Chapter Twenty Thera #2
Lynnea pointed to the knot in the centre of the collection.
This one was carried by that scribe you banished at the Spear Maiden’s request. This one.
Her finger moved to the trinket to its left.
By a wealthy merchant’s son, spared service in war due to his lamed leg.
What he lacked in prowess he made up for in insight.
I’ve rarely encountered a sharper mind, nor one more mired in spite and bitterness.
I think a spymaster would be very keen to hear his report.
“Very well. I’ll take the scribe, you the bitter son.”
Donning the trinkets, they lay down on the bed. After several tense moments, Thera began to reflect that it would have been a sound idea to have a sleeping draught prepared for this task.
It would dull our minds too much, Lynnea chided. Dreams become confused when mixed with intoxicants. She slipped her hand into Thera’s, her touch a warm and welcome comfort. Try to relax, my queen. Seek gentle memories.
“I have few of those,” Thera muttered.
Not so. Something shifted in Thera’s mind and she found herself recalling the night they had lain together after her wounding at Danith’s Bay. Another shift then another memory, not gentle, but beautiful: the white whales veering away from the Great Wolf in answer to Lynnea’s silent song.
I sang to them. And they sang to me. Such old, wonderful songs. So unlike the fierceness I expected. They carry the story of their kind in these songs, passed through the generations. Wordless odes to the infinite beauty of the ocean. To them, time is so different…
As Lynnea’s words and emotions flooded her mind, Thera found her vision filled with a vast blueness, pale hues descending into blackness.
An echoing moan thrummed the water around her and she felt a spasm of fright at recognising the pale skin and sweeping tails of white whales.
They circled the two women, dozens of ghostly giants casting out their strange songs, the sound seeming to sink into Thera’s body with every groaning pulse.
Fear nothing here, Lynnea told her. For in dreams, the only danger is that which you make for yourself.
Turning, Thera found her floating close by, her hair a slow cascade of ink.
Reaching out, Lynnea clasped both of Thera’s hands, entwining the fingers.
Long have I wished to share this with you, but found it too difficult.
Perhaps these knots are a blessing. Some wonders lie beyond the reach of mere words.
She drifted closer until their lips almost touched. So many things I’ve longed to share…
“We have a purpose here,” Thera reminded her.
The dream rendered her words into a cascade of bubbles, but the regretful arch to Lynnea’s brows made it plain she had grasped the meaning.
Releasing Thera’s hands, she kicked her legs, descending into the deeper strata of blue.
Distracted by the fluid grace of her movements, Thera followed after a short delay.
They left the whales behind, though their song lingered as dark water enveloped them, Thera experiencing a disconcerting sense of near total insignificance.
They were little more than specks floating in an unfathomable void.
It’s possible the spymaster is absent from this dream, Lynnea advised.
They paused at a point where the blue shifted into utter blackness, the water taking on a chill that sank deeper into Thera’s flesh with every second.
There’s probably a prearranged hour of the day when his agents are required to dream…
“Wait,” Thera interrupted, grimacing in annoyance at another cloud of bubbles and switching to thought speech.
There. She pointed at a faint grey swirl in the blackness below.
At first she thought it another whale, but then it grew larger, and she knew it to be no beast. It was more like a storm, an ugly spiral that took on shifting hues of grey, black, and red as it came closer.
Stay behind me. Lynnea’s thought was coloured by both fear and resolve as she moved to place herself between Thera and the storm. I sense another mind here.
Watching the roiling vortex emerge from the depths, Thera felt a terrible, shameful impulse to flee.
The same sense of helplessness that had gripped her when last she faced this thing rose again.
On firm earth or the deck of a ship, she feared nothing.
Here in this realm of the unreal, she knew herself defenceless.
Sensing Thera’s alarm, Lynnea turned to her, smiling in grim reassurance.
There is danger, it is true. But the stuff of dreams is as clay.
It can be shaped. She extended a hand whereupon Thera saw the water directly in front of her take on a glow.
It shimmered for a moment, a glittering cloud of silver motes, then began to coalesce into a recognisable shape.
Soon Thera found herself regarding the dreadaxe.
It appeared perfectly real and, as she discovered when she reached out to grasp it, was also solid to the touch.