decide that his beloved Illyra had suffered too much in his absence and to
repent that he had gotten drunk or sought work outside the bazaar. He lifted her
gently and carried her back to their home, muttering softly to himself as he
walked.
Not even Dubro’s comforting arms could protect Illyra from the nightmare visions
that stalked her sleep once they had returned to their home. He shook off his
drunkenness to watch over her as she tossed and fretted on the sleeping linens.
Each time he thought she had settled into a calm sleep, the dreams would start
again. Illyra would awaken sweating and incoherent from fear. She would not
describe her dreams to him when he asked. He began to suspect that something
worse than the murder had taken place in his absence, though their home showed
no sign of attack or struggle.
Illyra did try to voice her fears to him at each waking interlude, but the
mixture of visions and emotions found no expression in her voice. Within her
mind, each re-dreaming of the nightmare brought her closer to a single image
which both collected her problems and eliminated them. The first rays of a
feeble dawn had broken through the fog when she had the final synthetic
experience of the dream.
She saw herself at a place the dream-spirit said was the estate called Land’s
End. The estate had been long abandoned, with only an anvil chained to a
pedestal in the centre of a starlit courtyard to show that it had been
inhabited. Illyra broke the chain easily and lifted the anvil as if it had been