A Greater Day Forgotten

Chapter One: Adalroun

Diveena Erose was only ten when she first saw him in the Dream, spritely red hair stuck out like the twigs of a bush in need of a manicure. He was just a man, though that was a matter of some debate. His eyes shone piercing blue and betrayed an impish tendency to defy authority even when obeying might have been good for him. His was a mind sharp with instinct but not wisdom.

There was something different about this Dream. The boy, who she later heard called Ardis, was not constructed out of her imaginative sleeping mind which spoke in so many symbols, foils, and patterns meant to show her the future. This boy was real and he was now, and for that to happen in the Dream was new to her. The experience was both frightening and exciting and for that reason she schemed to keep Ardis her secret.

Every day she was enveloped by Ministry priests who came to read what she'd written about the Dream and probe her for details she'd not committed to paper. The last thing she wanted was a new reason for them to occupy her time. They often sat in circles debating on the meanings of these Dreams until she thought the sun would fall out of the sky and she'd miss the day entirely. She learned that the Dream was like a warning bell about important events except that it rang before any emergency ever happened.

What then were Visions of Ardis doing in her head?

Ardis was neither noble or special. He lived far away from others where he was unlikely to have any effect on events of the world or amount to anything uncommon for a dirty peasant with bad manners who ran around the untamed forests like a wild child.

Despite all his appearances, she did sense something noteworthy. She was intuitive; she felt gentle disturbances the way a lake ripples from the smallest of breezes. There was a feeling around Ardis that swung from hot molten lava to bitter cold quartz—one minute seething with blood boiling rage, the next, his mind focused with razor-edged acuity. Either way, he was dangerous, and she was scared of him, but the kind of scared that fascinates a person, not frightens them away.

Though she didn't know why Ardis had become a subject of her Dream, understanding why she hoped for the Dream of him each night was not hard—for even from the first, his story was both heart-rending and mysterious.

Ardis raised himself to his feet, a movement more like a bounce for his youthful frame. With sleep still in his eyes, he ran through the twenty-two offensive strikes of Kan-tarta with discipline and boredom. His companion, an aging ex-soldier in self-exile, still slept on his cot and wouldn't see Ardis's poor execution of the movements. In his youthful arrogance, he wouldn't admit that the forms had the desired effect of awakening his mind to the morning. He performed the action only to obey.

His stomach rumbled as he tied the belt of his cloak tight for warmth and headed outside into the wet pre-dawn. He immediately stopped, his senses alert, and snatched his simple wooden staff from the side of their cabin, its smooth surface sliding comfortably into his grip. The goat fence was broken, the woven wattle leaning askew. He ran light-footed to the lean-to that served as the goat shelter and looked inside. He relaxed a hair; there was no blood, but the two goats were gone.

He whistled the call he used before bringing the goats a treat and saw shadows shift in the fog. He let out a breath. They were alive, and he would still have milk for breakfast. He opened the gate and let himself into the paddock to fix the fence. Two steps brought him up short. One foot dropped into a print left by something heavy. He bent tracing it with his finger. Four toes, one deep enough to show the point of a claw he could fit his pinky into.

He was breathing hard again, something he had been trained not to do. That's when he noticed the smell, the scent left when a dominant male marked its territory. He spat distastefully into the dirt and followed the tracks across the pen, over the fence, and toward the trees. That's when the hunter in him fully woke up. He crouched, swung his staff forward ready to fend off attack, and listened.