She lost her smile. “That’s where the color of your mother’s hair comes in. The last dream, the one I had in the inn on the way here, was even odder than the others. At least they seemed to come from my experiences: This one wasn’t about anything I’d ever seen.”
“It concerned my mother?”
Aralorn nodded. “Partially, yes. It was more a series of dreams. They all concerned you—things you had done.”
“What sorts of things?”
“Unpleasant ones. Like when your mother died. Someone who didn’t know you as well as I do might have thought you didn’t feel anything.”
“I didn’t.”
Aralorn shot him a look of disbelief, remembering the boy’s frozen face, then shook her head at him. “Right,” she said dryly. “At any rate, that was the first part. In another, I was tied down, and you were going to kill me. But I knew there was something wrong, and I fought it. When I did, it . . . altered. I was watching again, and it was the ae’Magi who held the knife. He offered it to you, and you refused.”
“I didn’t always,” commented Wolf softly—he had stiffened again.
Aralorn tightened her grip briefly on his arm. “I know. But you wouldn’t smile while you killed—or talk either, for that matter. At any rate, the last part was when you destroyed the tower. What I saw at first presented you as a power-mad mage, but this time it was easier to shift the dream back to what really happened. I can picture you motivated by rage, hurt, or cold-blooded anger, but greed just doesn’t fit.”
“The story you told tonight made you think that something was sending you dreams like the Dreamer?” repeated Wolf carefully.
“It sounds even stupider when you say it than when I think it,” she commented, but she slid back under the covers and huddled near his warmth just the same. How to explain the alien feel of the dreams without sounding even stupider? “I didn’t know the color of your mother’s hair, or that you were trying to destroy yourself with the tower. We are living in odd times.” Times made odder by the last ae’Magi’s foray into forbidden magics—she didn’t need to say it. Wolf knew his father was in some part responsible for the changes taking place. “Dragons fly the Northland skies, and howlaas venture into Reth.”
She continued without pause. “There has even been a resurgence in the followers of the old gods for the past several years. Look at the temple here. It’s been centuries since there was a priest in residence, but there’s one here now. The trappers have been decimated by nasty critters like the howlaa and other things that haven’t been seen in generations. Is it so impossible that . . . that something else was awakened?”
Wolf broke in. “You mean that the black magic my father worked might have fed the Dreamer you told us about tonight?”
“Yes.” She swallowed. “That howlaa today. It was sent, Wolf.”
“Sent?” asked Wolf.
“Uhm.” She nodded. “When I met its gaze, it spoke to me. Something evil sent it searching for us—it was meant to kill you.” She hesitated, then continued. “Then there was the wind . . . Wolf, I believe that there is something evil here.”
Silence lingered for a while as Wolf thought of what she’d said.
“Well,” he said finally, “as long as we are throwing out odd theories, I have developed one of my own, just for you. It even has to do with dreaming.”
“You didn’t laugh at mine, so I won’t laugh at yours,” she promised.
“Right,” he replied. “When it became obvious to me that Kisrah had worked the spell, I thought about just what it would have taken to persuade him to do so. I could only think of one thing—and tonight I realized that it was even possible. Let me tell you a little something you may not have known about human magic.”
“That doesn’t limit the topic much,” she quipped.
He ruffled her hair. “Quiet, little mouse, and listen. Human mages have different talents; one of them—though it is very rare—is a form of farseeing. The mage’s spirit leaves his body and can travel over vast distances in a matter of moments. In that state, he can speak to others in their dreams or merely watch them. Usually, they are invisible in that form—but occasionally they can be seen as a ghostly mist.”
“All right,” agreed Aralorn. “I think I’ve heard of that. It’s called spirit travel or something of the sort—but I thought it was rare.”
“Like shapeshifters,” agreed Wolf.
“Your point,” she acquiesced, grinning a little in the darkness of the chilly old castle room. “So you think that maybe my dreams might be coming from a human mage? Someone deliberately trying to get information from me?”
“My father could do it,” said Wolf softly. “I heard him talking about it once with another wizard. They were discussing another mage, I think. I don’t know which one. He said, ‘Of course I’m certain he’s a dreamwalker. I have some talent in that direction myself.’ I think he used his talent to influence his rise to power—by speaking to the other mages as they slept.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “I remember, because I marked a rune on my staff that kept him from doing the same to me as soon as I overheard him.”
Aralorn tightened her arms around him, wondering how he was still sane after all his father had done to him. He squeezed her in return—to comfort her, she thought—and continued to speak without a pause.
“If the body of a dreamwalker is killed while the spirit is outside, the spirit remains alive for a time. He probably would not be able to work magic as a spirit, but he can persuade others to act on his behalf.”
“A ghost?” she asked.
He grunted. “No. Ghosts are . . . bits of memory trapped in place. A spirit is—it’s too late at night for lessons in magic theory, my Lady. Let me get back to the subject at hand. It is possible that my father managed to leave his body before the Uriah killed him. In that state, he could have visited Kisrah—as well as the other mage who appears to have had his hands in the pie—and persuaded them to act in his stead.”
“You think the only reason Kisrah would use black magic ...”
“Was if my father asked him to do so,” said Wolf. “Yes.”
“To use Father as bait for us.”
“Perhaps.”
Aralorn stiffened at his cautious tone, which usually meant things had gone from bad to worse. “What do you mean?”
“My father wanted to live forever, Lady. Do you think that he would be content with mere vengeance?”
“You think he’s trying to use Father’s body?”
“Your father can’t work magic; but your father is connected intimately with three mages. Attack him with magic, and my father has a whole selection to choose among.”
“He would prefer yours since you are the most powerful of the three.” Aralorn shivered and settled closer. “I think I prefer the Dreamer.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Wolf mildly, “we’ll be lucky, and it is only Kisrah trying to kill me.”
She snickered into his shoulder. “Not everyone would look at that as lucky.”
“Not everyone is looking at our list of alternatives.”
“True.” She yawned.
They fell silent, and she thought Wolf had drifted off to sleep. She patted him gently.
Her uncle had said that Wolf had a death wish.
She’d known that he had a tendency to be reckless, thought that it was something they shared. In her dreams (and she was convinced that the memories of Wolf’s experiences were true dreams, however they’d been sent), she’d seen that he’d expected death when he’d destroyed the tower. He’d hoped for death. Apparently, he still did.
She took in a deep breath of his familiar scent and held it to her heart. She would not lose him.
“Tomorrow, I think we might visit the priestess of the death goddess,” she said. He had been asleep, because her voice jerked him awake. “If there’s a ghost or a Dreamer out there, the death goddess ought to know—don’t you think?”