Page 9 of Never the Roses

Well, Stearanos would be ready for them this time. Rising from his chair, he went to the twin books on his desk and took up the one the intruder had left behind, shelving it where it belonged, with the other books on scales combined with fire. Returning to his own copy, he considered, then put his plan into motion.

7

Roses.The book Oneira had borrowed from Stearanos’s library had been, in truth, literally and entirely about cultivating Veredian roses. She’d never heard of them before, which put her in good company, as few people had, apparently. With dark foliage, wickedly long thorns, and small leaves, the Veredian rosebushes added nothing ornamental to anyone’s landscaping. In addition to that the fact that they bloomed only once a year, for a few days at midwinter, when the nights were longest and most bitter, no one really pursued cultivating the things. Which in part had led to them dying out.

Gazing up at the cloudless blue sky—for she’d been lying on her back on a pile of pillows in the center of her dome to read—Oneira held the book in one hand, arms flung out like she was a starfish caught above tide. Thinking. Why would a sorcerer of Stearanos Stormbreaker’s caliber and fearsome reputation spend his time reading about cultivating rare and undeniably ugly rosebushes?

She’d been so sure there would be some hidden meaning in the tome, a deeper significance, some sort of meticulously encoded information, perhaps, on the location of ancient Vered and their magics, rumored to have been greater than any known to humankind today. Not that humankind needed greater magics, especially as it seemed they only wanted them for more magnificently vile acts of destruction.

And not that the book hadn’t been interesting, though it hadn’t pointed toward the question she’d been seeking. Veredianroses turned out to be exceedingly difficult at every stage of the process. Virtually impossible to grow from seed, they needed to be either transplanted—which they hated—or grafted, which they hated apparently only slightly more. Then they perished at the least bit of variance from ideal conditions. They’d all but vanished from the world.

Eerily enough, the last place they’d been known to flourish was the island of Govirinda.

Discovering that startling bit of information had made her ill enough that she had to set the book aside and close her eyes for a while, willing the nightmare memories of what she’d done to subside. Could it be a coincidence? She didn’t believe in coincidences. Still, she’d gone seeking a question, following intuition and guided by the Dream, and she’d found this. It might have meaning. Perhaps she was meant to restore Veredian roses to the world.

It would be within her power to do so. If anyone in the world could find a Veredian rosebush, she could, via the Dream. From there it would be relatively straightforward to transplant the thing to her walled garden, as straightforward as anything to do with the cultivation of the finicky things was. She’d have to plant the ugly shrub inside the walls, in order to stabilize the microclimate—the book was most insistent on the critical parameters of that—and she could use the various magical tools at her disposal to keep it alive. No one but her would know or care about this little bit of restoring of what she’d destroyed. Still, she was tempted, even intrigued by the challenge, which perhaps spoke to something she’d been unwilling to entertain until this moment.

It could be that she’d become bored.

“I think I’ll grow a Veredian rose,” she said to Moriah, who lay with her back pressed to the crystal curve of the dome, idly flickingthe tip of her tail. “That will show Stearanos Stormbreaker,” she added, though she had no idea what she meant by that. Except that she was now quite sure that he contemplated cultivating the rare blossoms for some arcane reason of his own. She might discover his plan by being first to locate and grow the roses. From what she’d learned, he lived in entirely the wrong climate for the persnickety roses to thrive. Not even his oh-so-impressive wards could create the much-vaunted microclimate under those conditions.

Taking the book with her, but not Moriah, who elected to stay in the sunbeam she’d found, Oneira descended to the main level, then went out into the walled garden. Bunny came galloping up in wolfish joy, delighted to see her emerge. With her hand resting on his shoulder, the book dangling loosely in the grip of her other hand, she strolled with him in the muddied track of their regular perambulations. Sunshine draped over her hair and shoulders, warming them, hinting of spring and languorous summer heat to follow. A good time to plant her roses.

She’d have to wait for nighttime, preferably those hours after midnight and waxing toward dawn, when dreams predominated, to enter the Dream and seek out the roses. She’d have to go physically, in order to bring one back, but the search could likely take a while. If they still lived anywhere, though, some dreaming mind would know about them.

For the time being, she planned her Veredian rose garden, consulting the book for specifics, using magic in exacting doses to prepare the soil, warding it against the burrowing rodents that the book warned liked to chew the tuberous roots. Through a stroke of serendipity, she’d hit upon exactly the right season to establish her new bushes, which she took as a promising omen. Perhaps this book, and the resulting inspiration to plant these roses, were part of her journey to discovering the question she sought.

Satisfied with her preparations, she turned to the problem of the book itself. She had planned to return it, but clearly could not do so, not if she wanted her roses to succeed. Oneira possessed an excellent memory, but she would need to regularly consult this book, itself exceedingly rare. Too bad she’d left Stearanos such a bland and worthless replacement. If she’d realized she’d have no choice but to keep his book, she’d have left something better, something of more equivalent rarity.

She hadn’t checked to see if he already had a copy ofDragon Anatomy: From Tooth to Talonin his library. He almost certainly did, as it was required reading at most of the magic academies, including the one he’d attended, she was sure. One never knew when checking an arcane fact about dragon anatomy, especially verifying the precise location of their few vulnerable points, could win a battle.

There was nothing else to do but go back, retrieve her copy of the dragon book, and leave him something else. Something of equivalent scarcity and value. The risk of return didn’t concern her; she’d be surprised if he’d noticed her visit, beyond possibly looking for his book and missing it. Surely an active sorcerer of his stature was much in demand and had little time for reading or sniffing out elusive nighttime visitors. He no doubt had stormbreaking to do, though she had no idea what that would entail. No one ever had been able to tell her the exact act that had led to his nickname. He should be Stearanos Wardmaker, if these things followed any logic.

Whatdidconcern her was the foreign—to her—sensation that she owed him something.

That was nonsense, of course, as they owed each other nothing, except perhaps a swift, merciful death should they face each other on the battlefield. Still, the imbalance of what she’d taken from him and what she’d left in its place plagued her. Only restoringthat balance with an appropriate offering would settle this. But what could it be?

She spent several hours contemplating the choice. It had to be a book, to balance the other, but she loathed the prospect of parting with any of the valuable and rare ones she’d brought into exile. The ones she could spare weren’t good enough, for exactly that reason. She could travel via the Dream to steal or buy one, but that felt wrong, too. It needed to be a book she already possessed, and one she cared about. Nothing less would resolve her debt—and never would she be in debt to anyone, ever again.

After far too much time sorting, she ended up with a pile of books scarce enough to fulfill that aspect of the requirement and beloved enough to give her physical pain to contemplate parting with them forever. One was a favorite novel from her teens,The Folded Pages of Isabelle Blue, a first edition she’d found in a secondhand bookshop in a city she’d since forgotten. Firmly, Oneira set that one aside. Sentimentality, yes—but also the Stormbreaker couldn’t possibly appreciate what made that book special.

Another was an obscure text on mystical representation in dreams and pervasive symbology across cultures of various nightmare elements and themes in night terrors. It had taken her years to locate it, as it had been enchanted with a forgetfulness spell, one she’d paid dearly to have removed. Her attachment to that one derived less from nostalgia than from the sense of victory in finally acquiring it and from the edge it had given her in tormenting foreign armies. She wouldn’t use it anymore, obviously, but she was loath to put it in the hands of someone like Stearanos. So far as anyone knew, he possessed zero talent in oneiromancy, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t hire an oneiromancer to assist him.

Ultimately, she settled on a children’s book, one of the very few things she’d brought with her when she left her parents’ home.The Adventures of the Beastly Bunnyitself wasn’t particularly rare,though it was old enough to have belonged to her grandmother whenshewas a child. The velveteen cover had worn down to the nubs, barely showing any of the deep green it had once been, plush only in the few patches where grubby fingers left it mostly alone.

Stearanos would likely be baffled by the thing, but what mattered in these sorts of exchanges was intent. The Veredian rose book had come to be precious to her—had given her a surprising amount of pleasure already and, more important, a renewed vitality, an opportunity for redemption, however small—and so she’d leave something in return that was similar in inherent quality. A reminder of family and love, little as she’d experienced it herself, to match the simple joy of gardening. If that’s even why he cared.

Worn out by her nocturnal travels from the previous night and unusual flexing of her oneiromancy—she’d grown far rustier than she’d realized—she napped away the remainder of the day and evening. Rising at midnight, she tuckedThe Adventures of the Beastly Bunnyinto a pocket of the cloak she donned in case it was cold where she ended up, since she’d need to be outside to excavate her rosebush.

She’d sketched her doorway in the air and opened the portal into the Dream and was just about to step across the shimmering threshold of starlight and night when Adsila flew into the tower room and lit on her shoulder. Oneira raised her brows in surprise. Like most raptors, the tiny kestrel tended to sleep during the nocturnal hours. Adsila blinked back at her, winding her talons decisively into the padded shoulder of the cloak.

“The Dream can be disorienting,” she told the bird, who emitted a whistle of contempt. True. Adsila belonged to a goddess, so likely the Dream paled in comparison to the silver paths trod by the deities. “Don’t let go,” Oneira added, just to be sure. Peoplecould be lost in the Dream, wandering there eternally if not anchored to a portal. She didn’t know if a goddess’s avatar could manipulate the Dream enough to create her own way out without being connected to one who could, but Oneira worried about the possibility. She did not want She Who Eats Bears to arrive on her doorstep asking after her gift that Oneira had carelessly lost.

She stepped into the Dream, Adsila a rust-and-sapphire light on her shoulder, less like a kestrel in that nonwaking world than ever. Gradually, Oneira accelerated her pattern of searching, moving in ever larger circles, seeking someone dreaming of Vered. She’d gleaned ancient Veredian from the Dream in order to read the book, but that didn’t help her as much as she’d have liked with identifying the modern version of the language.

So she modified her search, seeking Veredian creations—some snatches of song, a few myths, an image embroidered into a tapestry she’d seen in a palace after her victory as the soldiers pillaged it. She’d nearly claimed that tapestry for herself. If she’d been in the habit of collecting things, she would have, liking the unusual lavender roses depicted in it. Roses she now knew to be the rare ones she sought. Her attraction to them had been an omen of things to come, no doubt.

The search took hours, something she kept high in her awareness, closely tracking the passage of time in the outer world via the mental anchor she kept to her portal in the tower. Inside the Dream, time moved differently, compressing and expanding in response to the dreamers forming it. Thus, with every dreaming mind she skipped across, lightly as a flat stone over still lake water, time folded into a different pattern. With this person, years passed in a flash, taking them back to childhood. With another, a moment played out with infinite slowness. Another mind circled endlessly through the same sequence, visiting and revisiting a memory that grew increasingly distorted.

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