Seven Dreams (25 page)

DREAM FOUND, BUT
WHERE IS THE KEY? shouted the central board.

‘
So
much for Nimdre,’ Egg said cheerfully, hefting her pack.

Teyo read
quickly. A group from the University of Draetre, and other
organisations, had found a skyborne Dream in eastern Nimdre, near
the border with Ullarn. No key had been found within. The Dream
itself had been floating in an enormous bubble, the boards
proclaimed, though Teyo had trouble visualising that. It had been
secreted behind a ring of peaks so high that no one had ever
explored them before. Curiously, the bubble had been filled with
water, or something very like it, rendering it both airborne and
underwater at the same time. Teyo saw pictures flash past bright
with colour: the water was more lavender than blue, and filled with
watery fauna the likes of which he had never seen or heard of
before. Everything shone with a pearly radiance that was
mesmerising to the eye. He wanted to stay and read everything about
it, and look at every single picture, but his interest was not
shared by his colleagues. Egg was already striding away, and Iya
seemed more inclined to follow than to try out her fledgling
reading skills on the text. Disappointed, Teyo turned away. He
could catch up with the report later, maybe.

The important
thing was that their three choices had now been reduced to two:
Glour or Glinnery. That gave them good odds of finding themselves
in the right(ish) place at the proper time. It also explained which
realm the Baron’s key had come from, which gave them an advantage;
as far as he knew, few of the searchers were aware that three keys
had been found, not two. A lot of people would waste a lot of time
searching Nimdre, while his team would be well away.

Shouldering his
pack, Teyo trudged after Egg in the direction of the station, his
pace much slower than her brisk step. They were disguised again,
judging it best given Ylona’s discovery of their last hideout. Teyo
regretted this, since he secretly hated the wigs. They made his
head itch, and he had to resist the temptation to scratch. But it
was necessary. They were attired as farmers, which seemed apt given
the rural location they had been hiding in, and Teyo did his best
to stare around himself in awe, just like a real farmhand might do
on his first visit to the big city. He made a hash of it, of
course. Serena and Fabian would do it perfectly; he’d hardly know
them himself. Teyo wished they were here, not rambling around all
over somewhere without him.

Never mind. He
was doing the best he could, and nothing catastrophic (or
unsalvageably so) had happened so far. He tried to enjoy Iyamar’s
obvious enthusiasm for the venture and set aside his gloomy
reflections. If he was leading his reduced team wrongly, well...
they would deal with it later.

He was somewhat
heartened to notice a stray corner of Egg’s new blanket sticking
out of the top of her backpack.

Teyo had been to
Glinnery only once before, in his youth. He had gone with his
father to the market of Waeverleyne, Glinnery’s capital city, to
buy new and rare materials for their business. Glinnery was a
remarkable place, and the market was justifiably legendary; he had
held fond memories of that trip, until the death of his parents had
tainted all such recollections forever.

This being the
case, he had privately hoped that his team might pick any realm to
go to except Glinnery, though he would rather have died than admit
it. Especially to Egg. And now, here he was; not only in Glinnery,
but back in Waeverleyne as well.

Admittedly, it
had changed a great deal in the quarter of a century that had
passed since his last visit. Or, some of it had. The route from
Iving through southern Glinnery to Waeverleyne remained as
remarkable and glorious as Teyo remembered: all rolling hills and
valleys spread with bright grasses and vibrant flowers, and dotted
everywhere with clusters of the strange Glinnish glissenwol trees
that were seen nowhere else. They were not like the trees of Irbel,
which were clad in coloured bark and decked in wide, frondy leaves.
Glinnery’s trees were vast — much, much taller than those of Irbel
or Nimdre — and they bore neither bark nor leaves. Their trunks
were toweringly tall, wide and gracefully curved, and topped with
enormous, spreading caps, plumply rounded and shining blue and
purple and silver in the eternal Daylander sun.

The same trees
populated Waeverleyne. In fact, most of the city’s buildings were
constructed up and around those graceful trunks, easily accessible
to the winged folk of the realm. But here, things had changed. The
city had been the site of a brief but brutal war between some of
the returning draykoni and the human inhabitants of Waeverleyne.
The attackers claimed that the realm had been theirs, many
centuries before, and they sought to reclaim it from the human
settlers. They had been defeated, but Waeverleyne had borne heavy
losses. Teyo saw painful gaps where once majestic trees had grown,
still unfilled two years later. Worse, there was the appalling
sight of half-burned glissenwol trees, one or two buildings still
clinging bravely to their trunks but the upper storeys lost
forever.

‘
Why
are the trees burned?’ demanded Iyamar as they neared the centre of
Waeverleyne. ‘Come to think of it, why are the trees so
weird
?’

‘
They’re “weird” because they’re glissenwol, and they’re burned
because there was a war,’ Egg said. ‘Surely you can’t have missed
that?’

‘
I
dunno. When was it?’

‘
About
two years ago?’

Iya shrugged. ‘I
would’ve been busy trying to eat, around then.’

‘
That’s no excuse for ignorance,’ Egg snapped.

Teyo quickly
intervened. ‘I asked around, and there’s a decent inn a couple of
streets from here. Shall we get settled in? We’d be close to the
boards for the news.’

Egg grumbled
something, but thankfully it was inaudible. Iyamar said nothing at
all.

‘
Excellent,’ Teyo said with a bright smile. ‘Let’s go,
then.’

Their stay was
destined to be short, in spite of the inn’s many comforts. Teyo was
woken in the middle of the next night (such as it was in daylit
Glinnery) by the ferocious buzzing of his voice-box. He leapt to
answer it, kicking his blankets out of the way and slamming his
hand into the activation button.

‘
Teyodin Bambre, division three.’

‘
Teyo,
this is Rulan Trame, division five,’ said the box. ‘Got a tip-off
for you. I’m stationed at Aravin. They’ve found something up here,
and I think it’s going to be the one you’re looking
for.’

Teyo felt a flash
of excitement, and relief. ‘Aravin’s north of Waev?’

‘
Due
north. The site’s near the coast, about six miles west of the
border with Glour.’

‘
Gotcha,’ said Teyo. ‘Thanks.’ He switched off the box and ran
to wake his team.

‘
Got a
proposition for you both,’ Teyo said a little while later, as they
collectively shoved food down their throats prior to departure. ‘We
need to get up to Aravin
fast
. We don’t have time for
carriages. I’m going to shift, and I’ve got two options for
you.’

Iyamar stopped
eating and stared at Teyo, horror-struck.

‘
I can
either carry both of you, or Iya can shift and one of us can take
Egg,’ he said. He gazed back at Iyamar, trying to convey by his
expression an air of confidence and calm. He knew Iya could do it,
even if she didn’t.

Egg glanced
sideways at Iyamar with more than a hint of derision, but to Teyo’s
relief she didn’t complicate matters by offering any comments. The
silence stretched as Iyamar struggled with herself.

‘
I
can’t,’ she said finally. The statement bore none of the panic or
fury of their legendary debate a couple of weeks ago, but it was
nonetheless inflexible. Resigned, defeated, and depressed as
well.

‘
Why
not?’ said Teyo gently. ‘Here, try something right now. Shift
draykon, but do a tiny one. This big.’ He held his hands a few
inches apart to demonstrate the size. ‘You won’t be a danger to
anybody. It’ll be almost the same as turning Jispish.’

The subject of
this latter addition twitched at the mention of her name, and
looked up. She was ensconced atop the table with a dish of cream,
which she had been greedily slurping without pause since Teyo had
put it down for her.

Iyamar glanced
uncertainly at Jisp, and then back at Teyo. ‘Do you think it will
be all right?’ she said uncertainly. ‘What if I lose control of it
again?’

‘
You
won’t.’

‘
But
what if I do?’

‘
You
won’t. It’ll be fine.’ When Iya glanced uncertainly towards the
door, he added, ‘no one will come in.’

You can do
it,
declared Jisp adoringly, and proceeded to radiate the kind
of serene, worshipful confidence nobody had ever felt for
Teyo.

Iyamar bit her
lip, and then — before Teyo had even realised she planned to try —
she was gone, and in her place hovered a tiny draykon. She’d
panicked a bit, though. The proof was clearly evident.

‘
You’ve got the head on backwards,’ Teyo said calmly. ‘Give it
another try.’

Iyamar had
realised this and was flapping madly in circles, shrieking. The
girl had a point, Teyo was forced to admit; had she done this
full-size, the damage could have been considerable.

It took her a
minute or two to pull herself together, and then she shifted again,
correctly this time. Her miniature draykon was perfect in every
detail. Her joy at getting it right was palpable, and Teyo grinned.
‘Good! See, I knew you could do it.’

Iyamar whuffed
through her nostrils and nuzzled at Jisp, who had thrown herself at
the little draykon with a piercing howl of admiration. Egg rolled
her eyes and turned her back, munching her sausages and bread with
cheerful obliviousness to the screaming congratulatory victory lap
going on behind her.

‘
So,
if we get you somewhere out in the open, I reckon you could do a
full-size one,’ Teyo urged. ‘You’ve got it down!’

The joy-party
stopped abruptly and Iyamar-as-draykon keeled over in a dramatic
faint.

‘
It’s
not that bad,’ Teyo said, laughing. ‘If you end up with your tail
growing out of your nose, we’ll just fix it.’

Iyamar,
apparently dead, made no response.

Teyo solved that
problem by simply picking her up and stuffing her into his pocket.
He added Jisp, too, to keep them both quiet, then hauled Egg away
from the remains of her very generous breakfast and packed them all
off northwards.

They soon found a
reasonably unoccupied meadow to use as a testing ground. Teyo
decided it was time to apply just a little bit of pressure, and
made a show of checking his timepiece. ‘If we don’t get going soon,
we’ll be too late,’ he observed. ‘Rulan won’t be able to hold off
the hordes forever.’ He held Jisp in one hand and Iyamar, still in
her tiny draykon form, in the other. ‘Ready?’ he asked. ‘Good!’ And
he chucked her up into the air.

Her wings
stretched out instinctively, and caught her before she fell. She
soared some distance away, turned a few loops in the air (showing
off for Jisp’s benefit, Teyo thought, feeling the tiny lizard
vibrating with awe in his curled left hand), and then began to
grow. It happened fast. Teyo had noticed that about Iya before; she
procrastinated, shied away and generally gave in to all manner of
specious fears, but once she gathered the resolve to do something,
she did it, instantly and without delay. Within seconds, a
fully-sized draykon was soaring majestically over their heads, her
amber scales flashing gorgeously in the sunlight.

Teyo forgot
himself so far as to jump into the air and let out a wild cheer.
Egg greeted this with a sardonic look and a roll of her eyes.
Chastened, he stopped, coughed, and confined his raptures to
mindspeak.

Amazing!
he called.
Fabulous! Fantastic! You’re the best!

I hate
you,
Iyamar replied.

I suppose
that’s fair.
Teyo handed Jisp off to Egg, who tucked the tiny
creature into her pocket with surprising tenderness, and then he
shifted into his own draykon shape. He
loved
it so much,
which was a thing he would never admit. The sheer size and power of
it! In this shape, he didn’t feel guilty about the past, or
troubled about the future, or worried about anything at all. He was
content to simply be, and enjoy the miraculous joy of flight. He
waited with forced patience as Egg clambered onto his back and
settled herself and their belongings, tying the latter down with
rope. Once all was ready, she tapped him between the shoulder
blades in their agreed signal, and he spread his wings.

His favourite way
to take off was simply to jump into the air and burst into flight;
it felt exciting and fabulous and powerful. He was careful today,
though, mindful of Egg and the baggage, and rose slowly and
steadily into the air. Iyamar was still turning loops ahead of
him.

Time to
go,
he called.

Iya span in a few
frenzied circles and then stopped, with a visible effort at
controlling herself.