
Bannor’s throat tightened. “Take over the body of a woman?” It made him shudder. Force himself inside of Wren? It was like asking him to rape her, only worse. It would be a complete violation of her body and psyche. The whole idea of forcing himself on a woman, especially this way, made revulsion surge through him. He stepped back. “Think what you’re asking me. This is your girl.”
“She’ll die otherwise.” Desperation gleamed in Grahm’s eyes. His breathing quickened and he clenched his hands. “You have to help her.”
Bannor grasped the Guilder’s fear now. Not only a fear for Wren, but himself as well. “If she dies, it cuts your ties to the material world.” His jaw tightened. “You die, too.”
“Nobody wants to die!” Grahm yelled. “You think I wanted a minion’s knife in my back? Poison turning my blood to acid. I died slow in Wren’s arms. I’m only a dream in her head now. All I can do is perish a little at a time right along with her.” His eyes glazed. “I want to live.”
Bannor saw Rammal’s fear, the tremble in his hands. Both wanted to live. Dream people tied to their anchors in the material existence.
His stomach churned. Take over Wren’s body? It felt and sounded—evil. Even if it weren’t, the unnaturalness made him cold inside. If he asked Wren’s permission, he risked alerting Mazerak.
Each wasted moment increased the distance between Mazerak and Wren’s body. How long since they knocked him unconscious?
“You have to do it,” Grahm insisted.
“Don’t tell me what I have to do,” Bannor growled. He smacked his fist in his palm. Thoughts of Sarai and what Mazerak might do to her made the anger worse. He’d seen his power unleashed. If the avatars turned his capabilities into a weapon it would be devastating. He must either free himsel
f or suicide to prevent the suffering of others. In death, he would condemn Sarai to whatever fate Mazerak planned.
Odin’s eyes, think! He kept coming back to the fact he needed to manipulate objects in the material world. While his astral body could handle small items and affect people, it couldn’t break open cages of iron.
Or kill Mazerak.
The ends justify the means. That’s what Wren would say.
There was so much at stake. Mazerak would send his minions to kill Irodee and the others while they slept to ensure they wouldn’t follow. Ultimately, he couldn’t justify not going for Wren’s body. Could he let his allies die simply to save his conscience?
Another chill went through him. “I’ll do it,” he said, lips tight.
A wind picked up, whipping leaves and dust into spirals.
Rammal’s eyes hardened. “You know what to do, SproutBoy. You know I’ll be here—always.”
Grahm nodded. “Take them to the wall.”
Grahm and Rammal turned transparent. The landscape of the old homestead changed so that it appeared to be a picture painted on glass. The image shattered and the fragments toppled off into nothingness.
Grahm’s voice continued to reverberate. To the wall…
The wall…
Wall…
A shroud of fog closed around him and turned everything white.
Bannor became aware of a jarring vibration. Pain jangled through his neck and his face felt raw where he’d slumped against a bar.
He opened his eyes to slits and saw nothing but a fuzzy blur. Wood creaked and metal groaned. Horses snorted and shod hooves clashed on rock. He felt his enclosure heave up, then slam down with loud clattering.
A wagon.
He blinked to clear his vision. After a long period of trying to focus, nothing came clearer than blurry shapes framed by the broad bars of his cage. It was still nighttime.
The wagon lurched again. A horse whinnied.
He heard Mazerak’s clipped voice. “Get the other cage loaded and catch up. I want to be in Albrech by noon tomorrow.” The Lord sounded too far away to be on the wagon.
Little time had passed. The minion must have hit him a glancing blow. Have to do this fast.
He closed his eyes and tried to focus through the throbbing in his skull. Time to fly on his own.
Bannor reached into himself to that place Wren touched. How did she do it? A kind of a twist and everything broke free.
He thought back to the last time Wren had helped him leave the shell of his body. She did it so fast. Reach in and flick, out he came. He recalled how it felt to unleash the spirit locked in the flesh; the tingle of each tiny component giving up its imprisoned energy. Wren made it like a key in a lock. Turn it and everything trapped behind the door flowed out.
The tracery.
When Wren wanted to talk to Sarai or to heal him, she made him weave a complex series of lines in his head. When done right, the magic worked. Wren did it fast for a reason. She didn’t want him able to do it himself. He must have the design for this feat of magic.
I wish… Bannor focused his desire, his love and fear into the urging.
Writhing lines and colors blossomed in his mind. The tracery beat like a heart. Colors pulsed through it like blood. Recognition shocked through him. He’d seen this image in his sleep.
It’s me.
He’d ponder the revelation later. Expanding the pattern in his mind, he imagined wrapping the lines and colors around himself like a suit of armor. Energy surged. A flickering. A twist.
In the next instant, he looked down at his body crumpled at the bottom of the cage. The glow of his wolf-form surrounded his astral self. He dimmed the radiance until it became only a shadowy outline.
Mazerak sat on a huge white war-horse a short distance away. Several minions lifted Wren’s cage into a wagon. Two warriors controlled the team of horses pulling the wagon loaded with his cage.
He saw at least ten more armored forms in strategic positions around the operation. It would take careful planning to break free of this trap.
Time to go. He braced himself for the pain. Last time he had done this with thinner bars placed much farther apart. He wasn’t sure if spacing mattered. There was only one way to find out. Gathering all his will, he shot forward.
Red-hot talons ripped down the length of his body. He heard the sizzle and the iron glowed with heat.
Bannor hit the dirt, writhing as pain continued to reverberate throughout his spirit. The world grayed. Could a spirit go unconscious?
The wagon rolled on. The racket caused by its travel no doubt covered the sound of the hissing metal. He lay paralyzed until the agony abated. No one appeared to have detected his presence.
When his strength returned, he flowed closer to Wren’s cage. The savant’s phoenix image halted. Her diamond eyes fixed on him. She spread her wings and looked in the direction of their camp. Focused on him again, she closed one eye and cocked her head.
He headed for camp. If she knew what he planned, she might not have been so eager to send him to it.
It took only instants to travel to the barge. As he approached, Bannor saw two minions in the reeds heading toward camp.
He hurtled toward Wren’s body.
Odin help me…
If he had a stomach to feel, it would have tightened. Don’t think about it. Do it.
Bannor dove into Wren’s untenanted form.
Jangles of pain shot through him. Apparently, some remnant of Wren still occupied her body. As he tried to enter, he met fierce opposition. He struggled with the stubborn fabric, shoving and tearing forcing his way inside.
It sickened him, but he continued. He subdued that spark of resistance, crushed it with the weight of his personality. He shoved it into a dark place in the back of her mind and locked it behind a door.
When finished, he felt the spasms of what he’d driven himself to do wracking his new body. Her heart raced and blood hammered in her temples.
Taking hard breaths, Bannor opened her eyes. She stared at the crimson moon and sniffed the cold night air. The sounds of the sleepers impinged on her ears, loud and distinct, much sharper than his own hearing. He heard the minions approaching through the reeds.
She felt around the bedroll until her hand came to the hilt of a sword. The night of the bloody moon was only beginning.
* * *
Damay Alostar, the most powerful of the Kel’Varans to walk the realms.
She was obviously one of Gaea’s favorites. I regret never taking a personal hand in killing the witch. Dead twice, and still giving me headaches.
It’s really too bad she came back to teach that troublemaker Kergatha.
I should have killed them both myself to make sure they stayed dead.
—From the Dedriad, ‘musings of an immortal’.
Chapter Twenty-Two
« ^ »
Bannor sat up clutching Wren’s sword. The savant’s body felt odd; nothing appeared to have any stiffness to it. Could something be wrong with her? The thought made his new heart race. How did a man tell right feeling from wrong in a woman’s body? His heightened hearing still detected the minions moving in the reeds. Everything smelled different—unfamiliar.
Studying the clearing bathed in the Triatus’ crimson light, he saw Laramis, Irodee and Dac. They showed no sign of having stirred since he and Sarai engaged Mazerak’s warriors a bell ago. Apparently undisturbed, the barge still fidgeted against its moorings at the riverside.
From the growing sounds, he determined where the minions should emerge from the foliage. Slipping out of the bedroll, he found Wren’s boots and pulled them on. Why did the clothes feel tight? A tug on the tunic revealed the fabric’s looseness. He ran now slender fingers down from his neck down across—breasts. The tingle made him pull his hand back. Female skin must simply be more sensitive. He looked at the hand; so small and delicate, yet he sensed power in this flesh.
The Nola. Unlike in his own body, Wren’s
power seemed alive. He felt it clamoring to be tested.
A sense of revulsion crept into Bannor again. He’d pried into this woman’s body and become privy to sensations and experiences he neither had the right or desire to know. He forced it down. Either he did this or all of them died. He clenched his fists.
Think of Sarai.
Bannor crawled to Irodee and Laramis shook them. The Myrmigyne and the Justicar moaned and thrashed, but he couldn’t rouse them. Dac responded the same way. They showed no adverse effects, no sweating or poor skin color. They only seemed deeply asleep. Mazerak’s claims about the drug’s intoxicating power must be true. He’d have to do this alone.
The sounds told him the minions were close.
He climbed to a standing position, staggered and sat down hard. His face burned and he smacked the grass. Nothing about this body worked right. His movements grew more difficult and sluggish as if something in Wren’s body were resisting him.
How? All the savant’s consciousness should have been locked up with her astral body in Mazerak’s cage. Perhaps the resistance was instinctive or linked to the aliveness of Wren’s savant power. Even something as stupid as a bug understood intrusion, maybe the resistance was like insects that swarmed to attack enemy invaders. A cold fear made his stomach knot. He couldn’t even stand. Not much time left to get control of this body.
Bannor calmed himself. Maybe if he seemed less of an intruder. Don’t fight her.
He stood carefully, trying to let Wren’s body move naturally. He took a few experimental steps. The legs seemed hinged wrong. The body wanted to walk on the balls of its feet in a way that felt off balance. Trying to walk normally made him stumble.
How will I fight like this?
His throat tightened and his blood rushed as he saw the reeds swaying. He gripped Wren’s blade. At least he’d trained with a sword.
He gripped the weapon San cleed style, the way he fought for summers before turning to the axes. His fingers ached and the hilt felt awkward.
Damn it, do it your way then.
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