WHO TOLD YOU THAT?
The voice whispered through the darkness, sharp and accusatory. He looked around and found himself in the stone gardens of the Ashenell. Massive sepulchres and blocky vaults cast their shadows over a forest of smaller markers. The night was quiet, a shroud over the graves of the dead. Yet a voice had spoken to him.
He saw Erisha then, standing less than ten feet away, her clothing torn and bloodied, her slender white throat sliced open to the bone. She stood solitary and ethereal in death, cast out into the Void by the loss of her life. She looked at him and tried to speak, but no words came.
Erisha, he said. I’m sorry.
She tried again to speak, and again she failed.
Who told you that?
The voice again. Not her voice, but another’s. He searched for the speaker and found him standing close to the girl. Old Culph, his grizzled face and gnarled body unchanged from life. Yet he was a ghost, too. The boy could see it in the translucence that radiated from him, in the way the starlight shone through him.
He could see it in the silhouette of his bones through his skin.
The old man was grinning, his lips curled in disdain, his sharp old eyes fixed and staring.
Who told you that?
Kirisin did not understand. Told him what? What was the old man talking about? The demon, he corrected. What was the demon saying?
He looked again at Erisha, who did not seem to see the demon. She was speaking once more, but still no words would come. Her mouth opened and closed, and there were tears in her eyes.
Then a third figure appeared, cloaked and hooded, dark and forbidding, hovering back in the deep shadows at the edge of his vision. A wraith, perhaps. But no, not this one. This one was alive, was of flesh and blood. It stared at him from out of the folds of the hood, and while he could not make out its features, he could feel its gaze.
Kirisin started toward it, and the ground seemed to give way beneath his feet. Suddenly he was falling, pitching forward into blackness, leaving Erisha and Culph and the Ashenell behind.
Only the dark figure stayed with him, one hand reaching. Its voice hissed in warning.
Who told you that?
KIRISIN’S EYES SNAPPED OPEN, and his slumped body jerked upright. He had been dreaming. Daydreaming perhaps, but maybe something more, something deeper. A vision? He couldn’t be sure. He wet his lips and stared out into the sun-drenched day. How much time had passed? Only moments, it seemed. But then he looked at the sky and saw that the sun had moved far to the west. He had been sleeping or daydreaming or whatever it was for hours.
And what had the dream been about?
Who told you that?
The words echoed faintly in his memory, vaguely recognizable, and for a moment he almost had a grip on their origin. But then the link faltered, and his grip was gone. He tried to regain it and failed. For the moment, it was lost to him.
But not forgotten. At some point, he would remember.
He sat quiet and unmoving for a long time, coming back to himself in bits and pieces. The dream had disturbed him in a way that transcended his memory of the images or even the words. It was the feel of it, the way it pressed down on him like an oppressive weight. It was also in his recognition that it meant something that he could not decipher.
What had prompted the dream?
Simralin woke. Her eyes blinked at him, and she smiled. “Time to set out again, Little K. Are you ready?”
He smiled back, cold inside. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
They drew out the air bag and refastened its lines to the basket. Then Simralin engaged the blower and began filling the bag anew. As she did so, she glanced over to where her brother sat staring into space. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Well, maybe nothing. I dozed off and had a dream of sorts. About the Ashenell and Erisha and Culph. It was disturbing. Still is, thinking about it.”
“Well, try not to think about it, then. Dreams have a way of mirroring our doubts and fears. They suggest things that might be true, but usually aren’t.” She waited a moment for his response. When he failed to give it, she said, “Want something to eat?”