Chapter 2
Melelea
Present Day
Scarlet like blood, dripping down a wall. The moon, thin in the sky. Cold wind blowing over the mountains. Pain, so much pain.
I wake with a start, my heart pounding in my chest. My dreams have been troubled of late.
They are unclear, disjointed images, just swirls of color and emotion; feelings of rage and vengeance, mixed with pain and fear.
I cannot tell whose emotions these are. Do they come from the same source or many?
It is the burden of being sasari, to receive images and have to interpret them.
Sometimes I am able to make sense of them, but sometimes they are just scattered dreams. These latest images are so dark that I hope they are just nightmares, but I fear they may be more.
I roll over in my bed, trying to go back to sleep, a deeper sleep, to a place of stillness with no dreams or visions, but my heart is still pounding and something feels wrong.
Urgent. With a sigh, I sit up in bed, tapping the lumen crystal on my bedside table, the answering glow lighting the room.
I will consult my runes and find out once and for all what my dreams portend.
I move to the window, where my runes are bathing in the moonlight, recharging their magic in a small basin of beaten silver.
Taking the basin, I move back to the bed and sit cross-legged in the center, smoothing the sheets so that I have a place to work and pour my runes on the fabric.
They are mismatched, stone and bone, each made with my own hand as a younger woman.
Each rune has meaning to me, each material that they are carved on matches its significance.
Tiruc on lapis lazuli, the wisdom stone, Xaskash on granite, the stone of protection, and so on.
I touch my favorite stone, Helgaka on an amethyst, the family stone.
The stone I made after the birth of my son.
Along with its companion, Yid on moonstone, the stone of my sorrow.
That rune I made the day that I realized that my former husband wasn’t capable of love, made at the same time as my son’s birth.
A pang hits my heart, as it often does when I am reminded of Guruk, of all the terrible deeds he did to me and Rognar.
In my memories, I can still feel my hands bruising and breaking as I tried to break down the door of the room he locked me in when he left Rognar as a babe in the woods to die.
Can still feel the burn in my lungs when, many years later, I ran from his hunters that were running me down so that Guruk could kill me.
I remember the panic I felt as I desperately faked my death so that Guruk would hunt me no longer, the pain as I cut out my Mating Bite so that he could no longer feel that I was still alive.
All these memories live inside me, my past burdening me.
But I need a clear head for my runework, so I banish these errant thoughts.
Picking up my handful of runestones, I shake them in the cage of my hands, humming the frequency of the universe, calling its power upon me.
I picture what I can remember of my dream, picking specific images that confuse me, sifting through them with care.
I choose the image of the scarlet dripping and cast my runes onto the bed.
All are face down but one, in dead center, making the cold hand of fear grip my heart: Colbu on jet, the death stone.
Alarmed, I pick up my runes again, picture the next image I can remember, the thin crescent moon, and cast my runes. Again, I receive only one message: Colbu. With each new image, I receive the same answer: Colbu, Colbu, Colbu.
With fear in my heart, I reach for the death stone, my blue-painted fingertips brushing the smooth, polished stone, when a vision assails me.
Wings like death, beating in time with the pounding hatred in my heart, a tower in the distance.
Lust for power grips me, relief at reaching my destination.
Soon, very soon, I will have what I need to wreak havoc on this world. Soon, no one will be able to stop me.
Dropping the jet like it burns me, I jerk backward, the vision in my mind clear. I was mind-sharing with a creature of pure hatred and pain. One with skin like pebbled leather, save for a swath of human skin on his chest. All too quickly, the images start to make sense, and I realize what I saw.
I jump from the bed, grabbing my robe with fumbling fingers and pulling it on while trembling and stumbling toward the door to my chamber. I pull it open without preamble and enter the antechamber, startling awake my lady-in-waiting, Naiva, whose turn it is to sleep in the antechamber.
“My lady?” she blinks groggily. “Are you all right? Do you need something?”
But I ignore the sleepy girl, rushing across the room and exiting to the corridor.
I must get to Rognar, I think to myself. He must be warned! He must!
Careening through the hallways of Castle Ilustan, I head toward the King’s Wing, even as I hear Naiva chasing behind me.
“Lady Melelea! What is wrong?”
I get to the entrance to the King’s Wing, only to find it guarded by my old friend Wodred, standing grimly in the center of the corridor. His brows raise in surprise as he sees me running toward him.
“Lady Melelea?” he asks, confused. “It is the middle of the night. What are you doing here?”
“You must let me through, Wodred,” I say desperately. “I need to speak to my son. It is urgent and cannot wait.”
“King Rognar left specific instructions not to be disturbed. I’m sorry, Lady Melelea, but you’ll have to wait until morning.”
“It cannot wait!” I exclaim. “It is happening right now! This very instant! We have to act or it’ll be too late!”
“What is happening, my lady?” he asks, voice calm and steady. “What is too late?”
“It is Lord Grazrath,” I breathe out, the name feeling like ashes in my mouth. “He’s attacking the Mage’s Tower. If he takes a magical blood slave, we are all doomed.”