To Dream of White & Gold (Death Dreamer Legacy Book 1) Read online

  To Dream of White & Gold

  Death Dreamer Legacy Book One

  R.K. Hart

  Pindika Press

  Contents

  Title Page

  The Seven Lands

  The Law of Tolerance

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One: Market

  Chapter Two: Decisions

  Chapter Three: Pull

  Chapter Four: Brothers

  Chapter Five: Tests

  Chapter Six: The Illarum

  Chapter Seven: The White and the Gold

  Chapter Eight: Panic

  Chapter Nine: Dreamer

  Part Two

  Chapter Ten: Dreamlines

  Chapter Eleven: Instinct

  Chapter Twelve: Bruises

  Chapter Thirteen: Siva’s

  Chapter Fourteen: Selkie

  Chapter Fifteen: A Command

  Chapter Sixteen: Brinnica

  Chapter Seventeen: Wants

  Part Three

  Chapter Eighteen: Welcome

  Chapter Nineteen: Gifts

  Chapter Twenty: Whole

  Chapter Twenty-One: Absence

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Sivasdotter

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Sick of the Cold

  Chapter Twenty-Four: The Belle

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Promises

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Waiting

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Port Royal

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Brave

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Kaia

  Chapter Thirty: Lost

  Chapter Thirty-One: Home

  Epilogue

  A Note on Languages

  Glossary of Terms & Select Translations

  On Gifts

  Dramatis Personae

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  This is a work of fiction. Its characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  To Dream of White & Gold

  Published by Pindika Press

  Canberra, ACT

  Copyright © 2020 by R.K. Hart

  rkhart.net

  Cover design copyright © 2020 by Sara Oliver

  Map design copyright © 2020 by Michael Hart

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form, or by any means whatsoever, without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  eBook ISBN 9780648849605

  Print ISBN 9780648849612

  First Edition

  For Michelle, who gave me Sacred.

  The Seven Lands

  The Law of Tolerance

  This charter governs the rights of all people resident under the protection and in the service of the monarchy of Eilan.

  On Generalities

  ❖ The actions and infractions of all people on Eilin soil are dictated by, and answerable to, Eilin Law and Eilin Justice. The only exception to this is non-Eilin nationals acting on the land of the Star Seat; in these cases, individuals are answerable to the Star Seat rules and mentors.

  ❖ Gifted individuals or groups should not be unfairly persecuted by non-gifted individuals and vice-versa. Persecutions that break Eilin Law are answerable as usual to Eilin Justice.

  ❖ Infractions of the Law of Tolerance against a gifted individual should be reported by the affected individual in person to a local magistrate. The issue may be escalated to a formal Justice Sitting at the magistrate’s discretion.

  ❖ All gifted persons of Eilin birth apprenticed to the Star Seat shall sign a normal employment contract, a copy of which should be sent for approval by the Palace and kept at the Kingstown Justice Hall. The apprenticeship should not commence until this has been fulfilled.

  On Particulars

  On Shielders

  ❖ Shielders may be called upon to serve Eilan, the person of the King or Queen, or a member or members of the royal family at any time. Conscription into such service will be dictated by the King or Queen, or military personnel nominated by the Palace.

  ❖ Shielders serving in an official army are subject to normal military rules and command. The use of a gift against another soldier – gifted or non-gifted – serving in the same force is a punishable offence.

  ❖ Persecution of a gifted soldier by a non-gifted soldier will be tried before a military court and fall under normal military procedure.

  On Readers

  ❖ Readers should not in good conscience use their gift against an ungifted person, excepting in direct self-defence. Evidence to the contrary shall be treated and tried as assault.

  On Healers

  ❖ Regardless of severity of injury, patients have the right to refuse treatment by a gifted healer. Infractions of this rule shall be treated and tried as assault.

  ❖ In times of conflict, plague, or other times of need, gifted healers may be conscripted into local infirmaries or sent where required within the bounds of Eilin soil. While conscripted, healers are under the direction of, and answerable to, the relevant infirmary overseer.

  On Natureworkers and Weatherworkers

  ❖ Ungifted individuals should take due care when a natureworker is in the throes of a growing song.

  ❖ Ungifted individuals should avoid weatherworkers at all times.

  ❖ Weatherworkers shall not reside in heavily populated areas. Wherever possible, they should live on the outskirts of towns or villages and avoid cities. Petitions to eject weatherworkers should be made directly to the monthly Kingstown Justice Sitting.

  ❖ Weatherworkers should be registered on the list at the Kingstown Justice Hall. Their place of residence should be kept updated at all times.

  ❖ Weatherworkers will be held accountable for their actions at all times, including when in the throes of their work.

  On Aberrant Gifts

  ❖ Gifts falling outside the main four categories are known as aberrant. Such individuals should be registered at the Kingstown Justice Hall and should stay confined to the lands of the Star Seat unless otherwise permitted by the King or Queen.

  ❖ The aberrant gifted are subject to the general rules laid out by this charter.

  Prologue

  The white place is infinite, and deathly quiet.

  You frown.

  You are not sure where you are, nor how you arrived. The white stretches as far as you can see in every direction. There is nothing here but space: no landmarks, no features, no variation in the white emptiness that might show you the way.

  You are not sure where you are going.

  You take a few tentative steps forward. Nothing changes.

  You spin around and move back. 'Hello?' you call. Your voice cuts through the silence without a hint of echo.

  There is no answer.

  You suppose you should be afraid, but the place is peaceful. You do not feel lost, nor trapped, though you have no clue as to how you will leave.

  The thought is not as alarming as it should be.

  You look down and frown. A slender golden line emerges near your foot, thinner than twine but thicker than thread. Its ends snake to disappear into the white; a long, gleaming tendril in the mist. You reach down to touch it.

  As you do, an unfamiliar weight shifts in your pocket. Your hand slips into your steel-grey tunic and pulls out a pair of silver scissors.

  They are old, tarnished in places, but their shape is slender and elegant, their blades ho
ned to a terrible sharpness. Your fingers fit neatly through the handles, as if the scissors have been crafted for your hand.

  Moving slowly, almost against your will, you bend to pick up the golden line, pulling it up from the white. As you do, you realise that below your feet are thousand upon thousand of the same lines, and that the white of the infinite space is not an absence of colour but rather the white that comes to the fore of the eyes when you spend too much time staring at the sun. This white comes from brilliance, not from lack.

  The line settles in your hand, warmly snug in your palm. It is unexpectedly heavy and you fight to lift it up, struggling against its drag. With effort, you hold your hand before you, and for a long moment, you stare at the gold.

  You carefully position the blades of the scissors, and in one smooth, decisive movement, you cut.

  Part One

  Chapter One: Market

  The midday sun was merciless, golden and high in the unbroken sky. It beat down, relentless and inescapable, burning skin and heating sandstone brick, turning the air in the Kingstown forum into a turbulent clamour of sweat and scent and spice and sound.

  It was Lida’s favourite kind of weather.

  She wove between the packed bodies, avoiding the spill of arms and legs and the swing of hair and bags of goods. She wasn’t always lucky: she swore as a blacksmith twice her size stepped back onto her sandalled foot, almost crushing her toes under the weight of his bulk. She narrowly avoided being pushed against a stall selling iron pots, slipping under elbows to escape, listening to the tangle of accents around her. The language was mostly the fast, clipped Eilin spoken by the city-dwellers, but she could hear the drawl of northern Eilan too, and, as she moved further into the crowd, the caressing lilt of Brinnican. Looking around, she spied a group of envoys from the cold northern country, all dressed far too warmly for an Eilin summer’s day, their pale skin turned pink by the sun, sweating in their fur-trimmed tunics.

  It was the only reason she’d agreed to do this favour for her father: the summer market day was always an overwhelming mess of people, and Lida liked to look at them all. Familiar Eilins manned stalls selling everyday things, the wool and knives and grain and cheese that would stock pantries for the coming winter. Vendors from further away - honey-skinned Setiians with caramel hair and black-eyed Auterans from the desert land - sold the objects Lida coveted but could never afford: beautiful tapestries woven with gold and silver thread, glass blown with rainbow colours, scarves printed with careful patterns of birds and flowers and waves, and cunningly wrought mechanical toys for the children of lordlings. She ignored those stalls with difficulty, pushing further into the crowd, though she stopped for a moment to stare longingly at a display of Setiian scents, the table shaded by gauzy fabrics to protect the precious wares from the sun. The tiny vials were worth a small fortune each, and came in a distinctive woven green bag. Lida’s sister had been given one as a courting gift, and though Maya hadn’t kept the man, the vial was one of her prize possessions. At almost eighteen, Lida wasn’t too old to wait until Maya left the house to steal into her room and sniff it longingly, though she’d never dared dab some of the precious liquid on her wrists.

  There were other smells, too, some of them more pleasant than others. She edged past a row of stalls selling bread to hungry shoppers, when one of the stall owners - a small man named Torig - called hello. Lida smiled and waved, regretting that the coins in the pouch tied to a ribbon around her neck were meant for something else. Torig made the best pastries in Kingstown, in Lida’s opinion at least. His specialty was a mix of potatoes and peas swirled in a creamy white sauce and wrapped up in flaky, buttery pastry, topped with cheese. Lida’s mouth watered just thinking about them.

  The crowd thinned as she neared her target, the southern end of the city market square. For the first time since she’d arrived, she took a proper breath. It was here that the market square met the side of the public bath complex with a towering sandstone wall, and beneath its shade stood a row of permanent shopfronts, all identical and distinctly Eilin in design, with square facades and wide front windows. Lida made her way towards a small shop that stood pride of place in the middle, its front step flanked with pots of wild white roses, its doorway crowned with a bunch of dried barley grass tied with black twine.

  Lida opened the door and breathed again, deeply.

  The shop sold goods from the islands of Erbide, primarily honey and barley grain, although for a hefty price redwood products could be specially imported. Inside, its walls were lined with barrels, filled to the brim with different types of Erbidan grain, and shelves displayed a range of products: honey soaps and creams, candles and oil burners, wax for seals, and varieties of expensive flour sold in colour-coded paper bags.

  ‘Salu, little one! I did not expect you for a month at least.’

  ‘Hullo, Jorge,’ Lida said with a smile.

  The man behind the counter was typically Erbidan: tall and broad-shouldered, his golden skin sprinkled with freckles. His beard and thick hair had once been raven black, but were now peppered with grey. Lida had known him since she could walk, and this was the only thing about him that had changed.

  ‘Where is Cathan?’

  ‘He was called to the Palace - one of the northern mares is foaling.’

  Jorge made a tsk sound. ‘That is late in the season, is it not? I suppose you have come to rob me again?’

  Lida laughed. ‘Yes. Da says you charge too much.’

  ‘When you have braved the Kelti Sea you may change your mind.’

  Lida knew Jorge hadn’t sailed for years, though when she was younger she would spend as long as her father would allow listening to his stories. ‘I’d rather you braved it for me.’

  Jorge smiled rather sadly, and selected a pot of honey from the shelf behind him, pushing it into a black woven bag. ‘Just the usual?’

  Lida nodded. The local honey was a golden yellow; the stuff in the pot was a thick, rich red, from Erbide’s southern-most island, Kell, and was worth its weight in coin.

  ‘You are going to eat this, are you not?’ Jorge said warningly. ‘Last time I found out that Cathan had smeared it all over a horse.’

  Lida bit the inside of her cheek and nodded, her face warming. She knew very well that the honey was going straight on a wounded piglet and nowhere near the kitchen. Honey staved off infections in wounds, and her father preferred to use the thick Kellith honey; Eilin honey was too thin, he would complain, and didn’t seal. The Kellith honey stuck.

  ‘Have you apprenticed yet, Lida?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m still wearing Da down.’

  ‘That may take some time.’

  She grinned. ‘I’ve had a lot of practice.’ Cathan Valson was well-known for his stubbornness, but his daughters had their own ways of working around it. Maya cajoled, strategically working on her father so gently he often didn’t realise she was doing it. Lida was more forthright. ‘He wants me to go to Brinnica, and learn from his old master, but I told him I want to learn from the best, so I’ll stay in Kingstown and learn from him. He’s torn between wanting to be rid of me and knowing that I’m right.’

  Jorge laughed. ‘Well, you have a month, no? Much can happen in that time. You may yet change your mind.’

  Lida didn’t think so. She had little interest in leaving Kingstown, and she didn’t like cold weather. Brinnica was often carpeted in thick snow and its capital city, the Kali’s Court, was inaccessible in winter. She chatted to Jorge a while longer, before they half-heartedly haggled over the price of the honey. Lida handed over a sizeable amount of coin, though less than she’d expected, and before she left Jorge pressed a small paper bag full of bite-sized honey biscuits into her hand, just as he’d done when she was a child.

  ‘For you and your sister,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t make any promises,’ Lida said, smiling as she stepped back out into the noise of the summer market.

  After a swift internal struggle, she deci
ded that she would share the biscuits; the hospice where her sister worked had been quiet of late, and Lida thought Maya would appreciate the visit. She pushed and elbowed and ducked her way back towards the main road, stopping to watch a weaver at his loom; as she moved away again, a display of jewellery caught her eye.

  Brinnican gold and silverwork was the best in the four lands, but the woman behind the stall was not from the snow. Her skin was darker than the usual warm Eilin brown and her hair was braided across her head; beginning at the left temple, the plait pinned in a coil over her right ear. Her amber eyes were bright and lined with kohl, her frame strong beneath the simple white shirt and tan pants, tight to the skin like the jodhpurs Lida favoured.

  A familiar sadness tightened in Lida’s chest. Her own skin was the same, and she wagered that if the woman was to unbraid her hair, it would fall in tight coils just like the ones she unsuccessfully tried to tame each morning, though Lida’s unbound nest of hair was streaked yellow by the sun and this woman’s plait was closer to black.

  The woman behind the stall was Myrae, a sea-maiden, one of a race of merchant women from the Isle of the Gods, which hid uncharted off the southern coast of Eilan. The Myrae rarely came inland, preferring to stay in view of their ships; it was said that they only went home for birth or death, and spent the rest of their days on the waves, sailing the four lands and beyond.

  Lida had no idea whether this was true, but it had not been so for her mother. Siva had died in the bed she shared with Cathan on the outskirts of Kingstown, with Maya asleep at her side and the newborn Lida at her breast. Lida sometimes wondered if it might have turned out differently, had Siva gone home to the Isle to birth her instead. Along her skin and her hair and her eyes, Lida had a delicate white-gold chain set with a single sea-pearl that Siva had owned, which she wore alongside her guilt. She could never quite forget that she was the cause of her mother’s death. Her father’s reluctance to speak of his dead wife made the burden somewhat heavier, and the only stories Lida had heard of her mother came from Maya, and they were so fuzzy that there might not have been any truth in them at all. Lida constructed an imagining of Siva on every rare occasion she saw one of the Myrae, layering each woman upon the next over the solid base of her sister’s heart-shaped face.