Nightseer

Chapter 1 A Reluctant Dreamer

Keleios had come to the rose garden and hidden behind its wall to work her magic. The warm summer darkness was thick with the fragrance of roses and the song of crickets. A stray frog had wandered into the garden's centerpiece, a fountain. It gave its shrill song alone. Keleios laughed. She was not sure if she had ever heard just one frog. They usually went in chorus. Soon her magic would quiet the crickets and the lonely frog. It was strange how the presence of active magic silenced the world.
Keleios' brown-gold hair lay in a loose braid down her back. Any mirror Keleios passed told her she was like a ghost of her mother. The only thing that saved her was her father's elven blood, which thinned her face and let Keleios look like herself. She was dressed all in brown, except for the glimpse of snowy linen at the collar of her tunic. She wore trousers laced close to her legs with crisscrossing bandages. Boots came to her knees, hardened leather soles and soft hide. Keleios knew her mother, ever feminine, would have been horrified. But her mother had been dead for eighteen years. It was a long time to worry about someone's opinion.
Keleios touched the small pile of dry bark shavings and twigs. Fire had been the first sorcery she had ever called; it was still the easiest. It flared like a falling star and landed in the wood. The flames leapt and crackled round the dry kindling. She placed two slightly larger sticks on top of the flame, and the fire slowed to work on the thicker wood.
The world had fallen into silence. Only the wind still blew through the roses.
Keleios poured water in a small empty pot. She had not been able to get the right kind of wood for this particular fire, so she planned to cheat. She placed a fire-protect spell on her hands. It glimmered briefly just behind her eyes, then she could not see it. It was a matter of trust that when she picked up the fire, it would not burn her. A matter of trust and confidence in her own sorcery.
She scooped up the fire in one hand. The blaze flared in the wind, sparking against the darkness. Keleios looked at the fire, concentrating on its wavering orange-red depths, studying its heat without fearing it. She concentrated, and it flared a tiny column of burning. Another thought and it burned to the low orange of embers. It flickered stronger, following her thoughts.
She nearly lost concentration, distracted by the fire's dance in the shining surface of her arm guards. She drew her mind back to the work at hand. It was a bad sign, being distracted by light. It spoke of dream sickness. She was vision prophet as well as dream, so she was doubly at risk.
Keleios touched the flame briefly, curling it to her will. Her concentration was pure. She was ready for the levitation.
It was a different sort of spell from calling fire. Instead of calling something out of nowhere, one touched an object with nothing and made it move. There were no lines of power, no dim glows, to let one know that one was on the right track. The thing either moved or it didn't.
The water-filled pot floated upward, then hovered above the flame. She waited. Even with magic fire it took time.
The water began to simmer. Keleios reached her free hand to the small earthenware bowl. She took tiny but equal amounts of anise seed and fragrant valerian root from it. She placed them gently in the bubbling water.
Keleios checked the time by the clock tower and its striking of the quarter hour.
More waiting. Keleios had had potion to ward off nightmares, nearly a week's supply, but she had run out last night. A potion that merely allowed a peaceful night for a frightened child blocked prophecy in a dream prophet.
Keleios was courting dream sickness and knew it. Too much fragrant valerian was poisonous, and she knew that, too. She had the beginnings of dream sickness already. She was easily distracted at odd moments and caught herself listening to voices that were not there. She was being foolish. Fear makes a person foolish from time to time.
An evil dream was waiting for her. She was afraid to sleep, afraid to dream, afraid not to dream. Keleios hated prophecy. From its first touch prophecy had never helped her. It was the most useless of magics.
Whatever waited for her was something awful. She had never felt such a crashing on her mind, not even when she dreamed of her mother's death. This would be worse; she wasn't sure she could face it. It was a child's fear and she cursed herself for it, but she could not bring herself to have the dream.
The tower clock struck. She set the pot on the white gravel pathway to cool. She flung the fire into the darkness, and it vanished in a cascade of sparks. She canceled the fire-protect spell. Conserve sorcery -- it had been a rule drummed into her mind these last three years. Though sorcery was instant magic and powerful, it was easily depleted and left the spellcaster drained and magicless.
She thought of cold, the cool autumn cold that first blows near the door in November. Not too cold, or she would freeze the potion solid and ruin it. She wanted only to cool it.
Keleios secured cheesecloth over the pot with a string and strained the liquid into the cup. A little water from the fountain restored the volume lost in simmering.
Keleios held the cup in her hands. Another dreamless night lay in her hands. The moon rose free of the castle towers. It bathed the rose garden in silver and grey and blackest black. The towers were midnight silhouettes against the rising moon.
The tallest tower soared black and perfect, velvet in the moonlight: the tower of prophecy. It mocked her, tall and menacing, a challenge.
Keleios squeezed the wooden cup in her hands, and it cracked, spilling the potion down her hands and forearms. Her decision was made. She would go to the tower tonight, unguarded, with nothing but her skill to protect her. Anything was better than this cowardice.
Keleios rinsed the potion from her golden bracers. The water would not rust them. They were magic and never needed polishing. Stains ran from them like the water that sparkled down them now. They were a good piece of enchantment. She half-whispered, "I am a master enchanter and master dreamer, regardless of what council says." Tonight the words seemed empty.
Three years ago she had been a master. Then she had discovered she was a sorcerer. At the age of twenty a totally new magic poured out of her hands. It was unprecedented, impossible, but true. And the Council of Seven, ruling body of Astrantha, had seen fit to strip her of master rank, until she mastered this new talent. They had sent her back to Zeln's school. She was a journeyman again, and had been for three long years.
Was one little word so very important? Did she need to be called master to be one? Keleios knelt and plunged her arms into the fountain's bowl. She splashed water on her face and gasped from the sudden cold.
The small frog dived frantically with a wet plop.
Keleios blinked up at the moon. Water trailed down her neck into the linen undershirt. She felt better, her mind cleared. These doubts were their own poison. To doubt one's magic at all was a very dangerous thing.
She wiped the water from her eyes and smoothed some of it back into the loose braid of her hair. She dried her hand on her pants. It was one of the benefits of wearing the inexpensive hide. She began gathering up her spell components.
The second moon had risen small and dim, yellow beside the white mother moon. This time of year it would be the small hours of the morning before the red moon rose.
Three moons for three faces of the great Mother, or so some of the very ancient legends said. The All-Mother was Cia, the healer, all that was good; Ardath, she who balances the scale of heaven; and Ivel, destruction incarnate and hatred made real. Astrantha and its neighbor across the sea, Meltaan, were countries that believed in all faces of the Mother equally. They called it the law of balance. If you were registered as a follower of Ivel, or one of her dark children, you could literally get away with murder.
Keleios had come to understand the law of balance but never to agree with it. There were a handful of times when Keleios had sought blood price in secret, because some acts were not to be tolerated no matter what land you lived in.
Keleios had spent much of the last three years in research. She had hunted for the reason that the goddess was one in three, three parts, but not a whole. Only the legend of how the moon had broken into three pieces seemed to hint at it. It said that the goddess had gone mad with a pain in her head. When the pain cleared, she was split asunder, and so was the moon. The legend hinted that the goddess could be healed and made one again, but it never said whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing.
Keleios had seen the moons through Zeln's telescope. They were dead rock, nothing more, worlds of shining light and shadows. Keleios found it hard to believe that the moons were tied to the goddess. She did believe that the Mother could have split the moon in a fit of anger.
Keleios laughed. "I am wasting time staring at the moons. My fear seeks to trick me." She would delay no longer. There was freedom in the decision. Now that she would go to the tower and have her dream, the fear had lessened.
She had discovered that most fears shrank when confronted. Not all fears, though. Keleois pushed the thought back before it could grow.
Keleios opened the small leather pouch at her belt. It glowed softly with enchantment. She had not made this but had purchased it in Meltaan. The pot slipped through the impossibly small opening, followed by the bowl. She scattered the remains of the wood and tossed the cracked cup off the path.
She took the simple golden ring off her right hand and placed it in the enchanted pouch also. She unlaced each of the bracers and slipped them through. They were four times as long as the pouch appeared, but they slipped out of sight. Her waist dagger and the two hidden knives followed after. Luckweaver, her short sword, lay in her room. Zeln had tried to outlaw knives in the keep, but there were too many other uses for them besides as weapons. Swords were nothing but weapons, and one must get special permission to wear them openly.
Keleios agreed with the rule in part. There were many who had carried swords who would have been alive today if they simply had been unarmed. For herself she disliked the rule, but she obeyed it.
It was not Zeln's rules that kept enchantments and weapons out of the dreaming rooms. Dreamers had been known to do themselves, or others, harm with weapons. The tower of prophecy did not like foreign magic. For whatever reason enchantments seemed to anger the tower.
Keleios herself had forgotten the ring of protection once but only once. The tower had tried to trick her into cutting off her own finger.
The opening to the leather pouch was spelled so that only her own hand could open it. Regardless of who was prophet keeper tonight, it would be safe from tampering.
She had done all she could to prepare. It was time to go to the tower. Keleios walked through the trellised arch and passed into the herb garden. The intricate beds of plants led up to the steps of Zeln's castle. Zeln the Just had once been a rich Astranthian noble, and the castle showed that, but Zeln had changed. It was from him that Keleios learned her love of simple clothing and a feel for equality of all people. Anyone could come to Zeln's school, all they had to have was talent. And every student learned what it was to do manual labor. Some of the noble children found that a very hard concept indeed. Keleios thought it was normal.
The castle towered above her in the dark. Its square shape had been designed for defense, but centuries of softer living had widened the windows and brought gardens up to the very door.
The inner corridors of the castle were darker than the summer night. Keleios paused to let her eyes adjust. She could see in the dark, like a cat, or a demon. She was demon-named Nightseer, but she still had to wait for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.
The libraries were in the center of the castle, and in the center of the libraries was the tower of prophecy. Keleios walked up the narrow, winding stair. She could taste her heart thudding in her throat. She did not want this dream.
The dreaming rooms circled an open space that held the stairs and a fireplace. Here the prophet keepers kept guard.
Eduard, the journeyman herb-witch, sat in front of the fire, knees clasped to his chest. The fire caught vague highlights in his raven-black hair. The emeralds on his tunic glimmered with green fire. The tunic was the stylish above-the-waist cut, leaving most of his lower body in nothing but green tights. His eyes were the crystalline blue of sapphires. "Keleios the Enchanter, I am honored to guard your prophecy."
The smirk on his face gave the lie to his courtesy. Eduard and Keleios had an understanding between them. He didn't like her, and she didn't like him. He was a follower of Ivel.
"Surely you do not stand guard alone, Eduard the Witch."
"My companion had to take a piss."
Keleios' face remained impassive. If he hoped to anger her with vulgarities, he would fail. If someone could provoke you to anger without good cause, they controlled you. She would never give Eduard that satisfaction again. She disliked Eduard, but he had lost the ability to anger her, and that angered him.
"Your little follower is in the dreaming rooms tonight."
Keleios knew who he meant. Alys was the youngest apprentice to ever be allowed at Zeln's school. She was five and had come plagued with nightmares that were truly powerful prophetic dreams. Whenever Alys wasn't doing chores or studies, she was tagging behind Keleios. It was sometimes bothersome to have a child in such constant attendance, but Keleios could not tell her no. The child reminded Keleios of herself at five, and you must be kind to shadows of your own child hood.
"How was she when she went in?"
He shrugged, "Nervous, but who wouldn't be? I hear the tower can eat a person's soul."
Keleios ignored his attempt to frighten her. "Is there a dreaming room open?"
"Three."
She waited, but he didn't offer to show her which were empty. "Which ones are empty, Eduard?"
He pushed himself upward with his arms and directed her to three doors. He gave a courtly bow and said, "It is your choice, my lovely coquette."
It was a nice word for slut, but that was what it meant. "Eduard, you're being childish."
It was not the reaction he had hoped for. "I will find something that will break through that calm stoic face of yours. I've heard rumors that you have a violent temper."
"When I was a child, I did. But I am no longer a child."
He caught the emphasis and his face darkened. "I will find something that bothers you."
Keleios stepped close to him; they were almost the same height. "If you ever find something to truly anger me, Eduard, it will mean a duel on the sands. And I will kill you."
He didn't move back, but his hands tightened into fists.
For a moment Keleios thought he would strike her. She let a slow smile dance on her lips. It was a mocking smile. "As you constantly remind me, I am only a journeyman. And by Astranthian law I can challenge any other journeyman to battle."
His blue eyes had gone wide. Taunting a fallen master was one thing. Fighting her on the sands was another. His anger discolored his face and made his eyes glint like hard rock, but he took a step back. "Take any of the rooms that you like."
"Thank you." She held out the leather pouch.
He took it reluctantly. "Your weapons?"
"Yes, all that I was carrying with me."
He looked perplexed then at being trusted with so much of her power.
She laughed. "Don't look so worried, Eduard. There is a spell on the opening that I think you would find less than pleasant."
"I will leave on journeyman quest this year. You think I cannot undo a simple locking spell?"
"Whoever said it was a simple locking spell?" At the puzzled look on his face, she decided to elaborate. Keleios had no desire for the young man to try the pouch and be killed. Fidelis the Witch would be angry. It was considered very impolite to kill someone's journeyman. "The pouch is easily opened, but if any but my hand open it . . . Let us say that it is an unpleasant way to die."
"You did not make this."
"No, but the guardian spell was worked into it at its making. So it can't be dispelled or disarmed. It is one with the substance of the pouch."
"There is always a way to undo a spell; that is a law of magic."
"I didn't say there wasn't."
He held the pouch awkwardly.
Keleios could read his thoughts on his face, but she knew how to make sure there wasn't an accident. "Eduard the Witch, I charge you not to open that pouch. To do so is death, so I have spoken, and now my guilt is ended."
"There really is a death spell on here, isn't there?"
"Have you ever known me to bluff?"
He shook his head and held the pouch carefully between three fingers.
Keleios was satisfied. Her weapons were safe, and she would not be explaining to Fidelis why her journeyman had been eaten.
She chose a door and pushed it open. The air was cool and dry. Through the room's only window the last rays of an orange sunset were dying. The dreaming rooms kept to a different time than the outside world.
The night blackness of Astrantha had been left behind. Some said the windows reflected dreams, but Keleios did not think so. There were many theories, but Keleios did not believe any of them. No one remembered why the builders had even given windows to the tower. It was a mystery, and that was enough. The light faded, dying in golden oblongs on the floor.
There was a rich smell through the window, like honeysuckle or the jasmine in the greenhouses, yet that wasn't it either. It was sweet and rich, and made her think of magic and hidden places. Keleios had smelled it many times but had yet to see the flower that gave off such perfume.
Dreamers were advised not to look out the windows. Keleios often did, just a glance. She had become almost familiar with the alien stars that glittered so brightly and the calls of birds that never saw Astrantha.
Tonight the dream fought for attention, and Keleios did not go to the window. The tower's magic was already beginning to work upon her. Keleios belonged to the tower until her prophecy came.
Without sight she would have known where she was. The tower of prophecy was a slow ponderous building of spells, stone by stone, death by death, prophecy by prophecy, for this tower had been one of the first built. In those long-ago days the golden Astranthians had served fiercer gods. They had killed to aid their magic; blood had gone into the tower. Dreams, especially the dreams, reflected that.
The room held only a narrow bed, a small table, a dark lamp, and a carved stone basin full of water.
Darkness had fallen on the land of the window. A velvet blackness swallowed the dreaming room.
Flint and tinder were near at hand. Perhaps through the heavy air she could have thrown a spell to light the lamp, but it was not always wise to flaunt magic in the tower. Keleios had no real need of light. She still felt attracted to it like a frightened child cheers at the dancing flames. She was Keleios Incantare, called Nightseer, and true need for light was a thing of the past.
Keleios stripped off her tunic and boots. The boots were soft brown hide with hardened soles, an elfish thing. She hated the clopping noise the new wooden heels made. Most of the hunters and scouts still wore the soft boots. Elfish boots were highly prized, and she had watched her Wrythian cousins make them. Even a human could make them, if he knew the techniques, but Keleios, like all Wrythians, enjoyed keeping a secret.
She undid the single braid that held her hair back. It came free in a wavy mass, and she ran her fingers through it briefly.
Keleios slipped between the sheets and almost immediately felt the tower's need. She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling, trying to fight the pull of sleep. The magic was too strong. Her eyelids began to close; the need for sleep was a terribly physical thing. She fought it until she was nauseous and her head ached. Sleep pulled her under and the sickness vanished.
Images flashed in her mind: vivid colors, feelings, dreams demanding that she enter, but they were old dreams, memories of people long gone. Keleios evaded them with long-practiced ease. It was her own dream that she had come to find, not someone else's outdated prophecy.
The true dream that she had come to find began quietly with memories like all dreams. Master Poula, teacher of herbs and prophecy at the school, was walking down the hallway that led across the front of the keep. And in the way of dreams the figure changed to other faces that Keleios knew. It was Alys, the school's youngest prophet, whom Keleios comforted when she cried from homesickness. It was apprentice Melandra, she with the scarred face and the timid heart. Keleios had more or less adopted the frightened girl, the younger sister that Keleios had never had. Keleios knew that someday Melandra would be a great enchanter, but Melandra did not know it yet. Face after face flowed through the dream, all walking down the hall toward the windows that looked out over the courtyard. The fear began.
It gripped her chest until she fought to breathe at all. It was Belor, her friend since childhood and the keep's greatest illusionist, who turned to the windows. One window was filled with darkness. A silver light that wasn't light shone round the blackness.
"No!" Keleios fought the dream. Against all her training, she tried to change the dream, but prophecy cannot be changed. Belor could not step into the darkness, for if he did, he would die. It was Feltan, the peasant child Keleios herself had brought to the keep for training, who fell through the window into the dark, his small body swept away.
Something else was in the darkness, someone standing. Fidelis the Witch, teacher of herbs and illusion at the school, and follower of the dark gods, stood wrapped in black. A bloody dagger slipped from her hand and fell winking in the dark like a fading star. The walls of the keep stood in the dark, and someone walked atop them, a tall woman dressed in grey. Keleios knew who would turn to face her. Harque strode the walls of the school. That wall began to crumble. Harque turned her back and threw her hands skyward. When she turned to face Keleios again it was Fidelis who stood on the crumbling wall. The wall blew inward, spraying rock into the growing darkness. The dream faded.
Chaos came.
Keleios found herself in a place she had never dteamt of, never imagined. She was surrounded by notnihg, and something. Colors half-sensed wove through shades of grey. Forms twisted into shapes that could only be half-remembered. She was standing, but there was nothing to stand on, nothing to hold to, nothing. Keleios screamed and fell to her knees, covering her eyes. If this had been a dream, she might have been unable to move, but it was not a dream.
She knelt, screaming until her throat burned and her voice sounded ragged. Tears were streaming down her face, and she had not even known she was crying.
There was a whisper of sound, but Keleios did not search for it. She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes until white flowers exploded against her closed lids. The whisper became a word, then another. The sound was as if many sighs had been sewn together into one voice, the faintest of sounds, the barest of humanity left in it.
"A prophet, a prophet, look upon us, prophet. See what you shall become."
Keleios ignored the summons, praying to Urle, god of prophecy. She concentrated on the prayer, each word important, each syllable a shield against the madness. "Urle, god of good dreams, god of favored prophecy, aid me, your child. A prophet cries to you for help. A prophet cries to you in great need. Hear me, Urle, god of the forge, hear me, and do not leave me desolate. Help your prophet child." Keleios recited the ancient prayer over and over until the hissing sighs became quiet screams.
"Hear us, prophet. You must obey. Look up at us and see true power. We who have gone before you command you to look up; look upon us."
Keleios stumbled over the words; her tongue seemed to forget how to form them. It was an effort to remember, an effort to cover her eyes, an effort not to look up.
Keleios knew what it was: a phantasm, an eater of souls. Thev preyed upon dream prophets and were minions of the Grey Lady herself, goddess of evil dreams and treachery. They were attracted to dark prophecy like vultures to the newly dead.
The prayer to Urle had died on her lips. She could not think of it anymore. There was something that kept phantasms out of the tower. She knew what it was. She knew, but she could not think.
The sighing voices whispered, "Prophet, prophet, look upon us. You cannot escape this place, and you cannot survive in this place. Look up and end your suffering."
Keleios found herself rising to her knees, eyes still pressed shut. She spoke to it, "No, no." She sat back down, hiding her eyes against her knees. It was said that one glance at a phantasm and sanity was snuffed like a candle, one's soul ripped away. So alien were they that only a glance was needed. Keleios fought not to give that glance.
How were the phantasms kept from the tower? She had known the answer only minutes before, but she could not think. Sorcery, something of sorcery, yes. A symbol of sorcery.
"Prophet, hear us. You cannot escape. You are ours. Do not torment yourself. Give up and you shall be free of all cares."
Sorcery, a symbol, a symbol . . . of law. Phantasms are kept out by a symbol of law. Every apprentice dreamer knew that. The symbol of law was replaced every day, but someone had taken the symbol. Someone had opened the tower to the phantasm, and she was helpless.
"No." There had to be a way.
"Little prophet, aren't you tired yet? Don't you weary of this game?"
She screamed at it, voice breaking, "Shut up!"
"In dream you have power, but we are not a dream to be shaped and controlled. We are not prophecy to vanish when complete. We are your destiny. You are to join with us. You shall be power with us."
Power, that was it, power. She was a sorcerer now, and sorcery made the symbol of law. She didn't know how to wield the symbols of making yet. The symbols were high sorcery, beyond a journeyman, beyond Keleios, unless . . . unless it was like any other sorcery: Once she formed an image in her mind, knew its name, and was unafraid of it, then the power was hers. To hesitate was to be worse than dead. If she called it and couldn't control it, then she would die cleanly and cheat the soul-eater.
Without thinking more, she called it. She stood, eyes closed, hands out in front of her, the whispers gone distant, that neck-ruffling flash of power that was sorcery sweeping through her, but stronger until she could not breathe, waiting for power to level off, waiting for it to be controlled. The magic swelled until Keleios thought that her skin would burst with light and power.
The phantasm shrieked, "What is that, what is that? Dirty thing, filthy thing, take it away! Take it away!"
The radiance beat against her closed eyelids, forming red shadows. Her entire body tingled with the nearness of so powerful a sorcery. She drew a shaky breath and opened her eyes carefully, a slit at a time. The symbol hung just in front of her eyes, beautiful in its straight lines, its simplicity. She could see nothing else but the shining of it.
The phantasm called just beyond its glowing circle. "Prophet, prophet, hear me. Cast that thing aside. Join with us. Free yourself of that frail shell and become as one with us."
Keleios stared at the symbol of law, reading its power and understanding some of it, and she understood something that her teachers had not told her. They had said that no journeyman had the strength to call a symbol, but that was a lie. Any sorcerer could call them, but very few could deal with them. She had called the symbol to herself, but its power overwhelmed her. She was but an empty shell before it, waiting for its command. So quickly and so completely was she possessed that Keleios did not even have time to be afraid.
Keleios heard herself speak, but it was not her choice. "Here me, Methostos, third of three. By true name, by sorcery, word, will, and gesture, I cast you out, I close this tower to you."
The thing shrieked. Against the blaze of the magic she was blind; the symbol flared yet brighter, feeding off the phantasm's pain.
As the phantasm vanished in distant screams, the symbol of law left also, burning after images in her eyes. Keleios was blessed that the symbol of law was not a greedy rune. There were other symbols that would have kept what they had touched.