The Dreaming Hunt (38 page)

The dwarf's expression alternated between skepticism and interest.

“Where was it found, and by whom?” the First asked.

“In Groenn's Rest, on the Hauksgrafir. By a kelnor, Gunther Druumedar.”

“And where is he now? Does he still live?”

“Aye. We sent him away as soon as we saw that old copper. Hid 'im with the terrakin resistance in the high mountains where he's out of reach of the Empire.”

“And undoubtedly saved his life and that of his family and friends in the process.”

“Aye. Just so.”

“Not only is this storm copper,” the First continued, “but the workings and symbols upon it identify it as belonging to the personal guard of an ancient dwarven king. A king whose resting place has been lost.”

“Many resting places are lost with the passage of time.”

“Ahh, but we need to find this one. I believe the king within it is not truly dead and gone, but merely sleeping. And I most deeply desire to wake him.”

“A sleeping dwarven king? Never heard of such a thing.”

“Exactly. Our beloved Emperor has carefully erased all memory of him. Which is precisely why I should like to wake him.”

“Is he one of these rokken dwarves, too?”

“Yes, indeed. If this bracer belongs to one of his guards, perhaps more of his guards are near. Mayhap they can tell us more of where to find their king. If nothing else, they might be able to tell us where he fell and how.”

“Wake the dog and he'll find his master, eh?”

“Just so, my friend. Just so.”

“Gunther said he got that piece off a broken statue, though. Not a living guard.”

The First nodded. “The same method that created storm copper also could be used on people. It turned them into storm copper statutes, frozen within the metal, frozen in time. I believe it may be possible to reverse that process.”

“That how the rokken king been sleepin' all this time without dyin'?”

The First smiled. Clever, dwarves were. Perhaps clever enough, even, to bring back the rokken king. Ahh, the problems that would cause for Maximillian. The existence of a rokken—and a king who predated Maximillian, no less—would sharply challenge the Great Forgetting and its planted idea that the Kothite Empire had existed forever and nothing had come before it.

Yes, indeed. If he could throw enough paradoxes at the minds of the people of Urth, no amount of oblivi would be able to counteract the breakdown of Maximillian's curse. First an awakened ethiri girl had come along. She was a boon he had not been counting on, but what were the odds a gypsy would encounter a magic item powerful enough to erase Maximillian's curse upon her? Beyond calculation, for sure. And now this bit of storm copper. The stars were smiling down upon him and his plan to end Koth.

The dwarf commented, “Gunther ran into a yeren not far from where he found yon bracer. If they's lurkin' in the area, we might have ourselves a hard time gettin' past them to find your rokken royal guard.”

The First considered his resources briefly. “I can help with that. There's a White Heart member in the Heartlands who has good relations with the yeren. I have a contact who might be able to prevail upon him to help us.”

“You talkin' about the Shaggy Father?”

The First nodded. “I am.”

“Way I hear it, he's off-kilter. Thinks yeren be sentient and that the Empire should recognize them as people, not creatures.”

The First took a pull on the perfectly aged ale, smacking his lips together in enjoyment. “You know how those White Heart types can be. Always trying to make friends with the unlikeliest sorts.”

Sorts who would make excellent allies when it was time to move against Koth. Yeren were large, strong, and hunted by the Empire for their valuable hides. They would be all in favor of overthrowing the Kothites when the time came. Moreover, no one knew how many of them there really were. Because they were hunted so aggressively, they'd become deeply reclusive and secretive, staying to the most remote corners of Urth, hiding in caves, thick forests, and underground.

The First nodded in decision. “I'll send word to my contact to speak with the Shaggy Father. Convince him to help us. If he agrees, I'll send someone to collect Gunther Druumedar, who can then show the Shaggy Father where this bracer was found. They can search the area for more rokken of the old royal guard.”

Yes, indeed. This could be the catalyst that brought down the Great Forgetting and sparked open rebellion at long last.

*   *   *

“Raina? Raina of Tyrel?”

She whirled, shocked to hear her name, let alone spoken by a stranger in a place such as Shepard's Rest. “Do I know you, sir?” She identified the avarian sitting by the fire as the source of her name. He was a hawk changeling by the look of his reddish hair feathers and prominent, hooked nose.

“Nay, but I know you. Or at least I know your mother. And you've got the look of her through and through.”

“Are you Tyrelian, then?” she asked cautiously, searching his skin for the telltale runes of the Mages of Alchizzadon. Of course, this man could well be one of their agents and not bear the marks. For that matter, his runes might be on his back or some other part of him not visible to her now.

“I am not
from
Tyrel. I have merely been
to
Tyrel.”

“You have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I do not know yours.”

“I am Hawk.”

“Well met, Hawk. How recently come are you from Tyrel?” Of a sudden, a burning thirst for some sort of connection to home coursed through her. “What news is there?”

“Nothing of note. Crops look good this year barring any late storms. Taxes are still too high, and more bandits than ever roam the Sorrow Wold.”

“What of my family? My sister, Arianna? Is she still at home?” She could not come right out and ask if the mages had forced her sister to walk out into the wasteland as they had generations of her female ancestors.

“Aye. Arianna's as bossy as ever. Gonna give Lady Charlotte a run for her money in that department soon.”

Given that Raina had run away rather than give birth to a new generation of Tyrelian women for the mages to manipulate to their own ends, she'd hoped desperately that the order would think better of discarding her older sister. Apparently, her plan had worked. That was a small victory, at least.

“No offense intended about your lady mother being bossy.”

Raina grinned. “None taken. She is.” Her mother's overbearing demeanor was legendary in Tyrel. “What news of Justin Morland? His mother works at the castle. He's of an age with me. Tall. Sandy-haired. Last I knew, he was training as a squire.”

“I know the youth of whom you speak. Way I hear it, he left Tyrel.”

“Where to?” she asked urgently.

“How would I know?”

She subsided, disappointed. She felt bereft, somehow, not knowing where Justin was. He had always been her anchor, but now he was gone. And he'd taken a piece of her heart with him.

“One of those mages, the ones in the blue cloaks, left about the same time as that young'un you asked about,” Hawk supplied.

“Which mage?”

“The older one. The younger one, the one your eye slides off whenever you look at him—you know the one I speak of?”

Raina nodded grimly. He'd been hand selected to father her children. Which was
not
going to happen in this lifetime.

“He got left behind in Tyrel. He's teaching magic and whatnot to your little brothers, the way I hear it.”

So. The mages had installed a permanent watch on Tyrel, had they? As if she would ever go back with them skulking around, lying in wait for her. Or, if she did return home, one day, it would be with a big contingent of Royal Order of the Sun knights around her. Defiance surged in her belly. She would never be anyone's pawn—

She checked the thought. In this tabard she was the pawn of plenty of people. But at least she'd gotten to pick who pulled her strings. It was better than nothing. New resolve to wake the Sleeping King coursed through her. Gawaine thought he might be able to help rouse the great human mage whose memory held her family in thrall, compliments of the Mages of Alchizzadon.

She could not fail. Her freedom from all of them depended upon it.

*   *   *

“You are arrived just in time, sir. Proctor Elfonse has a visitor. All proctors are requested to attend a small reception for him.”

“I'm sorry. Did you say a
visitor
?” Shock coursed through Kadir. Since when did the Mages of Alchizzadon receive visitors? In the hidden palace itself, no less!

“That is correct, sir.”

“When is this reception?” he asked tightly.

“Now, sir. In the receiving hall.”

Kadir groaned. He had been on the road for weeks. He was filthy and hungry and exhausted, and he wanted a bath, hot food, and his own bed, in that order. Of course, Elfonse would take great pleasure in catching him at a disadvantage like this.
Scheming sewer rat.

The very last thing he wished to do at the moment was play politics with the more extreme elements within his order. Elfonse and the Collectors—the faction over which Elfonse was proctor—were going to get them all killed one day with their complete disregard for the laws of the land. The only thing that mattered to them was collecting enough magic to rouse the Great Mage. By any means and at all costs. Lunatics.

Personally, he was a Preservator. He was concerned mainly with safeguarding the lineage of the Great Mage, Hadrian. His kind felt the problem of rousing him was best solved organically, over time, by creating a line of mages powerful enough to wake him. It was to that end the women of the House of Tyrel and their exceptional magic had been carefully managed and maintained since before there was record of time.

As for the other line they bred—male seers—they drew from whatever talent they found throughout Haelos. Like the youth he brought into the fold this day with promises of being with the girl he loved.
Anything to bring them in,
Kadir thought sourly. But once the lad saw the extent of what he could learn here, the magic would seduce him away from thoughts of true love.

Of course, the flip side of that coin was that Kadir fully intended to dangle young Justin as bait to draw out Raina from whatever rock she thought to hide under, be it painted in Heart colors or otherwise.

Following the initiate sent to fetch him, Kadir reached the rarely used receiving hall. He grimly straightened his shoulders under the road-stained blue of his robes and nodded at a pair of acolytes to open the tall, double doors for him.

Dregs. It was not just Elfonse and a few of his cronies. The entire faction of Collectors looked to be present. A sea of navy robes crowded the spacious hall, and avid curiosity crackled in the air. Hidden and shielded as their enclave was, no daylight penetrated the palace's protections, and perpetual night cloaked every room. But today, the chandeliers overhead were crammed with hundreds of burning candles that cast a warm glow over the assemblage.

In spite of the crowd, Kadir spotted the guest immediately. How could he not? The man was taller than almost everyone in the room and strikingly handsome. Of course, what really captured his gaze was the visitor's unusual coloring. His skin was snowy white, as pale as newly fallen snow. But as the guest bent his head to listen to someone speak beside him, the candles cast shadows in every shade of blue across his iridescent skin.

He would have taken the visitor for an ikonesti were his features not so unmistakably human in shape and his ears as round as non-elven ears could care to be. Kadir passed through the crowd, using his height and bulk to plow his way politely toward the stranger. As he did so, he caught the faintest glimpses of other colorations in the man's skin, glints of silver and gold, red and brown, as if a diamond winked at him in rainbow flashes of color.

A jann, mayhap?

What extraordinary circumstance could have convinced the high proctor to let any outsider into the inner sanctum of the mages of Alchizzadon like this? In his entire lifetime, Kadir had never heard of an outsider being granted access to this secret place. Elfonse was as adamant as the next man about maintaining the secrecy of the Mages of Alchizzadon in spite of his single-minded focus on his work.

Kadir could not imagine what had changed so radically in his absence, then, that Elfonse had been able to convince High Proctor Albinus to allow this travesty.

“Ahh, Proctor Kadir. You are returned to us, and just in time for glad tidings,” Elfonse intoned.

“I cannot wait to hear what these tidings might be,” he replied dryly.

“Prithee, allow me to introduce you to our guest. He is a man who claims to have no name but whose interests run parallel to ours.”

A man with no name? The mystery deepened. The order's seers had been mumbling about nameless ones coming in from the wilds for years now. Had this fellow caught wind of the prophecies and claimed nameless status as a ruse to gain entrance to these hallowed halls?

Kadir looked the stranger in the eye directly. The confidence and power he saw there shocked him. And truth be told, it daunted him a bit. “In what way do we share interests, sir?”

The jann glanced over at Elfonse, who nodded slightly, and then turned back to Kadir. He intoned in a rich, deep voice, “I have an interest in exploring the magics of this continent.”

Hmm. The Gatekeepers of Alchizzadon would have something to say about that if they were here to defend their interests. But alas, that secretive portion of his order served elsewhere, standing guard over the Gates of the Realms scattered across the continent. Aloud, he asked, “What sorts of magics do you explore, exactly?”

The jann shrugged. “Whatever magics Haelos has to offer up.”

Kadir studied him intently. That face … memory of it hovered just beyond the edge of recall.