Sam Bowring - Destiny's Rift

‘No, it’s not alive. It’s just a spell, unusual though it is.’

‘But it’s built on souls,’ she pointed out. ‘On living essence.’

‘Mmm,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You are right, flutterbug. I suppose it is not just a spell. Perhaps it is alive, but …not in any way that you or I could identify with. It’s only bits and pieces, melded together in one shape.’

‘Where is it now?’

‘With Tyrellan across the fort, away from the sleeping lightfists.’

She had gone down to the great hall for a time today, to watch the process. Losara had not seen her, for he had been in another’s dream: an auburn-haired girl whose head he’d held tenderly in his lap as he slumped over her. She’d experienced a flash of jealousy on seeing that, but then remembered that he was killing the girl, not cradling her.

‘What is it like, in their heads?’ she said.

He fell silent at that, and after a while she thought he may not answer. Then, ‘Troubling,’ he said. ‘I grow to learn what they fear to lose most, then use it against them. It would be the same as if someone threatened you to make me do something I didn’t want to.’

Her heartbeat quickened at his words. Was she really what he feared to lose most?

‘Even to make a strange lizard grow bigger,’ he added. ‘As odd a request as that is.’

‘I don’t need any help to make your strange lizard grow bigger,’ she giggled, and he chuckled as she playfully bit his neck.

‘Savage little,’ he said, squeezing her. ‘But it isn’t just that.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘In the dreams,’ he said, ‘I let them see me as they imagine me.’

‘Oh?’

‘It is …well …I don’t know. They see me as a menace, in various guises, but always twisted and hateful. Sometimes much older, or wilder, or more violent. Sometimes with claws, or fangs, or towering and wrapped in muscle. Some imagine me as Battu. I guess maybe they’ve seen a picture of him somewhere, and think all Shadowdreamers are the same.’

‘Then they are fools,’ she spat. ‘Always they have hated us, conjured images in their minds that have nothing to do with the way things are.’ She sat up then and stared into his eyes. ‘If they saw you as I do, they would realise how beautiful you are.’

‘I doubt they’d think me beautiful.’

‘Fools then, like I said.’

‘Besides, it’s you who is the beautiful one.’

‘They probably wouldn’t think that either.’

He smiled at her. ‘Fools then, as you said.’

‘But do not let their prejudice affect you, lord,’ she replied. ‘Why should it? You do not suffer from the vanity of your other. ’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that, then, is the reaction I’m missing.’

‘No need to miss it,’ she said, deliberately twisting his words. ‘You look better without it. There’s nothing like vanity to make a man ugly. He who stares into the mirror reveals the truth behind needing one.’

‘I’ve seen you look in the mirror,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I’m a girl.’

Grimra came under the door, chortling to himself.

‘Well, who be this?’ said Lalenda. ‘A self-satisfied ghost?’

‘Oho, yes, mightily!’ said Grimra. ‘Flutterbug would not believe it – someone be leaving a heap of dead mages piled up in search of a stomach to enter!’

‘Well,’ said Lalenda, ‘let us hope there’s someone who’ll oblige them.’

‘Too late!’ hooted Grimra. ‘They have been obliged – much, much obliged!’

‘Goodness,’ said Losara. ‘I know I shouldn’t laugh.’

‘Don’t try,’ said Lalenda, and it was good to see the mirth on his face.

Long after Lalenda dozed off, Losara lay awake. He had not been entirely honest with her about how troubled he felt by his actions. Yes, it was disturbing to learn how these Kainordans pictured him, but he could hardly take umbrage when it was their very lives he stole. He tried to console himself with the knowledge that they went without pain, at least physically, but there was little solace in that.

Before Holdwith he had killed twice – the Throne Naphur, and Gellan. Can I really claim that? he wondered. I may not have been the dealer, but I am the cause of other deaths. Trolls tricked down from mountainsides, a village mage in the woods, peasants, and a dragon slain by Mireforms …

Today was different, however, from any killing before. Today he had killed many, one after the other, methodically. He did it because he knew he must, because he had seen what would happen if he did not fight – if any single one of his victims was able to wipe out his people, they would do it in a heartbeat. It was not guilt he felt, he decided: he was too justified for that. Was it compassion, then, that trait Bel had accused him of lacking? Or something else?

Bel. What would he feel in Losara’s place? There was a blankness that came over Losara at the moment of each death, when he knew Bel would have experienced something. Having now travelled with his other , he did not have much trouble guessing what.

As he had steeled himself to the task, invading mind after mind, he’d noticed himself becoming faster and more systematic. No need to draw the process out, he told himself, that was all – but a thought nagged at the back of his mind …that as he continued to kill out of necessity, he was necessarily getting used to it.

Later that night, the Cloud grew. The Shadowdreamer was in Holdwith with people of Fenvarrow, and so it came, a swirling stream of vapour. Once over the fort it filled out into a blurry-edged circle, connected to the main Cloud by a black and grey passage, marking that which now belonged to the shadow.

Progress was pain. What the tapestry of cuts lacked in depth, it made up for in plenitude. It seemed to Bel that no movement was possible without tweaking at least three of them open. Beside him walked Jaya, patched up as well as he could manage, and Hiza limping, having managed to suffer a high number of crystal leaves and spider bites on one leg.

‘Is it the same leg you hurt chasing after that rat-haired thief in Kadass?’ Bel asked.

‘Yes,’ said Hiza with a grim smile. ‘It seems the world really has it in for this particular limb. Perhaps I should just lop it off and be done with it.’

M’Meska was less injured overall than the rest of them, but where she was the wounds were worse, for leaves had worked in between her scales. She was still clawing out little pieces of glass, giving small hisses as they came loose.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Jaya, her eyes on the skies above.

‘What part?’ said Bel.

‘There’s only one path through Crystalweb,’ she said. ‘Easy enough to spy from above, I’ll warrant.’

No one wanted to return to the wood’s interior, from which they would need to flee if the dragon found them. With the storm over, the leaves were falling less frequently, but spiders still ticked and tacked along their webs.

Damn paths , thought Bel. Be nice if one of them ever turned out to be useful.

While his own personal path had consistently failed to show him a way to kill Olakanzar, it had at least proven that it could lead him to escape. If they were attacked again, maybe he could draw the dragon off, away from the others, keeping them safe as he fled.

‘Maybe big lizard not like Crystalweb,’ said M’Meska. ‘Maybe got glass in scales like do I, not want to come back into here?’

‘Let us hope so,’ said Hiza, though his tone was not exactly sanguine.

Despite his anxiety, Bel did not push them to move any more quickly. Sleepless nights, constant fear and the latest round of damage made for a bone-tired and bedraggled party. Caught between the wood and the sky above, there did not seem to be anywhere that was really safe. He did not know what to hope for once they made it through, for they had not really improved their situation beyond taking a small hop in the right direction.