Numair began to have the same dream, night after night. It began on the boat as they made their painful way back from Carthak to Tortall. He was badly hurt, and feverish from infection which the exhausted healer on the ship could only manage to keep at bay, not destroy. Back then the dreams were hazy, rolling waves of seasickness and grief which made him wake up, pale and trembling, clutching at his splitting headache in the darkness.
The dank smell of wet wood and salt made him retch, and he heard his vomit spilling onto the watery floorboards, and saw it's vileness as just another proof of his own failure. He didn't want to die, but he didn't want to heal. He didn't deserve it, he thought. He hadn't even managed to avenge Daine's life, he had simply made her murderer more powerful. In his dreams he saw her eyes, as grey as the rolling waves and just as baleful. Every night he saw the sky in that gaze, full of foreboding clouds and darkness. He waited for the storm.
It came, in hordes of sharp wings and screaming bloodlust, and the whole world shook with its thunder. The world reeled from its violence, and never seemed to right itself.
For months Numair trailed haunted every battleground, searching the dead stormwings for a face which he knew would never be found. He saw that leering gaze on every corpse, but none of them were truly him. He would have known. He would have felt his revenge, heard the monster's final scream. He would have felt her forgiveness. But he never did.
Even when he was exhausted from the battles against the seemingly endless swarms of immortals he dreamed the same dark visions. But after a few months they changed, growing clearer and clearer until the night came when he could see every detail. It had been nearly a year since she had died, and when he was awake he sometimes struggled to picture her face or hear her voice. But in the dream Daine was as clear as if she were standing beside him.
Well, not standing. She was sitting at a table, every time, reaching out for the poison that had killed her. Sometimes Numair saw a goblet, sometimes the wooden beaker she brewed tealeaves in when they were travelling, but he always saw her raise it to her lips. He struggled to speak, to warn her or to knock the cup away, but even when his dream allowed him to intervene it was always too late.
The dream grew clearer, and he knew it was a goblet she reached for, filled with thick sweet pomegranate juice. He could smell the flat sweetness of it, the sour note under the bright. He watched her drink, and as always he watched her dying.
The dream gave him new details, now, which he wondered at. Ozorne knelt on the shit-stained floor and raised her head in his hands, stopping it from striking the ground when her convulsions grew more violent. He asked her something, and her eyes looked wildly around the room. For a hair-raising second she locked eyes with Numair, and she choked out his name, desperately, hopelessly.
Ozorne's hands fell away from her as if he had been burned, and he strode from the room. He did not look back, and there was little to see. The slaves watched silently as the girl lay still, splayed against the stones like a grounded insect. Then they too crept away, and Daine was left alone to die. She was still, and waxen, and yet her fingers twitched and a few rattling sounds ebbed from her blackened lips.
"He told you not to fight it," A casual voice remarked, and Numair looked up in amazement as a wizened old woman hobbled into the aviary. She sniffed disapprovingly at the state of the room, and slowly lowered herself into the chair Ozorne had vacated. Picking up the poisoned cup, she dabbed her gnarled fingertip into the mixture and tasted it, smacking her lips. "Hurts more when you struggle. He was right about that."
She dashed the cup onto the ground and laughed wickedly as a pair of large rats scurried over to lap at it. "Nosy little beggars. One of these days I'll make you mortal, just to watch your faces when you die."
Numair wanted to slap the woman. Of course he knew who she was. It didn't mean he had to respect her. But he could not move; he could only watch, as if this were a play by the travelling actors that he could not interrupt. The Hag tucked into the abandoned food greedily, throwing morsels to the filthy rats and sometimes making snide comments towards the girl lying on the ground, who by now was quite still.
"No, no," The old biddy said, seemingly to the empty air. "She's in my domain, not yours. I can claim her if I want her, and I do. If you don't give her to me then I'll be taking her bones for my garden instead, and then you'll never get her back."
There was another long silence, which the Hag passed by belching loudly and downing the other glass of juice. Numair wondered if it was also poisoned. He hoped it was. He couldn't take his eyes away from his friend. She looked so small. So alone.
"Get up." Ordered the Hag, not looking around. "I haven't got all day to sit around waiting for your lazy bones to rise."
"You could have brought me back," A soft voice said, and Numair flinched and stared around. No – no, Daine was lying on the floor, graceless and empty, and she couldn't possibly be standing in the doorway. And yet, there she was. She wore the same dress she had died in, and her hair was just as filthy as the wasted strands on the corpse before her, and yet she walked with steady steps.
She spoke reproachfully to the Hag. "You could have helped me."
"Interfering in mortal affairs? Me?" The goddess snorted out a laugh and picked up an orange, peeling it with her horny fingernails and flicking pith up at the ceiling. Daine sat down carefully beside her, careful not to touch any of the food in front of her. Her eyes, like Numair's, seemed drawn irresistibly to the crumpled body, and she looked as if she was going to be sick.
"I'm not alive." She said, "Am I?"
"Of course not. It's a rather direct side effect of the whole 'dying' thing." The Hag shrugged off the question as if it were nothing. "Everybody does it. You're not so special. If you want a shoulder to cry on then ask one of my rats. I'd do it before they start sniffing at your mortal remains, mind."
"I..." Daine cleared her throat and looked around. "Is the dark god... coming?"
"No." It seemed to be enough explanation for now, although Daine clearly disagreed. She caught urgently at the goddess' sleeve and her voice rose.
"Please! Please... ma'am. I... you have to tell me what's going on. Please. I know you didn't bring me back or else I'd... I'd..." She gestured helplessly at the body and choked out, "I'd be in... in that."
"It's just meat." The Hag sniffed. Seeing the girl whiten, she softened a little. "Your mortal shell has been torn away, and now we have to decide what to do with the rest of you. Your parents want you with them, but there's no place for forest gods in the desert, and I'm not sending you all the way across the blessed sea for nothing. You can just earn your way back, if you want to go. For now, I can do with an extra pair of hands."
Daine blinked, looked down at the table, and drew a deep breath. Then, opening her eyes, she gritted her teeth and picked up her empty goblet. Gripping it so tightly that her knuckles went white, she hurled it violently away. It exploded against the wall in a fountain of expensive crystal shards.
The Hag watched her implacably, folding her arms and sucking loudly at her teeth. Daine drew another breath, and through those same gritted teeth she said: "My ma was a midwife in Galla, not a forest god."
"Conversely, your father is a forest god, not a midwife from Galla. But do suggest the idea to him. I'd love to see what the man can do with those horns of his." The Hag chuckled mischievously and shook her head. "Well, there it is. Even if you want to go into Pigeon's dark arms you'll still have to earn your passage."
Daine looked blankly at her, and then almost imperceptibly shook her head. The goddess nodded, and then glanced at the scattered crystal shards. Her nose wrinkled in something close to approval; one of the rats sniffed at a drop of poison, his whiskers trembling over the edge of the droplet.
"Can I say goodbye?" The girl whispered it, almost begging, looking towards the guest wing where her friends must just be waking up. They would be utterly oblivious to the foulness that had happened a few pathetic rooms away. She swallowed and then a mask of determined anger crossed her face. "Can I tell them what he did?"
"They'll find out. We shouldn't interfere with the order of things. It'll just confuse matters and it's none of our business." The Hag said it idly, but there was an implacable note of command in her voice and the girl flinched back.
"But... but it's about me." She whispered, and tears rose in her eyes. The Hag croaked out a mocking laugh and shook her head, as if the girl were being very stupid. Looking back at Daine, and then at the body, she seemed for the first time to notice the girl's distress. There was no empathy in her voice, but a kind of resigned sigh whined from her nostrils.
"Pffnt. I've no time for weeping or wailing, but if you must, then I'll meet you at the grand temple at noon."
She hobbled out, still shaking her head and chuckling as if the girl's request was the funniest thing she had heard in weeks. Daine watched her go, looking numbly at the broken shards the god had crushed underfoot. She didn't look back at her own body again. She chewed her lip and stared at the fractured goblet until tears started in her eyes, and then she buried her head in her hands and screamed.
Numair woke up with his head pounding, his heart racing, and his ears ringing from that unearthly sound. What on earth had he dreamed about? He had never seen those details before, and he had no reason to invent them. Even sleeping, his mind tended to lean on facts. He sat bolt upright and massaged his temples, willing the headache away.
The next morning he couldn't eat breakfast, but headed straight to the royal suite and asked the pages to announce his presence. Jon invited him inside immediately, and even came to the door with a mouthful of bacon making his greeting slightly incoherent.
"Do you have any reports on Carthak?" Numair asked, the words coming out in a rush. Jon looked puzzled.
"Given that we're at war with..."
"No, I mean more... from the priests. From the people. About... about strange things happening."
"Again, Numair... do you mean strange things that aren't extinct magical creatures coming back to life?"
"Exactly!" The man exclaimed. "Anything that's unusually unusual!"
"I'll ask my clerk." Jon chewed thoughtfully. "Or you can. I still have no idea what you're talking about."
"Daine," Numair said, as if that explained everything. Then, looking a little anxious, he hurried off to find the clerk.
Jonathan watched him leave with the bacon hanging from his limp fingers. It wasn't so much Numair's anxiety that made him pause, but the man's expression when he said his student's name. Ever since the funeral he had refused to talk about her at all, save for a very bitter, heartfelt eulogy which had lasted far longer than most of his meandering speeches. Now, unbidden, he had spoken her name aloud, and his eyes had not narrowed or darted away but were nervous and quick. If he didn't know any better, Jon thought, he would have thought Numair was excited.
"He didn't find anything in particular," The clerk reported back later that day, as he wearily sorted out the detritus from Numair's search. Shuffling a stack of papers, he added, "He took a few reports away – nothing important, so I said he could keep them. Stories about feral animals, a farming census, a few reports about horses and the Banjiku. If we were actually going to the mainland to confront Ozorne then they would make a difference, but since his transformation no-one even knows where the Emperor is."
"I don't think he's looking for Ozorne," Jon said absently. Afterwards, he wondered at his own words. If Numair wasn't looking for Ozorne, then what was he actually doing? There was no-one else who so possessed the man's thoughts. Ever since Daine had died, all Numair seemed to think about was crushing the Emperor Mage into dust.
He had headed more patrols than any other mage in the country, and attended every strategic meeting he could find. Captains and generals had reported him appearing in their camps, asking for their strategies and suggesting new ideas which he would gladly help with. His ideas, Jon gathered with some discomfort, were always vicious and deadly. Before the war he had balked at death, taking prisoners or transforming his enemies rather than see them bleed. Now, it was as if a red mist had covered his black eyes. Any enemy could die; any man or monster might be close enough to Ozorne to leave a scar on that man's heart.
Numair seemed to revel in their extinction. He slaughtered them without a second's remorse. His own pain was unforgiving and just as relentless as his revenge. If Ozorne's heart stung with a few slight scars, then Numair's was raw and bleeding.
Reports on animals and farms did not fit with this darker, deadlier man. Jon was not certain whether he should be relieved or worried. He was beginning to fear that Numair was losing his mind.