Gallel's Heir

Chapter 4: Encounters

She should have known how to prevent this mindless theft; Gizelle had given her a wondrous gift. Yet, as Tutang held Dylin like he thought she liked it, all focus fled and her wari sifted away. She hung limp in his arms, weak breath came with difficulty.

It was the only time he ever touched her. His eyes did funny things, like nothing existed but him, not even her. She was an object. That's what hurt most. She no longer existed as a person. She had no identity - he stole it with her wari - and she was a husk until her strength and wari regenerated.

When Tutang slept, she slid away from his room, her limbs heavy with so little wari to lift them. She crawled up the steps and down her corridor, gray dawn just lighting the dried garlands opposite the windows.

She kept a flint blade in her tubroom. After placing a thick towel on the lavender rug, she lay on the towel, then pulled up her sleeve and cut. Tension eased as blood oozed from her arm, and her wari seemed to hang somewhere above, just beyond touch. She cut a little more. Exhilaration tingled her mind to a point of rapture. She lay breathless as the sun rose, relishing the sting she herself caused, then wrapped her arm in mason root-lined linen. Her wari would trickle back with sleep and something to eat.

The wari returned as strength returned, and cutting weakened her. She cut anyway. She cut for her sanity.

She crawled into her bed and fell into a dream.

A man stood within a crystal sphere, she with him, inside a cathedral of light, white pillars all around. The man was familiar. He was - Canúden den Ubal, the boy she'd shared that vision with when Lianna was a baby, the night before Dylin had met the Escort. Now a young man, he had recently come to work as a hall sweep in Gallel. Awkward for Dylin, who had spent the past eight years successfully avoiding him and putting that intense experience behind her. No awkwardness in this dream, only natural familiarity.

Lianna, a woman, held Dylin's hand and den Ubal's, and smiled at them both. Others stood with them, intimately familiar yet she failed to recognize them. A lithesome woman who looked at Dylin and den Ubal lovingly as a daughter would. A woman with dark skin and dimples. A thin man with closely cropped hair. A pale, stocky man with broad shoulders and a warm smile. Dozens, thousands of people stood within the congregation, all waiting.

Platforms stood one behind another, each taller than the one before, on either end of the cathedral, graced with men and women in silvery robes. A man on the foremost - and lowest - platform held up his hand and twirled his fingers; a ball appeared above the congregation, blue and green and brown and swirling white. Joy and love emanated the room. Expectation. You are the same woman, the man said. Hallel needs you. The last was the plural you. The man meant all of those in her group, den Ubal, Lianna, and the four others.

The dream changed.

Dylin struggled in darkness. Waves crashed over her head, and breath came painfully as though she drowned. If she could drown, relinquish her pain, she would grasp hands with the Escort again and find her way to the Otherworld with the Ancestors.

"Lianna, no!" she said. Lianna hung above her in what would have been the sky, if there was a sky, curled, trembling and weeping for... what? "I'm here!" Dylin struggled to stand, but waves engulfed her and she found no footing. "Don't weep, I'm here." Lianna wept and the black waves rose to her also, tickled her toes, engulfed her shoulders. Dylin thrashed, unable to make progress in the surges of whatever she struggled in. She shrieked, and her voice fell dead.

A man appeared in the sky, standing above Lianna. He turned towards Dylin; it was den Ubal. He spoke to Lianna; his lips moved, but only crashing waves sounded. Trembling, he took Lianna's hand, pulled her away from the rising torrents. He held something in his other hand, something that glowed. When Lianna embraced him, he wept also, but the waves dispersed from the glowing ball like mist from sunrise. Lianna and the servant laughed, as one laughs when the storm has ended and all is well. They disappeared.