A Warrior of Dreams (6 page)

Feran did not. But when the left the valley they traveled and reached another, broader, plain, he began to. He thought of the daysoul, slumbering in the cave back in what passed for the real, everyday portion of Somna's dream.

Poor half-man, half
-
nothing creature,,, what will you do without me
?

PERHAPS DIE, IN TIME, answered the shadow, unasked. WHEN IT'S TOO LATE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. THAT PART OF YOU IS NO LONGER YOUR CONCERN.

*

The sun through a crack in the stone finally woke him.

Gone
.

It was his first thought. He looked around at the stone room, trying to put his finger on what was missing. His pack was still there, and his staff; he was sleeping on his robe. And still he knew something was missing.

I think it's me
.

He wasn't even sure who that was. He knew yesterday; he remembered coming to the safe haven to... what? There was a reason; he was sure of that. It was the only thing he was sure of.

No. I'm here. I'm me. I'm Farerrrr
... The sound of his name garbled and turned to nonsense in his mind. Meaningless. He knew that, even if the name came to him in some trick of memory, it would mean nothing.

Gone.

He came out of the stone room, went to the basin and splashed cold water on his face. It didn't help. He walked naked into the water. Goose pimples rose over his entire body from the chill, but for some reason he couldn't fathom he was more frightened than cold. But he forced himself to continue, immersing himself completely. He arose, shivering, and managed a question.

"Who am I and why can't I wake up?"

He thought about it for a moment. For some reason concentration seemed painful, but at last he brought a certainty to the surface, fighting him every inch like a hooked perch.

I didn't come home last night
.

He looked at himself, using the rippled basin for a mirror. He watched himself take breath from the air, watched him see himself in the water with no recognition at all. An apparition…no, not an apparition, not an illusion, not a trick of the light. The thing, rather, that was left when the thing that had been alive, left. And he was the pitiful remnant of something that had been.

A Ghost.

He giggled.

Chapter 3
—
Joslyn Traps a Moth

The Chamber of True Dreaming in the new Temple was a theatrical marvel. Thick pillars of black-veined marble supported its vast dome, and all across the dome tiny windows of thick frosted glass were set in carefully ordered patterns. In the daytime the chamber was kept dark by thick velvet tapestries, and the sunlight scattering through the glass was transformed to starlight in a clear night sky. In true night or on bleak days acolytes lit specially designed reflective beacons on the roof. Rain was more difficult to deal with, but since the priests termed rain 'the Tears of the Dreamer' it was held to be an unlucky time for augury in any case.

The priests of Somna were a thorough lot.

In the very center of the chamber there were two gilded couches, both marked with the sigil of the Closed Eye. Joslyn stood alone by one of them, waiting. She was too tired now to be nervous; she'd forced herself to rise very early that morning in preparation for the evening ceremony
—
an augury.

Master says I'm ready
.

Joslyn wasn't so certain; she was scheduled to give her first dream augury to a very troubled young man, nephew to the city Governor himself. She was proud and afraid at the same time, but mostly wishing they would arrive so that she could get it over with and get on with her own dreaming.

An unseen acolyte finally struck the gong, and the doors to the chamber opened. Tagramon entered, flanked by two White Robes with a dark-haired, pale young man in tow.

He's more worried than I am
.

Joslyn took a little comfort from that thought, drew herself up straighter. The White Robes halted at a respectful distance and the Supplicant was led up to the augury couch by the Dream Master himself.

"This is Joslyn. Will you meet her tonight in the Domain of Somna?"

"As the Dreamer wills."

The question and reply were both fixed in the ritual but the young man was never introduced. He was the Supplicant, in another of his thousand guises. But all the Temple Dreamers would be known; Joslyn imagined an ancient set of instructions rolled and kept in some dusty archive, with a blank space for the Temple Dreamer's name. She couldn't totally suppress a smile, but it turned out to be the right thing to do. The young man thought she was smiling at him and he smiled, too, relaxing just the slightest bit. Joslyn finally looked at him,
seeing
him, as, preoccupied with her own concerns, she had not done before.

You look terrible
.

He did. She hadn't thought much of his paleness
—
as a scion of the governing class it was natural that he'd spend most of his time indoors, learning the administrative skills necessary to one of his station. But he was pale to the point of sickliness, and there were dark rings under his eyes, and a sense of such great fear and weariness there that Joslyn couldn't help feeling sorry for him. She saw his pain, and for the first time began to understand what Tagramon meant about casting out nightmares, and healing Somna's Dream. It wasn't just the ritual, or a test of her skill now. She
wanted
to help him.

Tagramon led him to the couch on the left, Joslyn lay down on the other. At a signal from Tagramon all the tapers surrounding the couches were snuffed at one, and Joslyn, looking up, was suddenly confronted with a vision of a night sky, conjured by tiny windows of glass. She knew how the effect was achieved, but that didn't lessen its impact. Joslyn couldn't remember the last time she'd seen the true sky, but she found it hard to believe that the reality could stand up to the illusion.

One of these days
, she thought,
I'll have to compare them
...

There wasn't time just then. Joslyn was too busy falling asleep.

*

Stars
.

Joslyn awoke with an image of the night sky in her head, and she wasn't sure why. The glow of a dream started to form and rise around her immediately. A dream of her own, and impatient to be born; she dismissed it easily, almost impatiently. For some reason the idea of stars annoyed her, and she held onto the image until she'd throttled the meaning out of it.

That's not me. That's her
...

It was an odd certainty, but it wouldn't go away. She was different. She was Joslyn and that
other
was Joslyn, too. It was an understanding that had grown slowly in her, in the months since she'd been taken into the Temple. In order to free herself to travel easily on the Nightstage she'd had to develop that strong sense of
self
that enabled her to stand apart when the dreams of all the sleepers in the city were blossoming around her like morning-glories after a rain. To stand apart from her own impulse to dream, and walk the stage of dreams as a free Nightsoul, able to see and do at will like some minor goddess. But it was also that sense of self that forced her to see how she was different from that other Joslyn now asleep in the Chamber of True Dreaming.

And what was it I'm supposed to do
?

After a moment that came back, too. Joslyn took a moment to orient herself, using her still-fledgling sense of direction to pin down where the Supplicant's dream should be. It wasn't hard to find.

It looks healthy enough
.

Joslyn was a little surprised. It had the same golden glow of any other dream; none of the flashes of dark lightning and shadow she'd expected from a troubled dream. But that didn't make sense
—
there should have been trouble, some sign, something. Joslyn crept up close like an urchin trying to see through a bakery window.
If it isn't the dream, what is it
?

There were no answers waiting on the outside. Joslyn took a steadying breath and slipped into the dream.

Careful
...

The dream held together, and Joslyn felt a strong sense of relief. It was difficult to see just what sort of scene one was walking into, and the balance was so easily disturbed. But Joslyn had judged correctly, slipped through the curtain but not into the play. She stood back, taking in the scene in front of her.

The Supplicant sat at a table in the middle of a damp stone chamber. He seemed to be waiting for something. His manner was calm... no, that wasn't right
—
resigned. Joslyn puzzled this for many long moments; it was a few more before she realized that he was sitting in the middle of a dungeon. His awareness seemed to rise with hers; the chains, burning coals, spikes and manacles arranged on the walls and around the room suddenly moved into high relief. The dreamer seemed to note this, sighed. Waited. A key turned in a lock in a door that hadn't been there a moment before. The door swung open and banged against the wall.

"Good evening, Quin. Sorry I was detained. Shall we begin?"

What an unpleasant little man
.

Joslyn looked at the newcomer and was instantly seized with dislike. He wore the garb of a torturer and an affected air of professional detachment that only held so long as you didn't look at his eyes. The Supplicant
—
Quin? At least now Joslyn had a name to use
—
rose from the table and stood towering over the newcomer.

"What have you decided for tonight?" he asked, resigned.

"The lash, I think. Yes, I think so. The lash," he grinned. "Please be so good as to chain yourself to that wall."

He's going to do it
!

Joslyn watched, amazed, as Quin stripped to the waist and proceeded to clamp a pair of manacles to his wrists. He stood against the wall, watching dully as his tormenter went to a rack of whips conjured out of nothing on the opposite wall. The little torturer stood a few moments, inspecting his options, and Joslyn's mind worked furiously, trying to make some sense of what she was seeing. There was nothing here of signs and portents, symbols and cryptic messages from the Dreamer of All. Just a young man about to be whipped by an image he conjured himself for the purpose...

No.

Joslyn didn't so much realize the error as feel it. Then after a moment she remembered the weary sadness that the other Joslyn had seen in the young man's eyes. Whatever was happening now, he wasn't enjoying it. It was driving him to madness or death with an equal wager for either, but Joslyn was sure he wasn't doing it himself. If she'd learned any one thing in the brief months she'd spent in the Temple, it was that a dream was a poor place to keep secrets. They rose to the top like bubbles in a rain barrel, and there was no keeping them down. That left only one possibility.

Young Man, your dream
-
candle has attracted a Moth
.

Joslyn's studies had told of such though this was the first time she'd actually seen one. A Moth was not an adept; in most cases they were not even consciously aware of what they did or how they did it. They were like sleepwalkers, stumbling about blind.

Moths roamed the nightstage because they had little choice in the matter; their own dreams were so narrow and miserly that there was nothing to anchor the Nightsoul within and they fled them like prisoners quitting their cells. The problem was that the frustrated Nightsoul tended to take control of any dream it found like a cuckoo stealing another bird's nest. It might even be drawn to one particular dreamer time and again because of the cruel fun it found there. In short, blind instinct matched with a powerful, mean-spirited will
—
Moths were dangerous.

The intruder selected his whip, turned back to his work. He flicked the whip once to lay it out on the stone at full extension, the lash touching Quin's right foot, and then without pause he struck the first blow. Quin cried out, a red welt appearing on his shoulder, and the dream shuddered, almost as if it was wincing with his pain.

Joslyn knew there wasn't much time. A few more of those and the pain would break Quin's dream, and he would awake as he had all those other nights, not to sleep again until time and weariness gave him no choice. And the other Joslyn would have to make up some story about Somna's anger and an appropriate penance that would enrich the Temple but not do very much for the poor idiot chained to the wall in his own dreams. That thought made Joslyn angry, even more than the thought of failing her first augury.

If I'm right there should be able to find some sign... there
!

With a little effort Joslyn spotted what she was looking for, easily missed in the slightly hazy images in Quin's dreams
—
there was a very faint glow around the little torturer, one that did not match the misty outlines of the other props there. The man was not a part of Quin's dream at all, but another Nightsoul; now Joslyn was certain.

Moth to a flame. The Dream Master named them well
 --

The lash snaked out again. Joslyn fancied she could hear the dream cry out, too. She had to do something quickly, but what? She knew what she
should
do
—
send the Moth packing with singed wings. But if Quin became aware of her, or aware of the Moth for what he was, that cold knowledge alone could end Quin's dream before any good was done. The dream must survive...

She smiled a resigned smile. Of course. Not her
—
Quin. Quin would have to deal with the Moth himself if he ever was going to heal himself.
And right now he feels so helpless that he chains himself to the wall at that monster's whim
...

Another blow. No time. Joslyn skirted the edge of the dream, came up behind the bit of dream stuff that Quin had made into a dungeon wall out of habit and fear. Careful to keep out of the line of Quin's sight, she used her will delicately and worked one little change in the dream
—
the manacles fell from Quin's wrists and landed on the stones. Quin and the Moth both looked down at once at the chains on the floor. There was confusion on Quin's face, anger from the Moth.