***
Hunor had been dumped unceremoniously on the grass where Jem and Emelia sat.
“How is he?” Emelia asked.
“Alive. The mage did not hesitate to torture him. From what he says Hunor may well owe Lady Orla a favour.”
“I can’t see her needing to collect that in a hurry. The mage is insane. Why is he here with the knights? What’s he really after?”
“I’ve wondered the same thing. In my experience that degree of malice only comes with greed or revenge. I hope it’s the former.”
“Me also, but I’m not so certain. By Torik, I can hardly think I’m that tired. Can you feel...?”
Jem shushed her, indicating the nearby Sir Unhert.
Emelia nodded and became silent. A wave of fatigue washed over her. The return of the magical sensation within her was oddly draining and the emotional plummet at the relief of seeing Hunor again made her realise how much she had been relying on adrenaline that night.
She slipped gradually into a deep sleep; at first a refreshing nothingness then a sporadic awareness of thought as she began to dream.
Emelia was in the Keep in Coonor walking down a long corridor. At the far end was the stained glass window, a blaze of distant colour, like the end of a rainbow.
She became aware of her feet becoming heavy. She noticed with horror that a stony hue was spreading from the walls and the floor onto her bare feet and from there trickling up her legs. She realised that soon she would become part of the building itself.
By the gods, this is like the dream of the beach and my father, she thought.
As she became more like the rock so the tapestries and statuettes that lined the walls of the passage began to come to life. A bust of Lord Ebon-Farr turned and snarled at her; she stifled a cry.
Emelia backed against a large painting whose colours had begun glowing with an intense light. The grey colour had spread like a mould over her abdomen and was now on her chest. She knew that soon she would be a statue, frozen in death for all time. She turned with great difficulty to look at the painting.
It was a large painting titled “Death in Erturia.” So an Eerian painting of the Artorian Empire: how bizarre, thought Emelia. Its shimmering oil figures were in some sort of throne room, strewn with rubble and a noble looking figure was sat impassively on the throne with a crumpled corpse at his feet.
Emelia could feel the warmth radiating from the canvas. The heat was blissful, trickling through her body. The stone melted away from her as her ragged dress began to change. She noticed that her clothes had become liquid, running down her muscular body. The painting loomed and then instantly she was within it.
The throne room was huge and the artist had painted it in broad strokes giving it a blurred quality when one moved around it. Rows of carved marble columns soared to the vaulted ceiling. Statues of heroes were shattered like dolls on the black marble floor. Overturned braziers smouldered thick smoke into the chamber’s air
The corpse lay on the floor next to where Emelia knelt. Emelia was dressed in a silk gown, a solid gold brooch on her breast and a platinum and jade tiara in her hair. Scattered around her were the torn bodies of a dozen elite guards, their features indistinct as if painted as an afterthought.
The dead body before her was richly adorned and a shimmer of holiness surrounded his glittering crown.
The figure on the throne was painted with as much detail as the fallen man. His garb was black satin interrupted by hints of silver. He radiated an aura of power from his shaded face. His eyes were oddly familiar, his lips tinted scarlet as if stained with blood. Yet despite the ghoulish appearance he was oddly charismatic and Emelia felt her pulse race as he addressed her.
“Princess, attend me. Leave your father now for he is beyond hearing your tears. I desire some light relief in this cascade of death,” he said.
Emelia looked up tearfully and replied.
“My father, your Emperor, was a great man and your evil has robbed many lands of his wisdom and beneficence.”
The pale man laughed. “Forgive me, Princess. I was under the impression that the soldiers of the Empire have slaughtered more in their time than the Plague of Dust. At least so I am told. I’ve been—shall we say—indisposed.”
“May Egos and Tindor themselves convey your black soul to the Pale, you monster!”
“They’d be far back in the queue, jewel of Artoria. My soul has been bartered for like a merchant’s carpet between Onor, Sirgos, Ingor and Nekra.”
“Say not the names of evil in this palace, devil. What manner of Pale-spawn are you to invoke those demons so glibly?”
The dark robed man paused and then rose. His black robes flowed like oil as he strode towards Emelia. His face was deathly pale yet his eyes a vibrant blue.
“What manner of monster am I? I am the Darkmaster. I am a sorcerer. I am the past, the present and the future. I have risen once more as prophesised and great will be the sorrow of this mortal Empire. I am Vildor.”
Emelia jolted at the name. This was the same mage as in her last dream but he was no longer a half-ogre. Why was he here in the Artorian Empire in this dream when he had lived two thousand years before?
“Well, Vildor, you will rue the day you crawled from under your rock and murdered my father. My two brothers will avenge their father and me if need be.”
“Your brothers, Princess Coreline? Which brother would that be? The older one who staged this coup and is currently below us with his troop of rebels? Or your younger brother, the one who shudders with fear behind the gathering mages on the steps of this palace?”
“Those are lies, Prince of Evil,” Emelia said, her voice trill. “Lies to turn me against my kin. The Empire’s sorcerers will slay you and your vile servants; even the Codex allows them such action.”
“Indeed it does, Princess. My, you are more than just a clothes horse! My own mages are not bound by such sensibilities, only the four schools of fools. Ah, my day was so less complicated than all this. Humans did not wield magic and everyone knew where they were. Now we have humans spraying fire storms, Galvorians raising magical towers of stone, Subaquans and humans squabbling over salvage. I hear, whilst I was dormant, that human magicians managed to annihilate two countries! All credit to you, the ogres never dreamt of death on such a scale. What a race!”
Emelia, or rather Princess Coreline, looked with hatred at Vildor.
“You speak as if you were not human, sir. It is your race as it is mine.”
Vildor’s smile chilled her to her marrow.
“Oh, but I am so much more than that now. Come, my friends, we shall prepare for this magical battle and perhaps a little instruction for the princess on our nature.”
From the fringes of the throne room they came, dark shapes with snow white faces and red lips. The artist had painted them far in the background and horrifically as they neared Emelia their faces remained near featureless blobs of white.
“Xirik, my freshest disciple. Please demonstrate for the princess,” said Vildor.
The blank faced figure retrieved a long sword from one of the dead guards and turning it around thrust it through his chest. Emelia screamed as the sword emerged from his back and he gasped, a mixture of pain and ecstasy, before standing very much alive before her.
“What are you? What in Egos’s name are you?”
“We have many names,” Vildor said, prowling around Emelia. “Certainly we are dark wizards, sorcerers who bring our magic from the black opals that have seared into our chests. Yet amongst that cohort we are the truest masters of evil. We have forsaken our eternal souls to taste the sweet nectar of immortality. We are the undead, feeding off the warmth and life that was once ours to hold. We are called by some the vampyr lords, by some the ghasts.”
“You cannot be! That is but a tale told by wet nurses to frighten their children,” Emelia said, sobbing.
“And frightened you should be, Princess,” Vildor said. He stroked her cheek. A
tingle of excitement ran down her.
Xirik approached the pair. “Word has arrived, my lord, from the usurper Prince Corillion. He claims the assembled mages have access to a prism.”
“Then this should be a battle to be proud of my protégée. For whereas their prism has but four colours, ours has five.”
From his robes Vildor brought forth a triangular prism, about the size of a large orange. It throbbed with magical energy, its blue, red, green and yellow crystal casting tiny lights around his hand. On the base Emelia could see a triangular fifth side of black crystal and the darkness was so deep that her eyes hurt to look at it.
Vildor paused as she looked at the crystal and something in his manner changed. His blue eyes met Emelia’s as if he was seeing her in a different light.
“You have seen this crystal before, haven’t you?” he asked.
Emelia felt a surge of panic and a strong need to escape. The painting around her felt claustrophobic and stifling. Her legs refused to move as Vildor came closer.
“We have to stop meeting this way. How are you in my dreams and my memories?” he said. He was very close now; his pale skin seemed almost translucent.
“Tell me where you have seen this crystal, my dear. I need to know.” His voice was like silk in her ear, in her head, in her mind.
The surrounds began to melt away, the colours flowing together then separating in some arcane whirlpool. The throne room was gone and instead the ground beneath her was a green hill, the back drop mighty purple mountains. The painting was becoming Thetoria as Emelia looked on helplessly.
Out of nowhere a small figure appeared. About four foot tall its face was identical to Emelia’s, down to the glittering eyes. Its hair was wild and rippled like water and its immature body was covered in green fish scales.
“Emelia, you stupid girl. Wake up. Now!” it shrieked. The voice had been within her head for so many years: it was Emebaka.
Vildor turned with anger in his face and lashed out at the impish creature. Emebaka ducked and then punched him square in the gut. He spluttered in pain, the prism flying from his grasp.
The world around her exploded in a cloud of paint and suddenly she was awake.
She was lying on the cool grass, her head inches from Hunor. Jem slept soundly at her other side.
Hunor was looking at her as the sweat ran down her forehead. “Another bad dream, love?” he asked.
Emelia nodded slowly. “They’re really disturbing me at the moment, Hunor. I’d been having this one about being lost in a city of purple stone for months but now... well now they’re... dark.”
“If you ask Jem he’d probably analyse every part of it. Me—I don’t think the content matters at all.”
“So you don’t think dreams matter?”
“It’s not that, no. It’s more the details are irrelevant—if they’re some message sent by the gods then who are we to understand them? I reckon it’s how they make you feel that is important.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well that’s kind of my point. How does the dream make you feel—in your guts, in your heart, as you come around?”
“It... well, it made me feel scared, but excited and... curious too.”
“So there’s the message, the meaning. Sometimes you’ve got to go with your instincts, Emelia, go with how you feel. Forget the rational voice and... just act.”
Emelia screwed her face up. “You all right, boss man?”
Hunor smiled his charming grin, “Apart from my insides feeling like the private spittoon of some syphilitic whore monger, yes. You knew I was coming back for you didn’t you, love?”
“Yes… of course. We stick together don’t we?”
“Sure we do. Get some rest, Emelia. Today was only the dress rehearsal. Tomorrow the plan comes together,” Hunor said in a whisper.
Emelia lay her head back down, although not to sleep. She had an uneasy sense that escaping from the knights wasn’t going to be their only problem.