Lianna

Marpenoth 13, 1386 DR

I opened my eyes to a dark fog thick enough I could barely see my hands in front of me, and the susurrating sound of a hundred voices making for a din like waves crashing in a roar onto the sand. Not exactly the pleasant dream I'd expected, I had to admit. This was more like the red swirls of madness I'd seen in the Skein.

I shut my eyes; the darkness was unnerving, like oily smoke. Any direction's good, I thought, stepping forward carefully.

I felt it as a wisp of the mist traced its way across my wrist, and suddenly became a solid thing, snagging me. I tried not to scream, yanking frantically. As it tightened its hold, one voice grew louder and distinct from the rest of the dull roar. I recognized it as the cultured tones of Neverwinter elite, but I didn't know the voice. "You can't think to train him; you can't make a paladin out of a child that's almost a barbarian." It released its grip, leaving a trail of cool damp where it had gripped me.

Shuddering, I scrubbed my wrist and edged forward another step: got caught around the knees this time. A woman now, a melodic voice made harsh by obvious cold anger. "Do you hear me? Control yourself, apprentice. Master your emotions else I no longer have anything to teach you."

Step again, bracing against the thick rope—oh gods, this one was going to be bad—that caught me around the waist and almost yanked me off my feet. "You dare to call yourself a paladin?" This was a young man's furious shout. "Thank the gods Mordren told me; I knowall about what you've done!"

"Harcus, please, calm down…" Casavir's voice pled in answer, tight with panic.

"Can't control your lusts around a lady? You're gutter trash, and now you'll die like it."

"Let me expl—"

"You can save a little honor and die fighting, or I can just run you through." The ringing rasp of a sword drawn from its sheath, and it let me go.

With that, I ran like a pack of hellhounds was behind me. Heedless of direction, just running on a panicked animal need to escape from the mist that was grabbing, blinding, choking me...get out, get out now or I'll die here.

I heard Bishop's arrogant drawl next, the grasping tendrils stinging as they hit but didn't catch hold. "Oh, paladin, leave the wench to a realman."

Was I running in circles? "It's like he's not even human."

"So, the fallen apprentice of a fallen master."

"Justice can't be biased by emotion, Casavir. It's your duty."

The shadow priest hissed, "Surely you recall how they died, paladin. These mountains have been covered in blood since your arrival."

"Such passion, but you have no use for it, do you? Not with the sword at your side…or the other one either," Blooden chuckled. "Ohh, you're wasted in your temple's walls, paladin."

"Perhaps we were mistaken in you. If the base material is flawed…well…"

"Katalmach, you pay today in blood," Logram snarled in my ear.

"I love her, more than I love my own life, and I can say nothing of it." Cas sounded like a man staring at a vast abyss of his own defeat and despair. Who had he said that to?

I almost faltered when I heard my own voice shouting. "Do you ever feel anything at all? At least he has a heart, black and shriveled as it is!"

And then I burst out of the fog into the sunlight, almost blinding me. I stood, hands on my knees, panting. I wanted to laugh with relief. I wanted to start crying like an idiot. Mostly, I really wanted to throw up.

I looked back over my shoulder. A thick pine forest stood where the mist had been, but I still heard the sound of it in my ears. "Stupid," I hissed to myself. "You should have known better." Being calm and centered was essential to successfully roaming the dreamscape. One of Gann's first lessons, that: most dreamwalkers instinctively bridged to a mirror of their own inner state.

"So, does that mean you're desperately horny," I'd suggested peevishly, "that you end up haunting the dreams of lonely farmgirls?" Hit a little too close to home, that. I'd been one of those farmgirls a few years before. And yeah, now and again I'd woken with my breath fast and my body aching after dreaming about a man—they varied—very different from the village lunkheads.

It seemed depressing to think that ordinary boredom and some sexual frustration at holding out for a really decent man were my biggest problems back then. These days, that was laughable. I was upset, full of doubts and terror and all kinds of nasty things that went bump in the night. Small wonder that I'd stepped into a like part of Casavir, and dumped myself right into the swirling hurricane of his own darkness.

And Mielikki, did he have a lot. I hadn't even heard more than a taste of it.

"What are you doing here?" I turned and saw Casavir standing there with an expression that was anything but welcoming. In fact, there was a faint gleam of hostility in his eyes.

"I…ah…" Yeah, this was probably not a great time to start babbling about dreamwalking and accidentally poking into shadowy corners of his soul. I settled for a meek and confused, "I'm not sure." True enough. By the looks of it, he had been alone on the clifftop behind him. I saw the glimmer of the sunlight on the ocean off on the horizon. So the roaring I heard wasn't the voices, but the waves crashing against the rocks below. Well, he wasn't exactly having the happy dream I'd expected.

He stared at me and laughed incredulously, resting his forehead on his fist. "Oh, gods. Really, Lianna? Not enough that I spend my waking hours playing stud, but now you can't leave me alone in my sleep? Even whores get to rest sometime."

I froze hearing that from him. Painfully blunt words, so unlike what I was used to. He couldn't have done better to have hit me physically, I thought, as two realizations hit me.

First: this was the dreamscape, full of both truth and illusion. They could create great illusions in surroundings, but the dreamer was usually truer than their waking self ever could be. So this was his feeling, raw and unfiltered through courtesy. At least there wasn't loathing in his expression—not yet. But I could see his anger, his humiliation.

Second: I'd screwed up by dreamwalking. He was right. I'd apparently already made his waking hours miserable by feeling entitled to use his body. And here I was trying to use his mind for my own purposes as well. I'd stripped away his last bit of privacy and dignity with this invasion. I'd already ended up poking into a few painful memories I wished I could give back.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, embarrassed for him, embarrassed for myself. "I won't come back…"

He let out an irritated sigh, gestured me to stop. "I conjured you here for some reason. And hopefully it's not that I'm finding a taste for pain," he added half to himself.

I didn't dare move closer, and couldn't quite look at him. "It might help?" I offered tentatively. If nothing else at least I'd know how he honestly felt after the crap I'd put him through.

I noticed he made no effort to come close enough for me to touch him. "Somethinghas to change, that I know. I've thought about strangling you more than once this last tenday. Now, aside from the fact that paladins simply don't try to kill their wives—I almost worry you might enjoy it."

He said it, a half-scathing, half-funny remark, so matter-of-factly. I couldn't help it. I started laughing, and the dam burst again. Before long, my shoulders were shaking with a mix of giggles, sobs, the occasional hiccup as I tried to catch my breath…was this what hysteria felt like? I wiped my eyes on my sleeve, and somehow managed to say here in the dreamworld what I didn't dare in reality. "I think I'm going insane."

He just nodded, giving me no indication of how he felt about that. "Then someone sane needs to be there to catch your fall." The scene around us blurred, and I felt ready to throw up all over again at the dizzying whirl as his dreaming mind reshaped the scene.

When I dared to open my eyes again, I saw the clifftop we'd been on jutting out over the ocean about a mile distant. Then I turned and saw the flames.

"Where are we?" I yelped in surprise.

"My home village. Riverbirch Hollow."

"It's…destroyed?" Somehow I couldn't seem to come up with more than stupid, obvious comments right now. I was still on the fact that I'd somehow admitted that I was afraid I was losing my mind.

"You remember I told you that my parents died?"

"Yeah. They died of fever, so you were sent to Neverwinter."

"It wasn't just them. It was the entire village. Just six of us were left, all kids. Red ague doesn't kill anyone under ten or so. They put us in quarantine for two tendays and then we went to the temples to foster or to other villages." He turned his head to gaze towards the fire, the wind ruffling his hair. "When they took us away, they burned it."

"The houses?" I asked him. We were far enough away that all I could see was the flames dancing, terrible and red, in the crumbling timbers of buildings. But suddenly his memories took hold of the dream, reshaped it a little, and I could smell it all too well. I almost gagged. There was woodsmoke, yes, but the thick greasy scent of roasting flesh, the acrid char of hair…I knew that somewhere in the inferno, the bodies had become a funeral bier.

"You never forget thesmell…" His breath caught in an abrupt hitch. "The Ilmaterian sister who cared for us cast a spell to help us forget until we were older. All I remembered was that my family died of the fever." He smiled sadly. "My parents and my sister—I was the youngest. They'd lost two children already."

"It came back, though." The haunted look on his face said it all. "It wasn't…it wasn't at Ember, was it?"

I thought back to how stricken he'd looked at Ember. Bloated, blackened, butchered corpses squirming with maggots and stinking in the blazing Flamerule sun…and he'd grimly insisted on burying every one of them. Shandra and I had agreed. Grave detail had been frequently interrupted: puke, drink water to replace what we lost from puking and sweating, go back to work.

I'd seen it again at West Harbor. Bishop's suggestion of just burning the bodies led to the first time I'd seen Casavir showing his temper. I'd been plenty pissed off at that suggestion. But hearing this? Gods, Bishop was lucky to have left with his head on his shoulders.

"I remembered when I was fifteen, with the Wailing Death. The first time I smelled a plague pyre burning in the square in Neverwinter." He didn't elaborate what had happened, but I could well imagine.

"Did you ever go back?" When he'd told me the name long ago, I'd seen that it wasn't on the map, though most tiny villages weren't. But unlike the rest, he'd never mentioned being nearby when we were on our travels. Even Bishop had confessed when we were near Redfallows Watch.

"What for, Lianna?" He gestured towards the flames, a look of desolation on his face. "The ashes scattered to the winds long ago. There's nothing for me there. I've only come back a few times in nightmares."

"Then why," I asked carefully, "did you just come here?" If I'd mired him in this kind of hellish mindset, I really had a lot to atone for. "The last tenday's sucked for you. I know. Why hurt yourself more with this?"

"Because it's pain enough to remind me what could be lost."

"And what's that?"

"My kinfolk fought a band of Luskans that Flamerule. They killed the raiders to the last man, to keep us kids from being stolen like Bishop was. But come Marpenoth, even the need to stay alive and protect us couldn't fight the plague." Now he turned to look at me, a look of fierce intensity on his face. "So is that it? You survive the fight just to fall to the plague you never expected?"

I felt the crushing weight of it all over again. "Plague" didn't seem too far off a description to the sickness come over my soul. "I guess fate just fucks you like that sometimes, doesn't it? Tyr, Torm, and their ilk got their piece of me, and now Cyric and his friends are calling in for their share."

"I don't accept that," he snapped, and I saw his hands clenched in fists. "The benevolent gods protect you, Lianna. And besides, I was the one Cyric wanted to torment." What? All right, he'd neglected to mention the part where he heard the gods, hadn't he? I stared at him, but like a boulder set in motion, he was on a roll and didn't notice.

"Maybe it's the price I pay for saving the people. One sacrifice made for so many…not so bad, right?"

Now he was actually shouting. I'd only ever heard that from him over the din of battle. "Ah, stop quoting that kinslayer Ammon Jerro, will you? People's lives aren't cheap little coins to trade!"

"Says the man who, when we met, was trying really hard to get killed to pay for taking a life," I snapped back.

"Yes, I spent four years thinking that all I could hope for was making my death count for something. I was wrong, all right? Do yourself a favor and learn from my stupidity instead of just repeating it like a gods-damned idiot!"

"And what if I can't just stop sliding further into darkness, no matter how hard I fight? This last tenday I've spent just taking what I wanted and not caring how I hurt you. That's how it starts, thinking nobody else matters. So do you start making excuses when I start hurting people? Turn a blind eye to my evil until I finally turn into my brother and you have to kill me?"

"I don't give up so easily, damn you! I can't sit by while there's something that needs me in the fight. That's why I was miserable in Neverwinter with just words, speeches…" He shrugged helplessly, his voice calming. "I found purpose for a time at Old Owl Well. But I finally felt alive fighting by your side, Lianna; you gave me hope and a battle to be won. Whatever this battle is, let me stand with you. I'm…not strong enough to lose you like that."

"It starts there," I said, feeling the bitter resignation creep into my voice. "I rely on your help because you'll let me, and then I actually start to need it…"

"So what in the nine hells do you think a husband is for?" he exploded again, eyes flashing. I almost felt myself cringe; a strong man working into a full-blown rage was something to give pretty much anyone with a lick of sense some concern. "No, never mind. After the last tenday, I've got the idea."

It was a nasty low blow, and I deserved it. That didn't mean his strike didn't sting me like a poisoned blade. I tried to hit back with explanation, because it was all I could do. "You'll save anyone who needs it, damn you! You'll stick with me long past the point you should just because your admiration suckered you in back in the day, and paladins keep their word."

"I swear to the gods, you're denser than a block of ironwood. My former admiration and my sense of obligation; is that all? Why is it so bloody hard for you to believe that I could just love you?"

"Because maybe I'm not wor—"

"Enough! After all this time, after all you've done." He grabbed my wrist with surprising strength. "Listen to me. Not one in ten thousand could have done the things you have. I couldn't. And I'm tired of your denying it. Why do you insist on believing you're just some farmgirl who barely knows what end of a sword to handle?"

That struck a nerve, and I lashed out with it. "Do they even know where you come from in Neverwinter? Or do they think you're just a whore's brat from the Docks?"

"How," he said carefully, realizing how hard he was gripping me and relaxing his hand, "does that have to do with this?"

"Answer the question," I challenged.

"Not really. I saw no reason."

"You just shut it away and don't think about it, do you? Hurts too much, except when you need to embrace the pain? I'll bet you don't even think about the good times you had, or dream about them. Well, maybe unlike you, I don't want some held-back tears to be all I've got."

Now I realized why the words about destiny and heroism made me so uncomfortable. If I was still just a country ranger, not a war hero, not a Neverwinter noble, I hadn't lost it all. That was my last bit of the innocent kid whose biggest worry had been restless boredom. The last little piece of the West Harbor that I'd come to realize only too late that I had loved.

He didn't rise to the bait. "This isn't about me. You've lost too much. And I wanted to believe that I could be enough to give you hope for the future. And Marrin too." He shook his head tiredly. "Maybe I was wrong."

"Cas…I think you're the only thing that's kept me from wanting to go hang myself this last tenday," I admitted, the words rough. Marri too, but much as I hated to admit it, of late the hope my love for her gave me was offset by her sheer dependence on me. She was both a raft keeping me afloat and a weight chained to my feet. Bishop? My blood brother, my betrayer…I couldn't count on him. All our other friends had left to start their own lives, justly deserved, of course. Casavir was the only one I had, the only one who'd been with me from when I was just a scruffy watchman. And as much as I'd sworn I didn't want to rely on him, I realized that the last tenday had been pathetic, scared attempts to keep hold of the only thing that made sense. I stared at the scuffed toes of my boots, blinking back tears.

"I need you." There. I'd said it, weak and ashamed and afraid as it made me. I waited for it, for this angry, defeated, tired man to hit me when I was reeling.

Instead, he drew me into his arms. There was no kind of desire in it, just the simple comfort of another person's embrace, a touch to say that I wasn't alone. And it felt better than any of the pleasure I'd stolen from him in the last tenday. It felt safe. Head on his shoulder, I felt about ready to start bawling like I had at Cloverton.

"Then I'm yours. You helped me through some of my worst days, before you even loved me. You think I'll turn away from you now?" He dropped his arms, found my hands and squeezed them in his own. "We'll fight this, Lianna." A roguish glint came into his blue eyes. "That's what we country hicks do best, right?"

I actually managed a smile at that. "We'll crack a few skulls, all right. I should go." It was too easy to lose track of time in the dreamscape, and if I didn't slip out of his dream to the waking world before he woke up, I'd be trapped, at least until the next night. And Gann had warned me; the longer one stayed, the more tenuous the grip on reality became. Too many people had gone into the dreamscape and never found their way back, until they believed the dream was reality.

It struck me then. Would that be such a bad thing? I could stay here, talk to him each night in complete honesty. No need for fumbling with the masks of the waking world, shyness or fear or pretense. Never go back to the pain of my reality, and never hurt him again with my mistakes? I could stay here, forever in an embrace like this. Gods, it was a tempting draught to drink.

As I felt myself weakening, another thought came from somewhere, cold and clear as crystal. And you'll drive him to despair when he wakes up and you don't, and then to madness when you stay in his mind where you don't belong. You thought leaning on him was bad? I shook my head, trying to clear the dream haze and searching for the threads of myself.

I stretched up on my toes to kiss him, to give him my thanks. I saw how he flinched and drew back—he had to be thinking of what my kisses had meant in the last days, and he couldn't hide his feelings about it here. "It's…it's not like that," as I settled to just kiss him lightly on the cheek. "Do something for me?"

"What?"

"Find somewhere happier than this for a while." Sliding my hand down his arm, lingering for a few moments, I was still reluctant to let go. It seemed that after two and a half years, finding him here had told me that I still only half knew him. And this side to him, passionate and maybe a little too blunt, might have helped me more than his restrained gentleness would have. I started tugging gently on my threads to the waking world, locating the anchor of my reality. A little harder than normal, I noticed ruefully. I wasn't as tied to the earth and the world around me as I usually was.

Things blurred around us again, and the choking smell of fire faded to green grass and forest, a fresh salt tang from the sea. When I looked, the village was intact again, the timber-and-stone cottages shabby but snug-looking. Dusk was falling over the ocean, and it painted the water in the colors of fire.

From the path on the cliffs, a family came walking. A young woman, small and black-haired; a basket of fish balanced on the curve of one hip. Sune-kissed like me, I thought ruefully, the polite term for being rather generous in the hips and chest. Her man beside her walked with his nets in a heavy bundle over his shoulder, tall and broad and blond. "Not a good day. Maybe you need to come tomorrow and sing the flounder up for me, aye? They wouldn't resist that voice."

"Never you mind that, Dru," she said with a laugh, nudging him playfully with her shoulder as they walked. "We'll put enough by this year. We always do."

They moved on, talking, as two children followed behind. The girl, probably eleven and fair as her father, looked back at her brother, some four years younger, with some impatience. "Well, come on then. Or d'you need to be carried?" she mocked.

"Race you to the village," he answered, almost bouncing with sheer energy.

"Fine. Count of…" The boy was already off like a shot, and she started running to try and keep up. She almost knocked her parents over in her eagerness, bowling past them and shrieking about her brother cheating.

"D'you hear me?" their mother hollered. "Stop acting like wolves in the woods!" She turned to her husband and groaned. "And what do we do with the pair of them?"

"Start tossing them raw meat and bones?" he said with a hearty laugh I recognized. I'd heard it more than once. Casavir had his mother's black hair and blue eyes, and the height and strength of his father, made into a trim swordsman's build rather than a fisherman and farmer's brawn…I suddenly saw it. "Give no mind to it, Melli. They'll grow up soon enough, the two of them." Their words faded as they walked further down the path. Young Cas reached the pasture fence first and waited, sitting on it, until his sister arrived. She roughly tousled his black curls, and I could see the affection in the gesture.

"That's them?"

He nodded. "My parents, my sister Irenna and me, yes." He put his arm around me, drew me close. "I didn't forget. But…maybe I didn't want to remember." And then he gave me the kiss I'd wanted to give him.

I woke up with a start, tangled in the covers like a badger in a collapsed burrow. Casavir was still out like a poleaxed Uthgardt, but turning towards me even in his sleep. The first rays of dawn were stretching their fingers through the window like uncertain phantoms. He'd be up soon enough for his morning prayers and training. And I didn't want to talk to him about it, not just yet. Not when I'd have to explain what I was doing wandering in his dreams. But for the first time in days, I had some kind of hope.

As I got dressed, I felt the details of the dream rapidly fading, as they always did. I struggled to grasp hold of what I could and fix it in my mind. Most of it slipped away, though. "No easy route," I muttered as I went to go feed Marrin. I wasn't going to get away with just a nice chat with my husband in the dreamscape, problem solved. Chances were he wouldn't remember most of it either when he woke up. But with the fearless honesty we'd had there, maybe that dream had been just the thing I needed. I thought it might give me enough guts to have the conversation with him here in the real world.

I picked up our daughter and smiled at her. She smiled back, recognizing me. And I realized with a tinge of regret that I wished Casavir would show me a little more of the man I'd met last night.

He finally cornered me a little after noon. "Hi," I said, putting down the bow I'd been training with.

"I thought we could get out for the afternoon. Go fishing, maybe?"

"You want to go fishing," I repeated dumbly, wondering what he was getting at.

He nodded, smiling cheerfully as though the awkwardness of the last tenday hadn't happened. "Why not? The fire salmon are on their way upriver. There's nothing urgent at the Keep, so I thought it might be nice to go catch a few. I figured a ranger doesn't need too much encouragement to get out into the woods."

Fishing? Well, that could mean a few things. If he didn't take his dreams seriously, that could mean that he wanted to just do a Smite Evil out of the Greycloaks' sight.

It could mean that he'd taken my appearing in his dream as a good sign and wanted to talk. Or, to be honest, it could mean that he wanted to, well…fish, and show that despite everything, he wanted spend time with me.

Either way, it looked like his silent endurance act was up. I could only think that was a good thing.

"Sure," I managed, following him back up towards the Keep to get the fishing gear.