Winter's Dreams

4

Not all Artifacts and Old Timers were confined to the shadowed reaches of the world. Only those whose aspect offended or whose talents terrified and who were not otherwise useful on a regular basis. And those considered too dangerous to Real People. Shredlu saw several of them as he passed through the domestics corridors. They did not see him. Not even the guards. He wore an illusion supplementing their natural disinclination to see the thing that did not belong. They felt him. They moved out of his path, puzzledly, though even under torture they would recall with certainty nothing concrete.

Shredlu returned to the principal hallways for the final approach to his destination. Manners forbid making his entrance like a servant. He scratched at the appropriate door, waited patiently. She would come when it became clear he would not go away. Someone might pass and remark upon his presence.

Lady Everay Non Ethan appeared beautifully serene when she opened the door herself, more swiftly than Shredlu anticipated. She had prepared herself to receive company. Elegantly gowned and coifed and bejewelled, she appeared a regal vision of Winter, tall, lithe, blonde, her forty-six summers unbetrayed by cunningly engineered lighting. "Shredlu. Will you stand there gawking 'till some roving band of functionaries tramples you?"

The Magician stepped forward. "You surprised me, Ethan You were waiting."

"Am I so isolated and deaf that alarums and tumults fail to reach me entirely? I hear Winter's name whispered when they think I cannot hear. What disaster has befallen the child so soon after her cheerless nuptials? Has she been laid low by melancholy, like her mother before her?"

Ethan confused melancholy with bitterness, Shredlu feared. Her bottomless well of bitterness was the principal reason he came visiting so seldom anymore. "She is laid low but wicked magic was the agent. Someone sent a tackoo to steal her dreams." His gaze swept the decadence around him. Ethan certainly made Everay pay for her participation in its progression.

"How could that be? Tackoo and dorado and the gell people.... They're nightfears you Magicians made up so you can extort a livelihood from the rest of us."

She did not believe that. It was a play-argument from a time when there had been less cool between them.

"This is no game, Ethan. A determined and abiding malice has turned its countenance upon Everay. The weight of its animosity is being born by Winter but it is not she who won the motivating hatred. She's never been out of the tower."

"Perhaps she has an enemy inside. Tuft Yarramal springs to mind. Yarramal hates everyone."

Shredlu examined the proposition from obscure and descant angles. Tuft Yarramal did indeed hate everyone but only as a mannered attitude. Nor did Yarramal hate herself enough to devise her own destruction. "It is a

thought, Ethan. I shall consult Yarramal."

"Will you go without so much as touching me?"

"My time is no longer my own. I came as a courtesy, to inform you, to caution you."

"Caution me?"

"Catastrophe has struck once. Forewarned, we need not let it slide into our midst again." Shredlu surveyed his surroundings once more. He turned to the door.

"Don't go."

He steeled himself against her loneliness. "I must. I must reclaim Winter's dreams."

He was gone before she whispered, "And what of Ethan's dreams?"