Wakeworld (17 page)

V
ivian sat on a fallen log by the campfire Weston had built, toasting her front while her back turned to goose bumps with the cold. Poe stood across from her, his white patches glowing reddish in the flickering flames, the crimson mark where a sword had once pierced his breast seeming to move and change into different shapes. No stars tonight—the sky was opaque blackness. Weston had been muttering about the need for rain, the forest so dry that they shouldn’t really be making a fire at all, but she prayed to all the powers that be to leave well enough alone. Bad enough to sleep on the cold hard ground without rain to make matters worse. Maybe that made her a wimp, but she was bone weary and not inclined to further misery.

Weston’s tried-and-true door had not worked. Vivian couldn’t even see the damned thing, although she sensed it clearly enough. A small buzz of energy when she was near it gave her its essential size and position. But she couldn’t open it. And when Weston opened it, or said he did, he simply vanished from her view and she was unable to follow him.

A long time she stood, eyes closed, hands moving over the current of energy that eluded her, searching for a way through. It felt like trying to shift the course of a river, and she gave it up at last as a lost cause.

“Maybe if I shift,” she’d said, staring at the bushes and rock that she knew marked a door into Dreamworld. But she felt cold and empty, the dragon fire far away, and she couldn’t seem to remember why shifting had seemed to her a tenable idea in the first place.

Weston pulled supplies out of his backpack and set up a rough camp. He got a small fire going, explaining that he didn’t dare make it any bigger because of the need for rain. He dragged over a length of fallen log for her to sit on.

She watched the fire rise and fall, the flames making ever-shifting picture patterns as they consumed their fuel, dying away in one place to arise in another. Poe pressed up against her and she laid one hand on his head. She startled some time later to find Weston standing at her side bearing a tin cup full of something steaming hot. Expecting coffee or maybe tea, she accepted it thankfully, but when she raised it to her nose to inhale the fragrance she sputtered and almost flung the cup away. A greenish wave washed over the side and burned her fingers.

“What the hell is this?”

“Plan B.”

“Poison?”

“No, peyote.”

“What?”

“Peyote. You know, the sacred medicine that allows you to see into the otherworld.”

“You mean the hallucinogenic drug that makes you crazy.” She tried to hand the mug back to him. “I’m not drinking this shit. Where did you get it, anyway?”

He shrugged. “You ask a lot of questions for a woman out of options.”

“You drink it.”

Weston laughed. “Yeah. I get high, see some pretty colors, and that’s about it. But some people—not even Dreamshifters—have been known to have real dream quests on peyote.”

“You’re actually serious.”

“I am. Don’t give me that law-abiding holier-than-thou look. The natives were doing this stuff years before you were born, all as part of spiritual journeys. Their version of dream walking.”

“It’s still a drug. A hallucinogen. People get stuck and can’t find their way back to reality.”

“For real? You’re telling me you killed a sorceress in the Between and now you’re afraid of a little peyote?”

She sniffed at the tea again, skeptical. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“Do you have a choice?”

“What if—I drink your peyote tea, and then I turn into a dragon while I’m high? What then?”

“Well, that would be quite a trip, I’d think. One for the books.” His face was tight, belying the lightness of his tone. “Look, there’s a ceremony that is supposed to go with this. I don’t know the whole thing, but I can try. Maybe it will help.”

He pulled his cooking pot out of the backpack, turned it upside down in front of him, and started beating out a rhythm with his hands. His voice rose in an odd, wavering chant that ran a shiver down the center of her spine.

“Where did you learn that?”

He paused in the chanting, but his hands kept the rhythm. In the firelight his face had taken on a remote, mysterious look. “I have a friend who brought me in to the ceremonies. I always sat in the corner and listened, which is why this won’t be quite right. Well, that and the fact that I’m playing a pan instead of a ceremonial drum. Play big or go home, right?”

Vivian looked into the cup and back at him, believing despite herself. If there were Dreamshifters, why shouldn’t there be shamans, and who was to say what mysteries existed in the spirit world?

“But if it matters—if you get it wrong. I mean, couldn’t the spirits or whatever take offense? They might not take kindly to us messing around.”

“If your heart is pure and your intentions clean—”

“But what if it’s not?” A few minutes ago she’d felt beyond emotion, even fear. Now something very close to panic set her heart to fluttering. Pure? She hadn’t been to church in years, and she didn’t think
pure
was an adjective that would have ever fit. An image of Jared came to mind again, his hands on her unwilling body.
Not your fault,
she told herself reflexively. But no amount of logic served to wash away the lingering shame and loathing that was always waiting, just below the surface.

“Either it works or it doesn’t. If not, I figure we’re shit out of luck. Take a few deep breaths, clear your thoughts, and drink the damned tea.”

He went back to chanting, his voice rising high and quavering into the night. She’d heard native chants and knew he didn’t make the mark, although his efforts definitely qualified as eerie. The shadows seemed to thicken and coalesce around the fire, as if other presences were moving in, crowding her a little. Poe puffed up his feathers. Somewhere in a tree branch close by the raven croaked, softly. It sounded like encouragement.

Vivian took a sip and gagged.

The brew was bitter and a little slimy; not a beverage made for pleasure. Maybe if she thought of it as medicine she’d do better. Holding her breath she drained the entire mug in several long gulps, shuddered, and waited. Too late to back out now. For a time nothing happened. Weston continued to beat his makeshift drum and sing.

And then the nausea struck. Her stomach cramped and convulsed. No time to move away from the fire before her body rejected the tea with a vengeance. “You poisoned me,” she muttered, as soon as she could speak, but Weston didn’t hear her. Pushing her hair back behind her ears with shaking hands, feeling limp and fragile, she resumed her seat beside the fire, watching the flames expand and contract to the rhythm of the drum.

Mesmerized, she breathed in the melody of smoke and pine, the scent of warm orange flame filling her ears. The shadows stretched and turned inside out, transitioning into color while the flames went dark.

Her brain insisted that this was all wrong. The fire was orange and hot, it flickered, it made the shadows by casting light. In response to the logical thought, the music lurched, the shadows bent and twisted, and nausea squeezed her stomach again. A deep breath, and she let the logic go, let the music and the fire and the color do whatever it was they wanted to do.

“It’s beautiful,” she murmured, lifting a hand to pluck at a strand of yellow light. It quivered beneath her hand, making a sound that smelled of lemon and sunlight. With both hands she played with the symphony of light and sound and fragrance, lost in a purity of sensual pleasure she could never have imagined.

A voice scattered the music, sending the color dancing away and out of reach. At a little distance from the fire a door appeared, hanging in midair. It was not like any door she had ever seen before—it glowed with translucent color. If stained glass were alive, it might look this way with a light behind it. Getting up from her place by the fire she paced toward it, solemnly and in rhythm with the steady beat that permeated the air. As she drew closer, she slipped off her shoes. Her feet sank into a maelstrom of light, currents of color that swirled and eddied with every step.

Holy ground.

In front of the door she paused, awestruck. She could see the atoms moving, electrons circling and shifting, changing allegiance from one partner to another. The dance expanded—planets circling stars, constellations revolving around constellations, one universe flowing into another. Cosmic wind blew against her, pushing her back and away, even as she stretched her hands out trying to touch the wonder. Farther and farther she blew, growing ever smaller until the door was the size of the universe and she was the size of an atom, tiny, flung adrift in the winds of empty space.

At first she thought she heard her own voice sobbing with loss, but light flickered around her, thousands of tiny fireflies, and as the light grew brighter she could see that each light was a human soul surrounded by multihued auras, their weeping creating a great choral flare of a dull greenish black, like a bruise on the surface of the universe.

Above, in a velvet-black sky, one bright spot shaped like a keyhole glowed with promise.

Vivian sprouted wings and flew toward it. There was a squeeze, and then she was through and flying over a land where the rivers were made of molten gold and precious stones the size of boulders were as common as granite.

Dragons everywhere—sleeping in the sunlight, swimming in the golden river, flying free and wild. And then they turned on each other and began to fight and kill. Fire swept across fields and forests and a great smoke rose up into the sky. Dragon blood, black and corrosive, fouled the golden river.

From out of the earth a thick black substance rose up like smoke, drifting and coiling above the scarred earth. It frightened her more than the clash of the dragons, although she couldn’t say why.

A dark cloud boiled up out of the hills, growing bigger and bigger until it filled the sky like a wall. Lightning bolts shot through it; thunder rumbled and crashed. As a mighty wind came up that drove her back through the keyhole, helpless as an autumn leaf, she heard a baby crying, a lost, abandoned sound. She struggled against the wind to get to the child, but it was too strong, tearing at her body, dashing her about without mercy. Still, she could hear the wailing of the child, and she too was crying with helplessness and loss.

The darkness gathered and coalesced, took on shape and substance. Wings. A long body, a graceful serpentine neck, a horned head with eyes that shone like molten gold. Wherever the black dragon went, darkness went with her and she left a trail of darkness behind her. Stars were blotted out of the sky. Grass and flower and stone were sucked up into her shadow.

Let there be nothing,
a voice said, and it was so.

After that it was a long time before Vivian came to herself. It took her a moment to remember the name of the man sitting across from her, silent and watchful, to remember the word for the thing around her shoulders—
blanket
—and the warm glowing light in front of her—
fire
. Despite both fire and blanket she shivered, her teeth chattering, and Weston walked over and pressed a tin cup into her hands.

She shook her head,
no, no more
, but when he pressed it to her lips it was not bitter but hot and sweet. Her hands shook too much to hold the cup. Even with his help it chattered against her teeth and hot liquid dribbled and slopped down the front of her, but Weston was persistent and for every mouthful that she swallowed she felt a little better.

“Now you will sleep,” he said. Words sounded strange spoken aloud, twining with the smoke and the flame and drifting up into the night sky. She obeyed his guiding hands, though, climbing into a sleeping bag laid out for her by the fire. A gentle hand touched her hair, then brushed her eyes closed and she slid into a deep dark slumber.

S
urmise. Zee’s instincts had been right, after all. Not far past the place where the dragon and the giant had died, he’d found an open door that led right into the grassy field in front of the castle. Prince Landon had come out to personally greet the new arrivals, and within moments Jared was whisked off to the healers. Landon had tried to get Zee to go too, but he had refused.

“No time,” he’d said. “Vivian’s in danger. I need your help.”

He’d been conducted to the private garden where he now sat beside a fountain on the stone bench that had once been stained by the Chancellor’s blood. No penguin lying dead now in the grass, no Vivian bruised and frightened, but these images lodged in his memory like stones in a shoe.

He was safe here, for the moment, but this did nothing to ease his sense of urgency and impending disaster. Safety meant nothing as long as Vivian was in danger.

He was hoping that Landon and Isobel could help him think of what to do next.

“Vivian will be a little lost without the pendant, I’d think,” Isobel said, one slender hand dabbling in the clear water of the pool where the fountain endlessly played. She wore a white dress and her hair fell loose over her shoulders. It made her look young, Vivian’s sister more than her mother, and not possibly a woman of over a hundred years.

Zee watched her hand dip in and out of the water, the forearm marked by a network of thin white scars. The fountain and the garden around it was a Dreamworld of its own, somehow sewn onto the fabric of Surmise. Time did not exist here; as long as Isobel and Landon stayed in this small space they would not grow old, no matter how many years passed in the world outside.

A sense of unreality set his teeth on edge. His journey through the maze of the Between, dragging Jared behind him on a makeshift wooden stretcher, seemed a story from a distant past; perhaps something that had happened to another man. The sense of the surreal felt too much like enchantment, made him want to leap to his feet and run.

Which would accomplish absolutely nothing, of course, and so he held himself together and sat, his mind hammering his body into submission.

“What benefit would someone find in stealing the pendant?” Landon asked. The Prince had changed since Zee and Vivian walked out of Surmise, hand in hand, only a few short weeks ago. His shoulders were square, no longer rounded in defeat. His face held a restless energy, the eyes quick with intelligence. Already he had men out mapping the roads of the Between that led directly into the kingdom so he could better understand the risks and resources that were out there.

Isobel’s hands fluttered, then stilled. “That depends. It would give the carrier some power over Vivian, perhaps.”

“The old woman who stole it was crafty and stronger than she looked—overpowered Vivian and then opened a door and vanished.” Shame kept him from telling them about his encounters with either the dragon or the temptress, although he knew he should.

“Sorceress,” Landon guessed.

“A plague of sorcerers, a pestilence of usurpers, a contagion of evil. There must be no communion between them and the Dreamshifters, lest evil befall,” Isobel chanted, in a voice that did not sound solely her own. A silence hung in the air, punctuated by the continual flow of falling water from the fountain. Isobel traced a line of scars with a finger still dripping from the pool.

“But what does that mean? You must know something that can help me find her.”

Isobel’s smile was sadder than tears would have been. “And you must understand, Zee, that anything my father said to me was long, long ago and that . . .” She paused. “Did Vivian tell you? About what happened to my mind?”

Landon trapped her restless hand in both of his, raised it to his lips.

“So much is lost,” she said, with a sigh. “It comes to me, like this, in phrases remembered but not understood.”

“Forgive me, if this is painful,” Zee said. “But your mother was Jehenna?”

“Yes, and my father, as you know, was a Dreamshifter. And much evil did befall.”

“He and your mother are both dead—”

“But the Key is in play,” Isobel said. She rubbed her forehead like a fretful child, her brow furrowed in concentration. “It’s a very powerful object. Jehenna thought it would open the Gates for her, but it did not. There are prophecies of doom and destruction connected to the finding of the Key.”

“Jehenna said she wouldn’t need the dragon blood anymore,” Landon said. “That she would live forever. And then, in the end, she came running back saying it was the wrong key.”

“Somebody believes otherwise. Somebody with enough power that she can’t be new to the game.”

“Hanging out in the background then,” Landon said, “smart enough to bide her time, wait her chance.”

Powerful enough to venture into Wakeworld and transform herself into an old hag. Crafty enough to borrow Vivian’s shape, to know how to tempt Zee with his own desires. “But the question remains—what is the Key for? What does it open? If I know this, maybe I can find this sorceress and stop her before she acts.”

“It was made by the giants, it is said. Back in the mists of time.”

“Why?”

“To lock the doors and preserve the balance. There was a falling-out between the dragons and the first Dreamshifter, Allel. Their war threatened to destroy all of the Dreamworlds and the Wakeworld. In that time the giants alone had discovered the way to leave their world and walk in the Between; they had deep secret knowledge and took it upon themselves to correct the balance. The Gates were locked with a spell so that even the Key cannot open it until wielded by the hands of one in whom dragon, Dreamshifter, and sorcerer are joined together.”

“But if that’s true—then whoever this is who stole the Key won’t be able to open the Gates . . .”

“Unless she’s figured something out. Like the pendant. Could she have come by skin and hair and maybe even blood?”

Zee went cold, remembering the marks of the chain around Vivian’s neck. The scratches on the backs of her hands. He nodded. “She could have all of these things.”

“Well then—if she knows magic, she could work any number of spells.” Isobel pressed the back of her hand to her lips, and Landon put a hand on her shoulder.

“She’ll be all right, my love. She is strong.”

“I saw a giant on the way here,” Zee said. “Dead. Alongside the body of a dragon. Are they at war?”

Isobel and Landon exchanged glances, before the Prince answered, slowly, “The envoys. I’d wondered.”

“What envoys?” Zee demanded.

“We sent messages to the giants and to the dragons, seeking a meeting to discuss the best interests of all. There was no response.”

Isobel’s brow puckered, and again she rubbed the scars on her forearm as though something itched. “And yet, although there was no response to our overture, the giants have been drawn to Surmise in greater numbers within the last few weeks.”

“They are healers,” Landon said, but there was uncertainty in his voice. “They offer no threats of violence.”

“It is the timing I don’t like. So many of them coming here, where the Key was found. If they know—then the company of the sorcieri will also know.”

“With all due respect, this is all riddles and guessery and not much help.” Zee’s voice was sharper than he’d meant. Fear was an unaccustomed feeling, one that made him itch for an opponent he could fight. Give him a dragon or even a giant and he could accomplish something. This business of sitting around with insufficient information and trying to guess what was going on made him want to break things.

Landon gave him a look of sympathy, and Zee remembered that this man had stood by, helpless, for a hundred years while his love was caught in a morass of madness, far beyond his reach to help her. “Neither of us has the power to open or close the dream doors. We can’t help you find Vivian or get back to Wakeworld.”

“I may be able to help you find the lost Gates,” Isobel said, “although I don’t know what you will do should you get there.” Eyes still closed, her movements detached as if someone else were in control of her body, she pulled a small dagger from her pocket and freed it of its sheath. Both men, conscious of the marks of scars on her arms, held their breath, waiting to see what she would do. Sinking down on her knees, she carved a line into the turf. This she intersected with another line, and then another. Zee watched, marveling, as her delicate hands cut away the grass to form an intricate maze, a complex tangle that twisted and turned in on itself.

At last she traced a path from one side to the other with the tip of the dagger, murmuring, in a voice so low Zee bent down to hear, “Let the one who seeks the Forever take care to walk true and not stray, for one misstep may lead to torment and dreams beyond the reach of death. Here is Surmise. Here lies the Cave of Dreams.” Tracing another path, she stabbed the dagger into the earth and left it there. “And here are the Black Gates, that bar the way into the Forever.”

Her eyes opened and she blinked three times, looked down at the image she had made, and then up at the men. “What is it?” she asked, her voice edged with fear. “What have I done?”

Landon held out his hands to her and helped her rise, drawing her close and holding her against him, smoothing her hair as though she were a frightened child. “You’ve drawn a map. Did you not know?”

She shook her head, her face buried against his chest. “I don’t remember. I’m scared, Landon. There was something—” She shivered, and he drew her closer.

“A glass of wine for you,” he said, “and then a chance to rest.” His eyes over the top of her head dared Zee to say a word.

But Isobel pulled away a little at that, and smiled for them both, though her face was deathly pale. “I am well, my love; the madness will not come to me again.” She bent and looked at her handiwork. “It makes me dizzy. Are you able to read it?”

Zee nodded. “You explained it. I think so. If the two of you don’t mind, I’ll stay here a little.”

“Take as much time as you need,” Landon said. “There will be a hot meal and a bath for you in your room whenever you are ready. And the healers will do what they can for your hurts.”

Isobel uttered a small cry of distress at that. “We should have tended to that already. Forgive us, Zee, we were worried about Vivian . . .”

“As am I. This was the greatest of my needs, and I thank you.” He tried to smile, but the hurts that most needed tending lay beyond the skill of any healer, and his heart was a weight in his chest.

Out of respect, he waited until they were out of sight. Then he knelt on the cool grass and retraced the paths of the maze with a finger, over and over again, engraving the map on both his brain and his heart.

When he could trace it blind, eyes closed, without hesitation, he stretched out the muscles cramped from bending over the earth and retraced his steps to the castle.

His was not a large chamber, nothing too fancy, and he was grateful for this. Several windows let in what remained of the daylight. A warm fire crackled on the grate, with a comfortable chair pulled up next to it. The bed had been opened for him, a puffy goose down coverlet, soft pillows. Through a half-open door he saw a bathtub and thought with longing of his aching body immersed in hot water.

Crossing to the table where a cold repast had been laid out, he drained the goblet of wine and poured another from the stone decanter. Moving swiftly, then, before temptation had time to work on him, before the healers came and insisted on treating his wounds, he made his preparations.

The feather coverlet on the bed was too bulky for his needs, but he removed the warmly woven blanket underneath it, folded it, and put it into the backpack. Then he knotted the bread and cheese and cold meats that had been set out for him into a clean pillowcase and added that as well. He filled the canteen with cold water.

One more quick look around, and then he let himself out of the room, closing the door behind him. Careful not to make eye contact with anybody he passed, hoping not to be recognized, he worked his way downward through the winding corridors. After a few wrong turns, he found his way at last out of the castle and across the field to the path that had led him from the mazes of the Between into Surmise.

A strange anomaly, Surmise, woven into the fabric of both Dreamworld and the Between by the dark sorcery of Jehenna. George had shifted the weaving somehow, but it was still a thing that ought not to be. No door should stand open between Dreamworld and the Between, lest beings cross from there into Wakeworld. Only evil could come from such breaches of the doorways—as had been proven by the dragon that had found its way into Krebston.

In this moment, though, he was grateful that Vivian hadn’t had a chance to figure out how to reweave Surmise so that the breach would be healed. It was an easy matter to find the path, a winding way through old-growth forest. He consulted the map now etched in his memory, marking the next series of twists and turns that he might not miss them, and set out in a long, swinging gait.

If his guesses were correct, the sorceress would also be headed for the Black Gates. Very likely she would arrive long before him, might already be there. Even so. He must do something, take some action, and it was the only thing he knew to do.