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room he tossed and turned until
finally he banged his fist on the pillow in frustration. The mage
got up and stumbled across the stone floor until his foot kicked at
his travelling bag, full of supplies. He rummaged around for a few
seconds before finding what he was looking for. Going to the door
he locked it quietly and started unwrapping a small scrunched up
bit of bark-cloth. He stopped for a second to listen to the noises
of the night, and then quietly put a small bit of something on his
tongue. Farden went to the windowsill and stood there looking at
the dark forest outside his room. He closed his eyes and chewed,
and waited. After a while the mage felt the numb feeling gradually
climbing his spine, and the stuff began to sour in his mouth.
Farden spat, and heard the shadowy thoughts slowly quieten, felt
himself slowly forgetting. Before he felt too dizzy he grabbed a
nearby candlestick and wedged the bundle of bark-cloth into its
hollow base. With a thud he put the candlestick back on the bedside
table and let his world begin to melt. His head felt heavy and his
breathing slowed as the drug started to make his head spin. Farden
fell back onto his bed with a bang and slowly let sleep take him
hostage, all problems forgotten.
     
    The mage was in a desert. The
thought that he might not have ever seen a desert had not yet
occurred to him, but he stood in a desert nonetheless, and lifted
his hands to the feel the hot rays of the strange red sun dance
across his skin. He wore only his trousers and the red-gold
vambraces, and his feet were bare. The cracked dusty earth quivered
and shook in the heat. Pebbles floated from side to side and tried
to hide from him. In the haze of the distance the horizon was
darkened by huge black mountains scraping at the heavens. Farden
looked up and around him, in all directions, he had never seen a
sky so big, so massive, or so empty and blue.
    He felt something scratching at
his leg and looked down to find a skinny black cat impatiently
clawing at him. The thing mewed at him, and yawned cavernously, a
yawn too big for a cat that small, he thought, and he stared, and
watched the thing scratch about. It fixed him with an obsidian
gaze, eyes like two black scrying mirrors, and cocked its head on
one side.
    ‘What?’ asked Farden, but
nothing happened. Then, slowly at first, he became aware of his
skin starting to tingle and shiver, and sparks of pain began to
shoot up his arms, as if he had slept on them for too long.
Confused, Farden looked down to see flakes of burning skin peel
from his hands and wrists in great quantities, his arms and chest
started to brown and blacken, and the veins and arteries under the
skin melted into rivers of fire. His vambraces cracked and
splintered into pieces before his eyes, and fell to the dusty earth
with a dull clang that reverberated and roared and became an
unbearable noise in his ears, like the mountains were dragging
themselves forward, towards him, inch by inch, closing in. He
lifted his hands to his face and felt the charred bone underneath,
and watched shreds of flaming skin fill the air like a swarm of
locusts in the sudden hot wind. Farden opened his mouth to scream
but his tongue was too dry, and refused to move, and sat
smouldering between his black teeth. Before his eyes were burned
away, he looked down at the cat. It stared at him with a placid,
bored look, then its tiny mouth seemed to curl into a smile. The
mage heard a voice in his head speak clearly over the fire and the
roaring wind.
    Follow the
dragons , said the voice, and then the wind swallowed
him.
     
    Sunlight streamed in through
the open window, piercing the sleeping mage’s eyelids like a yellow
spear, and sending a spark of pain jolting through his skull.
Farden swore darkly and hoisted himself out of bed. Remnants of a
dreams swirled around him, and dissolved to nothing in the morning
light. Soon there was a knock on the door and Elessi came in to the
cold room holding a small