The Verse:
The ghost and the dreamer wandering
An empty hall of ghosts and dreams.
The Vision:
It’s my uncle, Cetin Urhu. Somehow, I know he’s dead.
I’m at the enormous interior fountain at the juncture between the Hall of History and the Stella Maris Hall in the Imperial Palace of Vuernaco on Sideria.
There’s a man at my side. He has wavy red hair, a few pale freckles, and he’s wearing a silly bowler hat. I don’t know who he is, but his eyes look so familiar.
He can see into the paintings and artifacts in the hallways. He can see my uncle’s ghost. He can see the dreams of the ghosts who live there.
Commentary by Archbishop Co’oal Venesti:
Her Eminence continued to have prophetic episodes while under the influence of the impure sacrament during the following eleven years. She evidenced many occurrences of minor visions which were proved to be true within weeks of their occurrence. She has deemed as significant only seven visions, recorded here. The second vision occurred while she was still on Volparnu, at the age of twenty-three. From a theological standpoint, it is only significant in that it features the twenty-fourth emanation of our God, Prince Hurley O’Niall.
It is a matter of deep theological speculation why this was the case. First, only four emanations feature in these early visions: His Holiness Ailann Tiarnan, Prince Hurley, Prince Daniel, and Sloane, Lord Redmond of Skalisia. That His Holiness would figure prominently is to be expected. At the time of the visions, Her Eminence was personally familiar with Prince Daniel and Lord Redmond, so their appearance is unsurprising. But Prince Hurley’s appearance is anomalous. It will be twenty-six years between the vision and the time of Hurley’s emanation, another two years before she will finally return to Vuernaco, to settle her deceased uncle’s affairs, and the events of the prophecy will take place.
Commentary by Elma, High Prophetess of Skarsia:
Hey ho! Hurley is dreaming, dummies. He’s the blue amrita in physical form. If you want Ashtara to talk to you, talk to Malachi. If you want to talk to Ashtara, talk to Hurley.
Commentary by Prince Hurley O’Niall:
I would prefer to allow Tara to tell the story in her own way. All I will say is that she was dogged by the ghosts of a dozen dreams, and she had to acknowledge them before she could fall completely into mine.
Commentary by Her Eminence Tara del D’myn, 6th Matriarch of Skarsia:
This story is private, but significant. It took place four years after the death of the former regent, Cetin Urhu. I had delayed returning to the Imperial Palace for all sorts of practical reasons, but the truth was that Vuernaco had always made me uncomfortable, and it was doubly uncomfortable because I knew damn well that Patrick had murdered my uncle.
I suspect that Archbishop Venesti will object to the use of the term “murdered.” Perhaps “executed” is a better word. Cetin Urhu certainly deserved his fate: his treasonous leadership of the coup against me was well-known. The courts had convicted him and waited upon my judgment. In a moment of personal weakness, I delayed the sentencing. He was my last remaining relative. In the end, Ash made the decision for me. The term of Archbishop Venesti’s choice is probably “divine retribution.”
Finally, I could stall no further. I returned to the surface of Sideria to decide how best to manage my father’s estate. I had held my courts for years at my own residence, the summer palace at Court Emmere, and on Eirelantra, in the Matriarch’s High Council Chambers. I had no need for another palace, especially one as elaborate as this one. It was home to some four-hundred members of the aristocratic class, mainly various retainers to my uncle or families that had long been vassals to my father’s bloodline. It was also home to a history which stretched back centuries.
Ironically, Court Emmere is the older of the two palaces. Dolparessa was inhabitable when humans colonized the system; due to the heat and lack of free water, Sideria needed large amounts of development available only after the power grid was established. Yet it was at the Vuernaco Palace that my ancestors chose to make a monument to their own pretensions. As most schoolchildren know, the Stella Maris Hall is a hall of portraits, the history of our bloodline. The Hall of History contains the plunder of Earth, an enormous collection of treasures and kitsch rescued from the great sodai-gomi pile of the War of Centralization. Possibly the most wretched piece in the collection is that damned fountain, constructed around a horrendously sentimentalized statue of a mermaid that came from a harbor in Denmark. I can think of many better things from Ancient Denmark to immortalize in a statue. Hamlet. Havarti cheese. In any case, I wanted to get rid of it, but then Driscoll pointed out that it had been the subject of numerous poor attempts at restoration, and the most authentic thing to do would be to remove the head. It’s much better now.
However, this isn’t a story about Driscoll’s taste in art. It’s about Hurley, and how a ghost is a special subset of dreaming. It’s about Hurley, and how I fell in love with him.
It wasn’t until we saw the fountain that I even remembered the vision. I hadn’t thought about the prophecies for years – in fact, I had shoved them to the back of my mind. At the time, I hadn’t come to terms with my gift. But then again, at the time, I’d only used the blue amrita once. It’s amazing to me that my old visions were as accurate as they proved to be despite the fact that I was using the impure vehicle.
I tilted my head, and the light caught the spray of the fountain at a certain angle, and I noticed his eyes. Ash always has the same eyes, no matter how many emanations he creates. For a moment, I was overwhelmed with a sense of déjà vu, of being at the fountain and realizing that I’d had the same revelation, that I knew those eyes. And then I remembered the vision where I had struggled to place them, but couldn’t quite make the connection between Daniel, the lover I believed dead, the man I had seen in repeated visions (who proved to be Ailann), and the man in this vision. But then suddenly, standing beneath that ridiculous mermaid, it hit me all at once – that I had foreseen this years ago, and more, that Hurley, husband number 24, was exactly the same man I always fell in love with.
And then he looked at me and smiled, because he can read my dreams. There wasn’t a heartbeat between the moment I fell, and the moment he caught me.
I grabbed his hand and walked quickly down the Stella Maris Hall. Suddenly I felt awkward. My hands were shaking. I’d seen him on several prior occasions, even slept with him. But then I’d needed his skills, enjoyed his company, taken the pleasure of his body. It was all different now; in an instant, the universe had gone belly-up.
I walked a bit too quickly, and then I halted, reflexively, without really noticing where I was. It was a moment before I saw that I had stopped in a place where I had stopped a hundred times before – the portrait of my parents.
My mother’s gaze was stern, impenetrable. She stood proudly, stiffly in her full dress battle armor. I had armor just like that – I knew how heavy it was. And yet for years of practicing while wearing it, I never knew its full weight until the Battle of Starbright Point, when we believed that the Cybrids would kill us all, when the mothman saved us and then the Atlas Tree was blown off the side of the mountain. I hadn’t been to see this portrait since then, all those years ago. My mother was a warrior. Now I understood.
My father was tanned from years of alternating between the harsh Siderian desert and Dolparessa’s pleasant beaches. He was an emperor of merchants and farmers – a suitable empire, as a Skarsian battlequeen might think, for a man. He wore a cloak of rich velvet, a purple almost black.
Behind them was a wall. Solid stone. No escape. His hand rested lightly upon her shoulder.
I remember wondering as a child if they had loved each other, and never got an answer, no matter who I asked. And now I realized that I knew. Whenever a girl was born with the blood of the Matriarchs, the 5th Matriarch had given the parents a chance to divorce. She didn’t want a repetition of the event. Too many rivals could be dangerous.
Christolea’s parents had complied. Mine hadn’t. If my uncle hadn’t lied to me about it, it had cost them their lives.
And then I felt my neck suddenly cold, even in the heat of Sideria, and realized that it was because, for the first time, Hurley’s gaze had left me. He was looking over my shoulder at the next painting, the painting of the Regent of Sideria, Cetin Urhu. That portrait was hung between the one of my parents, and the one of Ailann and myself, a painting with a story in its own right.
But Hurley wasn’t looking at my uncle’s portrait. I knew, because I remembered my vision. “You see his ghost,” I said.
Hurley jerked his attention back to me, startled. “Yes,” he said, “but you can’t see it…can you?”
“No,” I said, “but I know it’s there. I’ll explain later. But first, you should go and talk to him.”
I could feel Hurley’s grip on my hand tighten. “I don’t have anything to say to that man,” he said.
“You killed him. Well, Patrick did. You can at least be polite.” I had my own reasons. I wanted to ask if he had told me the truth – that he was not responsible for the deaths of my parents. When he was living, he’d have a reason to lie. But now the truth would suffice.
“I don’t have to speak to him,” said Hurley. “I can see his dreams.”
“Can a ghost have dreams?”
“A ghost is a dream, a dream so strong it can’t let go of life. I don’t know if you want to know what his dreams were.”
“Why not?”
Hurley’s eyes met mine. Such unspeakably kind eyes. My heart was all moist heat and motion, like the air wavering in the burning rays coming through the skylight. At that moment, I didn’t care about the past anymore.
“He loved your father. As a normal brother, I mean – not like Owen and Lugh. He hated both you and your mother because he blamed you for his brother’s death. He would’ve done anything to keep you from ruling because you carried the Matriarch’s blood, and he hated her most of all.”
I didn’t even think before speaking. I said, “Then Patrick was right to kill him.”
Hurley nodded. “Yes. He was.” He turned his head away quickly. But even with his hat and his thick, wavy hair to block me, I could still see that he was crying.
How many times will Ash cry because I won’t, or can’t?
I wanted to be away from here, away from this hall of ghosts. I wanted to turn towards the future with this tender dreamer at my side. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get some ice cream.”
“I can see their dreams, too. Your parents, that is. Your mother was so tired of fighting. She wanted you to be safe. That’s why she agreed to marry the Siderian Emperor. She didn’t want her children to have to fight, the way she did.”
“The Terror of Nightside-Elsinore wanted me to be safe. How ironic,” I replied. “How futile.” I’d been in, and won, wars far greater than my mother could have imagined. I expect I’ll be in many more.
“But your father,” said Hurley, “wanted you to be Matriarch.”