We all have nightmares but Id never recalled so many so clearly after I wakened. Some force, some power, was summoning me. Was trying to enlist or subject me.

Those dreams were the creations of a sick mind. If they were supposed to appeal to me, that power didnt know me.

Landscapes of despair and death under skies of lead, fields where bodies rotted and stunted vegetation melted down like slow, soft candlewax. Slime covered everything, hung in strands like the architecture of drunken spiders.

Mad. Mad. Mad. And not a touch of color anywhere.

Mad. And yet with its taint of perverse appeal. For amongst the dead Id see faces I wished amongst the dead. I strode that land unharmed, vitally alive, its ruler. The ghouls that ran with me were extensions of my will.

It was a dream straight out of the fantasies of my dead husband. It was a world he could have made home.

Always, in the late hours, thered be a dawn in that land of nightmare, a splash of color on a poorly defined horizon. Always in front of me, it seemed the dawn of hope.

Simple and direct, the architect of my dreams.

There was one dream, less common, that did without the death and corruption, yet was as chilling in its way. Black and white too, it placed me upon a plain of stone where deadly shadows lurked behind countless obelisks. I didnt understand it at all but it frightened me.

I couldnt control the dreams. But I refused to let them influence my waking hours, refused to let them wear me down.

Ive sent word out, Mistress, Narayan said, responding to my question about recruits. We fenced whenever the subject of his brotherhood arose. He wasnt yet ready to talk.

Blade suggested, Someone ought to be watching things at Dejagore. I understood, though sometimes his brevity caused problems.

Narayan said, Ghopal and Hakim can take a party down. Twenty men should have no trouble. Itll be quiet now.

I said, You had them spying on our neighbors.

Theyre done. Theyve made their contacts. Sindhu can take over. He has a higher reputation.

Another of those little oddities about Narayan and his cronies. They had their own hidden caste system. Based on what, I couldnt tell. Narayan was the man of most respect here. Broad, stolid Sindhu ran a close second.

Send them. If we have spies everywhere why havent I gotten any information?

Theres nothing to report that isnt common knowledge. Except that theres a lot of disaffection among Jahs men. A third might defect if you offered to enlist them. Jahs been doing some talking about you ignoring your duties as a wife because you wont commit suttee or go into isolation, as befits a Shadar woman. Hes working on a dozen schemes but none of our friends are in his closest councils.

Kill him, Blade said. And Sindhu nodded.

Why? A political victory would be better, long range.