It was dark, and the only sounds were of shuffling, breathing, and the dull thrum of the wind against the tent.
As I came to, I began to perceive, first by feel and then by sight, that friendly figures were looming, worrying, over me.
“Hard dreams?” Hester muttered just above a whisper. “You gave a pretty firm thrash there.”
“It was a spell, wasn’t it?” Gena said.
“Mmfg,” I began, sitting up slowly as the two of them gave me the space to. “How’d you know that?”
“Even the most obsessive bookworm doesn’t chant in Classical Ivian in their sleep.”
“Oh, right. Gena, Hester, we need to talk. I was hoping to do so in private.”
They exchanged a look, probably deeply alarmed about how “casting a spell in a dream” had anything to do with “needing to talk.”
“This will do,” Hester said.
“Our hosts?”
Ariké had begun to say something from their bed across the tent, but Hester ran over top. “We can trust them with our lives. We are already.”
“Guess I can’t argue. Gena, I had another vision. The being who sent them introduced herself to me.”
Hester’s eyebrows shot skyward. “The Lightbringer herself?”
“No,” I hastened to add, growing a little red in a way that I hoped was hidden by the night. “She introduced herself as Lady Iltara.”
Hester crossed his arms. Gena said nothing.
“She…” I said, hesitating before I took the plunge. “She appeared as a beautiful… lady.”
The silence was thicker than even the darkness in the tent.
I don’t remember exactly what I said after that, but after overcoming the basic mortification of the whole situation I recounted the basic facts of the two nights’ dreams to my companions.
I will never forget the way Gena’s eyes twinkled with amusement while Hester’s face grew ever more leaden with every passing moment.
“A temptress,” he declared after I finished, gaze fixed furiously at the foot of my bed as he spoke. “It explains everything. Theodric. Strange foreign agents.”
Gena said, “Howe, you really should talk to her.”
I winced. “What? But… she’s dangerous, I don’t…”
Hester looked up, his eyebrows still holding a tight angle. “And let her fill his head with poison?”
“Oh, honestly,” Gena replied. “We don’t have to trust her. But what is there to be afraid of? Her feminine wiles?”
“Many a famed hero has done battle with temptresses and their minions,” Hester said. “They deceive. They entrap. They… bed isle.”
“Beguile?” I offered.
“Bed-goyle, right.”
“Ye gods,” Gena said. “You can’t go on taking old romances at face value. Look. The next time she appears to you, talk to her. Ask her what she wants. Tell her what you want. If she truly is our enemy, we’d best know her.”
“She is our enemy, and I mislike it,” Hester said.
“Howe?” Gena pressed.
“Know her… ahem. That way?” I said.
Gena buried her head in her palms. I noticed—I’m not sure Hester did—a twitch of the chest and throat suggesting that she was heroically stifling a laugh.
She looked back up. “You know what? She’s a beautiful woman propositioning you in a dream. You tell me.”
“Um,” I said.
“My point is that this temptress characterization, while perhaps not completely meritless, is thin. We should engage with it with a critical eye. Do you not trust yourself to remain true to yourself?”
“I… do, I guess?”
“You do. And she cannot make you do anything you do not want. You said it yourself, spells do not survive the constraints of a dream. It’s not like she can simply enchant you to act contrary to your will. So take the opportunity. Speak with her.”
“And you trust me? Theodric betrayed you at her behest; why shouldn’t I?”
“That question is non-responsive to my claims. Why should you betray me?”
“Fair…”
“Don’t do it,” Hester said. “A champion of the Lightbringer ought never put themselves in the clutches of their enemies.”
“Also… non-responsive to my claims,” Gena said.
“I’ll… I suppose we should,” I decided, finally.
“You should,” Gena corrected. “She hasn’t deigned to offer me the opportunity.”
“But we—you and I—should also talk about what we might now know, supposing I am not simply mad. Lady Iltara sent these visions…”
“Yours maybe, but not mine,” Hester said.
There was a brief scrum (“Surely…” “But…” “No, you see…”) which Hester cut short again. “Say what you will. I will hear no more of it.”
“… Fine!” I said. “A self-proclaimed lady who rules some polity in the Valley of the Sun and who can communicate through our dreams, presumably over great distances…”
“… paid Librariarch Theodric through intermediaries to steal for her one of the Lightbringer’s divine treasures,” Gena finished. “Evil wizard, I suppose.”
“She insists she’s not, and she has some sort of good reason, but…” I remembered the stench of blood and death.
“All the more reason to talk to her.”
“She may lie, but… ‘When people bar your way you often need only look right behind them,’”, I said, glancing over at Hester. He nodded.
“I wonder,” I wondered, remembering my Histories. “She said she rules a domain in the Valley. We’re headed in the right direction, then. But the Old King’s rule is… absolute, I thought. Sometimes delegated to governors, but ultimate authority comes from him alone. Is she perhaps one of his governors?”
“Or a hedge wizard on the margins with a few followers. Wouldn’t be unlike a wizard to talk big about it.”
“Desheret-Nemes is not fond of magicians. She must practice in secret,” Hester said.
“Hm. Speaking of which… she is, perhaps, not a wizard at all.”
“Oh, don’t tell me this is about wizardly pride, apprentice,” Gena said.
“Well, no. But also yes. I am proud of how long I had to work for my skills, and she would be too. Unless she were born with the Talent, but then that would be a terrifying prospect on its own. Such an effortless invasion of my dreams. Unsettling, I call it.”
“But then she said she wasn’t born with it,” Hester said.
“Right. One of those has to be a lie, right?” I postulated. “She was trained in wizardly magic, or she was born with the Talent. Can’t be neither.”
“Self-taught?” Gena asked.
“I… guess? Difficult to imagine. And that’s not just my pride speaking.”
“Haha. No, I know.”
With that, we had exhausted our well of speculation, and the three of us settled back in for a short, quiet rest of the night.