DREAMWIELDER Book 1 of The Dreamwielder Chronicles

Chapter 27: TRUMBALL'S HEIR

Makarria sat huddled up against the cavern wall with Taera's head in her lap, awaiting Caile's return. He had left the two of them in the cavern at the south end of Issborg to go fetch water from the lake, and Taera had immediately fallen into a fitful sleep. Her face was swollen and the blood on her face had dried into a black crust around her nose and mouth. Makarria, for her own part, found herself nauseous and overcome with an empty feeling inside her like a great sorrow. Part of it was a sense lethargy from having transformed the wooden spoon into a dagger, she knew, but the sense of loss she could not explain except from having been so scared by what happened with Roanna and Kadar. Her cheek stung where Roanna had slapped her, and poor Taera had faired much worse. The sight of her face made Makarria want to cry. Makarria closed her eyes, fighting away tears and wishing everything could just go back to the way it was before, when she was back with her parents on their farm. She could barely picture her parents' faces anymore. For that matter, she could barely picture her grandfather's. The thought of him left behind on Pyrthin's Flame pained her. She desperately hoped he had somehow escaped the burning ship.

"Is everything alright?" Caile asked, startling her.

"Fine, yes," Makarria said, rubbing the tears from her eyes.

Caile knelt down and handed her a waterskin to drink from, then turned his attention to Taera. He had dampened a cloth in the lake and he used it now to wipe the blood from her face. She moaned but did not wake.

"Kadar was beating her," Makarria said. "He would have killed her, but Roanna set him on fire."

"Roanna saved her?"

Makarria nodded. "She's mean but not as mean as Kadar. He's got black teeth."

Caile frowned at the thought but said nothing. He rinsed the blood from his cloth with water from the skin and continued to clean up Taera the best he could. When he was done, he sat down beside Makarria and sighed.

"How is it that you came to be captured with my sister?" he asked.

"I was stranded at sea, and your sister rescued me," Makarria said, and she told him how she had been rescued along with Parmo by Pyrthin's Flame, only to be taken away with Taera by Roanna on the airship a few days later. It felt good to talk to someone and speak her grandfather's name. She said nothing about the prophecy or Taera's visions however.

"Roanna has a flying ship?" Caile asked. "Are you sure you didn't just dream it up?"

Makarria laughed at the irony in his question. "Technically, Siegbjorn is the captain of the airship."

Caile thought her laugh odd but wrote it off to fatigue and delirium. She's little more than a kid, he realized now that he got a chance to look at her up close. Her arms were skinny but well-muscled, and the way she had walked into the town hall holding up his sister, he mistook her to be much older than she was. She had seemed very much an adult the way she carried herself. She was very pretty but younger than Caile by several years at least, by his estimation.

Makarria blushed under his prolonged gaze.

"Sorry," Caile said, realizing he was staring. "I just thought that... I mean—"

Taera gasped and woke with a start, cutting Caile short. "No!" she cried out. She pushed herself upright, panic on her face.

Caile grabbed her hands. "Taera. It's me, Caile. Everything is alright. You were just having a nightmare."