Page 1 of Never the Roses

1

The sorceress Oneira retired from the gilded courts of men after the last war. Her last war, that is, as she’d resolved to absent herself from such conflicts for the remainder of her life.

She built herself a house on a spit of land between the mountains and the sea, close enough to both that she could descend the long series of white steps to the pink-pebble beach below or follow the narrow trails left by forest animals through the hills rising behind. Large windows looked out in all directions, commanding views of the wave-tossed horizon, the snow-capped peaks, and the forest canopy between. She raised a tower with a single room at the summit and nothing in it, and topped it with a bubble of crystal she breathed into being like a dream that could never shatter.

Alone in that tower, she watched the sun rise and set, the stars spin into a diamond-splashed array of contained chaos. And she set her wards, meticulously guarding all approaches to her solitary fastness, especially the one road that led there from the world of men.

In this way, she lived at an intersection of the elements of nature. If she could remove that sole unnatural element, she would have. She loathed that pulsating scar through the forest left by the hungry axes of men, one last ugly link that rendered her forever tethered to their world of debts and allegiances and endless plotting. She didn’t care if she never saw another human being. Evenin their noisy, greedy midst, she’d been isolated in her power and her soul-ravaging sorrow.

At least now she would have silence.

Though wardmaking wasn’t the strongest of her skills, she didn’t concern herself overmuch. Her weakest ability—whether in drawing runes, mind-reading, divination, healing, and so forth—still exceeded the best most magic-workers could muster. Only someone like Stearanos Stormbreaker could outmatch her there, and only because he was a powerful chartomancer, able to channel his magic through runes of all kinds, particularly wards. And Stearanos, the nemesis she’d never met, had no reason to attack her and every reason not to. Especially now that she’d been freed of the blood geas that had bound her since childhood.

For the rest of the world, magically gifted and otherwise, her reputation was enough to terrify all who’d heard the tales, even the ones that hadn’t been liberally embroidered. Also, she’d been coldly clear as to the consequences of anyone who dared disturb her retirement. No one could or would dare trespass on the privacy of her exile.

So, no one did, for a very long time.

She found a solace of sorts in the silence that wasn’t silent at all, but simply devoid of idle chatter, angry debate, and the shouts and screams of the dying. Away from the crowded world of people, other sounds emerged. Oneira learned to appreciate the subtle harmonies of the crash of surf against the rocks far below, the sifting rustle of the leaves as the winds changed direction, wafting cold alpine air over the forest one moment, salt-drenched ocean warmth next.

Oneira had never been one to talk to herself. She’d learned the lesson early in her education to be very careful of what she put into words. For any sorcerer, but particularly a powerful oneiromancer like her, giving voice to thoughts gave them a tangiblereality that could lead to disastrous results. When Oneira spoke, she scrupulously said nothing of import or she deliberately shattered entire realms. It was far easier to say nothing at all, to allow the small sounds of the world to fill her ravaged, empty spaces.

She spent her days doing little. Nothing that affected the fate of anyone, let alone realms and entire populations. At most, she changed the course of fate for the fruits and vegetables in the garden she planted, learning what to do from the books she’d brought with her, working with her hands, using a bit of magic here and there. She’d sworn to never again use her sorcery at the behest of another, no matter who asked it of her, regardless of the reward offered or the threat levied, but that didn’t mean she’d forsaken magic altogether. She might as well attempt to stop breathing.

It might come to that, someday—stopping breathing, stoppingbeingaltogether. Although, within the healing silence of her white walls, that eventuality seemed far less likely than on the day she’d raised them, pulling what she needed from the Dream and meticulously shaping it all to fit more or less seamlessly into the waking world. Still, the imminent inevitability of death had weighed so heavily on her mind while she built her house that, when she finished, it occurred to her that she had created for herself a sort of massive tomb, a mausoleum for one occupant: her eventual corpse, no doubt perfectly preserved, given all the magic that had coursed through her mortal form.

The prospect of her death gave her no sense of sorrow, only a kind of warped delight at the image of herself lying on her back, hair streaming in a silver-threaded crimson river to the floor, no virginal princess, but a woman matured and molded by the cruelties of a lifetime, both dealt to her and dealt by her. Some prince might happen along, somehow evade her wards and traps—through the purity of his heart or some such; it was only a dream of a tale, after all—and attempt to awaken her with a kiss.

Whether her mythical would-be lover was motivated by true love or inconstant lust, it didn’t matter. Oneira had long passed any interest in such things. Though she remained awake and alive, her sexuality had fallen into deep slumber, if not killed along with the last remnants of her humanity.

Besides which, no sorcerer capable of laying such a deep enchantment would enable a simple key to unlock it. The prince would flail and curse the fates and go away disappointed. So much for heroic glory. Better for him to learn such things were the stuff of dreams, illusions only.

The image of that fairy-tale scene tickled her enough, however, that she’d giggled aloud. The sound echoed through the forming walls, halls, and archways of polished white stone, absurdly melodious given the deep grating despair of her thoughts. (She’d chosen white for obvious reasons: purity, simplicity, restfulness, atonement, a longing for an innocence forever lost.)

Unable to resist making one aspect of it real, Oneira searched the Dream and found a bier. Enough people dreamed about their own funerals in vivid detail that the pedestal needed little modification to blend into reality. She centered the bier in a large room that formed the heart of the house and created skylights, focusing them to shine upon the pedestal, spotlighting it with a touch of theatrical drama that would have been embarrassing, had there been anyone else to see it.

In the ensuing days, she took to laying fresh flowers upon her bier daily, first wildflowers that she picked on her rambles, later blossoms harvested from her increasingly bountiful garden. She arranged the flowers so they’d frame her corpse, so she could simply lie down, exhale her last breath, and have done. When the snows on the peaks behind the house crept low enough to sprinkle the garden with hints of frost, she dried blossoms and petals, storing enough to decorate the bier for an entire winter.The ritual of it pleased her. Someone would mourn her passing, even if it was only herself.

The laying of flowers on her bier also reminded her, in the haze of honeyed autumn, that she’d need food stores for the frozen months. Food from the Dream rarely tasted right and was never properly nutritious, being the stuff of dreams and not reality. She wouldn’t starve—she couldn’t die that easily, not from such a basic bodily need—but hunger distracted and annoyed her. It made her mind too muzzy to read, forcing her to descend from her tower to eat, or left her legs too weak to ascend the many stairs from the beach or the hills beyond where she roamed without purpose.

Knowing she’d feel more alert with a balanced diet, she searched the vast library she’d brought with her, some of the titles from her own lifelong collection, others she’d helped herself to when she left, figuring they owed her far more than that. She found a tome with instructions on agromancy, a field of magic she hadn’t learned. The academy that had purchased her life contract didn’t deal in such low-return employment as farming. Agromancers never earned enough to pay off the debt of their schooling, much less deliver a profit.

Oneira enjoyed learning the simple enchantments of growing food. Living things weren’t like the inanimate; nothing in the Dream was truly alive, not even the monsters extracted from nightmares and set loose in reality. Thus, she couldn’t bring plants from the Dream and expect them to be anything useful in the waking world. But basic agromancy, coaxing existing fruit trees, grains, and vegetables—and flowers for the bier, of course—to sprout and flourish fell easily within her abilities as a sorceress. Sometimes she smiled, thinking of the warlords who’d employed her world-scathing skills seeing her on hands and knees, planting seeds, soaking the soil with magic.

She also learned to take pleasure in working with her hands, making porridges from grains, brewing soups from vegetables, and baking bread from flour she ground with her own hands. In learning to feed herself, she discovered a kind of affection for her own body, a basic sensuality she’d lost along the way. She’d never again have a lover—that sort of thing did require another person—but she began to forgive her own failings in that realm, content to allow her libido to slumber on. She found a peace in puttering around in the kitchen she later added on to the house, the need for one never occurring to her when she built the original.

She, of course, could not bring herself to eat meat of any sort, not even the pearlescent oysters that perched amid the pink-rock tidepools along her narrow beach. All life had become precious to her here at the edge of the world, far too late for it to make any kind of difference. Regardless, she refused to kill ever again. She couldn’t undo what she’d done, but she could do that much.

Those simple things formed the bones, breath, and flesh of her days and nights. She nourished the garden, tinkered with recipes in the kitchen, arranged flowers on the bier. As impulse led her, she prowled the pink-pebble beach, or wandered the high hills, depending on how far the snowline crept down. The wildlife who shared her small, private realm—or, perhaps, it was more accurate to say she’d inserted herself into theirs—came to know her and ignored her presence, a restful novelty for her, who had always stood at the center of attention, usually the dangerous kind.

Where once a forest of birdsong had fallen silent at her approach, the feathered creatures now sang away. The sorceress who’d once frightened horses so badly that she couldn’t be near them, either to ride or be pulled in a carriage, now sat quietly with paper and ink, sketching the does and fawns in springtime as they grazed trustingly nearby. Her scintillating, sharp-edgedmagic had retracted its spines and settled around her into a soft cloak, harmful to none. She liked the feeling, though she didn’t care to examine the implications for herself as the battle sorceress she’d been or whatever kind of creature she’d become. So she encouraged the magic to wrap itself about her, making another layer of stillness and silence.

After some time—she’d lost track of how long in the seamless slide and tumble from season to season, all circling around to the same, yet different points—a visitor arrived. Not the hapless, yet heroic prince looking to awake his sleeping princess. It was too soon for his doomed attempt, Oneira not quite ready to lay herself upon the bier amid her flowers.

It happened on one of her rambles through the mountains, the full summer allowing her to hike higher and deeper, the meadows purple with wildflowers and the sky so close that wisps of clouds formed just above before whisking away again. As the afternoon wore on, those playful strands would weave together with dizzying speed, becoming storms with thunderous rain and lethal lightning akin to the sort she’d once brought out of the Dream and wielded with such unthinking destruction.

Oneira lowered her gaze from silent contemplation of the frisky clouds condensing white against blue and scattering again to find the creature there, without warning of its approach, watching her with keen intent.

It came as a bit of a shock, not being ignored after all that time. She almost looked around, about, behind herself, casting for the true object of its attention. But no, it sawher, standing as if pointing her out to some companion, all lean, alert hunter, canny, deep-blue gaze fixed on her and unmoving. Dangerous. Capable of dealing death, even to one such as herself.

---