Ashes of a Black Frost

“I don’t know! If they left the valley they probably headed west along the main caravan route. Stop, please!”

The creature remembered the jeweled map. It had been a thing of much beauty. Precious metals and sparkling gems gleamed before its eyes, tracing borders and marking the limits of the empire it had once helped expand. That the map was worth a fortune meant nothing to it now, but the location of the caravan route did. It saw it clearly and understood. It vanished the spear and walked away.

“Wait! Kill me, please kill me! Don’t let them-” the dwarf’s words turned into screams as the rakkes moved in.

With blood dripping from their fur and chunks of flesh still hanging from their mouths the pack moved off with the creature urging them on, a strange phrase stuck like a metal pick in what was left of its mind.

Suhundam’s Hill.

Konowa opened his eyes and scanned what little he could see of the desert around them. The acorn against his chest thrummed with a cool intensity. It wasn’t a warning as much as an acknowledgment of power somewhere out there in the dark. He wondered briefly if it could be Visyna, but suspected it was something he’d just as soon never meet.

The wagon continued its rocking motion as Rallie steered the camels, and Konowa let his eyes close again, telling himself he’d rest them for just a few minutes.

“Double bloody hell!”

He was standing among the Wolf Oaks of his homeland.

I’m dreaming. Again.

He fought the urge to shout or kick or even try to rouse himself from sleep. Based on his previous visits with the Shadow Monarch there didn’t seem much chance that he was going to enjoy this, but perhaps he could learn something useful.

All right then, he said to himself, let’s have a look around.

The forest blurred and suddenly the birthing meadow spread out before him. The sun sat low in the sky casting long shadows from the towering Wolf Oaks surrounding the meadow. Saplings rose arrow straight above the dark, green grass, their leaves unfurling before his eyes as they oriented themselves toward the sunlight. He took a deep breath and was surprised when he didn’t feel the crisp cold of a late frost. He took a couple of steps then stopped and looked down. His boots glistened with dew. There was no frost anywhere.

This didn’t make sense. The Shadow Monarch bonded with Her Silver Wolf Oak during a late frost. He glanced around the meadow trying to find Her.

A figure sat huddled by a sapling near the edge of the meadow on the far side.

Konowa shrugged and started forward again. He went to shift his musket to his shoulder but his hands were empty. It was just a dream, but all the same, he wanted a weapon in his hands. He reached for his saber, but his scabbard was empty. He stopped and looked down. A twin-headed dwarf battle-ax lay in the grass at his feet.

“Well that’s odd,” he said, shaking his head as soon as the words came out of his mouth. This was a dream. Odd was merely the starting point.

He reached down and picked the ax up, grunting at the weight. It felt good to hold it, but a guilty feeling kept him from enjoying himself. Axes were viewed as evil incarnate by the elves of the Long Watch. Anything that harmed trees was seen that way. The elves of the Long Watch weren’t known for their sense of humor. Konowa knew his father’s choice to transform into a squirrel was partly due to the old elf’s desire to tweak their noses and partly because his mother would have disowned him or worse if he’d chosen the form of a beaver instead.

“What are you planning to do with that?”

Konowa turned. Regimental Sergeant Major Yimt Arkhorn stood among the saplings a few feet away. Unlike Konowa he was fully armed with his shatterbow cradled in his hands and the wicked-looking drukar knife hanging from his belt.

“You’re dead,” Konowa said.

“And a good morning to you, too,” Yimt replied. He didn’t smile, but looked around the meadow. If he noticed the figure in the distance he paid it no attention.

Konowa gathered his wits. “What happened to you?”

“Think, Major, think. How would I know that? I’m not really me, I’m you, or rather the part of you remembering me. All I know is what you know. . more or less.”

Riddles, lovely. The conversation looked dangerously similar to ones he had with his father, at least until the old elf turned into a squirrel. Konowa decided to try a different approach.

“Any idea why a dwarf ax would be lying around here?”

Yimt shrugged. “Got all my weapons here. Guess that’s for you.”

Konowa rested the end of the ax handle on the ground and tilted the weapon away from his body to get a better look at the twin half-moon-shaped blades. “So why do dwarves use axes? I never understood that. You’re born miners for the most part. Wouldn’t shovels make more sense?”

“Ever try to bash a man’s head in with a shovel? It can be done, but it ain’t pretty, and it usually takes more than one swing. But that’s not why. It’s like you said, we’re miners.”

Konowa waited for an explanation, but none was forthcoming. Apparently, Yimt thought it was obvious. Konowa didn’t.

“That doesn’t make sense. There’s no way you swing these things down in a mine shaft,” Konowa said, flicking a finger against one of the blades. A sharp ting rang out that echoed far longer than it should have.

Yimt nodded. “True enough. But mines need shoring up, and that’s done with big, thick timbers, and that means dwarves spend a lot of time chopping down trees to use in their mines.”

“I didn’t know that,” Konowa said, but now that he thought about it, it made sense. “Is that why elves and dwarves don’t get along?”

Yimt lifted up the brim of his shako to get a better look at Konowa. “What, you mean any better than elves and humans, or humans and other humans, or perhaps you mean you and just about everyone else?”

“Point taken, point taken.” This wasn’t quite the jovial dwarf that Konowa remembered. Or maybe it was the best he could remember. Dreams were tricky. He knew he’d missed something, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Yimt tugged on his beard and looked around. “Look, we’re being watched, so I have to make this fast.”

Konowa looked around the meadow. Dusk had fallen, though he could have sworn it had been early morning only a minute ago. The figure still sat at the far side of the meadow. Something about it looked naggingly familiar to Konowa.

“What?” Konowa asked.

Yimt motioned with his shatterbow toward the distant figure. “Use the ax.”

Konowa looked down at the ax, then back up. “That won’t solve anything. This is a dream. I know it’s a dream. Nothing I do here is going to matter when I wake up.”

“Then the sooner you get on with it, the sooner you can wake up,” Yimt said. “Use the ax.”

Mist started pouring between the trees, blanketing the meadow in a white down. A pain began to grow in Konowa’s chest. He tried shrugging his shoulders and taking a deep breath, but it didn’t help.

Konowa looked at the ax again, then out toward the figure still sitting by the sapling. “Look, I hoped I’d figure something out by this-” He stopped talking. He stood alone, and night had fallen. Konowa gripped the ax in both hands and started walking. The mist swirled around his knees. The pain in his chest wouldn’t go away. He rolled his shoulders and got a better grip on the ax. Yimt is right and Rallie is wrong, he thought, there is no other choice. She has to die.

He reached the Shadow Monarch long before he was ready. Though She was still shrouded in mist he could see Her clear enough that he wouldn’t miss.

He raised the ax, ready to swing.

She turned to look up at him. Konowa was now looking at himself.

The ax hung still in the air as he stared at his double. He knew this was a dream, and that it had to mean something else, but what?

“Do it,” the Konowa by the tree said. “Swing the ax.”