Rythe Falls by Craig R. Saunders Page B

the woman who would be his conscience, saw to it that he did not die. That woman, the keeper of his dreams, was his dead wife, Hertha, and she had work for him still.
                  Always, she had work for him, dead or alive.
                  Renir ran and sweated in his bed. He woke from these dream-nights with little or no recollection of his travails, but was always tired when he had those dreams. So tired.
                  Hertha scolded and scorned her husband even though he slept and she was dead. She might have married a shirker, she told him, but she knew he would be king and she would see him wear the crown yet, whether he wanted it or not.
                               
    *
     
    'Renir!'
                  'Leave me sleep, woman,' Renir mumbled, turning his head against his hard cold bed. Damn woman would be after him going out, buying pots, traipsing round Turnmarket. Or worse, getting his fishing boat out on the sea. Sea would be freezing, he'd be cold. Middle of winter, on Sturma's far south? On the Spar?
                  No.
                  'Leave me sleep,' he whispered into his bedding. 'Please...please...'
                  'Renir...'
                  Softer, this time. His wife had never been soft.
                  What's she playing at?
                  'Renir...'
                  'No, Hertha. I'm tired...so tired...please...no more...'
                  'Renir, you always were lazy. No more. You think a king rests easy? You think a king sleeps sound at night? No. A king hears screams in his sleep. He worries, he frets. And he should. A country's life and the lives of the people are held in that king's hand...tenderly or with an iron grip, it matters not. A king's burden is a heavy one. Sleep? Pfft.'
                  Renir opened one eye, looked at his wife.
                  She sat at the end of the bed. She bore the scars of death even here, in his dream. In his dream he slept (or tried to) in their marital bed. The home they had shared for such a short while had been little more than a shack. Freezing in winter, unbearably hot in summer. Heavy drapes at the mean, narrow windows, hangings on the walls to keep the drafts from sneaking between the timbers.
                  How the hell can I be so cold, in bed...in a dream?
                  Hertha smiled as sweetly as the memory of a corpse could.
                  It's cold because she wants it cold.
                  He groaned. He wasn't even the master of his own dreams any more.
                  Never, never, marry a witch.
                  Wish I'd known that before I married her, he thought, in the deep places within the mind where a man is still free to think his own thoughts, even within a dream. Even while haunted ( no, harried ) by the memory of a dead wife...or her ghost. For without a doubt, the haunting in his mind was no mere ghost, no simple memory. Hertha had been a witch in life.
                  In death? Here, in his mind? She had power, still.  And a damn sight more than he.
                  'Hertha...I need rest. I'm not a king. I'm a man, and a simple one at that. A tired man. Each night you come to harangue me and lash me with your tongue. I'm tired, though. Please let me sleep, if only for one night.'
                  'Pfft,' said Hertha's ghost once more, impatient, even though this was just a dream within a dream. 'Lazy.'
                  'Goodnight.'
                  'Ungrateful, too.'
                  Renir nodded, and snuggled back into his blankets. Then a suspicious look crossed his dream-face.
                  'Ungrateful?'
                  'Yes, Renir Esyn. Ungrateful. I came to warn you, and you