Cold... Darkness... Meyer tried to open his eyes but couldn't... couldn't think... couldn't sleep... But why... why couldn't he wake up?
Again the darkness faded around him, and his consciousness was swept away. He felt a faint beating...
Then nothing.
Only emptiness. He tried to open his eyes... Colors... He was awake... Or was he?
Again there was blackness. He felt metal on his raw skin...
Did he hear voices?
Meyer strained to fight the weight that suppressed his mind—that smothered his senses... But the oppressing force was too great... He slipped back into the unknown... The emptiness... The pulsing... ever beating...
The pattern continued, but it remained an endless nightmare—a mixture of consciousness and dreams—a strange reality on the edge of insanity...
But then Meyer was awake. He was in a cage; he was chained. There was a fire nearby, and figures were sitting around it.
Where was he?
The thought had barely formed in his mind when a man appeared in front of him. The man opened the cage and tilted Meyer's head back, pouring an icy liquid down his throat.
Again there was nothing; when Meyer regained consciousness he could not remember the incident and soon he had returned to his delirious state...
But even as Meyer was pulled through the blackness he could feel a steadying force... The beating: it was growing stronger. And Meyer knew he had to fight against the chaos—to cling to the beating...
When he finally saw the face again—a man approaching him—Meyer focused with all his energy. He exerted all his strength to memorize the man's face—to ingraining the figure in his memory...
The cage opened and Meyer's head was tilted backwards.
Everything was black.
There was nothing... nothing... nothing...
...except...
He could feel it—a thumping... pounding...
And when Meyer woke up, he remembered. He remembered the face. He was a captive. Even before the icy liquid poured down his throat, he knew what was coming. He tried not to swallow, but it was hopeless...
Still, as his captor walked away, Meyer managed to spit out a small mouthful of the vulgar liquid... The darkness closed in, but he felt the beating stronger than ever. He held onto it—kindling it—keeping his consciousness alive within him...
When later the man came to pour the liquid down his throat again, Meyer groped instinctively with an unfamiliar sense. For moment he felt a strange force—a flowing power—but then a cloud obscured his mind, suffocating his connection with the source...
He passed into the emptiness, but he clung to the pulsing, fighting to break free...
And suddenly he did.
It was evening, and men were bustling by him, casting long shadows as they carried large packs and armfuls of kindling. A few yards away a single man knelt over the embers of a fire, and past him, several more were tending to a half dozen horses.
Invigorated by the absence of darkness, Meyer prepared himself. He didn't know where he was or what he planned to do, but he would be ready.
When night came Meyer felt himself growing stronger. He knew the man was coming, and his mind fixated on the single thought, building within him a power of resolve that he was sure would not fail.
No sooner had the man poured the liquid down his throat, then Meyer shoved his own fingers into his mouth. The man took no notice, already having turned his back and started walking away, and then when he was several yards distance, Meyer began puking on the floor of his metal cage. His vomit was yellow and watery, but he beheld it with joy as it leaked through the bars and into the earth.
When the emptiness came, Meyer embraced it. He would be awake soon. And he was right. He merely channelled the distant beating and then he was alive again.
He looked up at the sky, shining with stars, and then shifted his focus back to his surroundings. He could vaguely discern the outlines of tents and baggage, and in the distance he saw the flicker torch light, between the shadows, the figures of two men.
Reaching out with his strange sense, Meyer snapped his bonds. He cut a hole in his metal cage and slipped out of the cell. He walked silently through the tents, and then disappeared into the night.
At first he ran, using the unfamiliar power to propel him forward, but after a time, he realized he was thinking again. And then comprehension began to dawn on him...
He was Meyer Brant...
He was running...
He was...
Meyer staggered forward and fell to the ground.
...Damian...
...The Magician...
A cold wind swept across the land, and Meyer felt a freezing sensation burn through his body. He felt acutely alive as he gulped breaths of cold air, but also empty—hollow.
He was alive.
He had survived.
But his friends... Eldrin's Dale... The Outlands... Meyer closed his eyes. There was no peace. He was Odessa's son... the Magician was looking for him... Who had captured him?
The thoughts caused Meyer to leap back to his feet, but he stood motionless. He had never felt so alone, and despite his fear, he sunk back to the ground. He was lost with nowhere to go... defeated...
But as Meyer stared into the darkness, he felt a familiar pulsing with his magical sense—the same rhythm he had clung to in order to escape his sedation...
He reached into his pocket and his fingers closed around a hard metal object. He withdrew it, at once recognizing the star and skull emblem. It was the token he had picked up so long ago in the Outlands—with Sarn and Gib... They had just seen the mass horde of Raiders... And when he had picked the metal up...
Meyer's spirits stirred as an unbelivable thought crossed his mind. He stared at the metal token, just as the pulsing vibrated through his conscious again... The pulsing was coming from the star and skull emblem, and he had felt it previously—the night he had picked the token up for the first time!
Meyer's thoughts began to race as his mind tried making sense of the token which he had always thought was no more than a metal trinket—which he had even tested for magicality, searching for signs of enchantment as he had done with the decryptor ring...And then he remembered—sitting in Adryn's classroom—the afternoon before his first outing to Gray Pond...
There are other means of creating magical objects that leave no trace. For example, a lifelink, which allows its wearer to sense the location of another person, relies on Blood Magic and leaves no imprint in the Currents.
Adryn's words filled his mind as his heart began to pound. If the star and skull emblem was a lifelink, it would outwardly show no signs of being magical. Fixing his attention on the metal token, Meyer subconsciously reached out with his magical sense. He could feel the beating again, and as he focused on the magical signal, he felt as though the lifelink was pulling him in... As though he could slip into it...
...In the distance was a looming wall, and around him the lights of many torches. He marched among an endless sea of bodies... But then his vision shifted; he saw only the ground beneath his feet.
A horn blast rang through the sky, and his pace quicked. Again Meyer saw the dark walls. They were maybe a few miles away, but still near enough that he could discern the vague outline of the ramparts, looming defenses against flickering torch light.
The focus returned to the marching mass of attackers... To the endless sea of the Raiders in front of him...
And then Meyer withdrew from the lifelink, a terrible sense of understanding dawning upon him. He finally knew the cause of the vivid dreams he had sporadically experienced ever since leaving Vanroc.
First in Urbana he had dreamed of a commanding voice, enticing his followers to join forces together... Then in Eldrin's Dale after discovering the power of the ring—right after Cade's seizer—he had dreamed of marching men. He had hardly considered the dream that he had kept slipping into that night—but there was no doubt; he had seen Raiders enroute to attack... Finally he had heard the Raider leader announce that Eschera had ordered the attacks to stop...
All those times he had been using the lifelink subconsciously—somehow drawing from its power to slip into the consciousness of the Raider who possessed its other half. He even vaguely remembered waking up with the metal digging into his body... The dreams only happened when the skull and star emblem was touching him.
And now he had just seen Raiders attacking again.
Meyer hesitated a moment before slipping the lifelink into his pocket. He could still feel the beating, and using it to guide him, he stepped forward into the night. He needed to warn the Outlanders.