Moe Lane

Getting to a stopping point! …Yeah, there’s a book in there.

Two nights later

The dream was familiar and strange at the same time, like it had happened before, but he hadn’t kept the memory. 

He was in the forest again, right back at the hole in the ground. No sun or moon in the sky, but he could see from the light coming from underground. It wasn’t a bad light — it was green, but the honest green of leaves and living things, not sorcery and chaos — but it wasn’t natural, either. Or at least something else didn’t want it there. The wind itself hissed at the presence of this bright trespasser, and Gregor did not like the way that the light pulsed back. He’d heard of light being ‘angry,’ but thought it was just a saying. At least in the confines of this dream, it was far too real.

At least the light wasn’t angry at him. The wind, though? No, the wind was definitely not on his side, from the way that it was plucking at his limbs and raising the stink of distant mucks in his nostrils —

Gregor jerked awake, to find Seamstress grabbing his arm with one hand, and shushing him with the other. “Quiet!” she murmured, not quite hissing. “Michael needs you.” She swallowed once. “Bandits.”

Amulet!

“Yeah. About that.” Michael peered at his chest. “That amulet you’re wearing. It’s gold. Why did the guard give it back to you?”

“I honestly have no idea, good Trader. I suppose he felt some guilt for stealing it?” Gregor essayed a smile, trying not to think about how, no, he really did have no idea why the guard gave it back. Or why it was apparently around his neck now. “I have never felt any power from it. Which at least means it can’t be cursed!”

“Sure, sure. But maybe it’s uncanny anyway.” Michael squinted at Gregor’s chest. “It’s got a tree carved on it. What does that mean? Some new god?” He directed the squint at Gregor’s book. “Or some old one?”

Gregor smiled, inside where it didn’t show. “I can tell you that it is of no new god, Trader Michael. But you guessed this already.” That’s even the truth, Gregor thought. I mean, the guard wasn’t dying from a thief-curse, after all. “As for the lost gods, from a better time?” He sighed, and offered a small smile. “I ma… cannot speak to that.” He reached for the clasp of the amulet, ready to take it off. “But I will understand if you find my amulet worrisome. Would you care to keep it? Or should I simply leave it here, suspended from a tree branch?”