Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 159

Chapter 159: The Voice (not the TV show)
“What?”

“What what?” Anaisa looked at Trace curiously.

“Emily?” He asked, looking around.

“It’s me… Anaisa,” She answered him in confusion.

“No, I… she’s whispering to me,” Trace clarified, and then went silent for a moment. “I hear her voice in my mind. It startled me.”

“She can speak to you??” Anaisa perked up with excitement.

“Emily mentioned last night that she didn’t know whether seeing me in a dream meant ‘meeting’ me. Sanders told me she can whisper to anyone she’s–” He paused, his brow furrowed. “I wish there were a way for me to answer her.”

“What’s she saying?” Anaisa lowered her voice, and Trace brought a hand to his head.

“She got brave enough to try to sneak out of her section of cave. Normally she’s tied up, but not during meals. The guard got distracted and didn’t close her in—hold on,” He blinked, listening.

Anaisa bounced lightly in place, anxious to hear what Trace was getting firsthand, or at least, secondhand.

She badly wanted to ask more, but if Emily was whispering to Trace right now, she didn’t want him to miss anything with her interruptions. So she waited patiently. As patiently as she could, anyway.

“I’ll go scout while you listen,” She said when he kept silent. He nodded vaguely, clearly not concentrating on her words. That was just as well.

She made her way to the nearest high place, a summit at the edge of a canyon which looked down in between rock formations. Trace had lowered himself to sit on the ground, his hand over his mouth as he continued to listen to whatever Emily was saying. How long would that last?

Reaching the top, she laid on her stomach, something Trace had taught her about the army scouts to avoid being seen, and cast her eyes across the landscape.

A river, the border with Foundrel, was in the distance, barely visible through a gap in two of the rock formations.

Everyone knew it changed course with every large storm, thus carving the series of strange canyons through the area. The landscape was mesmerizing and beautiful, and not very thoroughly mapped except that each nation liked to claim more territory than the other thought it had a right to.

The cave entrance was on this side, so far as Anaisa knew.

She scooted to one side, trying to create a mental map of the crevices and shadowed areas that might be hiding the entrance to the mighty cavern that Trace had recreated in his dream world.

Noting three or four places that seemed most likely, she wondered if she should explore them on her own or wait for Trace to finish gathering information from Emily. She glanced down at her husband, who was still deep in thought. He didn’t look up.

With a sigh, she decided to slip down to the nearest one and make some progress on at least ruling something out. She waved at Trace and tried to signal to him that she’d be right back, but his eyes were closed now as he concentrated.

Oh well. She didn’t intend to be more than a minute or two.

The slope was steep, and she had to lean heavily to one side to avoid tumbling down. She immediately began to regret her decision to come down, but better to finish the task than to turn back without accomplishing anything.

Trace had a rope with him. He could lower it down and help her if she needed, once he snapped out of whatever kind of trance Emily had him in.

Coming to a ledge, she leaned forward to the crevice she’d been looking at before. It went all of two strides deep before it was simply a wall of rock. She frowned. Dead end.

Glancing back up, she realized how much steeper it looked from this direction than coming down. There was no obvious path to get back up the hill.

The moment stretched, and she inhaled and exhaled, trying her hardest not to panic. She lifted a hand to find a hold to begin a climb, but the soil gave way each time she tried to grip it.

Turning behind, she looked down. It was quite a way to the base of this gorge, and then she would have to try to find a way to hike back up from another path. That didn’t seem promising.

Screaming for help might alert the enemy to their presence, but she was running out of options. Just when she opened her mouth, a rope hit the rocks next to her.

“Oh,” She sheepishly glanced up, where Trace’s longsuffering expression peered back down at her. She grabbed on and made her way up the slope, slipping several times and causing rocks and dirt to tumble downward, making a fair amount of noise.

When Trace pulled her to the top, he grabbed her shoulders, looking her up and down before tensing his jaw.

“Why would you do such a foolish thing?” He demanded.

“I wanted to save time and rule out one of the–”

But before she could finish the sentence, he crushed her into a hug.

“Never do that again,” He murmured against her ear.

“I’m sorry,” She grimaced, realizing that he must have come out of his concentration only to see that she had disappeared from the top of the summit. “I’d planned on being back before you noticed.”

He pulled away and looked into her eyes, but a sound from below made them both step back from the edge.

“I swore I heard something,” A voice echoed from below. “That ram that’s been coming around, I want his horns. Carve something nice and sell it.”

“Your talking’s gonna scare it away,” Another voice joined the first, “I’m sure it’s gone by now.”

Trace dropped to the ground, pulling Anaisa with him. She lay flat on her belly on the earth, her husband’s arm and half his body protectively over her as they hid from sight. Slowly, he allowed them both to scoot towards the edge, but no one was in sight below.

“Fine. You’re right, let’s head back.” The first voice responded, the echo beginning to fade.

Anaisa panicked. Before she could overthink it or let Trace stop her, she picked up a large rock with one hand and threw it.

The tumbling echoes of its descent seemed to make the rest of the world go silent.