Joslyn felt the bite of the blade before she saw it, slicing through her upper arm deeply enough to cut bone. Yelping in surprise and pain, she parried the next strike just before it landed.
Training trumped pain. Joslyn fell into the rhythm of the dance. Parry, thrust, duck, swing. Rennus didn’t land another blow, but Joslyn couldn’t land a blow, either. As they danced, blood leaked copiously from her wounded sword arm. Her fingers grew numb; her slashes and thrusts slowed. She wouldn’t be able to hold the blade above her waist for very much longer, let alone fight.
It’s not real,the familiar voice in the back of her mind reminded her. Milo knew that; he could see through the dream rather than assent to it. You can do the same.
She danced out of range of Rennus’s sword, glancing down at her arm. Her blade may have slowed, but the bleeding had not.
A dream.The cut, the numbness, the blood – it was a dream. All the Shadowlands was a dream, and Joslyn was a dreamwalker.
Do not assent to its reality.
With effort, Joslyn formed a new q’isson. Now she and Rennus stood in the snow-dusted eastern courtyard of Castle Pellon, the place where she and Linna trained each morning.
Joslyn had created people inside her q’issons before, such as when she created her birth mother inside a Terintan bliva, sewing beside the fire, but it had always been by accident, a byproduct of the place she’d imagined. This time, she added inhabitants to her q’isson. She was willing to wager that just as the dreamlike environment of the q’isson functioned the same way an ordinary environment did, so would its dreamlike inhabitants.
Which was why she didn’t have to look behind her to know that some three score Imperial soldiers stood with drawn swords behind her, waiting upon her command.
She also didn’t have to look down to know that her arm was whole once more. In forming a new q’isson, she’d formed a new dream body at the same time.
Rennus arched an eyebrow and took a few wary steps backward. “Do you see how naturally it comes to you, Commander? The true heir of the House of Dorsa would put your talents to use so much better than your false Empress.”
“The Empress ain’t false!” yelled one of the dream soldiers from behind Joslyn.
“Do all your q’isson’s soldiers sound like inbred Arun’s Quarter residents?” Rennus asked with a hint of disgust. But Joslyn wasn’t fooled by his false bravado. He kept himself carefully out of range of the squads behind her.
“Who ye callin’ inbred, ye dirty sorcerer?” another soldier asked.
“Speaking of inbred,” Rennus said, “one of the Empire’s most persistent fantasies is that the bloodline of the House of Dorsa has remained unbroken since the time of the great warrior Dorsan.”
He’s stalling for time.
“Yet in actuality, the only person alive who shares Dorsan’s blood is the deathless k–”
“No one cares.” Joslyn raised Ku-sai’s blade high. “For the Empire!”
With cries of “Long live the Empress!” and “For the East!” and “Remember Fox Battalion!”, the soldiers rushed past Joslyn.
For the first time in their duel, Joslyn thought she saw panic cloud Rennus’s features. Without another word of smug banter this time, he simply turned and fled for the nearest set of stairs.
Joslyn’s soldiers pursued. Rennus might be fast enough and skilled enough to heal some of his wounds when they caught him, but he’d never heal them fast enough.
But before the soldiers reached him, the castle began to warp, like an image reflected by a bowed mirror. Her illusory soldiers flickered in and out of existence as if appearing in a flash of lightning before vanishing again.
The soldiers were not the only things appearing and disappearing. Around them, the eastern courtyard wavered. One instant it was there – bare winter trees and stone benches piled high with snow; in the next instant it was gone and the rusted waste of the Shadowlands was all around them.
Rennus was seizing control of the q’isson.
Joslyn pushed back, holding onto the q’isson even as Rennus pulled it away. She ran after him, pushing through soldiers until she reached the front. Vertigo seized her as the courtyard, the stairway, the snow, the soldiers vanished completely. Joslyn lunged wildly at Rennus. He had remarkably quick reflexes. But not quite quick enough. Ku-sai’s sword grazed his thigh, cutting deeply enough that Joslyn felt it slice through muscle.
He screamed in pain as he stumbled backwards, losing his footing at the same time Joslyn regained hers.
They were in the blank expanse of the Shadowlands again, circling each other cautiously. Rennus’s leg bled freely.
Joslyn glanced at the wound, then at the blade in her hand. Suddenly she understood.
“The sword,” she said. “You can’t heal from it, can you? Not in a dream form, perhaps not even in the mortal realm. That’s why it’s so dangerous to him. That’s why the small men made it in the first place.”
Rather than reply, Rennus blinked out of existence – and so did the Shadowlands. In the next moment, Joslyn found herself standing atop a tower’s narrow crenellation, a two-hundred foot drop to hard cobblestones just beneath her toes.
“I’m fairly certain I could kill you,” Rennus said, behind her again. “And if your mind believes you dead, your physical body will become an empty shell – easy to inhabit that way, even in the Prince’s weakened state.” He sighed. “It’s really too bad he wants your mind as much as he wants your body. Because killing you would be –”
Joslyn dodged the shove she felt coming, using the merlon in front of her like a springboard. With a backflip even Linna would have been hard-pressed to match, Joslyn soared over Rennus’s head and landed behind him.
“You talk far too much.”
This time, her feints went low and her strike went high. But just as Ku-sai’s sword was about to connect with Rennus’s shoulder, the scene changed again.
Joslyn was underwater and sinking fast, a tremendous weight pulling her down by the ankles. Shackles were fastened tight to each ankle, a chain running from them to a boulder. First she tried remembering that the shackles, chain, boulder, and even the sea itself did not truly exist – a convincing illusion, but still only an illusion. But this time, the primitive part of her mind refused to be soothed, and she thrashed at the water despite herself, nearly losing the sword in the process.
The sword. Nothing was more important than the sword. If she lost the sword, she lost everything.
Somehow this thought sobered her and Joslyn stopped struggling. Rennus was not the better dreamwalker. She was.
Joslyn closed her eyes and breathed deeply, letting the seawater flood her nostrils.