She was in the foothills of some mountains or other, that stood, threatening and black against a cloudy blue sky. The snow lay deep around her, seemingly undisturbed. She stood there, breathing in the impossibly clean air, and straining her eyes in the twilight. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned to see the hagspawn standing next to her.
"This is what Ashenwood once looked like," Gann said, "Before any walked here, God, man, or beast. Something is wrong here, be on your guard."
"I thought we were dreaming," she said, "What do I have to fear?"
"Yes, we are dreaming. We are within your mind. Your body is quite safe, but your mind may still be destroyed by the demons who dwell within you."
They tramped through the snowy woods. Adahni felt none of the familiar aches and pains, and knew that Gann was telling the truth, they were indeed dreaming. They followed a path cut between the mountains of her mind, which went round and round in a spiral, until they reached a barren clearing, where the snow had melted away. There were a few small birch trees there, surrounding the clearing. Of more interest, though, was the group standing within.
"I don't know them," Adahni said, stopping dead in her tracks, "If this is my mind, then shouldn't it only be populated with people I've seen?"
"It's only yours anymore," Gann said, "You are carrying yourself and the curse within you. These may be memories that the spirit eater has."
"So this is how I can talk to the curse? You speak of it as though it is a person," Adahni said.
"I don't know what it is. And neither do you. That is why we are here, no?"
"There are five there," Adahni said, "I don't know them. I've never seen them before in my life, and yet..."
"And yet what?" Gann asked.
"That one is named Juraj," she said, pointing at a shorthaired woman in a sorcerer's robe, "I don't know how I know this. I have never lain eyes on her before..."
"Someone walks in our lady's garden..." Juraj said. Her voice was familiar, low and husky.
"Stay back!" another of the group called. He turned, and Adahni looked upon the face of a painted barbarian. She knew his name. Ivoi. How did she know his name, "We found her, she is urs! She is all we have, and you cannot take her away!"
"Careful," the hagspawn whispered in her ear, "These four mean us harm."
"And the fifth?" Adahni asked, straining her eyes in the half-light. The fifth figure hung back behind the other four. She could see the silhouette of wizard's robes, and a bald head, "Is that Safiya?"
"How did you find your way to this place?" A third of the group asked. He was blad and moustachioed, wearing some nobleman's garb that looked dreadfully out of date, "Tell us."
"I might ask you the same, seeing as this is my mind you're occupying," Adahni said.
"Is it true?" Ivoi the barbarian asked, "Does she dream us, or do we dream her? And each other?"
"Be quiet," the older man said. His name came to her of a sudden. Zarakh. "She is another bearer of the Gift, nothing more. They arise, one after another, blazing bright and guttering out. They hunger, gorge, and are gone... but we remain – we have her for an anchor."
"What is so important about that woman?" Adahni asked, looking at the red wizard behind them.
"She is the last of many... all facets of the same dream, the same memory. There were many once... before the hunger took them all. Only she remains because she was always the strongest. Her garden, our garden – grew firm and strong around her."
"Please, don't take her away!" Ivoi begged, "Don't cast us adrift, we cannot bear it again!"
"I need to speak with her. Can I offer you something, anything, in exchange?" Adahni asked, keeping her speech sweet.
"No. She's been waiting for this one. They'll speak their words, and then she'll leave us."
"Ivoi is right," Zarakh said, "We cannot risk losing our anchor, and I think that if we slay you here, you will never find your way back to our lady's garden." He threw his hands in the air, and began an incantation. Ivoi drew a large and nasty-looking axe. They advanced on her, slowly.
"Good gods," Adahni said, "You mean I have to fight figments of my own mind?"
"You could," Gann said, "But for someone who has such a great command over her own mind, I think it should be easier for you."
She looked at him strangely, but then realized what he meant. This was her dream. Her mind. She did not control these aspects of the dream, these strangers to her who had managed to come there to that place deep within her, but she did control the rest of it. She concentrated a moment. A great crack sounded across the barren landscape, echoing for nearly a minute, as a great avalanche of snow was loosed from the hills above and came barreling down on the group. It buried the, crushing them under a mountain of snow, so that not even the point of Ivoi's axe was visible beneath the white.
"Very nicely done!" the hagspawn said, clapping his hands slowly in admiration, "For one with such a fiery spirit as your own, I would have thought you would have called upon something hotter than snow."
"I work with what is available to me," Adahni said, actually impressed herself with what she'd been able to do, "I would, of course, prefer fire. But snow is here, and so snow will do."
"I am going to do my best not to read too far into that statement, my lemming," Gann said.
"See that you don't," Adahn replied. She made her way over the snow bank, feeling the four companions start to stir beneath it. The woman in red was still standing there in the grove of snow-covered birches, as though she had neither seen nor heard the avalanche that had buried her four devotees. She turned absently as Adahni approached her.
"I feared you would not find me before the hunger took you," she said. Up close, Adahni could see that it was not precisely Safiya. The two looked very much alike to be sure, but this red woman was a bit older.
"What are you? What are you doing in my mind?" Adahni asked, "What do you have to do with the hunger?"
"I am but a memory of love," the red woman said, looking away. She started walking away, into the shadow of the birches, so that Adahni could barely see her outline.
"I don't understand," Adahni said, "A memory of love? What do you mean by that?" She followed, putting her hand out to stay the hagspawn who wished to follow her. She followed the retreating back of the red woman into the birches. She walked into the darkness, branches tearing at her face, until she came upon another clearing. The red woman was now one of several people, all of whom looked up as she came in. Adahni put her hands over her mouth as she realized who they were.
Alden, the plowboy, the first boy she had ever kissed, and then never seen again. Dayven, her first husband, still a young and whole man with all of his teeth, his green eyes clear and beautiful, untainted by hatred or the madness of Cyric. Jem, who had rescued her and been rescued by her, his curly brown hair and blue eyes with the smile lines at their edges. They were sitting in a circle in the middle of the clearing. They rose, one by one, and embraced her. All of the men she had ever loved.
All but one.
"I don't understand," she said, feeling hot tears spring to her eyes and course down her cheeks.
"Yes you do," the red woman said, "You know what it is to love and lose."
"Yes I do," Adahni said, "You didn't have to... you didn't have to show them to me. Why did you do this? Why am I doing this to myself?" The agony pierced her heart as she gazed upon the eyes of her lost loves, "Alden... I can't even remember your face when I am awake. Why do I see you now?" The darkeyed plowboy shrugged. He'd disappeared after the harvest. He has no voice because I cannot remember his voice, she thought. Dayven had turned into a bitter little addict, cleaved to the darkness of the Circle of Blades. And Jem... poor Jem had fallen while in her service, killed by a bandit's arrow. "Jem..."
"It's all right, Addie," said Jem. He put his arms around her, and then released her, and turned her by her shoulders so that she faced the red woman. The woman had produced something, it looked like a dark piece of carved wood, and held it out to her. "Take it, love," Jem said.
"What is it?" Adahni asked, but took it from the woman's hands before she received an answer.
"It is me," the woman said, "And while I am within you, it is them."
"I don't understand," Adahni said.
"You will," the red woman said, "You will not see me again, but so long as you have this fragment, know that I am safe, and so are they."
She had begun to go hazy around the edges, and then became as transparent and insubstantial as a telthor. She turned to see that the same was happening to Jem, his arms around her were fading into nothingness, as were the outlines of Dayven and Alden the plowboy.
"No, wait!" she cried, "Don't leave me again!"
But they were gone.
Gann chose that moment to burst into the clearing, his blue face marred with scratches where the branches of the birches appeared to have tried to keep him out. And then Gann too began to fade into nothing ness.
"No!" she cried, "No, don't you leave me too!"
She woke herself up then, the words incoherent and strangulated as she howled them into the warm night of Immil Vale. She sat bolt upright and tried to regulate her breathing, which was coming in fast and ragged sobs. Gann was already awake, and he put his hand on her back, trying to get her to calm down, and then put his arms around her when he realized that she was in no danger, but only on the brink of a complete emotional meltdown.
"What... in the fuck was that?" Adahni gasped between sobs.
"Memories of love," Gann said, "That's what the red woman said. Here, let me see that."
He took something from her hand. When she saw, she realized that her fingers had been curled fiercely around the thing that the red woman in the dream had given her. It was of dark and polished wood, and carved beautifully.
"I think you'd best hang on to this," he said, "It may prove its worth later on."
Adahni took it back from him with a shaking hand, and tucked it into her pack. She sat, her back to the Moss-stone, and tried to calm herself down. She didn't understand why she was so upset about this particular thing. All of those men were long dead to her, if not actually. She had mourned them all, and moved on with her life. Why was she reacting this way?
"It's not just you," Gannayev said, "Just remember, not everyone has such a handle on their emotions as you do."
"I have to," Adahni said, "I am a bard. I trade in emotions. Why am I shaking?"
"There's something within you that cannot handle loss in the way that you can."
"Handle loss?" Adahni asked, "Two of those men abandoned me. And the third... he just died."
"But part of you loves them still," Gann said, running a hand through her dark hair, "I suppose that is admirable of you, no? To love the parts of them that remain with you, even if the rest of them has gone down a path of darkness?"
She was quiet a moment, and then spoke her true fear, "Why was Bishop not among them?"
Gannayev flinched a bit at the question, but composed himself, and thought on it a moment, "She said it was a memory of love lost. It must mean you have not lost him yet."
"I haven't? Even while I am here, and he's gods know where?" she asked, but she had to admit that what the hagspawn said made sense.
"You have not let him go," Gann said simply, "Not yet."
"Of course I haven't," Adahni said, "Nor do I intend to."
"Well, that was certainly harrowing," Gann said, changing the subject entirely, "What say we rejoin the others in the tent, and try to get some proper sleep?"
"Sounds wonderful," Adahni said.
Laying down on the soft bed in Safiya's wondrous tent, she was grateful as she closed her eyes that that part of her brain was utterly exhausted, and sleep brought only blessed nothingness.