Knave of Dreams

by Andre Norton

“I must have strength—”

  Osythes nodded. “First”—he spoke to Dedan— “unite with me!”

  He held out his hand, and Dedan, looking puzzled, clasped it. Then Osythes leaned toward Ramsay and, with the fingers of the other hand, he touched the younger man’s forehead.

  Ramsay felt that flow, first slowly, then feeding into him—energy that spread downward through his body, banishing that burdensome languor that was a part of waking from the dreaming.

  Rising as the Shaman broke contact, he knew that he was ready, as ready as he would ever be.

  “To the lab.” He drew a deep breath. “Let those guards you can trust the most,” he added to Osythes, “come. And comrade”—Ramsay turned to Dedan—“you are at my back, armed. I will not deny that we may meet death beyond that wall, for I could not see their weapons, and they may have worse than we met, even at Yasnaby.”

  Dedan showed his teeth in the grin of a wolf. “Comrade.” For that first time he used the warmer address as if the promise of action were indeed afire. “You need not waste words in such advice. I am ready.” He reached behind him and plucked a needler from beneath the pile of cushions where he had been sitting.

  Once more they descended to the hidden chamber that had been Melkolf’s domain. Ramsay led, with Dedan at his shoulder, Osythes behind, and following the Shaman, those of the latter’s choice from the guardsmen. Ramsay went directly to the secret cupboard.

  “Rip out the shelves,” he ordered. One of the guards moved instantly, using strips of metal to pry and pound out the wooden lengths, clearing the ancient stone behind.

  Ramsay closed his eyes, bringing to mind the picture from the dream. There—there—

  His hands were outstretched, fingers crooked. Just so must he finger the well-concealed lock.

  Beyond—Thecla’s dead-alive face before his eyes—that black threat of the box blotting it out. Ramsay fought away that vision. He dared have no doubts now, nor allow any fear for himself or another to deflect what force of will he could summon.

  There were no visible spots on the blocks he chose, but when his fingers were on the stone he felt out a double set of depressions. Pressure— It was as if now his flesh were sinking into the rough rock, being swallowed—Pressure—

  Along with the strength of his arm, Ramsay exerted his will, for it seemed to him that the resistance of the stone was amplified by another, more subtle thing. As if Ochall and the others were reinforcing the holding of that physical barrier with their own force of projected power.

  Slowly, even as it had in the dream, the blocks slipped back, showing light beyond. Ramsay spoke. “Be ready—!” He delivered a last vigorous thrust and jerked aside, out of the path of any weapon that might be set to cover that doorway.

  The flash of fire, or projectile he had expected, did not follow. With caution, after a long moment of waiting, he slid back to the opening, stooping to peer into the hole.

  Beyond—no, not the nothingness of his dream— but a haze that did not quite have that turgid look of the yellow fog that had rolled across the dunes at Yasnaby but was as hard for the eye to penetrate.

  Ramsay pushed his way through that opening, into the haze. Though he could not now depend upon his eyes, he had another guide. Some unknown sense that was allied to the dream told him those he sought were here.

  On the other side of the opening he stood, his hands consciously half raised to ward off attack, his head turning slowly from right to left. Then he caught that flicker of light, seeming less strong than it had been in his dream, but, he guessed, nonetheless deadly to his purpose because of that.

  Behind that glinting of light was the enemy, believing himself safe. For it was something in the flickering that was both shield for defense and weapon poised for attack. And it was the light which Ramsay must face in its unknown strength, beating down the defense, warding off the attack.

  He took one step and then another into the swirl of the mist. If any followed him now, he was not aware of it. All his senses, both the five of his physical body, and the new one of his mind, were centered only on what was before him.

  Out of the mist loomed a solid shape. He thought it the corner of the exchanger. But he heard no sound. If they did shelter here, they were using a cat’s trick of freezing, waiting for its prey to approach within striking distance.

  The flicker—it was playing with his mind, weakening his will. But there was only one way he could reach the one behind it—and that was to force him out of ambush into the open. That mist, it swirled— Did or did not the forms stride through it? He glanced from the light to the solid edge of the exchanger, riveted on that for the space of a breath to steady himself. Then once more he looked steadily at the swing-dip-swing that reached not only into his eyes but his mind, weaving a web to entangle his will.

  Behind that light—reach behind that light!

  The man—not his weapon—reach the man!

  He knew what was to be done, but to accomplish that—

  Ramsay fought to see beyond the flicker, to reduce it to something that mattered no more than perhaps the glass of a window. He must break the pattern of the flicker, yet let him concentrate on the seeing and he saw only that. With sudden inspiration he closed his eyes. See the dream—he ordered his mind— SEE!

  Spin—swing—dip—He was dizzy, fear rising in him. SEE!

  Into that one thought he poured his strength.

  Behind the flicker—yes! There was now a form, dim, hardly to be parted from the swirls of the mist. But it was there!

  Then—

  “You die!”

  No cry that rang in his ears, but rather a blast that clawed at his mind.

  “Look—and die!”

  Ramsay held against the blast. “OUT!” he countered. “Out to face me. I am the Knave—” From somewhere flooded those commands. “I am the one outside the pattern Out to face ME!”

  “You die!” That was like a scream torturing his mind with its lash of red fury.

  “I live! Out—” And into that command Ramsay poured for an instant every trace of his own will, of the strength that was Ramsay’s life and identify.

  The flicker was still spinning, more and more furiously. But behind it—behind it now a face. Only not the face he had reached for. So that the very identity of his enemy nearly shocked him into making a fatal slip.

  “You die!”

  “I live!” Ramsay rallied before the other could take advantage of that half-breath length of shock. “Out!”

  The flicker spun now as a coruscating cloud, but it could not hide that face again, no matter how hard it tried. There was a spouting of maddened, fiery particles, like an explosion.

  “No-o-o-o—!” The scream that came to his mind was not now that of fury, but rather fear, fear which accompanies fate.

  “Yes!” Ramsay held. The fiery particles shot out at him. He opened his yes. There they were, as visible to his sight as they were in his dream state. A mad whirl of sparks to envelop him. But he looked beyond and held that gaze level.

  The fire enveloped Ramsay; there was a scorching heat around him. This was not real; to that belief he held firmly. And he who tried so to trick that attacker was—

  Aloud, Ramsay spoke a name. The fiery particles were snuffed out, the mist tore raggedly. He faced the enemy clearly for the first time. In the other’s hand—

  Ramsay leaped. He was past the exchanger as his hand shot out and down. The edge of his straight, firm-held fingers met a wrist with an audible crack. There was a cry of pain and the selector fell to the floor. Then the other was clawing for his throat, yammering like an animal, the very wildness of the attack driving Ramsay back until his shoulders were pinned against the exchanger. He dropped to the floor, confusing the other, heard a shout which he knew was a warning though he could not distinguish the words.

  The crackle of a needier warned him to remain where he was. But only inches beyond his hand lay the box which brought the exchanger to life. Ramsay grasped
at it. Above him someone cried out. Ramsay threw himself to the right, the selector tight in his grip.

  Once more the needler cracked as Ramsay fought to his knees. Another bore down on him, gas gun ready. He had only time to strike forward with the box. It met flesh, wringing a grunt from his new attacker. But muzzle of the side arm had been deflected. Mist shot to the roof, not directly into Ramsay’s face.

  He drove his fist into a belly where muscles stiffened to meet the blow, took a jolt in return against his cheekbone, one that had enough force to send him reeling back. His boot heel caught and he crashed down, falling prone over a body on the floor.

  Then Ochall gave a strangled whoop, his hands rising to his chest, and went to his knees, to fold up, his head against Ramsay’s boots.

  “Enough!” Ramsay only half heard that voice. His head was still spinning a little from that one good blow the High Chancellor had landed.

  He was struggling to get once more to his feet when he heard a scream. Not this time in his mind, but ringing in his ears. And he wavered around to see— clearly, for the mist was now gone—Berthal backed against the wall, in his arms Thecla, not now any blank-eyed, mindless captive, but a raging, struggling fury, fighting against the Prince’s grasp so that he could not hold her and bring his weapon to bear on Ramsay. Even as Ramsay faced him he stopped that attempt. The barrel of his side arm pointed into the girl’s face.

  “Move—” he panted. “Give us a free road out, or by all the Blood of Jostern in me, I will fire!”

  Ramsay froze. He glanced toward the door. Osythes was there, Dedan also, with that needler that had taken out the greatest of their enemies. Then he looked back to Berthal—there was madness in the Prince’s eyes. He was on the edge of killing from fear alone.

  In that instant Ramsay used the only weapon left to him. For the second time in this hidden room he summoned the full force of his will and sent an arrow straight into another’s mind.

  Berthal’s mouth jerked, he shook his head. But his arms fell limply. Thecla broke from his grasp with a force of her own that almost sent her sprawling. She half fell forward and Ramsay caught her, steadied her gently.

  “Take him!” he ordered, and guardsmen moved to Berthal’s side.

  As they led the Prince away, Ramsay looked to the Shaman.

  “We were wrong. Ochall must have been his man, not the other way around—”

  It was still hard for him to believe that one with the High Chancellor’s supreme confidence in himself, possessing that aura of raw power, could have been second to anyone—no matter what strange knowledge that other might use.

  “Not wholly.” Osythes had knelt by the crumpled body beside the exchanger, had shifted it so that Melkolf’s face was turned uppermost. “I believe that they were rather partners. We judged Ochall to be the complete master because of his outward nature. However, I do not think that, even had they won, he would have easily ruled in Ulad. Not with all Melkolf knew.” Gently the Shaman touched the forehead of the dead man. “So much this youth knew, yet not enough. He wanted everything, in the end even what little he had was reft from him, and he was left naked to a storm of his own raising.”

  Ramsay felt Thecla shiver. “You do not know what they planned—” Her voice was ragged. “They would have sent you—us—all who opposed them to other level deaths. He”—she glanced at Melkolf and then quickly away again—“boasted that he could do it now without a dreamer. He said—that dreaming had no force compared to that of the machines he could master—”

  “And so he died,” Osythes answered, “because he disdained self-mastery and trusted most the work of his hands, rather than that which lay within himself. That was the Great Sin of the Ancient Ones, and one that we are very prone to—valuing the visible always above the unmeasurable.”

  “Lord Emperor—” Dedan brushed aside the Shaman’s words as if they had no meaning. “Here we had three men. Which of these gave the order for the Company’s slaughter?”

  “He—” Ramsay indicated Ochall. “Or so he told me.”

  The First Captain went to look down at the High Chancellor.

  “It was my hand that ended him. I am content,” he said slowly, half as one waking from a nightmare. “Those of the Company will now rest well.”

  “There is one thing more, comrade,” Ramsay said.

  Dedan looked up. “What is that, Lord Emperor?”

  Ramsay nodded toward the exchanger. “That— and any more such apparatus as may be found here. Will you see that it is left so no man can once more attempt to solve such secrets?”

  “Well enough—”

  Content, Ramsay turned to the door, supporting Thecla who shivered and stumbled as she walked. The girl did not speak until they were out in the wreckage of the outer lab.

  “Melkolf and Ochall—” Her hand had a wondering note. “They—they are finished. And Berthal— what will be done with Berthal, Kaskar?”

  He noticed the name she had given him.

  “He will have justice—”

  “From whose hand?” Once away from that hidden room she seemed to revive in strength. Her trembling had stopped, she walked more easily, but she made no attempt to draw out of Ramsay’s hold.

  “I suppose—from those who deal with justice in this world.”

  “He is of the House Royal—justice comes from you, Kaskar.”

  “I am not—” Ramsay began and then stopped. Thecla had turned her head, was watching him intently.

  “What are you not?” she asked, when for a long moment he had stood in silence, unable to finish that statement.

  “I do not know what I am not, but perhaps I know a little of what I am,” he said slowly. “Once I was one man—it seems I have become another.”

  Ramsay Kimble was dead. He was dead in body in his own time and world; here he had died slowly in another way.

  “You are Kaskar who shall rule in Ulad,” she said softly.

  “Am I? Or am I a dreamer who has gone too far into his dreams to return?”

  “If the dream is Ulad,” she replied confidently, “then you have dreamed true. Are we so poor a dream that you would seek waking from it?”

  She raised her hand and drew her fingertips along his cheek.

  “Tell me, Kaskar—Knave of Dreams—are We so poor a dream?” she pleaded.

  His arm tightened about her. “Never so—!” he said with the same firmness with which he had faced Melkolf.

  Thecla laughed softly.

  “Then dream on, Kaskar, and never wake!”

  “So be it!” His lips met hers, and the last of Ramsay Kimble died forever.

  The End