Thank the gods he hadn”t slammed into that!
With his good arm he managed to pull himself farther and farther away from the sea,
desperate to get himself as far away as possible.
Then, impossibly, he heard a faint shout coming from behind him.
From within the sea.
“No,” Maximilian whispered, too tired, too cold, too desperate for shelter to even
contemplate the idea that someone might be calling out to him for rescue from the raging waters.
His ring screamed again, flared as if in agony, and Maximilian cried and rolled to one
side, the cry intensifying as his injured shoulder hit the boulder.
The shout came again, closer, and somehow Maximilian struggled to one elbow, and
looked over his shoulder.
There was a man, struggling out from the surf, directly behind him. He was dragging
something in his hand.
Another man, perhaps, or a log.
Then everything went black for an instant, and when he regained his vision, all
Maximilian could see was a body being rolled over and over in the surf.
Almost crying with the effort, Maximilian managed to get to his knees, shuffled into the
waves, then pushed forward with his feet as the water got deeper.
Waves crashed into him, blinding him, and he felt his feet give way.
The next instant the body collided into him, and Maximilian felt something very hard hit
his head.
He blacked out for a moment, then something picked him up and thrust him forward. He
found himself on sand, out of the water, a heavy body draped over him, almost suffocating him,
and he felt the icy heaviness of metal against his injured shoulder.
He rolled away from it, onto his belly, raising his head a little to peer into the rain-swept
gloom.
Then blinked, not believing what he saw.
A woman stood on the crest of the small hill that the wind had blown Maximilian over,
her cloak wrapped about her, long dark hair streaming in the wind, but otherwise apparently
unaffected by the storm.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Marshlands Outside Narbon, Escator
Maximilian blinked, and she was gone.
He blinked again, and the driving wind and rain blocked any sight he may have had of the
crest of the hill.
He blinked yet again, and the woman was standing before him, bending down to him,
squatting at his side, her hand lifting back the sodden hair from his brow.
“Hello, Maxel,” she said softly.
He stared at her, still too shocked by the events of the past half hour to comprehend what
now was happening.
“It has been a long time,” she said. “Perhaps too long. Don”t you recognize me?”
Her hand continued to stroke back his hair, her fingers combing it into some order.
Maximilian still stared at her, trying to take her in. The one thing that instantly struck
him, almost overwhelmed him, was that she was walking magic.
The second was that she was lovely—very long, thick, dark hair that, somewhat
remarkably given the storm, appeared only slightly damp; an exquisitely structured face, pale
skin, the lightest gray eyes he”d ever seen, ringed with thick, luxuriant dark lashes…
It was the eyes that were so different, Maximilian realized. They were far lighter than he
remembered.
And her face was much stronger, and far more mature.
“Ravenna,” he whispered.
Ravenna, the marsh girl who had helped Garth rescue him from the Veins.
Ravenna, the girl who rescued him from his madness, but then left him, and
Garth—with whom she was close—to run with the Manteceros and Lord of Dreams, Drava,
whose likeness Maximilian wore carved into his upper right biceps.
“You do remember,” Ravenna said, and smiled. “What are you doing here, Maximilian?”
“Pulled here by magic,” Maximilian said, managing to get to his feet with Ravenna”s aid,
and suppressing a wince at the pain in his shoulder. “You?”
Ravenna shook her head, looking at the man still lying half in the water behind
Maximilian. The storm had abated now. It still blew about them, and it still rained, but it was a
gentle and mild thing compared to what had enveloped both sea and land only a few minutes
earlier.
“It was magic that brought me here, too,” she said. She stepped past Maximilian and bent
to the man lying at the edge of the tide. “Who is this man, Maxel?”
“I don”t know.”
Ravenna rolled him over. “He has a strange aspect.”
Maximilian stepped to her side, looking down. “He is Icarii,” he said, “but with no
wings.”
“I have heard of the Icarii,” Ravenna said.
“No doubt from Drava,” said Maximilian.
She looked at him at that. “I heard about them while I was with Drava, yes,” she said.
“Our lives together were filled with the pursuit of mysteries.”
“And now?”
“Now the dreamworld is waking, Maxel. The barriers between it and this world are
cracking.”
“So Drava sent you back?”
“I wandered back of my own accord. I am a marsh woman, Maxel. I belong to no man,
whether he be flesh and blood, or dream.”
This was, Maximilian thought, a bizarre place and time to be having this conversation.
He looked back to the Icarii man, now softly moaning as he regained consciousness.
“Power dragged me here, to this man. I have no idea why.”
“Maxel?”
He looked at Ravenna.
She nodded at an object lying in the water a few feet behind the Icarii, almost obscured
by the darkness and rolling waves. “What”s that?”
Maximilian walked over, leaning down and grabbing at the object with his uninjured arm.
Almost immediately he swore softly, and jumped back.
“Maxel?” Ravenna said again, now at his side.
“You”ll have to pick it up,” Maxel said. He indicated his left shoulder. “I injured my
shoulder. Can”t use my left arm very well. Don”t worry,” he added. “It isn”t dangerous.”
She gave him a level look, then bent down and lifted the object gently from the water—it
was an exquisitely worked bronze figurine of a young man.
It reeked with magic, which Ravenna knew Maximilian must have felt as well, but which,
as he had, she instinctively knew wasn”t dangerous to her.
Not dangerous, but Ravenna received the faint impression that the object didn”t like her
very much.
“It is very sad,” she said, softly.
“He is the Weeper,” said a weary voice from behind Ravenna and Maximilian, and they
turned about. “And he is indeed very sad.”
The Icarii man had lifted himself onto one elbow. “My name is StarDrifter SunSoar,” he
said, “and I beg your aid in finding me a dry and warm spot.”
“StarDrifter SunSoar,” murmured Maximilian. “Dear gods…are they all coming back?”
Ravenna looked at him, an eyebrow raised in query.
“His son, Axis,” Maximilian said, his voice infused with weeks-old fatigue, “has also
returned from the land of the dead, and now has my wife, Ishbel. I was traveling to rescue her
when this,” he waved his hand about, encompassing the storm and all it had wrought,
“intervened.”
“Well,” said Ravenna, with a bright smile, “now you have Axis” father. I am sure, with
your undoubted royal diplomatic skills, we can arrange a prisoner exchange.”
“Axis has your wife?” StarDrifter said, having now struggled into a sitting position.
“You knew Axis was back?” Maximilian said.
“Look,” said StarDrifter, “I have no idea who either of you are, and I don”t really want to
go through explanations and introductions sitting in this frigid water. Is it possible, do you think, that we can find some shelter, some dry shelter, and talk all this out there?”
“I have no idea where—” Maximilian began, but then Ravenna caught at his arm with her
hand, and nodded at the crest of the hill.
Silhouetted against the night sky were the figures of Serge and Doyle, holding the reins
of three horses.
“I know of somewhere,” Ravenna said.
Venetia paced back and forth by the wooden table in her small ramshackle home deep
within the marshlands.
Something was happening.
Something was coming.
She had felt this for many weeks…the sense of something happening. Over the past few
days the sense had intensified, and had been infused with the pain and terror of a woman far
distant.
A woman was in pain, and was being brutalized, and Venetia felt some tenuous
connection with her, although she could not identify it.
Venetia inhabited the marshes beyond Narbon, a witch-woman, one who lived partly in
the mortal world and partly in the Land of Dreams, a guardian of the borderlands between the
dream world and the mortal. Generally Venetia was happy with her solitariness, but, as the sense
of impending events crowded her, she”d become nervy, constantly on the alert.
Waiting for whatever it was to strike.
When the knock came at the door, Venetia gave a startled gasp, her body tensing, her
eyes widening, one hand at her throat.
She should have detected someone approaching.
That she had not told Venetia that whatever waited outside for her was a power-wielder