Clearing the Hollow might have been hard work, but it was satisfying. All of us except Vari had lost our homes over the past year—several times, in my case—and with the Hollow we had a sense that at last we might have a place from which we couldn’t be driven away. Morden’s demands on my time eased, and the continuing refusal of the Keepers to put me on the duty roster became a plus instead of a minus. On top of that, the Crusaders stayed quiet. I hadn’t really expected Landis’s efforts to make any difference, but to my surprise his prediction proved accurate, and neither Lightbringer and Zilean nor any other Crusader hit team came hunting for me during those long summer days.
There was only one catch. The Hollow might be turning into a prize, but the item we’d brought out of it was exactly the opposite.
| | | | | | | | |
“Are you ready?” Arachne said at last.
“Just one question,” I said. “What am I supposed to be ready for?”
Luna and I were in Arachne’s lair, standing in a space that we’d cleared of furniture. Luna was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and looked relaxed. Of course, she wasn’t the one expected to perform.
I was standing facing Luna, holding the dreamstone that I’d brought out of the deep shadow realm. Arachne had set it into a lattice of silver wire, and beneath the wire the facets gleamed amethyst in the light. I could sense power from it, but no more so than from any other focus. It didn’t look dangerous. It looked like a pretty piece of rock.
“For trying to bond with the dreamstone,” Arachne said.
“Haven’t we been doing that already?”
“Yes,” Arachne said. “And as you’ve no doubt noticed, it hasn’t been working especially well. Today we’re going to try a more direct approach.”
“You mean activating it?”
“Hence the lattice. The material has some ability to conduct thoughts.”
“I thought you said I wouldn’t need to touch this thing.”
“Once you bond with it, physical touch should no longer be necessary,” Arachne said. “For now, I think you need all the help you can get.”
“You know, I might not need so much help if you could tell me exactly what this thing’s supposed to do.”
“As I’ve told you repeatedly, it isn’t so simple,” Arachne said. “All dreamstones have a connection to Elsewhere, but their exact properties depend on the bond they forge with their bearers. Until you practise with it . . .”
“I have practiced with it. I’ve tried channelling through it, I’ve tried meditating on it, I’ve even tried talking to it. About the only things I haven’t tried are hitting someone over the head with it or sitting it down with biscuits and a cup of tea, and I’d be about ready to try those too if I thought they’d work.”
“I think we’ll leave that for later.”
I gave Arachne an exasperated look.
“This is an exploration, Alex,” Arachne said. “Not an instruction manual. The best analogy I can give you is that so far, your voyages into Elsewhere have been like diving into a very great ocean. You can explore widely, but not deeply.”
“So this focus would be—what?” I said. “Scuba gear?”
“More like turning into a fish,” Arachne said. “But only if you can make it accept you.”
I sighed. “What do you want me to do?”
“Through Elsewhere, one can find another person and speak to them through their dreams,” Arachne said. “It’s not a use of Elsewhere that most mages would expect, nor one they would recommend, but it can be done, and it’s something you’ve practised with Luna.” Arachne nodded to her. “You can find her dreams faster and more effectively than you can anyone else’s, and most importantly, the two of you trust each other. I want you to try to do that here.”
“While I’m awake?”
“While you’re awake. Mental connection is, I believe, this dreamstone’s most basic use. Any other abilities will require you to master this first.”
“I’ll give it a try,” I said. Luna stood there expectantly. I held up the dreamstone and concentrated.
Using a new focus takes a bit of trial and error, but it’s not usually all that hard. Focuses all work in basically the same way—the wielder channels power through them and the item shapes it, in the same way that a hammer or a saw directs kinetic energy. The trick is to get the channel going in the first place.
I looked through the futures, searching for the ones in which I got a reaction. Nothing jumped out at me, and I kept looking. Ten minutes passed.
“Anything happening?” Luna asked.
“No,” I said. I wasn’t sure what was going on. Normally, channelling your power into a focus gives you some sort of result, even if it’s not the one you’re looking for. But the futures in which I did that didn’t seem to hold anything at all. Admittedly I was looking for a future with a mental connection, but still . . .
I gave up on divination and tried just focusing my power into the thing. For a second, it seemed as though I almost had it—I could feel something, a sense of the focus coming alive—but then I tried to direct it and it slipped away. I tried again, and the same thing happened. It was like trying to pick up water between my fingers. I looked into the futures in which I tried other things: command words, invoking, shouting at it, hitting it, every possible action that might or might not produce a reaction from a focus item. The crystal just sat there.
After I’d run out of ideas to do it solo, we tried alternatives. A capacitor focus to overcharge the crystal, linking directly with a mind magic focus, special invocation rituals that Arachne knows.
“Is this going to take much longer?” Luna asked at last.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Because my arm is starting to ache.” Luna was holding the dreamstone to her forehead. Arachne had suggested that having her touching the thing instead of me might work. It hadn’t.
“Just wait, okay?” I said. It sounded more impatient than I’d meant it to, but we’d been at this for two hours and I was getting frustrated.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one. “Look,” Luna said, letting her hand drop. “I’ve been standing here like a shop dummy. I don’t mind lessons where I’ve got something to do, but this is getting ridiculous.”
“If you’ve got any better ideas, feel free.”
“How about I try?” Luna said. “I mean, if you just want a link, it shouldn’t matter who initiates it, right?”
“I don’t think that’s the—”
“Actually,” Arachne said unexpectedly, “that could be worth a try. Go ahead, Luna.”
I started to object, then waited in a bad temper. Luna took a breath, closed her eyes, then clasped her fingers around the lattice and concentrated.
For a moment nothing happened. “Anything?” I asked.
“Give me a minute,” Luna said.
I waited. “Now?”
“Just wait! You took way longer than . . .” Luna trailed off, staring down at the crystal.
“Luna?”
Luna didn’t answer. She was looking down at the focus with an odd expression, as though she were looking through it to see something far away. And as I looked at her I noticed something else. In my magesight, I usually see Luna’s curse as a cloud of silver mist swirling around her. It was doing that now, but some of it was seeping into the dreamstone, soaking into the crystal without trace.