So it was with considerable relief that she answered the peremptory summons. As she approached Master Zoltan’s office, however, nerves struck. He should have asked her to come to the oneiromancy studio to finish her training. Unless he’d discovered she’d been physically walking the Dream without his permission and supervision and planned to withhold his final stamp of approval as punishment?
He sat in his office, as gloomily lit as his nature, apparently meditating. He opened his eyes and raised his brows at her knock on the doorframe. “I apologize for disturbing you, Master Zoltan,” she said. “You sent for me?”
“Yes.” He gestured to the chair before his desk. “Sit. Close the door behind you.” He waited for her to comply. “I understand you’ve made the decision to marry the pretty young prince and join Soren’s court and that you’ll be departing very soon.”
“Yes,” she answered, feeling like she should say more, but unwilling to speak the lie.
He sighed. “So few of our graduates stay for the actual graduation ceremony, so eager are the powers in the world to lay claim to them. It’s too bad, really.”
Rose nodded, not having strong feelings about the graduation ceremony, which was good, as she wouldn’t be able to attend regardless. Thorn could, in her place, she supposed. It surprised her a little that Master Zoltan cared about something so relatively meaningless.
“I see that Adsila remains ever by your side,” Zoltan observed.
Rose caressed the kestrel’s breast. “Yes,” she said again, unsure where his apparently idle small talk was headed. She wanted to ask about the certification, but it felt rude to presume.
“Have you determined the significance of the goddess awarding you the companionship of her avatar?” he asked. His tone made the question sound like an exam, not at all curiosity.
Rose had ideas there, but she hardly wished to expose her secrets, and Thorn’s. “Can any of us claim to understand the intention of a deity?”
The oneiromancy professor gave her a disgusted look. “Don’t presume to dissemble with me, young sorceress. Unless you’re more obtuse than I believe and you’ve not yet realized the import of what happened when you first physically walked the Dream, which is also when Adsila attached itself to you.”
Rose froze in place, uncertain what Master Zoltan had discerned.
He narrowed his eyes at her arrested expression. “So youhaverealized and thought to hide it from me. Not entirely foolish of you. Should anyone else realize what you are, it would likely not go well for you. It has occurred to me that the responsible action for me to take would be to banish you back into the Dream myself and seal you there forever. It is where you belong, isn’t it? Creatures of the Dream should not be allowed to exist long in the waking world. It upsets the balance of things.”
Rose, her mouth dry with fear that he might do that verything—and that she might not be able to fight it—considered her next words carefully. “Why didn’t you do so immediately?”
He dipped his chin as if she’d given a satisfactory answer. “At least you don’t attempt to prevaricate. I will answer your question and then you will answer mine. In the first place, I did not act immediately because I was uncertain of what I’d witnessed. That you are a creature made entirely of the Dream instead of a human being is unprecedented. I checked,” he added drily. “It should be impossible.”
That verified her own research.
“Tell me, have you always known?”
She answered honestly. “No. I only recently discovered this. Around the same time you did.”
He rolled his gaze toward the shadowed ceiling. “I presume you know how this came to be? Don’t tell me,” he cautioned before she could speak. “I don’t believe I want or need to know. Should I change my mind, I’ll inform you and you will confide what I wish to know, on pain of exposure and/or banishment to the Dream.”
Nothing like a little extortion—though it occurred to Rose that he’d have to find her first.
“It also occurred to me that an oneiromancer had to create you and that there is only one oneiromancer in all the world that I know of who possesses the power and skill to make what is an apparently fully realized human being from the Dream. That person is the sorceress Oneira. I didn’t believe that shewouldcommit such a monstrous act, but only that shecould. So, I paid her a visit in the sanctity of her retirement, in the home she built in the middle of nowhere. Yes, of course I’d heard she disappeared, but I thought I might find her there anyway.”
“A trick,” Rose said, but then Oneira’s companions wouldn’t have left her.
“Oneira was not there, however. Or rather, her body lies within the home she built, but she no longer occupies it.” Heraised his brows at Rose. “I taught you well enough that you must perceive the implications of such a situation.”
“She went into the Dream,” Rose answered as neutrally as possible.
“Indeed. To my vast surprise and interest, the sorcerer Stearanos had also deposited his unoccupied body nearby. Thus I sought out a gentleman named James who served as secretary to the sorcerer Stearanos. He was able to explain that Oneira’s action is less mysterious than anyone thought,” Zoltan continued with real anger and disappointment. “In some fit of self-castigation, Oneira punished herself with this impetuous exile into the Dream. Stearanos, the fool—his erstwhile secretary and I agree on that point—went into the Dream after her, apparently with some deluded, romantic idea of saving her.”
“Is Stearanos an oneiromancer?” Rose asked in surprise. She’d never heard of him mentioned as one of their rare set.
“No.” Zoltan shook his head. “I can’t imagine what he was thinking.”
It was exactly the sort of noble gesture that occurred in heroic tales, and she found it deeply moving. She nevertheless envied the kind of devotion embodied in such an act. She wished there could be someone who cared for her that much. Not a desire an inhuman Dream creature should have, but… “Maybe he was thinking that he loved her and would rather die trying to bring her back than live without her.”
Zoltan snorted in disgust. “Love. Guilt. Worthless emotions. He will be utterly lost, but Oneira may yet survive this ridiculous exercise in self-excoriation.” He pointed at her. “Thisis why I have chosen to spare you, if only for the time being. You are the only oneiromancer in existence with any hope of retrieving Oneira. I am charging you with her rescue.”
“Me?” Her mind whirled. It rather startled her as she’d been contemplating this exact thing, although with no idea how to do it.
