Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar

“Trey’s a shaman,” Bayne explained. “They take responsibility for everything; so it’s up to us to remind him not to. But in the meantime . . .” He caught hold of his own pony’s halter, “we have to find a clear patch of fodder and some dry wood for a fire. Unless you want a cold breakfast?”

Kellisin smiled ruefully. “No.”

“All right, then. Let’s catch up to our ray of sunshine, shall we, before he falls off a cliff? Maybe some of your warm rabbit stew will lighten his mood.”

Kellisin nodded and together, they followed Trey down the path.

That night Trey dreamed. He saw Vulshin standing in the midst of a winter storm so violent it blinded him. One hand shielding his eyes, the other stretched out before him, Trey reached out for the old man but, just as their fingertips touched, Vulshin vanished under a sudden avalanche of snow. Trey sprang forward and, falling to his knees, worked frantically to dig his old teacher free, but every time he thought he might have reached him, another deluge of snow buried him again. He cried out in frustration and awoke to find Bayne holding him tightly, rocking him back and forth as their parents had done when he’d been a boy. In the moonlight he looked so much like their father that Trey gaped at him, then the other man pulled back, and Trey was back on the cold ground south of the Feral Pass once again.

The next night he dreamed again, only this time it was Shersi who disappeared under a cascade of falling snow, then Dierna and her baby, then Aivar, then Vulshin again, night after night. He began to avoid sleeping altogether, sitting wrapped in his blanket, staring up at the moon for hours until exhaustion drove him to a few hours of broken rest. He became gray and gaunt, drawing farther and farther into himself and neither Bayne nor Kellisin could bring him out of it.

Finally, as the mountains gave over to rolling hills and valleys, Bayne joined him, sitting staring up and the starcast sky before fixing his brother with a serious expression.

“You have to stop this, Trey,” he said. “We’ll be in foreign lands in a day or two and we’ll need your insight.”

Knees drawn up to his chest, Trey shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You have to. You’re our shaman. We need you.” Bayne frowned. “This isn’t like you, brother. What is it?”

Scrubbing at the growth of beard along his cheeks, Trey took a deep breath. “Do you remember the nightmares I used to have as a boy?” he asked after a long moment.

When Bayne nodded, he continued.

“They were so real, so vivid; sometimes it was hard to tell if I was awake or asleep. I saw storms and floods and fighting and everything I saw came true. I saw our father’s death as clear as if it were happening right before my eyes.”

“I remember. That was when Vulshin began your training and the nightmares stopped.”

“The nightmares stopped,” Trey agreed. “But not because Vulshin began training me.” He closed his eyes. “The dreams always started the same way. I was standing by bright, swiftly flowing water wearing a dark blue coat the like of which I’ve never seen among the Goshon. I looked down into the water and I saw the future of our people.” His face darkened. “But our people had no future,” he grated, “and all I saw were bodies floating below the surface. And just as Vulshin heard them singing in his head; so I saw them dying in mine, and it hurt worse than anything else has ever hurt before or since. One day it was just too much, so I went into my dream and I took the coat off, I buried it in a deep cleft in the rocks, and the dreams stopped hurting. They became hazy and unclear, sometimes happening before and sometimes afterwards. I saw Aivar’s death and Dierna’s and their baby’s, but they didn’t hurt. Not the dreams anyway,” he amended.

“And Vulshin and Shersi?”

Trey nodded wordlessly.

“And the dreams are hurting again?”

“Yes. But there’s more. The day before we left the vale, Vulshin told me that he’d seen me in a dream standing by bright water wearing a coat dyed the deepest blue of a summer evening sky. His very words. Bayne.” He fixed his brother with an intense stare. “I never told Vulshin about the coat. Does that mean it’s back? That even though I buried it, it followed me here?”

His brother gave him a skeptical glance. “It’s not a predator like a mountain cat,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“I suppose I don’t.” Bayne was silent for a moment, then stared up at the stars again. “When I was young, I was afraid of the dark,” he said.

Trey smiled. “I remember.”

“I still am sometimes.”

“What?”