Page 10 of Never the Roses

Eventually, after spiraling in a search pattern through hundreds of thousands of minds, she found some Veredians. Fortunately, people tend to gather like to like, and she found more people linked to those. After that, however, it took nearly as long to find anyone who knew much about the elusive roses, much less anyone still growing them. A search of that specificity for something so rare required that she delve into minds far more deeply than she liked.

At one point, she glanced upon someone dreaming of the Veredian roses on Govirinda, the dream symbols full of grief and rage for what had happened to the place, redolent of the anguish of having lost a home forever. Oneira extracted herself immediately from that mind, thought it may have given her clues, unable to take the risk of losing her own control to the consuming memories. All the time, Adsila remained a still and steady presence on her shoulder.

Rattled by that encounter, Oneira began to tire. Also, the control required to search all those minds without affecting them and from being in the Dream for so long drained her magical and mental stamina. She might have to resume the search the following night. She hesitated to do that because it would take so much time to find her way back to these far-flung dreamers. Besides, she wanted to drop off the replacement book to Stearanos’s library, to close that loop and be done with the debt. She disliked the irritating feeling of having unfinished business there, fully acknowledging it was her own cursed fault for starting it. She supposed she could do that without obtaining her rose first, but she wanted to be able to tweak the Stormbreaker’s nose with her triumph where he had failed, even if only she knew about it.

She’d very nearly resolved to withdraw from the Dream, lest she tire too much and lose her anchor to the portal, relegating herself to becoming one of the lost wraiths forever trapped there, when she found it. An ancient woman dreamed vividly of gliding through a snow-covered garden blooming with lavender roses on black-emerald thornbushes. Veredian roses.

At last.Oneira stepped through into the woman’s location, immediately closing the doorway behind her so nothing from the Dream would leak into the waking world, and keeping a mental thumb on it, much like marking her page with a finger in an otherwise closed book.

In the close darkness, she surveyed the small dwelling, which smelled of soil and green leaves. It wasn’t the opulent palace she’d expected, some noble’s castle with a collection of the rare and fabulous, along with an experienced gardener dedicated to preserving the roses, but rather the modest home of a humble person devoted to their passion.

Though she’d have liked to waken the sleeping woman and talk with her—and where did that impulse come from? Oneira hadn’t wanted to converse with anyone at all in ages—she instead cast a light enchantment to ensure the gardener slept on undisturbed. Strolling outside, Oneira took in the elaborate nighttime garden with raised brows, Adsila giving a chirp that sounded delighted.

Here was the lavishness she’d expected. To this person, the interior didn’t matter except as shelter for sleeping and storing necessities. This woman truly lived outside, in this extravagant garden that went on forever. Oneira could spend days exploring it and, much as she loved the gentle cloak of night, she briefly regretted that she couldn’t see it in daylight.

She also worried about the time it would take to find the roses in such an expansive garden. It seemed she’d have to return thenext night after all. At least she knew the pathway now, which would all allow her to travel more directly. She sighed. Ah well, however much time it took, she’d find her roses eventually.

“How did you come to be here, Dreamthief?” the old woman asked behind her in the language of Oneira’s homelands.

Oneira turned in considerable surprise. The woman should not have been able to shake off the enchantment at all, much less without Oneira feeling the spell break. The woman stood with a straight spine, though her gnarled hand gripped a walking stick made of polished blackthorn, and she gazed at Oneira with penetrating, dark eyes, her long hair cascading around her in the moonlight shades of age.

“Why would the Dreamthief visit my humble garden?” the woman mused. “And with the avatar of She Who Eats Bears on her shoulder.”

This woman presented quite the puzzle. She possessed no magic, but she’d shaken off Oneira’s enchantment as if it were cobwebs and she knew things no common person should—including Oneira’s identity. Though it should be no surprise that the person who managed to grow practically extinct roses that bloomed only at midwinter could navigate magic in unusual ways.

The woman laughed and waggled a finger at Oneira. “I will have answers from you, child. Cat got your tongue?”

Oneira finally found her tongue, not stolen by felines after all. “How do you know these things?” she asked in return, more in wonder than anything. “How did you escape the sleeping spell I laid upon you?”

The gardener smiled. “You are no doubt powerful, Dreamthief, but you are also young. Surely even one such as you realizes there is more in the world than you know.”

It had been ages since Oneira thought of herself as young. And ages since she’d discovered something she didn’t already know.A flicker of a feeling akin to excitement fluttered through her blood. Following the roses had been the right path to travel to find her question.

The old woman nodded sagely, as if she divined Oneira’s thoughts. “I’m supposing the likes of you has come for something rare in my garden. You are not the first to come, reeking of powerful magic, to raid my plants that I nurture with such care. Which are you after and did you plan to simply take them without a word?”

Oneira saw no reason to temporize. “The Veredian roses.”

“Ah.” The gardener nodded again. “I should have known you would want them, you with your eyes and skin luminous as the moon, and power blazing brighter than the noonday sun.”

Oneira considered her. “Who are you?”

“A simple gardener. Let me show you where the roses are.” She began walking, leaning slightly on the walking stick, seeming unbothered to be out in the cool night in only her sleeping gown.

Oneira fell into step beside her. “Why would you show me where they are if you fear that I’ll steal them from you?”

The woman slid her a canny glance. “I fear nothing. I’m too old for that nonsense. And you can’t steal them from me as they don’t belong to me.”

Aha, then the gardener did work for some collector. “Who do they belong to?”

“Themselves.” The woman shrugged, chuckling softly. “I am simply their caretaker, providing what they need. Will you give them what they need?”

“Yes,” Oneira answered with confidence. “I’ve been studying their cultivation in preparation.”

“Hmm. You do have the scent of plants and soil about you, but you also smell of pain and suffering. Death and destruction. Oceans of blood,” she added, not quite accusing, but close.

No longer surprised by what this woman knew, Oneira only nodded, oily shame coating her heart, an abyss of regret opening beneath her feet. “So much that it will never wash away.”

“Perhaps washing is the wrong analogy.”

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