In the Eye of the King's Needle

Chapter Two

When I was on my own, I had dreams of a bright white light. I can]t remember when they started exactly, but from as far back as I can remember until the day I came into my mother's town. 

They were strange things, distorting things, always changing to that there was no single light dream I could lay out for Mother, just a sort of menagerie of lightdreams. Each was a different vase holding the same flower in its center. 

I would start from anywhere. The abandoned cottage still fresh with blood I'd once passed a night in, the gorge of writhing, unknown bodies that is my first memory, or even the meadow I lazed in for the entirety of one perfect afternoon. No matter how many times I'd had the dream, I never knew what was coming next. 

I was always walking, which made sense. The entirety of my childhood was comprised primarily of aimless walking. Not toward anything in particular. Not even away. Just walking, thinking maybe I'd stumble across something that could me some sense of direction. Purpose.

In the dreams, I find it at the foot of a young tree that was never actually there in the waking world. The light is partially infused with the wood, and in the center is a pit of blackness somehow brighter than the surrounding light. 

I stop walking, then. A tension wracks my body, the need to both step away and to lean into it. I reach out my hand even though I do not want to touch it. I can't help myself. 

At first, it is cool, then I dissolve into bitter agony and it burns me to ash. 

This time, I'm standing in the pinewood grove. The air is cool and slightly damp as if it had just been raining. A lone bee hovers near a pale wildflower at the edge of the glade. It's the same as it always was, I think, though my head feels cottony and it takes me a breath to parse my own reaction to the place's familiarity. This is where he came for me. He...lured me here or, no,  maybe I followed him. Had he seemed surprised to see me? I can't remember.

That man isn't here now. The clearing is empty.

With a start, I realize that I know what comes next. I look for the tree and that light like I know it's supposed to be here, though I haven't had the dream in years. In a way, it's like I never stopped having it. 

I cross the glade, eyes sharp for the light as well as anything that shouldn't be here. It was my mother who warned me of the danger dreams could harbor when she began showing me how to bend the world. Sometimes the world would sneak into your dreams and try, in its own way, to bend you in return. She wouldn't tell me what happens if the world succeeds. 

The tree grows in the shadows at the other end of the clearing, twined and twisted through a cluster of strangely branched yews. None of them actually grew in the pinewood grove. I let that fact slide off me. 

At my feet, so small I almost missed it, rests the white light. It had never been on the ground before this, always it had floated, but I guess it's been years and maybe I was supposed to be taking care of it. I dismissed the thought. There was nothing in the glade I cared to aid. There was something cold and slick about the thing, an oppressive atmosphere that reminded me of sickness. 

I'm not sure how I became aware of the other presence in my dream. It was as if I had known the whole time and only then decided to acknowledge my own awareness. That's how it so often goes in dreams. It was dangerous to put too much focus on any one thing. I might miss changes disguised as something not a change at all.

I turn away from the too-small white light. A four-limbed creature, sleek and gleaming. watches me with an unnaturally narrow head. Ah, I think in the dream, my mother warned me of this. Dream demons flock to power. Now that I am grown and trained, I have more than I did as a child. 

I don't have my usual tools with me in the dream, the rules of my usual magic doesn't apply here. The only part of me in the dream is essence, and so essence is all that I can use. 

I breathe air from my lungs in my hands, not because I have to, but because the visualization makes wielding abstract essence easier. The essence-as-air molds like clay in my hands. 

The dream demon lunges and becomes a flurry of dark limbs and bright teeth in snapping jaws. My heart pounds, hands already moving to form a wall of wind between us, but a hard, masculine voice tears a jag-edged seam through the clearing. 

I wake abruptly in a small but somewhat clean if cramped room. IT's only big enough for the bed I'm currently lying on, a small chest, and a washing bowl. 

Blinking warily at the man standing at the foot of the bed, I lever myself up on my elbows-- or I try to. My head aches as soon as I use the muscles in my neck. 

He's hard to see in the dim room lit only by a single candle and saucer atop the wooden chest at the foot of the bed. The pain in my head turns the room fuzzy and indistinct, but the way he stands registers as familiar somewhere in the back of my mind. I'm still having trouble thinking, remembering where I am or how I got here. 

"Were you waiting for me to wake or--" No, the sound of a voice ripping through my dream comes back to me. "How did you pull me out?" I ask instead. Mother always told me that a dream like that, one touched by magic and reality, can only be escape via the dreamer's own will. That also was one of the many dangers in dreaming. 

"I wasn't sure if you knew how to leave a waking dream," he said, answering a question I hadn't asked. 

I narrowed my eyes at him. "I was on my way out," I said. Mother had taught me how to protect myself in sleep as soon as I told her of the lightdreams. 

He didn't react, standing there with his arms crossed, stone-faced but still...something about the stiff lines of his posture spoke of discomfort. Other than that he might annoyed or resentful. Of what, I wasn't sure. The orange candlelight reflected of the harsh lines of his dark cheekbones and danced in the depths of his black eyes. Abruptly, I came to the certain realization that he was something more than human. I could've known from his ability to pull me out of a--what had he called it--a waking dream, but even if I had no knowledge of anything, even if I'd never met Mother I would know. And yet...

"You're--" My head throbbed as I tried to focus. "You're the reason I'm here. You're the man who...attacked me."

The corner of his mouth twitched upward at that, a moition and expression meant to convey pride, but he didn't smile. Surely that would've been too drastic a change for his stony face. No teeth revealed to reflect brightly in the dark. 

"I am," he said, great eyes gleaming.