Adrin

Adrin stood in the archway of the sunlit courtyard where he’d met the girl the night before. She was sitting on the bench in the same spot she’d been in last time, but the scene had changed. The flowers above them were blooming, and a small fountain burbled next to her out of a ceramic vessel full of smooth stones. At least, he thought that hadn’t been there before?

She smirked at him. “I was wondering when you were going to show up.”

“Sorry. I was working on something.”

“What were you working on?”

“Well, when you told me about the crash, I thought, there’s got to be a way to make sure that never happens again. And the solution is so simple, when you think about it—” Adrin caught himself. He was about to launch into an explanation of the design he’d spent three hours drafting, hours he should have spent sleeping, but the idea had needed to be given form before he could rest. That wasn’t what mattered now, though. There were more important questions that needed to be answered.

He began with the simplest one. “Who are you?”

“I’m . . . Naomi,” she said, fidgeting as Adrin came closer to peer into her eyes. As he’d suspected, they were a deep, dark red, but held neither the malice he’d seen in Kaethar’s eyes, nor the weight of ages present in Brizin’s.

“Are you Kaethar’s daughter?”

She flinched, then looked back up at him sheepishly. “Yes . . . ?”

“And you’re a Rispara?”

“Yes!” Now she leaned forward eagerly. “Can you tell me what that actually means?”

“You don’t know what you are?” Adrin backed away and sat down on the bench opposite Naomi—Naomi, Naomi, he repeated her name to himself so he wouldn’t forget it. It sounded a bit like a Namaian name, but it wasn’t one he’d ever heard before.

“Kind of? Esar told me the name, but any time I try to get him to tell me more about it, he just blows me off.”

“Well. Um. I could tell you what I learned in school, but you probably learned the same things. Weapons of Vas from the Victorless War, created to fight the constructs of Bhadrat.”

“Actually, I didn’t learn any of that.”

Something wasn’t adding up about what she said, but Adrin couldn’t quite piece it together. “Where did you come from?” he asked hesitantly.

“Earth. Which is another world.” She launched into an explanation that conveyed quite a bit of information without actually clarifying anything, as far as Adrin could figure out. It didn’t help that her sentences became less and less coherent as she went on, and clouds gathered to cover the sun, her dreamspace reacting to her increasing agitation.

“And I didn’t know . . . I didn’t know a lot of stuff. I didn’t know that I was a Rispara, or any of that. I was just trying to figure out what happened, who I was, where I came from. I didn’t mean to bring Jason into this—I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble for you, for Esar, for everybody.”

“It’s not your fault,” Adrin said, the same reassurance she’d given him the day before.

Naomi sighed. “I know. I mean, I know it’s not all my fault, but it’s complicated. Everything is so complicated, isn’t it?”

Adrin couldn’t disagree with that. He had so many more questions that he wanted to ask, but his attention fixed on a name that she’d uttered more than once.

“When you said ‘Esar,’ did you mean Esar Semfrey? The Tresuan? Is he with you?”

Naomi rolled her eyes. “Yes, that’s him. He told me not to trust you. But he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Adrin looked at the ground. “He’s not alone. Nobody wants to trust me, it seems. Even people who know nothing about me think I’m suspicious.”

“Why? What happened?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think it was going to be easy. I expected challenges, I just didn’t expect everybody to hate and distrust me when they don’t even know me!” He took the opportunity to unload the day’s events, telling her about Zafrys and Jocyanë, Vaclan, the king and the sword and the Ethereal Guard and the meeting with the assembly. If he hadn’t already been asleep, it would have exhausted him just to recount all of it.

While he was speaking, Naomi had crossed over to sit next to him, listening intently until he reached the end. “That sounds awful. Is it just because of what happened to the king? And to Raen?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. And the fact that right after the Ocean chose me, a giant shockwave took out the ambient field and broke everything and people died . . .”

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“But hey, at least the monsters didn’t get out?” A ray of sunshine broke through the clouds as she said it.

“Did Esar see it coming?” Adrin asked. “I mean, did he dream anything about this?”

“He said he saw me coming, but not the other stuff,” Naomi replied thoughtfully. “All the magical stuff not working any more, the linecar crash, none of that. I think he’s seen other stuff, but of course he’s not going to tell me about it, because . . .” She threw her hands up in frustration. One of her arms brushed his shoulder, but Adrin barely felt it.

“But why do you trust me?” Adrin asked. There had never been the slightest suspicion in her attitude toward him, even knowing who her father was.

Naomi tilted her head and turned his question back on him. “Why do you trust me?”

She hadn’t asked if he trusted her, and she hadn’t needed to ask—because it was obvious. So obvious that he couldn’t put it into words. Because the courtyard and the flowers and the sky and everything around them—well, it was Naomi. Not that he knew everything about her, far from it, but it was all so open and honest that there was no question of trust.

And, now that it occurred to him, that was a little frightening. It wasn’t appropriate to be so familiar with a person he’d just met, was it? He was trying to figure that wrinkle out when he thought he heard someone calling his name.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” asked a woman with curly, dark brown hair, dressed in a style fifty years out of date.

Adrin looked all around, disoriented. Naomi and her courtyard were gone, and Adrin stood in the grand gallery of the palace, but out of a different time. The drapes were red instead of yellow, and the lights were of an antique style, globes the size of his head suspended on wrought iron arms that jutted out of the walls.

Adrin frowned for a moment at the stranger before he recognized her. “Queen Zafrys?”

“Hello, Adrin. At last we can have a proper chat.” She dreamed of herself as neither the young shade from the Ocean nor the aged queen mother he’d met in the waking world, but a woman in her thirties.

“How did you bring me here?” Adrin asked, taking a couple steps down the long hallway.

“I called you.”

“That’s all? You just called me, and it pulled me out of another dream?”

“Well, first there needs to be a connection—it can be a bond of friendship, or kinship, or, well, a tether.” She indicated the threads that tied them both to the Ocean. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. I know it’s a lot to take in.”

“It’s . . . yeah.” What kind of bond had connected him to Naomi? Kinship through Brizin, perhaps?

“Was it only a normal dream?”

Adrin shook his head, and Zafrys sighed.

“I was afraid of that. She makes us dreamwalkers, opening the door between us and the unconscious sea. I should have been there to guide you, but the Blight has diminished me here, as well. The unconscious sea is a dangerous place for a dreamwalker. When we dream in a normal sense, we remain sheltered within our own minds, for the most part. Thoughts and emotions may leak in or out, but they’re buffered, and you can always awaken from even the worst nightmare. But when you leave the shelter of your own dreamspace, you put yourself at the mercy of the forces that roam the void. Eventually, you’ll be able to create your own dreamspace, as I have here—a shelter that you can summon to protect yourself. And in the meantime, don’t panic if you end up out in the unconscious sea again, you’re tethered, you won’t lose yourself in the currents.”

“Lose myself?”

“There’s a risk of being swept away by a torrent of emotion—it’s quite unpleasant, even with a tether to keep you connected to reality. I know that there are other dangers, I’ve felt—things—that I can’t describe, but Brizin has always been quite reluctant to tell us about them.”

“How dangerous is it, though? Can’t you just wake up?” Adrin asked.

“There’s no danger of physical harm, but that doesn’t mean you’re safe. Dreamwalkers have gotten lost in the unconscious sea, their consciousnesses wandering for years while their bodies withered. Right now, Gerimon’s body is safely asleep in the palace. His mind is here.”

“Then what are we doing? We need to go find him and bring him back!”

“I tried, Adrin,” Zafrys said, her face pained. “Last night, I tried to get through to Brizin or Gerimon, and they wouldn’t answer me. They’ve created some sort of barrier to keep Kaethar imprisoned, and while they are within it, they are beyond our reach.”

In the dream, Adrin could say the words that he hadn’t been able to while he was awake. “It was supposed to be me! That was the real reason she called me. I was supposed to be the one locking him away, and locked away.” The ache that filled Adrin’s chest wasn’t physical pain, but it was the most he’d ever felt in the dreamspace.

“That doesn’t change the fact that she chose you, Adrin,” Zafrys said.

“She chose me for one task, and I failed. I hesitated, and that’s all it took for Kaethar to break through, and the shockwaves scrambled the ambient field and broke everything, and Gerimon had to take my place.”

“I was there, Adrin,” Zafrys said. “Gerimon didn’t know what Brizin wanted from you, but he knew that something had gone very, very wrong with Raen. And he was determined not to allow it to happen again. He chose to pull you out of the Ocean. He chose to take the place that she intended for you.”

“Why? I’m not important. She chose me because I was expendable.”

Zafrys smiled, a sad, sympathetic expression. “We’re all expendable. When she chose me, and Gerimon, and every other Prince and Princess Ethereal throughout the centuries, she told us all that we could be called upon to sacrifice everything for the sake of Elorhe. So that our people could have a future—a future that came so close to being snuffed out in the Victorless War. And what we all have in common is that we said yes. We chose the future, knowing what the cost might be. That was the choice Gerimon made. The choice I would have made, if I were still strong enough to do so. He chose the future. He couldn’t save Raen, but he could save you. And I think he made the right choice. Just like the Ocean made the right choice when she gave you breath.”

Tears came to Adrin’s eyes—tears that didn’t sting, because he was dreaming, but the emotion that brought them forth was genuine. Zafrys hugged him, but he could barely feel the embrace.

“But—there must still be a way to bring him back,” Adrin said.

“I hope you’re right, but I’m out of ideas,” Zafrys said.

“I’ll think of something. But first, I need to understand all that you can tell me about the dreamspace. What it is, how it works.”

A smile quirked at the corner of Zafrys’s mouth. “I’ll tell you what I know, but something tells me you’ll surpass my knowledge before long.”

“I need to know all you can tell me about the Rispara, too,” Adrin went on. “There’s another, you know, besides Kaethar and Brizin.”

“The daughter?” Zafrys asked.

“Her name is Naomi.”