"The dream, the bad dream. It's still here," She touched her forehead, "It's still here."
Elwine motioned the nurse to leave and crawled up on the bed with Keleios, She snuggled the child to her and said, "Now tell me about this dream that won't leave."
Keleios told her everything. Her mother listened and nodded and made all the comforting noises she was supposed to. There had never been a dream prophet on either side of Keleios' bloodline; magic talents just didn't appear by themselves.
Elwine comforted her child, and Keleios felt better. With the telling of the dream, a weight seemed to have moved. She could breathe again, and that horrible fear was gone.
"'Mother, why does Harque not like you?"
Elwine sighed and hugged the child. "Do you understand what it means to be challenged to walk the sands?"
Keleios frowned. "It means you fight with someone and you win."
Elwine smiled. "Not always, but you have the idea. Harque challenged me years ago, when you were very small. She lost and felt humiliated. Do you understand what humiliated means?"
"It means when you're embarrassed."
"Very good. Harque feels I humiliated her, and that is why she doesn't like me."
"She scares me, Mother."
Elwine stiffened. "Has she ever hurt you or frightened you in any way?"
It wasn't anything Harque had done, but Keleios had no word for it. "No, mother."
Elwine hugged the child. "You must always speak freely to me, Keleios. If anything frightens you, you must tell me about it."
"I will."
"Good. Do you feel better now?"
Keleios smiled and nodded.
At five, Keleios was easily comforted by her beloved mother. Elwine tucked the child into the large four-poster bed. She kissed Keleios on the forehead and said, "Would you like to have a lamp?"
Keleios was a brave little girl. "No, I'm fine."
Elwine smiled, pleased. "Sleep tight, little one."
"Good night, Mother. I hope I didn't spoil your spell."
Elwine laughed, a rich throaty sound. "No, little one, the spell keeps well." With that she was gone. Keleios was left alone with the wind moaning round the castle, but she slept because Mother had said there was nothing to fear.
Three days later Harque the Witch kidnapped Elwine and her daughters, Keleios and Methia. Five days after that Harque forced Keleios to make the walk of her nightmare to the room where her mother lay. What the dream had withheld had been the horror in her mother's eyes, the madness that the disease had forced upon her. She died that way, the life slipping from her eyes without knowing that Keleios was there to see and to remember.
Two days after that, Harque's keep was raided; Keleios and her sister were rescued. Harque the Witch escaped. And Keleios found that true nightmares had their horrors, also.
Chapter 1 A Reluctant Dreamer
Keleios had come to the rose garden and hidden behind its wall to work her magic. The warm summer darkness was thick with the fragrance of roses and the song of crickets. A stray frog had wandered into the garden's centerpiece, a fountain. It gave its shrill song alone. Keleios laughed. She was not sure if she had ever heard just one frog. They usually went in chorus. Soon her magic would quiet the crickets and the lonely frog. It was strange how the presence of active magic silenced the world.
Keleios' brown-gold hair lay in a loose braid down her back. Any mirror Keleios passed told her she was like a ghost of her mother. The only thing that saved her was her father's elven blood, which thinned her face and let Keleios look like herself. She was dressed all in brown, except for the glimpse of snowy linen at the collar of her tunic. She wore trousers laced close to her legs with crisscrossing bandages. Boots came to her knees, hardened leather soles and soft hide. Keleios knew her mother, ever feminine, would have been horrified. But her mother had been dead for eighteen years. It was a long time to worry about someone's opinion.
Keleios touched the small pile of dry bark shavings and twigs. Fire had been the first sorcery she had ever called; it was still the easiest. It flared like a falling star and landed in the wood. The flames leapt and crackled round the dry kindling. She placed two slightly larger sticks on top of the flame, and the fire slowed to work on the thicker wood.
The world had fallen into silence. Only the wind still blew through