A Dagger of the Mind (The Imperial Metals) (27 page)

Nuria saw that the ground was almost upon her again. She changed their location one more time, now miles above the blue ocean. It could have been anywhere.

“Why won’t she turn to me?” Eric said. He reached into his chest, fingers digging beneath his skin, as though he intended to tear his heart out of his ribcage. But instead, his hand emerged with a glowing white ball of light. His soul, out in the open.

The Regent took the gift, without ever looking at Eric. She considered it like a bauble. A cheap trinket. And she discarded it.
The
little ball of light fell faster than Nuria, plunking into the ocean below within
seconds
.

“I would give her everything,” Eric lamented, “But she does not see me.”

Nuria laughed.

Eric stood, turning to Nuria. Even though she was still plummeting to the sea below, and upside down, and so much smaller than him, she was still bursting with the giggles.

“What do you find so amusing?”

“This,” Nuria said. “Look at you. The greatest mage in the Turinheld. One of the two most powerful wizards on the continent. And your greatest fear is that you will not have the love of a woman?”

“You are too young to understand.”

“Fuck that. I understand. I’m just glad that’s your greatest fear. That I can deal with it.”

“Perhaps, but you cannot deal with me!” Eric’s voice had changed. Nuria had dug deep enough to find Grimsor, hiding under the surface. “I know your greatest fear, and you will fall before me.”

Nuria felt the ground approaching fast. She tried to change her location again, but found herself stuck. Eric was smirking, making sure she couldn’t move. Grimsor was going to make her hit the surface...

---

Landora still had a couple of concussive blasts left in her, and she managed to keep the assault at bay. But she was wearing out, and by her own rules, she hadn’t killed any of the attackers. It was only a matter of time before they tired her out. And she was even more concerned that, when she could spare a second to glance at the cave, she couldn’t spot Duncan.

Duncan watched as one of the two healthy guards started climbing the side of the cave, hoping to get to Nuria before anybody could stop him. Duncan limped in to grab the guard’s leg, but the last healthy guard drew his sword and blocked his way. There was no way to get to the climber without engaging the swordsman.

Duncan knew that would be a losing fight. Besides having been bruised by his fall, and only one working leg, he wasn’t a good fighter to begin with. So, he was going to have to do something else that was crazy.

He flailed around with his sword, forcing his opponent to back away. And then he turned and fled down the slope. On one good ankle, he wasn’t moving very fast, but he let gravity drag him down the hill when he could. As he had hoped, the last guard pursued him, sword leading the way.

Duncan stopped when he got to the largest tree he could find that rested along the side of the path. He grabbed a clutch of vines, hacking them just below his grip. He turned and flung his sword at his pursuer. It wasn’t a good throw. There was no chance it would kill, or even injure the guard. It would just force him to stop for a second.

And with that second, Duncan leapt off the path.

He swung on the vines, arcing around the trunk of the tree, to the other side of his pursuer. The vines shortened as they wrapped around the massive limbs of the oak, and Duncan had to let go, flinging himself back onto the side of the cave. As luck would have it, right by where his sword had landed.

He grabbed his weapon and ascended the side of the cave. He was a good ten feet below the climbing guard, but he might still be able to catch him before he hit the top of the slope...

---

“Submit to my will,” Grimsor said.

“Not gonna happen,” Nuria protested. The sea was close now. So wide in her sightlines that she couldn’t see the horizon.

“Perhaps your master could match my will for a fleeting moment,” Grimsor said. “But you are a pup. You will be mine.”

Nuria couldn’t think of anything to say. She couldn’t think of anything at all. She felt the mist of the water on her face as the ocean sped up to her.

“Wait!” she said. Fuck falling. Fuck hitting the ground. She didn’t need to defeat him. She didn’t need to avoid the ocean. She needed to free Eric.

“Eric, listen to me!” Nuria said, rushing her words as her fall continued. “Don’t let this monster use your love against you. Your love is more powerful than your fear. Embrace it! Fight with it, not against it!”

“Are you done, little girl,” Eric’s voice was still the deep, gravelly whisper of Grimsor. “Do you want to hit the water?”

“No, please!”

And she stopped falling. She was on solid ground. On the Lunapera once again. Grimsor appeared in his natural form. The leathery-red demon, with the blazing fire above his horns, the reptile wings, and eyes from beyond the netherworld.

“Leave me alone,” Nuria called out, but her voice was weak.

“I will not,” Grimsor said, holding his fiery hand out. “You have been Turned.”

And he pressed his paw over her eyes. Nuria screamed...

---

Landora backed away. Her sword arm was worn down, and still the enemy assault continued, their numbers only thinned by a fraction. Sure, Landora could hurt a couple of them, carefully, to make sure they wouldn’t die, but also wouldn’t continue the fight. But there were still thirty of them coming at her.

She backed away from the ledge, giving up the bottleneck position. She could only swing her sword once every five seconds now, and they weren’t good swings. She instead just kept shooting off concussive blasts, hoping to topple a few of the enemy. But she was now only a few paces from Nuria’s sleeping body, and she was running out of energy.

Duncan’s luck was only slightly better. He climbed as fast as he could on one foot, pulling himself up by his weary arms. He ignored the stinging in his shoulder from the bruise. Nothing he could do about that.

Above him, one of the guards climbed higher. But he wasn’t an experienced climber. By luck, Duncan was actually gaining on him. But below Duncan, the last of the healthy guards, the one who had pursued him down the path, was now climbing up after him.

Duncan didn’t have a lot of options. He gained a few more feet on the man he was pursuing, and then braced himself against the rocks. He drew his sword and stabbed up, cutting the man’s foot. He was thankful he didn’t cut the Achilles tendon. But a nice cut in the foot would make sure this guy didn’t get to the top too fast.

Which meant Duncan had a second to breathe. He let the guard below him close in, and, at just the right moment, Duncan loosed his grip on the rocks. He slid, only for a couple of paces, and planted his boot in the bottom guard’s face.

Again, it wouldn’t be enough to kill anyone, but the pursuing guard fell off the wall, collapsing to the ground below, onto the pile of the other injured guards. Duncan only had the one guard left. He continued his climb...

---

...Nuria screamed. Her mind was wiped clear. Her will swept away. Grimsor had taken her.

“Stop!” said a thundering voice behind Grimsor.

And Grimsor stopped. Shocked that anyone could find him in this part of the dream. Usually, by the time he had gotten his victim to submit to his will, nobody could reach that part of the memory.

“Let her go!” the voice said. And Nuria recognized the voice. It was Eric. The first Eric she had met. The proud leader of the Turin-Guarde. The loyal soldier. The good guy.

“You will release her,” Eric said. “For she has already released me.”

“An acceptable trade,” Grimsor said. “This one is more valuable to the Countess Vye.”

“Nuria, you do not need to bend to his will,” Eric called out to the mentally imprisoned young woman. “If you can free me, you are already stronger than him.”

“Too late,” Nuria said, with a devious smirk. “I know all the secrets now. And if I know them, Grimsor knows them too.”

“The battle isn’t over yet,” Eric insisted. And he waved his hands.

And they were falling again. All three of them. Grimsor spread his wings, steadying himself. Though he stayed beside the others, he was in no danger. It was as if he was hovering.

But Nuria could only look down at the stone ground below. It wasn’t a real place anywhere in the world. It was just an unforgiving stone quarry, stretching out to every horizon. Eric’s version of Nuria’s nightmare.

“What do you think you can prove?” Grimsor taunted them.

“Nuria, listen to me,” Eric said. “If you want, Grimsor can save you again, and you can continue to submit to his will.”

“If you don’t,” Grimsor warned, the snarl in his voice digging into Nuria’s deepest fears, “I promise you will hit the ground. He will not be able to stop it.”

“No, I can’t,” Eric said. “But I can teach you how to land. I can help you. I can support you.”

Nuria glared into Eric’s eyes. Her own pupils reflected the sky, like mirrors. And deep inside her, her will reached out, and fought off the fear, only for a second. Only long enough to say...

“Save me...”

Eric hugged her, pulling her body in close to his. She shut her eyes...

---

Landora knelt beside Nuria. She held her hand out, causing sparks to fly out of the campfire. They hit the soldiers as they closed in. The burns forced the assailants to back up, but only for seconds at a time.

Duncan crawled along the ground. The guard he had been chasing was limping to Landora’s flank. And the weary Turin-Guarde wouldn’t know what hit her. She was too distracted by the other attackers.

Duncan hefted himself to his feet, charging forward, even with the stinging in his ankle, tackling his guard to the ground. The guard, trapped in close quarters, drew his dagger and planted it in Duncan’s ribs. Duncan rolled off, clutching his wound.

Landora felt the guards close in on her. They grabbed her, and she was so tired, she couldn’t even lift her arms to fend them off. They dragged her away from Nuria...

...but the weird part was that Nuria was standing. And Eric was standing with her, his arms wrapped protectively around her.

“Stop!” Eric shouted in Turin. The guards all froze at the sound of his voice. They let Landora go. She dragged herself to the injured Duncan.

“What’s going on?” one of the guards asked.

“We have all been tricked,” Eric responded. “And we have a lot of work to do.”

Chapter
50: The Lonely Souls

Emily knocked on Jareld’s door. He kept the same quarters that he had as the Baron von Wrims. They were technically noble quarters, but nobody wanted to reassign him. He had, after all, uncovered Landos’ betrayal. He was, in fact, the Magistrate. And he had, in a few strokes of his pen, restored order to the Kingdom.

“Come in,” Jareld called.

Emily entered. The room was the same as when she had left it, but the desk was overrun with papers. Jareld’s obsession with creating a new Kingdom, one with elements of democracy...
It had taken over the scholar’s mind and his room.

“What can I help you with?” Jareld asked, sitting at his desk again. “I’m very busy.”

“Something’s wrong with you,” Emily said.

“Nothing is wrong with me.”

“You don’t seem to be yourself.”

“You’re confused, Emily. I pretended to be the Baron. But now I’m just me.”

“No, it’s more than that. The meeting we had last night...”

“What about the meeting this morning?” Jareld said.

“We haven’t had a meeting this morning yet,” Emily insisted. “Though... Wait a minute. We should have had one this morning, right?”

“Would you mind shutting the door?” Jareld waved to the doorway. Emily turned to the door, then remembered that it should have been destroyed. That only a day ago, she and James Avonshire had plowed through it to get to Landos. She turned back to Jareld...

He smirked. Like he was capable of pure evil. And that’s when Emily realized she was dreaming.

“No...” she said.

“It’s too late,” Jareld said, but his voice was deeper. More sinister. “We already have the rest of the Council. We already had the Queen and the Regent...”

“You don’t have me,” Emily said.

“We wanted to do something special for you.”

And then they weren’t in Jareld’s quarters. But instead on the jousting fields, standing below the tents. It was a bright summer’s day. The first day of summer. The day her family died. There they stood, like porcelain dolls. Her Father and Mother. Her Brothers and Sister. Lined up, expressionless, looking down on her with glassy eyes.

Of course Emily knew that they didn’t all die that day. Her older brother was killed in Hartstone on the same day. Her younger brother would die more than a week later, in an ambush on the road. But that didn’t lessen the blow as the figurine of her father shattered. The crystalline pieces of him crumpled to the ground.

“Does it ever get exhausting,” Jareld asked, though now Emily knew it wasn’t really Jareld, “Saying goodbye?”

And then her Mother shattered, falling to pieces. Emily reached out, shrieking as she watched the Queen disappear.

“Everyone you love,” Jareld said, circling her, “Taken from you before their time.”

And her two brothers cracked open, like eggs slammed against stone. The shards of them slipped away. Only her sister Helena remained. Emily reached out to her, hoping that somehow her outstretched arm could save her last sibling.

“Do you ever wonder if you are cursed?”

“Helena!” Emily called out, but she had lived through this nightmare before. Her sister fragmented, exploding in a mist of dust. Blown away in the wind. Erased from sight and mind.

“And why stop there?” Jareld said. “Your husband died during the War. You had faith in Michael, but he also left you.”

“Stop it,” Emily said, “I’ve lived through these things. I don’t need to live through them again.”

“And then the Council turned on you,” Jareld added. “You will always be alone. Betrayed. Abandoned. The Council all fell before me...”

And now the Council was standing behind Jareld. And they all had the same blank expressions they had during the meeting. Their wills had been broken in the hands of some terrifying force.

“But that wasn’t the worst of it, was it?” Jareld said, stopping right in front of her. Staring her down. “I was the worst of it. I vanished. Your curse even chased me away. And when I came back, I wasn’t me. I was transformed...”

And with that, Jareld began to grow. He became taller, stronger. His muscles tore through his clothes as his skin became scaly and tough. He had become Grimsor, the fiery demon of nightmares.

“I saved you for last,” Grimsor said, “Because being alone would scare you the most.”

“Please, take them away,” Emily said, cowering, pointing at the Council.

“Emily Brimford,” Grimsor said, “You have been--”

“OK, enough of that,” said Vye. Grimsor and the Council spun around to see Countess Vye sitting in the King’s Pavilion. On the throne, of course. Arms crossed, like she was pissed and impatient with everyone. Emily backed up to stand below the Pavilion. To face the Council with Vye. She spat at Grimsor.

“You know what I learned from all these tragedies?” she said to Grimsor, “I’m never alone.” She looked up at Vye, “Took you long enough.”

“Sorry,” Vye said, “I had to make sure they were all in the same place.”

“What are you doing here?” Grimsor screamed at the Countess.

“I had a little chat with Emily,” Vye said, “When she fell asleep tonight. We figured out what happened to the Council, and we’re here to fuck up your plans.”

Vye swept her arms out. A fierce wind howled across the field, whipping against everyone’s skin. Vye glared at each member of the Council in turn, finding his or her own inner strength and will, turning it against Grimsor’s grasp, helping each of them fight off the Demon’s control.

She found the memory in James Avonshire’s mind, the one where his father was murdered, and he did nothing. Nevermind that he was five years old at the time, Grimsor had twisted his guilt into a cage for his mind...

She learned that Sir Gaelin of Trentford had once slept with his brother’s wife. Passion and wine had overwhelmed their sensibilities for a night. Not so great a sin, except when his brother found out, he started drinking, and hadn’t stopped for three years now. And he started hitting his unfaithful wife. Was it Gaelin’s fault? Grimsor made him think so...

Vye found secrets and sins that each of the Council Members held close to their hearts. She saw how Grimsor had manipulated them. Weakened their resolve with fear. Not the fear of revealing their sins. But the fear we all carry, that we are, at some level, terrible and flawed people. Undeserving. Evil.

In a dream that lasted only minutes in the real world, Vye’s mind felt like she was contending with Grimsor for days. Weeks. For every two minds Vye freed, Grimsor would retake another. She was going nose to nose with an evil older than the earth itself, fighting for every inch of his slaves’ minds.

And there was no measurement for their proximity. Two people clasping hands would have been further away than Grimsor was to Vye at that moment. For in the Dreamscape, they were scraping their raw wills against one another. Beating each other up with ethereal punches. Whaling on their souls with roundhouse epiphanies.

But Vye felt the battle start to turn, slowly. She learned the secret. The same secret she had shared with Emily. She was not alone. And though Grimsor was ancient, he could not contend with living, human souls if they were determined to fight them.

So she had to show the Council that their fears and guilt were real, but they were not alone. She opened herself up to them, and showed them her last battle with Argos, on the Lunapera, six years previous. And she didn’t just show it to them, like an actress in a play performing a scene. She let them live through it.

They each felt the sting. The grasp on their hearts. The moment of Rage that Vye had never been able to shake from her memory. The time she had reached into the deep recess of her hate and murdered Argos. He needed to be murdered. He had to be stopped. But Vye knew she had tapped into something dark and carnal when she did it.

A searing white light burst through the dream. Emily, Vye, and the Council all stood facing Grimsor on the desolate fields of some forgotten war. They had won. They were free. But Grimsor only laughed at their victory.

“Very well,” he snarled. “Your minds are free for now. But you have spent yourselves on this battle. You have worn out your wills. And I am here now.”

“Where?” Vye asked.

“At your front door,” Grimsor said, and vanished.

---

Emily woke. She was disoriented. She had been through a strange dream. It had started with her talking to Vye, even though Vye wasn’t on her mind when she went to sleep. And they had made some kind of weird plan. And then others were there. And then there was a long and tiring struggle.

She rose from her bed with a sense of urgency. She had to get to the west tower. She slipped into her boots and she scrambled up the flights of stairs until she was on the parapet facing the western sea.

The rest of the Council was there. None of them could explain why they all felt the need to be there. None of them could fully remember the strange dream they had lived through. None of them had the training in the Dreamscape necessary to hold onto it.

They all exchanged glances. Like they all knew some secret. Like they had all shared some embarrassing moment. A drunk party. But none of them said a word. Because the sight on the horizon was too startling.

A fleet of ships. Thousands upon thousands of small rafts. Thousands upon thousands of soldiers. An invasion fleet.

But even worse than that. Before the fleet. In front of it. The water was rising. A wave was building up. Every second it grew taller. It wouldn’t hit land for another ten minutes, but when it did, it would be a hundred feet high, and it would wipe out the city.

Doom was coming for Anuen...