Free Dreams of the Compass Rose by Vera Nazarian

of the tongue. And thus she must, for in all things, Lero madly kept her word.
    Taken away, the magical invulnerability. Traded away somewhere, one bit of her soul for another.
    For here they were, her brothers, her soul—moving and living and breathing before her, sailing once more aboard a ship called the Eye of Sun.
     

DREAM FOUR
     

GODDESSDAY
     
    T here were two human figures which rode two horses over the craggy hill to look down at the battlefield—one rider per horse. And yet their mounts each labored under a double weight, for death rode at the back of both human figures, skeletal fingers of one silver hand clutching at their saddlebags and the other wrapped around their waists as a vise of emptiness. It was that touch which curled their entrails with cold, corroded the sweet marrow of their bones.
    Death also stood at the foothill of the valley, against a crimson sunset sky.
    The two mortals were a woman and a youth.
    The woman sat rigidly astride a black warhorse, while the last golden rays of the sun fingered the polished steel of her armor, the antique scabbard of her great battlesword, and the ornate visor of the helmet attached to the saddlehorn. A cold evening wind disturbed loose filaments of hair from her unkempt long dark braids. Death’s breath kissed the nape of her sunburned neck.
    The woman’s face was gaunt and lined. Expressionless eyes. She glanced once behind her, to where the other sat atop a russet stallion—a youth, or a boy, also in armor. His hair and eyes were like hers.
    He watched her.
    “ Come,” she said, her voice cracking upon its first note as it cleaved the silence. She did not speak again.
    He nodded quietly. All that was heard from then on was the sound of hoofbeats against rock, and small stones hurtling away from under the feet of the great horses, chipping and bouncing down before them into the valley.
    At the foot of the hill, they paused. The woman looked at the great field before her, covered with bodies. She heard the wind of the wide-open land, a constant soothing hiss.
    The sound made by the wind was a major chord.
    Between matted grass, steel occasionally gleamed in the waning light, pitch-black with blood. There were movements in places, but as she looked hopefully closer they were revealed to be lurching scavenger birds. Even now, their cries brought more of their kind, black hungry specks against a red sky.
    She felt weak. She did not know it, but death shifted its silver gauntness in the saddle behind her, and gently touched her throat, then her cheek, draining her. She was compelled to dismount.
    Slowly following the compulsion, the woman entered the field, walking with leaden feet, pulling her black warhorse by the reins. The youth followed her example.
    As she walked, she looked at the faces only in order to identify. Her mind was atrophied. Through its placid filter she recognized many of them.
    Behind her the youth walked, and stared with hypersensitive eyes, dilated pupils. His hands and jaw trembled, as his reason connected the wounds, mutilations, severed organs and limbs to the faces he knew.
    The blood affected him. Amid clumps of ebony silhouette stalks of tall grass, it stained the sand and earth like bits of oasis—a thick congealing juice of over-ripe black cherries, so similar to the dark wine that he was accustomed to drinking. He had known on one level, yet had not known in this reality level of the here and now, that it would be so rich and gelatinous when drying.
    Somewhere in the middle of the field the woman paused. She stood dumbly looking at the corpse of a young woman. Having caught up with her, and seeing that corpse, the youth suddenly retched and burst into tears.
    She said nothing, did not look at him, vomit and tears dribbling over his face, although it passed through her mind, with a slight irritation, that she had once taught him not to cry at death. But—not his fault now; he had never seen death before like this.
    Not that