I never slept at night. If I were capable of this dreaming thing that Jaetheiri did, I did not know how to trigger it. Usually, I spent those quiet camp nights drifting through other people’s dreams. Now that I had touched everyone through the water of the lake, I had access to the entire camp’s subconscious. They were weak connections, not like Jaetheiri. Her bond with me was sealed with blood, and I could see her every dream. The others were harder. I had to really concentrate and even then, I only ever saw still images, if I caught glimpses of anything at all.
I never knew what I would get.
I would focus on Ruzar the cook, and see a woman with anatomically unlikely breasts, and then I would focus on Nisari and see the broken body of a boy, his windsinger headdress snapped in two.
I didn’t think I was learning very much from the disparate, confusing images, but it was something to do during the lull at night, and occasionally, there were patterns.
Hegrir and Nisari dreamed of the same battle beneath the shadow of a distinctively shaped mountain. Grokar and a thrall named Natir often dreamed of the same woman. Vezemar dreamed of the same door that appeared to frighten Jaetheiri so. It frightened him, too.
That night, Vezemar dreamed of Jaetheiri herself, holding a young Yethyr in her arms. Her bone circlet sat crooked on her brow as blood dripped down from it, from Yethyr’s limp hands, from everywhere. There were bloody footprints on the floor behind them.
Yethyr’s head rested on Jaetheiri’s shoulder, peering up at someone beyond Vezemar. His eyes were dim and lifeless. Vezemar would have taken him for a corpse if not for the wrath.
If not for the unbridled rage.
The image cut off as Vezamar was shaken awake by Kettir. It was time for them to rotate guard duty.
I could hear Vezemar’s footsteps as he took up his spot beside Grokar while Kettir settled down onto a log.
So far, I had not been able to enter Kettir’s dreams. It made me wonder if he had touched the water at all. I didn’t remember hearing his name that night on the lake. Maybe the capsizing of The Wily Seal had thrown him to the rocky isle that we found him on, accidentally sparing him of my accursed touch.
Lucky for him, if so.
Once I heard his breath even out, I tried to breach his dreams anyway. I hadn’t anything better to do at night, and it seemed to me an interesting challenge.
I was disrupted from my lack of progress by Grokar’s sudden hiss.
“Do you see that?”
Vezemar’s breath caught. “Is that firelight through the trees?”
“I think so. From a campfire, no?”
“That would be my guess.”
“It needs to be investigated,” Grokar whispered urgently.
“The whole camp needs to be roused,” Vezemar corrected. “We could be ambushed at any moment!”
“I’ll wake everyone up,” Grokar agreed. “You should be the one to do reconnaissance. You’ve always been better at stealth.” He must have gotten a glare for that assertion because he squawked. “What? You are!
Vezemar sighed. “Fine. Get everyone up. I’ll be right back.”
I heard him scurry into the underbrush and then slow his steps to creep up toward the fire they apparently saw in the distance.
Grokar turned into Yethyr’s tent.
The few times the other huntguards had needed to disturb Yethyr, Jaetheiri had always awoken, every time. If she had not been under the influence of the sleeping tea, she would already be awake.
Now, as Grokar pulled back the flap, she didn’t even stir.
Yethyr usually set me down beside him, on the right side of his sleeping bag. Grokar approached and crouched on the opposite side from me. I could hear the rustle of his black scale armor. I could hear his pounding heart. I could hear him shake Yethyr awake.
“My prince,” Grokar hissed.
I felt Yethyr blearily return to consciousness.
“Don’t speak. I won’t dare to ungag you.”
The confusion born from Yethyr's half-asleep state evaporated, but was replaced by a very different confusion.
“We don’t have much time before he comes.” Grokar took a shaky breath. “I need you to release me from my vow.”
Yethyr’s confusion intensified.
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“Don’t give me that look. Listen.” Grokar’s voice was urgent. “This hunt you have been charged with, it is folly, cursed from the start. We are all going to die, fruitlessly, for nothing.”
Now, Yethyr was offended.
“You barely have a life. I understand why that means little to you, but everyone else does have a life, family that relies on them, and you are leading them where not even Tezem can follow.”
Grokar’s swallow was loud in the silence.
“I didn’t volunteer for this. Honor has chained me to follow you. So release me. Release me so that I can go home.”
Yethyr was angry, furious even. I could not guess what his expression was on his face.
“No, I’m not going to ungag you or untie you. I don’t dare. You’ll kill us both—”
“Why in the Angel’s name did you wake him up?” Hegrir slipped into the tent, loud and furious. “Vezemar won’t be distracted by the fire for long. We need to be quick.”
“I…I need him to understand.”
“Understand what? That you’re tired and you hate him.”
“I don’t hate him,” Grokar said.
Hegrir snorted. “You hate him enough to let me in here, enough to let me do this.”
Suddenly, I had sight. The dark tent was unfurled before me through Hegrir’s eyes. His name was ringing through me as he took me from the ground beside Yethyr. The Prince didn’t stop him. He couldn’t.
I had never seen how Jaetheiri bound and gagged the Prince to prevent an attack from Spryne. She always did it when I had already been set aside.
Now, with eyes to observe from, I could see that he was snugly held in place by skillful knots, a rope wedged between his teeth.
He could do nothing as Hegrir held me over him.
“Hegrir,” Grokar chided. “That isn’t yours to wield.”
“Isn’t it? It should have been Mullir’s, and I am his Tezem.” He lowered my edge dangerously closer to the Prince.
Yethyr was still. He didn’t try to struggle. He wouldn’t have had the strength to break out anyway. The only thing that moved were his blue, furious eyes, shifting between Grokar and Hegrir in contempt.
Hegrir sneered right back. “You don’t even remember him? What a disgrace. All should know him. They say he slew Daened of Datrea with a single arrow.” Yethyr’s eyes widened, but Hegrir ignored his recognition. “And instead of getting the spoils of such a kill, he was killed for his glory. By you and your whore. Should I stand for such a thing? No, my prince. Daened’s spoils are mine to take.”
I resisted scoffing. As if being the Tezem of that pasty archer who shot my father would give this idiot the right to even look at the forge’s treasures.
“What is the meaning of this?” Vezemar burst into the tent, back from his false espionage mission. He charged Hegrir immediately, and my white edge was suddenly in a bind with his red warfang.
I had no control over Hegrir’s movement, no control over who lived or died, and before I could figure out who I actually was rooting for, my blade was embedded in Vezemar’s chest.
I swallowed Vezemar’s violent memories all at once. His hunts of younger days. Campaigns through the witchwilds. Grand violent moments. Then it narrowed to something more intimate and yet, far more terrifying. A man’s body crumbled before a woman with red hair bound up in a white bone circlet. Dozens of men just like him littered the floor at her feet. Vezemar had to tiptoe over them to draw closer. Each step frightened him, here in this chamber where not even the King dared to walk. Here where another lounged upon her divan as if it were a throne.
“Well, hunter?” She said with laughing eyes. “Are you worthy of guarding my son?
There must have been no violence in his answer because I did not know it, but I did hear him echo the question to himself, again and again, as he fought the men who came pouring in behind him.
Was I worthy?
He hadn’t thought so when he watched Ettisar beat and bruise and break his prince during training. Vezemar had done nothing to stop it. The Prince would have killed him if he had tried, and yet…
Was I worthy?
He hadn’t thought so when he watched the King beat his son, for the first and only time.
“How could you?” the King had shouted then. “How could you have sold yourself to Hell?”
Vezemar had done nothing to stop it. The King would have killed him if he had tried, and yet…
Was I worthy?
The King certainly didn’t think so. He had struck Vezemar, for the first and only time. “You are his. If I ever do something like that again, stop me, goddamn it. Are you a guard or not?”
Vezemar didn’t feel like it. He who could not protect Yethyr from Spryne or the other guards from a Spryne-possessed Yethyr. I devoured memory after memory of dismembered guards who weren’t careful enough.
Was I worthy?
He hadn’t thought so when he burst through the door, and saw a dead assassin bleeding out on Yethyr and his white woollen blanket. A girl stood over Yethyr himself. Splinters of a wooden thing in her hand, twin strings dangled from it, limp and bloody.
Jaetheiri. The scars that carved up her skin were uglier and fresher than ever. Without her armor, she looked young and wild and half-mad. The panicked snarl of her lip belonged more to an animal than a girl.
She looked just as feral when Ettisar sparred with her, beating her even worse than he had done to the Prince.
She looked just as feral in the Oredreirium
“How did she get down there?” Vezemar had cried.
“She jumped,” was the Prince’s delighted reply, terrifyingly from below him. “She will put all the blame on me, I’m certain, when this is done.”
“Done? My prince, going down there is a death sentence.” Vezemar watched Jaetheiri carve a river of carnage through the ruins down below and was afraid. “No one can come back.”
“Of course she’s coming back,” Yethyr had said, serene as a prophet. “She’s going to win.”
And she did.
“This is the path I carve” were her only words, but Vezemar did not know what path he was carving.
People were sacrificed. Towns were razed. Pyromancers were slaughtered trying to break the siege on Datrea. Many more were slaughtered afterwards. So much cruelty. So much death.
Was I worthy? he asked one final time, as I was embedded in his chest. With dimming vision, he saw Hegrir and treacherous Grokar standing over his prince's helpless body and knew for certain that he was not. Not at all. The Witch Queen had chosen wrong.
It was his last thought as I ate him.
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