1. The Traveler (Patreon)

The Lions of Dawrtaine begins!

------

The moon sleeps on her back, just a sliver in the sky. A handful of clouds sail past like ladies in their long dresses. The spirit of a dragon soars among them, flying through their misty garments. The woman he follows isn’t some dainty lady. She runs with a fierce animal joy matching his own, making a game of weaving between the trees. Her name is Hallon Nilsdotter, and her steps are as swift as any hunter’s. She smells of fire and human sweat.

Hallon breaks from the trees and leaps the low rock wall surrounding a farm. A field opens before her, dotted with newly cut hay. A motorized tractor sits in front of the sleeping farmhouse. She leaps another rock wall and is back in the woods, her pace not slowing. All her focus is on the coordination of body and breath as she navigates through the dark countryside. It’s almost enough to make Eratosthenes feel envy. He sends her the feeling of it, and though their purpose is serious, she laughs, amused that a dragon should feel envy for anything.

She shares her senses with him—of finding a stream and the feeling of scrabbling on the loose stones before settling into the dish-dash rhythm of running over uneven terrain. The way the trees loom and disappear and how her lungs strain with the effort of running. Of the fire flowing through her limbs.

He sends back the view from above—the landscape covered by night’s blanket. The lake ahead is an inky spot dotted with the stars’ reflections. Together, their senses still mingled, they arrive at the thin beach surrounding the lake. Hallon slows to a more wary pace, while Eratosthenes drops down for a better look. Not fifty yards away, a woman sits on the sand and stares out at the water. She’s squat and round, and the simple dress she wears doesn’t hide the fact that she’s missing her legs. They end in stumps just below her hips. The lake is visible through her transparent body. She is as incorporeal as Eratosthenes.

Hallon’s thoughts are tinged with curiosity. What’s this? Were we expecting a ghost?

Not a ghost, Eratosthenes says. She’s a traveler. And from the smell of her, from a long way away.

Interesting. Hallon licks her lips. There are countless universes existing in parallel, and it’s not uncommon for spirits to travel between them. She wouldn’t happen to be a neighbor of yours?

No, I’d recognize her scent if she were, Eratosthenes says.

It would’ve been nice if things were simple for once, Hallon says.

Eratosthenes laughs. When are our lives ever simple?

Hallon grins. True. But that still leaves us with a mystery. Who is she and what’s her connection to the Calamity?

I have a novel idea, Eratosthenes says, grinning back. How about we talk to her and find out?

Now see, this is why dragons have a reputation for—

Being brilliant, Eratosthenes offers.

For being condescending, Hallon says, still smiling. But you’re right. We’ll only learn so much from watching.

She dusts herself off and steps out onto the beach. The scent of fire within her grows as she gets ready to fight if necessary. For all the banter between them, years of searching have lead to this moment; ever since a certain night in Prague.

“Hey,” Hallon says.

The traveler looks out at the water. Her face is tired, and the dark splotches around her eyes hide the smile lines that would normally be there.  “Hells,” she says under her breath. “Am I lost after all?”

Hallon recognizes the language—it’s Arabic. She’s a bit rusty but gives it a try. “Peace be with you.”

“Foolish woman,” the traveler says to herself, “you’ve blundered again.” She shakes her head. “How am I supposed to find Nilsdotter and Rabbit like this? We need them. Dawrtaine needs them.”

Hallon startles at the mention of her name and touches the traveler’s arm.

The traveler shivers in response. “They’ll all die if I fail. What am I going to do?” Her desperation grows, wafting up from her spirit body like heat shimmering on desert sands.

A vision comes to Hallon. The beach disappears, replaced with a view from the air of a city surrounded by white walls and wind turbines. A dried riverbed runs through it, crooking the city in half. The only movement is a yellow-green cloud moving along its streets. Wherever it touches, people and things die. The cloud reacts to Hallon’s presence and reaches for her.

The hackles along the back of Hallon’s neck rise, and the fire in her surges, but before anything else can happen, the traveler starts to cough. The hacking grows worse and worse. “Damn. Damn. I can’t hold—” she says and disappears, leaving the beach suddenly, startlingly clear.

###

The village is small, but famous for the quality of its wool and its public house. The sign out front boasts that it first opened in 1856, almost seventy years ago. Hopefully that means the food is good. Hallon’s been running all night and all day searching for signs of the spirit traveler.

Frustration leaks into her emotions, and Hallon checks to make sure it doesn’t interfere with the the magical array surrounding her. It’s a small misdirection, making her features appear more angular, and anyone looking should see a pretty boy of about sixteen with hair the color of summer wheat. She wears a gray work shirt and pants, and her hair, already cut short in a bob, is pinned under a newsboy cap.

Inside, Hallon finds a seat by the smoking fireplace, under a painting of an old hound standing by a stream. The brass plate underneath reads, Henry. The bartender comes out from behind his bar, while the other patrons watch him approach the stranger in town.

“You’re—”

“Just passing through,” Hallon says, adopting a Gaelic accent. Feelings are still running hot three years after Ireland claimed its independence from Britain, and she wants to blend in if she can. “Not causing any trouble and not looking for any either. All I want is a meal and a place to think.”

“No trouble, eh?” The bartender scratches his neck. “All right then, thinking’s free, and we’ve got mutton stew with carrots and turnips. There’s also buttered lake fish.”

“I’ll take the stew.”

“A pint with that?”

Hallon shakes her head. “I want to think clearly.”

“You can pay?”

She’d exchanged gold for paper money in Dublin and puts a handful on the table. The bartender grunts and goes to get the stew. With the show over, the other patrons go back to their drinks. They leave her alone to do her thinking.

It started twelve years ago. Hallon had been visiting Prague, staying at a hotel on the Vtlava, when a vision came to her while sleeping. It was a simple dream—of a cloud obscuring the night sky, swallowing the stars as it passed—but it filled her with such dread that she’d jumped out of bed. Her nightgown was damp with sweat and her heart beating so hard, she was sure the people in the next room would hear it.

Hallon’s earliest training was in the ways of the vǫlur, the shamans and seers of old Sweden, and she recognized the dream for what it was—prophecy. And wasn’t the air that year already full of omens? All the European powers were vying against each other. Everyone knew a war was coming, and Hallon’s first thought was that the dream signaled a particularly nasty one.

She’d been right and wrong.

The war was terrible—the Great War stretched across Europe and Asia. Men fought and died by the millions, while in the spirit realm guardians and shadows struggled against each other, one side aiming for peace and the other suffering. Surely, such events were worthy of prophecy. But when peace finally came with the armistice, so did the prophecy again—that very night, stronger than ever. It’s stalked her since, and she and Eratosthenes have taken to calling it the Calamity. They’ve gathered a handful of clues along the way, but nothing meaty enough to act on. Not until they ran into the Green Witch in Dublin.

The witch was following her own set of clues, traveling from another universe on a mission for her coven. She told them a name she’d found in her search—Lough Gur, a small lake south of Limerick—and a date—July 29, 1924. Hallon pounced on the opportunity and offered to be the witch’s local guide; explaining the world and its customs to the visitor.

The encounter at Lough Gur was supposed to be their long-awaited breakthrough, but it turned out to be only another clue. Hallon slams her fist against the table The bartender frowns in her direction and the farmers glance her way. She takes a breath to calm herself, to rein in her emotions once more.

The air in the pub changes, partly a shift in the murmur of conversation, partly the faint scent of earth and forest. The Green Witch must’ve arrived. They’re due to meet tonight. Hallon closes her eyes and sends her spirit wandering.

The barkeep and his patrons fade like ghosts. To them, she’ll look like she’s dozed off, while in the spirit realm, vines crawl over the pub’s floor and walls to herald the Green Witch’s entrance. An oak tree extends its branches through the windows. Moss stretches across Hallon’s table—soft, furry, and damp.

The Green Witch walks through the door. She comes from a universe that Hallon’s never traveled to, but from her stories, her version of Earth is covered in forests. Her real name is Mary Featherwise, and she’s a middle-aged woman with walnut hair gone gray at the temples. She wears an emerald linen dress and carries a rowan staff.

“Well, that didn’t go well,” she says, setting her staff aside to sit.

Hallon sighs. “You heard?”

“The vervain told me,” Mary says, looking around. “Where’s that dragon of yours?”

“One,” Hallon says, “he’s not mine, and two—”

“I’m right here.” Eratosthenes is a master of manipulating spirit energy and appears at the table in his human shape—a tallish man with a sharp chin, aquiline nose, and dark eyes. His black hair is straight and slicked back. He wears dark pants and a white shirt with a light ruffle at his throat. A ruby is pinned at the collar. He winks at Hallon through their connection.

Mary does a fair job of pretending she wasn’t startled. “The, ah, vervain told me that the traveler knew Hallon’s name.”

“I didn’t recognize her,” Hallon says. “Or the city in the vision that came from meeting her.”

Eratosthenes shakes his head. “Both are new to me, as well, and we’re certain that there’s nowhere named Dawrtaine on this world. We’d have recognized it if it were.”

“Can you show me?” Mary asks.

The vines on the floor slither to bring Mary a polished wooden bowl filled with water. The vervain, a woody bush dotted with white and purple flowers, comes to her like a dog to its master’s side. Mary picks five of the flowers and puts them, one by one, into the water.

Hallon feels the memory come loose from her spirit body. The flowers take hold of it and pull it into the water, fogging the surface at first, before revealing the city from Hallon’s vision. Wind turbines stand on its walls, but their blades are still. A cloud moves along its streets.

“There,” Mary says. “Show me that.”

Once again, the cloud kills all it touches, choking everything in its path. Yellow-green tendrils slip along the streets and alleys, bumping into the edges of the bowl where they feel along the walls keeping them in. They tentatively rise out of the water, before eagerly spilling over onto the table. The moss withers at their touch.

Mary takes up her staff and raps it hard against the floor. “Enough.”

More of the cloud spills over, spreading across the tabletop, and Hallon wonders if she or Eratosthenes will need to intervene, but Mary raps her staff again. “I said enough!”

The cloud slows and its flow reverses until it’s once more contained by the bowl. The water clears, revealing five shriveled flowers.

“I—I didn’t think that was possible.” Mary’s brows furrow. She’s newer to the hunt and hasn’t seen yet what the Calamity is capable of.

Eratosthenes hovers a finger over the now-scarred table. “Impossible is a state of mind,” he says, “so change your thinking.”

“When we first started this search,” Hallon says, more gently, “we consulted a seer, a woman named Thera. She was a bit traditional—dark robes, blind, but powerful nonetheless. We asked her for help, because I was having a hard time seeing the Calamity clearly.” Hallon clenches her fists under the table. “The vision killed her, from the inside. We watched her choke to death, tried to drive the influence out, but whatever it was, it had her in its grip and wouldn’t let go. So no, it’s not impossible. No one else has been willing to help. You’re the first.”

Which says something about either her courage or intelligence, Eratosthenes says.

Shush, Hallon says. You could say the same about us.

Point taken. Eratosthenes pulls his hand back from the table. “Whatever is animating this cloud is eager to spread its influence. We don’t know exactly why Hallon has been immune so far, but we suspect it’s because her visions have been obscure.”

“The stronger the connection, the greater the danger?” Mary asks.

Hallon nods. “At first, we thought the cloud was a sign of the chemical weapons used in this world’s Great War, but that turned out to be too simple an answer.”

Eratosthenes continues her line of thought. “The threat is and is not the cloud. We’ve seen it killing people, but the real danger is the power behind it. That one is able to spread its influence across the boundaries between universes.”

“Like a cloud swallowing the stars,” Hallon says.

“The question is,” Mary says, thinking, “what is the nature of this power? And how do we stop it?”

That’s two questions, Eratosthenes thinks.

I said shush. Hallon pokes him through their connection. Keeping the conversation on track, she says, “And what about the gods? I understand that things may be too dangerous for the other guardians, but you’d think the gods would do something.”

The three of them look at each other.

“It’s probably a test,” Eratosthenes says. “Or a way for them to protect their people. Or both. Or something else entirely. They mentate at such a high level, who knows what they’re trying to accomplish.”

“Clairvoyance is out,” Mary says. “Too dangerous.”

“Is it?” Eratosthenes taps a finger against his chin. “What if we poke around the edges and don’t confront the Calamity directly?”

Hallon considers the idea. “Our best lead is Dawrtaine.”

“The traveler,” Eratosthenes says, “also mentioned someone named Rabbit.”

The water ripples in the bowl, and an image appears. The boy is 16 or 17 years old. His skin is the color of lightly-steeped tea, and his short hair looks like it’s been blown by the wind. In the background, steam blasts from a train engine. He’s distracted and trips. The crowd helps him up, dusts him off. Some men, not much older, laugh. Above them, a sign reads: Welcome to Sacramento. The image fades.

“That wasn’t the vervain,” Mary says carefully.

Hallon can’t quite keep the surprise out of her voice. “It wasn’t?”

Eratosthenes smiles. “Interesting. Perhaps the gods haven’t forsaken us after all.”

###

That night, in a bedroom rented from a lonely widow, Hallon glances at Eratosthenes sitting in the room’s only chair. You were picking on Mary.

I couldn’t help myself. She tries so hard.

She’s an ally.

And I honor her for it.

Can’t you be nice?

Nice? Neither of us is nice, my dear.

All right. Good. Be good.

I am good.

You know what I mean.

I do.

Hallon throws a pillow, but it passes through Eratosthenes. You’re so frustrating sometimes.

It’s my nature.

You’re incorrigible too.

That’s been said before.

By me and many others, I’m sure. Hallon sighs. Do you really think we’ll ever find the source of the Calamity?

Yes. I’d bet on it.

That’s a sure thing then. She yawns and gets under the bed's covers. Good night. See you in the morning.

He smiles at her. Till then, the sweetest dreams.