Unquiet Dreams

Chapter 20

White.

Sound stopped. The howling wind. The groaning oaks. Gone.

Whiteness filled my vision. I paused for several long moments, but nothing changed. The white remained, all encompassing. I looked behind me expecting to see Meryl and Murdock lying like the dead on the tomb, but I saw only more white.

Above me. Around me. Below. White simply was. A mass of dense essence that emanated purity. I had the impression of solid ground beneath me, yet my feet did not rest on anything. With nothing to orient myself in the space, a sensation of weightlessness made me dizzy.

The essence had a current. I could feel it flowing around me but not through me. The stone protected me. The thing in my head held me together. Radiant waves streamed over me with a magnetic-like pull. It all flowed in the same direction, and I followed. I put one foot in front of the other but could not perceive any forward motion. I began to doubt I was even moving. The more I walked, nothing changed, but I pushed forward anyway.

A humming pricked at my ears, a low bass tone. Once I noticed it, I realized I had been hearing it for some time, growing louder, vibrating in my chest. In my groin. In my head. It came from the direction the essence was flowing.

A core of white light, whiter against the white, towered ahead. I couldn’t tell if I were seeing it with my eyes or sensing it with my druidic ability. The dark mass in my head shifted, a literal, physical movement of wrenching pain worse than anything I had ever experienced.

I hunched forward, nausea ripping through my gut. A shock of white essence burst from my eyes, a sensation I hadn’t had in a long, long time. It hurt. It felt good. But it wasn’t me. I didn’t do it, and I had no control over it. It was just the thing in my head, adjusting to wherever I was, releasing essence like a pressure valve as it realigned itself in my head. The mass clenched again, and the essence stopped flowing out of me.

I staggered in confusion as a darkness flickered across my mind, like a lid had come down and shut out all thought, then lifted off again. Like a blink inside my head.

I looked around. Everything was white. Something tugged at my memory. I had been here before. I remember being angry and running and falling into a bright white light of essence. I turned slowly in place, trying to remember why, trying to remember what this place was.

My mind blinked again.

I jerked my head up, feeling like I had passed out. People surrounded me, staring at me. Some I recognized, and some I didn’t. Their faces held a multitude of expressions—fear and horror and sadness. Then the screams began.

My mind blinked.

Everything around me was white. I lay on my back staring into a nothingness of white. I was here again. This place. Above me, I could see two vast shadow shapes. Powerful shapes speaking with words I couldn’t understand. They moved closer.

My mind blinked.

My mind blinked.

My mind blinked.

I didn’t know where I was. Everything around me was white. Facing me, a core of white essence burned like a star. I moved toward it. Near its base, the white seemed—darker—not as brilliant. I kept moving toward it. The darker white faded to gray, then the first hints of color. The color began to resolve into three figures standing around the column. I remembered them. I remembered why I walked here. I remembered who these people were.

Nigel, Eorla, and Gerin faced each other in a loose circle. They all reached toward the center, gripping Gerin’s staff of oak. None of them moved. I could see their faces now, their expressions frozen in a rictus of agony, their eyes white in their sockets. Gerin held the staff with both hands, his head thrown back. White essence smoked from his eyes and open mouth.

The staff hummed with power. Teutonic runes spiraled around it, incandescent green glows against the shining white essence of the wood. I could feel the drys trapped inside it. I could feel Hala there. She had hidden in Meryl and then me. Then I used her to break through the dome. The spell had pulled her back in. More drys were with her. I could feel them, too, their Power caught in Gerin’s spell. I could feel Nigel and Eorla, their focus on the staff, forcing themselves against what was left of Gerin’s mind. They had come close, pushing his will back, stopping his control. They had achieved only a kind of equilibrium. But they had only stopped Gerin, not the spell. I could feel nothing from the High Druid. He had lost control of the spell and had lost the fight with Nigel and Eorla. His mind had dissipated. He had lost his mind. Literally. Into the white.

I saw what Nigel and Eorla had tried. They had joined their essences, joined their knowledge, into a counterspell. They had wrenched control away from Gerin but did not gain it for themselves. Like Gerin, they could not both fight their adversary and the spell. In achieving the stalemate, the spell had broken loose, guideless, mindless. They did not have the Power to contain the essence and reverse its course. I could feel the spell’s hunger, a massive maw sucking in essence. Running free, it had no equilibrium to achieve, nothing to anchor or contain it. It would just continue to feed itself, devouring more and more essence until it exploded, exploding with an energy never seen before, obliterating everything in its path. Maybe never stopping. Maybe exploding forever. Maybe.

I looked down at my hands. They were stone, sheathed in granite. I remembered this happening, remembered doing this to myself. I looked up at the essence running free. It had no anchor. I remembered someone saying something about an anchor. Something about a harrowing needing an anchor. Something to ground its energies and interrupt the spell. Stone. It needed a ward stone. I remembered why I had come here. I reached out my hand.

My mind blinked.

I was surrounded by white. One moment I was running, and the next there was white. I turned. Bergin Vize had been standing behind me, a look of fevered hope on his face. His youth surprised me, his almost black hair worn long for an elf, fanning out as though filled with static. I had thought him older. He held his hands out in front him about a foot apart. A gold ring hovered between them, pulsing with essence, revolving around a shaft of light.

Vize’s eyes locked with me, and he smiled. “One door opens; another closes,” he said.

I reached for the ring.

My mind blinked.

My hand was extended toward the staff. My hand wore stone. My body wore it. Like a ward stone. I was a living ward stone. The dark mass in my head held me back for a moment. But only a moment. Pain cut through my mind as I reached forward and closed my hand around the staff. A hot, searing jolt coursed through me. I screamed as the thing in my head tore open and

everything

went

white