Muse of Nightmares (Strange the Dreamer, #2)

by Laini Taylor

There was a myth, back on Rieva, about Lesya Dawnbringer who held up the sky. Every day she lifted it over her head, and only at dusk could she let it fall. But at Deepsummer, the sun didn’t set for a month, and she had to hold it for all that time.

She sent out her eagle, and her sight and senses with it. It could pass through stone, brick, even steel, but not mesarthium. They learned that early on. But all godsmetal ships, and even the emperor’s floating metal palace, had small openings for ventilation, and she could pass through those, no matter how small. The eagle could fade almost to nothing, so that it was no more than a glimmer, and it could hear, see, and even steal—tokens and paperwork, maps, messages bearing the royal seal. It could even steal a godsmetal diadem right off the brow of a dead Servant, and it did.

until the day that Kora discovered her eagle could...pierce space. That was what it felt like: cutting through the fabric of space so that distance lost all meaning. There were Servants who could do it. They called it teleportation. They could will themselves from one side of the world to the other, and vanish and appear there instantaneously.

And one night, after Skathis left her, she let her soul drift farther up into the crystal-cold ether than she had ever dared before. She was remembering what Antal of the white hair had said: how the first astral had claimed he could voyage through the stars.

She’d been miles away and snapped back in an instant. She tested it later, when she regained her nerve. It was real: Her eagle could travel any distance in a blink, melting through the air as though space were just another wall.

Zeru existed just beyond the edge of the empire’s farthest expansion, and, as such, its people did not know of Mesarthim.

The worst, though, was lust. She could make Kora go mad with it, and every time she did, and Kora was caught in a sick pantomime of desire—and its abominable fulfillment—it left a rotten place, like a bruise on fruit, somewhere on her soul.

At first, Skathis had no purpose in Zeru beyond godhood and debauchery, but that changed. Later, he would claim it was all by design, but that was a lie. He was a rapist for fun before he began to turn a profit. It was the children—the ones born to the first of the unfortunate human women in the citadel’s sinister arm. That “gods” should claim concubines was to be expected. That children would result was only natural. That the children should be special, now, that was a surprise.

Kora thought maybe it was because of the mysterious, clear fluid, spirit, that flowed alongside their blood. As far as she could tell, it was the only anomaly that set these humans apart from others who fit in that broad taxonomy.

He sold shape-shifters and elementals, seers, healers, soporifs, every kind of warrior. There were gifts that had no application in war, but he put every child on the block—almost every child—and the leftovers were bought at a discount by traders, to be sold off down the line, wherever they might be wanted.

And one day a baby boy in the nursery manifested smith ability. Kora snatched him. She stole him, and sent him, in her eagle’s grip, through pierced space to a place far away where Skathis wouldn’t find him. She hadn’t planned it. It was luck. But once she had the baby, it all began to take shape in her mind: her mutiny. The boy would grow up, not knowing what he was, and one day she would bring him back, and he would set her free. She daydreamed of murdering Skathis. If his hobby was breeding slave children, hers was dreaming up his death. She planned to wait until the baby grew into his power. Then she would bring him back—to fight the gods and kill them, and open the portal and fly her through it.

Because home was and had always been Nova, and Kora died believing her sister would come.

Rows of buildings were sucked underground, including the ancient library so recently unearthed.

With a deep breath, she began the task of moving it through the portal to the world on the other side.

She couldn’t catch her breath. It was all too much. Her father was dead. Azareen too. Her home was stolen, and Lazlo was taken. The rest of them had been jettisoned here. She could hardly process this basic fact: She was in Weep.

She had thought Sparrow was pale. But Sparrow wasn’t pale. She was gray.

Sarai knew what that meant, but before she could make sense of it, a voice surged above the chaos. “HOLD YOUR FIRE!” it boomed. It was deep and rich. Sarai heard it, and knew it, and couldn’t believe it for the obvious reason that it was impossible. It was Eril-Fane’s voice. But Eril-Fane was dead. He’d been pierced through the hearts. His body was right... . . . here? Sarai turned to where Eril-Fane’s body was sprawled out on Sparrow’s other side. Only it wasn’t sprawled out anymore. It was—he was getting to his feet. But how?

“I said, HOLD YOUR FIRE!” he boomed again, and the rain of arrows stuttered to a stop. “Tizerkane, stand down!” he commanded. “These children are under my protection!”

When the hand reached in and grabbed them, when it dropped them here on the ground, she’d stayed with them, and now she was bent over Azareen. Her hand was thrust under the warrior’s breastplate. Sarai could see her fingers through the hole the wasp stinger had punched through the bronze. Sparrow’s hand was on Azareen’s wound. That was the story. Eril-Fane was alive. That was the story. Sparrow’s eyes were closed in deep concentration, and her skin was gray, and that was the story. She was gray, but as Sarai looked on, this ceased to be true. Sparrow’s color was fugitive, changing fast enough to watch. The gray hue took on a new richness as the last hint of blue left her flesh, giving way to beautiful, silken, chestnut brown. Except for the blood, the arrow, and her clothes—a slip from the closet of the goddess of secrets—she could have been a girl of Weep. Sparrow looked human.

Sparrow—Orchid Witch—could make things grow, and not just flowers and kimril. But could she really have done this, regrown what was sundered inside Eril-Fane?

She let go. She had always imagined her gift as a fist clenching a tangle of threads. Now she opened it. The threads slipped free. A tremendous weight lifted as she released every soul she’d collected since the Carnage, save three.

The mind is good at hiding things, but it can’t erase. It can only conceal, and concealed things are not gone. Minya’s memory had a trick spot in it, like a drawer with a secret compartment—or a floating orb with a portal inside it, leading to a whole nightmare world. Now it all blew open, and the truth spilled out like blood.

In every world, the seraphim had cut two portals: a front door and a back door, so to speak—a way in from the previous world, and a way out to the next. When navigating the Continuum, there were two directions: not north and south, right and left, up and down, but al-Meliz and ez-Meliz. Toward Meliz, and away from Meliz. The seraph home world, where the Faerers’ journey had begun, was the only compass point that mattered.

“All right,” said Minya. All right, said Minya. Sarai struggled to keep her astonishment from showing. Minya was never agreeable. It was part of her makeup. Sarai hoped that the miracle of her acquiescence might be the start of a chain of miracles that could see them through this, back to the strange and wonderful future Lazlo had taught her to believe in.

“No one loves anyone here. They all just scrape against each other, like rocks in a bag.”

Kora was dead. The truth would destroy Nova. Somewhere, her mind had built a blur around it, like the one Sarai had encountered in Minya’s mind. But the truth has a way of seeping out. The mind can’t erase. It can only conceal, and concealed things are not gone.

“Korako’s gift was always a mystery to us,” she told Nova. “I never knew it was like mine.” Nova looked at her sharply. “You’re an astral?” “A what?” Apologetic, Sarai explained, “No one ever taught us about our gifts. We were all alone here.” “No one ever taught me, either,” said Nova, and she didn’t need to add that she’d been all alone, too. “Astral means ‘of the stars.’ It’s someone who can send their soul out of their body.”

She kept thinking of Wraith melting in Kora’s chest. She remembered the burgeoning sensation in her own every night just after sunset. Astral, she thought with amazement. There was a name for it, because there were more of them—more god-spawn like her, and Kora had been one of them.

Abruptly, without leaving the dream, she shifted part of her awareness back to reality. With her moths, it had been seamless, shifting among the hundred of them with the mad choreography of a flock of swifts. She hadn’t tried splitting her attention since she’d lost them. It made for a strange twinning: the real room and the dream room, both at the same time.

spot where she had seen it melt into Kora’s, and she tapped her breastbone in invitation. The bird understood. It didn’t hesitate. Its look sharpened and it dove. Sarai was overwhelmed by a rush of white. It felt like wind blowing into her through an open window—right into the very core of her.

Minya convulsively tightened her grip on Sarai’s tether, lest it be tugged from her grasp.

When Wraith poured into Sarai, Kora appeared in the dream. She was a phantasm, of course, but not of Sarai’s making. She looked like the woman Sarai had seen in the nursery doorway—she was even wearing the mesarthium collar—but she also didn’t look like her, because that woman had been blank-faced and stiff, and this one was anything but.

Kora, or this phantasm of her, said, “My love, my own heart, I don’t have much time.” She went to her and took her by the shoulders and just looked at her as though to fill herself up with the sight. Nova looked back at her the same way, and here, after all these years, was the face that was truer than a mirror—similar to her own, but not a copy. They weren’t twins, and...

There was a half beat of silence, and then Nova asked, in a child’s broken whisper, devastated, unbearable, “Are you gone?” And Kora, sobbing, her blue face shining like wet lapis, said, “Oh my Nova. I am.”

He touched her face as though to make sure he wasn’t imagining her. “Are you all right?” He looked at her and looked as though he couldn’t get enough of looking, as though he’d been saving all his witchlight, and then he was crying, and she was crying, and he was smiling and he was slowly unfolding his limbs, wincing, and Sarai’s hearts felt as though all her moths and Wraith were living inside her chest, and a sweet wind had caught them and sent them all spinning.

It was all for nothing, she translated. She says the sea tried to warn her. She didn’t listen. “The sea?” Sarai queried, looking at Nova and hearing Kiska’s voice in her mind. When Nova answered, Kiska’s translation came simultaneously. It always knew. “How could it have known?” Sarai asked gently. She thought of the cold black water in the dream, and feared Nova was again losing her grip on reality. But when Nova turned to face her, she looked more sane than Sarai had yet seen her. She spoke, and Kiska translated. It knew my name, Nova said. She was calm. The sea always knew my name. And then she took a step back. The balustrade was there. But then it wasn’t. She hadn’t given back Lazlo’s gift yet. For a moment her eyes locked on Sarai’s. All the ice was gone from them. They were brown and tired and sad. Just as Sarai realized, just as she reached, Nova leaned back. And fell.

Once upon a time, a sister made a vow she didn’t know how to break, and it broke her instead. Once upon a time, a girl did the impossible, but she did it just a little too late. Once upon a time, a woman finally gave up, and the sea was waiting. It was the wrong sea—red as blood and just as warm—but falling felt like freedom, like letting go of trying, and on the way down she took her first full breath in centuries. Then it was all over. Or maybe it wasn’t. The ones who know can’t tell us, and the ones who tell us don’t know.

It would also never again be Weep. Kiska, Rook, and Werran remembered its real name. When Letha, goddess of oblivion, had eaten Weep’s true name, her power had not reached past the sealed portal into Var Elient. And so, three godspawn born in the citadel to be sold as slaves to fight other worlds’ wars restored what had been devoured. Amezrou.

Mesarthium skyships are shaped by the mind of their captain, and Lazlo transformed these into moths, in homage to those that had brought Sarai into his dreams, his mind, his hearts, his life.

Thyon could easily imagine Ruza as a little boy on a pony. He looked at him and saw the child he’d been, and he saw the man he was—warrior, prankster, friend—and he felt a warmth that he had never felt before for any other person. It was affection, and something that frightened him, too, that he could feel in his knees and fingertips and face. It made him unsure what to do with his hands. He noticed things like knuckles and eyelashes that he didn’t notice on other people, and sometimes he had to look away and pretend to be thinking of something else.

It turned out that sometimes it’s enough to start doing things differently now.

“Do you realize, Nero, that if you hadn’t come to my window in Weep that night with your shard of mesarthium, I’d never have stopped the citadel from falling, and we would all be dead?” “Do you know, Strange,” returned Thyon, who was not about to take any credit, “that if you hadn’t given me the spirit from your veins, I wouldn’t have had a shard to begin with?” “Well then,” said Lazlo, wry. “It’s a good thing we were always such excellent friends, working together for the good of all.” It mightn’t have been true before, but perhaps it could be.

the ship’s new form, an homage to Korako, who may have been the one to take them from the nursery but had saved them, too, in more ways than they’d realized.

Boring was not the word Sarai would use to describe licking Lazlo’s lip, or anything else in her life these days—or her afterlife, if you wished to be technical.

the Astral, as “Wraith” sounded menacing, and they all appreciated the layered meanings of star voyagers and souls sent forth, and that it honored Sarai’s gift as well as Korako’s.

The girl had changed her ragged garment, at last, for one Suheyla left where she could find it, and she had a loose tooth, her first ever, which had to mean that whatever had frozen her age at six had unfrozen, and that she would not continue forever a child. That night at dinner, the tooth came out.

“A piece of my body just fell off,” she said darkly.

“Wishes don’t just come true. They’re only the target you paint around what you want. You still have to hit the bull’s-eye yourself.”

This was her wish: to help people whose minds were unquiet, who were trapped in their own labyrinths, or stranded on cracking ice. This was what she wanted to paint a target around, to use Suheyla’s metaphor.

And Lazlo might not have been able to fill her up with certainty, but he could fill her with witchlight, and he did. The way he looked at her, she felt like some kind of miracle, as though his dreamer’s eyes cast her in their glow of wonder.