Anne Bishop - Bridge of Dreams

He didn’t stop sweeping, didn’t break the rhythmic sound of broom on floor, but he glanced at her again.

Something different. There was a little more water now at the bottom of that broken well, and it wasn’t as frigid.

“Have you made a friend?” he asked casually.

Kobrah had been dusting the gongs and the shelves built under the windows. Now she stopped and turned—and Danyal felt the stones in her well shifting and becoming sharper.

“She told you?” Kobrah’s voice was harsh, hateful. Pained.

Danyal stopped sweeping and gave her his full attention. “If you have confided in someone, your trust was not betrayed. I asked because you seem happier.” He gestured to the gongs. “I would like to take credit for lifting some of the weight from your heart, but I don’t think I’m the reason you’ve been smiling lately.”

Kobrah stared at him, want and wariness in her face.

“I am a Shaman,” he said gently. “I know how to listen.”

When she continued to stare, he went back to sweeping.

She watched him for a minute. Then, “His name is Teaser. He comes from a place called the Den of Iniquity. He says it’s a dark landscape, but it’s not a bad place.”

She clearly wanted—or expected—him to react badly, so Danyal just went to the cupboard for the dustpan. “What else does Teaser say?” he asked.

She studied him a while longer before she told him that Teaser was from a race called incubus and his best friend was an incubus-wizard named Sebastian who was also the Den’s Justice Maker.

Strange words. Mostly likely this friend was someone she had imagined, since Guards did walk the Asylum’s grounds at night and would have noticed Kobrah and a stranger—or an inmate—taking a walk in the moonlight.

“How does he reach the Asylum?” Danyal asked.

“Through the twilight of waking dreams.”

A little breeze brushed the back of Danyal’s legs like a friendly cat, as if to encourage him to believe the words.

A shiver ran through him. That breeze seemed too aware to be something natural.

With effort, he pushed that thought aside and focused on Kobrah and what she had told him.

He would send a note to the Shaman Council this evening, but he didn’t think this den of iniquity was a part of Vision. That left the question of where it was and how someone could travel through dreams.

Many roads led to this city, but few things beyond the city seemed able to set hooks deeply enough to bring in something alien. At least until now.

Which made him wonder again about Zhahar and why he often felt three heart-cores in her instead of one—and why he usually felt the three when she was tired or distracted and, therefore, less able to keep some truth hidden from the one person who sensed she was different. Him.

“He sounds like an interesting man,” Danyal said as he set a gong in front of each mat Kobrah had positioned in a circle.

“Yes.”

There was no trust in Kobrah’s voice. She had confided in him. Now she would wait to see what he did with her words.

Having prepared the room he used to help people release sorrow, he and Kobrah went into the room set aside for joy. In silence they swept and dusted, and the wind chimes sang at their touch.

As part of his morning and evening ritual, he chose a wind chime that had a particular sound. Then he walked the grounds, letting it ring with his movement. Bright notes to encourage bright thoughts and lift hearts toward the Light.

Today he chose one of the larger wind chimes.

“Could I…sometime…?”

He looked at Kobrah. Her eyes were fixed on the chime. That gave him hope for her, so he held it out.

When she smiled at him, he saw the girl she had been before dark acts had twisted her life.

He waited until he heard the chimes moving away from the temple. Then he walked over to the main building and went into the room that held the Handlers’ lock bins—and saw a strange woman standing in front of Zhahar’s open bin, pulling out her blue work jacket.

She had dark brown hair and dark eyes. There was a jagged, raised scar that ran down her left forearm from elbow to wrist. On her left bicep was a tattoo of a heart inside a triangle.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice ringing with the authority and power of a Shaman.

Storms. Floods. Landslides. That’s what he felt when her eyes locked with his.

Dangerous. And somewhat familiar.

“I’m Zeela,” she finally said. “Zhahar’s sister.”

Her answer left him caught on a frozen pond, with the ice suddenly cracking beneath his feet. A careless move would destroy more than his own life. He was sure of it.

He took a step toward her—and felt the calm summer lake he associated with Zhahar as well as brooks full of bright water.

He had never experienced such confusion in a person who was supposed to be sane. And yet it didn’t feel like confusion. Which made no more sense than a person with three heart-cores.

“Has something happened to Zhahar?” he asked.

“No,” Zeela replied. “And nothing will while I’m around.”

He glanced at her boot. “Is that why you carry a knife?”

“I carry more than one.” She tipped her head toward the sliding door that closed off a washroom and toilet. “She’s in there.”

“What happened?” he asked. He had loaned a book to Zhahar for her sister, but he didn’t think this woman had much interest in books.

Those dark eyes studied him, and he felt the storms getting closer.

“A woman down the street from where we live was attacked last night. She isn’t expected to live through the day. She might have survived the violence done to her body, but her mind was damaged as well, and in the end that is what will kill her. Zhahar can be tough when she needs to be, but Sholeh…”

“There are three of you?”

Zeela gave him an edgy smile. “Not unusual in our family. Zhahar is the eldest by a few minutes. Sholeh is the baby, since she left the womb after me.”

Danyal rocked back on his heels. Triplets? Was that why he sensed an overlapping of heart-cores? He’d never heard of such a thing happening, but he supposed it could if the emotional attachment between the sisters was strong enough.

Did that mean Sholeh was the bright water?

“Sholeh is the scholar?” he asked, hoping to find out a little more about Zhahar’s family.

“Yes.” A clipped answer that didn’t invite further curiosity.

And you’re the warrior. Danyal looked at the sliding door, then back at Zeela. “Tell Zhahar I’d like to speak with her. It was a pleasure meeting you, Zeela. I hope to have a chance to meet Sholeh someday.”

“Shaman.”

It sounded like a dismissal.

Danyal went to his office and sat at his desk, determined to review the nighttime reports from the Handlers. But after a minute, he rose and stared out the window.

Storms. Floods. Landslides. Zeela made him uneasy. She was capable of great violence. The scar on her arm wasn’t as much proof of that as was the look in her dark eyes. She would do anything to keep her sisters safe, and that was something he couldn’t afford to forget if he was going to pry into the mystery of why he could sense all three heart-cores when only one of the sisters was present.

He should report her presence to the Shaman Council. She was a mystery, an unknown that might be the source of Vision’s troubles. But if she wasn’t the source, if she was only a mystery because he didn’t understand some simple truth, he could set some changes in motion that would not be undone easily, if at all.

So he would watch and wait and see if he could gain her trust enough to tell him what made the connection between her and her sisters unusual. And he would ask Farzeen—carefully—if the older man had ever heard of anything like what he was sensing.