Of Mortal Dreams: Chapter II

Vara

Ashes. Ashes everywhere.

It was Vara’s first thought every morning. Ashes under her fingernails, on her dress, in her hair, her mouth, even her lungs. She opened her eyes, fixing her gaze on the low, stone ceiling of the room where she’d slept all her life. Through the cracks in the heavy shutters on her left, she could see that it was still dark outside, but that the sky was the fleeting, deep blue that came just before dawn. Her breath rose into the cold. Her chamber fire had gone out again.

She rose, swiveling her legs off the bed and pressing her feet to the cold floor. In two short strides she was at the window, a simple, square empty space, where the builders of the keep hadn’t put any stone. She pushed the shutters outwards and leaned on the rough sill, looking out over the keep from the most protected position, the tower. It was also the oldest part of the keep, the first thing to have been built on the enormous riverrock that made the land and people of Tor famous and difficult…