Dust of Dreams

or, if we don’t cooperate, trapped between two bloodthirsty foes.’ Even as she spoke those words, Lostara regretted them.
Because, once said, everything points to . . . points to the worst thing imaginable. Oh, Tavore, now I understand your defiance when it comes to how history will judge us. And your words that what we will do will be unwitnessed—that was less a promise, I think now. More like a prayer.
    ‘It is time,’ the Adjunct said, collecting her gloves, ‘to speak with the King. You can run away now, Sinn. The rest of you are with me.’
    ______

    Brys Beddict needed a moment alone, and so he held back when the Queen entered the throne room, and moved a few paces away from the two helmed guards flanking the entrance. The Errant was on his mind, a one-eyed nemesis clutching a thousand daggers. He could almost feel the god’s cold smile, icy and chilling as a winter breath on the back of his neck. Inside and outside, in front of him and behind him, it made no difference. The Errant passed through every door, stood on both sides of every barrier. The thirst for blood was pervasive, and Brys felt trapped like a fly in amber.
    If not for a Tarthenal’s mallet fist, Brys Beddict would be dead.
    He was still shaken.
    Since his return to the mortal world, he had felt strangely weightless, as if nothing in this place could hold him down, could keep him firmly rooted to the earth. The palace, which had once been the very heart of his life, his only future, now seemed but a temporary respite. This was why he had petitioned his brother to be given command of the Letherii army—even in the absence of enemies he could justify travelling out from the city, to wander to the very border marches of the kingdom.
    What was he looking for? He did not know. Would he—could he—find it in the reaches beyond the city’s walls? Was something out there awaiting him? Such thoughts were like body-blows to his soul, for they sent him reeling back—
into brother Hull’s shadow.
    Perhaps he haunts me now. His dreams, his needs, slipping like veils in front of my eyes. Perhaps he has cursed me with his own thirst—too vast to be appeased in a single life—no, he will now use mine.
    Ungracious fears, these. Hull Beddict was dead. The only thing that haunted Brys now was his memories of the man, and they belonged to no one else, did they?
    Let me lead the army. Let us march into unknown lands—leave me free, brother, to try again, to deliver unto strangers a new meaning to the name ‘Letherii’—not one foul with treachery, not one to become a curse word to every nation we encounter.
    Let me heal Hull’s wounds.
    He wondered if Tehol would understand any of that, and then snorted—the sound startling both guards, their eyes shifting to him and then away again. Of course Tehol would understand. All too well, in fact, on levels far surpassing Brys’s paltry, shallow efforts. And he would say something offhand, that would cut deep enough to bite bone—or he might not—Tehol was never as cruel as Brys dreaded.
And what odd dynamic is that? Only that he’s too smart for me . . . and if I had his wits, why, I would use them with all the deadly skill I use when wielding a sword.
    Hull had been the dreamer, and his dreams were the kind that fed on his own conscience before all else.
And see how that blinded him? See how that destroyed him?
    Tehol tempered whatever dream he held. It helped having an Elder God at his side, and a wife who was probably a match to Tehol’s own genius.
It helps, too, I suppose, that he’s half mad.
    What of Brys, then? This brother least of the three? Taking hold of a sword and making it a standard, an icon of adjudication. A weapon master stood before two worlds: the complex one within the weapon’s reach and the simplified one beyond it.
I am Hull’s opposite, in all things.
    So why do I now yearn to follow in his steps?
    He had been interred within stone upon the unlit floor of an ocean. His soul had been a single thread woven into a skein of forgotten and abandoned gods. How could that not have changed him? Perhaps his new thirst was
their
thirst. Perhaps it had nothing whatsoever to do with Hull Beddict.
    Perhaps, indeed, this was the Errant’s nudge.
    Sighing, he faced the doors to the throne room, adjusted his weapon belt, and then strode into the chamber.
    Brother Tehol, King of Lether, was in the midst of a coughing fit. Janath was at his side, thumping on his back. Bugg was