“How long until we can open them?” Soaring Eagle asked.

  Liv could hear the impatience in his voice, and she didn’t blame the man. If it had been members of House Syv? slumbering within these coffins of steel and glass, wouldn’t she have felt just the same? If it had been the ancestors of the Summersets, perhaps, with Matthew waiting to welcome them home to Whitehill?

  “I don’t have an answer for that,” Liv admitted, from where she sat on the textured metal floor of the chamber, next to Sidonie. There was a notebook spread out between them, with two quill pens and a pot of ink, so that they could carefully copy every individual sigil which made up the enchantments etched into the functioning casket. Sidonie’s pen scratched ceaselessly as she wrote.

  To be fair, Liv’s friend was the one doing most of the work.

  The pain of attempting to link her crown with what was left of Corsteris had dulled, somewhat, but not faded. Liv hardly managed to scratch out a single sigil at a time before she needed to squeeze her eyes closed and focus on her breathing, so that she didn’t pass out or throw up.

  “If it was just the cold sleep spell, I could end it right now,” Liv explained to Soaring Eagle. “But they also used enchantments to manipulate the dreams of every one of these people.” She waved a hand out to indicate the remaining rows of functioning caskets. “We don’t know what they’re dreaming about, but we can guess.”

  “Knowing Ractia, she’s probably got them living out fantasies of how much their Great Mother cares for them, in between training to kill her enemies,” Wren grumbled, tossing the end of her enchanted scarf back over her shoulder. She’d planted herself next to Ghveris, who’d turned so that his shoulder-mounted weapons would be facing the entrance to the chamber at all times.

  Liv nodded, and then winced, immediately regretting the motion. “Probably. So I’m worried about how they’ll react if we just wake them up. Ideally, I’d like to go in and see what they’re dreaming, first. Maybe make contact, and explain to them what’s happening.”

  “But,” Sidonie spoke up, pausing in her writing, “we also know that Ractia is very good with wards. Triggered magical effects that do, to be honest, absolutely horrifying things when someone tries to cross them. So the first concern is whether she has set up defenses to strike at anyone who interferes with this whole operation.”

  “Which means we need to analyze every line of each individual enchantment,” Liv explained. “Until we’re certain what everything does. And on top of that, we know that she used a different ward at every barrier back on Nightfall Peak, going through something like half a dozen words of power. So we need to compare the enchantments on each casket, since we can’t assume that any defenses would all be the same, or hidden the same way.”

  “Which is why I’m working over here,” Arjun called, from the other side of the aisle, where he’d recruited Karina to assist him. The young Elden woman only had a brief time at the Bald Peak College, but Liv would never make the mistake of discounting the magical knowledge of her father’s people.

  “Welcome to following guild mages around,” Wren grumbled. “They can spend days at a time on projects like this. It’s agonizingly boring.”

  “You could go and scout,” Liv reminded her friend, but Wren was already shaking her head.

  “I don’t trust you to do your own fighting right now,” the dark-haired huntress said. “And this has all been too easy so far. Didn’t Jurian tell you they were fighting wyrms left and right once they got underground? We’ve only seen one, and it wasn’t even trying to kill us.”

  Liv glanced back over her shoulder, down the aisle which stretched between the rows of dead caskets, to the entrance where Kaija and Lina stood guard. Miina and Sakari were with them, in case a wyrm came out of the shadows, though after the failure of their first attempt to employ the word of wyrms, Liv didn’t have a lot of hope on that front. When it came to managing shadows, however, Keri had been much more successful.

  A full five orbs of magical sunlight bobbed just below the ceiling of the chamber, one set in each corner and the fifth at the center of the room. With light coming from that many angles, there was hardly a single shadow in the room, save for directly beneath the caskets which held Ractia’s slumbering children. With any luck, that wouldn’t leave wyrms - or giant beetles, or any other sort of mana beast which had fed on the power of Godsgrave - enough room to come up and take them by surprise.

  Keri himself had unpacked a small iron pot and half a dozen packages of food that had been preserved with Ters. He’d emptied a spare waterskin into the pot, followed by chunks of dried meat, potatoes, herbs and other vegetables that Liv hadn’t kept track of. Now, he sat with the pot cradled between his crossed legs, held in the palms of his hands, which were shining with a brilliant, near blinding light. Thankfully, he’d taken himself into one corner of the room, but even from so far away Liv could feel the heat he was pouring into the pot - enough, from the steam she could see, to apparently make the contents boil.

  Soaring Eagle sighed, attracting Liv’s attention once again. “My apologies. I suppose I simply feel useless.”

  “You helped us get here,” Liv told him. “And I’m going to want you to come into this woman’s dreams with me as soon as we’re ready. I think these people are going to be a lot more willing to listen to one of their own than to someone like me.”

  “You’re right,” the hunter said, giving her a nod. “I will do my best to be patient.”

  ?

  It was a sentiment that every one of them needed to keep in mind, Liv thought, hours later. Keri’s soup - bursting with mana, because apparently he’d made the entire first batch from Elden ingredients, specifically for her - had done a good deal to clear her mind and ease her headache.

  “It’s a nasty piece of work,” Sidonie explained, tracing one finger along a thin, almost unnoticeable band of black iron hidden below eye level on the casket. “If anyone interferes with any of the other enchantments, this will form into a spike that jabs out and pierces the skin. See how it’s placed so that you’d be standing right next to it, looking down at the face of the person inside? That’s where all your focus would be. And the spike - an iron needle, really - uses the same technique that almost killed Keri.”

  Liv reached out and put a gloved hand on Keri’s arm, at that. It had taken him months of hard work to get to the point that he could have a normal life again, and though the worst of it had been done while she was fighting in Varuna, she knew that sometimes his body still frustrated him. To anyone else, he looked like a whirlwind sparring with his spear in the courtyard atop Bald Peak, but she could see the moments when he couldn’t quite extend the way he used to, when his balance wasn’t quite right. To someone who’d spent years training, like he had, the knowledge that he might never again be as good as he had been before the dowager’s curse was maddening.

  “Good that we took the time for you to examine her defenses, then,” Keri said, placing his own hand on top of Liv’s glove.

  “Can you break it?” Soaring Eagle asked, turning to meet Liv’s eyes. “Now that you know what everything does?”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Liv nodded. “We’re going to do a couple things at once,” she said. “The first is that Miina is going to hold that ward in stasis, while Sidonie uses Aluth to wrap the iron in a mana shield. That way, even if it gets triggered, somehow, the needle should break against the mana shield.” Arjun opened his mouth, and Liv answered his question before he asked it: “I want you ready to heal anyone who might need it.”

  “While they do that,” Liv continued, looking to Soaring Eagle and then to Ghveris and Wren, who’d gathered around with most of the others while Kaija and Lina kept watch at the door, “I need at least one of you to come into the dream with me.”

  Wren was already shaking her head. “I’ll stay. The two of you should go.”

  Soaring Eagle frowned. “You have as much right to do this as any of us - perhaps more.”

  “But I’m not the chief of the tribe,” Wren pointed out. “And Ghveris is the only one of us who actually remembers the time these people come from. They might even know his name. He’ll do a better job at winning their trust than I will.”

  “Alright, then,” Liv agreed. “The three of us go in, while the rest of you keep guard. Soaring Eagle, Ghveris, come and sit next to me, please.” She waited while Ghveris knelt, settling onto the floor with a variety of clanks and scrapes; the Red Shield chief was considerably quieter.

  Liv drew the stormwand: there was no point in wasting mana. While Sidonie conjured a mana shield up against the iron, and Miina trapped the ward in stasis, she thought over the incantation that she would use. Sidonie and, above anyone else, Master Grenfell had put much more work into exploring the word of dreams. Liv almost felt embarrassed at how little she experimented with it, but even simple uses, like this one, had proven invaluable.

  “Csun ?'Ceimus,” Liv said, after a moment, allowing the incantation to vibrate up through her body and stir her mana. The word of dreams woke in the back of her mind, and she reached out with her Authority to wrap Soaring Eagle and Ghveris up in her spell. She shaped her intent into a sort of bridge, or a funnel, drawing all three of them toward the woman who slumbered within the casket -

  - and opened her eyes to a star-strewn sky, lit by the ring shining overhead. Before them was an immense fortification of stone and wood, a daunting shadow against the night, lit here and there by flickering torches, or perhaps lanterns. There was no moon, and when Liv spun to look behind her, she saw only emptiness. Perhaps a hundred feet from the base of the fortification, the world simply ended, with not even the light of the stars to mark out any one element as distinct from another.

  Perhaps more jarring was the presence of a man that Liv had never seen before, standing to her right, while Soaring Eagle, on her left, looked ready to fight. The stranger was tall and broad in the shoulders, with the muscled arms of a man who laboured or fought for his living. His hair was dark, and his eyes as well, and he wore strange clothes like nothing Liv had seen in any of the lands she’d ever visited.

  “Wren knew me at once when she saw me,” the man said, and there was something familiar about his voice that finally caused Liv’s thoughts to fall into place, like a puzzle piece.

  “Ghveris?” she asked.

  The Antrian nodded, in a motion far easier and more graceful than Liv was used to seeing from his armored form. “This is how I appeared in life,” her companion admitted. “Or, at least, as well as I can remember. I suppose a thousand years of sleep might make my recollection - unreliable.”

  Liv’s mind hitched for a moment on the fact that Wren had seen his body in her dreams, but of course she had: they’d split a pair of dreamstones while the huntress went to fetch Soaring Eagle, just a few weeks before. She wondered whether they’d taken advantage of the chance to share a kiss, or -

  She forcibly turned herself aside from that particular line of thought. It wasn’t her business, in any case, and if they had - well, good for them. Liv firmly believed that both of her friends deserved to be happy.

  “Is anyone actually in there?” Liv wondered out loud, stepping forward to approach the fortification.

  “Give me a moment, and I’ll find out,” Soaring Eagle said. He collapsed into blood, then flapped leathery wings against the dark knight, soaring up above the walls to get a better view.

  “I’m half surprised that works here,” Liv muttered, watching him go.

  “If you’re correct that she was using this to train them,” Ghveris reasoned, “it would have to, for the dreams to be of any use.”

  “Do you remember anything like that, yourself?”

  Her friend shook his head. “I don’t think they were finished working on me, yet,” he admitted. “It’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense. Otherwise, they would have thrown me against the army that attacked Celris.”

  “You’ve always seemed pretty well finished to me,” Liv said.

  Ghveris shrugged. “Who can say? I suppose the next time we fight Ractia, we could try asking her, but I doubt she will answer.”

  A great screeching and crying rose from within the fortress, and then a cloud of bats rose against the stars and the ring, swirling like leaves caught in a storm. One of the bats flew directly toward them, and was pursued by the others.

  Liv stretched her arm out, and the stormwand was there, waiting, held loosely in her fingers. Half a dozen of the pursuing bats swarmed Soaring Eagle - that had to be the lone bat, Liv was certain of it - knocking him to the ground. The bat’s identity was confirmed a moment later when the Red Shield chief rolled to his feet, his back to Liv and Ghveris.

  “Stop!” he shouted. “We are not your enemies!” Then, he tried it again, in the language that Liv had heard Wren use occasionally with other members of her tribe.

  Half a dozen bats shifted as they landed, taking the forms of cougars, wolves, and one even the shape of those great long lizards, the ones who lurked in the water like half-submerged logs. The slumbering children of Ractia fanned out in a half circle as they came on, moving to flank Liv and her two companions.

  At a thought, six swords of ice coalesced, coming as easily within the dream as they did in waking life, hanging three to either side of Liv’s shoulders, points in line with the leading wolf. An instant later, Liv’s wings spread out behind her, immediately the strongest source of light in the entire area, casting the shadows of the attackers back on the stone walls behind them, and making the shifters flinch away from the glare. Liv had simply been determined that she wouldn’t be the only one trapped on the ground if they had to fight, but she would take any advantage she could get.

  Should she speak to them in V?dic? Or the ancient dialect of Vakansa Ghveris had used, when he’d first woken? Liv had never mastered it - no. None of them were actually speaking any language at all, she reminded herself. All of this was a dream, and she was the only one present who had imprinted the word of dreams.

  Liv took hold of Cei, and stole a trick from Ractia.

  “We are not your enemies,” she shouted, in every language and none at the same time. Her voice was a chorus, and the dream carried the meaning of her words to every dreamer caught up in the same enchantment that Liv had joined.

  The animals flinched, and looked at each other, but they did not yet back down.

  “Enough!” A voice boomed from Liv’s side. “Look upon me, and know who I am!” Ghveris shifted between half a dozen forms in as many heartbeats: from bat, to cougar, to wolf, to lizard, copying all the shapes his long-lost kin had shown them. But the Beast of Iuronnath did not stop there.

  Ghveris took the form of an eagle, and spread his wings wide, letting out a shriek. Next, a great constricting snake, and then a snowy-owl of the far north, the kind that might be seen in Whitehill or the lands of the Eld. A fox, a weasel, and finally a great bear of immense size. In that form, he stood up on his hind legs, towering over all of them, threw back his head and roared, mouth wide and fangs bared. Finally, he returned to human form.

  “Know me, my people!” he shouted again. “I am Ghveris, the Beast of Iuronnath! First among Ractia’s children, General of the V?dim! Will you fight me?” He spread his arms wide, fingers splayed, as if ready to embrace them, or perhaps daring them to strike. And though Liv knew that none of them had true bodies in the dream, his chest heaved with the force of his words, and the muscles in his chest and shoulders rippled.

  Wren should have been here to see him now, Liv thought to herself.

  For a long moment, all was still.

  Then, one by one, the children of Ractia shifted, through blood and then to their human forms, standing on two legs. More bats descended from the cloud, changing in pairs and handfuls, until dozens of them stood there before the walls of the dream-fortress, shoulder to shoulder, eyes wide beneath the dark of night and the empty stars.

  “Have you come to lead us to war?” a man called out of the crowd. “We feared the day would never come, that we had been forgotten and abandoned. Does the Great Mother finally send for us?”

  “No,” Ghveris said. “I - we - have come to wake you from the lie that she dreamed for you. We have come to tell you the truth, if you will listen to it.”

  volume nine is off and running!

  here. I am more available there than I am here.

  Dramatis Personae

  Livara T?r Valtteri Kaen Syv? - Archmage, former scullery maid at Castle Whitehill, the bastard daughter of Maggie Brodbeck and Valtteri Ka Auris. Mountain Queen, and Lady of Winter. Dream-guide. [36+ Rings of Mana, not counting mana stored in items.]

  Arjun Iyuz - Journeyman Guildmage from Lendh ka Dakruim; his jati specializes in healing magic. His job really starts once they begin unhooking people... [18 Rings of Mana]

  Ghveris, the Beast of Iuronnath - Formerly a Great Bat in service to Ractia, now the remains of his body form the heart of an Antrian juggernaut. Being seen by more and more people. [Mana Battery: 10 Rings]

  Inkeris "Keri" ka Ilmari k?n B?lris - A young warrior of the Unconquered House of B?lris, father to Rei. Camp cooking! [20 Rings of Mana.]

  Sidonie Corbett - Guildmage. Succeeded at her roll to detect traps. [19 Rings of Mana]

  Soaring Eagle - Husband of Calm Waters, father of Blossom. Red Shield Tribe. Totally got jumped.

  Wren Wind Dancer - Daughter of Nighthawk, cousin of Calm Waters. Staying to watch the bodies while everyone else goes to sleep inside a dungeon.