Page 43 of Tides of Shadows

“Hey,” he said softly. “It’s done.”

We stood like that for a moment, in silence. The stream whispered beside us, and in the distance the birds returned to their branches, as if nothing had befallen this place.

“All my life I trained,” I said at last, voice rough. “But I had never faced a nightmare like that.”

“I know.” He looked aside, as if weighing matters. “Come. I will see you safely to the palace. Then I will summon the guards. The bodies must be burned, and the patrols in the city doubled”

I sheathed my knife. We took the road together toward the keep. Neither of us spoke, yet the silence bore a new weight, the thick knowledge that the world had shifted while we watched.

That night brought me no rest. The dream took me as soon as sleep touched my eyes. I ran through the forest. Darkness lay thick as pitch. All around I heard snapping boughs and the growl of throats. Red eyes flamed in the black, dozens of pairs that marked every step I took. They hunted me in packs, swifter, nearer, relentless.

I broke onto a glade. By night it seemed a foreign land, ringed by a wall of black trees. I stood there, gasping, and the eyes burned from every side, like coals in the deep.

Then he came.

A figure of a man stepped out of the dark. Tall, young and slender. His hair fell across his brow, black as obsidian. His skin was so pale it seemed to carry its own cold light. His face was boyish, almost innocent.

Clad all in black, he moved with an untroubled calm, and the hint of a smile touched his mouth as he began to circle me.

I wished to move, to flee, to do anything at all. I could not. It was as if roots from the trees had wound around my feet and held me fast.

He came closer. Our eyes met. His were near to black, bottomless, without end. However, I felt no fear. Not like I felt with the wolves. There was something different about him. Something that made me keep staring at him.

He smiled gently. He lifted a hand and set back a stray lock that had fallen across my cheek. The gesture was so intimate that I forgot to breathe.

“Powerful. Beautiful. Unconquered. Water itself,” he said, his voice rough, thick with desire. “I cannot wait until we meet.”

Then he was gone.

With him the dream was torn away, and I woke alone, heart pounding, chilled by the thought that this had been no common nightmare.

The next day the dream still haunted me. It had not been like an ordinary nightmare. I had felt it in my bones. Was I beginning to lose my senses like my mother?

The thoughts of plague and the man in black didn’t leave my mind. I decided to go to the palace’s library to see the ancient scrolls with my own eyes. The ones that bore images of gods and Plague.

In the Dominium, gods had never been worshiped with the fervor known in other lands. The temples I had seen stood silent and dust-laden, their stone altars veiled in moss, abandoned by the faithful. The gods had no names or faces here, they were the presence, the power.

The grand palace library astonished me. It was vast and, to my surprise, open to all. Cool air drifted through the aisles, heavy with the scent of parchment and age. A stooped librarian with sharp features studied me in silence before guiding me toward shelves he called the ancient volumes.

I began to read. Myths and legends blended together. Stories of monsters devouring villages, warriors of the elements standing against them with blades forged of pure palladium. The further back I read, the less coherent the texts became. Words broke apart, replaced by strange symbols, fragments of forgotten tongues.

I heard quiet shuffling and saw lord Iskareth’s back leaving the library. Suddenly I heard beside me:

“You won’t find what you’re looking for here.”

Dricus emerged from the shadows.

We looked at each other. I remembered the fire he awakened in my body. I pushed those thoughts away as quickly as possible.

“How do you know what I look for?” I asked.

“Come with me.” He said it and turned toward the library exit. He didn’t look back to see if I was following. He knew I would.

“So,” I said as I fell into step beside him. “You and Iskareth?”

“His lands lie closest to mine. He understands the danger well enough. Cassandra is losing control. The Dominium is losing its authority, and the Gathering means nothing anymore.”

I had never seen him so unsettled. Dricus was usually calm and unbothered.