‘Was there something else, master?’
Losara thought about it – was there anything else? Or had he simply come to tell Tyrellan what was going on? He felt bad for the First Slave, restricted as he was, all for a weapon that was proving a nuisance …but now Tyrellan was looking at him as if he did not need to be there. The goblin had his own sources, Losara knew. He probably did not need the dreamer to personally deliver him news, nor would he approve of such a thing.
‘No,’ said Losara.
‘It has been a long day,’ said Tyrellan. ‘The Shadowdreamer does no favours to himself or his people by failing to rest.’
He held Losara’s gaze until Losara nodded.
‘You are right. Good night, Tyrellan.’
‘Good night.’
•
Lalenda lay awake, staring at the roof of the large black tent, on a plush and comfortable mattress that smelt a bit like horse. It seemed strange that it was someone’s job to be responsible for the dreamer’s comfort, and lug about his bedding. They weren’t all soldiers, she supposed. With an army this size, there were plenty of things to do besides fight.
She had slept already, and awoken again to wonder where Losara was. Thoughts of her prophecy kept her so anxious that it was a marvel she’d been able to sleep in the first place. She kept seeing the vision of herself and Jaya both holding the hands of a blue-haired man. Foggy it had been, uncertain. Would it come to pass? Finally there came a shifting in the corner, and she sat up to see that he had arrived, and was now undressing.
‘Hello flutterbug,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘I was awake already.’
Once naked, he flowed under the sheets and re-formed next to her, his eyes already closed. She cuddled up to him, and put a hand on his chest. He stirred slightly, whispered something under his breath, and wrapped his arms around her. Then he was asleep, and she lay trapped, wide awake in his embrace. Frustrated, she tried to get comfortable. She had been entertaining the notion that she would jump all over him when he got to bed. She felt a burning need to consolidate their connection in the face of the prophecy, or maybe just simply forget about it all for a few blessed moments …but he slumbered, and although she half-heartedly explored his body, it seemed he was too deeply gone.
She no longer felt like lying down. Disentangling herself roughly, Lalenda pulled a frayed green dress down over her wings and left the tent. Outside, the tents of Losara’s commanders stood about in a circle, in the centre of the dense camp. Without much purpose she headed into it all.
Many of the regular soldiers slept in the open, their scant belongings piled around them. She stepped nimbly over a Vortharg who lay slobbering quietly, curled against an ice lantern. There was a kind of order to the camp, she knew, but right now it was hard to see. Off at the edges, patrols moved, and there came the occasional voices of Graka overhead. There were so many here it seemed impossible that all could be defeated …yet across the way lay just as many, if not more, of the cursed enemy.
She flapped and took off directly upwards. As she did, she felt air rise under her wings that could not have been caused by any wind.
‘Grimra feels a tugging at his pendant,’ said the ghost. ‘Wonders why Lalenda is up and about when he think she be sleeping.’
‘Sleep finds me not this night,’ she said.
‘Ah,’ whispered Grimra. ‘Grimra remembers not much about sleep, but sometimes he makes himself small and still. Then for a time he forgets everything, and hunger does not bother.’
‘Something akin to sleep, then?’ she said. They were high enough now that she could see the sweep of the Kainordans, and tried to work out how greatly they outnumbered the shadow. ‘But I cannot escape my hunger that way tonight.’
‘What does flutterbug hunger for?’ said Grimra.
‘For them,’ said Lalenda, pointing at the distant fires, ‘to be gone from the world.’
Grimra swirled, steadying her as she hovered. ‘That is not the concern of Lalenda,’ he said. ‘There be great warriors and deadly mages aplenty for such business. Lalenda’s job is to be small and cutesy.’
Lalenda laughed. ‘Would that it were so.’
‘Is it not? What brings flutterbug so high?’
Her laugh was quickly strangled by worry. She could not tell the ghost about Losara’s uncertain and secret plan, for he had sworn her to silence.
‘I had a vision,’ she said.
‘Oho yes, some trick or fancy of the sleep-time.’
‘No, not a dream. A prophecy.’
Grimra growled. He did not like her prophecies, for the last one had led them to the undead of Duskwood, an enterprise he had not cared for at all.
‘What does Lalenda burn next?’ he said bleakly.
‘It showed no burning.’
‘What it be showing, then?’
Well , she thought, telling him what I saw isn’t the same thing as betraying Losara’s trust.
‘I saw myself …I am not sure, but I think I was standing with a blue-haired man, holding his hand …and on the other side was another woman.’
‘Sharing?’
‘Perhaps,’ she said angrily. ‘Or trying to pull him away.’
‘Well, where be this imposter?’ said Grimra. ‘Grimra could chew her face off, not so tempting then she be!’
‘Over there,’ said Lalenda, gesturing at the Kainordans.
Grimra groaned. ‘So that is why flutterbug wants so much to see them fall.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and the claws flicked from her fingertips. ‘And one in particular. Lalenda does not care to share.’
•
Losara did not realise how much he’d been missing Fenvarrow until he drifted there in his dream. How cool it was, how quiet and peaceful under the Cloud, away from battle. He had almost grown used to the sun, from his days with the army and, before that, travelling with Bel. He did not enjoy it, but like a niggling old wound he sometimes forgot its presence. This was what he fought for, he reminded himself – so that this peace would go undisturbed by the encroaching light in the north.
He found himself on the ashen fields where Duskwood had once stood. New plants were finally beginning to grow, in ground long untouched by life – Lalenda had told him how the Shadowdreamer Assidax had cast an enchantment on this place to keep the wood dry and dusty. It seemed that with the wood’s destruction, the enchantment had gone too. His flutterbug had done well, but it had been a favour to the future, worth nothing if Losara could not save them all.
The land began to flash by, and he wondered if this dream had a purpose, for it seemed to be taking him somewhere. When he slowed he was at the base of the Bentemoth Mountains, ancestral home of the Graka. In the lee of the peaks lay an area of coarse swampland called the Thin Soup, where spindly trees grew out of soft mud, crisscrossed by streams no bigger than trickling tears. It seemed a desolate place, lacking the vibrant growth of other mires he had seen. A movement in the trees caught his eye – a bird, its colourful plumage dull in the grey light. He watched as it flitted from branch to branch, eventually coming to a stop and staring at him with blood-drop eyes.
He awoke. Under the black tent roof the air was growing muggy as the canvas absorbed the rays of the rising sun. By his side Lalenda snoozed, her sheets unconsciously flung aside. Let her sleep , he thought. The heat of the coming day would wake her soon enough.
A weaver . That’s what he had seen. He hadn’t given much thought to the creatures since the end of Iassia. They were difficult to find, and unlikely to serve anyone but themselves, so there had seemed no reason to seek one out. But now the Shadowdream had shown him where he could find one.
Why?
Maybe there was no purpose. There often wasn’t.