In Dreams I Lie

Chapter Fifteen: Along the Knife's Edge

A Vision:

Sansori dances, hands high above her head. With each spin, her skirts fan out, draping the room in flame and shadows. Her back faces to me, and only her hair, elongated to fall to the floor, is visible through the smoke. The ends burn, embers falling from the locks to the blackened volcanic ground, then flowing back upwards to form a crown of spikes around her head. No music sounds, only a vague rattling catches my ears. Her head shakes up and down, first to the heavens, then the dirt. Lighting flashes over head, knocking the ceiling away. Rain begins to fall, crashing down around us in heavy, gasping torrents. The walls crumble to ash, and she looks back, lifting a hand as if begging me to follow, but keeping her face from my eyes. Then she runs, picking up her skirts and fleeing up the side of the fire storm mountain. Her feet are bare, but do not burn.

I take off after her, but for every step I take, she leaps five more.

We reach a flat just bellow the precipice. She blinks out of view. I turn and turn again, knowing that I have to find her.  

I hear my name from up above through a cracked voice, desperate and lost. I run again, and with each step the rain hisses in the lava, forming a pathway for my feet. I'm nearing the top, nearing the gaping mouth of the volcano, where lava swirls and spits in a writhing foam.

"Arcadiel!" My name, screamed again. Twenty pace away stands Sansori, on a thin ledge over the yawning mouth. A crack appears by her feet, then another. She steps back, her face twisted in agony, but she is bound, bound to the mountain top with a set of blood chains. The more she pulls, the tighter they enclose around her wrist. Blood drips to the ground hissing and turning to smoke.

"Arcadiel!" Another voice screams. Twenty paces to my left stands the light boy, chained with a boy of darkness that I have never seen. But I know the voice. Sansori's new prince.

"Choose." Cadren materializes in front of me, low to the ground on all four rotting limbs. "Choose and win a freedom."

I open my mouth to scream to her, but the smoke chokes through my lungs. My eyes flit to Sansori. Then to the prince.

"You cannot save them both. Choose wisely, Little Sister." Her face splits into a gaping smile, filled with blood and jagged teeth.

"Arcadiel!" Pleads Sansori. Tears line up her face. "Please, Please, it wasn't me, believe me, please."

The boy meets my eyes. They do not show fear. Only resolve. "Save her." He chants. "Save her, save her, save her." Then he plunges a knife into his chest. But the blade doesn't pierce him. It is Sansori who falls, blood pouring from her heart. The prince looks down, then reaches out his arms to me. But Sansori is already in mine. She coughs, and blood streams through my face.

"Sansori." I murmur. My throat clears.

"Arcadiel!" She murmurs. Her eyes open. She screams my name again, but she's not looking at me.

"Wrong choice." Cadren hisses in my ear as a knife enters my ribs for the second time.

Reality:

A scream tries to tear through my throat but I still can't make any sound. My eyes flash open. The boy and the girl, the ones that I thought were the leaders of the camp, stand over me.

"She's fading." The boy mutters, doing something with his hands over my head.

The girl rounds on him. "Well then do something to stop it, you worthless magician!"

"I'm trying!" He hisses, sweat beading his forehead. "You're the telepath! Can't you go into her mind and do some crazy mind shit to fix her?

"Because I tried that three days ago!" She yells back. "And she just choked more!"

They cross to the side of the room, bending their heads so that they don't hit themselves on the skins that make up the ceiling. He brings back a bowl to my table, one filled with herbs of various kinds. Some I recognize from Jerlla's garden; some are completely foreign. He grinds them to a paste, and attempts to spread them over my lips. I reach out a trembling hand to stop him, touching his wrist lightly. His wrist is soft under my finger tips. His face transforms from deep concentrated stress to a wide, beaming smile.

"She wakes!" He cheers.

His sister hurries over. "Hallelujah!" She smacks him with the side of her sleeve. "Finally, you did something right."

They focus their attention back on me. He reaches out his hand to help me sit. "How do you feel?" He asks.

I let go of his fingers and place mine to my temple. "Like hell." Except that's not true, at least, not exactly. My head feels clearer than it has since Sansori drove her dagger through me. My thoughts zoom through my head instead of crawling, and the cold that has pressed against my spine, influencing everything from my posture to the formality of my speech is gone. It is like I am waking up in my bedroom again, in the South, with the fires off and the wind blowing only just through the window. But I'm not. I'm here in this mountainous place, wherever that is.

"What happened?" I question, running my fingers now through my hair.

The boy sits on the end of the table. I pull my legs to my chest to make room for him. "We don't really know. Your maid found you submerged in the water, black tendrils shooting from your finger tips and beams of light coming from your eyes. You wouldn't wake up, so we took you here, to our med tent."

I nod. I will need to thank her when I go back.

"Oh, you're not going back to that tent," Answers the telepath. I glare at her. I like my mind to be private.

The boy glares at her. "Look, don't push-"

She blows him off and sits to my other side. "Nope. We tried your strategy of not telling her anything, and she ended up at the bottom of a tent lake. Now it's my turn." She offers me a hand to shake. "My name's Esha. As you may have noticed, I'm a telepath. I'm also co-general of this lovely little rebellion. This bone head is my brother, Theadorus. He's younger than me, but still thinks it's to boss me around. He's got a twin brother, but Nikolai is complicated. We'll tell you later."

"And don't worry, we will, it's just a long story that I don't want to go into without food." She answers to Theadorus' scolding and my apprehensive glare.

"My name is Arcadiel, though you already seem to know it." I respond.

She nods. "Well, anyway, welcome to the the Magi, a not so covert group dedicated to retaking the thrones!"