A moment later, a huge shadow shot past the starboard rail. The explosion of wood and blast of water nearby were a distant echo. Meric slumped to his planks, head hanging. As alarm bells clanged along the docks and shouts rose in a chorus of panic, one word whispered from his lips: “Betrayed . . .”
Seated in the Grand Courtyard of the castle keep, Nee’lahn watched the children pause in their play as bells rang along the docks beyond the stone walls. Her own fingers stopped in midstrum on the strings of her lute.
Something had happened at the docks.
A few steps away, little Rodricko lowered his stick, a pretend sword, and glanced to his mother. His opponent in this playful sparring match—the Dre’rendi child Sheeshon—cocked her head at the noise, her own fake sword forgotten.
Nee’lahn rolled to her knees and swung her lute over a shoulder, bumping the thin trunk of the koa’kona behind her. Leaves shook overhead. The fragile sapling was thin-limbed and top-heavy with summer leaves—not unlike the male child that was its bonded twin.
“Rodricko, come away,” Nee’lahn said, reaching out to the boy. Rodricko was all limbs and awkwardness. Thank the Mother, his initial growth surge is about over. Both tree and boy would grow into their forms more gradually from here.
“Sheeshon, you too,” Nee’lahn added. “Let’s see if the kitchens are ready with your porridge.”
As Nee’lahn straightened, she dug her bare toes into the rich loam at the base of the tree and took strength from the energy in the soil. She readied herself to enter the stone halls of the castle. Reluctant to leave, she drew the strength of root deep inside her.
Around them, the gardens of the Grand Courtyard were in the full bloom of summer. Tiny white flowers garlanded the ivy-encrusted walls. The dogwoods stood amid cloaks of fallen petals. Red berries dotted the trimmed bushes that lined the crushed white-gravel paths. Most glorious of all were the hundreds of rosebushes, newly planted last fall. They had blossomed into a riot of colors: blushing pinks, dusky purples, honeyed yellows. Even the sea breezes were given color and substance by their sweet fragrances.
But it was more than beauty that held her here, for only in this courtyard were her past, present, and future gathered in one place: the lute that held the heart of her own beloved, the sapling that sprang from the seed of her bonded, and the boy who represented all the hopes of the nyphai people.
Sighing, Nee’lahn tousled the mop of sun-bleached curls atop Rodricko’s head and took the boy’s hand. So much hope in such a little package.
Sheeshon reached to take Rodricko’s other hand, the webbed folds between the Dre’rendi girl’s fingers marking her as a link between the seafaring Bloodriders and the ocean-dwelling mer’ai. Rodricko joined hands with her. Over the past moons, the two children, alike in their uniqueness, had become all but inseparable.
“Let’s see if the kitchens are ready,” Nee’lahn said, turning.
She stepped away, but Rodricko seemed to have taken root in the soil. “Mama, what about the bud song? You promised I could try.”
Nee’lahn opened her mouth to object. She was anxious to learn what had arisen at the docks, but already the alarm bells were echoing away.
“You promised,” Rodricko repeated.
Nee’lahn frowned, then glanced to the tree. She had promised. It was indeed time he learned his own song, but she was hesitant, reluctant to let Rodricko go.
“I’m old enough. And this night the moon is full!”
Nee’lahn found no way to object. Traditionally among the nyphai, the first full moon of summer was when the young bonded with their new trees, when babe and seed became woman and tree.
“Are you sure you’re ready, Rodricko?”
“He’s ready,” Sheeshon answered, her small eyes surprisingly certain. Nee’lahn had heard the child was rich in sea magicks, an ability to sense beyond the horizons to what’s to come. The rajor maga, it was termed by the Dre’rendi.
“Please, Mama,” Rodricko begged.
The dock bells had gone silent.
“You may try the bud song; then it’s off to the kitchens before the cook gets angry.”
Rodricko’s face brightened like a sun coming through the clouds. He turned to Sheeshon. “Come on. I have to get ready.”
Sheeshon, always the more sober child, frowned. “You must hurry, if we have to finish before the kitchen closes.”
Nee’lahn nodded. “Go ahead, but don’t be disappointed if you fail. Maybe next summer . . .”
Rodricko nodded, though clearly deaf to her words. He crossed to the tree and knelt on limbs nearly as thin as the sapling’s branches. Now would be the moment when all the fates would either come together or fall into disarray, for Rodricko was the first male nyphai. Both sapling and boy were unique, the result of the union of Nee’lahn’s tree and the twisted Grim wraith Cecelia. Who knew if the ancient rites, songs, and patterns of growth would hold true here?
Nee’lahn held her breath.
Rodricko touched the tree’s bark, drawing a fingernail down through the thin outer coating. A droplet of sap flowed, and the sapling’s treesong rose up from its deep thrum and quested out for Rodricko. Nee’lahn listened with both ears and heart. The boy was either attuned to the song, or he would be rebuffed. She was not sure which she hoped. A part of her wanted him to fail. She had been given so little time with him, less than a single winter . . .
Rodricko used a rose thorn to prick a finger, drawing blood. He reached his wounded finger toward the flow of sap.
“Sing,” she whispered. “Let the tree hear your heart.”
He glanced over his shoulder toward her, his eyes shining with his fear. The boy sensed the weight of the moment.
Sing, she willed to him silently.
And he did. His lips parted, and as he exhaled, the sweetest notes flowed forth. His voice was so bright that the sun seemed to grow pale in comparison. The world grew dark around the edges, as if night had come early, but around the sapling, a pool of luminescence grew brighter and brighter.
In response, the sapling’s own song swelled, like a flower drawn to the sun. At first tentatively, then more fully, boy and sapling became transfixed in treesong.
At that moment, Nee’lahn knew the boy would succeed. Tears flowed down her cheeks with both relief and loss. There was no turning back. Nee’lahn could feel the surge of elemental magick from boy and tree, one feeding on the other, building until it was impossible to say where one began and the other ended.
Two songs became one.
Nee’lahn found herself on her knees without realizing she had moved. Treesong filled the world. She had never heard such a chorus before.
She craned up at the thin branches; she knew what would come next. Leaves began to shake as if from a strong breeze. Each branch tip throbbed with treesong and elemental energy. And still tree and boy sang in harmony, voices louder, strained, beautiful, expectant.
With nowhere else to go, the magick trapped in the tips of each branch had only one course left to follow.
From the end of each tiny branch, buds pushed from stems, growing from magick and blood: petaled expressions of the treesong brought to existence by the union of boy and sapling.
He—they—had done it.
A gasp escaped from Rodricko, both joy and pain.
Slowly the treesong faded, as if draining down a well, exhausted. The summer sun returned to the courtyard.
Rodricko turned, his small face shining with joy and pride. “I did it, Mama.” His voice was now deeper, richer, almost a man’s voice. But he was no man. She heard the lilt of magick behind his voice. He was nyphai. He turned back to his tree. “We are now one.”
Nee’lahn remained silent, her gaze fixed on the tree. What have we done? she thought silently. Sweet Mother, what have we done?
Hanging from the tips of each branch were indeed the buds of new union. They would open for the first time this evening with the rising of the summer’s first moon. But Rodricko’s flowers
were not the bright violet of the nyphai, jewels among the greenery. Instead, from each tip hung buds the color of clotted blood, black and bruised—the same night shade as the Grim wraiths.
Nee’lahn covered her face and began to sob.
“Mama,” Rodricko spoke at her side, “what’s wrong?”
Deep below the Grand Courtyard, Joach slouched along a narrow tunnel. It had taken him a full moon’s time to find this hidden path. Much of the secret tunnel system under the Edifice had fallen to ruin, destroyed during the awakening of Ragnar’k from his stony sleep. Joach remembered that day: his own harrowing escape from Greshym’s enthrallment, his flight with Brother Moris, the battle at the heart of the island. Though less than two winters had passed, it now seemed like ages. He was an old man, his youth stolen from him.
Joach rested, leaning heavily upon his stone staff, a length of petrified gray wood impregnated with green crystals. The end of the stave glowed with a sickly aether, lighting his way. It was the only bit of dark magick left in the dread thing.
His fingers tightened on the staff, sensing the feeble trickle of power remaining. He had struck a bad bargain with Greshym for this length of petrified wood. It had cost Joach his youth, leaving him a wrinkled and brittle version of himself. Standing now deep underground, Joach felt the weight of rock overhead press upon his thin shoulders. His heart pounded in his ears. It had taken him all morning to climb the long-hidden stair to reach here.
“Only a little way more,” he promised himself.
Fueled by determination, he continued, praying the chamber he sought was still intact. As he reached the tunnel’s end, he used the stump of his right wrist to shove aside a tangle of withered roots hanging across the threshold. They crumbled away at his touch.
He lifted his staff forward.
Beyond, a cavernous chamber opened.
Joach wheezed with relief, and limped past the threshold. Overhead, roots and fibrous stragglers hung like swamp moss, yellow and brittle. Rodricko’s thin sapling, above, had yet to send its young roots down into this cavernous tomb. Here death still reigned.
Joach found a certain solace in that gloomy realization. Beyond the castle walls, the summer days were too bright, too green, too full of rebirth. He preferred the shadows.
Exhausted, knees complaining, he advanced. The chamber floor was strewn with boulders and the moldering corpses of the dead. Tiny furred and scaled creatures scurried from his staff’s sickly light. Joach ignored the scavengers and lifted his staff. Old scars marked the walls, from the swaths of the balefire wielded by Shorkan and Greshym during the battle. They looked like some ancient writing in charcoal.
If only he could understand it . . .
Joach sighed. So much remained closed to him. He had spent the past two moons holed up in the libraries and nooks, poring over texts, scrolls, and manuscripts. If he ever hoped to regain his youth, he needed to understand the magick that had stolen it. But he was a mere apprentice to the Black Arts, far from true understanding. He had only managed to glean one clue: Ragnar’k.
Before joining with Kast, the dragon had slumbered in stone at the heart of the island for untold ages, growing rich with the elemental magick of the dream, imbuing the rocks and crystals here with its energies. Any hope of regaining his own youth lay in the mystery of the dreaming magick. Joach had lost his youth in the dream desert—his youth and one other thing.
He closed his eyes, again feeling the flow of blood across his hand, the slightest gasp in his ear. “Kesla,” he whispered out to the cavern of the dead. She too had been like Ragnar’k, a creature of dream.
If all his pain arose out of dream landscape, perhaps his cure lay there, too. This frail hope had finally driven him down into the bowels of the island.
He had a plan.
Using his staff as a crutch, Joach limped over bones and around boulders. Though Ragnar’k was long gone, the dragon had slept in this chamber for so long that every stone, every bit of broken crystal, had been imbued with its magick. Joach planned to tap this elemental power.
Like Greshym, Joach was a dreamweaver. But unlike the darkmage, Joach was also a dream sculptor, with the ability to craft substance out of dream. If Joach hoped to take on Greshym and steal back his youth, he would need to hone his skill. But to do that, he first needed energy. He needed the power of the dream.
Joach crossed to the center of the half-collapsed chamber and slowly turned in a circle, studying the room. He sensed the abundance of energy here. Satisfied, he shifted his staff to the crook of his stumped right arm and slipped out a dagger. Clenching the hilt between his teeth, he sliced his left palm. As the blood welled, he spat out the dagger and lifted his wounded hand. Squeezing a fist, he dribbled blood onto the stone floor. Drops splattered at his feet.
Ready, Joach let his eyes drift half closed, slipping into the dream state. The dark chamber grew fitfully brighter, as swaths of rock and wall took on the soft luminescence of residual energies—echoes of the dragon’s dream.
A smile formed on Joach’s thin lips.
Reaching out with the magick in his own blood, he tied the energies to himself, weaving it all together as was his birthright. Once all was secure, Joach grabbed up his staff again with his bloodied left hand. He lifted the weapon and again slowly turned in a circle, drawing the magick into the staff. He turned and turned, dizzying himself, but did not stop until every dreg of magick was siphoned into the length of stony wood, weaving stone and magick together.
As he worked, the staff grew cold to the touch, trembling with pent-up power. The crystals along the staff’s length glowed with brilliance, flaring brighter, even as the cavern grew dimmer.
Soon there was nothing but darkness around Joach.
Satisfied, he lowered the staff and leaned upon it, his legs wobbling and weak. He stared at his crutch. The green crystals there gleamed with a sharp radiance. Joach’s shoulders shook with relief. He had done it! He had bound the energy to the staff.
All that was left was to bind the staff to him, to give him the skill to wield it to its fullest extent. Dreamweaving alone could not do the binding that he needed. A deeper connection was necessary, and he knew a way—an old spell, and one that came with a high cost, as did all things powerful. But what were a few more winters lost, when so many more had already been stolen from him? Besides, he had been involved in this same spell before, when it had been cast by Elena and forged upon Greshym’s old staff. So why not once more? Why not cast by his own hand, and forged upon this new staff, now ripe with dream energies?
To challenge Greshym, he needed a mighty weapon and the skill to use it. There was only one way to quickly gain such skill.
He must forge the staff into a blood weapon.
Joach prepared himself, concentrating on the red dribble trailing down the staff’s surface. It was not a particularly difficult spell, simpler really than calling forth balefire. It was the cost that gave him pause. He remembered Elena’s sudden aging.
But it was too late to look back. Before he could balk, Joach released the spell in a flow of words and will.
The effect was immediate. He felt something vital rip from him and pass through his blood into the staff.
Gasping, he fell to his knees. His vision blurred, but he refused to give himself over to the darkness. He breathed deeply, sucking in air like a drowning man. Finally his vision cleared. The room slowed its spin.
Joach pulled the staff across his knees, and stared at the hand that gripped the wood. As with his sister before him, the spell had aged him instantly. His fingernails had grown out and curled; his skin had crumpled. Had his sacrifice of winters been worth it?
He lifted the staff. The gray wood was now as white as snow. The green crystals, aglow with dream energies, stood out starkly, like the crimson streaks flowing from the withered hand that held it. With each thud of his heart, the streaks flowed farther down the shaft, fusing staff and body, forging weapon to wielder.
Joach hauled h
imself to his feet. When Elena had forged Greshym’s old staff, Joach had become a skilled warrior with the weapon. Would the same hold true here? Had the fusion granted him, as he hoped, the ability to wield the dream magicks now woven to the staff?
Shaking back the sleeve of his cloak, Joach exposed the stump of his right arm, his hand lost to the blood lust of Greshym’s beast. If Joach could mend that injury, then perhaps there was hope—not only for himself, but for them all. A mighty war was coming, and Joach did not want to remain behind with the children and the feeble.
He reached out to the staff. As his severed wrist touched the petrified wood, Joach willed his magick—not weaving this time, but sculpting.
From the stump of his wrist, a phantom hand bloomed out in wisps and tendrils. Ghostly fingers stretched and gripped the staff. Joach’s legs shook, but he used his blood connection with the staff to draw upon the dream energies. Slowly the spirit hand grew solid, gaining substance from his focus and attention. Fingers that had once been ghostly became whole. Joach felt the grain of the staff’s wood, the sharp edges of the crystalline stone.
He lifted the staff with his dream-sculpted hand and held it aloft. Blood continued to feed the staff through his conjured hand.
Dream had indeed become substance!
Power thrilled through him. Dark magick and dream energies, now fused, were his to command! He pictured a girl with eyes the color of twilight, and his lips moved in a silent vow of vengeance. He would find Greshym and make him pay for his theft, make them all pay for what Joach had lost among the sands.
Joach lowered the staff, then wrapped his sliced palm and took the staff back up in his gloved grip, severing the connection between flesh and petrified wood. As the blood drained out of the white wood, its length grew gray again. For now, he would keep his new blood weapon a secret.
Joach raised his right arm and stared at the sculpted hand, formed out of elemental energy. It would not do to let this be seen yet, either. There would be too many questions . . . and besides, it drained his precious energies. He waved the hand through the air and unbound the pattern, and like a snuffed candle, the hand wisped out of existence, back to just dream.