Once Upon a Summer Day by Dennis L. McKiernan Read Free Book Online Page A

groan. He threw off the covers and stepped into a thin, silvery beam shining through the narrow crack between the two leaves of the shutters on one of the windows. Unclothed and crossing to that window, he lowered the sash and flung wide the hinged planks. A frigid wind moaned inward, bringing him entirely awake, and a bright full moon angling through the sky shone onto the far slope of the wide vale across the frozen river, casting long shadows down the slant.
    Help me, she said, and she called me her lord.
    Borel gazed up at the argent orb overhead. And she said time grows short, there is but a moon left.
    Oh, what a stupid question I asked—Do I know you, mademoiselle?—when instead I should have asked where she was.
    With the wind whirling up over the lip of the bluff and across the flat and courtyard, and groaning ’round the timbers and eaves, and blustering about the chamber, Borel stood in the aerie that was his mansion and gazed out across the Winterwood, his silvery hair whipping in the blow.
    She is real. I know it. Not just a dream but real. How I know this I cannot say, but nevertheless I do. And she is in peril, and there is but a moon left ere something dire comes afoot or awing or aslither or however else it might arrive. I must do something. I must! But what?—Ah, the reaper had it right. A seer. I must consult a seer, a dream seer—a voyant de rêves. No, wait. Better yet a diviner of dreams—a devin de rêves —and the nearest diviner is Vadun, a day beyond the cursed part of my demesne. I will pass by Hradian’s cote on the way. Two birds with one stone, or so I hope.
    Of a sudden the wind gusted and banged one of the shutters to and then flung it wide only to slam the other about. Snatched from his musings, Borel grabbed the boards and closed and locked them and drew the window sash. He stood for a moment in the thin beam of moonlight shining inward through the small gap, and then went back to his bed. Yet he did not sleep again that night, his mind atumble with inchoate thoughts, imperfectly formed and vague . . . and in the end quite pointless, for he did not know who she was, nor where she was, nor what hazard she faced. He only knew she was in danger, and time grew perilously short.
    Tossing, turning, unable to sleep, at last Borel left his bed just as the moon set and pale dawn graced the sky.
     
    “But, my lord, so soon?” asked the steward. “You are not yet rested from your journey here.”
    “I must, Arnot. She is in peril, and time is of the essence.”
    They stood in the armory, Borel buckling on his leather-armor vest, Gerard fussing about, slipping things into the rucksack, while Jules, the armsmaster, handed Borel his gear.
    Arnot, however, off to one side, eyed the weaponry all ’round the chamber: swords, halberds, axes, bows, long-knives, shields, bucklers, war hammers, chain, breastplates, and other such arms and armor, all marked with a silvery snowflake. Would that his lord would take up better weapons and protection—a good war hammer, a bronze breastplate, a helm, rerebraces, vambraces, cuissarts, greaves, and knee and elbow guards, as well as a shield—but Borel seemed to prefer to go lightly.
    With a sigh, Jules, tall and dark-haired, took up Borel’s bow—its grip polished ironwood, its limbs white horn, its bowstring intertwined strands of waxed silk—and turned to the prince. “Perhaps, my lord, it was merely the groan of the wind made you dream so. It was quite fierce last night.”
    “Non, my friend, not the wind, instead ’twas a sending, I am certain. She is real, and somehow we are linked.”
    “And where do you propose to go?” asked Arnot.
    “To Vadun. He is a dream diviner—a devin de rêves —and if any can unravel her location, Vadun is the one to do so.”
    “But, my prince, that means going through the cursed section of the ’Wood, and Hradian lives just beyond the blight. Let me round up some men, and we will go armed with