Traitor's Moon

full of concern.
    â€œDoes it hurt, little brother?” Lhial asked, patting Seregil’s cheek.
    â€œNot so much now.”
    â€œThat’s good. It would be a shame to damage such clever hands.” Lhial settled back against the far wall, then snatched something from the shadows above his head and tossed it to Seregil.
    He caught it and found himself clutching an all-too-familiar sphere of glass the size of a plum. He could see his own startled reflection on its dark, slightly roughened surface.
    â€œThey weren’t black,” he whispered, holding it in his cupped palm.
    â€œDreams,” the rhui’auros said with a shrug.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œWhat is it?” Lhial mimicked, and tossed him two more before he could put the first aside.
    Seregil caught one but missed the last. It shattered next to his right knee, splattering him with maggots. He froze for an instant, then brushed them away in revulsion.
    â€œThere are many others,” the rhui’auros said with a grin, pitching more of the orbs at him.
    Seregil managed to catch five before another broke. This one released a puff of snow that sparkled in the air for an instant before melting away.
    Seregil scarcely had time to consider this before the rhui’auros tossed him more. Another broke, releasing a brilliant green butterfly from a Bôkthersan summer meadow. And another, splashing him with dark, clotted blood flecked with bone. More and more flew from the rhui’auros’s fingers, one after another, until Seregil was surrounded by a small pile of them.
    â€œClever hands, indeed, to catch so many,” Lhial remarked approvingly.
    â€œWhat are they?” Seregil asked again, not daring to move for fear of breaking more.
    â€œThey are yours.”
    â€œMine? I’ve never seen them before.”
    â€œThey are yours,” the rhui’auros insisted. “Now you must gather them all and take them away with you. Go on, little brother, gather them up.”
    The same feeling of helplessness he had in the dreams threatened to overwhelm him now. “I can’t. There are too many. At least let me get my shirt.”
    The rhui’auros shook his head. “Hurry now. It’s time to go. You can’t leave unless you take them all.”
    The rhui’auros’s eyes shone gold again as he stared through the curling steam at him, and fear closed in around Seregil.
    Standing as best he could in the low chamber, he tried to gather an armload, but like eggs, they slipped from his grasp and smashed, releasing filth, perfumes, snatches of music, fragments of charred bone. He couldn’t move without crushing them, or knocking them out of sight into the shadows.
    â€œIt’s impossible!” he cried. “They’re
not
mine. I don’t want them!”
    â€œThen you must choose, and soon,” Lhial told him, his tone at once kind and merciless. “Smiles conceal knives.”
    The light disappeared, plunging Seregil into darkness.
    â€œSmiles conceal knives,” Lhial whispered again, so close to Seregil’s ear that he jumped and flung out a hand. It found nothing but empty air. He waited a moment, then cautiously reached out again.
    The spheres were gone.
    Lhial was gone.
    Disoriented, angry, and no wiser than when he had entered, Seregil crawled to the door but couldn’t find it. Feeling his way along the wall with his good hand, he made several circuits of the tiny chamber before giving up; the door was gone, too.
    He returned to the mat and settled there miserably, arms wrapped around his knees. The rhui’auros’s parting words, the strange glass spheres that now haunted his waking life as well as his dreams—there must be some meaning behind it all. He knew in his gut that there was, but Bilairy take him if he could find the pattern.
    Tearing the mask off, he wiped the sweat from his eyes and rested his forehead against his knees.
    â€œThank you for the enlightenment, Honored One,” he snarled.
    Seregil woke in the public meditation chamber. His head hurt, he was dressed, and the silver mask was in place again. He held his left hand up and found it whole. No dragon bite. No lissik stain. He almost regretted it; it would have been a fine mark. Had he gone down to the cavern at all, he wondered, or had the dreaming smoke here simply carried him into a vision?
    Getting up as quickly as the pounding behind his eyes allowed, he