Dream a Deadly Dream

A new book by my friend Remi Black, the second in her Enclave series.

Dream a Deadly Dream

Assassination.  A fugitive comtesse.  A lethal sleep-spell.  Wyre and wraiths.  Wizardry against sorcery.  And regicide.

In Dream a Deadly Dream, a sorcerous plot to kill the king weaves together past and present, dream and reality, to create a nightmare that can kill.

For three years Cherai, the comtesse Muirée, has hidden from the conspirators who assassinated her father.  Now, in the weeping season, a sorcerer has woven a lethal sleep-snare to entrap her.  Although she doesn’t know it, she holds the key to the conspirators’ chance to seize the throne of Vaermonde, a chance thwarted when they killed her father too quickly.  The poisoned nightmares sent by the sorcerer will compel Cherai to turn herself over to her father’s murderers.

Only a chance-met wizard can free her from the sorcerous sleep-spell.

The exiled wizard Alstera wandered into Vaermonde, seeking an opportunity to rid herself of the bindings on her power.  When she encounters Cherai, she realizes the nightmares are caused by a sorcerer.  Breaking a simple sleep-spell without any expectation of extrinsic reward should remove one of the bindings.  Selfishly, she attaches herself to Cherai.

Yet the sleep-spell is not a simple one:  it is a powerful sleep-snare, designed to kill once the conspirators have the document that Cherai’s father hid.  Alstera must use forbidden blood-magic—another crime against wizardry—to slip her powers through the binding sigils tattooed on her wrists.

After capture and escape from the king’s regiment and the betrayal by a friend who is spying secretly for an old enemy of Cherai’s father, the two women flee cross-country, heading for the Muirée estate.  There they hope to find the reason for the assassination and the identity of the conspirators who plan to kill the king.  Yet the poisoned nightmares intensify.  The sorcerer sends a wraith and a wyre to capture Cherai.  And betrayal closes the net.

Will the poisoned nightmares kill Cherai?  Can Alstera free her from that sorcerous web before the conspirators kill the king?  Threats come from both enemies and friends, from steely blades and magickal spells.  Will Cherai be caught by the conspirators?  With her powers bound, protected only by blood-magic, can Alstera defeat the sorcerer?  Or will he kill Cherai with his sleep-snare?

Dream a Deadly Dream, a novel of 119,000 words, is the second book in the Enclave series.  Enclave 1: Weave a Wizardry Web explores Alstera’s crimes, for which she was bound and banished.  While Dream is a continuation of Alstera’s story in Web, both novels are complete and without cliff-

hangers.