Dreamstrider Read Online Free PDF

impressed if he knew how little I really achieved.
    He closes his eyes for a moment before he speaks again. “You know, the Dreamer gave me dreams of you last night.”
    Perhaps to a Farthinger, or anyone unfamiliar with Barstadt ways, such a statement would unsettle or even allure. I’m told other nations find it rude to speak of dreams—that all but the dreamer finds them insufferably dull. But in Barstadt our dreams are sacred, and we share them as readily as we’d share a greeting or a comment on the weather. In the northern isles, I hear they only worship in great halls, surrounded by their gods; Barstadters worship in every street and parlor and corner shop when we speak of the dregs of night.
    “You were an oak tree,” Brandt says, “surrounded by mothwood in a field—”
    “An oak tree?” I laugh, and pinch at my scrawny forearm.
    He grins and nudges me with his shoulder. “I’m serious. Your roots went all the way into Oneiros, just like the mothwood that grew around you. The dreamworld nourished you. You glowed and glowed in the forest, filled with a light from the Dreamer himself.”
    Maybe he thinks it is a sweet reaffirmation of my talents as a dreamstrider, but I know the truth—I’d nearly succumbed to the siren call of the Nightmare Wastes. They’d been so much more insistent than I’ve ever found them before. I’ve always been able to shrug them off, but this time, they’d gotten their hooks into me.
    Reading the scowl on my face, Brandt’s smile dims and he edges toward me until our knees touch. “Liv.” His gaze holds mine. “Are you feeling all right?”
    I break his gaze and lean into the wind, letting it toss my curls around. Something to make me feel alive, solid, real—far from the bodiless soul who nearly got gobbled up by the Wastes. “I pushed too hard, is all.” I’m about to say I’ll know better next time , but I suspect I said exactly that after the Incident.
    “Our mission’s complete. We learned what we needed to know and escaped without giving ourselves away.” He laughs to himself—still the goofy young spy in training I met eight years ago. It makes me want to laugh, too. “When we get back, why don’t you ask Professor Hesse to help you work on your dreamstriding technique?”
    My innards are all knotted up. I hate keeping things from Brandt, but maybe I’m only imagining the Nightmare Wastes’ new strength. Memories of their frosty reach prick at my thoughts again, and the sun is too low to bake the chill away.
    Brandt studies me with those thunderstorm eyes. “Liv?” he repeats. “Is there something else?” That mischievous glint in his gaze always sees through me.
    “I’m just…” I glance out to sea, but the sun is fast slipping into the waves. “I wish we could have gotten more information, that’s all. That I could have done more.”
    “Well, this isn’t like breaking up street gangs and gambling dens.” He rests one hand on my knee; heat rises on my face, making me grateful for the twilight. “Of course it’s difficult. Maybe we could’ve both been better prepared, but we found out the Iron Winds’ plans, didn’t we?”
    But it’s not my lack of training. Doesn’t he know this? I may be the only dreamstrider, but I’m a sorry excuse for one. Dreamer knows how hard I try; how often I sink into the cleansing pools of his temples and pray for a little more grace and cleverness. I pray that someday I’ll be worthy of my gift.
    This has not been such a day.
    “You’re right. I just … wish I could do more,” I say. “Think on my feet like you, or even—”
    “We each have our gifts. And I always believe in you.” Even when the others don’t , I imagine him thinking.
    I force myself to lean back and shrug. “I’m more concerned about the Barstadter. Did you get a closer look at her?” I ask.
    He nods, letting his golden mop of hair scatter across his brow. “She’d gone to a sitting parlor back behind the dais. She was