by Cindy Dees
Oh. The elemental phantasm army that had tried to break through to the material plane using the gate in the Dominion stronghold. The same gate that Eben and his friends had helped the Dominion to close. It had been a bloody fight.
Eben muttered, “I don’t think any phantasms made it back through the gate. I’m fairly certain we killed every one who came through to our side. Those soldiers down there won’t have any idea that we were the instruments of slaughtering so many of their comrades.”
“Still. Most of the creatures down there are powerful. They’ve been phantasms a long time. The forms we see them in now are merely recent personas they have adopted.”
“So, what’s the problem?” Eben asked, not understanding the accomplished warrior’s sudden trepidation.
Rynn replied heavily, “I am not exactly unknown on the dream plane. Many of the phantasms down there will know who I am.”
“And…”
“And will not take kindly to me barging into their midst as if I own the place.”
Eben frowned. Did he own the place? None of them knew all that much about the secretive paxan. Sure, the guy had that open eye in the middle of his forehead that automatically made him a fugitive from the Empire. But what about here?
“Are you types”—Eben gestured at his own forehead—“unpopular here, too? Or illegal?”
Rynn answered reluctantly, “Not illegal. And not unpopular, exactly. More … feared.”
Eben swiveled on his heels to stare at his friend. “Why?” He added hastily, “Don’t get me wrong. You’re a sight to see in combat, and it’s an honor to fight beside you. But why are you so feared? Is it all that mental stuff you do?”
“Something like that,” Rynn answered evasively. “Look. I can’t go with you into yon encampment, but I’m fairly sure you will find your sister down there. You’ll be fine. You’re an elementally aligned being, and no one will think twice about you being there. You should be able to stroll right through the camp.”
“You’re not going with me? Won’t I fall out of the dream or something?”
Rynn grinned. “No. You should be able to stay here and talk with your sister until you wake up. You might want to ask her where her physical body is located so you can go to her and rescue her, though.”
“Good idea,” he mumbled, staring intently at the city-sized settlement, learning its layout and trying to guess where Marikeen might be found. “You’re sure you won’t come with me?”
“Not into that place. I’ll stand out even worse there than I usually do.”
Eben sympathized. Being of a rare race in a sea of humans could be an exhausting and demeaning experience. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck.” Rynn added, “And don’t do anything stupid.”
Eben snorted. The one thing he could be counted on to do with some regularity was the stupid thing.
Keeping an image of Marikeen firmly planted in his mind, Eben plunged down the hillside and into the maze of tents, huts, and more permanent structures. The place would have reminded him of the Dominion, except instead of teeming hordes of animal changelings, this place was crawling with elementally aligned beings.
Another difference between this place and the Dominion was the vaguely transparent nature of many of the denizens. He recalled Rynn saying that the more powerful and connected to a living being a phantasm was, the more corporeal the phantasm would appear. Eben strode farther in, seeking the most solid-looking beings. Marikeen would gravitate toward the center of power. She was a powerful mage herself and had never suffered fools lightly.
Walking through the camp was a strange experience. He fit right in, for a change. The colored striations across his caramel-colored skin that usually made him stand out like a freak blended in perfectly here. Elemental elves—pyresti, ikonesti, typhonesti, and other types of elves he did not recognize—were abundant. In his entire life, he’d seen maybe ten other jann, not counting his sister, and now he shoved through crowds of them. He felt like some lost creature who’d finally found his way home to his own kind.
Eagerly, he moved deeper into the encampment. He passed practice fields and healers’ tents, heard barked orders and the grunts of drilling soldiers. This army definitely was training for some future attack. Had they found another way onto the material plane? It had been a monumental task to shut down the gate last fall and had taken the full might of the Dominion colony to contain the horde that had tried to pass through.
Marikeen was tangled up with this? She did, indeed, need her big brother to rescue her, then. He continued forward with no plan in mind other than to somehow infiltrate this army and extricate her from its coils.
He didn’t know how long or how far he walked. Distance and time seemed to move strangely in this place. His dreaming body didn’t seem to accumulate fatigue either. He kept a sharp eye out for his sister, who was strikingly beautiful, with shockingly pale skin and nearly white hair. Faint, pale blue striations played across her skin when she was agitated, and the rest of the time she looked like what he imagined a fairy snow queen to look like.
Eventually, he came to the far end of the crammed row of tents, and the ground rose before him into a beautiful copse of trees. There were tents here, too, but they were large and widely spaced, their skin walls extravagantly painted and silk ropes tying them to beautifully carved and inlaid tent poles.
“Who goes there?” a guard demanded as Eben approached the biggest tent of all in the center of the other dwellings. The fellow looked like an air elemental, his form not quite solid, not quite opaque. It was a little awkward being able to see through the fellow’s head to the open tent flap beyond. Eben made out a group of people sitting in the tent’s shadowed interior, eating and talking.
He spoke up strongly, “I am Eben of Hyland. I have come to see my sister, Marikeen.”
Silence fell abruptly inside the tent.
A female voice, not his sister’s, called out, “Bid him enter.”
The crossed pikes in front of Eben lifted. With a polite nod to the pair of guards, he ducked his head through the opening and stepped into the darkness. His eyes gradually adjusted to the dim light, and he saw seated around a large table a group of elementals who exuded power as effortlessly as they exuded their various elemental alignments.
They all looked as dense and real as he was, and they studied him with alert curiosity.
“Thank you for seeing me,” Eben started courteously. “I come in search of—”
“Yes, yes. We know. Your sister.” The voice was high-pitched. Childish.
Eben peered toward the far end of the table and spied a little girl, aged maybe eight summers, sitting high on a pile of pillows in an adult-sized armchair. But her eyes. Heavens above, her eyes. They were older than time itself.
He remembered her vividly from his dream last fall. She was much more powerful than her youthful appearance let on. Curious, he searched the space behind the chair for her bodyguard from his last dream, a tall, lean warrior garbed in armor and wearing ancient gages on his forearms and hands. Someone, Eben couldn’t remember who, had dubbed him the Gaged Man.
There he was. Standing still as a statue in the corner. Eben nodded respectfully in the bodyguard’s direction, and not by even the tiniest flicker of an eyelid did the man acknowledge him. Nonetheless, Hyland had always taught his children that courtesy was never wasted.
The child’s name came to him all of a sudden, and he blurted it out. “Vesper. That is your name, is it not?”
“Clever boy,” Vesper murmured. “Come, Eben of Hyland. Sit by me,” the little girl ordered. “Tell me all about yourself.”
Although something in the back of his mind warned him against it, he met her dark, intense stare and found that he could not stop the flow of words once they started. He told her of his and Marikeen’s childhoods and how lucky they’d been to land in Hyland’s household.
She quizzed him on their education and training, their travels, and their ambitions. She was
greatly interested in those, although Eben could not begin to fathom why. He ended with an account of how he’d been tricked in a business deal and he and his sister had been sold into slavery. Their foster brother, Kendrick, had managed to buy Eben’s freedom, but not Marikeen’s. He ended by saying regretfully that ever since, he had searched to no avail for his sister.
“You are alone, Eben. Do you not have friends?” she asked.
“I have many good friends,” he disagreed. “They have helped me search for her.”
“And this Kendrick who failed to buy Marikeen’s freedom, does he help you?” Vesper asked keenly.
Smart girl. Eben reminded himself yet again not to be deceived by this female’s youthful appearance. She was apparently hundreds or thousands of years old and fully as cunning and wise as any field general.
Eben glanced up at his hostess, and yet again, her dark, mesmerizing eyes captured his fascination. So much wisdom and pain in those eyes …
He jerked his attention back to the conversation at hand. “Um, no. Sadly, Kendrick is no longer with us.”
“Did he die?” Vesper asked.
“No. He was kidnapped and taken from our search party. And then he was transformed into a horrible, bestial creature by his captor.”
Vesper’s stare lit up, avid, almost greedy. “What sort of creature?”
Eben sighed. “A were-creature. He transforms into a great, hairy, tusked boar when ordered to do so by his captor or when he becomes very angry.”
“A boar, you say?” Vesper blurted. Even the Gaged Man took a shocked, eager step forward.
“Aye,” Eben answered cautiously.
“A tragic turn of events,” Vesper said thoughtfully. “Have you and your friends given any thought to a cure for this terrible affliction of Kendrick’s?”
“Indeed. We’ve given it a great deal of thought. One of my friends belongs to the Tribe of the Moon, and she was able to cure another friend of ours of a brand-new were-curse. Sha’Li does not believe she is powerful enough to remove Kendrick’s curse, though.”
Vesper tapped one of her front teeth with a small, pink-and-white fingernail, an adult gesture that looked strange on her childish frame. “What if I were to help you cure your friend Kendrick of his were-curse?”
Eben half rose out of his chair. “You could do that?” he exclaimed.
Vesper nodded slowly. “I believe I could.”
“Why would you do such a generous thing for me and my friends?” Eben burst out. Surely there had to be a catch to this offer of hers.
“It is good to have friends, is it not?” Vesper asked sweetly. “Be my friend, and I will be yours. You help me, and I’ll help you.”
“How can I repay you for your generosity?” Eben asked promptly.
“I do not know, but mayhap, someday, some situation will arise wherein I need your assistance.”
“And you shall have it,” Eben declared. “Fix Kendrick, and I will be in your debt, my lady.”
“We understand each other, then.”
The Gaged Man stepped forward and leaned down to whisper in his mistress’s ear.
She listened intently and then looked up at Eben. “I am given to understand that you find yourself in a bit of a predicament on the material plane.”
He frowned. “I do not understand.”
“Apparently, you have been recently drugged by agents of your enemy, one Anton Constantine.”
Oh. Oh! Abrupt memory of that moment of appalled comprehension that he’d been drugged—they’d all three been drugged—slammed into him. The tent and its occupants started to fade as panic drew him toward the surface of his dream and wakefulness.
“Not so fast!” Vesper said strongly. Her black-upon-black-upon-black eyes dragged him back into the dream whether he willed it or not. “I can help you.”
That got his attention. He stopped fighting the downward pull of her will and let her anchor him once more in this dreaming place. “How can you help me and my friends?”
“Even from this place, I have a certain influence on the people and events of the material plane. I do not know yet how I shall help you, but when you see it, you will know it. Do not hesitate when the moment comes to make your escape.”
He nodded, oddly reassured that this strange child was on his side. She was supposed to be the enemy, yet she had turned out to be a generous benefactor. “My sister—”
“She is currently performing a small errand for me, but she will return soon. The next time you dream your way to us, I will see to it that she is here and waiting to speak with you.”
“You are too kind.” Eben stood and bowed formally to the child seated on the mound of pillows.
She nodded back regally—
—and the dream blinked out.
* * *
Queen Gabrielle of Haraland sat on a stump and looked around the heavily wooded margins of the clearing, a massive bonfire blazing up before her into the black night, a swirl of sparks rising to meet the heavy dusting of stars. Great, hulking mountains rose all around them, the Rignhall Ring of seven towering mountain peaks blotting out any far horizons.
The night was grand and cold, and she breathed deeply of its freedom, far away from the Imperial Court and her duties there.
The group of mostly dwarves around her was muddy and exhausted. The combination of the recent thunderstorm they’d summoned and the torrent of lightning and water they’d gathered and unleashed had been a messy affair.
But worthy. She glanced sidelong at the rokken dwarf seated next to her, roughly dressed in borrowed clothes and wrapped in a thick blanket. How strange it must be to him to have been magically released from a storm copper statue only to discover that thousands of years had passed since he’d been transformed to the rare metal.
He was big for a dwarf, nearly as tall as she, and wreathed in muscles that looked hard and capable even after all this time. She didn’t know much about rokken. From what she gathered, they started as regular dwarves and then earned some special status through mastery of mining, metalworking, or weapons skill. Supposedly a few survived still, mostly in the Heartland, where they mined the priceless Heartstone. And her guide, Gunther Druumedar, had muttered something about rokken mining nullstone for Koth.
What must it be like to realize that everyone you’d ever known or loved has been dead for millennia? Mayhap this fellow had a few descendants alive, at least.
A hairy yeren, the very picture of an abominable snow monster and half again the size of a normal man, crouched across the great fire beside his mistress, a White Heart healer named Mina. At the moment, Mina massaged the stump of Gunther’s leg. The dwarven miner had lost the limb above the knee some time back and apparently hadn’t trusted the Heart enough to let a healer magically restore the limb before it was permanently lost. Gabrielle couldn’t imagine voluntarily choosing to live without one of her legs.
But then, she couldn’t imagine sitting here with this motley collection of rebels in a secret valley in the wilds of Groenn’s Rest either. Yet here she was. This place could not be any more unlike the Imperial Seat of Koth or the luxurious palace she shared with her husband, King Regalo, in Haraland. In a way, the primitive camp and rugged demands of the past few months had been a refreshing break from all the pomp and ceremony of her otherwise caged life. Being Queen of Haraland might be a magnificently gilded cage, but it was a cage nonetheless.
Gunther spoke up, gesturing with the remains of a wild pheasant leg at the blanket-wrapped dwarf seated next to Gabrielle. “Ye feelin’ up to speakin’ yet, friend?”
The rokken beside her stirred, looking up from the fire as if startled to realize they were still there. “Sorry. It’s disorienting to find out that so much time has passed.”
Gabrielle shuddered. It was a minor miracle that he wasn’t witless or insane after his ordeal. She moved over to join him on the long log he sat upon. “What shall we call you, good sir?”
“My name is Bekkan. Bekkan Kopathul, second
guardian of the Septvardin, the Seven Guardians of the King.”
“Which king would that be?” she asked.
“His Royal Highness, King Eitrik, also called Fireheart.”
“Eitrik?” Gabrielle echoed. She was familiar with all the hundred kings of Koth, and she’d never heard of this one.
A look of intense grief passed across Bekkan’s face as the loss of his liege and his comrades in arms apparently struck him. A heavy blow to bear all at once.
Gabrielle said gently, “Can you tell us of what was happening before your … long sleep … that we may help place you in time?”
“I do not know where to start.”
“How far did the power of the Eternal Empire of Koth extend in your day?”
“The Kothites? Oh, them. They’d come. But their hold on Ymir is … was … tenuous. The giants rose up to oppose them, my king with them. When the other dwarven kings fell, Eitrik made a deal with Moten to hide him away.”
“Moten, the giant?” Gunther blurted from across the fire.
Shocked silence fell all around.
“Aye.”
This man seated before her had lived in the Age of Giants? Had potentially seen and actually met one?
Gabrielle quelled her astonishment enough to murmur, “Pray, continue. What sort of deal did they make?”
“I do not know the details, of course, but Moten agreed to protect Eitrik, to change him so those filthy Kothites could not get their hands on him.”
“To change him … like you?” Gabrielle asked into the hush.
“Yes. Like me. But not into storm copper, of course. I’m a coppervein, but my king is … was … an ironvein dwarf. He would’ve been transformed into ghardiin.”
Gunther breathed, “These days, we call that adamant iron.”
A hiss of indrawn breath among the oldest dwarves present made Gabrielle look up sharply. Thankfully, one of the younger dwarven smiths asked aloud what she was thinking.
“What’s this adamant iron, then?”
A white-haired dwarf with a beard nearly to his knees answered solemnly. “’Tis said to come from the hearts of the great mountains of Ymir, from Thoris’s Shield itself, pitch black in color and hard as diamond. Items forged from it are unbreakable by any means whatsoever. If our last great dwarven king rests in adamant iron, then he’s sleeping undisturbed.”