life and death-with his ancestors. The Tunishnevre had been a spiteful coven of the undead, with their own source of power, one that came from the curse that had denied them true death. And that curse had come from Tinhadin. Santoth sorcery. As such, it should be within her power as well. After all, the Tunishnevre, when speaking to Hanish, had demanded he murder her. They had failed. They went to the real afterdeath instead, as did Hanish. Corinn still lived and ruled and had a son. Who, then, was more powerful?
This was but one of the myriad things that she held in her mind after the Numrek uprising and the League of Vessels declaration that a war was coming once more across the Ice Fields. She had, in a surprising way, found a sort of pitching, tumultuous equilibrium. Once she knew that Aaden was safe-and she did know that with enough certainty to put worry for him behind her-she rode the noise and confusion of unfolding events with a calm certainty.
Much of this came from her realization that she had known something like this was coming all along. She had known not to lower her guard. She might have been tempted to forget it briefly, lured by Mena's enthusiasm and Grae's attentions, drawn even to notions of higher nobility in her rule, thinking she might leave the people free of sedation and ways to bring some of Aliver's high ideals to life. As much as she had held power grasped in one hand, she had tried to loosen the clenched fist of her other hand. That had been a mistake. Even the flexion of her fingers in considering the possibilities became an invitation to disaster. That was why she had not been ready and had not seen the treachery standing right behind her for so long. That's why Aaden had nearly died.
Unforgivable.
When faced with violence right before her eyes she did nothing but watch. She was completely unprepared in that moment. While Mena fought, Corinn stood and stared. That could never happen again. She had been lax in her study. Spending time summoning furry creatures for Aaden? Casting euphoria spells at banquets and creating flying insects? Foolishness! Even the water she fed into northern Talay was done for the wrong reasons. It was needed, yes, but she had enjoyed the approbation of the masses too much. She had delighted in hearing herself called mother of the empire. And what was that but a title she had commanded her people to use? No, the truth was she had been wasting time, wasting power.
Such neglect was completely and utterly unforgivable. She swore that she would never be that weak again. It amazed her that she had let slip so much of the strength that had helped her grasp power and steer the Known World out of Aliver's war and back toward prosperity. She had now to remember the person who had climbed to the throne nine years ago. She had to be that person again, tempered by experience, mother to a child whom she would never, never let come to harm.
Part of this included determining the real extent of the threat coming toward them. Trust the league's version of events? Hardly. Sire Dagon could profess his complete and utter honesty until he went hoarse; she needed to hear from other sources before she could decide how to act. Dream travel seemed the only possible way. It was, at least, worth a try.
The first time she planned to attempt it, she dismissed her servants and prepared her room herself. She dimmed the lamps. She lit sticks of incense and set a mixture of soothing herbs bubbling in fragrant, citrus-infused oil. She put on a formal dinner dress of dark green velvet, with a high neckline and full sleeves. Lying on her back atop her bedspread, she smoothed the folds of her dress out around her, feeling unnervingly silly. Did one dream travel in one's garments, naked, or without a body at all? She did not know if any of her preparations were necessary, but she needed some sense of ritual, something to occupy her as she gradually drew nearer the moment.
And what to do in that moment was another riddle she had yet to solve. However Hanish had dream traveled, he managed it without true knowledge of the Giver's tongue. Perhaps he used some fragment of it. Or perhaps his success had a different explanation. Corinn had consulted The Song of Elenet with this question in mind. As ever, the words and music of the book had surged up to engulf her. As ever, she closed it, knowing she had learned from it but incapable of putting her finger on the knowledge and examining it.
She slept for a time, a fitful slumber in which she counted the passing hours. Eventually, awake again, she just lay, calming her heartbeat, letting her body go limp against the bedding. She allowed herself to drift toward sleep again. She focused her attention on her breathing. No, on the awareness that her thoughts were a thing different from her body. Housed in it, yes, but not contained. Not trapped. She imagined her true essence floating up from her body and-
Ah! That did not work. She lifted her fist and smashed it against the mattress in exasperation. She sat up. This was not the way. It felt like something a fortune reader would instruct her to do. Some nonsense, like when she pretended to be able to read symbols in her girlfriend's mind as a child.
Use the song, she thought. It all begins with the song.
She fell back against the bed, inhaled, called up the swirling music that was the Giver's tongue, and, very softly, sang. She did not entirely understand the notes and words and shapes of sound that came from her mouth, but she knew the intent was right. She wove them in with her hopes, with the preparations she had already made. Trying to shape them even as she felt shaped by the song escaping her, she lost herself in the effort.
At some point, she realized the song was not on her lips anymore. It was in her. It was her and would travel with her. She pushed her spirit up and out of her body, floating free above the bed and then through the ceiling and beyond. For a time she swam through air above the palace. Such a strange feeling. She had an awareness of her physical form, but she also knew how very incorporeal it was. Part of her lashed at the air with limbs that were not entirely there but that were not entirely absent. Ultimately, it was thought, not physical effort, that moved her through space. More than thought, it was thought propelled by force of will.
For some time she flew from point to point above the palace, slowly learning to feel the presence of souls, sleeping and awake. She found she could draw herself to some individuals simply by settling thoughts of them in her mind and then driving toward them. Thus, she felt Rhrenna's sleeping presence and Aaden's. She knew the bed in which Delivegu slumbered, not alone. Any of these she could have stirred awake, but they were not her objective. She aimed for a person much, much farther away: Dariel.
She conjured every memory she had of him. She held her thoughts of him until she had them within her, contained like the seething balls of creation from which she built the creatures she summoned for Aaden's amusement. The song helped her. It gave shape to what she wished to do. She took that swirling embodiment of memories and thoughts and images and emotions that to her were Dariel, and then she hurled them forward.
It was like tossing a great ball of energy, a thing that hungered to be released. She sped behind, hooked to it, shooting forward across the Inner Sea. Oh, it felt good! Such speed. She watched Acacia recede as she passed between Kidnaban and the Cape of Fallon. Before long, the mountains of Senival rumbled beneath her, as if they were a herd of stampeding creatures. Wonderful. Such power and freedom. She raced across the coast and farther until…
She forgot what she was doing. Her progress slowed. For a few moments she felt the force that had been pulling her casting about in one and then another direction. Then it simply stopped. In a spirit form, immune to the cold or fear, Corinn hung in the air high above the Gray Slopes. Below her, the ocean moved in unending undulation. Watching it, she knew the waves gave life to all the earth. She knew, looking down, that there could be no more horrible thing than a dead sea. It meant a dead earth.
By why am I thinking that? I'm here for a reason. I'm searching for-
Her eyes snapped open. She gasped a breath so loud she thought for a moment that she screamed it out. Sitting up on her bed, in her gown, the air heavy with incense smoke, she realized she had failed. Dariel! She had been flying toward Dariel, driven by her thoughts of him, scorching toward whatever place or fate in the world identified him… but then the energy that propelled her realized it did not know where to go. She should have been able to find him, but there was no scent, no trail, not even an intuitive feeling for where to head. At some point, there was nothing. That was why she had stopped somewhere out above the Slopes. If her brother was out there, she had no power to find him.
'Dariel,' she said. In speaking his name she felt a strange, dread certainty that she would never see him again, neither in life nor through the song.
The following day passed much the same as the one that preceded it. One appointment after another. One function before another. Her last official meeting that afternoon was with Paddel, the head vintner of Prios. She kept it short, not wanting to look too long at his heavily jowled, red-cheeked face. He sat at the far end of the table from her, as unattractive as ever, squeezed into a black jacket that was so tight he could barely move his chubby arms.
