"Suhail is right," said Kendappa. "You're overreacting. Ashura, you blew up your bedchamber during a nightmare. How did you make the mental leap from damaging a few rooms to being a danger to all your people?"
"You were worried about that yourself at the time," Ashura reminded her.
"We were all upset in the heat of the moment," she said reasonably. "I can view what happened more objectively now. You should, too."
"It's not that simple, Kendappa."
"Yes, it is. Your problem is that you think too much. Sometimes it overcomplicates things."
"A few precautions will help put my mind at ease." He gave her a long look that revealed nothing of his true concerns. "Humor me, cousin."
"If it makes you happy." She shook her head fondly. Taking his arm, she said, "Come along, Your Majesty. It's almost time for the evening meal, and you know the household won't begin without you unless you send word that you won't be attending. Take pity on all those poor, starving people staring at their plates, unable to taste even a morsel until you arrive."
Ashura smiled and let her lead him out of the library.
The next day the weather finally cleared. While everyone cheered the blue sky and the sun, the improved conditions created a great deal of work that needed to be completed as quickly as possible. No one knew how long the good weather would last. Roads had to be cleared, buildings damaged by the weight of snow and ice repaired, and supply chains reopened so food and other essentials could be restocked. Preparations also needed to be made for the next major storm. There was certain to be at least one more before deep winter ended. There were innumerable administrative tasks involved for the royal court, a great many of which required input or approval from the king. Ashura kept happily busy and didn't have time during the daylight hours to dwell on the long future.
In the evenings he did ponder the future, although the urgency seemed lessened. He was always pleasantly tired from the day's work and slept well at night. For a wonder no dreams troubled him or drove him to frantically seek solutions to something that hadn't occurred yet. It gave him some time to sit back and consider things more rationally. And rationally, what he needed was more information. He still had no idea what would set him on that fateful path. He dedicated at least two hours every evening to crafting a spell for this purpose. By the end of the week it was ready.
Its statement of intent was deceptively simple. Basically, it just stated that he wished to know why the future he foresaw would come to pass. He didn't particularly care how the information came to him, so he left that part ambiguous. With this type of spell, it was best to let the magic find its own way to fulfillment. He had put most of the week's effort into tailoring an appropriate sigil and determining the power and technique required for the best chance of success.
It was almost midnight. Almost the appointed time for the working. Ashura spared a glance for his golden wizard's staff. Its focus stone of colorless fluorite glimmered like a perfect ice crystal, outshining the other jewels set in the stylized, outstretched wings. He decided to leave it behind. He rarely used it anymore, considering it a ceremonial prop at best and a crutch at worst. Tonight he would either succeed on his own merits, or he wouldn't.
He conjured a magelight to light his way, and went to the shrine beneath the castle. No one had ever dared give this most hallowed of places a formal name. It was known simply as the shrine. The entire cavern was carved from the very bedrock of the mountain. It was immensely old, and contained the greatest source of natural magic in the kingdom. In days lost to history the castle's original foundations had been constructed over and around it. Succeeding generations had built upon the structure, so that the various parts of the castle were an eclectic jumble of architectural styles.
Within the cathedral-like shrine stood many concentric circles of columns. They supported the carved arches and vaults of the smoothed rock ceiling that soared overhead. Ashura passed through them to the very heart of the structure, to the sacred pool.
It lay in the shrine's exact center. He stood next to it and gazed into the impossibly blue depths. No one knew how deep it ran. No one had ever mapped it out, physically or by esoteric means. It would have been too sacrilegious an act. The water was pure, so terribly pure it was almost antithetical to ordinary, mortal life.
On impulse, he knelt down and rinsed his hands and mouth, a small purification rite that he usually didn't bother performing for spell-casting. But this time was special, and the simple ritual felt right.
Then he rose and walked to the spot he had selected for the working. He had chosen this place to perform the spell because it held the most resonance with his dreams. It was here that he would die.
He stood at the precise location where he had foreseen his own death, where his body would one day lie. He felt no different. Ashura had half expected to feel something. A chill, a foreboding, anything. But there was nothing strange at all.
He looked up at the ceiling, but the cold stonework told him nothing. It provided no impulses to correct action, triggered no hidden instincts that might guide him. He could only begin his spell, and see where it led.
Ashura took a moment to marshal his power, focusing and concentrating all his mental and magical energies. When he was ready, he used his index finger to draw the elaborate sigil in the air while sending all his power into the design. The pattern of his magic took shape, accepting his will and desire for knowledge.
He traced over the glyph repeatedly, charging it with more and more power. It glowed brighter and brighter, until the shrine seemed filled with midday sunshine. When at last he was satisfied, and the sigil was full to bursting with esoteric energy, he clapped his hands sharply. The glyph exploded in a shower of multihued sparks that faded and vanished.
It was done.
At first, it seemed that nothing had happened. Then he felt a slight breeze, a tiny movement of air that fluttered his hair and caressed his skin.
A voice whispered his name. "Ashura..."
That was unexpected. "Who's there?" he asked, turning in a circle. No one else was present.
The voice whispered again, breathy and drawn out. "Ashura..."
The sound of a single drop of water echoed throughout the shrine.
Puzzled, Ashura returned to the sacred pool. The preternaturally blue surface rippled, small waves flowing out from the center in a series of perfect concentric circles. Ghostly gray and white images danced in the disturbances, reflections of the arches and columns overhead.
As he watched, the water calmed and became still. Once again, utter silence surrounded him. Ashura frowned, pondering his experiences. He assumed his spell was at work, but these signs weren't clear.
He'd just have to wait and see what eventually manifested. It might be a while. There was nothing more he could accomplish this night. He decided to leave the shrine and go to bed. Perhaps the spell would reveal something of interest later.
He stepped through the great doors, emerging not into the castle passageway, but instead a wintry landscape.
He stood in the center of some nameless village. Bodies lay strewn around him, ripped to pieces. Crimson stained the snow, defiling its white purity, the warm blood melting ice and mingling with the liquid flows to create vile, pink pools.
He turned in a circle, scanning with his eyes, reaching out with mystical senses. Death hung over everything. In the entire village, not one person still breathed.
His eyes turned downward, to the corpses at his feet. His gaze fell on his hands, and his heartbeat faltered.
His hands were covered with blood.
Shredded skin and wet strings of tissue clung to his nails. His robes and greatcoat were splattered with gore and gelatinous gobbets of flesh.
No, his mind denied. It can't be. It can't.
"No!" Ashura shouted. "I will not live through this again! I will not!"
The trigger worked, and he was able to step outside himself. He stared at his future self, who stood frozen in time and horror, and wondered what had gone wrong. Why was he dreaming? He didn't recall even falling asleep. Was this the spell's doing?
He turned sideways and left the dream. Assuming this was an effect of his spell, he should be able to finally determine how he would become a madman. He quickly identified the darkness that shrouded the paths into his future.
It was a thick miasma that reeked of evil and malign intent, definitely something that had been placed deliberately. Ashura touched it with tentative fingers, trying to get a sense for who could have put it here, and why. A sorcerer, and a powerful one, far more powerful than any Ashura had ever encountered. The veil held the kind of immense potency he had only read about in myths and legends. He hadn't really believed before that this kind of power could even exist.
He couldn't get the slightest hint, though, of the sorcerer's identity. It was too well disguised, the concealment far too strong for Ashura to break. Despite the immensity of the power involved, he thought it might still be something his future self had done. He knew that once he started murdering his subjects, his own power would grow immeasurably. But this strong?
Perhaps. Perhaps he might gain this kind of strength. The thought was terrifying, and yet somehow exhilarating.
He didn't dare let himself think like that.
Ashura pushed on the veil. It gave just a little, then a little more. He put all his will, focus, and magical power into it, and managed to press one hand inside the darkness. It felt cold, colder than a moonless winter night in the midst of a monstrous blizzard. Ashura had never felt such cold. For an eternity he stood there, his hand trapped inside that terrible blackness, the cold radiating up his arm and into the rest of his body. He gritted his teeth and pushed harder, despite the pain still determined to see inside.
He got his arm in up to the elbow when the veil suddenly rebounded. The violent force flung him away, away from his living nightmare, away from himself, and far across the abyss of dreams.
He couldn't stop falling, falling, falling...
Flailing, he reached out, seeking any lifeline, and touched a thread of pain, full of misery and fear that matched his own. Not quite the same, but similar. So very, very similar. He let the thread draw him in.
It took him into another dream, but not one of his own, nor one he had ever encountered before. It was of another time, a time in the past, he believed. It held a strangeness, a sense of the alien, that marked it as a world different from his own.
He beheld a royal court in a place called Valeria. Standing for judgment before a grim man on the throne were twin boys with blue eyes and blond hair. A pair of young princes. They couldn't have been more than five or six years old, only a little younger than his own children would have been by now, had they lived.
Would his sons have been blond and blue eyed, like his beloved queen? Or would they have taken his own, darker coloring? No dream path ever showed him, and he would never know.
No one in this foreign court dreamed true dreams. No one here could share this dream, communicate with him or even detect his presence. He was nothing more than a ghostly shade, intangible and impotent, an unwilling witness to events that had nothing to do with him or his kingdom.
There was nothing to be gained here. He should leave.
But the twins' pain, so much like his own, called to him. They were the source of the misery that had drawn him here. He couldn't resist them. He gripped their thread tightly, and followed their path to see something of their fate.
For all their short lives, calamity and tragedy followed the two children. No one loved them, not even their own mother. No one could. In this world any twins born were an ill omen, the cause of misfortune and disaster for all those around them. As such, royal twins were an abhorrence and source of evil to the entire country.
Great suffering afflicted these twins, and great despair, and so much pain that it tore open Ashura's heart. He saw that only one boy would survive, but not the reason for the other's death. Ashura didn't permit that to trouble him too deeply. Children often died young, of disease or injuries, or sometimes for no apparent reason at all. Even in a land as steeped in magic as his own, it happened.
What did trouble him was the horror that dogged the twins' lives through no fault of their own; the misplaced condemnation, the nightmarish choices, and the unjust punishments. This alien world held powerful magic, and magicians to make use of it, yet none would even attempt to ameliorate the damage. No one did anything except passively suffer misfortunes and cast blame.
The twin princes clung tightly to each other, as though they were two halves of a single whole. They faced their tribulations with great courage, but in the end Ashura believed they would both be destroyed. Worse, no one in this land would grieve. Instead, there would be rejoicing.
Poor, unfortunate children.
They were both born magicians, he could tell. The one who would survive might become very skilled and powerful someday, were he allowed to reach adulthood.
Ashura doubted that he would be allowed to reach adulthood.
These children didn't belong in this place. Ashura instinctively reached out, seeking a path through the dream worlds, one that he could follow in body, not just in spirit. If he could only mark them, he might traverse reality once more as he had done in his youth, before he had become King of Seresu and weighted down with responsibilities and sacral oaths, and take the twins away from here.
Their dream slipped away, beyond his reach. He cast his mind about, searching, searching, but they were gone. He had lost them. Just like he'd lost his own sons.