Prologue
Some say time is a river, driving the world on its powerful current. It is not. It is a stream, moving slowly so one can see where one is and how one has gotten there. Each person has chances to float on the passage of a minute or an hour, contemplating mistakes made and victories won. The stream offers glimpses of the future—tantalizing and baffling. Sunlight and shadow dapple its waters in a puzzling pattern that is clear only in retrospect.One can become caught in an eddy, an eternal whirlpool where there is no forward or backward. Only an unending spinning where all is seen and nothing understood. There, salvation can only be found within the singing of true dreams.
— From The Dreamsong Chronicles of Durgan Ketassian
One
Dariana heard music that was not truly music. It swirled around her, as powerful as her father’s hugs and as joyous as her squeals of laughter when he used to pick her up and throw her into the air, always catching her. Every time he returned home, her father would toss her and twirl her about, and she would know that everything was all right. He had never let on how dangerous his latest journey had been or how many had died trying to win back Gayome from the invading Elasians. Nor had he let her see his grief at the loss of even one life.
Now, as she let the music of his dreamsong enfold her, she saw her father and mother. The passing seasons had not lessened the strength of Durgan Ketassian’s arm or his determination to see Gayome free once more. Nor had time dimmed the glorious silver of her mother Nerienne’s hair or her vow to serve Gayome well as its ruler, the Tiria.
In the dreamsong being sung by her father, with the help of his lap lyre, it was as if Dariana stood with her parents. She saw her father’s red hair and her mother’s bright blue eyes, eyes that she had inherited.
"How do you fare on the first day of your sojourn to the Hollow River?" asked her father. His voice always sounded familiar and yet, somehow, different when he sang for her, his music reaching across leagues.
"Our journey has gone well," she said, her own voice seeming to lilt on the music that could not be explained, only experienced. She had pestered him with endless questions about dreamsinging when she was a child, for she longed to sing as he did. She had come to accept that only a dreamsinger could truly understand the music that made pictures and scenes out of dreams. "We should reach the Hollow River within a nineday."
She smiled at her friends who stood beside her in the dreamsong, although, in reality, she knew they were sleeping beside her in the forest, a day’s journey from the chamber where the dreamsong had brought them. She had traveled often with Lajila Tocho and Trey Wyborn, who had been born within a few seasons of her. First, they had been playmates, then had shared the same teachers. Now they were allied in hopes of keeping Gayome safe from further invasions.
"Good," her father said. "Have you seen any sign of—"
The dreamsong ended abruptly in mid-note. Silence, then a whisper—First Daughter.
Dariana sat up, awakened from the dreamsong. She scanned the trees edging the clearing. They were almost lost in the darkness, for the fire had burned to embers.
What had happened to her father’s dreamsong? She had been about to report to him that she, Lajila, and Trey had seen no sign of any intruders. When they reached the Hollow River, she intended to make her parents proud of her by negotiating a new trade agreement. She wanted to be a worthy first-born daughter of Gayome’s rightful leaders.
First Daughter.
Who was calling her? She had never heard that soft voice, either awake or asleep.
A moan came from across the fire, and she looked toward her companions. Their forms were flickering like a lamp’s flame in a high wind. Black lines cut through them, as if the dark night were consuming pieces of them.
"Trey! Lajila!" she cried. "Trey, are you caught in a swallowing space?" Like his father, Trey could bring forth the portals that led from one place to another distant one. But she had never seen a swallowing space like this.
Intent on reaching her friends, Dariana tried to move but could not. Her mind commanded her legs, but they were unable to obey.
"Help us!" she shouted. Her plea disintegrated into the night as if she were calling into a bottomless well.
The strips of darkness widened along Trey and Lajila’s bodies. Trey’s eyes opened, and she saw horror within them. His mouth worked, but no sound came out. Did he know what was happening to him?
First Daughter.
That unfamiliar voice again! Chills raced up and down her, and she shuddered. As she did, she discovered she was able to move.
Crawling with difficulty across the damp ground, she put her hand on Trey’s shoulder. He was quivering. She pushed back his dark hair to touch his forehead, wondering if he was ill. But no sickness she knew of made a person’s body vanish.
By the Eldest Ones! What was happening?
"Trey, hold on!" Keeping her hand on his arm, she looked at Lajila, whose disintegration was even more advanced, her form disappearing in ever-widening patches. Even though her friend was deaf and could not hear her, Dariana urged, "Hold on, Lajila!" She wondered if Lajila was shifting her shape, a skill she had inherited from her parents, Hyndla Shenvirl and Runolf Tocho. But that would not account for Trey’s condition. . . .
Placing her free hand on Lajila’s shoulder to get her attention, she shrieked in agony as ice and fire exploded through her. Her hand jerked back, and Lajila was gone. Not changed, but gone.
"No!" Dariana tightened her hold on Trey, but there was nothing to hold. He had disappeared, too.
She shouted her friends’ names but got no answer. She jumped to her feet, then immediately sank back to the ground as her knees folded beneath her. Whatever had prevented her from moving had been as powerful as a forest cat, and it had weakened her.
Stumbling to her feet, she put her hand on the nearest tree to keep from falling. "Trey! Lajila!" she called again. "Where are you?"
Only silence. She was alone in the clearing. Even stranger, as her panicked gaze searched the area around the glowing coals of the camp fire, she saw no sign of her friends’ blankets or packs. Nor were there any footprints but hers in the loose soil. It was as if she had been traveling alone.
By the First Dream, what happened?
She ran her hand along the tree’s bark. Its commonplace scratch across her palm told her that she was not dead. Unless the place beyond death was so like the living world that she could not tell the difference.
Father! she called as she searched her mind, seeking his shattered dreamsong. But no remnants of the music, which was not truly a dream or a song, remained.
Never had his dreamsong ended so suddenly. It obviously had been cut short. Had he stopped singing to confront some danger? Her father had been gifted with the rare skill to sing dreams that both connected him to others and offered him a peek at the future. She was certain that if he could have, he would have begun his dreamsong anew by now. She wished she could reach out to him in the same way and knew he had hoped she would have inherited his gift, even though no First Daughter ever had been a dreamsinger. She had hated disappointing him—never more so than at that moment.
Dariana stared at the place her friends had been lying on their blankets. People did not simply evaporate. Had they been taken someplace else? Or were they . . . she cringed at the possibility . . . dead?
Whatever force had caused them to disappear might be a new threat against Gayome. The Elasians, who had invaded Gayome before she was born, had remained within their own borders for the past decade. Were they again trying to claim what belonged to her mother, the Tiria, as it had belonged to every Tiria back to the Beginnings? Or had a new enemy stepped in to take their place?
As her mother’s successor, it was her duty to protect the Tiria, but how could she when she had no idea what had occurred?
No one, not even her mother, understood how uncomfortable Dariana was to have been named the First Daughter. It was an honor she gladly would have given to any of her three sisters, all of whom were more deserving than she. They often saw what needed to be done more clearly than she did, and she wished they were here now.
But they were not here. And she was not going to find answers staring at the bare ground. She must return to the hide-house, where her parents and their allies lived. Something had happened, something terrible, and she needed to let her mother and father know. They would know what to do. They always did.
She looked at the sky, just visible through the canopy of leaves overhead. Dawn would be breaking soon.
As she repacked her supplies, hastily stuffing her blanket into her pack, Dariana tried not to think about what she might find at the hide-house. When she had doused the fire and was ready to go, she lifted the pack, settling it on her shoulder. She checked that it was not resting on the silver-strand that held the lifestones, which she had worn since being named First Daughter.
They were gone.
Horrified, she looked quickly about her. Had someone skulked close to the fire and taken them while she was in the dreamsong? No, that was impossible. Anyone who touched the lifestones would be dead before taking a single step, for only the First Daughter could handle them and live.
She tore open her pack and yanked out the blanket. Shaking it, she saw nothing but dirt and bits of leaves fall from it. On her knees, she searched the ground where she had been sleeping but to no avail.
The lifestones were gone.
Sinking onto her heels, she hid her face in her hands. How could she have been so careless? The lifestones had been entrusted to her to keep until she could pass them to her own First Daughter.
First Daughter.
She looked up.
First Daughter.
Anguish rushed through her. Devastating, hopeless anguish.
"Who is it?" she called. "Who are you? Do you know what happened?"
As before, she got no answer.
She was wasting time. Something horrible was going on. Her father’s dreamsong had ended in mid-sentence, Trey and Lajila had vanished, and her mother’s lifestones were gone. She had to find out why.
Coming to her feet, Dariana grabbed her blanket and shoved it into her pack again, then hooked her swordbelt around her waist and started walking. The gray of dawn colored the sky above the mountains ringing Gayome, granting her some light. She watched the ground, hoping she would chance upon the lifestones while retracing her steps to the hide-house.
The sun rose, but still she did not see the sparkle of the lifestones’ silver-strand as she had hoped she might. Several times she was fooled by dew glistening on grass. Each time, she reached down, then straightened with nothing more than a wet hand.
Dariana held herself back from running when she saw the walls of the hide-house among the trees surrounding it. The house was cleverly disguised to look like a part of the forest. A traveler who did not know it was there could pass without seeing it. She had been born there, making it easy for her to find it, yet as she approached, she felt a strange need for caution.
Still, despite her growing anxiety, her steps quickened when she emerged from the trees into the shadow of the wall. She had been eager to travel to the Hollow River, but she was even more pleased to be home. She wanted to assure herself that the one fear she had not been able to voice—that something abominable had happened to her family—was groundless.
"Halt!" called a man standing by the gate. "Who goes there?"
Dariana frowned. She was known to everyone in the hide-house and should not be challenged. Slowing, she stared at two men flanking the narrow gate. She had never seen them before. They were wearing bright red tunics with a sash of dark green around their waists. Their knee-high boots were topped by hedge-hider fur dyed to the same eye-searing red. No one in the hide-house wore such clothing.
"Good day. I must—" The prick of a sword against her back brought her to a halt. She stiffened, then remained motionless.
First Daughter.
She ignored the voice that now seemed to be taunting, although its tone had not changed. Neither the man who had called to her and who was walking toward her nor the one holding the sword to her back gave any sign of having heard the voice.
She tried to find something familiar about the man coming to a halt in front of her but could not. His nose, which appeared to have been on the losing end of too many fistfights, was separated from his full lips by a dark mustache. Eyes, narrowed as he appraised her, were set deep beneath brows nearly as heavy as his beard. Few men wore facial hair in the hot season.
"Your name, woman!" the man demanded.
"I am Dariana—"
First Daughter.
She bit back the words echoing in her head. Until she knew why these strangers were at the hide-house’s gate, she would be wise to say no more.
He did not appear to recognize her name. "Why are you here?"
"I have come to see the Tiria and—"
She was interrupted by the man’s roar of laughter. "The Tiria (May she live forever!)? Here? Near the Ring Mountains?" The man repeated her words to the man standing on the other side of the gate, and they both laughed, as did the one holding the sword at her back.
"What have you been drinking, woman?" the first man asked. "The Tiria (May she live forever!) never leaves her compound on the plains."
"Her . . . compound?" Dariana tried to breathe slowly as fear tightened its hold on her throat. The Tiria’s compound had been leveled and the old Tiria killed the first day of the Elasian invasion, before she was born.
The guard stepped closer and raised his sword, although the one poking her back had not shifted. "Who are you that you do not know about that glorious place where all aspire to be in service to the Tiria (May she live forever!)?"
"I know of it." She wanted to pull her own weapon, but that would be stupid. She would be run through before she could touch it.
Tiria. That was her mother’s title, but she used it only during diplomatic meetings, not demanding, as her own mother had, that the phrase "May she live forever!" be added each time. The expression had been discontinued with the old Tiria’s death. Yet these men, whom she had never seen before, uttered it with the ease of practice. None of this made sense.
"Then why are you here?" the man demanded.
"I . . ." She had no idea what lie might persuade him and the other man to lower their swords.
He made a motion to the man behind her. The sword tip vanished from the middle of her back. Before she could do more than draw a single relieved breath, a knife pressed against her throat.
"Who are you?" asked the man standing in front of her, his mouth twisting. "Who are you with hair the color of the Tiria (May she live forever!) and her daughters? If you think to baffle us with your disguise, you are mistaken. The men of Holder Vare are not easily fooled."
Vare? Since being named First Daughter, shortly after her twelfth birthday, she had often sat with her mother to receive holders who came to reclaim their holdings in the wake of the Elasian retreat. She did not recall the name Vare among them.
"Tell me your name!" he ordered.
"I am Dariana."
"Who sent you?"
"No one."
"You are lying! No woman with silver hair lives within the forests of Holder Vare’s lands. Tell me the truth, or—" He again signaled to the man behind her.
The knife tilted toward the underside of her chin. One slash and she would be dead.
First Daughter.
"Tell me your name!" he shouted.
"I have told you. I am Dariana. My mother is Nerienne, the—"
"Kill her!" he shrieked. "Kill her for daring to speak that name!"
Knowing that hesitation meant death, she rammed her elbow back and heard the man behind her groan. She leaped away. The man who had issued the order raised his sword. She ducked under it, pulling her own. It struck his, and a jolt raced up her arm and across her shoulders. She gripped the hilt with both hands.
"Keep your knees flexed, so you can move in any direction. Attack only when you can follow through. Otherwise, take the defensive stance until you have an opening to defeat your opponent. Her father had repeated those words often while teaching her to wield a sword.
But it was not her father’s voice that whispered, First Daughter.
"Go away," she snarled to the voice.
The man’s sword slashed toward her. She halted it, but the blow knocked her to her knees and flipped the sword from her hands. She pulled her dagger.
She froze when the tip of his sword pressed against her breastbone. Beneath his mustache, the guard’s lips tilted in savage triumph. She did not dare breathe as he lifted the sword far enough to drive it into her. She would not beg for her life. The daughter of the Tiria would never—
"Don’t kill her! I need her alive," a man shouted.
The guard froze at the sharp order. For what seemed a nineday, he did not move. Then he lowered his sword. Grabbing Dariana’s arm, he jerked her to her feet and shoved her away.
She yelped as she fell backward over something. She crashed onto the ground, sure every bone had been bruised. Wincing as she started to stand, she put her hand against her left hip.
"Holder Vare," the guard said, "she refuses to speak of her business here. She must be mad. She seems to believe the Tiria (May she live forever!) resides within."
Dariana pushed her hair back and locked eyes with a man who she guessed had come through the gate while she was battling the guard. He had the aristocratic mien of a holder. He was tall and . . . the only word she could think of was sleek. His hair was ebony, save for white strands that edged his temples, although he had the obvious vitality of a man in his prime—not brawny but with a strength that could not be overlooked. His eyes were the same crystalline blue as her own, and they looked very pale in his bronzed, unlined face. His clothing was that of a holder, simple yet well-made. He wore what looked like a carved shell on a leather cord around his neck. Unscuffed boots rose along his legs and accented his well-defined muscles.
As First Daughter, she had been bequeathed the ability to see the colors of emotion that surrounded every living being, and as she looked at the man standing before her, her eyes widened slightly. Around him a silver light, the light of courage, glowed scorchingly bright. Was the man extraordinarily brave, or were her senses heightened by fear?
He held out his hand to her. She hesitated, then put her own in it. With a tug, he pulled her to her feet. She discovered her eyes were even with his chin.
Looking up, she asked, "Who are you?"
"I am Relezar Vare, who holds here, at present." He bent to pick up her sword.
"You . . . h-hold here?" she asked, nearly gagging on the question. "That is impossible. This hide-house is—"
She cut herself short, realizing suddenly how foolish it would be to say anything further.
Holder Vare—if that was truly his name—motioned the guards aside and stepped closer to her. She did not back away. Where could she go? This was home, and, if she could not find the answers she needed here, she did not know where else to search.
"You are brave," Holder Vare noted. "You are not cowering when I could slay you with your own sword."
"I doubt you halted your men from killing me only to accomplish the task yourself." She kept her head high, not only in defiance but because she wanted to watch his eyes to try to gauge his thoughts. The silver around him signified courage, but even a brave man could make a stupid mistake. "After all, you said you needed me alive."
He smiled coldly. "Your words are bold for a woman who has incited the ire of my guards."
"Your guards did not want to believe I was being honest."
"And were you?"
"For the most part."
When he chuckled, she did not relax. The lessons she had learned with a sword worked when parrying with words . . . or so she hoped. When nothing else was as it should be, she was uncertain about everything. She knew only that an explanation must exist for the morning’s baffling occurrences, and she needed to find it.
First Daughter.
Holder Vare frowned, and she wondered if he had heard those soft, nagging words. When he turned and ordered his men back to their posts, she knew she must take care not to overreact.
"Your name?" the holder asked abruptly.
"Dariana."
He waited for her to add a family name. She could not, because the Tiria’s daughters had none, save their birth order. Her brothers used their father’s name, Ketassian, but if she offered it, she might reveal more than she should.
She wanted to shout her own questions. Even if the hide-house had been overrun in the single day that she and her friends had been gone, why were there no signs of battle? And why had the men guarding the gate not recognized her name? Everyone in Gayome knew the Tiria’s First Daughter’s name.
"If you are Dariana, I believe I can help you," said the holder. His eyes narrowed as if he expected to be able to see right into her mind.
"Help me? How?"
He smiled and motioned toward the gate. "Come into my holding, and allow me to ease your thirst with some freshly squeezed juice. There, we may talk more comfortably."
His holding? She wanted to contradict him but, instead, bit her tongue. She must be careful. He had the look of a forest cat that had just captured its chosen prey. Yet if he did not know who she was, why would he be pleased to have captured her? This was becoming more and more confusing. She touched her breastbone, reaching for the lifestones, then sighed when her fingers found nothing but her heartbeat.
Dariana squared her shoulders as she walked through the gate. The courtyard of the hide-house looked just as it had when she left the previous day. The stone outbuildings and the well near the large, three-storied main house had not changed. The trees that seemed to be a part of the forest beyond the walls were exactly as she remembered.
But no familiar faces turned as she passed. She knew none of the people working in the courtyard, and among the many men who wore the same uniform as the guards by the gate there was not one face she recognized.
And yet . . . she heard someone singing a song she herself had sung only a few days ago.
Holder Vare said, "This way, Dariana."
She wanted to retort that she knew the way but only nodded. She saw a sheath and the outline of a knife half-hidden beneath the back of his tunic. If he handled the weapon with confidence, she was at even more of a disadvantage. She had tried to learn to throw a knife well enough to bring down prey. Her mother, especially, had hoped she would achieve that skill. She had not and, so, had disappointed her parents . . . again.
As they entered the house, her gaze darted quickly around the spacious entry hall. Like the song she had heard in the courtyard, it was the same and yet not. The sounds of water and birds that usually offered a welcome were missing. So were the people who typically gathered here to talk and rest from the day’s labors.
Holder Vare led the way up the broad stairs to the expansive room her mother used to receive guests. It was her parents’ favorite room in their private quarters. She had often looked out the large windows, one offering a view of the mountains, the other overlooking the courtyard below. As a child, she had run in and out among the pillars that rose along one side of the chamber.
She clenched her hands at her sides. This was home, but there was no sign of her family. The scraps of needlework her youngest sister always left scattered about the pillows by the back wall were gone, as were the easel and canvas on which the oldest of her three brothers had been painting the area between the hide-house and the Ring Mountains. He was working on a map of the barely explored area.
"Sit," Holder Vare said, motioning to a table and a dozen chairs near the window. "I will be with you as soon as I arrange for some juice to be brought for us."
As he walked out the door, taking her sword with him, Dariana ran her hand along the unfamiliar table’s smooth top. She had never seen anything this fine in the hide-house. The art on the walls was strange to her, too. There should have been tapestries strategically hung to cover all the square and rectangular patches that, unfaded by sunlight, were of a hue brighter than the surrounding walls. Those patches, she quickly realized, exactly matched the locations of the paintings hanging around the room.
Taking a deep, slow breath, Dariana ordered herself to stop thinking about what had been and concentrate on what was.
First Daughter.
Again, that unfamiliar, gentle voice, calling her.
What in the name of the First Dream was going on?
Copyright Text 2003 J.A. Ferguson
Copyright 2003 Web Page ImaJinn Books