NaNo Day 13 Part 2

Lunch session was very, very interesting.  I didn’t plan to write this scene either, but it suddenly came to me, and I had one of those manic crazed sessions of writing as fast as possible before I lost it.

Why so cool?  Dharman meets someone unexpectedly in her Dream.

Words: 1,581 3,301

NaNo total: 34,813 36,533

Unexpected developments.  This might be the big one for Dharman.  Placement is still iffy.  What’s really creeping me out (in a most excellent way) is how this unnamed antagonist is driving events so easily.  I already see the next Dream where he sees how the small seeds he planted here have resulted in exactly the fruit he planned.  I can even see the look on his face.  Although the face I see isn’t the face Dharman sees at all.  *mysterious*

Also brainstormed with Sis, always a delightful experience.  Planning devious things to do to Mykal once he arrives in Shanhasson.  *laughs*

Snippet (spoilers axed):

Vulkar help him, he wanted her so badly.  He growled, “Who am I?”

A flash of light blinded him.  She twisted and curled in his hands, flesh melting into glossy hard scales.  The White Dragon turned, tail lashing, her jaws gaping wide to threaten him with teeth as long as his rahke.

He opened his mouth, but a whinny tore out of his throat.  He jerked his gaze down to his body.  Coat as blood-red as Sal’s hair, he wore the shape of a na’kindre, a very small na’kindre compared to the beast towering over him.  A look flickered in her slitted eyes that tightened his stomach with dread, yet he didn’t turn away.  He’d never turn away from her.

She snapped those mighty jaws shut on his spine and he screamed, broken, unable to fight or flee.

:Is this what you want?:  She roared in his mind, shaking him side to side, tearing through his hide and breaking his bones.  :Is this what you drive me to do?:

:Na’lanna, all I want you to do is love me.:

With a howl, she tossed him into darkness.

“Impressive,” a male said.  “Does she know you walk in her Dreams?”

Trembling, Dharman pushed himself up.  His human body had returned and he didn’t feel pain any longer, but her Dream had shaken him more than he cared to admit, especially to a stranger.  Tensing, he cast out his senses, searching for the source of the threat.  He dropped his hand to his rahke.  “Who are you?”

A man stepped out of the darkness.  Although he was swathed head to toe in black cloth, he didn’t radiate evil.  The man’s skin was leathery and dark, as though burned and peeled and burned again in impossible heat.  Strange markings dotted his cheeks beneath each eye.  For some reason, the man’s pale silver eyes seemed horribly out of place.

A man of such dark coloring would surely have dark eyes.

“I’m here because she Called me, even though she knows not what she does.”  The man smiled, and Dharman tightened his fingers on his rahke.  His skin prickled, his heart pounding like stampeding na’kindre, even though the man was trying very hard not to appear dangerous.  It was the very lack of threat that alarmed him.  This wasn’t Gregar or Rhaekhar, and the only other man who’d appeared in her dreams was Shadow wrapped in dragon hide.  “Would you deny her?”

“I would give her anything,” he replied stiffly.  “My blood is hers.”

“Would you give her your life?”

“Aye,” he retorted, unsheathing his rahke.  “Would you?”

The man chuckled, pacing a slow circle about him.  “We shall see very soon, very soon indeed.”

Dharman shifted his weight on the balls of his feet to better attack.  “How do you know her?”

“I always know her, and she always knows me.”  The man shrugged, unconcerned.  A long slivered moon of a blade hung on his hip, but he made no move to touch it.  “Yet this, I do not understand.  If she wants to enter so badly, why doesn’t she?  It’s her Dream.  She can do anything she wants, even Call me forth from those burning sands.”

[some paragraphs deleted]

The truth dawned on him. The breath exploded out of his lungs, and his knees sagged until he fell, barely catching himself before he planted his face on the stone.  “She refuses her heart.  She refuses to love.  She refuses…me.”

“Iyeh,” the man’s voice echoed with compassion and he slapped Dharman on the back.  “She can’t shine with love.  She can’t be brightheart.  She can only be darkness and shadow, and that, my friend, is my domain.”

“Keep your filthy hands off her.”

The man laughed, and his genteel, amused tone grated steel claws down Dharman’s spine.  “Oh, this is priceless.  I’ve never had her before you, but this time, young Red, I may very well take her before she’s ever even yours.” 

He leaned down and lightly touched the old scar on Dharman’s chest directly over his heart.  The day she’d brought down the Shining Walls with his blood, her teeth in his flesh, seemed like an eternity, a lifetime ago. 

“This time, my teeth will brand her flesh before yours.”

With a roar, Dharman surged to his feet and thrust the rahke as hard as he could.  His blade sank to the hilt, grinding on the man’s ribs.

Laughing, he grabbed Dharman’s shoulder and pulled his body harder onto the blade, writhing on steel with a low sound of pleasure. 

Appalled, Dharman jerked back, his hand burning with the man’s blood.

“It will feel ever so much better when she does it.”  The man melted away, but his voice lingered.  “Your blood may be hers, but soon, her blood will be mine, all mine.”