“It was all entirely accidental.” I took a seat, but only because my bag was weighing heavy on my shoulder. “Incidental to keeping myself alive, since I had no illusions that anyone would be helping me out of there.”

Planir leaned back in his chair, his smile vanishing. “I can understand that you might feel abandoned,” he said seriously, “but that was by no means the case. Dev is far from my only agent in the islands.”

I didn’t respond, unconcerned whether he took the contempt in my face for Dev personally or not.

“Right then, let’s hear your tale,” Planir said briskly, rising to his feet and striding to a table set under the tall windows looking out across the towers of Hadrumal.

“I was sold in Relshaz, made slave to a Warlord’s lady and found I had to denounce another in order to save my own skin.” I folded my arms and waited for the Archmage’s reaction, ignoring Shiv who was frowning at me as he leaned on the mantel above the fire less hearth.

“There’s much more to it than that and you know it, man!” Planir folded his arms and abandoned his attempts at flattery, which was one relief. “We suspect the Elietimm were responsible both for your enslavement and for your purchase by Shek Kul’s women. It’s the sword, Ryshad. We thought it would be important and the degree of sympathy you’ve established with it is beyond anything else we’ve seen. Even without that, the Elietimm have betrayed its importance. They wanted that sword so desperately that they broke cover and exposed themselves completely.”

I was not at all convinced of that, rather suspecting that young D’Alsennin had been somehow roused in Relshaz, the Elietimm only taking advantage of the situation. These wizards were looking to do much the same, weren’t they? “So I was the goat tethered to draw the wolves out of the wildwood?”

“Not intentionally, but I’ll grant you the effect was the same.” Planir nodded, unperturbed. “Now we need to know just why they were prepared to run such risks to get their hands on that blade.”

“You want the sword, it’s yours.” I shrugged again. Messire wouldn’t take offense, not when he heard my side of this sorry tale. “You can find someone else to dream D’Alsennin’s dreams for you.”

Planir shook his head with a half-smile. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, Ryshad. Once a sympathy has been established there is no going back, no handing it on. No one else will be able to hear the echoes of D’Alsennin’s life but you, not if we pass the sword around every man in the cohorts.”

I looked at him, stony-faced.

“Nor will disposing of the sword relieve you of his presence in your sleeping mind,” continued Planir. “As I say, this can be no more undone than an egg can be unbroken.”

I shot Shiv a grim glance that promised a reckoning between us and he colored, looking down at his notes.

“So, we can all move on and learn what we may from this.” Planir broke the tense silence. “What have you learned about the man who owned the blade, what can you tell us about the colony and its fate?”

“Very little.” I shrugged, keeping my face expressionless.

Planir leafed through a handful of documents to find a sealed letter, which he handed to me without further word. I set my jaw as I recognized the imprint and scribe of Messire D’Olbriot on the outer surface. Cracking the wax, I was surprised to find only a handful of lines in Messire’s own, unpracticed hand:

Dastennin send that you receive this, Ryshad, that you have come safely out of the perils of the Archipelago. I do not pretend to understand all that I have been told about lost magics and mysteries hidden in dreams but know this; the Men of the Ice are enemies, to my House and to our Empire. This is a peril we cannot counter with swords or the strength of our arms and resolve. The Archmage is our best hope of defense at present and I charge you, on the oath that binds us, to tell him all you can and to spend all your efforts in his service, even to the hazard of your life. You are sworn to my service and so I command you.

So Dev had been wrong when he taunted me about being sold to the wizards. This was far worse; my honor was being held before me as a challenge. I stifled a disloyal anger toward Messire, that he would lay such a burden on me with no certainty of its weight or the length of the journey he was sending me on. Then I remembered the vision of the Elietimm flaunting the Emperor’s head on a pike and sighed heavily.

“I hope you are not going to prove Messire D’Olbriot’s word false, when he gave me his personal assurance of your co-operation and good faith, Ryshad,” said Planir crisply as he spread a yellowing chart over his highly polished table, anchoring its corners with books, an empty goblet and a random lump of rust-colored stone. “Tell me about your dreams before you were separated from Shiv, all of them, especially the night you were attacked.”

I crushed Messire’s letter in my hand, fixing my eyes on a distant weathervane and began my report, as detailed and dispassionate as any I had ever given Messire. Shiv motioned to me to slow down a little; as he took rapid notes, I remembered the time I had been sent to find the truth of a massacre of camp followers on the Lescari border where it abuts D’Olbriot lands. That hadn’t been a pleasant task, but it had to be done, and I had drawn the reversed rune. A sworn man had his orders to follow and his oath to protect him—that was the way of things, wasn’t it?

I talked and talked; Planir asked many questions, some so obvious as to be irritating, others obscure in the extreme. I didn’t notice him or Shiv ring for wine and bread, but drank and ate gratefully when sustenance arrived, snatching mouthfuls between answering yet more questions as we went over what had happened a second time.

“There’s more, isn’t there?” Planir was leaning over his chart, measuring something. He threw his rule down and turned on me, eyes bright.

“How do you mean?” I wasn’t about to give him a touch-by-touch account of my night with Laio, if that was what he was after.

“The dreams, Ryshad, the dreams,” said Planir softly. “Tell me about the waking dreams.”

I took a deep breath but could not bring myself to answer, not wanting to discuss the echoing sensations that kept trying to pick their way out of the back of my mind of late, if I ever let my guard slip.

“You see, I can help you with that.” Planir lifted a book from a neat pile on the window ledge. “We’ve recovered an ancient archive from a shrine sacred to Arimelin and learned a great deal about the dream lore of the ancients. We have a way to close your waking mind, to let us reach those dreams and learn all we want directly. Once we wake you from the trance the dreams will be gone, and we won’t need to make anymore demands on you. You will be free to go and you won’t be troubled any longer by dreams or visions.”

That was an offer so tempting there just had to be a hook in it somewhere, especially with the Archmage on the other end of the line.

“Just what exactly would you hope to learn?” I asked, puzzled. “I’ve told you everything I can remember and to be frank, none of that has seemed especially important. Anyway, the venture failed, didn’t it?”

“It was certainly lost, that’s true, but we still want to locate this colony, not just hear about it. We’re not simply trying to fill in the gaps in the archives to satisfy the scholars.” Planir poured himself some wine and offered a glass to Shiv, who closed his inkwell and folded up his notes. “If we are to counter the Elietimm threat, we need to know more about this aetheric magic, these powers the Ancients called Artifice. From what you have already told us, it’s clear people were being trained in these skills at this colony. There might be records, archives, even training regimes and instructions possibly.”

“Keep your coin to buy a pie!” I scoffed. “When was this? Twenty-six generations past? Anything they left will be rotted to dust and dirt by now!”