King of Dreams: A Vereldan Tale

33

Part I – Icebound

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

Alfred Lord Tennyson

1

After fifteen endless days the storm let up, but not the sense of foreboding that had begun to haunt Anuun already long before the massive front rolled in from the west, the air thrumming with violence, the light diseased, the sky heavy and roiling with menace like nothing he’d ever seen before, not once in all his many years.

This far north, blizzards could strike in any season, even at the height of the short Arctic summer, and this one was only slightly early for a first serious blow heralding the onset of winter. What set it apart was that it raged for two weeks straight without a break, howling with a cutting, rending ferocity that for the middle of September was unusual even in these high latitudes – which was why Anuun didn’t notice the disruption in the pattern until it was too late.

When the high winds finally did relent and he became aware of the intrusion, he immediately set off, deeply disquieted, taking the shortest route to the place where his finely attuned Iceling senses had detected the disturbance. Traveling underice, he flowed swiftly through the blue-green depths, now a fleeting shadow, now a streak of livelier color, now a whitish string of icebound bubbles freed by elemental magic to move with ease through compact matter.

Only when the offshore ice became too fragmented to allow him smooth passage did he surface. His essence pouring into form like water into a sturdy-sided jug, he assumed his bodily aspect: a head shorter than an average human, stocky, broad-shouldered and immensely powerful, his curly hair and beard the silvered grey of finely spun frost, his eyes the profound ultramarine of deep-core ice.

At the site of the disturbance he found an Orrian ship, completely imprisoned by the pack ice.

Albatross, she was called, but her days of flying before the wind over sun-sparkled waves were forever over. Massive floes piled up three and four deep all around her creaking, groaning hull had already begun their slow, relentless work of destruction, crushing, grinding, splintering until, come spring, nothing would be left of the once-proud vessel but a handful of flotsam, free to drift off into the vastness of the northern sea once the strengthening sun beat back the ice.

Inspecting the ship and its cargo, Anuun reckoned that the purpose of her voyage had been to trade with the Nordsmen, probably for pelts and the odd bit of gold. Blown hundreds of miles off course by the storm, she’d never reached Nordsmen shores, that much was clear from her hold still filled with Orrian trade goods – and with nineteen seamen huddled together under decks in a clump of frozen bodies, their faces blued and rimed with hoarfrost. Snow had drifted in through a broken hatch, and the deck was scorched and charred where they’d tried to start a fire, so desperately cold they’d risked burning down the whole ice-bound ship around them for a bit of warmth. For whatever reason, they’d failed to keep the fire going, and died a little faster for it.

Anuun couldn’t help a breath of relief. Tragic as the death of these men had been, it had likely served to prevent an incomparably greater catastrophe. For their ship had come to rest worryingly close to the Forbidden, a place no man must ever be allowed to set foot in, a locus inhabited by something far beyond any mortal’s, and even an Iceling’s, grasp, something buried under the ice thousands of years ago for a very good reason.

Ages past, Icelings had been assigned to guard against any living being intruding on this place, deliberately or otherwise, and they’d faithfully fulfilled the task to this day – though the passing of so many eventless centuries had perhaps begun to dull their vigilance a mite. Maybe earlier times would have seen one of Anuun’s predecessors brave a storm similar to the one just past, doing the rounds regardless of the inferno outside instead of sheltering underice until the weather cleared. And maybe not.

At this point, the question was already entirely moot.

What Anuun had no way of knowing was that the ship’s crew had originally numbered twenty-four.

Four had been taken by the storm, swept overboard by waves that towered higher than the masthead before they came crashing down and cleared the deck of anything that wasn’t twice and threefold battened down. Maybe the four went in silence, or maybe screaming for help – with the howling wind and thundering waves it would have made no difference. And whether it was the water or the cold that claimed them first was anybody’s guess. The deep took them either way, with a swiftness that was close to mercy.

Twenty-four. Four drowned, nineteen in the hold.

One was missing from the count.

That one had come through the storm alive. Owing perhaps to an exceptional constitution or to one of those twists of fate that border on the bizarre, he’d survived the cold as well, at least long enough to leave the stranded ship and head off across the pack ice to where he hoped to find land, the storm erasing his tracks almost as soon as he’d made them.

But Anuun was nothing if not thorough, and he was warned. Near impossible as it seemed, his questing Iceling senses found the feeble traces of the human’s passage. When they did and when he realized where the man had gone, his heart went colder than the deepest ice cave.

This should never have been allowed to happen. Not on his watch. Storm or no, he’d neglected his duty, broken the trust placed in his kind, risked bringing shame on the whole Iceling nation. Only one thing he could do: find the man before it was too late and untold horrors were loosed on the world.

Desperate, he plunged back into the ice, a streak of white lightning ripping landward.

*    *    *   

Now skidding over patches of wind-swept ice, now laboring through waist-high drifts of fine, powdery snow that crept into his boots and melted down his shins in icy trickles, Nudd Wiggin repeatedly cursed fate, the gods, and anyone else who’d ever done him an injustice.

Since that list included practically everyone he’d ever met, it made for an impressive litany, with the captain of the Albatross currently ranking second only to the filthy, whoring slut who’d given birth to Nudd between turning tricks, followed by his drunkard, layabout father and then by a long string of masters Nudd had been apprenticed to, a bunch of narrow-minded, nitpicking fools none of whom had owned the sense to recognize his true potential.

Looking back, he felt nothing but contempt for the lot of them... and, hell yes, a level measure of hatred as well.

The last of these masters, a furrier named Brychan, was the reason Nudd had started keeping the list in earnest, and the reason he’d begun to hate with a dedication he otherwise seldom saw the need to muster: Brychan, and his daughter Dilys – Amut take the vicious slag.

For months, she led him on, acting the bitch in heat when neither her old man nor the journeyman she was bespoken to were looking, until Nudd finally decided to give her what she so clearly wanted. But the moment he tried to jump her the stupid cow started screaming down the house, and suddenly he found himself cast in the role of the faithless fiend who’d tried to rape his master’s precious daughter.

Brychan, the craven arsehole, let his other three apprentices beat Nudd to a bloody pulp before calling in the city watch and having him arrested for a deed Nudd told himself he’d never intended to commit and hadn’t gotten round to in any case. Choosing between the noose and three years on an Orrian war galley was the easy part. Serving his time and getting through it in one piece was another matter. As an alleged rapist, he was scum to the scum that manned the huge ship’s one hundred and twenty oars, and he was treated accordingly, as likely to accidentally run into a fellow oarsman’s fist as catch a couple of – entirely unwarranted – lashes from the overseer’s cat o’ nine tails. He consoled himself with vivid fantasies of the terrible, painful things he’d do to every single one of them, once he was good and ready to strike back.

Just thinking about the bloody cocksuckers made him fricking mad all over again.

Their fault, all of it. Their fault that he was stranded in this freezing shithole. Their fault that he had to wade through all this godsdamned, bleeding white shit. Seething with anger, he came to a sudden halt. Sucked a gob of brownish-pink spit from rotting teeth and bleeding gums and used it to mess up the godsdamned snow that was so fricking pristine it made him want to puke. Wished he had a load of piss to add to it, but the bloody cold seemed to have sucked all the moisture out of him and left him drier than a hag’s cunt. Satisfied that he’d done what he could, he screwed up his muddy, close-set eyes against the overwhelming brightness and trudged on, still far from finished with the past.

When his three years were up, for want of a better plan he took hire on a merchant ship, the Dauntless.

His list went with him, grown by over a hundred names but with room for plenty more, and a good thing, too. It took him less than a day aboard the Dauntless to figure out that her captain and crew were dead set on making his life as miserable as they could, giving him all the lowliest, dirtiest jobs and no doubt acting at the behest of the fricking gods, who’d had it in for him since the day he was born, or maybe even longer.

Let them, he thought to himself. Let them go on digging their own graves. Though it’s still too early to say when exactly it’ll happen, they’ve got a big surprise coming. Nobody messes with Nudd Wiggin and gets away with it – not in the long run, they don’t, that’s for bloody sure.

At the Dauntless’ first port of call he jumped ship, and so began a series of hires that ended with the ill-fated voyage on the Albatross.

And to think that, this very fall, he’d actually considered hanging up his oilskins and trying his hand at something less strenuous than seafaring. But then he’d heard that the captain of the Albatross was offering double pay to any man willing to sail north a good three weeks later in the season than conventional wisdom deemed prudent.

There was some talk about a fashion war having broken out between the two leading houses of the Orrian Dressmaker’s Guild, Orid and Lechan; something to do with a battle over fur of the arctic fox and prices having gone through the roof, which in turn prompted the Albatross’ owners to send the ship on a late voyage north to trade for the stuff.

Nudd gave a rat’s ass for the reasons. The only part that interested him was collecting double wages, and then taking the winter off to figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life – aside from paying back his enemies with interest, that was.

And then the fool captain steered them straight into the worst fricking storm in history, and everything went to hell in a fricking handcart.

Now everyone was dead except Nudd.

No big surprise there. The idiots he’d sailed with had gotten exactly what they’d asked for, answering to the death god’s call like they did: limp-dicked, spineless chickens lining up at the chopping block even before the axe was sharpened, instead of fighting it like men.

But then, he had a righteous anger burning in his gut to keep him warm. He had his list, had accounts to settle, and he’d be damned if he let a bloody storm get in the way of the revenge that was his rightful due.

At least the godsdamned blow had finally died down, though his eyes were still half blind and stinging from the whipping snow, and his face felt cut to bloody ribbons. But he was alive, no thanks to anyone but himself.

And so he plodded on, his imagination hard at work torturing, maiming and slowly killing his enemies one by one, until suddenly a fricking crevasse had the bloody cheek to open up right in front of him. Too late, he tried to stop, his skidding feet finding no purchase on the mirror-smooth ice. Inexorably, his forward momentum delivered him straight into the arms of gravity, reaching out to him from bluegreen depths that looked as beautiful as they were deadly.

Fricking gods again, he thought angrily. Bugger the lot of you. I’m not ready to die.

Then he was falling.

The drop was short.

Not six feet down, the seat of Nudd’s pants made contact with the ice, his free fall abruptly turning into a high-speed toboggan ride along a bumpy, madly twisting tunnel. Thankfully, what began as a frighteningly steep incline gradually flattened out until he was spit out onto the floor of a spacious gallery deep under the ice. Sliding down the entire length of it on his butt, he finally came to a stop at the foot of a wall that looked suspiciously like it was man-made, its dull, black stone seeming to swallow the little light that filtered down through what had to be at least thirty feet of ice.

Nursing his bruised backside, he climbed to his feet, unsteady in the blue gloom, the slippery floor nearly throwing him right back on his face again. Looking back the way he’d come, he wondered how the bloody hell he was ever going to get out of this place. His only chance, he decided after a moment’s thought, was to somehow climb back up the tunnel. But for that, he needed something he could use to hack foot and handholds out of the sheer ice. Reaching for his knife, he cursed. The sheath was empty – how else could it be? Just his fricking luck again. What else...

The wall. Maybe he could find a loose stone, work it free and use it as a tool. Bloody crude, but better than nothing.

Taking a closer look at the wall, Nudd realized two things: one, the damned thing was made of a single piece, most likely hacked out of the bedrock, seeing as it was far too smooth and straight to be natural; and two, he was going to die down here.

Torn between wanting to collapse on the floor in a blubbering heap and the urge to scream out his rage over this totally unfair turn of events, he chose the latter, raising his face skyward and directing a stream of the vilest invective he could muster at the whole buggering lot of rotten, spiteful, scheming men and gods, all of whom kept on stubbornly refusing him even the smallest of breaks. For good measure, he gave the bloody wall a kick as well, hitting it full on with the flat of his boot.

With a groan like a ship’s hull scraping against dockside pilings, where he could have sworn that moments ago there had been nothing but seamless rock an eight-by-three-foot slab of stone detached itself from the rest of the wall, sinking into some sort of recess in the floor and revealing a dark, narrow passage.

Briefly, he wondered whether going in there was a good idea. Who knew but the stone might rise back up behind him, trapping him forever in a light-less prison deep underground. Then another thought struck him: what lay at the other end of that tunnel might well be some long-forgotten king’s tomb, brimful with gold and gems. Riches beyond imagining. The more he thought about it, the more sense it seemed to make. On the other hand...

In the end, curiosity and greed got the better of him. Pushing aside any lingering doubts, he stepped over the sunken stone and into the passage.

The tunnel zigged and zagged through the rock for a stretch, as if whoever had made it hadn’t been able to make up their minds which way they wanted to go. Or maybe they’d been falling-down drunk throughout the many weeks it must have taken to hack the bloody hole out of the bedrock.

When he reached the other end, Nudd found himself staring out into a large, six-sided chamber walled in the same, dull-black stone. There was no ceiling as such, only a natural, high-domed roof of ice. In the dusky, blue-tinted light that trickled down from above, he saw openings like the one he was standing in cut into each of the other five walls. Five chances of finding another way out – though he was almost a bit hesitant to set foot on the chamber’s spotless floor. Blacker even than the walls, it was polished to a high gloss, slicker than the finest marble, the kind of floor Nudd associated with the whispering, slippered feet of priests and highborn ladies – not that he’d ever seen one of the uppity cows except floating by in a curtained litter or gazing down on the common folk from some palace’s safe, high window.

There was nothing in the chamber, though. No dead king, and no treasure. But then, the good stuff might well be waiting down one of the other five passages.

His confidence renewed, he stepped out into the chamber – and found that the floor wasn’t polished stone at all but some kind of thick, oily liquid that sucked at his boots and shivered in slow, wavy ringlets around his feet. It was hardly half an inch deep, though, so nothing to worry about, unless the floor underneath sloped downward farther out.

Just take it slow, feel your way as you go.

Three steps out, overcome by a sudden, unaccountable fear, he stopped.

Realized that he didn’t care anymore what lay behind those other doors. Tried to turn back. And found that, in the two short heartbeats he’d stood still, his feet had somehow gotten stuck to the floor.

Suddenly he was sweating despite the violent cold, his hands clammy, his pulse hammering so loud he thought he could hear it echoing off the walls.

All right, then. So I’ll just slip out of my boots and make a run for it. It’s only three bloody steps. Piece of cake, as long as I don’t stop.

But, try as he might, he couldn’t seem to pull his feet free of the boots. Couldn’t even feel his feet, actually, only a cold, tingling sensation somewhere upwards of his ankles. Looking down, he saw that he’d sunk into the gods-cursed stuff up to his shins.

Which was impossible, seeing as it was only half an inch deep and there was solid stone underneath. Could the nasty black shit be rising? But no – the sill of the doorway he’d come through was still free of it, clearly visible. So maybe some sneaky, hidden mechanism was cranking down the floor under him? No matter, he had to find a way out of this mess, and fast. Even while he’d been standing there wasting time on useless thoughts, he’d dropped another six inches, the stuff rising up to his knees, all feeling gone from his lower legs.

By the time he finally understood what was really happening to him, the black crap and the cold tingling were already up to his arse. It was then he started screaming – screaming, and wildly thrashing about, suddenly caught in the grip of utter madness, trying to claw his way out of a nightmare that cruelly refused to be anything other than real.

The moment his uselessly scrabbling hands touched the black liquid’s surface it started eating them away as well, just like it had done with his legs, dissolving skin, flesh, and bones like some impossibly concentrated acid and consuming what was left of him with unearthly speed.

The last part to go was his head, his mouth stretched wide in a continuously rising scream that only broke off when the stuff reached his vocal cords, his face staring up from the floor in a frozen rictus of horror, distorted far beyond anything that might have still been called human.

*    *    *   

Some time later, a shudder went through the liquid covering the floor.

Here and there, puckers and dimples appeared, multiplying and spreading out as if a wind were rippling the shiny black surface. Whorls and eddies formed, gradually joining into a single, purposeful current. Then, with a sudden quickening, the viscous stuff drew back from the chamber’s edges, baring a rapidly widening margin of the underlying stone as it coalesced into a large, amoebic blob centered over the very spot where Nudd had been consumed.

For a while the accreted liquid simply hung there, wobbling, heaving, collapsing and reconsolidating, an amorphous mass obviously striving towards organized form, oozing its way through a painstakingly slow series of failed attempts as it sought to mold itself after some as yet indecipherable pattern.

Finally, contracting once more and further than its mass would seem to allow, it reached the shape it had been seeking. There, feet planted wide, stood a perfect copy of Nudd Wiggin, resurrected from the sludge, faithfully reproduced in every detail and black as the devil’s arsehole on a moonless night.

Almost hesitantly, the Wiggin-thing looked around, moving slowly as if it feared that any rapid movement might cause it to dissolve in a large puddle on the floor. And indeed it was still far from stable, the stuff inside it not yet settled, its outline warped, buckling and bulging like a sack full of angry weasels as it strained to hold itself together.

For the longest time the Wiggin-thing stood still, waiting with seemingly inexhaustible patience for the inner turmoil to subside until only the odd, wandering bump or hollow still occasionally distorted its outer skin. When even those had ceased to appear, it raised a foot and took a slow, careful step forward. And another. And a third. Heading back the way the original Wiggin had come. It wanted out, that much was clear, and it no longer looked as if anything could keep it from getting there. Gradually, color began to seep into the black, skin and hair and clothes beginning to look like they had before.

Once, just before it reached the tunnel entrance, one leg gave a sudden wobble and shed a large gob of black goo on the floor. Stopping to reclaim it, the Wiggin-thing scraped it up with a booted foot. Then it went on, single-minded, unswerving in its purpose.

*    *    *   

2

A thousand miles farther south, Laurin, son of Sem, was running for his life.

Not an easy thing to do if you stood just under four feet tall in your boots and had a dwarf’s bandy legs thrown into the deal. The torrential rain blurring his sight and slicking the cobblestones didn’t help either, nor did the heavy pack bouncing up and down on his back, nor the fact that the man chasing him was not only a big person but one who moved with uncanny speed and grace, swift and inexorable as the dark water rushing down the gullies on either side of the street.

Suddenly the street was gone, wiped away like chalk marks by a giant sponge, and, with no noticeable transition, Laurin found himself caught up in absolute darkness.

It was then he realized he was dreaming, though he found himself thinking that by rights no dream should feel so damnably real. There was substance to this darkness, a feel of cold, a smell of dust, an ‘up’ and a ‘down’. Shifting a foot, he felt his boot scrape over solid rock, a faint, lagging resonance suggesting that he was in a large, enclosed space.

Someone groaned, and Laurin’s heart skipped a beat as manifold echoes stretched the tortured sound to painful length.

‘Who’s there?’ he asked nervously, his words coming back at him in an overlapping multitude of splintered fragments that seemed to nest in every nook and cranny and go on whispering there forever.

‘I am the King under the Mountain,’ the answer came from somewhere in the dark, the voice sounding thin and distant, like wind blowing through reeds. ‘Who else would I be, given where we are? And you. Come closer, fellow, so I can see what manner of fish I’ve netted.’

Laurin didn’t much like the sound of that.

Then he remembered it was all just a dream, and took a few shuffling steps forward until his shins met with something hard.

‘Ah.’ The king – assuming he really was a king – sounded disappointed. ‘Just my luck, to catch a dwarf.’

‘I may be short,’ Laurin said, stung, ‘but I can fend for myself as well as the next man. I’ll also have you know that I don’t take well to belittlement. And now, if you’ll just point me to the door, I’ll be on my way.’

‘Not so fast, little man.’ The king sounded faintly amused. ‘I’ve called you here for a purpose. Because, you see, I need you to run an errand for me. So you’ll kindly stay until you’ve received your instructions. And be advised I meant no slight by what I said just now. I’ve known a few dwarves in my time, stalwart fellows all of them and held in the highest esteem by my royal self. It’s just that, in this case, a slightly longer pair of legs would have come in handy, seeing as you’ll likely have a lot of ground to cover. Now – ’

‘Hold it right there,’ Laurin said, raising a cautionary hand, the gesture feeling pointless in the impenetrable dark – though the king seemed to be able to see him well enough. ‘What makes you think I’ve got nothing better to do than play your errand boy? I’ve got a job, in case you didn’t guess. I have people to report to, I have – ’

‘Pettifogging,’ the king interrupted. ‘Irrelevancies. Whatever it is you do for a living, it can’t possibly be more important than delivering my message. In fact, nothing is more important. Thousands of lives may depend on whether it gets through or not. Tens of thousands, perhaps. So listen carefully.’

‘Just so we’re clear,’ Laurin interrupted once more. ‘You do realize this is just a dream? I might wake up and not remember any of it. And even if I do, I might not give a fig.’

‘Oh, you’ll remember all right,’ the king growled. ‘And you’ll give more than just a fig. Here.’

Laurin heard a rasping of steel on steel, and suddenly there was light, emanating from an object that seemed to float in the air before him. It was a sword, he saw, its half-bared blade glowing with a soft, amber radiance, the edges looking sharp enough to cleave downy feathers. He was no judge of weapons, but even he could see that this was an exceptional specimen. From the finely wrought pommel to the hilt wrapped with artfully braided silver wire, to the scabbard chased in gold and silver, it spoke of masterly craftsmanship – and of something more. Magic, perhaps.

Next, he became aware of the hands that were holding the sword: desiccated, leathery claws, bloodless skin and bones. The hands of someone who couldn’t possibly be alive. Fearing what he’d see, he steeled himself and raised his gaze. But before he could catch a glimpse of the king’s face the blade was thrust back into the scabbard, the cross-guard kissing the rim of the sheath with a ring of finality, the light winking out.

‘Take it.’ There was a rough edge to the king’s voice, hinting at a wealth of pain, and Laurin’s heart responded with a spontaneous twist of sympathy. Guessing in the dark, hoping not to touch those bony claws, he managed to grasp the sword midway along the scabbard.

‘The sword is called Altingal,’ the king said. ‘Which means Wild Thing in the old tongue. It is named thus because it’s apt to bite the man who wields it, if his purpose is anything less than pure. I charge you to deliver it to a person who will soon find himself in desperate need of it, if he is to fulfill the task that fate is about to set before him. For he is of the Blood – the first after all these years who looks to be deserving of the honor – and long has the Blood been singled out in dire times to bear the burdens no one else will shoulder. Guard the weapon well, needs be with your life. Should it fall into the wrong hands, all will be lost.’

‘Why me?’

‘Because I can reach you, shortling. Either because you’re somewhere close, or because you’re simply the responsive kind. Him, I can’t get through to. Thick as a brick, that boy.’

‘All right,’ Laurin said, suddenly wondering how sane this King under the Mountain was – and whether it might not be a good idea to wake up rather quickly, before he got himself neck-deep into trouble. ‘Assuming I’d be willing to do as you ask: where would I find this person?’

‘North and west,’ the king said.

‘North and west?’ Laurin asked incredulously. ‘That’s the best you can do?’

‘Well, no. It’s somewhere in... Ardath, I think. Here, let me show you.’

An image appeared in Laurin’s mind.

Almost as if he were there himself and standing only a short distance away, he saw some minor noble’s modest keep sitting on a knoll surrounded by a gently undulating landscape of woods and farmland. It could have been anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms. Or in the Empire, for that matter.

Then the scene was replaced by another, this time the interior of a barn. Laurin saw a hazel-eyed youth with bits of hay in his light, curly hair and dirt on his square-jawed face, crouching in the straw beside an enormous sow. The massive animal was lying on its side, every teat occupied by what looked to be close to a dozen suckling piglets.

‘A farm boy,’ Laurin said, his doubts as to the king’s state of mind redoubling.

‘Among other things,’ the king said. ‘Don’t let appearances fool you. There’s more to him than meets the eye.’

‘So I’m supposed to find this lad and hand over the sword to him.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Do you have any idea how many keeps like this one there are apt to be in Ardath? It’s a fairly big place, you know.’

‘I know. I’ve been there.’ Sounding slightly embarrassed, the king gave a phlegmy cough. ‘But I trust that, employing a modest measure of brains and goodwill, you’ll have no trouble finding the right one.’

Laurin sighed. Time to wake up, he told himself. We’re flogging a dead horse here, and I’ve another long day’s work ahead of me.

‘Does the lad at least have a name?’ he asked for completeness’ sake.

‘Avellin,’ the king said, and for once it sounded like a certainty.

Avellin? Laurin wanted to ask, incredulous, but suddenly felt the morning sun warming his face and realized he’d woken. Avellin, as in... No, it can’t be. Surely not in Ardath.

Far from slipping his mind, the dream stayed with him – didn’t leave him much of a choice, actually, seeing as upon waking he found himself clutching a sword to his breast, though it bore no resemblance at all to the one he’d seen in his dream. This one was a ruin, its hilt gnawed to a finger’s thickness by rust, shedding large flakes when he tried to draw it – only to find that the sheath and blade were fused into a single lump of hopelessly corroded metal.

Last night I must have bedded down right beside the thing, he told himself, and somehow gotten hold of it in my sleep.

Looking around, with a bit of imagination he could almost see how the stones scattered along one end of the flat piece of ground he’d made his camp on might have once been heaped into a small cairn.

Some poor sod probably lost his life and sword here centuries ago, perhaps in a long-forgotten skirmish or through some sort of accident, and it’s been lying here ever since. And my dreaming mind made up the rest of the story to go with it. That’s how dreams work, isn’t it? Like when a full bladder makes you dream about pissing. Yes, that’s exactly what must have happened.

He piled up a few stones, enough to support the sorry excuse for a sword in an upright position, and left it standing there with a short prayer for whomever it had belonged to.

And still the dream continued to haunt him.

Brewing a pot of morning kaf, filling his pack pony Dag’s feed sack with a few handfuls of oats, chewing hard waybread and stale cheese for breakfast, striking camp and readying to move to another site, he couldn’t stop himself from dwelling on it, silly as it seemed to go on worrying over something he’d already found a perfectly satisfying explanation for.

Except the more he thought about it, the less satisfying it felt, for no reason he could put his finger on. Finally he was forced to admit that the whole thing scared him, plain and simple. It weighed on him, pressed him, urged him, filled him with a crushing sense of guilt for not having rushed off on the king’s errand the moment he woke up, no matter the idea was entirely ridiculous. Mad, actually. Now there was a worrying thought.

Though he tried to keep his mind occupied with seeing to the everyday necessities, by mid-morning he was close to panicking, and thoroughly angry.

Neither feeling was new to him.

Born a runt among normal-sized people, he’d learned early on to deal in the long term with issues that ceased to be a problem for other children as they grew older and taller: objects that were too large, too high or too heavy; chores that taxed his small body, and sometimes even his inventive mind, to the limit or beyond; big people who all seemed to have a singular knack for overlooking him and putting their large, clumsy feet in the exact same space he happened to be occupying.

But none of that made him angry, though it was far from easy to watch his peers grow tall and distant, leaving him behind, a sad, quiet child who became sadder still once he realized what a burden he was to his parents.

Like every tenant farmer’s life, theirs was a constant, daily struggle to pay the lord’s tithes and still feed seven hungry mouths, even with all the children helping out from the day they were old enough to reach a cow’s udder or hold a rake.

‘He works for one and eats for three,’ Laurin’s da used to say about him, only half joking. What he really meant was that, try as he might, his stunted youngest managed to do only half the work it would have taken to earn his keep.

With a start, Laurin realized he’d been sitting there staring at his hands. Small hands, scarred and calloused, short, stubby fingers, cracked and dirty nails. Not pretty or impressive by any standards. But, dammit, they were his hands, strong and nimble as he needed them to be. Good for earning his keep now, though probably still not strong enough to save him from big men harboring cruel intentions.

The first time he’d known real fear was when the men from Orr came riding up to Sem’s farm one hot, dusty afternoon some weeks after his tenth nameday. Two of them were armed and mailed, strong, rough men whose unsmiling faces and hard eyes frightened him – though not nearly as much as the third member of the party did. A grey-haired, weathered man on a pint-sized palfrey, he looked to be only half a hand taller than little Laurin, who stared at him in amazement, never having considered the possibility that there might be others like himself.

He’s just like me, Laurin thought. I’m not the only one. I’m not alone.

It was shortlived sentiment. There was no hint of recognition in the gaze with which the man scrutinized Laurin, no sign of kinship, charity, or mercy.

‘I am Guildmaster Crowlin,’ he proclaimed before the dust had even begun to settle, ‘of the Orrian Glassmaker’s Guild. This writ’ – he pulled a rolled-up parchment from his saddle bag but didn’t bother to open it, knowing full well that none of them could read, – ‘is signed and sealed by the Council of Landing, and it assigns me the power and the right to conscript into the services of the Guild whomever I see fit.’

As if she sensed what was coming, Ma laid a protective hand on Laurin’s shoulder. Da looked ready to put up a fight, writ or no. One of the men-at-arms laid a casual hand on the hilt of his sword and gave Da a long, hard stare, and that was all it took to take the pluck out of him. His big hands falling limp and powerless to his sides, he lowered his eyes in shame and resignation.

That was when Laurin made his first acquaintance with real anger – not the sudden fit of temper that passed and was forgotten but a deep, corrosive ire much too large and inexpressible for a ten year-old to handle.

Nonetheless, it stayed with him, changing him in ways he wouldn’t begin to understand until many years later.

‘You there,’ Crowlin said, pointing at Laurin. ‘The little one. You’ll come with us.’

‘No,’ Ma breathed. ‘Please, no.’ Her grip on Laurin’s shoulder tightened momentarily, but when one of the soldiers kneed his horse past Da and crooked a finger at her, she picked the boy up and handed him over quickly enough. ‘Don’t forget, your Ma loves you,’ she whispered in his ear, her hair smelling of hay and freshly baked bread – or so he preferred to think in hindsight. It could as well have been old sweat and cow dung, for all he remembered.

Thus he learned another thing that day, namely that love bought you nothing. No security, no protection, no reprieve. Nothing at all.

Parted from his home and family at an early age, Laurin was lucky in other ways.

Instead of sending him to the mines like the rest of that year’s cull, the Guild apprenticed him to a Waylen, one of the mysterious, fabled seekers of rare minerals, precious, secret ingredients that enabled the making of clear, flawless glass – and hence of mirrors, an outrageous luxury much sought after by the mighty and the rich and fetching several times their weight in gold. The purchase of a small hand mirror could drive a lesser lord into bankruptcy, and a full-length wall mirror was worth a king’s ransom.

So it was no wonder that the nature of these minerals was jealously guarded knowledge, as was the process in which they were used. Everyone who was in any way involved, be it in the gathering of materials or in the making of glass, was made to swear on his life and on the lives of those he held dear to never so much as hint at what he did for a living,