Waking in Dreamland (51 page)

The apprentices bent to pick up the pieces and set them where their chief indicated. Taboret’s muscles were stiff, but she was entirely herself once again. She set to work willingly, blessing the privacy of her own thoughts, which could be as rebellious as she wanted. Sadly, it meant that she wouldn’t have been able to read Glinn’s mind any more, but that didn’t matter since he was dead. Now and then, she seemed to feel his presence as if he was still alive, but put that down to imagination, something with which she was not extraordinarily gifted, but love did funny things to a person. Typical of the Dreamland, where illusions were the stuff life was made of.

“Come on, Master Brom, we’ve got to get moving,” Acton said, impatiently, shoving a heap of gears and wheels into the piles. He didn’t look nearly as menacing as he had before. Taboret wondered if he, too, had been enhanced by the power of the crucible. They moved around him, dumping bicycle parts in heaps. “They’re coming up fast behind us.”

“We are working on the situation,” Brom snapped. “Assist, or get out of the way.”

Dowkin and Doolin Countingsheep sat side by side on the ground next to the pile of broken parts. They had long, thin faces with heavy foreheads and eyebrows, all drooping mournfully.

“It was almost perfect,” Doolin said. Taboret was surprised that she could still tell them apart, even without the help of the link. “We’re separate beings again. It’s no good.”

“Have to find a way back to that state, brother,” Dowkin said. “I can start the calculations.”

“It’s been a conspiracy all along,” Doolin said, with a dark look for the others. “We had a perfect bond. They copied it, then they broke it.”

“Dowkin! Doolin!” Brom shouted, throwing a set of handlebars at them. “Enough! Put these together!” Sullenly, the brothers got up and set to work, muttering under their breath to one another.

The remaining bicycles were jury-rigged into tandems and trandems, and a makeshift yoke was concocted to carry the Alarm Clock to the banks of the Lullay. Taboret hung back, hoping to be ignored until she could escape into the woods, but Brom’s personal radar found her even at the back of the crowd.

“You, and you,” he pointed at Lurry. “Take the litter. The rest of you we will need for the final construction. We haven’t much time. Hurry!”

The silver-and-gold bloodhounds veered off the road, dragging Roan behind them. They rushed into the woods, vacuuming scents off trees, lolloped over piles of bracken, and splashed through brooks. The trees dodged this way and that. Roan got tied up in the leashes more than once avoiding running into the landscape.

There was a rustle in the undergrowth ahead of Roan. The two dogs lifted their heads toward the heavens, and set up a loud howl of joy, and scrambled forth into the brush.

“Who’s there?” a voice asked tentatively, over the excited baying. “Oh, Schwinn!”

“Leonora!” Roan shouted, running toward the voice. He pushed through a brake of flowering lilacs. The princess stood there, high on her pedestal for safety, looking exactly like an exotic blossom herself. The dogs frolicked and danced around her, jumping up to lick her feet, tying the plinth up in their leashes. Roan felt as if he could dance, too. His heart was overflowing with delight and love. He rushed to her, and she jumped down and threw her arms around him. The music he’d heard that night on the hilltop filled the air.

“My darling, I thought you were dead, and then I was so angry and worried,” Roan said, in between eager kisses, as all his thoughts tumbled together. “We’ve been coming to rescue you.”

“Wait until I tell you what happened,” Leonora said. “If I could only have gotten that wretched steed loose from their influence, I could have been back with you ages ago. They’d never have caught up with me. I have so much to tell you.”

The others came crashing over the fallen brush, and gathered around them to welcome the princess back.

“Dear lady, I am so glad,” Bergold said. “It’s nearly been the death of my poor young friend here.”

“We’re happy you’re safe,” Felan said, smiling at her with relief.

“I found your treasures,” Roan said, pulling the daisy chain out of his waistcoat pocket. He folded them into her hand. “I knew you didn’t throw them away idly.”

Leonora kissed Roan soundly once more, then pulled away.

“Oh, thank you, my darling,” she said, with a sweet smile. “Just one moment?”

She spun on her heel, and slapped Felan across the face hard enough to make him stagger backward.

Without conscious impulse, Roan and the other men responded as all gentlemen of the Dreamland did when a lady demonstrated that she had been offended. They picked Felan up, marched him to the nearest river, which happened to be the Lullay, and threw him in.

“Wait! Hey! Blub!” Felan shouted, spitting out a mouthful of water. Not waiting for him to climb out on the bank, Roan went back to Leonora.

“Now, please tell us why we did that,” Roan said. The princess stood with her hands on her hips, tapping her foot impatiently. She was angry.

“Felan betrayed us,” she said, her eyes flashing. “He’s Brom’s spy!”

“Felan?” Roan asked, watching the historian crawl up the bank somewhat downstream from where he went in, sputtering, his clothes streaming.

“He’s been sending Brom air-mail reports all along,” she said. “One of them came while I was with them. He has been telling them all our moves from the time we left home!”

“He must be the one,” Glinn said. “You know, you’d have caught up with us days ago if it hadn’t been for him.”

“What?” Spar asked.

“What?” Bergold asked, his usually mild face turning purple.

“Who is this?” Leonora asked, spinning to study the scientist. Her eyes widened when she saw the blue-and-white tunic and the pocket protector. She clenched her fists.

“This is a brave man, and a true friend of the Dreamland,” Roan explained, putting his hands on her shoulders to reassure her. “He was the one leaving trail markers for us.”

“
You’re
the spy?” Spar demanded as Felan squelched back to the group, shaking water out of his shoes. “You never sent any reports home to Mnemosyne? You dragged us through the Nightmare Forest on purpose?” The historian changed his sheepish look for an arrogant one.

“Ha!” he said. “I thought you’d forgotten about that.”

“Forgotten!” Spar shouted.

“Is it true?” Roan demanded.

“Of course it is,” Felan said, impatiently. “I’m not surprised that a one-faced freak like you was never able to figure it out on your own. Not one of you understand what Brom is trying to do. All our life is a lie unless we find out the truth about the Sleepers.”

“But I
do
understand,” Glinn said. “I was one of the apprentices who drew up the design parameters for the project. Ringing the Alarm Clock could mean utter destruction. If not that, then certainly upheaval, terror, and danger for countless Dreamlanders.”

Felan pretended not to care, but Roan could tell he was upset by Glinn’s speech. Leonora was angrier than ever, but Roan never anticipated how furious Felan’s betrayal would make Bergold. He had never seen his dear friend so angry.

“You young fool.” The senior historian grew to a giant, eight feet tall with hands the size of watermelons. He picked Felan up, and threw him overhand back in the river. Felan sank with a splash.

“I for one don’t care if he never comes up,” Spar said, scanning the surface of the Lullay. A dark head broke water. “Oh, too bad. He can swim.” The figure that climbed out was a changed man. Felan was smaller and humbler-looking, almost wormlike. But this time he didn’t come back to them when he waded ashore. Keeping well away from them, he started walking south, and slunk in among the trees. The leaves closed behind him, and he was gone.

“Good riddance,” Spar said.

In as much detail as she could, Leonora told them about the rise and collapse of the gestalt-being. Roan listened, horrified.

“Thank the Sleepers he failed,” he said.

“It won’t stop them,” Glinn said. “But they’ll be moving much slower. This is our chance to catch up with them at last.”

“What about you?” Bergold said, holding up the blindfold. Glinn shook his head.

“I won’t need that now. The gestalt is broken. I’m free. Besides, it won’t matter if he can see through my eyes now.

He is nearly there.”

The party took to horse again, and rode west along the banks until they came to a place where the shore was churned into mud.

“There’s weirdness everywhere,” Lum said.

“This is where they took to the water,” Roan said. “But on what?”

“Brom is endlessly inventive,” Glinn replied. “He can make a sailing ship out of a brick and a bedsheet. He might truly have had to do something of the kind. He has a way of using opposing forces to his benefit.”

“Which way do we go?” Roan asked.

“Upstream,” Glinn said. “To the source.”

“Follow me,” Roan said. He backed Cruiser up a dozen paces, and spurred him straight at the shining water.

Chapter 34

Taboret hung on to the bow of the speedboat. It wasn’t a pretty craft, but it worked. Brom had transformed the remaining steeds into a single water vehicle that skipped along the river. He had hooked the remaining bicycles together with paperclip chain and coathangers, and the craft looked as if it had been constructed out of odd bits. The chief scientist held onto the tiller at the stern, staring straight ahead with his glowing eyes.

The gestalt was nearly burned out. It would never again be able to raise enough power to make them into a single entity, but it was just enough to impel their engines. That was all that mattered. Brom was fixed upon a single goal, and was pushing them to succeed. To keep the crucible power going, they had to maintain physical contact with one another. Brom had taken one of the remaining coat hangers and made handcuffs out of it to hold them all together until they got to the waterfall, which Taboret could see ahead of her. It reached all the way to the sky.

Every time the boat hit the waves, the bells would chime, transforming things. Taboret was tired of changing form every time it happened. She clutched at the side of the boat with fingernails grown into talons and longed for the journey to be over at last.

They must reach the Hall of Sleepers before Roan did. He wasn’t far behind them. The King’s Investigator wasn’t the only peril facing them. Sharks large enough to swallow them whole had been pacing the vessel since it took to the water. Giant lizards with strange eyes stared at them through the trees. Titans the size of trees threw rocks at one another and laughed with deep, earth-shaking voices. And Taboret was certain she had seen at least one dragon. If they didn’t win through to the Hall soon, their noisy engines would attract more unwanted attention.

“Hold tight!” Brom shouted at them, as they entered the waterfall’s great pool. The spray soaked them, and the thunder of the falls drove the little boat out and away again and again, threatening to capsize it. Water serpents circled the hull, looking for little tidbits, like humans, to fall over the side. Taboret drew back into the shell and found herself flattened against the Alarm Clock’s draped side. “We must pass under the curtain,” the chief scientist said. “Pay attention, all of you! Open the way for us. Focus on driving straight through! Use all the influence you have! Join it all in the gestalt! Now!”

Taboret thought there was nothing left inside her, but slowly, the pillars of the thundering, gray torrent parted. A narrow, dark slot opened in the great cataract. She stared at it, blinking water off her eyelashes. That couldn’t be large enough to let their boat pass! Brom leaned over, and turned the throttle up to full. The sound of the bells was drowned out by the deafening boom of the falls. Terrified, Taboret huddled in the bow and helped will the boat through the opening in the cascade and into the cave she knew was beyond. The water hammered down against the invisible substance of their barrier. Taboret was afraid it wouldn’t hold. She prayed Roan was close behind them.

Cruiser splashed his great splayed hooves on the surface of the water, kicking up little sprays like clouds of dust. The others rode strung out in a long file behind him, leaping waves and dashing over whitecaps. Roan glanced back at Leonora, who was clinging to Golden Schwinn’s mane with a grim expression on her face.

Because every vehicle is appropriate to its circumstances, the steeds had become water horses when Roan rode them at the river and turned them upstream. The hippocampi had two great finlike forefeet, a long back, and fishlike tails. Roan thought that they were very beautiful, but their looks were not as important as their speed. It was as hard as galloping uphill to ride upstream, but the steeds were willing, and their riders’ influence was oddly strong. Roan was sure it was because they were so close to the Sleepers.

The current of the mighty river was as powerful here at its point of origin as it was one and a half turns of the world away where it flowed into Nightlily Lake at the heart of the continent. This was the origin of all life in the Dreamland, the symbol of the Collective Unconscious. All along the shore, things were climbing or flying out of it, some things Roan had never seen before. Most of them were beautiful, true reflections of the Sleepers’ minds. Many were terrifying, living nightmares, manifestations of the troubles they sought to solve. This happened at other places along the banks of the Lullay, but much more frequently here. He wished the errand was less urgent, so he could study some of the emergent life forms, and bring back a report to the king. But there would be no reports if they didn’t succeed.

The sound of the great waterfall filled their ears. It seemed to be falling from the very top of the Mystery massif, falling from heaven itself. though they were still miles away from the cataract itself, the spray of it filled the air. Roan blinked away the wet mist, and kept his eyes on the falls, arched over by rainbows, roofed by clouds, and streaming over many-colored rocks the size of palaces. They were glorious, terrifying, and huge.

“There they go!” Lum cried over the roar of the water. He leaned over to point. Roan sighted down his arm until he saw the tiny gray craft in the heart of the basin. A dark hole seemed to open up in the wall of water, and the craft vanished.