I can’t remember.That’s a bad sign.
“It’s him,” Stan said, grimly.“But, Father Grigori…”
“Spit it out,” an Elder in braces, jeans, and a natty dark leather jacket said, softly.“We still have patrols to run tonight.”
“All in good time, Tannis.”Grigori gazed at Stan, but it would be foolish in the extreme to think he wasn’t fully aware of—and prepared to handle—Erik’s capacity for violence.“What is it, Stanley?”
“It’s him, without a doubt.”There was a time when Stan would have rolled his eyes at being calledStanley; now he just shook his head slightly.“But he and his entire trio were reported dead over a decade ago.”
What the hell?Erik might have said something, but another Father, this one with a deep, ugly scar down the left side of his face—a bad wound, healing slowly despite closeness tolirai—stepped closer.“Peace,” the man breathed, the collective sorcerous force of the Sons all around channeled for a bare, stinging moment.
The world fell away on a tide of thick darkness, and the only mercy was that there were no dreams.
* * *
He surfaced briefly when they clipped him, naked and shivering uncontrollably with need, into the restraints.The Truth Chamber wasn’t a place any Son liked to visit; the light was bright, the stainless steel tables along one wall were chilly, and the apparatus in its center was a confection of spun metal and whipped-cream glass, dreamstones—each one retrieved and set in the old way—glowing along its spines, a beautiful mosaic.
There was aliraithere, too, but not the one he wanted.There was something very important Erik had to remember, as he was carried—not violently, but not with the care they’d handle a Dreamer—to the apparatus and buckled in.
They would never subject a precious, irreplaceable Dreamer to this.
Theliraiwas a slim dark young man with bright hazel eyes and a shock of floppy chestnut hair, his hands—a little too big for his wrists, he hadn’t finished growing when he’d met the Flame—clasped before him.He wore a blue T-shirt with a red and white shield on the front, the star in its center wavering slightly as cloth moved, and the setting of hisoneiroswasn’t bulky as the one Erik had made.It was finer, more delicate, probably a Younger’s work.
That was what he’d forgotten, and Erik began to struggle, knowing he shouldn’t but helpless not to.Where is she?Is she hurt?
“It’s all right,” theliraisaid, a soft, easy tenor.The peace flowing from the words enfolded him, but Erik continued to twist and jerk, the table’s dreamstones lighting with a rill of bright, undeniable power.“Everything’s fine, I’m just going to take a look.You’re okay.”
“My lord?”Grigori plainly wanted to tell him to get on with it, but you didn’t hurry alirai.
“I know,” the Dreamer said, his gentle tone never altering.“I just wish this wasn’t so hard on you guys.”He stepped forward, and the shadows around him did too.He had two full trios, but it was the Younger on the right who touched the Dreamer’s shoulder with two fingers, silently offering comfort.
Probably sealed.Where is she?Is she all right?Traitor could be anywhere.What had Stan said?
Declared dead over a decade ago.But they still received gear and funding, they still ran patrols, and Ignatius was still in contact with a control liaison.
Thelirainodded, stepped forward once more.His gaze turned distant, and other shadows against that warm, forgiving light were Sons closing in to protect him if Erik had been stuffed full of venom and sent by an old, foul intelligence.
Bait on the hook.
“Lirai,” he gasped.“Mylirai.”
The Dreamer glanced at Grigori.“Is he…?”
“Unlikely.”The Father shrugged, spreading his hands.“The young lady is active, she has anoneiros—fine work, really—and Lady Sara says she’s recently been in the Flame.They’re caring for her now, but she’s a little?—”
Erik surged against the restraints.The whole room rattled and the Sons tensed, ripples running through preternaturally strong flesh.The light didn’t dim, electric glow like a honeyed summer afternoon.“Lirai,” he heard himself moan, helplessly.
“Erik?”The Dreamer’s voice took on fresh, sonorous depth.The stones along the arms and studding the base of the table would add to his force, channel and filter it—and impede anything Erik might throw at him, too.Or anything had been set inside a Son’s flesh and bone and breath, snuck through a temple’s protections to strike at those the Mad God hated most.
It didn’t matter that Erik was innocent—or that he thought he was.He had to endure, before he could rest.
Always.First came the suffering, and afterward a breather if you were lucky.
If you weren’t, well…
The pain arrived, a spiked wave tearing and digging through his skull.It wasn’t as bad as the mark, his essential self torn free of his body and hung upside down, the sleeping world vibrating underneath him as glowing cities—some transient, lasting only a mortal night while a normal slept in the grip of humanity’s most ancient magic, others eternal, full of cathedrals and avenues added to by generations of Dreamers—spun and slid fast as wet ink upon a greased plate.
It certainly wasn’t as bad as the glimpses of the Mad God’s home, cyclopean blocks of stone quarried from unspeakable cliffs and hauled with much suffering before being lifted by invisible, bleeding fingers and rammed together to make a whole of geometry no mortal mind could stand, with the black tower in its middle and the yellow gleam at its top?—
