NightVision

The room had settled into the small sounds of night: the faint shift of cloth, a breath against a pillow, the soft creak of wood as the bed took his weight. Amber lamplight rested on the plum-colored covers. Saevren lay on his side, his loose hair spread across the pillow and caught beneath his cheek.

His eyes were open.

A pale, pearly white veiled them, hiding the familiar brown. They did not follow the light or turn toward the window. His breathing remained slow and even, while somewhere beyond the quiet room, he began to walk.

Cold stone pressed against the soles of his feet.

Saevren stopped and looked down. He wore the charcoal shorts he had gone to bed in. His hair fell loose over his shoulders, brushing his legs when he moved. The Ward rested against his collarbones, familiar and still.

Walls rose on either side of him, their dark mineral faces disappearing into a height he could not judge. Ahead, the passage turned sharply. Behind him, another corner concealed the way he had come.

He searched for something he recognized: a doorway, a window, a mark that might tell him where he was. The stone offered nothing.

He started forward. His shoulders nearly brushed the walls in the narrower turns. For all the strength in his body, he felt exposed here, with bare skin, empty hands, and no way to see what waited around the next bend.

The corridor divided around a great wedge of stone.

To the left, warm light reached along the floor. Figures stood within it: men with broad shoulders, graceful postures, the kind of beauty that made his gaze linger. Yet whenever he tried to look directly at a face, brightness softened its features until he could no longer distinguish them.

The passage to the right was dark. Far inside it, a small light shone.

Saevren leaned forward, trying to make out the ground beneath that distant point. He could see neither the turns nor the distance between them.

From the other passage, warmth touched his feet.

He chose the light.

With each step, the shadows loosened around him. The stone brightened. His feet found a smooth, easy path, and the figures ahead turned toward him as though his arrival had been expected.

A man moved aside to let him pass. Saevren caught the line of a jaw, a shoulder edged in gold, but the face remained indistinct. Others waited beyond him.

His caution began to give way to a nervous, almost disbelieving pleasure. He straightened without meaning to. By the time the corridor opened into a larger space, he was looking ahead with the beginnings of a smile.

A low stone platform stood at its center.

Saevren climbed onto it. Light gathered along his shoulders, tracing hard edges in the air. Pale plates formed over his chest and arms, their surfaces catching gold wherever he turned. He watched a bright line close around his wrist. More shapes settled along his legs.

Behind him, something brushed his back.

A cape unfolded from his shoulders, ivory edged with gold. For a moment its hem drifted through the air like light seen through cloth.

The men gathered below the platform. Some lowered themselves to their knees.

Saevren looked from them to the shining armor taking shape around him. His smile widened.

Happiness rushed through him so suddenly that he drew a breath.

He had known satisfaction after effort, relief when something difficult finally became possible. This feeling seemed to arrive all at once, filling every space he had not realized was waiting for it.

The armor fitted perfectly. The cape settled into deep, elegant folds. Below him, every indistinct face was turned his way.

For a while, he let himself enjoy it.

He liked being seen. He liked the warmth of their attention and the ease with which he could stand above them, unafraid of making a mistake. His smile came freely now. When he looked toward the passage beyond the platform, he expected more of that happiness to be waiting.

He walked on.

The men knelt beside the path as he passed. Beyond them rose another row of pillars, another stretch of polished stone, another golden opening.

Saevren crossed it and found more pillars.

At first, he barely noticed. The cape moved beautifully behind him, and light traveled across his armor with every step. He glanced toward the figures at his feet, still pleased by the attention.

Then a familiar arrangement of lamps appeared ahead.

He slowed. He was almost certain he had passed them already.

The next opening led into a hall just like the last. Farther on, another waited. He searched the distance for a stair, a door, some sign that the path was taking him somewhere.

The kneeling men continued to watch him.

His smile faded before the light did.

Nothing around him had changed. The armor was flawless. The cape had gathered no dust. The figures still offered the same silent admiration, as if they had noticed no difference between his first step and his hundredth.

Saevren looked more closely at the nearest face. He wanted an expression he could understand, something that might change when he approached.

The features slipped away in the brightness.

An uneasiness settled beneath his ribs. He could keep walking. He could stand still. It seemed he would receive the same welcome either way.

He looked down the perfect corridor and tried to remember what he had hoped to find at its end.

The nearest man rose.

Then another stood, and another, until shoulders began to hide the rows behind them. Saevren stopped. The figures stepped closer, filling the spaces through which he had been able to see the path.

He lifted a hand near his chest.

There was hardly room for the movement.

A dark shoulder blocked the light to his left. Another crossed in front of him. He turned, searching for the opening he had just passed, but the crowd had closed around it.

The brightness narrowed to thin fragments between their bodies.

He tried to take a step back.

The floor was gone.

He fell.

His arms reached for stone, for cloth, for anything solid. His fingers closed on empty air.

The cape lifted above him. Its golden edge broke into drifting threads. Plates of armor separated from his body, turning slowly as they rose away, their pale surfaces shrinking into the dark.

Cold air struck his bare legs. He was wearing his sleeping shorts again.

Saevren twisted, looking beneath him. There was no ground, no wall sliding past, nothing by which to measure how far he had fallen. His hair streamed upward around his face.

He waited for the impact.

It did not come.

The last scraps of brightness dwindled above him, and still he fell.

Stone struck his palm.

His knee followed, and he caught himself with a sharp breath, one foot planted beneath him. For several moments he stayed that way, waiting for the floor to disappear again.

Warm light lay across the ground to his left.

Saevren raised his head.

The same wedge of stone divided the same two passages. The men were still waiting in the brighter one, their distant outlines as beautiful as before. Nothing in their stillness explained what had happened.

His hand trembled against the floor.

He turned toward the darker passage. Deep within it, the small light remained.

This time, he kept looking.

He moved toward it on his hands and knees.

The darkness swallowed the warm glow behind him. He could barely see where to place his palm, so he tested the stone before shifting his weight. His hair slipped forward, trailing across his arm and brushing the ground.

Every few movements he stopped to check the light.

It was still there.

He had no reason to believe this passage would be kinder. That thought stayed with him as he crawled. Once, his hand found an uneven seam and his whole body tightened, remembering the fall.

The floor held.

He moved again.

Slowly, the distant point widened. Its glow began to reveal the rough edges of the stone ahead, then a space beyond the walls.

He emerged into a clearing and stayed on his knees.

Two shapes stood within the light.

One was low and broad, with pointed ears and a thick tail. A wolf. The other lifted its head above him, the curve of a hooked beak appearing against the brightness.

Wings shifted. Four of them, moving in two distinct pairs.

Saevren's breath caught. There was something familiar in the bird's outline, in the angle of its head.

Thoden?

The thought rose quickly, but he could not be certain. Light ran along the feathers, revealing copper and cream before the darker parts of the body disappeared into shadow again.

The wolf came forward first. The bird followed.

Saevren held still as the space between them grew smaller.

The wolf lowered itself beside him.

Its body settled against his leg with a solid, ordinary warmth. After a moment, Saevren placed a hand on its back. Thick fur yielded beneath his fingers. The wolf rested its head near his knee.

On his other side, the bird folded its wings, one pair settling over the other. Feathers brushed his shoulder. Its head came close enough for him to see the small overlapping shapes around its eye.

He eased himself into a seated position.

For a little while, he kept watching them, as though a sudden movement might send them away. Neither moved aside.

His shoulders gradually lowered. The tightness in his hands loosened.

He let his gaze fall, feeling the wolf breathe beneath his palm and the quiet weight of feathers beside him.

Beyond their small circle, the light caught a curve in the air.

It ran upward, smooth and unbroken, bending the darkness beyond it. Another curve answered on the opposite side. Together they narrowed high above the clearing, where a slender neck of glass opened into a second chamber.

Golden sand filled the space overhead.

The clearing, the three resting figures, the patch of dark stone beneath them—all lay inside the lower half of an enormous hourglass.

Below the waiting sand, Saevren sat between fur and folded wings. His hand remained where he had placed it.

For a moment, nothing fell.

The first grains touched his hair.

A few slipped across his forehead and came to rest on his shoulder. More followed, whispering against skin, fur, and feathers. Above him, a narrow stream had begun to pass through the glass.

Saevren felt the faint, dry tickle of sand along his arm.

He opened his eyes just enough to see the pale grains gathering on the wolf's dark coat. The bird shifted closer, its feathers brushing his temple.

He might have expected that first touch to bring back the fear of falling.

Instead, he settled his hand more comfortably into the fur.

The sand continued to fall.

It gathered around his feet, then his folded legs.

The dark stone disappeared beneath a spreading layer of gold. Sand filled the spaces beside his thighs and rose across his lap, carrying a soft, steady weight. The ends of his hair vanished into it.

The wolf lifted its chin a little as the mound reached its neck. Saevren could still see its closed eyes and the dark tip of its nose. Beside his shoulder, the bird's lower feathers disappeared while its head remained close to his.

He stayed with them.

He did not understand the calm he felt. The sand was rising; he could feel how much of his body it had covered. Yet his hand still rested on the wolf, and the bird still leaned beside him.

He closed his eyes again.

The upper chamber emptied.

Below it, the sand rose until the three figures were hidden. The surface settled into a quiet mound, its fine grains catching the amber light.

One grain remained.

It passed through the narrow neck, hanging for a brief instant in the clear space between the glass and the sand.

Then it fell.

Saevren woke with a sharp breath.

He pushed himself up, one hand braced against the mattress, the other caught in the covers. Sweat cooled across his chest. His heart was beating hard enough that he could feel it in his throat.

The plum pillow lay behind him. The bedside lamp glowed against dark wood. Beyond the protected window, the red night of Brakhal remained where it should have been.

His eyes moved from one familiar thing to the next.

He looked down at his hand. There was no sand in its creases. Only the sheet, gathered tightly between his fingers.

For a few breaths, he could almost remember the warmth beneath his palm.

Then the brighter corridor returned to him: the perfect armor, the beautiful figures, the happiness he had wanted to keep. He remembered the other path too, and how afraid he had been to enter it.

Two ways. Two different feelings he could still recall, even as the details began to blur.

Was there a choice ahead of him? Had the dream borrowed one he already carried?

He could not tell. He did not know what the wolf meant, or whether the bird had truly been the one he knew. Even the hourglass was becoming difficult to hold in his mind.

Saevren loosened his grip on the sheet.

He sat in the lamplight until his breathing slowed, trying to remember the small light at the end of the dark passage.