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The dream finds her in the water, deep beneath the surface where the hazy beams of daylight wouldn't dare venture. She does not yet know that it is a Dream.
There is a sense to it of then, rather than now, though she isn't quite sure how she can tell. Prophecy has never been her art.
There is someone on the lake bed with her. She cannot see them, but she knows, senses their presence, feels the weight of a gaze on her like a rabbit in the brush.
A cold hand slides into hers, soft, elegant fingers slipping between her own—tough and blocky and calloused from gathering herbs, mixing tinctures, tending any number of menial chores. She can feel the weightless heft of a body bobbing alongside her, but when she turns to look, she finds only a thicket of rushes and pondweed, interrupted by the occasional pale glint of a fish belly flashing through.
Do you see? a voice whispers, in the water or in her mind or perhaps in them both. It is a faint, tinkling tune, not unlike the peal of a bell, rippling gently outward as it fades.
She turns the other way to discover more of the same—dark water, subaquatic flora swaying lazily in the low current, the sudden, sharp glimmer of small, darting things.
See, the voice says, not a question this time but a request. An order.
She turns her face up.
The surface of the water high above her flickers orange in the light of a distant fire. It stings her eyes and she screws them shut, gritting her teeth against a bitter, metallic crush that burbles at the back of her throat.
See, the voice pleads. Look, and I will show you.
There comes a rushing crash and she squints up just in time to watch the surface of the water break, the silhouette of a cloaked figure shattering the peace as it sinks into the mire, leaking a pitch dark stain as it falls. Blood in the water. She can just make out the faint ghost of a hand, a wavering tendril of yellow hair.
The black arrow of a small rowboat drifts by far overhead, the shape of it consumed in a flash of cold light as a sudden thunder rages on the shore.
The world around her begins to shake, schools of greyling and trout fleeing past her in glittering droves. She gasps a breath, lungs burning as it all floods into her—silt and algae, smoke and ash, iron and salt.
The sky above the surface burns, and below, in the depths, she drowns.
She wakes, shaking and retching; so loud that a handful of the initiates clustered around her on low, woven reed cots startle awake in kind. She rolls to the edge of her own cot just in time to heave mouthful after gushing mouthful of brackish water onto the hard-packed dirt below, nose running and eyes stinging as she chokes and gasps.
There come a few grumblings from the far edges of this outburst, faint shuffling as her fellows set themselves in order and settle back in to sleep. Night terrors are not uncommon in close quarters such as these.
The two initiates closest to her—a round-faced girl not much older than she is with tight, dark curls and a pleasant smile, and a whipcord of a boy with dark freckles and a thin, pinching mouth—come to sit by her side. They do not have names. None of them do. Not yet. To be a Named mage is a thing of great power. A blessing, bestowed by the Circle, in honor of a great deed.
They are but initiates. Their deeds generally only go so far as weeding the garden and preparing poultices, setting the long table in the meeting hall at mealtimes and clearing up afterward.
While the first initiate tucks her hair out of her face and murmurs gentle, soothing nonsense, and the second rubs a hand over her back in slow, careful circles, she wonders if this might be the beginning of her great deed. The first letter of her name.
Elder Cador comes to greet her where she toils in the brew hut, tying up bundles of freshly picked chamomile for drying and grinding goldenseal roots into fine paste with the ancient mortar and pestle in the corner.
He is a pleasant man, Cador. Average height and stocky with a beard halfway down his chest. He shares no direct blood with her, but has seen her through the past nine winters without complaint, after most of her line - well. Better not to dwell on it.
Cador's blue eyes are warm, creased in a smile when she meets them.
"The children say you have been Dreaming," he offers without preamble.
She can hear the weight of the word, and nods in confirmation.
Cador plucks a leaf off a towering mint plant growing from a sturdy oaken barrel and tucks it into his lip.
"What about?"
A warning, she wants to say. Or maybe a curse. A war which has already been waged, or perhaps is only just beginning. The world of men, from which the mages removed themselves many decades ago, and which they speak of now only with undertones of fear and contempt.
She considers all of these, discarding them one by one until she settles on, "Drowning."
The Dream finds her in a wood, towering pines and spindly birches draped with a heavy, stewing fog. It roils between her bare feet, so thick that she can't see the layer of leaf litter and soft soil she's standing on, though she feels the damp clinging and the familiar, spongy give with every step.
There is a man in the mist, tall and dark with a neat goatee and flinty gaze. She does not recognize him.
He wears armor, gleaming when he walks this way or creaking with rust when he walks that way, and carries a sword. Not the sword, but the banal blade of a soldier, here flashing with oil and polish, and there chipped and eaten through with tarnish. Ephemeral and changing, as things often are in dreams.
He steps surely, eyes tracking, though he does not appear to make note of her, watching still and steady from behind the thick trunk of an oak or crouched in the shadow of an unassuming boulder.
He is injured, at times, curling in on himself and sweating and gasping as he forces himself onward, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. Others, he marches with purpose, back straight and high and proud, with a standard streaming at his back.
There is a beast in this forest, too.
She cannot see it, but neither can he—only hear its slavering breaths and the low husk of its growl. Now and again, the vague hint of a shadow—so tall it nearly brushes the canopy above—looms through the trees, always circling, never drawing close.
She is again made into a rabbit, cowering at the root of an overgrown bog myrtle. She does not want the beast to see her. She cannot imagine what would happen if it did, but dread freezes a cold pit into her belly at the thought. She knows it would not be good.
She follows in the man's path—slow and cautious—until they come to a clearing, and then she steps out.
He wheels around with a flourish. The only indication he gives that he is surprised to find her there is a slight widening of his eyes as he drops from his offensive stance into something more restful, though he keeps his sword in hand.
He gives her a quick once over, taking in the garb, the cloak, the solemn face, and recognizes her instantly for what she is.
"Mage," he greets, with a dip of his chin. His eyes are dark and wary. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
She curls her palm over the low branch of a gnarled wych elm, digs her thumb into a little knot of bark so hard she may well give herself a splinter.
"There is something in the woods with you," she says.
He nods, slow.
"Are you hunting it?" she asks. "Or is it hunting you?"
His mouth is a flat line, brow knotted and creased. He is quiet for a long, long time. When he speaks, it's so soft she almost doesn't hear it over the chittering and rustling of a thousand invisible creatures in the brush.
"I don't know."
In the shifting fog, the beast starts panting, fast and frantic as though it were trying to laugh.
Her eyes snap open in the early morning gloom of the initiates' hall. The fire at the center of the room has dwindled to embers and there's a chill creeping in.
She shifts her small pile of furs aside and swings her legs over the side of the cot as quietly as she can manage.
There's dirt on her feet, a couple of leaves sticking to her heels.
The mournful, far away warble of a lone wolf splits the dark, and she rises to stoke the fire.
"Tell me again," Seer Esylt demands, not unkindly.
She complies, describing first the water and the blood and the fire, and then the forest and the man and the lurking beast, in as much detail as she can remember.
"Hm." Esylt frowns. "And you brought a token back with you each time? You're certain?"
She thinks of vomiting bitter, briny water and washing gritty loam from between her toes, and she nods.
"Hm," Esylt says again. After a long moment of narrow eyed consideration, Esylt reaches out and takes her hand, turning it so her palm faces up. She squints down at the lines and folds, tracing here, tapping there, turning her hand this way and that.
Cador waits patiently, humming a light, cheerful tune under his breath.
The air is very close here in Esylt's tent, hot and thick with the perfume of whatever herbs and spices she's seen fit to mix into the fire. It makes her head swim and her stomach turn, which Esylt assures her is all part of the process.
"Your affinity is for animals?" Esylt asks.
Again, she nods.
"Interesting," Esylt mutters, bending low over her palm for another long second before she releases her with a little, comforting pat. "The Lady does not often deign to bless mortals with the gift of prophecy, even we mages. And to bestow such a treasure on a mage with their gift already in hand? Well." She pinches her mouth into a concerned knot.
"So you think it Seeing?" Cador asks, though he sounds more like he is confirming a suspicion than proffering a question.
"I think it worrisome," Esylt corrects. "We fled the world of men for good reason. That it seeks to ensnare us once again is troubling."
"Ought to bring it to the Circle," Cador suggests. "We might want to consider sending her, as a gesture of goodwill."
"Please," Esylt snorts. "The kingdom of men was bought with the blood of mages. They would never allow it. Not now, after everything."
"We could always pay Merlin a visit," Cador offers pleasantly.
Esylt's face contracts, soft frown twisting into a sharp scowl as she juts her jaw forward. Her eyes are hard under her knitted brow.
"Be wary, my friend," she cautions. "You know well the consequences for speaking that name."
Esylt flicks her gaze back over and jerks her chin to the door.
"Back to work with you," she instructs, gentle tone at odds with her stark words. "I need to speak with the Elder privately."
She nods and goes.
The Dream finds her in a fine marbled chamber, with a throne on a dais in pride of place.
The room itself is empty, but she cannot shake the feeling that she is not alone. She crosses to the throne with quick, careful steps, hackles rising as she moves.
Her footfalls, light as they are, echo in soft scuffing slides as she goes.
As she approaches the throne, she can hear a peculiar sound. A low, wet slapping, like a freshly washed tunic being beaten against a sun-warm rock.
There is something on the seat of the throne, wriggling and writhing.
She ascends the few, short steps, fear blooming oily and viscous in her gut as she goes. She's only a foot or two away by the time she can make out the coiled bodies of an eel and a viper, wrestling to the death.
She watches, eyes wide, as the eel takes a vicious mouthful out of the viper's side at the same time that the viper sinks its fangs deep into the eel.
Both beasts shriek and flail, knotting and detangling as they square up for another go. It is a brutal bout, bloody and fierce. Despite the advantage of its venom, the viper seems to be losing.
The thought sends a visceral bolt of terror flaring through her, sudden and sinister in the way of a late summer lightning storm.
Do you see? a familiar, frantic voice asks, as the viper falls to the wayside, shuddering and thrashing.
She steps forward to help, reaching out a hand and opening her mind, even as the eel turns its gimlet eye on her. It rears up like a cobra and lunges before she has time to react, jaws clamping around her neck.
She wakes with a strangled cry, blood like hot iron on her tongue.
Cador finds her in the stable, the first gray beams of morning seeping in through every open door and notch in the walls.
She has a bag of provisions strapped to her horse, alongside a bow and a bedroll.
"I take it you're going, then?"
She flicks a darting glance over at him and raises one shoulder in a shrug.
"He needs me," she says. She isn't quite sure who he is yet, but trusts that the information will reveal itself in due time.
Cador nods and claps a meaty hand to her shoulder.
"Mages were not made to live in isolation," he tells her. "It will be good to have one back in the world again."
She smiles, small and grateful.
"I shall do what I can to stall for you," Cador offers, "but you'll want to be quick about it. Take care to avoid the sending circles along the path. They make useful tools to ambush wayward initiates and drag them home."
He gives her a quick, fond squeeze, and then makes his way out, humming.
Another few minutes finds her astride her traveling companion, at the genesis of a new and treacherous path. She turns into the sun and spurs her steed into action, destiny snapping at their heels as they go.