A Dagger of the Mind (The Imperial Metals) (28 page)

Chapter
51: The Turin Initiative

Duncan was the first to be healed. His was the only wound that was even close to fatal. Landora collapsed into a stupor, recovering her strength while Eric collected the injured Turin soldiers and fixed them up. Nuria helped when she could, but she was also weak from her dream encounter.

As the sunlight crept over the horizon, Eric took council with Duncan and Landora.

“The Regent is still in the grips of this demon,” Eric said.

“We can rescue her,” Landora said. “We can all go into her dream together.”

“First, we need to move the troops,” Eric said. “They will have arrived at the volcano by now. And Grimsor knew it was going to go active very shortly.”

“Do you have the authority to override their orders?” Duncan asked.

“No,” Eric shook his head. “We would need the Regent’s signature.”

“Surely this is a time you’d be willing to cheat,” Duncan suggested. “Issue fake orders?”

“Forgery isn’t one of my best skills,” Eric argued.

“OK, but you can transport the troops faster than they can march, right?”

“A Shadow Gate?” Eric said, “For an entire army?”

“Can it be done?”

“I’ve never opened a Gate for so long.”

“We could help,” Landora suggested. “Nuria, too. And you could even bring the twins.”

“But none of you know how to open the Gate.”

“We don’t need to open it,” Landora said. “You’ll open the Gate. We just have to help keep it from closing.”

“Can it be done?” Duncan asked.

“
Desperate
times...”
Eric said
.

---

Nuria caught her proverbial breath, curled up under a blanket by the fire. All around her, the Turin soldiers who had recently been trying to kill her milled around, whispering in their own language. All of them sent unabashedly awkward looks her way.

But she felt too cozy to care. The wind was chilling across the high plateau. But the fire was warm, and her blanket was snug, and anyway, Vye was sitting across from her. Wait...

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Nuria said. “Am I dreaming again?”

“You just nodded off for a second,” Vye said. “Figured I’d pop in for a chat.”

“You know, sometimes I have the kinds of dreams you wouldn’t want to see,” Nuria said.

“Nothing I haven’t dreamed before.”

“He got me.”

“What? Who?”

“Grimsor. Just for a minute. When we were rescuing Eric.”

Vye, or at least the dream projection of her, stood and raced to Nuria’s side, wrapping her arms around her pupil. It may have been the most maternal thing she’d ever done, and it wasn’t even in real life.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“What did you tell him?”

“What?” Nuria pulled away from Vye’s embrace. The way Vye had said it made it sound like an accusation.

“He controlled you. He knows what you know.”

“It was only for a moment.”

“A moment in your dream. But your mind was opened.”

“I wouldn’t have told him anything.”

“Not on purpose. But any secrets you had, he knows them now.”

Nuria looked around. Even in her dream, the Turin soldiers still milled around the campfire. And over by the cave entrance, Eric, Landora, and Duncan took quiet council. Nuria stared at Duncan...

“I’m in love with Duncan,” Nuria said. “He must know that now.”

“That is not a dangerous secret,” Vye insisted.

“He knows what we saw. In the cave.”

“Show me.”

And they were in the cave. Just Nuria and Vye now, wandering around the perimeter of Grimsor’s cage. Even in the dream, Nuria didn’t place them on the pedestal.

“It looks so different,” Vye commented. Nuria gave her a strange look, to which Vye added, “Frost showed me his memory of this place. But he hadn’t been here in thousands of years. Your recollection is much more precise.”

“We found these markings along the walls and floor,” Nuria said, “But I’m not sure they look right in my dream. They were all gibberish to me. Duncan said one of them was about sinking an island. Losmourne, he said.”

Vye staggered in her steps. Nuria offered a hand of support, but Vye wasn’t really falling, just as she wasn’t really in this cave.

“What’s wrong?” Nuria asked.

“Something’s happening,” Vye reported. “I was just in a dream with the Council Members in Anuen. And I don’t know what happened after they woke up, but... I think they’re in trouble.”

“You should go,” Nuria suggested.

“I will, in a minute. You should see if Eric can send any kind of help.”

“I will.”

Vye leaned against the cave wall. She noticed that all the markings kept changing. Every time she turned her head. They were random, shifting patterns. Except for one...

“What’s this marking?” Vye said.

“Oh, yeah, that one’s real. Duncan made a point of it. It means something like an unfinished thought. Or an incomplete--”

---

Nuria startled awake. Duncan had nudged her from her slumber.

“Nuria, how are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“I hope you’re well-rested. I need you to come with us and help Eric.”

“Where are we going?”

“To an active volcano. Leave the blanket. You won’t need it.”

Chapter
52: The Secrets of the Dead

Vye sipped her tea. It tasted really good, but that was because it wasn’t real tea. It was dream tea. She wanted it to have a dash of honey and a splash of lemon, and, because it was her dream, it was even the perfect temperature.

She was back in the room with the fireplace. Her dream vacation home. Her mental convalescence suite. And Johann Frost was there, tending to the fire, even though you really didn’t need to do that sort of thing in a dream.

“Can you sink an island?” Vye asked.

“Well, hello to you, too,” Frost retorted.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize we cared about formalities in here.”

“Doesn’t hurt to be polite.”

“Can you sink an island?”

“No. Why, is there an island that’s bothering you?”

“Losmoure.”

“Really? It always seemed so peaceful.”

“It’s not bothering me. The fact that it disappeared is bothering me. I fought Argos. And I fought Selene and Helios. They were fucking powerful. But I don’t think they could have just drowned an entire island. Not one that big.”

“It would have taken a massive amount of energy,” Frost explained, stoking the fire some more. But for fun, he also made the fire green. “Maybe if they had stored up magic over time.”

“How does that work?”

“Look, places and things and people all have magical energy, whether or not they know how to use it. So does time. So, basically, you could cast the first half of a spell. And then you let it sit there, collecting energy over the years. And when there’s enough energy there to, say, sink an island, you cast the other half of the spell. And the island sinks. It’s sort of like a dangling phrase or--”

“--an incomplete sentence?” Vye asked.

“Precisely.”

“The prison... The cage you built...” Vye stammered. But since she was at a loss for words, she just brought him to the same place. The place where Nuria had just brought her.

The room was hazy and blurry. It was a dream of a memory that belonged to someone else. But Vye didn’t care. She only wanted to show Frost one thing.

“It had this symbol on it,” Vye said.

Frost crouched over the foot of the pedestal, staring at the symbol. A chill ran through his soul. That marking wasn’t in his memory of the room. But it was so familiar. It was so intimate in his mind. He knew he was the one who carved it. That he had chiseled the stone with his own hands.

“Of course!” Frost stood, excited. Giddy. “Of course, of course, of course! We couldn’t open the portal again. Not the way I had originally, with Selene and the others. But we could imprison Grimsor. And then wait until the spell was ready to dispatch him back to the Abyss.”

He hugged Vye in triumph. It was as though a dam had collapsed in his mind, and realization and recognition were flooding through him.

“So, we just need to cast the other half of the spell?” Vye asked.

“Yes, but...” Frost said, “I still don’t remember what spell. And I can’t even remember who else would know.”

“It’s OK. I know someone who does.”

“Who? Nobody alive knows about any of this.”

“Yeah. I didn’t say it was going to be easy.”

---

Vye stood upon the Lunapera. She had always tried to avoid this dream. Reliving her final encounter with Argos. She always woke up in a cold sweat. But now she had shared it with her friends and colleagues. And she felt stronger for it. Now she sought it out.

Even though in the real world, the sun was just rising, in Vye’s dream it was night. Just as it was during her battle with her old foe. But even in the pale moonlight, she could still see one thing clearly: Michael’s corpse.

His body was in full armor, the Saintskeep discarded by his side. His eyes were open, but glazed over, unseeing, unmoving. They used to feed his mind, to bring him news of the world around him. Now they were just the leftover tissue of a life cut short by the War.

Vye had brought herself to this place, in this time. But this wasn’t just a dream. She was visiting the Land of the Dead. Just as when she sought out Halmir and Gabriel, she was finding them in familiar places. She didn’t know Argos that well, but she imagined that if this was where he had retreated when he fled the Battle of Hartstone, it must be important to him. It was also fresh in her mind, from sharing it with the Council.

It was colder in this dream. And again she felt her own heartbeat. It made so much noise in the Land of the Dead. Like a child crying because it didn’t know the noise would attract wolves. She was a light in a world of moths.

Vye knelt beside Michael’s body. And the same thought came to her mind now as had come to her mind for the last six years: Why had she lived when Michael had died? She had played the fight out a million times in her mind and in her dreams, and still he was always dead and she always lived. She never tried to change the past. She just punished herself by living through it again and again.

But she wasn’t here to see Michael’s corpse. Not this time. His body was a prop. A part of a ritual. A tool for her to summon the dead person she needed to speak to. The only other person on the Lunapera that night.

Argos.

Vye had fought a dragon. She had recently battled with Selene and Helios. She had battled almost every member of the Turin-Sen, back when they were agents of evil. But none of them instilled the kind of fear Argos had. Perhaps Grimsor, a creature of nightmares, was worse. But Vye had only contended with that monster for a few weeks. Argos was a part of her soul. He was the key to the door that held her fears at bay.

And there he was, as she remembered him. He always seemed ten feet tall, and now, in her dream, he was. His bright, white hair blew in the wind. His dark green cloak fluttered around him. His claymore was planted in the ground before him, like a six foot tall letter “T”. He rested his hands on the hilt, staring at Vye.

“Why would you seek me out?” he bellowed. Vye shook at he sound of his voice. She remembered that it was deep and resonant. But without hearing it, she had forgotten how commanding it was. How it instilled fear with only its timber and pitch.

“Master Argos...” Vye began, but she couldn’t complete her thought.

“Was it not enough that you turned my pupil against me? That you killed my soldiers? That you ripped my life from my body? And now you must disturb me in the Land of the Dead.”

“I need your help.”

“How did you find me here?” Argos pondered, as he pulled his sword from the ground and stalked towards her. “Halmir may have taught you some tricks. But he wouldn’t have known how to commune with the dead.”

“I have a new mentor. Johann Frost.”

“Frost!” Argos almost sounded amused, an emotion Vye would never have associated with the villain. “So, Johann Frost has been sending you on his little errands. I don’t suppose he warned you about the dangers of communing with the dead, did he?”

“He said it was dangerous,” Vye retorted, but suddenly Argos swung his claymore down on her. Vye parried with her own sword (though she didn’t remember having one a moment ago.) Still the swing packed such a punch that she staggered back five paces, skidding to a stop at the edge of the Lunapera. Pebbles trickled off the precipice...

“Dangerous?” Argos said. “You have stepped across the threshold. Your ability to get back depends on my generosity. If I want to, I can hold you fast. I can keep you here until your body fades from the earth.”

And now Vye saw they were not alone. Michael’s corpse remained still, but behind Argos, climbing the hill, were dozens of others. She identified some of them. Recognized some others. The rest all rang any number of distant bells in her memory.

All the people she had ever killed...

“What are they all doing here?” Vye asked.

“I sensed that you were looking for me,” Argos said, “So I reached out, and found others who might have a bone to pick with you. Or off your body.”

“Argos, listen, I don’t want to fight you.”

Argos attacked her again, a flurry of swings with his sword that kept Vye on the defensive. She had precious little room to move her feet. She could only give ground laterally, and Argos was pressing the attack every second. Behind him, the ranks of her dead foes marched closer...

“The Turin people are in trouble!” Vye tried, desperately.

“I might have cared, during my life,” Argos insisted. “But you took that all away from me.”

“They set you up!” Vye yelled, parrying another deadly blow from Argos. He stepped back, letting up just enough to hear her out.

“Who?”

“Selene and Helios,” Vye said, panting, “Michael was supposed to kill you. It was part of the plan. To free Grimsor.”

Argos glared at his nemesis. He would have believed she could lie about anything to get her way. He thought as little of her as she thought of him. Still, her claim fit the facts.

“Selene and Helios were my allies. Frost betrayed us, but those two were still loyal to the cause.”

“But you weren’t,” Vye said, inching forward. She was betting that Argos wouldn’t attack until he had heard the whole story. He backed up, step by step, as she gave herself more room to move. “You became loyal to the Turin cause. So they sacrificed you to open the seal.”

Argos knew she was telling the truth. He knew that the pact he made with the others would be void if they thought they could get something useful out of him. Perhaps they hadn’t stabbed him. But his death would have opened one of the four locks on Grimsor’s prison. A fair price for his life.

“Even now, after you have undone my life’s work, and murdered me, still you haunt me in death to mock me. To gloat in your victory.”

He charged in again, but Vye was ready for him this time. She parried off his first swing, bobbing aside, letting him run himself right up to the cliff. She whipped her sword around, holding the tip right up to the small of his back.

“I don’t know what happens if I stab a dead person,” Vye said. “Do you want to find out?”

“Even if I don’t kill you, they will,” Argos said, speaking over his shoulder.
Vye
could hear the others approaching. Lord Stafford, the man she had
dismembered
in vengeance for killing her father. Selikk, one of Argos’ students, the only one that Vye herself had actually killed. Rows of soldiers from each of the battles she had fought. All coming for her.

Vye parried off Argos’ desperate attacks, keeping him at bay, even as her other enemies approached. But she knew how to strike a bargain.

“I’m going to die one day,” Vye yelled. “And we can strike at each other until the end of time. But if I don’t kill Selene and Helios, who will?”

Argos paused his attack again. She had a point.

“What makes you think you can defeat them?”

“I’m a stubborn asshole,” Vye said.

“They’ve been around for thousands of years.”

“So were you.”

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

“If I help you, you have to promise to kill them. Not capture them or detain them. They must be dead.”

“Do I strike you as the merciful type?”

“What do you want?”

The relentless dead were creeping up on Vye, only a few paces away.

“Well, for starters, can you clear up the crowd?”

“Sorry, you’ll have to make separate bargains with each of them.”

“Can you at least help me out?” she pleaded as her old foes surrounded her.

“Watching you die is still an acceptable outcome to this situation.”

“Fine, we’ll just have to do this the fast way. I need to know the identity of Frost’s ally.”

“He had many,” Argos said.

“The one who lived.”

“Just ask Frost.”

“His friend erased his memory. He doesn’t know who it was.”

“He was telling the truth? We tortured Frost for months to learn his plan. When he said he couldn’t remember, we always assumed he was lying.”

“Well, he wasn’t. And if you really want me to fuck up Selene and Helios, you’ll tell me who it was.”

Vye’s voice was getting short and desperate. Her attackers were flanking her on all sides, poised to strike. But just before the first blade fell, the scenery changed. Argos had taken them to another place and time, somewhere in the Dreamscape.

“The others will find you shortly,” Argos said, “So we don’t have much time.”

“I know this place,” Vye said, “Frost showed this to me, in his dream.”

It was the field where Frost had been captured. The same place where his friend had erased his memory. Indeed, as Vye and Argos stood quietly atop the hill, she could see the visions of Selene, Helios, and the young Argos capturing the young Frost.

“I don’t know his name,” Argos confessed. “I can only show you what he looks like.”

There he was. Frost’s unseen friend. The one whose face didn’t appear in any of Frost’s memories. But there he was, in Argos’ mind. Vye recognized the man.