because she was no longer certain that it was the Warden of Dreams who was speaking. Her mother was dead. Her Oma. Her father—and her father’s future had shadowed her days with a terrible fear and certainty until the accident she’d foreseen had come to pass. Lefty was dead. Lefty, Fisher, Lander. Duster. Rath—gone. Alowan. Even Amarais, their shield and their savior.
You build, but it breaks. That is the nature of the world of your birth; it is a land of mortals, it is a land of death. Build where mortality does not reign if you wish to build eternity.
“It’s not mortality,” she whispered, her words cracked and broken by the roar of the fire.
It is.
She shook her head. She walked easily through the crowd, lifting her hand and exposing the signet that signified her position as The Terafin. The gesture was instinctive; it was a sweep of hand that was, wordless, a command. A command and a promise. When had she learned that? Why did it work?
The crowd parted, although she took care to avoid the line of men hefting buckets against the roar of flame. It was like making an argument in whispers when your opponent was roaring like the very dragons of legend; it made no difference at all. Yet they tried, in this dreamscape.
They tried, she thought, when they were awake. She squared her shoulders. She couldn’t douse this fire in reality. She could douse it in the dreaming.
No, you cannot. Unless you are willing to take her dream and make it your own, the flames will not respond to you—they are hers.
Would that be so much worse? Jewel, who’d known the fear that had created the whole of this landscape—who had known, worse, the end of that fear, and the truth of that death, wanted to say, No. No, it wouldn’t be worse. This was a nightmare that plagued her conscious, waking moments; to live it for—for however long this dreamer had been trapped here—
But no. No. This was how it would start. This is often how things did start. Good dream or bad, it didn’t matter. This was all dream, and it wasn’t—couldn’t be—hers. She reached the side of the dreamer, and knew—without knowing quite how or why—that this woman, small, stout, her face and hands lined with labor and lack of sleep, anchored this dream. Her face was red with exertion, wet with tears, her body bent with the burden of fear and the pain of hope when hope was so scant.
“Hold on,” she told the woman, lifting hand, letting her see the Terafin crest on its heavy band of gold; the gems that studded it were altered in color by the hues of fire. She had seen those colors—those exact colors—before. They were hers. They were the heart of the first tree she had planted in a forest that existed in the shadows of the Terafin grounds.
The woman blinked, and then dashed tears away with the blackened backs of her blistered hands. “Terafin,” she said, her knees buckling, her hands rising.
Jewel nodded. “The magi are on the way. They will be here soon.”
Symbols had power, even here. Or perhaps especially here. Jewel couldn’t see herself the way the dreamer saw her, but she felt strengthened by the woman’s gaze—and burdened by the hope in it. Jewel was The Terafin. The Terafin was one of The Ten. If The Ten summoned the magi, the magi would come.
It wasn’t the way it worked in waking life, not really. But this wasn’t life; it was the detritus of life, stripped of reason. In this case, the lack of reason worked in both their favors; the magi did, indeed, arrive. They arrived in a cloud of robes, taller than life, broader of chest and grimmer of expression; they were, to a man, bearded, and those beards were white and long—yet no other encumbrance of age hindered them.
“Terafin,” they said, as one.
She wanted to laugh. The magi could barely stand still in a room in groups of larger than one; they argued more frequently than they drew breath. If the real magi had come at her command, they’d be jostling for position in the streets, and arguing about the most effective way to put out the fire; the building would probably be ash by the time they finished. But her expression when she replied was the definition of gravitas. “Matteos. Send one of your men for the healer. Have the rest douse these flames—and quickly. There is