by Tad Williams
So it came to pass that they turned against their fellows, turned against the rest of the People and went away into the wilderness to make new lives. In the forest beyond the Lost Lands they built a great city and named it Sleep, and even now no one can agree whether they named it in angry defiance of the People they had deserted or as the saddest of jests.
Nothing is more bitter than a family divided. As the years sped by the People and their unsleeping kin shed each other's blood and opposed each other's wills. Distance became enmity. The Dreamless ceased to venerate even those gods they had once loved, until the temples and sacred places of Sleep fell into ruin.
In all the rolling centuries since the sundering, out of all the Dreamless, the blood of the People has bred only we three who slumber as our ancestors slumbered. And in that slumber we dream far and clear.
Shunned by all, we were driven out of Sleep, but we were also unwanted in our ancestral halls, the House of the People. Thus we too went into the wilderness and have lived so long in the savage waste that we do not even remember the ways by which we came and could not find our way out again even if we chose.
Still we sleep, though, and when we sleep, we dream. In those dreams we see what is to be, or at least what might be-in any dream there are shadows and confusion, real foretellings mixed with false. But we know that we three were made different for a reason. We know that our dreams have meaning. And we know that no one else, mortal or immortal, has been given the visions that are vouchsafed to us.
We do not know who gives us the gift of these particular and heretical dreams, or why we were singled out and then doomed to wait so many centuries to use it. We do know that to ignore our gift would be to turn our backs on the one thing that holds all worlds and times together-the spirit of which the Book of the Fire in the Void is word and thought-which is also the one thing that lends any hope of meaning to our own existence…
These words, these thoughts, were Barrick's only companions in the void. The three speaking as one gradually unraveled into three separate voices once more, each with its individual character, but darkness still surrounded him: only the voices of the Sleepers kept him close.
"What are we to do?" asked the first voice, the kindest of the three. "The story is unfolding but the characters have been misplaced or their entrances and exits mistimed."
"It was all bound to go wrong. I have said so." The sour one. Angry… or frightened?
"Did we see this before?" This one he remembered well, old and confused. The name… the name had been something like the wind blowing in a lonely place, a keening sigh. "I do not recall it. I am cold and frightened. When the great ones come back they will be so angry with us all."
"It is not for ourselves we do this, but for the story. Even the gods cannot destroy the story that we all are…"
"Untrue," said the sharp, angry voice. "They can suppress it for so long that its shape becomes meaningless-until the tale has waited so long to come true that it becomes unrecognizable. The ending can be held off so long that it outlasts the world itself."
"Only if we surrender," said the first Sleeper. "Only if we refute our own dreams."
"I wish I did not dream," said the old one. "It has brought only sorrow. We had a family once, you know…"
Hoorooen. That was the name of the ancient one with the querulous voice. Hoorooen. And the others had the same sound to them…
"Quiet. It is time we think of what we can do. You heard the blind king. This little one, this young creature of the sun, must reach him soon or all is lost."
"You struggle uselessly. Can the little mongrel fly? No. It is done, I tell you." Hikat, this one, Barrick remembered-a sound like an ax striking wood. Hikat. And the other was called…
… Hau. "It is not done. There is a way. He can go by Crooked's road."
"He does not know how-nor could he learn before years had passed."
"I knew once," piped old Hoorooen. "Did I not know? I think I did. I think I remember Crooked's roads and they were cold and lonely."
"Cold and lonely they are, but there are other ways he might travel them besides his own strength." Hau spoke gently. "There is a door in Sleep."
"Ah!" said Hoorooen. "The darklights. I would like to see them again."
"You are both fools," snapped Hikat. "The city of Sleep means death, both to us and this mortal cub. There is no chance he could reach the door, or walk through it even if he found it."
"Unless we help."
"Even so." The one called Hikat seemed to take a certain joy in despair. "What we can give him will only help him if he reaches the door-but he will never do so with an entire city full of deadly hatred against him."
"There is nothing else to do. We have only this one chance."
"It will freeze up his blood," Hoorooen said gloomily. "If he travels those roads the void will drink away his life. He will become old and lost… like us. Old and lost."
"Nothing to be done-he must use Crooked's roads. There is no other way. But we will gift him with something of ourselves. Those are dangerous paths and we must prepare and armor him to survive them. Bring him toward us."
"It will diminish us-perhaps even destroy us. And he will only curse you for such a gift." Hikat sounded almost amused.
"It will almost certainly destroy us." Hau was sorrowful but resigned. "But the world and everything in it will curse us if we do it not…"
Barrick now found himself aware of his body again, then of the growing light of the fire and the dome-shaped room as well, and even the three Sleepers, but this perception did not bring freedom or even movement. The hooded Sleepers leaned over him as though they were mourners and he the corpse.
"We send him into dry lands," Hau said."We must do what we can. But where? In what part of him do we pour our waters-our essence?"
"His heart," said Hikat. "It will make him strong."
"But it will also make his heart like stone. Sometimes love is all we have."
"So? It will give him the best chance to survive, you fool. Or would you betray the world you claim to hold so dear?"
"In his eyes," said quavering old Hoorooen. "So he can see what he will see in the days ahead and not be afraid."
"But fear is sometimes the first step toward wisdom," Hau replied. "To be unafraid is to be unchanging and unready. No, we will simply give our waters to him and his own being shall decide what to do with them. He is lame in one arm, out of balance-that is his weakest spot. We shall do it there, where he is already broken."
A uniform pressure moved over Barrick then, holding him motionless like a blanket of heavy armor links, but he could still feel the cool air of the room on his skin, the patchy heat of the fire. One of the three figures lifted an object up into the red light of the f lames-a crude, ancient knife chipped from gray stone.
"Manchild," said the one called Hau, "let what we give you now, the waters of our being, fill you and strengthen you."
The pressure grew stronger on Barrick's left arm, the wounded place he had hidden from people's stares, had always tried to protect. Now he struggled again to protect it, but for all his desperate effort he could not move himself by so much as a finger's breadth.
"Do it swiftly," said Hikat. "He is weak."
"Not so weak as you suppose," Hau said, then something tore across the skin of Barrick's arm-a horrible, searing slash of pain. He tried to scream, to struggle free, but his body was not his own.
"I give you my tears," said Hau. "They will keep your eyes clear to see the road ahead." Something burned once more in the wound on his arm, salty and terrible. Another scream rose and fell deep inside him without ever breaking the surface.
The second shadowy figure took the knife, which rose and then came down again as another fiery spurt of agony pierced his arm. "I give you the spittle of my mouth," Hikat growled. "Because hatred will keep you strong. Remember this when you stand before the gods, and if you fail, spit in their faces for what they have taken from us all." Again Barrick
felt a drizzle of misery for which he was allowed no release of movement or sound.
The gods were punishing him, that was clear. He could take no more of such suffering. Even the smallest twinge of discomfort now and his head would flame and burst like a pine knot in a bonfire.
"I am dry as the bones on which we sit," quavered old Hoorooen. "Tears and spittle I have none, nor any other of the body's waters. All I have left is my blood and even that is dry as dust." The knife rose and fell a third time, biting into his mangled arm like a white-hot tooth. Barrick could barely think, barely hear. "But the blood of dreamers may be worth something, in the end…"
Something fell into his wound, powdery but also coarse and sharp, as though someone had stuffed tiny shards of glass into the bleeding place. The pain was everywhere and unendurable, as though biting ants swarmed over his exposed flesh. Wave after wave of suffering washed through him. Barrick drifted farther and farther away, as if he were flotsam carried on hot dark waves, but at last the hurt became a little less and he realized he was hearing voices again.
"You are stronger now-changed. We have given you all that we have left so that you might have a chance to give our dreams meaning. But now we are fading-we will not be able to speak to you much longer." For a moment, the hard voice of Hikat became almost gentle. "Listen well and do not fail us, child of two worlds. There is only one way you can reach the House of the People and the blind king before it is too late-you must travel on Crooked's roads, which will fold your path before you so that you may step between the world's walls. To do that, you must find the hall in Sleep that bears his name."
"Most of those roads are closed to you," said Hau, whose voice was more distant now than it had been. "One only you might find and use in time, because it is close by. It is in the city of Sleep-the home of our own people. But know that the Dreamless who live there hate mortals even more than they hate the lords of Qul-na-Qar."
"But even if our essences may enable him to survive the cold, dead places that Crooked traveled, still it will be for nothing." Hikat sounded angry again. "Look at him-how will he cross Crooked's Hall? How will he open the doorway?"
"That is not ours to know," said Hau. "We have nothing left to give. Even now I feel the outer winds blowing through me."
"Then it has all been for nothing."
"Life is always loss," murmured the old one. "Especially when you gain something."
Barrick found a little of his strength again, although the scalding pain still swirled through him like hot metal in a crucible. "What are you talking about?" he demanded. "I don't understand! Is this all a dream?"
Hau's voice was little more than a whisper now. "Of course. But true, nevertheless. And if you reach Crooked's Hall at last, remember this one thing, child-no mortal hand can open the door there. It is written in the Book itself-no mortal hand…"
"I don't understand you!"
"Then you will die, pup," said fading Hikat. "The world will not wait for you to understand. The world will murder you and all like you. The Eon of Suffering will begin and you will all be punished for having left them outside in the cold so long."
"Who? Leaving who outside?"
"The gods," old Hoorooen moaned. "The angry gods."
"You're telling me to walk into the city of the Dreamless?" Face certain death there just for a chance to fight against the gods themselves? It was utter madness. "How can I believe any of this?"
"Because we are the Sleepers, the dreamers," one of them murmured-it might have been Hau. "And we have lived very close to them. Close enough to hear their dreaming thoughts, which roar in our ears like the ocean."
"Whose thoughts? Do you mean the gods?"
"Look back as you leave." The voice was so faint he could no longer tell which one spoke. "You will see. You will see them and perhaps you will understand… and believe…"
And then Barrick's eyes were open and he was alone in the cave. The whispering shapes who had sat over him were gone. The fire was out, but a little light fell from the single oblong opening in the cavern wall. He looked down at his forearm. Three stripes of blood showed where the skin had been cut, but the wounds seemed largely healed, as if he had been lying there for days instead of hours. Had it all been a dream? Had he cut himself, hit his head, stumbled here, and fancied the rest while he lay in a swoon?
Barrick stood on shaky legs. He might have been dreaming, but he hadn't been sleeping-that seemed clear just from how weary he felt. He still desperately needed fire, so he limped forward to see if he could find a piece of smoldering wood, but to his amazement and disappointment the ashes were white and cold, as if nothing had burned there for years. He was about to turn away when he saw something half-buried in the ash and dirt beside the circle of stones. Barrick bent, favoring his injured arm, which did not hurt as it usually did. (In fact, it was cold and stiff but painless, as though he had soaked it a long time in a mountain stream until it had gone numb.) He scraped at the dirt and uncovered a ragged, ancient leather pouch, so long in the damp ground that the leather was almost as hard as stone. When he peeled it open a chipped piece of shiny black stone fell out; a little more work and he withdrew a crescent-shaped piece of rusted steel from the remains of the leather. Steel… and flint! He had found someone's fire-making tools! He could hardly wait to try it. Even if all the rest of this interlude had been no more than an exhausted dream, everything would be better now that he had fire.
He folded the remains of the leather sack around his find and tucked it into his belt. Barrick was exhausted and needed sleep, but he was reluctant to stay in this strange place any longer. If he had not dreamed the three strange Sleepers, perhaps they had only left for a while and would be coming back soon. They had not harmed him beyond whatever mysterious thing they had done to his arm, but they had certainly held him prisoner and had talked madness to him about the gods and doorways and folds in the world.
And his arm… what had he dreamed about his arm? What had they done? He held up his left hand, which was not clenched as it usually was, as it had been for years, but instead was simply closed: with a little effort he could actually open it, something he had not been able to do in a long time. He was so startled by this that he laughed a little.
What happened here?
And there had been more: he had dreamed of the dark-haired girl again, and this time he had dreamed her a name-Qinnitan, and somehow that felt like a true thing. But if that dream had been real, what of the rest…?
No, it was dangerous to think that way, Barrick told himself. Those were the sort of lies priests told people to keep them stupid-that the gods saw everything, that they had a purpose for everyone. Although now that he thought of it, that hadn't been what the Sleepers had said. Hadn't they suggested the gods themselves were the enemy? "The Eon of Suffering will begin," one of them had told him, "and we will all be punished for having left them outside in the cold so long."
Barrick Eddon walked out of the domelike chamber into gray twilight. His eyes seemed to see subtleties in the dimness he had not noticed before-perhaps, he thought, because he had been so long in the dark cavern. Then, as he made his way down the path and off it and onto the raw stuff of the hillside, he remembered something else one of the Sleepers had said when he had asked whether they were really talking about the gods-the same gods Barrick knew. For most of his life Barrick had scorned his people's beloved oniri, the oracles and prophets who claimed to know the gods' will, but the strange Sleepers had said they heard the gods' very thoughts. How could that be?
"Look back as you leave," the quavering voice had told him. "You will see. You will see them, and perhaps you will understand."
Barrick did look back, but at the moment a fold of the hillside blocked the place he had been: all he saw were trees and glimpses of the butter-colored stone that dotted the hill. He shook his head and resumed hunting for a place to make camp.
A little later, when he had all but forgotten, he chanced to look back again, and this time
he had descended far enough down the slope that he could see the whole crest of the hill.
"You will see them, and perhaps you will understand…"
The forms had been too harried to notice on the way up, and had been too close to see or blocked by trees before, but now they suddenly leaped to his eyes. Beneath the earth and greenery of the hillside loomed shapes the color of old ivory, but they were not outcroppings of stones, as he had thought. Rather they were half-buried…
Bones…?
He had missed seeing it before because it was not one simple shape but two, wrapped together in a complicated way-two vast skeletons tangled in an embrace of love or death, giant bones which had perhaps once been buried, but which had been lifted up into the air by the living earth, a thin mantling of soil cloaking them like a shroud and providing the nurture of trees and vines. The tooth-shaped rocks on top of the hill were teeth, the immense jaw of a mostly buried skull, broken loose and exposed by wind and rain. The other skull… the other skull…
That's where I was, he realized, and a curtain of darkness threatened to fall over his mind and chase him away into the void. With the dreamers… inside a god's skull…
Barrick turned and fled down the hill-slipping and sliding, rolling more often than he ran, forced to vault over the branches that threatened to trip him, and which to his fevered thoughts seemed to be the finger-bones of the immortal dead, reaching up through the soil to snatch him and pull him down.
It might have been luck that he did not drop the flint and steel during that stumbling, terrified trip down the hill, or when he collapsed in weariness at the bottom. It might also have been luck that the first thing that found him there was not a silkin but something with a harsh, familiar voice.
"Thought you were dead!" After a moment, when he had not responded, something poked at his ear. "You don't be dead, do you?"
