This happens this evening:
That night, Rachel dreamed that she stood again in Dream Carthage, watching the shade of Remus Starkadder being dragged into the ground as he burned. In the dream, she traveled down with him toward a place of torment so horrific that merely approaching it filled her with unimaginable terror. Remus became Zoë Forrest, her hair the color of blood, her forelock braid streaming upward as she fell.
The dream changed, and a hart charged across the terrible landscape. It was a titanic stag, so large that it took up most of the horizon. Its antlers were a system of thunderheads, raining wrath and lightning. Its legs dwarfed mountains. Its hooves caused earthquakes. Its eyes were burning silver stars.
The hart charged forward. In the way of dreams, Rachel knew that this was one of the four harts that ate at the World Tree. Only, this one had foresworn his old ways and become one of the Tree’s defenders. Somehow, again in the way of dreams, she knew that the dead hart in the dreamland of Transylvania was an image of the fallen brother of this titan.
The dream changed once more, and the titanic hart became a man. He stood twelve feet tall, with storm-gray antlers sprouting from his head. His black armor bore feathered epaulettes at the shoulders. His storm-colored wings were enormous, spreading over a hundred feet in either direction. Up he flew, through winds, through swarms of blood-red imps, through darkness. And in his arms, he carried Zoë Forrest.
He landed on the commons, scattering the snow. Roanoke Hall was silhouetted behind him. Bending, he placed Zoë on the icy ground. Then he departed with three flaps of his enormous wings, blowing the snow away from him in every direction.
In her dream, the great antlered man turned his head, and his eyes—those burning silver stars—gazed directly into Rachel’s.
“I give you this gift, in honor of your service for my wife.”
Surely, in reality, any such words were for Nastasia. Yet, in the way of dreams, Rachel felt as if they had been meant for her.