2. Khiann
KHIANN
He had been climbing, and then he had arrived, but where?
Light assaulted him as if someone were shining the sun into his eyes. It went straight to the back of his skull and stayed there, burning. He could not turn away from it or shut it out, because he did not know how to do either.
Something enormous lay across his whole body, pressing him flat, and it took him a long, confused moment to understand that the weight was his.
He had a body?
Yes, he did, and it ached everywhere.
His chest hurt from the labor of hauling air in and pushing it back out.
His throat was a dry strip of fire. His back hurt in a hundred places along its length, his hips hurt, his heels hurt, and somewhere below him a slow, deep ache pulsed in his bones in time with the thing that was thudding in his chest.
Where did he come from?
What was the dark that he had climbed out of?
He wanted to go back to the place where nothing hurt, the place of perfect calm, where nothing troubled him, where he felt as one with everything and nothing.
Then a face leaned into the light above him, blocking the glare, and he forgot the aches and the place of nothingness.
An impossible face, luminous and framed by flames, with eyes the blue of deep water, ringed with green at the edges.
Who was the beauty?
He knew her too, but not how.
He had known this face before he had arrived here. He had seen her.
The dream.
It came back to him all at once, vivid and real, more real than this strange hall. A city of sun-washed stone. Petals falling from rooftops. Two carriages coming up a wide avenue from opposite ends, the crowd roaring, the bride sitting beneath a tall headdress, her flaming hair under the gold.
She had been laughing.
She had been blowing kisses off her fingertips.
She had been the last light to go out when the world turned gray, and he had reached for her and had not been able to touch her.
And here she was, leaning over him.
He was dreaming again.
He had dreamt of her before, and now he was dreaming of her again, and dreams did not have to make sense.
Something warm was wrapped around his hand.
He noticed it slowly, not all at once. A gentle pressure, warmth, two delicate hands holding one of his, cradling it.
Hers.
She was holding his hand.
Why?
He had watched her marry. He had stood in the crowd and watched a tall male leap between two moving carriages to reach her, then carry her up the palace steps despite her laughing protests.
He had watched the two of them face each other and pledge themselves for eternity and beyond.
He had watched it all from the crowd, and he had ached so badly that the ache was still in him now.
So why was she here, holding his hand?
He was dreaming again.
She spoke then, her voice familiar and beautiful.
It did something to him he could not describe, because he had no words for it. Everything in his body loosened, and all the aches faded. She spoke gently, precisely, and he should have understood her, because he had in the dream, but now her words washed over him more like a melody than meaning.
He knew that tune.
He knew it better than he knew her face.
The voice belonged to the one who had told the story, and the face belonged to the bride the story was about.
How could she do both? How could a person be in two places at once and tell a story while being part of it?
Nothing made sense, so it had to be a dream. He was either still under or he had climbed out into another layer, and the woman had followed him from one dream into the next.
That was almost comforting.
He tried to ask her why she was following him, why she was a constant in his dreams. He shaped the question with his mouth, but nothing came out.
He tried again, harder, and felt his throat working, felt the air moving through it, and still there was nothing, no sound at all.
Fear washed over him.
Somewhere off to the side, something began to make a noise, a rapid, insistent chirping that had not been there before. He did not know what it was, and it frightened him even more.
Another woman came, on the other side of the bed.
Her hair was a darker shade of flame, and she spoke, but her words were just strange sounds arranged in a pattern that seemed like a language yet meant nothing.
Her tone was kind, reassuring, and he understood that she was trying to tell him not to be afraid.
When she was done speaking, he looked at the one holding his hand. She spoke again, and hers was the voice that mattered, the voice he wanted to hear.
She leaned so close that her hair swung forward and brushed the blanket.
He watched her mouth shape words, and the sounds formed a familiar pattern, but he still could not make sense of them. The meaning slid past him and was gone, leaving only fragments.
There was so much kindness in her eyes, love even, but why would she look at him lovingly?
He was no one to her. She was the bride from the story, and her groom was the tall, handsome male in fine clothing and a big smile, who thought he was the luckiest male in the world.
He had envied that groom in the dream, and the dream had decided to be kind, giving him a tender moment with the beautiful bride. Dreams did that sometimes. He did not know how he knew that either.
She kept speaking. He kept watching her mouth, chasing the sounds, and one sound came around again and again, the same shape, offered to him each time with the same weight.
Khiann.
She said it and waited. Said it and waited. As if it were supposed to mean something to him.
He had heard that sound before.
Khiann, son of Yaeni and Navohn.
It had been the groom's name. The voice had said that name in the story when the bride had put a ring on the groom's finger and pledged herself to him for eternity and beyond.
Why was she giving him the prince's name?
Now he was certain he had been dreaming this whole time.
Strangely, that certainty calmed him.
It explained the strange room, which he could see only in fragments because he could not turn his head, but even what he could see was unusual. There were bright lights embedded in the white ceiling, and they were hurting his eyes.
He did not know where this place was. He did not know when it was. Was he seeing something that had already happened? Or was this a place that had not yet been built?
Neither answer troubled him much. It was a dream, and dreams went where they liked.
Only one thing about it bothered him.
Why did the princess keep appearing?
She had been in the last dream, and she was in this one.
The same incomparable beauty, the same voice that sounded like gentle bells, the same flaming red hair.
Of everything he had ever seen, heard, or felt in the dream world, she was the only thing that had followed him from one place to the next.
Everything else changed. She did not.
That had to mean something.
Did he know her?
Not from the story, but from before?
Was there a before, and had she been in it?
He searched for it. He reached back past the voice in the dark, but there was nothing there. No edge, no floor, no beginning. Just the dark, the voice inside it, and her.
She was speaking again, and he stopped trying to understand the meaning and let the beauty of her voice wash over him.
Warmth.
Not the warmth of her hands, though that was there too. Something else, running beneath, spreading from the middle of his chest into his shoulders and down his arms. When she leaned closer, it rose. When she retreated, it faded.
He tested it because he could not do anything else. He turned his eyes toward her, and the warmth came up. He let his gaze drift toward the ceiling, and it dimmed. The ache in his back and the fire in his throat came forward again, sharper without her in front of them.
He looked back at her. The warmth returned.
He did not understand it, and he did not need to. He understood only the principle, which was simple. Everything was better when she was close.
Exhaustion crept back in, dragging him under, and he fought it because he did not want to lose sight of her. The fight used up whatever he had left, and his eyelids grew so heavy that he could not keep them from sliding shut. The light softened at the edges. The chirping thing slowed.
She was still holding his hand. He could feel her hands around it, the gentle caress, and he tried to close his fingers to tell her to stay, but managed almost nothing.
He was slipping back under, the dark rising to meet him.
That was all right.
She would be there when the next dream started. He wasn't sure how he knew that, but he felt certain she would be there.