The Jarl's Son, Chapter 14-1
Through the Dreamer's Eyes, Part 1
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When Marten decided he would attempt to contact Renald in his dreams a few days ago, the sensations he might experience when that happened weren’t among the things he’d considered. His assumption was that he would wake and Renald would appear before him, or that the fox would simply appear in his mind and tell him what he needed to know. What he hadn’t expected, for indeed the hadn’t once crossed his mind, was that the whole of his consciousness would cross over into a nightmare that would feel real in every way save his ability to interact with the scene around him. Anytime he attempted to place his hands on something or someone within the burning remains of the razed village, he would simply pass through as if they, or he, didn’t exist.
Truth be told, he hadn’t thought to try that either, not until he started speaking with Renald about what he’d just seen. The little fox had already mentioned that this dream was originally Gaiur’s. He’d apparently bore witness to it when she reached out to his aid in curing Erik’s ailment. “Nightmares of such intensity are rare and oft dangerous things when had by sensitive folk such as Gaur,” he had said, though Marten wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by ‘sensitive folk.’ “I took great pains then to commit what I was seeing to memory. Call it a sixth sense if you will, but I had the distinct feeling I’d be drawn to this frightful place again. The difference, of course, is that I expected to find her here instead of yourself.”
That was actually the third time Renald mentioned that difference. “You repeat yourself a lot, don’t you?” Marten replied with a wry grimace, to which Renald confirmed that Gaiur had made similar remarks when they first met.
After that, Renald led Marten away from the nightmare itself. Once they reached its edge, they drifted a short ways off into the surrounding darkness and the fox explained the situation as concisely as he could manage. Naturally talkative as he was, that seemed to be something of a challenge for him, but Marten was able to get the gist of the fox’s explanation fairly quickly. Renald explained what the nature of the nightmare was, a recurring dream of Gaiur’s that seemed to show a raid that the Red Bear had led sometime in the past. When asked why she kept having this dream, Renald told Marten that it had to do with her destiny as a Night Hunter, someone chosen to hunt down and dispatch darksome fiends like the shadow adder that caused Erik’s affliction.
The explanations continued in this manner thenceforth, at least until Marten felt like he had a firm enough understanding of the what’s and why’s of the scene he witnessed to form a clear idea in his mind. Renald was amazed at just how quickly the young warrior was able to grasp the rather esoteric things he was trying to explain. The nature of dreams and nightmares, as well as the realm in which they existed, were usually difficult for people to comprehend. As a creature who was of these realms, the various ways in which the dream realms behaved felt perfectly natural and reasonable. As a realm of existence whose governing rules were simultaneously affected by and drawn from the subconsciousness of any and all who dreamed, what appeared within its seemingly endless emptiness was often idiosyncratic. Yet, this was by design, and it was his knowledge of that design that enabled him to function as a dream guide.
Generally speaking, all but the most fey of dreamers tended to struggle with recognizing the hallmarks of that hidden design. Dwarves, rare to see these days due to their limited number, had particular trouble with this and frequently found themselves lost and confused by the surface level chaos of the dream realm. Humans, in all their many varieties, tended toward a similar struggle with nightmares in particular. However, where dwarves found challenge in how the surface chaos of all dreams stood in stark contrast to the strict orderliness they tended towards, the human struggle was strangely the result of their enduring adaptability. Human nightmares tended toward the existential, often assailing them with visions and sensations directly targeted at their deepest uncertainties, anxieties, and the most primal of their fears. Indeed, this was the reason why dream guides were sent to lead humans out of the clutches of particularly dangerous nightmares far more than any other creature in the whole of creation.
Marten proved to be a surprising exception to this. Even when considering the fact that this was Gaiur’s nightmare, though Renald had yet to reconcile why Marten was experiencing it instead of her, his ability to calmly accept and understand what he beheld here was truly remarkable. Quite the opposite of how Gaiur first responded to these things, particularly when compared with her reaction to the artificial nightmare created by the witch of Jötungatt. Then again, Marten’s life wasn’t in imminent danger from this nightmare the way Gaiur’s was a few years ago.
Even so, as Marten attempted to explore and interact with the nightmare before him and found that, much like Gaiur, he was unable to directly engage with it, Renald was stricken by how easily he’d adapted to this strange situation. Indeed, he’d expected far more in the way of confusion and frustration. Which was to say, he’d expected Marten to react as Gaiur used to.
What Renald hadn’t realized was that his perception was being colored by a small failing on his own part. His surprise was based on two things. Firstly, that Marten had never experienced a nightmare in this manner before. Second was the fact that Marten had no acumen or ability with forces arcane, be they learned, gifted, or natural born. His existence was, though Renald didn’t dare say it aloud for fear of him taking it as insult, thoroughly mundane.
Yet there was a key difference between Marten and Gaiur which the silvery dream fox had utterly failed to consider, and that was the matter of their upbringing. Though ostensibly similar in that both were human and Stenisian, Renald’s own naturally solitary existence as a dream guide left him with a blind spot which he’d never had reason to consider: the many differences in human cultures.
Despite their similarities, Gaiur and Marten came from entirely different backgrounds. Where Gaiur was raised in a far northern village by a people steeped in superstition and hardened by the day to day struggles of surviving their harsh environs, Marten was the son of a Jarl and grew up in what was, by Stenisian standards, a rather large city. This difference in their lives and livelihoods gave Marten access to a level of training and education that Gaiur never had. Coupled with his service both as a soldier under his father and as the captain of Halvfjord’s city guard, teaching and experience alike had given Marten all he needed to remain calm and collected in high pressure situations. This skill set had further been tempered by his recent experiences with the shadow adder and Gaiur’s disappearance.
Renald’s own existence wasn’t solely lived alone, of course. His role as a dream guide meant he interacted with others regularly, but this was almost always on a one to one basis. To date, he’d never once encountered more than one non hostile being in a dream. Similarly rare were his encounters with other dream guides, which were all but universally relegated to those brief moments between one dream’s end and another’s beginning.
As such, Renald had little reason to consider the cultural differences between humans. Since his interactions took place on a strictly one to one basis, his needs revolved around connecting with whichever individual was under his charge at any given time. Without having to worry about the clashes that might come from guiding multiple people, he’d never had to take much notice of the differences that could spark them beyond his own need to ensure his charges felt he was trustworthy.
However quickly he caught on, though, Marten still had his fair share of questions. Upon returning to the scene of the nightmare, he began inspecting what he could of the village. This was the moment when he realized that for all he could sense within the nightmare’s visible border, from the sights, sounds, and malodorous scents of the carnage; to the heat of the fires that consumed the farmhouses; to the metallic taste of blood on the air; he wasn’t able to directly interact with any of it. Crouched beside the body of a slain and trampled young man, he’d attempted to grab the shaft of an arrow which was lodged in the muddy soil beside him. His hand passed through it as if it had never existed.
“You’ll find that’s going to be quite difficult,” Renald called out as he scampered up alongside Marten. “Interacting with one’s own dream can be a challenge at the best of times, but interacting with another’s is nigh on impossible.”
“You’ve had others end up in dreams which weren’t theirs?” Marten asked.
Nodding, Renald said, “Thrice before today, though one was a particularly unique exception.”
Marten was scanning the space with his eyes, his attention divided. After a lengthy pause he finally asked, “Unique how?”
“It was where I met Gaiur,” Renald replied, quickly explaining how he found Gaiur in the alien half-nightmare space created by the witch of Jötungatt.
“That being said,” he continued, “your case is rather unique as well.”
One again Marten’s attention was divided, leading to another extended pause. This time he was making his way deeper into the burning village, to that bloodstained place where the Red Bear was conducting his dark ritual on the women he’d captured. Most lay dead in the aftermath, either with their naked chests and collars stained in blood from having their throats cut, or their faces turned purple and swollen as killed by suffocating poison. Only one among them still lived; the expectant mother with chestnut haired and piercing blue eyes.
“How am I different?” Marten called back.
“Because the other two were wizards, after a fashion. They’d fallen into dreams which weren’t theirs by clumsily toying with powers they didn’t fully understand and other such nonsense like that,” Renald replied.
Marten was only half listening as he approached the weeping woman. Caked in mud and made dirtier still by the strange symbols the reavers drew on her with the blood of those they slew, her tears and filth weren’t enough to disguise her beauty. Round faced with a button nose and high cheekbones, she had a warm comeliness to her that made Marten’s stomach twist into angry knots from seeing it defiled like this. This wasn’t particularly strange on its own. Death and violence on this scale were hardly enjoyable things to witness, but this was far from the only time he’d seen brutal displays of savagery. He’d become good at accepting them for the reality they were, using the results of similar slaughters as motivation not only to bring those who partook in such savagery to justice, but to do what he could to prevent it.
He always felt those pangs harder when it came to women, and he always supposed that had something to do with his nature not just as a soldier and leader, but as a man. To his mind, protecting others was his highest duty, and that was particularly true of those he tended to view as less able to protect themselves, which were usually women and children. Part of him attributed this to his upbringing. Jarl Ostock believed similar things and he imparted those beliefs onto Marten at a young age. Marten joined him in this when it came to helping him raise Erik, too. Yet deep down, Marten always knew that there was more to it. Though he rarely faced the thought, he knew that his mother’s untimely death in childbirth was the real reason his feelings here were so fervent.
Wounded or dying women, or worse yet those who’d been sexually assaulted by just the sorts of brigands and dastards Marten helped put down over the years, had sadly not been an uncommon sight in his life. Nor, for that matter, were the murders and abuses heaped on innocent men and children. He always felt strongly for these people, always grieved silently for what they endured. Yet this was different. He wasn’t sure if it was something to do with the dream or if it was a trick being played by his own mind, but familiar somehow. Crueler. More personal. For some reason when he looked upon this woman whom he didn’t know, he felt a warming kindness inside of her going cold as it died.
“Who is she?” Marten asked Renald.
Seated beside him, the fox let out a deep breath and gave a little shake of his head. “I’m afraid I don’t really know, other than she’s one of the people the dream insisted Gaiur see,” he answered.
“What does that mean?”
“Well, when I first witnessed this dream back when Gaiur contacted me, I swiftly realized its nature as a vision partly because she, much like you, was only able to observe,” Renald said. “In fact, to my very great surprise, she’d been even more restricted than you are now, as she had no real physical form to speak. She was, in essence, forced to witness whatever it was the dream intended for her to see at any given moment. This woman, whoever she is, was one of those things.”
“Then do you know what happens to her?”
Again, Renald shook his head. “Alas, no. I’m not sure even Gaiur is aware of that.”
Marten’s brow knotted into a tight frown. The longer he watched, the more he realized that he couldn’t shake that strange feeling of familiarity. Kneeling down in front of the young woman, he tried to get a closer look at her face. Perhaps she was one of the farmers who’d fled to Halvfjord a few weeks ago? Her hair was similar to the young woman Ida, and Ida did have an infant daughter. But Ida was slimmer, her face less round, and her eyes weren’t the same color. A case of mistaken identity? No, that was too easy an explanation for this.
As if to confirm that very suspicion, something happened which neither Renald nor Marten would’ve expected. Pushing herself up onto her hands, the woman leaned back to look up into the smoke filled sky. However, as she did, her gaze passed over Marten’s face. The last time Renald had seen the dream, when he found Gaiur within it, the woman had turned her head back and forth while spewing insults at her assailants and never once had she stopped to register Gaiur’s presence, even though her gaze passed over the place she occupied many times.
This time, she did. This time, as she lifted her head, she stopped midway and she gave a wide-eyed gasp. Then, scrambling back the length of a single stride, she stared directly into Marten’s face and said, “Who are you?”
Thank you for reading.
The Jarl’s Son sees Gaiur the Valdunite return to embark on a new adventure and acts as the follow-up to my dark fantasy mystery tale, In the Giant’s Shadow. The previous story isn’t required reading to understand and enjoy this tale, but doing so will enhance the experience.
My first novella, In the Giant’s Shadow, is available for purchase! Lured to the sleepy farming community of Jötungatt by a mysterious white raven, Gaiur the Valdunite soon finds herself caught in a strange conspiracy of ritual murder and very real nightmares.
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Marten the dream stalker? The story was interesting, now it got more interesting.