Dreamseeker (24 page)

Don't trust anyone on Terra Prime
, he'd warned me. But I needed a friend on this world. I needed to be able to trust someone. And if the price of Sebastian's friendship was that I allowed him to dream of the day I would help him destroy the Shadows, that was a lot more benign than what others were asking of me.

“I want to try,” I said at last. Voicing the words sent a chill down my spine, but he was right; I couldn't turn away from this.

“The Shadowlords generally sleep during the day. So if you need to invoke your Gift while he's in a dream state, that would be the time to try it.”

“Tomorrow,” I told him. “I have preparations to make first.”

I needed to contact Isaac. Yes, that meant I would have to reveal my nature to him, but I needed information on the wraiths that only he could give me, and had no other way to reach him. I could only hope that the fragile bond we'd established would be enough to keep him from betraying me. If not . . . well, I would deal with the consequences of that when I had to. One emergency at a time.

The full magnitude of what I was planning was slowly sinking in. In a quiet voice I said, “Promise that if anything bad happens, you'll get word to my family. You don't have to tell them the truth. Just give them a story that's easier to accept than my disappearing without a trace. Give them some kind of path to closure.”

He hesitated. “Jessica, you know I can't go back there—”

“But you can arrange for a message to get to them. Yes?”

“I can do that, yes.”

“So promise me.”

He said it softly. “I promise, Jessica.”

I walked over to the small desk in the corner, took a pen and a piece of paper from the drawer, and wrote down my home address for him. As well as any other instructions I could think of, that he should have if I died.

Tomorrow, I told myself. Tomorrow I would test my Gift. Tomorrow I find out what I was truly capable of.

Or get killed
trying.

S
HADOWCREST

V
IRGINIA
P
RIME

I
SAAC

T
HE WELL OF SOULS
is silent and dark, empty of life, empty of unlife, empty even of death. As Isaac walks down the black corridor it echoes his footsteps back at him with the solemnity of a tomb; not even the passing whisper of a wraith breaks the eerie silence. There are doors on both sides of him, and now and then he tries one, but they are all locked. Human bones are scattered along the bases of the walls: skulls, femurs, dislocated vertebrae, random bones bleached white with age. The eye sockets of the skulls are turned toward him, as though their owners are watching. The atmosphere is chilling even by the standards of an apprentice Shadow, and he shivers as he walks down the hall, wishing he were anywhere but here.

Suddenly the corridor divides into two. Confused, he checks each direction, but beyond ten feet it's too dark to see anything. He doesn't remember this part of the level having forks in it, but now that he is facing one he must choose a course. After a moment's hesitation, he starts down the corridor on the right. It's empty of life and empty of ghosts, like its
predecessor, but there are many more bones in this hallway. They're stacked against the walls in no particular order, a junkyard of bones.

Soon the hall divides again and he must make another choice. He continues on to the right; maybe consistency will help him keep his bearings. But the hall twists around, skewing his sense of direction, and then it divides again. And again. There are more bones on the floor each time, until he has to kick his way through piles of them just to walk. The entire level has transformed into a maze, he realizes, and he is hopelessly lost. Is this some kind of test? He calls out his father's name, but no one answers.

Suddenly he finds himself standing in front of the great double doors that lead to the Chamber of Souls. A wave of panic overwhelms him. No, test or no, he won't go in there again. He turns and starts to walk quickly back the way he came. The straight corridor leads to a sharp turn, then to a long curving stretch, then to a fork where he must choose his direction. . . . and suddenly he is back in front of the doors. He feels the sharp bite of fear, and he turns to flee. This time he runs through the corridors, but that only brings him back to the doors faster. Either he is circling back to them or they are transporting themselves in front of him. Try as he might, he can't get away.

There is nowhere to go but through them.

His heart filled with dread, he reaches out with a trembling hand to open the door, but it swings open of its own accord before he can touch it, and a cold breeze pushes him inside. As he enters the chamber he can see soul fetters gleaming like malevolent stars on all sides of him. Ghosts begin to appear, grouped around the soul fetters that belong to them, and they call out to him. Some try to cajole him, some threaten him with shame, some deride his lack of courage or loyalty or honor. All are trying to coerce him into submitting to
Communion. Their voices merge into a din that fills the chamber and makes his head ring, while soul fetters swirl around him in dizzying patterns. He falls to his knees and instinctively shuts his eyes and covers his ears, even though he knows it won't do him any good. The ghosts are speaking directly to his soul.

Then, suddenly, the voices cease. The ghosts are gone.

Startled, he opens his eyes. There's only one person in the room now besides himself, and she's not a ghost, but flesh and blood. The last person he ever expected to see here.

“Jesse,” he whispers.

She's dressed as he last saw her, in a slim tank top and close-fitting jeans. Her face is flushed red with life, her eyes bright with passion. She is warmth. She is energy. He wants to take her face in his hands and feel the heat of her skin against his fingertips, to drink it in like a precious elixir, along with her passion and her strength. After two weeks in Shadowcrest he is starved for humanity, and she is full of it. The desire is so powerful it leaves him breathless.

But what is she doing here? No outsider is permitted in this place.

She looks around the chamber curiously, studying each element in turn as she would artifacts in a museum: the golden fetters, the richly carved doors, the piles of bleached bones. The fetters have stopped their wild motion, and are hanging in mid-air surrounding them. Isaac struggles to think of something intelligent to say, but all he can come up with is, “There aren't usually bones here.”

And that's when it hits him: the bones
shouldn't
be here. The corridor shouldn't be twisted into a maze. The doors shouldn't appear in front of him no matter where he runs, and
she
should not be here. So many things are wrong, and while he ignored them before, she is one wrong too many. Only one explanation is possible: He's dreaming.

With the revelation comes awareness. Suddenly he can
sense his body lying on a distant bed, and he's aware of just how thin the veil of sleep is that's keeping him here. A single thought could breach that veil and banish everything he's looking at. In fact, he has to concentrate for a moment to hold the dream steady, to remain by the sheer force of his will in a nightmare that ten seconds ago he would have done anything to escape.

But none of that explains Jesse's presence.

How real she looks! He's never dreamed of anyone with this kind of depth and clarity before. Compared to her, the rest of this nightmare is like a cheap stage set, ready to collapse the instant the curtain comes down. But in the same way he knows that he's standing in a dream, and none of this is real, he knows that the Jessica standing in front of him isn't something his mind created. Her existence is independent of him, and when the curtain falls on his nightmare she will continue to exist. But there's only one way that could be possible—

His mind won't complete the thought. He wants to bask in her presence for a moment longer, before speaking the words that will make everything more complicated.

“This is a dark dream,” she says. “Do you have it often?”

The casual conversational tone jars him out of his trance. “Every night, pretty much. Sometimes worse than others. I don't get much sleep these days.” On impulse he reaches out a hand to touch her—but stops inches short of her skin, not daring to make contact. Part of him is afraid of what he might learn if he did. He remembers how she asked him about dreams the night they first met. How he told her about the Dreamwalkers, that they went insane and infected everyone around them, so they had to be destroyed on sight. That's what his elders had taught him, and at the time he simply accepted it, as he accepted all their teachings. But were they telling him the truth? He's come to question so much of Guild dogma that he's wary of taking anything at face value now. Maybe the
Shadows have some other reason to hunt Dreamwalkers, that they wouldn't share with a mere apprentice. Or maybe they're just wrong.

One thing he knows: he could never betray Jesse to his Guild based on those lessons alone. Not when she hasn't done anything wrong, or shown any sign of insanity. He couldn't bear to see them do to her what they did to Jacob.

“Why are you here?” he asks. “Why are you trusting me like this? Yes, I helped you get away before, but this . . . this is . . .”

“So much more?” she asks quietly.

He nods.

A shadow passes over her face. She looks back over her shoulder, as if making sure that they're alone. “I need your help, Isaac. In all of Terra Prime you're the only one who can help me. So I took a chance.” Her eyes are fixed on him now, studying his every response. “Was it a mistake?”

He remembers the touch of her lips on his cheek when she kissed him in the dungeon, and the sudden rush of heat to his loins makes him grateful for the loose robe he's wearing, which shields him from any potential embarrassment. “No.” His voice is slightly hoarse, no doubt due to the lump rising his throat. “It wasn't a mistake. I don't know that I can help you, though. What is it you need?”

“I've run across something that Sebastian thinks is a ghost, but he can't tell me anything more about it. It keeps showing up in my dreams. The other day it crossed over into the waking world and almost killed me. I have to find out what it is, figure out how to fight it. Or at least how to avoid it.”

Again she looks nervously over her shoulder. It's the ghost that she's looking for, he realizes; any minute now she expects it to appear. The thought sends an icy chill down his spine. “Describe it to me.”

“It looks like a dark blotch in the sky at first, and then it
spreads. Eventually it takes on human form, at least in its outline. It doesn't appear to have any physical substance, it's more like a void where nothing exists. As soon as it shows up in my dream it starts sucking all the color out of the landscape, like it was . . .” She drew in a shaky breath. “Like it was devouring the dream itself. The first time I saw it, it attacked me.” She pushed up her sleeve and showed him a jagged gash on her arm, that was just beginning to heal. “I still had the wound when I woke up. That shouldn't be possible, right?”

“Go on,” he says quietly.

“When it showed up in the real world it was . . . cold. It didn't just suck the color out of everything, but all the heat as well. All the life. Everything it passed by became coated in ice.” Her voice is trembling now, her mask of confidence stressed to the breaking point by memories. “I can't just keep running from it, Isaac. Your Guild knows how to deal with the dead. Tell me what I can do to keep this one from killing me. Please.”

He draws in a deep breath, trying to think. A dream-bound spirit that acts like a black hole? He's never been taught anything about that—not officially, anyway—but he's heard legends. Fearful legends, of creatures that even Shadows would be afraid of. “It may be a reaper,” he says at last.

“What's that?”

“A type of spirit that's bound to the dream world. I don't know much about it. No one has seen one for ages. Most people think it's only a legend.”

“But legends can reflect something real,” she reminds him. “You were the one who told me that. Remember?”

He nods solemnly. “I remember.”

“So where can I find more information? If I don't, it's just a question of time before this one gets me.”

“I don't know, Jesse” He shakes his head. “I've read all the basic primers on spirit types, and nothing like this is described in them. The Masters of my Guild might know—”

“But you can't ask them,” she says quickly.

“If you think this thing will hurt you otherwise—”

“I'm a
Dreamwalker
, Isaac. The minute they even suspect that, they'll move heaven and earth to hunt me down. You know they will.” She shook her head emphatically. “You can't talk to anyone about this. Not even indirectly. Promise me.”

“Okay.” The edge of panic that's coming into her voice is unnerving. She seems to fear the Shadows more than she fears the reaper. “I won't talk to anyone. I'll just research it myself. I promise.”

Suddenly she looks around the room again. The atmosphere in the chamber has changed subtly, becoming colder by a few degrees. Maybe a bit darker. “I have to go,” she says quickly. “I'll get back to you later.”

“When do you need this information?”

“Yesterday.” She attempts to smile but it's a strained expression, without any humor in it. “There's bad shit going down soon. I need to know how to deal with this thing.”

“I'll do what I can—”

But she's already gone.

There was nothing about reapers in the library.

Of course there was nothing.

He had expected there to be nothing.

That didn't mean the Guild had no information on them. On the contrary, the Masters' archives probably contained the information Isaac was looking for, in a neatly organized format. The only problem was that as a mere apprentice he had no access to that specialized collection. He didn't even know where in Shadowcrest it was located.