Moon Dreams (The Jeremy Moon Trilogy Book 1)

by Brad Strickland

  Jeremy heard Barach attempt to speak, heard him produce only a hoarse, croaking sound. His own throat felt constricted. “A silence spell is on you,” the Hag said. “You will approach.”

  A sluggish tide pulled them into the room and toward the Hag. Even when Jeremy resisted, he felt his bare feet being dragged over the stone floor, inch by inch. It was easier to take step after leaden step toward her. He concentrated on the sword, but he could no more wield it here than he could have if submerged in molasses. Invisible fingers pried at his own, loosened his grip, and as if from a distance he heard the sword clatter on the floor.

  Barach and Jeremy came up beside the Hag. The mirror again held the view of Whitehorn, this time of the mountain itself, and dark shapes climbed its slopes. “They come from the Meres,” the Hag said. Jeremy recalled the shapes he had glimpsed in the lake the evening before, the dark, circling, hungry shades of the dead. “Their substance is the slime of the swamps, their will my own. Look!”

  The slouching dead were halfway to the stronghold. A wave of fire swept down the mountain toward them, a fierce yellow wall of flame, and Jeremy sensed in it Tremien's magic. It rolled over the shapes, and none faltered, none slowed. They continued on. “They cannot be halted. They cannot be turned. Magic will not touch them, for the Dark One has given them a shield from another world. And they cannot be killed, for they are already dead.”

  Something cold and foul spilled into the room from the passage, not an odor but a feeling. “Take them to the throne room,” the Hag said absently. “When my attention here is no longer needed I will deal with them.”

  Clammy hands closed on Jeremy's arms, and he felt himself dragged backward through the door, down the passage. Not until he reached the throne room and was pushed roughly to the floor did he see his and Barach's captors: walking skeletons packed with the ooze of the swamp, dripping with it, arms and legs articulated with twisted grass and ropes of green slime, mud dripping endlessly from eye sockets and jowls, ribs clenched over heaving, stinking blobs of filth. Barach had lost his hold on the torch. One of the foul things picked it up in skeletal hands and set it in a sconce behind the throne. The other stood over Barach and Jeremy.

  Jeremy tried to move and felt as if he weighed tons. Invisible weight pressed on his chest, making each breath a struggle. The Hag's magic held him in a giant's grip, and he could hardly think, much less articulate a spell. Turning his head was an agony, but he managed it. Barach lay facing him, his face above the gray beard red with pain. But the mustache fluttered, and Jeremy realized that the old mage was trying, trying to whisper a spell of magic.

  The fist squeezed tighter and Barach's eyes rolled. Jeremy closed his own eyes, found himself alone in the dark with pain. He had felt something like this when in Nul's mind. Nul. The thought of the pika shamed him: Nul had endured torment like this for who knew how long, perhaps endured it yet. Jeremy could not fight the pain, could not face it.

  Instead he went away.

  His mind fled to some deeper part of himself, some distant part where it looked on helplessly as the body suffered. This is nightmare, he told himself. This is all bad dreams made into one reality, all evils ever visited on humans in sleep coming to me at once, incubus and succubus, vampire and ghost, ghoul and hobgoblin. This is black night and no morning, dogs stirred and howled by the moon, dark woods and cobwebs across your face. This is the dead come back to drag you down, worms crawling deep in your flesh, the stench of corruption coming from your own wounds. It's a rat nesting and gnawing in your belly, it's the whistle of the black train that screams on hell-bound tracks, the bodiless hand that comes in the night and presses your mouth and nose closed and will not let go.

  Despair closed on him, colder than the hand of the Hag and more powerful. He huddled even deeper in himself and found there, in the heart of his darkness, a spark, a tiny flicker.

  He found a thought.

  It's only a dream.

  For a timeless period he paused in that private darkness, willing the spark to grow, just as long ago he had willed the spark to catch in the tinder when he had to make up the fire. It is only a dream. There is no reality here, nothing to fear: it is dream and nothing more. As the thought grew in him, Jeremy began at last to stir, to move, to test the strength of the spell that seemed to hold him. Like a god in an ancient myth, he put his hands on the darkness and thrust it away, rolled it back, pushed it before him. It was a dream, and he would wake and be free of it, be free of it all.

  It was like rolling a great stone up an endless hill, like swimming from the deepest floor of the ocean to an impossible surface. Jeremy fought every inch of the way, reached beyond his reach, strained his mind and spirit more than he thought possible, until—

  He woke up.

  He woke up in his own bed, in his own apartment in Atlanta, in the middle of the night, sheets damp and tangled around him, red digits of his clock-radio reading 4:22 A.M. Lights from the apartment complex parking lot outlined the window dimly. Against the panes he could hear the steady tapping of light rain or sleet. The room was cold. No sooner had the thought hit him than he heard the sigh of the air register, felt the first puff of warm air from the furnace. He took in a deep breath; his chest was free and unconstricted. In a moment he would have to get up, go into the bathroom, the tiles cold underfoot, for his bladder was tight in his belly. In just a moment, but not right now. Somehow Jeremy knew that it was December 22, the day after he had taken the sleeping pills, the day after the whole dream had begun, and he had nothing more adventurous to do than deal with Escher and Taplan the younger in a conference this morning. He was free, it had all been a dream.

  Except that far down, somewhere away below him, an old magician held in a spell of dire power writhed in pain on a cold stone floor, a witch stood before a mirror and directed a weird battle, a sad and gallant little creature named Nul lay broken and dying, and that was real, too.

  Something told him, some inner voice, that he could go back to sleep, could wake up in the morning, go to work, and never be burdened with nightmare again. It would take so little: close your eyes, drift away, forget the dream, forget the nonsense, forget the fantasy, forget, forget.

  Or.

  Or not. Or accept the other reality for the reality it was. Jeremy seemed to pause above the alternatives, wavering, undecided. Like a timid man who had climbed to a high diving tower and then had looked far below to see the water distant, hardly existing, Jeremy hesitated. Melodia. Kelada. Nul. Barach. Gareth.

  Cassie. Escher. Taplan. Brother Bill.

  Risk and safety, unknown and known, death and life.

  Stepping off the tower was the hardest thing Jeremy had ever done in his life, the hardest thing he could imagine doing, but he did it. He plunged down toward dark waters, toward the castle of the Hag, toward blood and death.

  And as faster and faster he plummeted downward, he screamed, screamed in anger, screamed in defiance, screamed in triumph.

  Chapter 13

  Jeremy sank back into his body, back into agony. The Hag's spell, a vise tightening without mercy, gripped his chest, squeezed hot red anguish into his mind, obscuring thought, feeling, everything but the knowledge of suffering. Jeremy faced the knowledge, examined it, knew it for all it was, and thrust it behind him. He ignored it, became conscious instead of the power filling the room, flowing under and about him. He visualized it as a net of pulsing red light, real but impalpable, holding him caught in its meshes as a fish might be trapped in a fisherman's seine. But he was not as defenseless as the fish, for another current flowed in him, his own mana, which he saw as a pale white shimmer pounding lighter and darker with every pulse beat. Use it, he told himself. Use your own magic to fight back.

  His throat felt clogged, closed, plugged by the Hag's will. He had no voice, could speak no words. The pressure allowed him no hope of speaking, of using an oral spell. His mind went back to his earliest lessons in sorcery, to the three-step path. Formulation, visualization, reali
zation. He could do all but the last, and that one was beyond his ability, a cloud full of water floating high above a man dying of thirst on the ground. It doesn't matter, he told himself. The spell must be spoken only if you believe it must be spoken. Say it in your mind. Say it here, where the Hag cannot come, inside your own head.

  It was hard even to think in English, but he tried. Without using vocal cords, throat, mouth, or tongue, he told himself that the grip of the Hag was growing lighter, that her force around him was weakening, and he willed himself to believe that it was true. He could not realize, but he formulated and visualized for all he was worth, and then put the wish into English, all inside his head. He used the language that no one else had ever uttered on this planet, the one that, being fresh, had the property of tapping deep into the flow of Thaumia's magic, deeper than anyone else's abilities, deeper even than the Hag's. Her hold on me is slackening, he thought. Her grip is growing feeble. Her strength is nearing an end. Whether he was right or not, he found a breathing space, a time to think, and his thoughts turned outward, to others.

  Nul.

  Darkness only, void. Where was the little pika? Jeremy could not find his thought or his spirit, could find not even his pain. There was simply nothing to connect with Jeremy's questing mind. Nul was gone. In his mind Jeremy saw Nul tumbling spread-eagled, as from a great height, hurtling into depth and emptiness. Nul has fallen into death, Jeremy thought. Grief welled inside him for the little creature. He turned the grief to anger against the Hag, blew on the embers of that anger, fanned it to fire, and warmed himself by it. If Nul was dead, his death would not go unavenged.

  Melodia.

  Yes, somewhere, very faint, very sweet, like the faraway song of the bells she wore. Melodia, who could not be untrue to love, who could not let a cry of pain go unanswered. Where are you, Melodia? Can you hear me? You give of yourself, healer. You are brave, though you do not think you are. Your courage is not the valor of arms. You could never take a life, even if in taking it you saved your own. No, yours is not the courage of the soldier but the will to wrestle with death itself, to taste despair sour and bitter on your tongue and yet still breathe sweet hope. O Melodia, Jeremy thought, brushing that dim presence with his mind, teach me to give, too! Show me the way to hold back the blackness, to send what I can of myself to the aid of my friends! Out of all the hope in your heart, give me a portion to sustain me! The curtains of consciousness trembled, and Melodia was gone.

  Kelada.

  Clever thief, hardheaded waif. There she was, like a bright flame on a dark night, stealing silent through stone halls, evading notice, coming ever closer. That flame burned hot, and only death could extinguish it. Kelada, you are lovely, you are starlight, you are warmth. Take no notice of your broken nose, of your narrow chin, of your body thin as a boy's. Oh, Kelada, you should see the fire that burns inside you, fierce and bright and pure! Men will sing songs of your deeds when the mountains have been washed grain by grain into the seas, and their remote descendants will remember you when the last embers of magic flicker and die in a universe gone mundane.

  Gareth.

  You, soldier. You have a laugh for death and a taste for action. With fear in your bones but strength in your arms, you grin and go forward; with death screaming your name, you hear only the call of duty. I see you, soldier, doorkeeper, sword at the ready, and at your feet I see the work of your hands, the enemies you pulled from Nul, and those you kept from Melodia when she bent over the still and broken body. Give me your courage, Gareth! I have such need of it.

  Barach.

  Talker, teacher, weaver of spells. I feel your throes of torment, I know your fear of defeat and what defeat will mean: the dying of the light, the passing of all fire, all warmth, all happiness. Old man with the young heart! For your parables and your wisdom, thanks. Now take from me what I can give you of strength, of comfort, and do not give in to hopelessness, for it comes from the mouth of the Hag, and she is a mumbling liar. Be ready, teacher! and your pupil will show you something. Yes, I believe you may learn a trick or two yourself today, teacher, and not be ashamed to call me student.

  Jeremy relaxed, slipped away, was himself again and only himself, alone in the dark behind his eyelids but calmer now and more hopeful. This time there was no mistake: the pressure on him had lessened. He opened his eyes. The ghouls raised by the Hag still stood over him, the muck between their bones glistening in the light of the flickering torches. They trembled and swayed, held up by the will of the witch, sustained by her power and that flowing through the mirror. He could sense that too, an alien magic, different in texture from anything except what he sensed in himself. Magic drained from the earth, he thought, from our world that has so little to start with, so little that for all my life there I missed it, passed it by, never looked to see it, never reached to hold it. And now it was being dragged here, to Thaumia, turned to evil purposes, and made to serve the ends of those who despised the light and sought the darkness. Yet he felt stray currents of the magic in the room, spilling from the corridor, seeping into him. For what it was, the earthly magic was his magic, and he concentrated on absorbing it, using it, feeling it gather bit by bit inside himself.

  Jeremy lay on his back, sprawled before the iron throne, his head lolled back, his arms and legs spread. Beneath him the stone was hard, cold, rough. He tried to speak but could not. He tried to move, willed himself to break free of the magic holding him, telling himself silently in every language he knew that he could do it. In his mind he pictured a million tiny strands holding him down, saw himself as Gulliver staked on a beach by tiny imps, and he imagined their strongest ropes were only cobwebs to him. Oh, there were many of them, a million of them, but each thread was a slender one. There, he had broken one, though he could not move. One thread doesn't make a lot of difference. There, this time two had broken. Now four. Eight. Sixteen. He multiplied in his head, imagining the bindings of the Hag's magic to be flying apart in geometric numbers. Two hundred fifty-six. Five hundred twelve. A thousand twenty-four.

  One finger moved.

  It was like a pebble slipping from under a boulder teetering at the summit of a cliff. An instant later the rock itself bowed forward in ponderous acknowledgment of the pebble's motion and began to roll. As if invisible bands were breaking, Jeremy felt the lines of magic releasing him one by one as he strained against them, stretched them, and tore them apart. With a shout he rolled, pushed himself up, got to his knees, then his feet. The shambling ghouls were almost on top of him. He retreated before them down the long length of the throne room, and still they came. He snatched a dead torch from its sconce and swung it hard, aiming for the nearest ghoul's head and striking it.

  The apparition reeled sideways, slime and mud spattering from the skull. Jeremy smelled its fetor, and for a second he was sure he had destroyed the thing. Then it found its footing again, turned on Jeremy, and plodded forward, the lower jaw broken and hanging by the right socket only, filth drooling from the gaping mouth. Jeremy again tried to speak, to send a magic spell against his foe, but found he still could not. He struck at the second apparition's legs, hit solidly, felt both bone and torch break from the impact. The creature's left knee was shattered, and the foot spun half around, but the grinning skull gave no indication of having felt pain and, lurching and flailing, the ghoul limped on implacably.

  This is what Tremien faces at Whitehorn, Jeremy thought. The ghouls fear no attack and are unaffected by magic; and they will be the old magician's defeat.

  Jeremy had backed all the way against the far wall. The animated hulks would fall on him as soon as they found an opening, and he had only the broken stub of a torch, a pitiful stick perhaps a foot long, to use against them. Again he tried to draw on any reserve of magic left in him, and still he found he could not speak.

  But he could hear, and from his right he heard a woman's voice: “Jeremy! I'm coming!”

  He whipped his head around. Kelada had just slipped through one of the narro
w windows in the western corridor. She flew toward him now, a spear in each hand. Beyond her two of the vilorgs lay in crumpled heaps. Jeremy worked toward her, scraping his shoulders against the stone wall. When the undead creatures lumbered forward, he hurled the broken torch at the face of the nearer ghoul, and held out his hand behind him. Kelada slapped the cool shaft of a spear there.

  Her own point went into the eye socket of the skull with the broken jaw, carried it back, smashed the skull against the stones of the throne-room wall, shattering bone and splattering mud. The ghoul slipped down to a sitting position, reached to jerk away the spear, and then tried blindly to rise. Jeremy swept his own spear through the legs of his limping opponent, sent the thing crashing to the ground. Kelada fell on it, getting her hands under the edges of the rib cage, bracing, pulling herself up, spreading the bones.

  The thing cracked open like something rotten, spilling the contents of the chest cavity in a liquid wash of putrefaction. Across the room, the headless creature still stirred feebly, trying to rise, to walk, to fight. On the floor even the scattered bones of the ribs seemed to twitch with a mockery of life, to attempt to crawl back into the ruined nest of the body. Jeremy grabbed Kelada's arm and dragged her into the throne room.

  Barach lay quiet, his eyes open. His glance darted to Jeremy's face, urgent with meaning, and then rolled toward the northern corridor. Jeremy dropped to his knees. He knelt, touched the old man's forehead with his own. Take what strength I can give you, father in magic, he thought again. A picture, a dream of his grandfather came to mind: the old man as Jeremy had last seen him, threaded with tubes, hooked to bottles, gasping out his life in a hospital bed. Once as Jeremy had sat with the old man, all alone—it was just before Christmas, he recalled now—his grandfather's mind had cleared, and he had spoken Jeremy's name quite plainly. Then, reaching a wizened hand up to clasp Jeremy's, he had said his last farewell. What had the old man said? Something Jeremy could never understand: “Son, you have to sit here with me. I'm sorry for you.”