The earth follows the red, and the air takes the silver, spinning him higher.
He laughs in the dream, and in the bed, Shipwright laughs too, as she feels his chest twitch. This is new. There is usually little joy in Shroudweaver’s dreams. But she does not see what he sees, the vast unrolling of the land, the shadows of forests and the blue cut of rivers, the black sink of the Midland swamps and the smudged trees of the Burner’s groves.
The earth’s song holds here, for he cradles the earth in his red right hand. Dark clods and red threads. The sky’s song joins it, and for a second, his heart feels light. He is a boy again. Beneath the Aestering grove, watching birches dance in the summer light. He relaxes, and the dream has him.
The land unspools below him. He can see the scars on it. He does not look south, he cannot, but even here the earth has seen too much. Not just the wars of Thell’s rebellion, but the smaller conflicts before and between. The bladedrinkers. Thriceflower. The land is green with grass and the grass is thick with barrows.
He is pulled faster in the dream. Northwards, with the song of the wind. He is a brother to geese and swans. Smooth, wild cuts of feather and noise barrelling through the stripped clouds.
He is pulled northwards, along what were once pilgrim roads, over the ruins of towns that held temples, market squares scoured empty, nursing only ash and mangy dogs.
Further north still, the grey of the air falling to blue with ice, and then purple with the growing cold. The shadow of mountains stretching over the land.
And here the towns are small things, and at their heart there are shrines, cold and empty. No candles, no meat, no offerings. The people left living in the shadow of the Barrowlands draw close to each other as darkness falls, and leave their shrines to the night, stroked by the calls of owls.
The scholars of the Glass Archive will have you know that every dream is a wealth of symbols, and that the body crawls through their meanings as the evening unravels.
The Shroudweaver would instead tell you this, were he awake: your soul will go where it is needed, pulled and bound.
By the time he realises where he is headed, it is too late. His dream-self greets it with fatalism, folding his body into the curve of the wind, and plunging downwards.
Sleet licks his skin, and the mountains open up to take him.
The land outside of Thell much as he remembers. Scattered now with cattle-fold and firepit, a few smaller, softer signs of life.
Thell remains the same. This Thell, which his mind has built. A composite of memory, and map ink. A dark line that cuts the sky like an absence. The white light of glaciers hanging on its far edge, like the whole chain of mountains might be a mouth waiting to unveil sharper teeth.
His mind does not panic, but his body does. In that thin tower cot, Shipwright grumbles as his ankles kick, and his brow sweats. Resignedly, she pours water from a pitcher, straightens the covers, sips.
Here, in the Thell of times gone, Shroudweaver falls towards the heart of it all – the Stump. Rock piled upon stone, battlements and hollow windows, and the flicker of red flags, bright tongues of flame in the dark.
The threads he holds unravel. The wind takes them.
He falls lower. The great escarpments loom, socketed and waiting. There is an impression of armour, of spears, but the dream does not care for this.
Instead, he falls towards a brazier that gutters against the cold. That spits as the sleet falls into the flame. As night pushes against the light, again and again.
The figure at the brazier is hooded, wrapped in rags of red and yellow. They smile, and the movement cuts the shadow of their face.
‘Weaver.’ A familiar voice; a familiar hand that passes a cup of spiced cider, thick and wild on the tongue.
‘You’re dreaming, Weaver.’
Shroudweaver answers in the voice of geese, of the snow.
The figure laughs. ‘Oh dear. You’rereallydreaming’.
Shroudweaver answers in the song of the land. His hands scatter threads of red and silver into the flame.
The figure adjusts its robes, scratches its side. ‘I think this is supposed to be a prophecy, Shroud.’ They shrug. ‘Of course, it’s broken. Because the gods are dead.’
They scratch their ribs again, and the brazier flares. ‘You’re trying to dream a way to stop the godkiller, Weaver.’ The figure leans in, cloves and spice on their breath. ‘You’re trying to save your daughter while you sweat your skin off in a Hesper bed.’
Shroudweaver answers in the bark of a fox, juddering out of his jaw.
The figure by the fire starts. ‘Hm. Let’s sort this before it gets any worse. Do you want an omen?’
Shroudweaver does not answer. The ice is dancing on his skin in patterns of silver flame.
