Jack Whyte - The Sorcer part 1 - The Fort at River's Bend

That night, one of the few occasions when Tress actually slept beneath my roof instead of returning to her own quarters, I frightened her by snapping awake and bolting upright in bed, shouting something that I did not remember and which she failed to understand. She sprang up immediately and threw ha arms about me, clutching me tightly to ha warm bareness as she made shushing, soothing noises. Eventually, when I relaxed and subsided to lie on my back, staring at the ceiling, she remained leaning over me, her soft breasts cushioned against me.

"What was it?" she asked, eventually, her voice the merest whisper.

"A dream." I could see her clearly, outlined in the light of the full moon that shone through the open window of my bedchamber. "Rufio. I saw Rufio." The effort of saying the words was enormous, for I had no wish to articulate them. The prospect of admitting my dream, even to myself, appalled me, for I had foreseen the deaths of far too many of my friends in former years, in dreams just like this one. I had thought that far behind me nowadays, for it had been years since the last occurrence of the frightening phenomenon, in Eire, where a dream had shown me the murder of one of Donuil's brothers.

There was a pause the length of several heartbeats, and then, "Where was he?" No hint of surprise or disbelief!

I swallowed, hard, trying to moisten my dry mouth. "In a hollow, a clearing, among trees on a hillside ... a rock face behind him ... "

"Was he alive?" When I said nothing, she grasped my shoulder and shook it. "Cay! Was Rufio alive?"

I tried to pull away from her embrace, but she clung to me. "How would I know that? It was a dream, Tress, nothing more."

"No!" She pulled me closer to her, hissing with urgency. "It was one of your dreams, Cay, and I know about your dreams. Now think hard, before the veil closes. Did you see anything else? Was Rufio alive?"

I resisted asking her how she came to know about my dreams, drawing comfort instead from the way she evidently had no doubt of my abilities, and forced myself to concentrate on the image that had brought me shouting from my sleep. Closing my eyes, I sought to breathe deeply and evenly, emptying my mind of everything that might distract me. Tress seemed to be aware of what I was doing and remained silent, looking down on me, braced on one elbow. Somehow, it seemed as though a mist swirled in my mind, and then it began to settle and the vision came back to me, hazy and indistinct, but real and discernible,

"He's masked in blood, unmoving ... no telling whether he's alive or dead ... Helmet's missing ... Blood everywhere—on the grass, on the stones ... He's lodged between two trees ... moss on the trunks, and blood on the moss. I can see where his fingers have clawed the moss from the bark ... " As I described it, the image shifted, as though my eyes had adjusted, and I saw something else, half-hidden in the shadows among the surrounding trees. My mind rebelled in disbelief, and the scene faded back into mist, leaving me staring wide-eyed at the dark ceiling. I held my breath for a long time, struggling with my thoughts, and then expelled the air from my lungs, allowing myself to relax. "That's all. It's gone. That's all I saw."

"Hmm ... " She released me and swung away, out of the bed. I watched her naked form as she moved across to the door into my main room. "Come, Cay, I'll rekindle the fire. Get dressed, and hurry."

"What? Why? What good will it do to sit up by the fire? We don't know where he is, Tress."

"We might. Or we will. Put on your clothes."

I rolled out of bed and went to the bowl on the night- stand, where I threw cold water on my face before beginning to dress myself, fumbling in the darkness for the clothes I had shed with abandon when I realized that Tress would not leave that night. By the time I had shrugged into them and crossed into the other room, Tress had candles lit and the fire was alive again, flames licking hungrily at the new fuel she had piled on the freshly stirred coals.

She herself was still naked, crouched over the fire with her arms out to the heat. I crossed directly to her side and caressed the smooth, warm bareness of her, loving the firm softness beneath my hands. There was no thought of such matters in Tress's head, however, and she pushed me away, motioning me towards one of the two chairs flanking the fire as she ran lightly back into the bedchamber and emerged moments later wrapping a woollen blanket about her. She sat then in the chair opposite me and stared at me, wide-eyed and expectant.

"What?" I asked her. "What is it? You obviously expect me to say something significant." She made no reply. "Well, I have nothing to say, that I'm aware of. You'll have to prompt me."

"Rufio. We know where he is."

"No, we do not, Tress. It was dream, and I saw no signposts."

"Of course you did, you silly man. We don't know exactly where he is, that's true enough, but we know more than we did earlier today."

"How so?"

"Because you saw him lying in a hollow, in a clearing on a hillside. Is that not so? And he was lodged against two trees, with moss on their trunks, that he had scraped away."

"So?"

"Ach! Cay, that tells us much, or it tells me much. There was a rock face by him, too. That tells us more."

"I don't follow you, Tress."

She shook her head sharply, to silence me.

"He was lodged between two trees, you said, with a rock face behind him. How did you know he was on a hillside? And how was he positioned between these trees?"

I blinked, thinking back. "The ground sloped down, sharply. He was on his back, his head hanging backward, down the hill. The trees were close together, almost touching—perhaps a fork, two trunks of the same tree. His spine was arched over them. He had tried to push himself outward. That's when he clawed at the moss."

"So the moss was towards his head."

"Yes."

"And the rock face you saw. Where was it? You said behind him, but was it to his right or left?"

Again I sought the memory of my vision. "On his left, running parallel to where he lay."

"Aha! You looked in the wrong places."

I looked at her with a measure of scorn. "That makes as much sense as my dream."

"I know it does, even though you do not. Think about it, Cay! Moss grows mainly on the northern side of trees— every child learns that on first entering the woods—and it grows thickest on the very northern side. You saw Rufio lying with his feet pointing south between two northern- facing trees, his head hanging downhill to the north, with a cliff face on his left, his east side, facing west. That means he's on the hillside, below the pass, where you didn't search, low down, in the river valley."

"How do you know he is low down?" I was convinced she was right.

"Because the moss was thick on the tree trunks. There's no thick moss on the trees on the high slopes."

I nodded, acknowledging my own short-sightedness, then shrugged.

"What," she asked immediately. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Tress, nothing really. I admire the way you make sense of my vision, but it was only a dream, and it was incomplete."

"How incomplete? I don't understand."

"I didn't tell you all of it, and the part I withheld makes nonsense of die whole thing."

She sat up straight, the blanket falling away from her shoulders, waiting for me to continue.

"I saw a man called Peter Ironhair just beyond the clearing, watching me."

"Peter Ironhair?" She was frowning. "You mean the ironsmith who tried to kill Arthur in Camulod, and then ran off to Cambria and thence to Cornwall?"

I sat staring at her. "You know," I said, eventually, "I find myself amazed by how much you know of things I've never told you."

"Shelagh has told me everything about you. I know everything there is to know." She stood up and crossed to where I sat, then settled into my lap, placing her right arm around my shoulders and wriggling until she was comfortable. The fire in the brazier snapped and spat sparks onto the stone flagging of the fireplace. When she was settled, she pulled my head down towards her breast and spoke into my ear.