A Dagger of the Mind (The Imperial Metals)

by Daniel Antoniazzi

  “Yes, but he won’t be able to make sense of any of it. And if he does, he won’t be able to remember much.”

  “I need to get him a message, to let him know I’m alright.”

  “You can try to tell him,” Frost said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Luke,” Vye said, surprised when she turned back to her brother, because he was now the younger version of himself, “Luke, listen to me. I’m going to be alright. I’m away right now, but I’ll come back, and everything will be alright.”

  “We need you back, Julia,” Luke said.

  “I know, I’m coming,” she pleaded. “I just have a few things to take care of, then I can come back.”

  “Beware of the fire,” he said.

  “What?” she said, but her brother only smiled. “What did he mean?” she asked Frost.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Luke, what did you mean?” but he wasn’t there anymore. “Where’d he go?”

  “It’s unclear,” Frost said. “It’s possible that he went to a different dream, but more likely he just woke up.”

  “What now?” Vye asked.

  “We’re going to practice,” he said.

  “But you heard him,” Vye said, “I should be returning.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Frost said. “You’re in a dream now. And it will last until you wake up. Waking up from within the dream can be done, but it’s tricky. So, you might as well practice Dreamscaping while we’re in here.”

  “Do you think he got the message?” Vye asked.

  “It depends. Some people remember their dreams. Some people just remember the emotions. They wake up comforted, disturbed, happy, sad, or confused. They don’t remember why, but it was the content of their dreams. I don’t know what kind of dreamer your brother is, but I suspect he will wake up with a feeling that you’re going to be alright.”

  Vye was comforted by this, and since she couldn’t wake up at the moment, she decided to practice with Frost.

  At first, they practiced locations. They started with places she had lived in, or spent a lot of time in. Then they tried locations she had only been to occasionally. Finally, Frost had her track down an inn she had been to only once in her life.

  Vye found herself sitting in the common room of the inn. It all looked so real, but when she looked closer, she could see that everything lacked detail. The walls were clean and even. The tables had no marks or cuts on them. She could only barely remember the layout of the room, so some of the furniture kept shifting every time she turned her head.

  “OK,” Frost said, “That’s not bad for a place you’ve only been to once.”

  “It was also about eight years ago.”

  “Then it’s excellent. Now, I want you to find the innkeeper.”

  “I can’t remember who the innkeeper was of this place. Did I mention it’s been eight years?”

  “Yes, but people are attached to places. You remembered that clump of trees by your childhood home very well. The innkeeper will think of this place as their home. So, see if you can find someone who has a very strong attachment to this location.”

  It took some concentrating, but Vye figured out the shortcut quickly. She didn’t have to scan the minds of every living mortal on the planet. She just had to start from the inn and then branch out. The first two people she met were the keepers, an elderly couple.

  When Vye opened her eyes, they were sitting across from her in the common room. The man was slurping his way through a bowl of stew. The woman smiled, a welcoming brightness on her face.

  “Welcome,” she said, referring to her Inn. To her, it didn’t seem strange to find herself in her own common room, sitting across from Vye and Frost. Her own dream was putting her at ease. Unless someone challenged reality, she would take for granted everything she saw and heard.

  Frost instructed Vye to update her image of the Inn. She asked the woman to fill in the details. Remind her what was hanging over the fireplace. Describe the drapes over the window. Enumerate the cracks in the tiles. As the room looked more and more complete, Vye realized the four of them weren’t alone.

  There was no smoking door, or a popping sound, or a flash of light. But from one minute to the next, Vye noticed there were other people filling in the seats around the common room. Some eating. Some sharpening knives. Some smoking pipes. The clatter of silverware and the murmur of conversation filled the room.

  “What’s happening now?” Vye asked.

  “Other dreams are joining yours,” Frost explained. “Some of these people are probably staying at the Inn tonight. They’re dreaming about it. Some of them might just be regulars. They might not be here right now, but they come often enough that your dream felt like a comfortable home for their minds.”

  “But I wasn’t looking for any of them,” Vye argued.

  “No, but, as I said, it’s all one Dreamscape. If they were having a dream of the Inn, they would be here. And now that your recollection is closer to the genuine article, they’ve found you. Which is why you must be careful when you dream of places that are familiar to our enemies.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Vye said. “Anything else I should be learning?”

  “Eventually, I will have to teach you to Speak with the dead.”

  “Are we going to do that now?”

  “No. That seems to be enough for today,” Frost said with a wave of his hand. And suddenly, Vye found herself awake in the room with the fireplace.

  “Wait,” Vye asked over the crackling of the fire, “I thought we had to wait for the tea to wear off. I thought we were only training because I was dreaming.”

  “We were.”

  “But if you could wake me up at any time... I have to get back to my friends.”

  “Hah!” Frost said. “How long do you think you’ve been away from them?”

  Vye crinkled her eyebrows at this question. It seemed like such a bizarre question, she wasn’t sure it deserved an answer.

  “I can’t remember,” Vye answered, when she realized it might be relevant. “Wait, I remember coming here. And then we… It feels like it’s been weeks.”

  “Weeks?” Frost said. “How many times have you eaten? How many times have you slept? Have you been in this room for weeks?”

  Vye stood, looking around the room in a sudden surge of paranoia. She couldn’t answer any of those questions. She didn’t remember eating. She didn’t remember sleeping. She was still in the same clothes she had put on when she first arrived, but they still felt fresh and comfortable.

  “Frost, what’s going on?”

  “You’re still in a coma, Countess. I’m not really here at all. You’re still asleep in Castle Hartstone, and this is all a dream.”

  Book 4

  Truths Revealed

  Chapter 31: Life Is But A Dreamscape

  “Say that again,” Vye insisted.

  “You’re dreaming,” Frost said. “Right now. And ever since you collapsed holding up the North Tower of Hartstone Castle.”

  “So, I’ve been imagining all of this?”

  “No, no, no. You’re ignoring everything you’ve learned. You are dreaming all of these events, but you’re not imagining them. I am real. But we’ve only ever met in your dreams.”

  “So that bald woman-- Selene-- never attacked me in my bed?”

  “No. She attacked you in the Dreamscape. She thinks your body is dead, so she wants to make sure your mind is destroyed as well. If they knew your body was still breathing, they would attack it in the real world as well.”

  “Why attack me in the Dreamscape at all?” Vye said. “If they think I’m dead, does it matter if there’s some part of me in here?”

  “It matters. Because of me,” Frost said. “Let me finish the story.”

  Frost waved his hand and they were were in a frozen tundra. They were standing outside the same cave Vye had seen in her dream. Well, her first dream. The dream before the dream in which she thought she was awake.

&nb
sp; There was snow everywhere, but Vye was not cold. She knew not to be cold. From inside the cave, voices shouted at one another. Frost led them through the entrance, into the darkened cave.

  “It had taken a lot of secret planning,” Frost said, “And I had to become good at Dreamscaping, to protect my secrets from Grimsor and the others of my order. Eventually, I tricked the demon into this cave.”

  Vye followed Frost through a short tunnel in the cave until they came to a huge, open room. The dome. Just like the one Landora had seen in the Turinheld, though, of course, Vye didn’t realize that.

  Grimsor was there, fighting off a half dozen mages, including a younger Frost. On the ground, another two dozen men lay dead.

  “We fought down to the last man,” Frost said. “We finally had him where we needed.”

  Grimsor stepped into the middle of the platform, and the younger Frost called out, “Now!”

  Immediately, four of the remaining mages cast different spells on different corners of the raised platform. Grimsor cried in anguish, looking to the sky and howling. But as he seemed to be at his most enraged, he started turning to stone. His skin lost all pigmentation, and the fire between his horns went out.

  The four mages who had cast the spell recoiled, shocked by magical backlash. Dead. Only two people remained. The younger Frost, and another man. But no matter what angle Vye took, she couldn’t see the other man’s face. It was just as Frost had appeared at the beginning of her dream. This man was there, but Vye wouldn’t have been able to testify to any aspect of him.

  “It took thirty people to imprison Grimsor,” the elder Frost said to Vye. “Everybody only knew a small part of the plan, so that none of us could compromise the others if we were ever Turned. Only two of us knew the whole plan. And we were the two that survived the battle.”

  “Everyone else died?”

  “Grimsor was just that kind of enemy. You had to know you were going to die in order to defeat him.”

  “Am I going to have to defeat him?” Vye asked, but Frost did not answer. Instead, he waved his arms, and the cave disappeared. Instead, they were on a wind-swept hilltop. Vye could tell it was a foreign land by the unfamiliar vegetation. All of these events had happened far from her home.

  Vye spotted movement down the hill. The Mystery Man dragged an injured young Frost across a ravine. Vye focused on the faceless man, but still she couldn’t learn anything about him. He was just there.

  “I can’t even remember his name,” the older Frost said, as though he knew what Vye was thinking. “My last companion on this earth. My last friend. It was he who came up with the ingenious idea. It was he who now gives us a chance.”

  Suddenly, the younger Frost and his colleague were beset by Selene, Helios, and Argos.

  “Let’s be careful,” the elder Frost said, pulling Vye behind an outcropping of rocks, “We can’t let them see us right now.”

  The three villains attacked the younger Frost and his faceless friend. Frost was severely wounded, falling over. The Mystery Man opened a smoking door, prepared to escape, but Frost was too badly wounded, and even the faceless man didn’t have the strength to carry him.

  “This is when my friend saved the world,” Frost said. His friend grasped young Frost’s head and put both hands on his temples, even as he dodged more attacks from Selene and the others.

  “What’s he doing to you?” Vye asked.

  “Making me forget,” Frost said. “He erased my memories. Not all of them. Of course, I was allowed to keep my memories about my companions, and Grimsor, and how we captured him. But he’s erasing the last part of the plan. The way to defeat Grimsor once and for all.”

  “Why would he do that?” Vye asked.

  “Because I was about to be captured...” the elder Frost said, his voice bitter. He waved his hand again, and they were back at the fireplace.

  “I can’t show you the last part,” Frost said. “Mostly because I don’t want to experience it again. But also because Selene and the others factor into it a great deal, and we can’t expose you to them. But what happened was this:

  “I was brought to the Allanha Se’Tai, the Tower of the Sun. Only now it was called Medinoch Se’Tai, the Tower of Midnight. It had been twisted into a bastion of corruption and hate. There, they tortured me for days and days. And they found out how to release Grimsor. My friends and I had devised such seals as could only be broken by epic events. Four events for the Four Seals. The return of the exiled to their home soil after 1000 years. An island sinks. A King buries his son on foreign soil. A mortal kills an immortal in combat.”

  “Wait! A thousand years?” Vye commented. “How long ago... How old are you?”

  “Ah, yes, the events we have witnessed until now all happened two millennia ago. By that measure, I am more than two millennia old. But, I also died when they tortured me, and this is the important part. Helios, Selene, and Argos kept torturing me for one last piece of information.”

  “The rest of your plan,” Vye realized.

  “They knew that capturing Grimsor was only half of a plan. There must have been another part, wherein I banish him from this world. But my friend erased it from my mind, so they could never find it.”

  “But they still tortured you.”

  “Yes. And I kept hiding in the Dreamscape. Finally, I made my ultimate escape. I somehow transcended. I left my mortal body behind me and existed purely in the Dreamscape. So they hunted me there, trying to kill my spirit. That’s why they were afraid of you in the Dreamscape. They feared you could be a danger to them in here.”

  “So, you’ve been hanging out in people’s dreams for two thousand years?”

  “Not quite. Having those three chasing me through nightmares was wearing me down. So I hid. In the Land of the Dead.”

  “Sorry?”

  “The Dreamscape is connected to the Land of the Dead. Sometimes, in our dreams, we remember a loved one, or we see something from before our time. These memories rarely last, and they’re difficult to control. Even more so than normal dreams. But I was able to hide there to evade my former friends.”

  “Why haven’t you tried to stop them before now? Why wait until they were on the move again?”

  “Well, I had to come back from the Land of the Dead, and since I didn’t have a body anchoring me in the real world, there was only one way. I had to travel back with someone who died and then came back to life.”

  “Me.”

  “Exactly. And the beautiful part of the Dreamscape is that time doesn’t work the way we think of it in the waking world. So with enough concentration, I was able to see ahead. I knew a great warrior would die and then return. And I followed you back into the Dreamscape.”

  “And now you’re living in my head?”

  “Kind of. Not really. I’m living in the Dreamscape. But you’ve been spending a lot of time here yourself, so I’ve been keeping you company.”

  “How chivalrous.”

  “But we must keep training. I sense Selene and Helios have already released Grimsor from his prison.”

  “But the Four Seals…”

  “The people of Rone have been their wooden soldiers,” Frost said with a dark and ironic smile. “It was Grimsor that first sent the people of Rone away from their old homes. They fled across the sea and landed on the continent you now call home. But when the Argosian War looked lost, some of your citizens fled back into the sea. One of those ships landed on the original shores from whence they had fled.”

  “The return of the exiled from their home soil after a thousand years. That’s one.”

  “Yes,” Frost continued, “The Island of Losmourne was sunk by a great Spell just a week ago.”

  “They can sink islands?”

  “I guess so. I mean, even for them, it sounds improbable. But either way, the task is done.”

  “So that’s the Second Seal. The sinking of an island…” Vye said.

  “The King burying his son on foreign soil wasn’t that hard
. They took care of that centuries ago, in Sourna.”

  “What about…” Vye began, but stopped before she finished the question.

  “You figured it out, huh?” Frost said. “A mortal kills an immortal in combat. If it’s any comfort, it was supposed to have been Michael. In some ways it was, since if he hadn’t stabbed Argos with the Saintskeep, you wouldn’t have been able to kill him.”

  “But Argos was one of your group,” Vye said. “He volunteered? He knew what was going to happen?”

  “Goodness no!” Frost chuckled. “But he had lost his way, according to the others. He was starting to associate more and more with the Turin. He was starting to legitimately hate the Rone, in a personal way. He wanted to keep the Turin as his own, instead of turning them over to Grimsor, when he was awakened.”

  “So they had him killed,” Vye said. “And they used us to do it.”

  “Yes,” Frost said. “Your King Michael was visited in a dream, not dissimilar to this one. In it, Helios convinced him that Michael would be capable of defeating Argos if he had the Saintskeep. They knew that the Historian was on his way to finding it, and they tricked Argos into hiding Sarah in the same Caves. They wanted Michael to get the sword and use it against Argos.”

  “So now what?” Vye asked. “We need to defeat Grimsor, but you can’t remember how.”

  “No,” Frost said. “I can’t. We’re going to have to figure it out. We have time, and there’s one more thing you need to be able to do before I can trust that your training is complete.”

  “You want me to talk to the dead, don’t you?” Vye asked. She was standing again, though she didn’t remember getting up. Fucking dreams.

  Chapter 32: The Vanishing People

  The Regent shut the thick oak door to her quarters. She dropped the bar across the frame, locking it. The day had been long and wearisome. Though except for the Queen’s outburst in the room with the Statue, all had gone well. Sarah had been on her best behavior when she returned for the banquet. The Festival would continue to be one of Peace.

  Rajani stepped across her vast room. This was only a guest suite, and it was already more spacious than her own accommodations at her own stronghold. But she did not feel shame at this. She was not a Queen. She was a Regent. She didn’t need a Castle. She just needed to keep her people safe.