with.
But to lose your mind?
That, she could not bear.
*
She did not sleep on the bed any longer. Truthfully, she barely slept at all.
Spread over the thick quilt on her bed were pieces of hard cheese, some grapes, a few hunks of bread, a piece of fat from some meat she didn't remember eating. A salt pot, two knives, a fork.
From the foot of the bed, the left was Sturma. The edge of the bed, unknown, was the Drayman lands, the pillows at the top Teryithyr. The middle was the ocean, with a small hump in the middle the rumoured new land of the seafaring nations. To the right, Lianthre. Above Lianthre, nothing, below, a land she'd come to know of as Ascalain, the warrior Wen's distant homeland.
The salt pot was placed where she imagined Naeth was, somewhere in this foreign land she found herself in. Knives and forks were Sybremreyen, the Kuh'taenium, and Arram.
Grapes people, fat the Protectorate, cheese Rahken, and bread seafarers.
She'd worried, for a time, that the bread would be too absorbent, for the sea. Obsessed, even, while she built this great map to chart the coming war. But it was just a bed, not the world. Rythe was more complex than a mere collection of rotten food.
'Wake up, my love...wake up...'
Tirielle sniffed, ignored the voice and shifted a grape from the Lianthran side of the bed to the hump in the middle.
The wizard's ship, moving. Hope and aid from Lianthre, the wizards trained by the rahken, coming fast as the sea would move beneath their boat, fast as the winds in their sails.
'Time has caught us...'
It was a woman's voice she heard. She imagined, if she were to go mad, that she might hear the echoes of her murdered father, or her friend Roth, or j'ark, the lover she was perhaps never meant to have.
But always a woman's voice. Deep and powerful.
Could anyone else hear it? She thought not.
'Time is on us, love. Wake...'
Often, the same thing. Sometimes, other words, but never the sense that the owner of the voice was speaking to anyone but the sleeper. Conversational, sometimes, sometimes chiding, but always this one-sided conversation and little else beside.
Tirielle moved another grape closer to a silver fork, tarnished from use a few days ago. The Seer, and her companions...she picked up a piece of cheese for the Rahken...moving to Sybremreyen.
How did she know this? The wizard ship, Sia and her companions? She knew because it seemed that not only could Tirielle hear the mysterious voice of the woman in her mind, but from time to time she caught thoughts and words from the Seer, too.
Once, connected, it seemed that connection could not be broken.
But you're not insane, Tirielle, are you? Not really.
She couldn't be entirely sure, but she thought not. Desperately, perhaps, no more than hoping this to be true, because there was something in Sia's thoughts that she picked up on, and from the other woman's thoughts, too. The other woman she merely thought of as The Waker, though she knew the woman must be more to project her words to Tirielle.
There was a sense, in both these stolen missives, that Sia and the woman both knew more than Drun and Caeus and perhaps the rest of Rythe together. A sense that time had not just caught The Sleeper, but caught them all.
*
Chapter Nine
'There are fast ways...all across the land,' the old Rahken said. She had not
But to lose your mind?
That, she could not bear.
*
She did not sleep on the bed any longer. Truthfully, she barely slept at all.
Spread over the thick quilt on her bed were pieces of hard cheese, some grapes, a few hunks of bread, a piece of fat from some meat she didn't remember eating. A salt pot, two knives, a fork.
From the foot of the bed, the left was Sturma. The edge of the bed, unknown, was the Drayman lands, the pillows at the top Teryithyr. The middle was the ocean, with a small hump in the middle the rumoured new land of the seafaring nations. To the right, Lianthre. Above Lianthre, nothing, below, a land she'd come to know of as Ascalain, the warrior Wen's distant homeland.
The salt pot was placed where she imagined Naeth was, somewhere in this foreign land she found herself in. Knives and forks were Sybremreyen, the Kuh'taenium, and Arram.
Grapes people, fat the Protectorate, cheese Rahken, and bread seafarers.
She'd worried, for a time, that the bread would be too absorbent, for the sea. Obsessed, even, while she built this great map to chart the coming war. But it was just a bed, not the world. Rythe was more complex than a mere collection of rotten food.
'Wake up, my love...wake up...'
Tirielle sniffed, ignored the voice and shifted a grape from the Lianthran side of the bed to the hump in the middle.
The wizard's ship, moving. Hope and aid from Lianthre, the wizards trained by the rahken, coming fast as the sea would move beneath their boat, fast as the winds in their sails.
'Time has caught us...'
It was a woman's voice she heard. She imagined, if she were to go mad, that she might hear the echoes of her murdered father, or her friend Roth, or j'ark, the lover she was perhaps never meant to have.
But always a woman's voice. Deep and powerful.
Could anyone else hear it? She thought not.
'Time is on us, love. Wake...'
Often, the same thing. Sometimes, other words, but never the sense that the owner of the voice was speaking to anyone but the sleeper. Conversational, sometimes, sometimes chiding, but always this one-sided conversation and little else beside.
Tirielle moved another grape closer to a silver fork, tarnished from use a few days ago. The Seer, and her companions...she picked up a piece of cheese for the Rahken...moving to Sybremreyen.
How did she know this? The wizard ship, Sia and her companions? She knew because it seemed that not only could Tirielle hear the mysterious voice of the woman in her mind, but from time to time she caught thoughts and words from the Seer, too.
Once, connected, it seemed that connection could not be broken.
But you're not insane, Tirielle, are you? Not really.
She couldn't be entirely sure, but she thought not. Desperately, perhaps, no more than hoping this to be true, because there was something in Sia's thoughts that she picked up on, and from the other woman's thoughts, too. The other woman she merely thought of as The Waker, though she knew the woman must be more to project her words to Tirielle.
There was a sense, in both these stolen missives, that Sia and the woman both knew more than Drun and Caeus and perhaps the rest of Rythe together. A sense that time had not just caught The Sleeper, but caught them all.
*
Chapter Nine
'There are fast ways...all across the land,' the old Rahken said. She had not
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