The Chronicles of Castellane, #2
The Ragpicker King
by Cassandra Clare
Contents
CHAPTER NINE — Lin
Overview
Lin experiences a vivid, frightening dream of a man whose embrace burns his family and world to ash, suggesting the Source-Stone is communicating through visions. When Lin wakes, the stone seems to transmit fear and warn her of something dark and unnatural in the city.
The chapter shifts Lin’s investigation from scholarly study toward a more immediate supernatural threat, implying that the Source-Stone is both a tool and an alarm.
Summary
Lin dreams vividly for the first time in a long while. In the dream, she stands in a green valley and watches a finely dressed man from centuries past approach a mountain-side house, where a woman and children rush out to greet him.
When the man embraces his family, each person catches fire and burns. The man appears horrified and grief-stricken, but cannot stop the destruction; the flames spread from his family to the grass, house, trees, and the whole green landscape.
Lin cries out in pity and fear, and the man turns toward her as if he expected her presence. He speaks an unfamiliar phrase, and Lin wakes with her heart pounding, convinced the dream was unusually clear and connected to the Source-Stone she keeps beside her bed.
Lin picks up the Source-Stone and senses an external fear moving through it. The feeling seems less like ordinary weather and more like a warning: something dark, unnatural, and malevolent is present in the city, singing with a discordant force like struck crystal. Troubled, Lin sets the stone down and tries to sleep again, haunted by visions of Source-Stones.
Who Appears
- LinDreams through or because of the Source-Stone and senses a malevolent threat.
- Unidentified manAppears in Lin’s dream, burning his family and surroundings despite his grief.