The Dreamer Stones by Elaina J Davidson Read Free Book Online Page A

doing
first”
    “From what she
told me, this is a realm walk. Her visions match a dream that
prompts you.”
    “Appears
so.”
    “Why?”
    “If I knew I
wouldn’t need to go.”
    “Yet you feel
it must be done now.”
    Torrullin
pushed his mug away. His fingers twitched with impatience.
“According to Rosenroth …”
    Krikian held a
finger aloft.
    Torrullin
frowned at him.
    “Rosenroth
deciphered this dreaming? Forgive my impertinence, but Rosenroth
can be a sensationalist.”
    Torrullin
stared at him and then gave a nod. “He was a showman, all
right.”
    “Tell me.
Allow me to confirm what Rosenroth said.”
    Again
Torrullin stared at him. “Lowen …”
    “What I know
from Lowen is from her point of view.”
    Torrullin
nodded. “Very well.” He took a few moments to get his thoughts in
order. “Since the night of my Immortality Ritual, this particular
dream started. It came in times of great tension or turmoil; thus
wasn’t regular. It stopped around fifteen hundred years back, and
began again the day after I returned from the Plane, and thereafter
every time I closed my eyes.”
    Krikian
listened. A recurring dream. The worst kind.
    Torrullin
sighed and leaned back.
    “I climb old,
worn steps of stone winding up a hillside carrying something light
and alive. I looked down to check on what I hold. A tiny pink face
peeks through the gap in the swaddling. Satisfied, I concentrate on
placing my feet on the steps, dangerous in encroaching mist. Soon
it will envelope all, block out sight and sound. I hurry up
cautiously, mindful of my cargo. I have to reach the modest stone
temple perched on the summit of this lone hill in the Plains of
Medinor before my pursuers plumb my purpose, and thank the Goddess
for sending mist to obscure my trail through the dust below. A
tribute, a sacrifice, that is what I bear. For me to live, it has
to die. I look down again, but now the white swirls are dense and
the tiny face is indistinct. I’m glad I can no longer see her. I’m
tired of running. Lifetimes of hiding. I can’t go forward looking
over my shoulder, wondering when they’ll find me, snare me for the
beast they think me, cage me until they’ve had enough sport. I
stand poised on the final step, lost in a world of choking white,
but know the shortest side step will plummet me and the babe, my
salvation, into the sharp rocks far below. Before me is the slight
shadow of the shrouded temple. I step forward and the baby
squirms.”
    A pause as
Torrullin swallowed. “There’s detail, feelings also. As I run with
the babe in my arms, I have flashbacks of a time I was caged like
an animal, taunted with the sharpness of spears, spat on,
ridiculed, starved near to death, big men with no faces climbing
into the cage wielding maces, my bones crushing, knitting together
painfully - I think I was cripple for the initial flight across the
plain. I hear them coming for me, horses, but don’t see them, and I
know it’s me they hunt. I have overcome and they don’t like
that.
    “Then the fog
descends, a saviour, a haven, the coolness a blessing, and I begin
to hope. I know the way to the rise, to the temple, and in the
blind I stumble up, my very soul dependent on my success. But she
is beautiful, tiny, perfect, my heart breaks, my resolve crumbles
and I cannot do it. I stand within the doorway of the temple and I
clutch the warm bundle and I cannot move, and behind me the unseen
men with their war clubs clamber up the hillside, cursing, in a
hurry, and I force myself to wake up.”
    Words said
before, to Rosenroth, to Lucan Dalrish and to Tristan, the boy who
dreamed as he did.
    Silence.
    “Gods,”
Krikian said. “You wake up before you have to choose.”
    “Yes.”
    “What did
Rosenroth ask first?”
    “Whether I
felt and feel caged.”
    “Do you?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “How?”
    “I don’t want
to go there again. That old fart put the screws to me already.”
    Krikian sucked
at his teeth, and then, “How, my