"They know," he said. "They know Magiere and I are responsible for the warehouse, and they're coming at her through guilt. Otherwise they would have offered the money directly to her. They knew she'd refuse, didn't they?"
After a moment's contemplation, Karlin nodded, his round face too sad for speech.
"You are responsible," Loni said with a hard glance at Leesil before focusing once again upon Magiere. "Would it be so terrible to go destroy their undead, to help others as you have helped the people here? No one denies the good you have done, but the repercussions cannot be ignored. You have a chance to make amends. Do you not owe this to Miiska? Hunting the undead is what you do."
The last statement made Leesil cringe. How could he or Magiere ever tell anyone that until they'd come to Miiska, their entire reputation was built on a charlatan's game for cheating peasants? Magiere put her head in her hands.
"Go home, Loni," she said. "Nothing you say can make me go to Bela… nothing."
The dreamer shifted in his slumber. All around him, below and above, was boundless dark, the dreamer suspended at its center. He hung there in silence, waiting.
Until the dark began to undulate.
It rolled like desert dunes under a starless sky. But when the stars did come out, they blinked not from sky but from the crests of those black dunes all around. The movement sharpened slowly into clarity, and stars became the glitter of an unseen light reflected upon black reptilian scales. Dunes covered in those scales became a mammoth serpent's coils, each larger than the height of man. They circled on all sides of him, and above and below. They writhed with no beginning, no end, no space between, as if ancient and eternal and all-encompassing, perhaps stretching back into the time of the Forgotten, and the lost history of the world.
"Where?" he asked again. "Where is it? It has been so many years… decades. Am I closer?"
The same questions as always, and little by little, small, cryptic images and words floated through.
High… in the cold… and ice. The weight of those whispering words slipped into the dreamer's mind and suffocated his own thoughts. Guarded by old ones… oldest of predecessors.
"How can I find it?"
The dreamer tried to peer beyond the black coils and envision what he sought, but he as yet did not even know what it looked like-only what the coils, his patron of dreams, promised the object could provide. Once acquired, it would forever alter the nature of his existence. Nothing would be needed from the outside, and all would be met from within himself.
The coils began to close in upon him with fear and exhaustion. These dreams with his nameless benefactor filled his mind with knowledge one grain at a time, but drained him quickly. He wanted to remain and ask more but could not.
Welstiel Massing opened his eyes, alone, lying upon a large, canopied bed in his rented room as the black coils faded from his thoughts.
It was like any dream one might have, sharp in its experience and dull in its aftermath. He remembered coils in the dark, but neither their look nor the feel of his patron's voice. And with each dream, the voice provided fewer new answers. In the end, if he acquired the promised object, it would free him. This much he did believe-and remember.
Rising, he settled at his desk with quill in hand and opened the top thin volume of a stack of journals. He'd procured private rooms in one of Bela's more respectable inns, affording him the privacy he required. Without contemplation, he wrote down what little he remembered from the dream. His hand shook slightly and his normal clarity was fogged, but he had a few more pieces to add, even if they did not all fit together well.
The object was hidden at an elevation cold enough for ice and snow to remain all year. And "predecessors," old ones, guarded it. That in itself wasn't new information, but still left Welstiel uneasy, as this detail recurred time and again. How old? As far back as the creation of this object he sought? From the time of the forgotten history perhaps, and so old it might predate the Great War.
He could not fight these predecessors alone; that he'd surmised by the patron's implications over the years, but he'd long been preparing to address this obstacle. Plans laid with patience were now ready for further momentum.
Welstiel made the bed and dressed with meticulous attention to each fold of shirt, breeches, and vest. He combed dark hair back to reveal two small, equally white patches at his temples. He used his right hand, as his left was missing the first digit of its little finger. He donned an expensive black cloak and pulled up the cowl.
Finally he opened a small jade box and removed a thin ring made of brass with minute, fine symbols etched around its inside. He slipped this onto the first finger of his right hand, bracing himself.
As always, everything around looked the same but felt as if the world suddenly separated from him, almost unaware of his presence. It had been many years since he'd made the ring, and he seldom succumbed to a self-appraisal when donning it. He looked into the small mirror on his desk.
His own familiar image was there in the glass, but it felt as if he stared at the reflection of a finely crafted painting. Though outside his appearance remained unchanged, what he held within-thought, feeling, and presence-would be imperceptible.
Before leaving, he took one more look about to be sure nothing was out of place. His journals were of no concern, written in the tongue of his homeland far across sea and land in the northern Numan territories. As to the other books stowed under the bed, their locked straps might intrigue anyone foolish enough to search his room but were far beyond the capability of any thief to open. If they were forced, the result would be most unpleasant.
On the bedside floor rested a frosted glass globe on a plain iron pedestal. Within the glass moved three dancing sparks that glowed enough to dimly illuminate the small room. It was the oldest thing he possessed, having been the first thing he'd ever created in his long studies. He opened the door to leave, speaking sharply without looking back. "Darkness." The sparks in the globe winked out.
After Karlin and Loni's departure, Magiere managed a polite front for her patrons until the last of them left past midnight. She thanked them and invited them to return again. Across the room, Leesil followed this same ritual as the final would-be gamblers gathered winnings and bemoaned losses. Caleb collected dishes and mugs from tables onto trays, and Aria took the trays into the kitchen to begin washing up. Magiere mindlessly continued closing down for the night. When Leesil nearly pushed the last gambler out of the tavern, he went to the curtained kitchen doorway.
"Aria, leave all that," he said. "I'll take care of it in the morning."
"Sir?" her questioning voice floated out. "Come morning, it'll stink like a broken ale keg in here."
"It doesn't matter. Just leave it." He looked back to Caleb, who was straightening up chairs. "Could you walk Aria and Geoffry home?"
Normally, Leesil would have played escort for their young helpers, who'd as well been assisting with preparations before the grand opening. With Caleb on such a duty and little Rose in bed, it was obvious to Magiere her partner was getting everyone out of the way.
"I don't need Caleb to take me home," Geoffry said indignantly. He dumped a load of firewood by the hearth and glared at the half-elf. Under a mop of auburn hair, his plain face expressed righteous indignation. "For the love of mutton, Leesil, I helped you fight wolves and vampires. I can walk Aria home myself."
"Come, come," Caleb said, gathering his cloak from the hooks by the front door. "Your parents may well be waiting up, even to this hour. We should walk in numbers."