Free Daughter of Blood by Helen Lowe

All she could do, she decided finally, was hope and plod on, following the thread spun for her out of dust and wind—even if that was a sure sign the Madness still held her in its grip.

5
Blood Warrior
    K alan’s dream was of a brisk blue-and-white morning in the great seaport of Ij, with the city’s domes and spires gleaming against a bright sky. In his dream, the Aralorni ship Halcyon ’s gangway thumped onto a wharf and the heralds’ great gray horses clattered down the tarred planks. Kalan would be leaving with the Halcyon again on the afternoon tide, but he followed the horses onto the dock to bid the heralds farewell. Inside his dream, he knew this was all as it had been: the smell of tar and salt, the cries of seabirds, and the voices of sailors, dock workers, and clerks from the Ijiri trading houses all raised about their own business, while Jehane Mor and Tarathan of Ar waited at their horses’ heads.
    In the waking world, they had spoken of everyday matters, mainly the heralds’ advice, as experienced travelers, for Kalan’s continuing journey. He, in his turn, had queried how safe it was for them to be back in Ij after events there in the spring, even if all they intended was traversing the long canal from the harbor to the river port. But now, in Kalan’s dream, he gazed into the impassive mask of the heralds’ faces, which could have been wrought out of sculptor’s bronze, and asked: “Before we left Emer, why did you send the dream to Jarna? The one that said my fate led me away from Emer and from her?”
    Even immersed in the dream, Kalan knew that he had never asked that question—not on that blue-and-white morning in Ij, and not at any time during the journey from Caer Argent. He had wanted to, but the time never seemed right. Now, though, the light in the heralds’ eyes pierced him as they spoke as one, their voices weaving in and out of each other in the manner of their Guild. “Because you did not love her, not in the way that she loved you.” The sculpted masks softened, although their eyes still looked deep into his. “But you asked us to save her life and she needed to be able to heal.’’
    Perhaps, the dreaming Kalan reflected, the reason I could never bring myself to ask the question was because I already knew the answer. Briefly, the dream showed him Jarna again, lying below Imuln’s sanctuary in Caer Argent with her lifeblood soaking through leather and mail. He had thought she would die in that gray dawn, and the heralds had expended a great deal of power to hold her body and spirit to life.
    Soft as a whisper, the dream shifted into his last memory of Jarna, with her face turned to the infirmary wall so she did not have to watch him leave. Reliving that moment, Kalan knew that the heralds had spoken truth: he cared for Jarna deeply and always had, enough to beg for her life in Caer Argent, but he had never loved her as she loved him. Oh Jarn, he thought, knowing this was as much a good-bye as their last farewell in Caer Argent—but the tide of the dream had turned, and the blue-and-white day in Ij was drifting away from him.
    The heralds’ faces dissolved into a blaze of light, and Kalan came awake to the bump of the Halcyon ’s hull against timber, followed by the thud of a hawser and a sailor’s call, answered by a jest in an unfamiliar accent. Grayharbor, Kalan told himself, but remained in his hammock while more sailors called news to those on shore. The gangway would go down soon, just as it had in Ij, although it would be some time before the captain and port authorities worked through the Halcyon ’s bill of lading and he could disembark the horses. But when he did walk onto the Grayharbor dock, he would be wearing Derai armor for the first time.
    Coming home, Kalan thought—ironically, because although he had been born into the warrior House of Blood, he also possessed the old Derai