Page 118 of Silverbow
She snatched it from his hand and tugged the loop over her head, pulling her long braid through. Oryn watched as the gold disappeared down the collar of her shirt.
thirty
Enya
“Why do you need to go in person?”
“It was what was asked of me.”
Colm’s brow furrowed. “I’ve been meaning to ask, Enya, how exactly did she ask anything of you? The dead cannot speak. Not even the witches can break that barrier.”
The cold she’d felt in that strange place between the worlds had certainly felt like death’s embrace, but she shook her head. “I was seeing a memory, I think. She couldn’t see me.”
The Dreamwalker seemed to relax at that. “But your mother spoke to you?”
“A telling of a telling, she said.”
It was still foreign to think of Maia Trakbatten as her mother, but one look at the woman had her convinced. The name sounded wrong on her tongue, but what Hylee had shown her filled in all the gaps and answered all the unanswered questions. An old Captain of the Queen’s Guard arriving with a bundle in his arms. Rhiannon and her child lost to fever.Originally recorded as dark of hair and eye.“What can you tell me about the visions?”
“The witch’s magic is foreign to our own and there are differences in dreaming and foretelling and seeing, but in general, you can think of the world,and everyone in it like a great symphony. Lives and events are intertwined as the melody, harmony, and rhythm. She showed you past, present, and future?”
Enya nodded.
“The past has already been played. It is often clearer in the dream or the telling.”
“Is it all true?” She asked.
Colm sighed. “Probably. Hylee is a Seer and I doubt even she can warp the chords of the past. But use caution, Enya, in interpreting the visions. Hylee’s intent is pain and suffering. She chose which to show you and which to leave out.”
She didn’t miss the look he darted at Oryn.
“The present can seem chaotic. The playing all happening in a rush. But it is the future you must be wary of.”
She huffed a laugh.He didn’t know the half of it.
“The future is often murkier, incomplete, harder to read. There is a pattern to the music, the gods have plans for where the tune is going, but the composition changes all the time. Thousands, perhaps millions of choices cause lives to shift and bend. They can become dissonant and have to be muted. You see, men have risked their lives, confident they will see some future event, only to have their part snipped early for their own foolishness.”
“My days are numbered as it is,” she muttered.
“What did you see?” Oryn demanded.
Colm gave her a sad smile. “I’m sorry, Enya.”
She shook away the burning that pricked at her eyes.
“What do you know of dragons? And Drulougan? What is not written inA History of Dragonkind.”
“Do not even think of going near Blackash Keep,” Oryn growled.
Colm sighed. “Dragons are as complex and unique as their riders, perhaps more. There is not much known about Drulougan. He was already a mature dragon when I was a boy, and he rarely appears in lore or the Vale’s records before he took Pallas Davolier as his rider, or rather, was bonded against his will, as we now know. He was a solitary creature, kept to himself in the high passes except when he came down to court a mate.”
“Preya,” Enya said. She had seen flashes of her mother’s sapphire dragon.Sacred are the songs of our bonds, of our love.“Why is she called the Protector?”
“She was fiercest amongst the guardians of the nests in the hatching grounds,” he answered. “Until she flew to Misthol, where she remained until her death.”
“And why is he called the Dread?”
“No one really knows. Despite the name, he’s never been much of a battle dragon. Few realize not all are. They all have flame and claw, of course, but he is big and that makes him slow. But it doesn’t much matter when he’s the only one left in Estryia.”
