CHAPTER FORTY-ONE #5
I’d watched as he carried water buckets, mucked stalls, and fell asleep sitting upright against a hay bale with a half-eaten heel of bread still in his hand.
I settled into the dream space the way you settle into cold water: slowly, giving the body time to accept it.
George’s mind was warm, dark, and smelled of horses and wet straw.
His physical rest was deep and without fret, just a consciousness that wasn’t doing anything and also wasn’t protecting anything. And that was exactly what I needed.
I moved along the edges.
The first thing I noticed was the texture of the space.
It should have been smooth. An uncomplicated mind like George’s left no real impression: his dreams were sensation and muscle memory, not story.
But there were grooves here: worn paths.
The kind that form when something moves through the same space repeatedly.
I stopped and crouched, metaphorically, running my attention along the groove the way you run a finger along a scar to read how old it is. This one wasn’t recent, but it also wasn’t singular.
Someone had traversed his sleeping mind, possibly dozens of times. Maybe more.
And the route they took was always the same, Galahad’s quarters to the training yard, then Galahad’s quarters to the Great Hall. But mostly, they centered around Galahad’s quarters, and I knew enough to know that it wasn’t Galahad they were interested in.
This wasn’t a rebellion operative I was dealing with either.
I’d felt the particular signature of rebellion dreamwalkers before.
They were trained in the way all clandestine things are trained: quickly and practically.
They left prints like boot prints that were both purposeful and mortal. This was different.
This was old. But old in the way that time is old. Old like a river is old.
The presence that had moved through this dream space wasn’t anchored in the living world the way I was anchored here, or the way Vaelen was anchored, or even the way Merlin was anchored. It sat at an angle to the living world, adjacent to it, yet not quite separate.
I knew that angle. I’d felt it before, years ago, in a place I didn’t visit any longer and had tried very hard to forget.
I traced the grooves forward through time, freeing myself from George’s mind to travel to the next dreamscapes I could find, those same paths traveled by whatever entity this was.
I traveled through the dungeon cells, then landed in Galahad’s quarters once again.
It was the same route, over and over again.
Not the pattern of someone gathering information once and withdrawing.
This was the pattern of sustained, deliberate, protective surveillance.
Someone was watching her.
And not watching her the way Galahad watched her, nor the way Arthur or Lance watched her. Whatever or whoever this was, they were watching her the way you watch something you’re afraid will break while your back is turned.
I withdrew carefully from George’s mind and surfaced through his warm, oblivious sleep without disturbing it. Then I released the connection cleanly.
The night air hit me like a blade. The northern camp was dark, cold, and smelled of mud, wood smoke, and animals. Vaelen’s fire had burned down to coals. Somewhere beyond the treeline, a horse made a low sound and went quiet.
I sat in the dark for a long time as I turned the signature over in my mind the way you turn a stone over to look at what is living under it. I checked my certainty, questioned it, and checked it again.
I was certain.
And the name of the perpetrator sat in my chest like something swallowed wrong. There was no doubt now, and that meant one thing. I could no longer ignore it.
It was time to have a conversation that required a face-to-face interaction. This required me to stand in front of the one person who could give me the final answer I was looking for, an answer that wouldn’t come from her mouth, but from her eyes.
Nimue’s eyes, specifically.
I’d known, in a general way, that Guin was being watched, because I’d picked up on this other dreamwalker before.
I’d assumed the watcher was on our side, though, or so I’d hoped.
I’d figured it was just a case of Merlin arranging something, some secondary layer of intelligence, a failsafe I wasn’t privy to.
That would have been like him: arranging things in layers and telling you about the first layer while never mentioning the others, but this hadn’t been Merlin’s signature.
I had one question for Nimue, one question I hoped she’d answer. But how she’d respond to me after all these years and everything that had passed between us the last time we’d stood eye to eye was anyone’s guess.
I’d known Nimue long enough to know that she answered questions indirectly, and in a way that required interpretation.
But there were certain questions that Nimue couldn’t deflect, questions that were too precise, too accurate, too obviously formed by someone who already knew the truth, and now only needed validation.
That was the question I needed to ask.
And when I said the name, Nimue’s face would tell me everything I needed to know.