Dream Gathered
“K arigan...”
She swatted at someone’s hand that was brushing loose strands of hair out of her face. “Leave me alone.”
She was having a very nice time with her pillow. So tired was she that few dreams interrupted her sleep.
“Karigan?”
She ignored the pleasant but persistent man’s voice and yanked the blanket over her head.
· · ·
Birdsong and sunshine flowed through the tall windows with fresh summer air.
She lay languidly under the covers and gazed at Zachary beside her.
He leaned back against pillows he’d propped behind himself and was reading through a pile of papers.
The light glowed in a golden nimbus around him, and she enjoyed studying the line of his cheekbone, the slant of his nose, his muscular shoulders and chest.
He smiled at her. “You’re finally awake, dearheart?”
Something was off. Some of the waves of his amber hair had turned white, and white streaked his beard. He wore a pair of specs perched on the end of his nose, and more lines creased his face. He gazed at her with brown eyes that were deep and wise. How the hells had he aged so quickly?
An even better question was, what was she doing in his bed?
“What’s going on?” she demanded, floundering beneath the covers.
“What do you mean?” he asked, his smile fading.
“What the hells am I doing here?” Her arm was splinted, and not with a sword, but properly, the way a real mender would do it. It didn’t even hurt.
“Sleeping? At least sometimes.” The smile returned.
“This is not right. You’re not right.”
He furrowed his brow. “Are you feeling well? Is it the dreams again?”
“I’m seeing things.”
“Karigan—”
“I need to go to my own chamber...” She struggled with the covers.
“Karigan, you gave up your chamber years ago. You’ve slept by my side for—”
Hopelessly entangled, she fell off the bed and hit the floor with a resounding thump, and everything turned dark but for star-like patterns of light that flickered all around her cast, she saw, by a lantern of punched tin.
She hesitantly rose to her feet on the cold flagstones.
This was not Zachary’s chamber, she thought, both in relief and trepidation.
It had been a dream, after all, but now the unmistakable sensation of awakening was upon her.
The grit of pebbles and sand stuck to the bottoms of her feet, and air currents curled about her ankles and rustled the hem of her nightgown.
“What is going on? Where am I?” The hollow space around her absorbed her voice. She looked up, but the dark beyond the lanterns glow was total. She sensed the air above her was empty like a tower lacking upper floors.
It must be a trick of Shawdell’s, she thought. It had to be. She hadn’t sent him reeling in that gray world, after all.
A soft footstep drew her attention to the lantern again. “Who’s there?”
A figure in silhouette appeared before her.
Karigan looked about herself for some weapon, but it was too dark.
“You did something to your arm,” said a girl’s voice.
Karigan protectively drew her arm to herself. “Who—?”
“I hope it hurt. A lot. You killed my grandmum.”
Karigan, now fully awake, said, “Lala?”
“I will have vengeance,” the girl said.
“What? I didn’t kill your grandmother.” Carefully she approached the girl. There was no metallic gleam of a weapon, but that did not mean Lala was not dangerous.
They were about eye level face-to-face, and Karigan realized Lala stood on a stool.
“Where am I?” Karigan demanded. “How did you bring me here?”
“This is the sorcerer’s tower,” Lala replied. “That’s what they call it, but it’s nothing special. Just a big old tower.”
This was not making any kind of sense.
“I used the draugmkelder,” Lala said.
“The what-kelder?”
“Draugmkelder. The dream gatherer.”
This explained nothing. “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you know anything?” Lala demanded with an impatient huff. “You killed my grandmum and I will have my vengeance.”
“For the last time—” Karigan began.
Lala’s fist shot out of the dark so fast Karigan didn’t see it coming. The shock sent Karigan stumbling away covering her nose with her hand.
“Ow, ow, ow! What the hells? Damnation!”
“I only bopped you in the nose,” Lala said. “Be happy I didn’t make you pee tadpoles.”
“Tadpoles?” Flowing blood and what Karigan believed was a broken nose muffled her voice.
Lala hopped off her stool and went to the lantern and took it off its hook. The light that beamed through its tiny holes speckled her face. She gave Karigan a satisfied look, opened the lantern’s door, and the flame hissed and sputtered, and died of its own accord.
“W ould the lady like me to draw a bath?” asked a gentleman.
Karigan sat up in the dusky light and tasted blood. “Ow, ow, ow!”
“Oh, dear,” the man said. “You are bleeding. Let me get you a cloth.”
Hand cupped beneath her nose to catch the blood, she peered through the dim light after the retreating figure and wondered what the hells Zachary’s valet was doing in her room.
Then she began to assess “her” room, the fineness of the bed linens, her fluffy and wonderful pillow that was now bloodstained, the rug on the floor, half-seen tapestries on the walls, and the tiled hearth.
This was not her chamber, nor did it look like any of those in the Rider or mending wings, but it was vaguely familiar.
“Where the hells am I?” she murmured.
A door opened and closed and someone hastened into the room.
“Karigan?” he said urgently. “Artos says you’re bleeding—what happened?”
She froze. His voice was unmistakable. She searched through the dim light and her gaze fell upon Zachary approaching.
A terrier trotted beside him and jumped onto the bed looking expectantly at her with black button eyes.
This Zachary looked the age he was supposed to be.
A different dream than the one before? But if it was a dream, how did her nose hurt so much?
“Did you do something to yourself in your sleep?” He tugged a handkerchief from the pocket of his waistcoat and handed it to her. She gingerly applied it to her nose.
Artos, the valet, reappeared with cloths and a basin of water for her. He set the basin on the bedside table.
“Do you need help, my lady?” Artos asked, “in staunching the blood?”
“No,” she replied.
“Artos,” Zachary said, “could you please send a runner to fetch Mender Simeon?”
Artos bowed and left them. The terrier bounded onto her lap and started licking her cheek.
“Finder!” Zachary said. The terrier subsided and lay down beside Karigan against her legs. “I think he smells the blood.”
“At least he’s not a wolf,” she muttered.
“What?”
“This is not my chamber,” Karigan said. “Not even the Rider wing.”
“Well, it is at the moment,” Zachary replied, “for at least one Rider.”
“What am I doing here? Am I here?”
“You are, and it’s actually quite a mystery as to how you ended up in my bed.” He grinned. “The Weapons are confounded that you somehow slipped by them.”
Her mouth worked but no words came out.
“I was sound asleep,” he continued, “but I awoke when I got cold because someone had stolen all the blankets. I was surprised, to say the least, but not displeased, to find an unexpected companion in bed with me.”
Karigan was mortified. She blushed so hard it hurt her bloody nose. “I swear, I didn’t...I don’t know how.”
“Don’t worry, nothing unseemly has come of it. I had Mender Simeon come down to check on you, and I moved to a guest chamber. You were in, shall we say, rough condition.”
“I don’t remember any of this,” she replied.
“Mender Simeon used his ability to heal your arm a good deal since it was a nasty break. Meanwhile, you fought us and told us to leave you alone. You also told us how much you loved your pillow.”
Her coat with its bloody and rent sleeve hung nearby over the back of a chair, and her boots stood next to it. She looked under the covers and found herself in her nightgown and wondered who had changed her clothes. She decided not to ask.
“It’s all so foggy,” she said.
“Several of us had a rather odd night,” he told her.
Ben arrived before Zachary could explain and looked her over. “Only you can break your nose while sleeping.”
“I didn’t break it! Lala did.”
Ben and Zachary answered her with stunned silence.
“Perhaps,” Zachary said after a moment, “you would like to explain how Lala did that.”
Karigan did so as Ben used his ability to align her broken nose. “She called the lantern a drom...Drom-kelder.”
“Draugmkelder,” Zachary said. “I believe we have one tucked away in the tombs. It is said to have the ability to pull someone to a place through their dreams either as a wispy figment or full bodied. I wonder where Lala would have gotten hold of such an artifact. They are extremely rare.”
“You mean, it really could’ve happened?” Karigan asked.
“Sounds that way,” Zachary said.
It reassured her to know she really hadn’t, somehow, punched her own nose.
“You are lucky,” he continued, “that all she wanted to do was punch you. She could have done far worse.”
“That’s what she said.”
“At least we know she is still alive,” Zachary said, “though it is concerning she can get her hands on objects like a draugmkelder.”
Ben tilted her head back and touched the tip of her nose with a glowing finger. Warmth spread through it and into her cheeks. Some of the pain dissipated.
“You’ll still be swollen and bruised, and you’ll likely be the butt of many jests,” he said, “but I staunched the blood and realigned the bone.”
“Thank you.”
He cleaned up the blood on her face, then placed his hand atop her head.
“Just checking to make sure the nose injury didn’t worsen anything else we’ve already fixed.
” A similar warming washed through the crown of her head, down her spine, and into her extremities.
It was pleasant and she sighed when it faded.