Wakeworld (23 page)

“Come on,” Weston said, turning away. “If we survive, there will be time to grieve later.”

Zee knew he was right. Still, he stood, head bowed, in a moment of silence for the sacrifice and all that was lost.

T
he weight of the dragon body spun Vivian down through the black water, careening off stones, deeper and deeper until she knew that even a dragon could never hold its breath long enough to reach the surface. Especially a dragon weak from blood loss and poison.

This was it, the end.

Without any conscious agreement of her will, she shifted. Her bursting lungs were no longer dragon lungs; her frantic heartbeat was far too rapid. And she knew that what had been impossible for a dragon was beyond impossible for a human.

Sheer obstinacy kicked in. Impossible or not, she wasn’t just going to accept death without a fight. She began to thrash with her legs and arms to stop the downward trajectory and thrust herself upward, even though it was impossibly far and the rocks would kill her if she ever did make it to the surface. Her lungs burned. Another few heartbeats and she would open her mouth and let the water flood her lungs, weigh her down. Her heart would stop beating. And that would be the end.

Just as all conscious will was fading, a black-and-white form appeared at her side, and then passed her: Poe, flying through the water. Mindless, Vivian followed him through a stone archway, but that was the end of her endurance. She could hold her breath no longer. Her mouth opened. Instead of the expected inrush of water, she gulped in air.

Stale, mineral-smelling air. Her feet touched solid ground and she realized she was standing in a calm pool, only waist deep. Poe scrambled up onto a flat surface, paved with red stone. Weak and exhausted, she staggered after him. There was pain in her chest and she remembered, a little dazed, the unhealed knife wound. It throbbed but wasn’t bleeding.

Poe waddled away across the chamber and she dragged herself after him through yet another arch, which led out onto the edge of a flat plain. Mist swirled around her feet. A dim red light filtered down from an indifferent sky. She blinked. There should be no sky here, deep beneath the earth. Wonder gave way to an awareness of a throng of people, silent, waiting. She could feel the intensity of the eyes, all focused on her as though she were the single most important thing in the universe.

Naturally, she stood before them naked. Like everybody else, Vivian had experienced dreams of appearing naked at a crucial moment. This wasn’t one of them. She had no need for a pendant to realize that this moment was real. Banishing the impulse to cover her breasts with her hands, to turn her back and flee the way she had come, she forced herself to stand tall and face them down. Only her knees were all wobbly and in a minute she was going to collapse, in which case she’d be naked and unconscious.

It was not to be thought of and she pushed away the encroaching darkness.

A figure separated from the mass and approached. An old man with a long white beard and eyes keen and blue despite his obvious age.

“Vivian,” he said, his face alight with a fierce and savage joy. “I barely dared to hope, but you have found us.”

Swaying, barely able to support herself, she clung to his proffered hand. “Grandfather. I’m in so much trouble. Can you help me?”

All the joy ran out of his face at her words, and he shook his head. “I’m sorry, my child. Your burden is already heavy, I know, but it is we who need help from you.”

“I won’t be much help to anybody if I’m dead.”

“Then you mustn’t die.”

She snorted. It was precisely the sort of thing he could be expected to say. And also an appropriate, if acerbic, response to her overdramatic words. At this moment, at least, she was in no danger of dying. Exhausted and hungry, maybe. But thoroughly alive. Poe pressed up against her side and she felt energy flow from him, strengthening her a little.

“What is this place—hell for Dreamshifters?”

“Close. We are trapped here when we die. Between life and the beyond.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. Why?”

But there was no humor now in his blue eyes, or in the hard-set lines of his face. The Ferryman had warned her—
Death has no favors for one such as you.
She looked from him to the others, women and men of all ages and nationalities. Her grandfather wore blue jeans and a button-up flannel shirt. Those farther back wore homespun. Beyond that was a mélange of clothing styles that should never have been seen together in one place: ball gowns and animal skins, togas, armor; there was even a man wearing a Viking helmet.

“There is no joke, child, unless it is a joke of the gods.”

She closed her eyes, remembering the people Jehenna had trapped in cattle pens to serve as dragon fodder. Some of them had been torn apart before her eyes. The rest of them had been freed, thank God, and now here she was again, being asked to do the impossible on behalf of a crowd of people she didn’t know. Her shoulders ached beneath the familiar weight of responsibility, but she said at last, “What do you need from me?”

“Find the Key—”

“That? Get in line. Everybody wants that freaking Key.”

“Find the Key,” he repeated, ignoring her interruption. “Open the Black Gates, travel through the shadowlands into the Forever, and bring back a cup of water from the fountain at the foot of the throne of the Dragon King. Only when that water is spilled on this plain will we be released.”

“You have got to be kidding.”

He shrugged. “As I said, this is beyond a joke. Here we are trapped, and here we will remain until it has been done.”

“And then what? If I succeed in this task—you all acquire eternal life and there’s an army of indestructible zombie Dreamshifters loose in the universe?”

“No,” he said softly. “If you succeed, then we will be able to truly die. Look around you. All are in some kind of hurt. Some for thousands of years.”

For the first time she noticed the jagged, bloodstained tear in the breast of his shirt. Looking beyond, she saw a hard-faced old man with a crater in his chest. She’d seen an image of him far too recently, trying to shoot his son with a rifle.

“Edward Jennings,” she said. “The man who destroyed his entire family. For you I have no compassion.”

“I regret,” he said. “I’ve had a long time to think on what I have done.”

“We are able to see,” her grandfather said. “To watch the struggle, but unable to intervene. He has been punished beyond measure already, Vivian. As have we all. If you do not help us, there is no hope.”

“I have the will,” she whispered at last. “I’m not sure I have the strength.”

“You must find it, child.”

“I need food, water—”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but we do not eat or drink. And I fear the water of this place would keep you here if you were to drink it. Now come. I will lead you to the path you must take.”

A woman stepped up beside him and touched his arm. She had been drowned, Vivian saw, water dripping endlessly from her clothing, her hair. “Perhaps it would be permitted for us to carry her, as far as the path. She is much wounded. Surely this much we could do to help her.”

“We will pay for it.”

“Let that be on us.”

The throng murmured, repeating “Let it be on us,” until the words swelled and became a chant. Two of the stronger men came forward and bowed to Vivian. “If you will permit, we will carry you.”

“I would be grateful.”

The two of them made a chair of their arms and lifted her. She placed her hands on their shoulders for balance as they strode out across the dry, dusty plain.

It was a strange and ghastly procession. As they walked, the undead parted to allow them to pass, bowing as they did so. So many different injuries marked them, all beyond any hope of healing. Vivian looked over her shoulder for Poe and saw that her grandfather had picked him up and was carrying him. The crowd closed behind him and followed, most of them bleeding, many of them lame.

Uneasy at first, Vivian became increasingly grateful for the lift as her human conveyance walked on and on. She could never have walked so far, and with the time to rest she felt strength gradually returning. How long the journey continued she had no idea. There was no day or night in this place, only the same dull, red light from the unchanging sky. Perhaps time did not even pass. She dozed and waked and dozed again.

A terrible thirst was on her, parching her throat, turning her tongue to sandpaper, and still they marched across the unchanging plain. Same dull sky above, same flat dusty earth beneath their feet, same halting, shuffling walk.

Then, at last, rock formations rose in the distance. These grew upward into cliffs and in one of the faces of stone she saw at last an opening. Light—real, white light—spilled through it. A draft of living air brushed against her skin.

The company came to a halt and her bearers lowered her to the ground. This time her legs held her, steady enough. Hope stirred, sluggish and feeble but alive, as she breathed in the sweetness of fresh air and fixed her eyes on the light.

“We can go no farther,” her grandfather said. “Do not fear what you are, child, or what you shall become.” He laid his hand over her heart. “This remains ever the same.”

Vivian only nodded, and did not speak. He was smaller than she, wizened and shrunken and so very old. But his eyes were the color of summer sky and his smile dazzled her, as unexpected as sun breaking through the clouds.

Garnering all of her small strength she turned from him and set off toward the promise of the light, Poe waddling solemn at her side.

Behind her, weighing heavy with their gray hope, the undead waited for her to free them.

A
idan rode the wind currents above the black mountain, allowing herself a moment of fierce joy. In her belly the Warrior’s seed had quickened into life, a white-hot flame that grew beyond the speed of any purely human child. Not long, only a few months, and she would bear a son.

It hadn’t been a part of the plan, but it was better this way. Her son was of the blood; he would grow to be a dragon slayer who would follow her bidding. She would hide him away as her mother had once hidden her, and when the time was right he would kill the King and help her rule the others.

Which meant she had no need of the Warrior, who had shoved her away in disgust as though she were some slimy scrap of refuse. Rage filled her at the thought. She hadn’t killed him at the time, believing she might still have need of him. But that was before she knew that she would bear a child. There was time to make him suffer, some special pain for him before he died. In the meantime, she ruled all of the dragons of the Between, and they would launch forays wherever she sent them. They were only pawns in this game, little more than primitive beasts after all of the years of inbreeding and the absence from the golden river. Their minds were full of nothing but hunting and flight. Docile and stupid, they flocked to her will like chickens in a farmyard. Most of them must die, of course, but once she had dethroned the King and taken her rightful place as Queen of the Dragons, those stronger and smarter would be allowed to live as slaves.

As for the giants, they too had fallen since the day they set the Black Gates in place and made the Key. Look at them—thousands upon thousands strong, just standing there on the plain before the Gates. Waiting. From this height they looked like rock formations, and would be about as effective. The sort of magic needed to create a containment like the Black Gates and the Key had been lost, long ago.

With the exception of Jehenna, the sorcerers—sorcieri, Allel had called them—had kept to themselves for so long that even Aidan had no idea what they were up to. Whatever it was, they were unlikely to interfere. Which meant there was nobody and nothing left to ruin her plan of destruction.

It had been so easy to kill the Guardian; she too had grown stupid and complacent over the years. Without the Guardian the dreamspheres would die, were already reverting to raw dream matter. People in the place called Wakeworld would die as their dreams winked out of existence. Any who survived would be unable to find a dream to enter. There would be chaos and insanity and war and the fools would destroy each other.

This was the deep desire of Aidan’s heart—that all things would end. If anything was left alive outside the Forever, her reign could never truly be secure. And she deserved to reign supreme for all time because of what had been done to her mother. And to her.

All things were in place and accounted for. Only one thing rankled. Surmise had proved to be beyond her reach. Not really a Dreamworld, not really Between, and not subject to the rules of either. Her only hope was that since it was woven from the fabric of the Dreamworld, perhaps it too would fade out of existence.

There was nothing she could think to do about it, and so she chose to dismiss it from her mind. It was time, now, to put her plan in motion.

Spiraling lazily down through the air, she alighted in front of the Gates. Huge they were, even to her in dragon form. When she shifted so as to manage the Key, they seemed to grow taller and blacker. She felt small and vulnerable in her human skin, frightened all at once.

A new emotion, fear. A thing she hadn’t felt since the time almost beyond conscious memory when she and her mother had fled from one place to another to stay in hiding from her father. No shelter for her anywhere in the world, then. She was not fully human or dragon, nor was she of the Dreamworld. Nobody wanted her, everybody feared her. But she had grown past that, learned to shift and blend and bide her time.

Fear would not stop her now, even though a sense of wrongness filled her with foreboding. Up close, the Gates gave off a subtle vibration that was at odds with her body. It pulled her heartbeat off its regular rhythm, made it impossible to draw a full breath. Her bones felt like they were being jarred apart.

Her hands shook too hard to hold the Key. It dropped to the ground and she bent to pick it up once, twice, three times.

She glanced at the giants. They could stop her now, if they chose. It would only take a moment for them to reach her. In dragon form she could easily elude them, but in dragon form she couldn’t open the Gates. Her plan had been based on speed and had already failed.

The giants didn’t move, but what they did was worse. They began to laugh, a sound that rattled across the plain like thunder, echoing off the impenetrable barrier in front of her. Louder and louder. As if they’d known all along that she was going to fail and had come to bear witness.

Aidan tried once more to navigate the Key, but the vibration this time dropped her to her knees. Involuntarily and without her will her body shifted back into her dragon form, and she unleashed a scream of rage that shook the Gates and stopped the laughter from the first ranks of giants. Tough as their hides were, they were not impervious to dragon fire and she felt it building, ready to flame.

But she held herself back. Oh, they would pay. They would all pay. But there was still a chance to get through the Gates. The One still lived, as far as she knew. Aidan wanted her to suffer, had locked her into Wakeworld for that reason. Dream deprivation would be a terrible death for a Dreamshifter. Long and slow, with the insanity creeping in and no means to beat it back.

But if she still lived, she could be made to open the Gates. Aidan not only had the pendant, she had also taken skin and hair and blood from the One, and a simple spell would serve to find her. Which meant that the plan had not failed. Not yet. Circling high above the plain before winging away to a quiet space to do the spell she had been taught long ago, Aidan’s eyes caught unexpected movement on the mountainside across from the Black Gates, and she flew across to investigate.

As she looked down on all that moved below, exultation filled her breast. Perhaps there would be no need to waste time on a fiddly little spell. Fate had presented her with a much easier way.