River of Souls (River of Souls 0.50)

“In her garden, of course.”

Minne lit the lamps in the stairwell with a word of magic. A strong green scent coiled upward, following Asa on the familiar route. By the time he reached the top landing, the sleep had cleared from his head.

Outside, moonlight washed over the garden path. Tanja Duhr sat on her bench, wrapped in loose robes. She was bent over her writing desk, staring at a fresh blank sheet of paper. Her face was wrinkled in irritation or concentration, he couldn’t tell which. There were no discarded papers on the ground, only a few sheets with writing stacked beside her on the bench itself.

“Tell me more dreams,” she said without looking up.

“You woke me for that?”

She shrugged “You are young. You won’t miss your sleep.”

“What about you?”

Now a shadow showed her faint smile. “I am old. I would rather work than sleep until my death. Now, tell me your dreams, or admit you’ve been lying to me.”

He hesitated. He knew what she looked for—life dreams, those fragments of memory from the past. Wasn’t that the reason for his journey? To understand his dreams?

A lamp sparked into life in the palace, far to the east. Its light filled a high arched window, in a tower somewhere in the middle of the grounds. Asa stared at that window. With a start, he realized it was the window where he and Tanja had spoken, that day before Adele marched to Károví with the others.

Stay silent, stay safe, said his other self.

He laughed to himself. If he had wanted safety, he would have stayed in Ysterien, in his mother’s household, where the greatest danger he faced was an inaccurate balance between yesterday and today. Even such mistake was unlikely, certainly not fatal, since his mother would surely assign another to check his work. So what was the truth?

The truth is I wanted freedom. I wanted…the chance to make my own mistakes, outside the nest of family.

And he had, in choosing to sell his passage on the ship, in choosing to travel overland, in spite of the journey’s dangers. He began to understand Adele, and himself. A little.

But Tanja waited for his reply. She would wait patiently, but not forever.

“I never said good-bye,” he said softly. “I meant to, that morning. But you had not slept well for weeks before. I wanted…I wanted to give you the gift of peace.”

Silence. Not even the hush of her breath.

He went on to describe that morning, the preparations Adele and the other soldiers hurried to complete. He, she had meant to return to their quarters, to steal a few moments for a proper farewell; but then came an unexpected summons from the general. They would march at once. No more delay.

“I wrote,” Asa said. “many letters. It was not enough. I meant to return. I could not.”

He stopped and closed his eyes, waiting. The silence stretched between them. So tight, it was as though the air shivered. At last he heard a faint scratching. He turned to see Tanja Duhr bent over her desk, writing.

* * *

He had expected everything to change after that. It did, but not as he had imagined.

Minne waited until midmorning to wake him. She set his breakfast tray on the table and flung the curtains open. The midmorning sun poured through. “She wants you again.”

Asa grunted. He had spent a restless night after leaving Tanja Duhr. There had been dreams, but of an ordinary kind, filled with murky shapes, like waves rolling through a sea of night. He rubbed his eyes with the back of one hand and hoped the tea was strong.

“You have a letter, too.”

That brought him awake and sitting up. “Who sent it?”

Minne ignored his sharp tone, but her shrug was expressive. “It came with one of the merchant caravans. A runner

brought it to the house. It’s on your tray.”

He waited until she closed the door to leave his bed. Even then, he found himself moving with the slow caution of an old man. Oh, yes, he knew the sender. It could only be his mother.

Minne had tucked the letter under the small pot of tea. It was a thick envelope of yellow parchment, the wax seal imprinted with the mark of his mother’s house. His name and Duhr’s were written in a strong slanted hand—yes, his mother’s. Other than one or two thumbprints, the paper was unmarred by its long journey. Eyeing it, Asa poured a cup and drank a scalding mouthful to clear his head. It would not do to approach this letter half asleep.