The fading dream

CHAPTER TWENTY — SEVEN

The Mournland R haan 3, 999 YK

Not quite what I’d hoped for,” Thorn said. She was standing at the gate of the Silver Tree, looking out over the pale landscape. At a glance, nothing had changed from the moment they had first arrived.

Drix grinned. “I thought you were the one who didn’t believe the story.”

“I didn’t. I still don’t. Still, after everything we saw… I was beginning to hope that prying that stone out of your heart might just change everything.”

“And it did,” Drix said. He let his fingers drift across his chest, passing over the place where the crystal shard had been. “It’s going to take more time.”

That was what Tira had told them after the ceremony was completed and Drix was able to stand. Initially the tinker had been heartbroken when the green fields of Cyre weren’t restored. Then Tira told them that the results were all that she’d hoped for. That she knew that the decay of the Silver Tree had stopped; it might take time for it to return to full health, but it was on the right path. And as for the Mournland, she was confident that all would be well in just a century or two. With Tira casually dismissing a century, Thorn could see why Shan Doresh had thought a few years a paltry amount of time to devote to his scheme.

“So it’s going to be a hundred years before we know if there’s any truth to the story,” Thorn said. “I guess it’s something to look forward to.”

“There’s lots of things to look forward to,” Drix said. “Why are you leaving so soon? And why like this?”

Thorn looked out over the Mournland, and her thoughts drifted back to her last conversation with Lady Tira, deep in the roots of the Silver Tree.

“So everything she said was true.” Thorn had been standing at the gates of the Silver Tree, staring out across the pale landscape.

“True enough.” The Stone of Life had glowed on Tira’s golden crown, but her face was still hidden beneath the long veil. “You are the soul of Nyrielle Tam, bound to the body of Sarmondelaryx. An old spell, and a powerful one. Certainly the work of dragons.”

“The Chamber-”

“I can only tell the truth of you, so I cannot tell you who among your Citadel might have been involved. But I have heard of this Chamber. For tens of thousands of your years-even before Shan Doresh challenged the giants of Xen’drik-the dragons have remained in isolation on Argonnessen. There they study a matrix of truths, a map of possibilities that can foretell the future-or create it. For generation after generation, they were content simply watch it unfold. Now there are those who seek to use it. To choose the paths the future takes. The dragons of this Chamber walk among your kind, hidden in human form. And they are not the only ones.”

“No?”

“You have met demons before. I can feel it. The most ancient among them have long sought to control the Draconic Prophecy. More of your history than you can imagine-your Last War, Galifar, even the birth of the Khoravar race-has been shaped by this struggle between the Argonnessen and these Lords of Dust. You are a pawn in that war. There are certain things the Chamber wants the Angel of Flame to do. Your battle with Drulkalatar Atesh was surely in their schemes. They knew they couldn’t control Sarmondelaryx, and so they bound your soul and your memories to her. To create an Angel of Flame they could more easily control.”

Thorn nodded. Drego’s words beneath Sharn made all too much sense. As a Lantern, she’d done her best to serve Breland, but what other powers had she truly been serving?

“I can tell you this,” Tira said. “You have changed the balance of things by bonding with the Stone of Dreams. It may give you the power to contain Sarmondelaryx indefinitely. But I fear this gift comes with a heavy price.”

“Oh?”

“Shan Doresh could not be so easily defeated,” Tira told her. “He-”

“You weren’t there,” Thorn said. “There was nothing easy about it.”

“It doesn’t matter. He was in his place of power. Stripped of his stone, he could be laid low for a time, yes. But no simple dream could destroy him completely nor could that defeat alone return his citadel to the realm of dreams. I fear that it was his choice to flee once the stone bonded to your flesh. Even I don’t understand how you’ve bonded with it so easily and what it will do to the stone if it is removed by force. Weakened, confused, and knowing that we had found him, I believe Shan Lian Doresh chose to flee, to remove his people and his citadel to a place we could not follow. I am certain he will return when he is ready. He will find a new home for his citadel in this world and reconnect with those agents he has scattered throughout your kingdoms. And when he is ready, he will return for his stone.”

“Well, that’s something to look forward to,” Thorn said.

“There’s still more,” Tira said. “Even I know little of the Draconic Prophecy, but I know both you and Sarmondelaryx are a part of it and that this is why the Chamber has used you in this way. And I am certain that your finding the stone was another part of their plans for you.”

“It’s never easy, is it?”

“No,” Tira said. “And for you, it never will be.”

Then she was standing at the gate of the Silver Tree. She had a portable hole, filled with all the supplies she’d need to cross the wasteland. Every one of the ghaele had offered to carry her back to her homeland, even the frosty Lord Syraen, but she wanted to walk.

She’d found that the ease with which she’d tapped into the Quiet Stone had been one more aspect of walking in dreams. She knew what powers lay within the stones she carried, but she still had a long way to go to master them. She knew what she was. She knew what she could be, if she chose. Could she return to her work for the Citadel? Or was there a greater battle in her future, one that could, ultimately, do more for Breland than her work as a spy?

“I need time alone,” she said to Drix at last. “I’ve got much to think about before I reach Breland.”

“What will you do when you get there?” Drix said.

Thorn thought about the life of Nyrielle Tam, about the mother who abandoned her, the father who died in the war, the brother who’d told her stories when she couldn’t sleep. She remembered her conversation with Drego Sarhain just before she cut his throat and the dream she’d had when she kissed Essyn Cadrel.

“I need to find my family,” she told Drix. “And then I think I’ll go looking for a demon.”