Page 31 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

Oryn didn’t notice the heads that whipped toward him when he rose, his chair scraping across the silence.

“Ten thousand gold marks will be awarded to the man who delivers her to any of His Majesty’s outposts.”

The other names and descriptions that were rattled off were lost to him.

He thought he might explode with the effort of holding back the torrent of air, water, and spirit that tried to burst from him.

He could practically feel Mosphaera’s frantic wails reverberating in his bones as the inn’s door burst open and a sudden gale whipped through the common room, trying to pry the parchment from the soldier’s fingertips.

Gods above.

Whispers and excited muttering picked up when the door banged shut again and the crimson coats departed.

Colm was saying something, but the muddled understanding had him bolting for Kiawa.

He didn’t know why or for what end, but one thing was clear.

The gods wanted the girl kept away from Peytar Ralenet .

Colm

Colm Bellami was not born a Dreamwalker.

He did not possess a godsung gift that gave him access to the World of Dreams, but with Nimala’s gift, he had learned to build a door.

Somewhere between awake and asleep, he spun out a silvery cord of spirit.

The doorway appeared in his mind’s eye and some intangible part of him stepped through.

He stood in their campsite in the World of Dreams. Around him, watery, diffuse light cast the landscape of Berdea Plain in a perpetual twilight.

The reflection looked much the same as his own world, but slightly duller, as if some of the color had been sapped.

Time and distance were different here, and with half a thought, he took a step and leapt.

The little estate that sat on the edge of Greenridge Forest had changed in the weeks since he’d seen it.

The yard was devoid of life, as was normal in the World of Dreams, but it was the solid things that were all wrong.

The iron gate hung askance as if battered by a ram.

Where an old farmhouse once stood was only a pile of charred timbers. Frowning, Colm leapt again.

Valdosonos was the one place in the World of Dreams that was not a reflection of the waking world.

The waking world could not contain the fabric of the in between, fabric that rippled around him here in ribbons of brilliant, ever shifting auroras.

He was careful not to touch those ribbons of light that filled the valley.

To touch one was to be pulled into the dreams of men in the waking world, where the things not solid enough to appear in the World of Dreams danced and flitted.

It was why he’d come, but he didn’t have time to waste being pulled into just any dream. There was one in particular he sought.

From where he stood, he could pick out the dreams that belonged to people he knew.

Like familiar faces in a crowd, those auroras beckoned to him in their brilliance.

Finding the dreams of those he didn’t know was more difficult.

He closed his eyes and willed himself to be carried to what he sought.

In a single step, he leapt to the other side of the valley.

Distance in Valdosonos was of even less consequence then in the rest of the World of Dreams. Where out there, places stayed where they were in the waking world, here, a leap like that could mean the dreamer he sought was just up the street or on the other side of the Saulet Sea.

But he peered closely at the ribbon before him.

With one finger, he reached out and touched the brilliant blue.

The aurora pulsed and swirled around him, drawing him in.

In the next blink, he was no longer in Valdosonos.

He was in a place where thousands of stars dazzled overhead and a faint breeze whispered through the tall grasses around him.

Mountain peaks rose up all around and smaller peaks of tents dotted the meadow in a neat little camp.

Somewhere in the distance, a horse whinnied.

A girl and a boy lay on a blanket, tracing out constellations with their fingers.

“Do you ever think dragons get lonely?” The boy asked.

“No,” the girl answered.

“Why not?”

The girl he sought was in this dream, but it wasn’t her dream, so Colm opened a door before they could see him and stepped back to Valdosonos.

He formed an image in his mind and leapt again. This ribbon was different. Its brilliant orange was more substantial. He reached out a hand and touched it. The aurora swirled and Colm stood in a dark hay loft, peering out from the shadows. The sound of merrymaking drifted from somewhere outside.

“Shh!” The boy said, sloshing wine into a tin cup.

“Did you steal that from the cellar?” She giggled.

“‘Course I did.”

This wasn’t the dream he sought, so he opened a door and stepped back to Valdosonos. Colm frowned. Usually with an image and name, the jump came easily enough. He closed his eyes and formed the image of Enya Ryerson again, but this time, as he held onto her face, his mind whispered Enya Silverbow .

He leapt.

The aurora before him was one of brilliant green and silver. He didn’t know how or why, but it felt right. Colm reached out and slipped into the dream.

He stumbled on his feet. The world she held in her mind was distorted and ever-shifting as was sometimes common in poor quality dreams. He would have to be fast. It would dissolve at any moment.

Enya Ryerson lay on the forest floor, staring blankly up at the sky. Colm went to her, shifting across the space to squat on his heels.

“Where are you?” He asked.

The girl blinked glassy eyes at him.

Blast it. It’s a fever dream .

“Where are you?” He asked again.

“I don’t know,” she rasped.

He gazed around at the trees.

“Do you see it?” She croaked.

“See what?”

She turned her face back to the sky and Colm looked up. He was so startled, he instinctively ripped open his door to the waking world and leapt through. What happened to a soul snared in another’s dream sometimes followed the walker back into the waking world.

“Where is she?” Oryn asked as he sat up in his blanket roll.

Colm scrubbed a hand down his face, trying to clear his head. Gods above. “I don’t know. I think somewhere in Greenridge Forest.”

Oryn

Oryn battled Mosphaera for control of his air gift as they raced west. The strain was becoming so unbearable, he was snapping at nothing, and his companions had fallen into silence around him.

They were near enough to Trowbridge they would make it by morning, but Colm insisted on making camp after dark fell, arguing they might miss her along the road.

Oryn gave in, but what little remained of the leash on his temper frayed when a farmer with an empty wagon cart lumbered to where they camped beside the Queen’s Road. “Mind if I join your camp?”

He did, but Colm welcomed the man, even as Oryn shot him a warning look.

“Any news from the east?” The farmer asked, settling down to his pipe at their fire.

Colm shook his head. “How about the west?”

“So much news it’s hard to tell it all. You know about the bounty?”

“The girl? Of course, everyone does,” Aiden answered.

The man puffed on his pipe. “The new one? Out of Innesh?” Oryn exchanged a look with his companions. “Take that as a no.” The man leaned back on his elbows and took a long puff of his pipe. A cloud of smoke obscured his features. The man was taking his bloody time with it.

“Not sure what good it’ll do. All they have is a folktale,” he muttered .

“A new folktale, eh? It’s been a long time since we’ve had a good one of those.”

Oryn thanked the stars for Colm’s never ending patience and easy way with people.

“Even longer since we’ve had a Silverbow.”

The damper slipped away and his gifts pulsed at his fingertips. The faint glow of their essence, brilliant silver spirit, luminescent white air, and glowing blue water, lingered there for those who could see them. Colm eyed him askance.

“There’s a Silverbow in Innesh?”

The man shrugged. “They aren’t saying that. Well, some are. Innesh’s Arrow, they’re calling them. They don’t really know, no one saw the archer. Five thousand gold marks to anyone who provides information leading to their capture.”

“What for?”

He chuckled darkly. “Put an arrow through the eye of a black blooded witch, I’m told.”

Oryn blinked. That was almost as much of a shock as hearing the mention of a Silverbow, but the witches didn’t often venture so far from Covwood, and they rarely got caught. “There was a witch in Innesh?”

The farmer waved a hand. “Wouldn’t have made it long anyway, tied to a pyre as she was. Seems whoever this Arrow is had a problem with the king’s justice. Took out a dozen men, I heard, and the folk rose up.”

“Now there’s a tale we hadn’t heard,” Colm said jovially, but there were lines of worry bracketing his mouth.

“Bunch of hogwash if you ask me,” the farmer growled. “Some Westerland propaganda. Stirring up trouble with the king.”

“I’m sure it’ll be put right,” Colm said.

Not if it really was the Silverbow. Not if Oryn had anything to say about it. What do the gods want with her? How did she even end up in Innesh? Unanswered questions kept him from dozing as he listened to the soft snores all around him, hoping Colm would find her again in the dream.

They set out east in the watery gray before dawn and he sidled Kiawa up next to Colm’s mare, Lanta. “Any news?”

A muscle in Colm’s jaw ticked. “Her dreams are…difficult.”

“Difficult how? ”

“She rarely appears in the valley and when she does, it’s such a jumble of nightmares, I can’t get through to her.”

Oryn ground his teeth but he asked, “How is it possible for Sana’s gift to appear in the bloodline of some no name house?”

Colm had a certain preoccupation with the Estryian nobility, so if anyone would know, it would be him.

“I don’t know.”

For the first time in over two centuries, Oryn was certain Colm was lying to him.

Colm

Colm sat on a barstool in the Sunken Buoy, listening to a wool merchant tell the same tale he’d heard at the Boom Tower not half an hour gone.

He’d set out hunting news, and twice already he’d heard the same tale from Innesh.

The farmers and shepherds must have gone mad to burn half the village, but the tale seemed as true as tavern news was, which was about half true, at best. Falsehoods and fabrications grew with every mile word traveled, but Innesh was only a little over a week from Trowbridge.

That ought to count for something, Colm supposed.

Still, it was not the news he was after.

He’d been toeing carefully around the bounty, though there was not much reason to be cautious.

Ten thousand gold marks was enough to make even the doe eyed barmaids dream.

Men laughed over their cups about how they would spend their gold.

It often involved women and wine and earned sour expressions from goodwives.

There were grumblings from merchants whose guards had run off, and ship captains short sailors, all chasing after the most wanted woman in Estryia.

Still, it seemed no one had heard more than a whisper of Enya Ryerson.

She had to be here, or would be soon. He’d found her dream again and though it had been a terrible dream of brigands and bounty hunters chasing her, he’d caught a glimpse of a wall he was fairly certain belonged to Trout Run. She was heading this way. She would be near.

It was only that certainty that anchored them to Trowbridge.

Stopping Oryn from galloping all the way to Innesh had been a feat of the gods.

Whatever the girl was, it hadn’t only unsettled them.

Oryn was still keeping a tight leash on his gifts, holding the damper in place even when they were far from prying eyes.

That troubled him. Oryn’s air gift was disastrously strong to be unruly.

Colm realized he was shaking his head when the merchant redoubled his insistence it was true.

They had pressed their horses as hard as they dared, Oryn chewing rocks as each day yawned into night.

Colm had said little and less of what drove the man, it was not his to share, but Oryn would have to answer to the others for driving them like gods blinded fools.

Not even Aiden was so hasty, and the boy had all of Bellas’s fire and none of his good sense.

He blinked at what the wool merchant was saying. “...burned down the soldier’s outpost.”

“In Trout Run?”

The merchant nodded gravely and lowered his voice. “They’re saying there might be a rebellion.”

Colm blinked. “When?”

“I don’t know, man, I’m just telling you what they’re saying.”

“I mean Trout Run. When was the fire?”

“Five days ago now, or so I heard,” the merchant shrugged.

Five days. Colm thought it was too much to hope it was a coincidence. “Any news of the bounty?”

The merchant shrugged. “Heard someone saw her skulking down by the docks this morning. Course I also heard she slipped through weeks ago, probably halfway to Durelli by now.”

“Probably,” he agreed. He fished in his pocket and slid coppers across the bar to pay for the drinks. “Have the wielders been summoned? To deal with the trouble in Innesh?”

The merchant shrugged again. “Prolly, but they haven’t come down yet from Windcross Wells.” Wielders were always news unless the town had an outpost and Trowbridge blessedly did not.

Colm gave the man a tight smile. “Well, let’s hope the king’s men put it right before anyone gets hurt,” he said lightly. “I should be off to find an inn. Light and luck shine upon you.”

Colm blinked in the bright morning sunlight as he stepped out of the tavern and crossed the alley. Oryn was leaning against a barrel watching people pass by. If she was headed to the eastern gate, he’d spot her from where he stood.

“News?” He asked curtly.

“Rumor she was down at the docks this morning. ”

Oryn looked torn between bolting for the docks and maintaining his post, but Colm turned and started up the street.

“Where are you going?” Oryn called after him.

“To the soldier’s outpost.”

“Why?”

“Someone burned the one in Trout Run to the ground.” And he had a sinking suspicion the Silverbow had something to do with it.