The Last Dream

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Supporting her with an effort, he pulled off one by one his two hip-length leg-coverings. The thin material was as easy to handle as cloth. He knotted the feet together and the tops to each other to form a loop. He put this loop around his neck. Lifting Anvra into it as into a supporting sling, he moved forward once more.

  But soon the weariness of his legs became pronounced. He stopped to rest, leaning against the cold side of the pipe, then went on, stopped a little later, went on and stopped again… he was staggering forward more by a reflex of the survival instinct than anything else.

  Suddenly Doug tripped over some steps at the side of the tunnel and sprawled off balance to his right, spilling Anvra through an open door to the stone floor of a room above water-level.

  He dragged himself up beside her. It was some little time before feeling began to come back to his water-numbed legs. He set about rubbing some circulation back into Anvra’s limbs, too. After a while her eyes opened.

  “All right,” he said. He gathered her still-chilled body to his warmer one. She made no sound. He held her until he suddenly became conscious of a new dampness against his chest.

  He looked down, startled. Her face was as expressionless as if she were yet unconscious, and her eyes were closed. But from under the closed lids, tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  “Anvra—” he blurted. “What is it? Are you hurt?”

  “I failed you,” she said dully.

  “Failed me? You got your wings wet. That wasn’t your fault.”

  “At the last, I couldn’t help you…” It was a terrible, soundless weeping. He realized that in spite of what she said it was not him she had failed. It was that stern personal code of hers— that creed of self-obligation.

  He hugged her to him comfortingly. After a while, she stirred and lifted her head.

  “Don’t forget,” he said, “I’m not Kathang. You don’t really owe me a thing.”

  “You’re many times what Kathang was,” she said, not looking at him. “And I owe you all I’ve got to give.”

  She rose to her feet, then. He stood up also, and for the first time he looked about him. They were in a small bare room that was almost the twin of the one at the Water Witches’ tower behind the water-tight door through which they had entered the drainpipe. Floor and walls were of what seemed to be concrete.

  He could hear a faint rushing sound. It seemed to come from the corridor off a room they could see beyond the open inner door of the room they were now standing in.

  “Blowers,” said Anvra. “The Cadda Noyer must have many deep-rooms under this Aerie.” She turned her face to him. Though it was still white from chill and exhaustion, her eyes glowed. “There might—I mean, it’s possible they have something to hide from the Magi. If so, maybe you can dicker with them to leave you alone as the price of keeping your mouth shut.”

  She started toward the inner door. He followed.

  The corridor led past several other bare rooms to end at last in a chamber no larger than a walk-in closet.

  “An elevator,” Anvra explained. She touched its wall. A small panel slid aside, uncovering a vertical row of square studs. Apparently Anvra’s people did not like their devices or controls to be out in plain sight.

  The doors of the elevator closed and she touched the bottom-most stud. He felt the familiar, stomach-floating sensation of a rapid elevator descent.

  The doors opened again before them. They stepped into still another room. A room with no doors other than the one through which they had emerged.

  Anvra made a sharp but barely audible sound like a curse and jumped back into the elevator. Her fingers ran rapidly over the area of the studs and a facing panel fell off, revealing a tangled maze of small transparent tubes filled with green liquid.

  “It may fool a wingless slave,” Anvra whispered. “But I’m on the Secrets Committee of my own Aerie—”

  She twisted and pinched a couple of the small tubes together. They melted into one another and the green liquid drained from the section of transparent tubing below the pinched spot in the vertical one of the two tubes.

  One whole wall slid aside. Beyond it lay a brightly lit expanse as immense as an aircraft hangar, filled with equipment.

  “Space!” murmured Anvra with relief. She ran into the huge room and pirouetted, unfolding her wet wings, stretching them out until they were extended to their full, sweeping width, the feathers still dark with water.

  Instinctively Doug joined her, felt himself extending his own wings. He reacted without thinking, shaking the stiffness and moisture from the appendages. His feathers clacked and rattled.

  Anvra’s hands caught his shoulders where clavicle and scapula came together in the great double-socket that allowed the winged people to use their arms either separately or as a reinforcement to the heavy wing-muscles themselves. Anvra’s own wings folded around Doug’s, holding them still.

  “Kathang,” she whispered fiercely, “are you crazy? You know they’re bound to have listening devices here.”

  “All right,” he said harshly, but remembering to keep his voice down. “It was just a reflex. I didn’t know. I’m not Kathang, remember?”

  She stepped back from him, folding her wings. Her large eyes peered uncertainly at him. He settled his own pinions, turned from her and began to walk among the devices filling the floor space.

  He stopped before an apparatus consisting of a metal hoop some six feet in diameter, surrounded by strange jewels and odd curlicues. He could swear he had never seen these shapes before—but they blurred as he looked at them, and suddenly they seemed familiar. He stepped forward, feeling his hands lift and begin tracing an ordered pattern in the air.

  Anvra was puzzled. “What are you doing?”

  He ignored her. His fingers touched the jewels in a quick combination.

  Soundlessly and magically, the metal hoop was replaced by a disk of blinding radiance—a circle he remembered.

  He ducked back instinctively.

  Through a disk like this one had gone the dark thing that had stolen some essential part of himself. And though such a disk he had come to this place of a winged people.

  Behind him, Anvra made a small choked sound.

  “Kathang?” she said, softly and almost timidly. Her voice shook. “Do you remember who you are now?”

  “I repeat,” he said. “I’m not Kathang!”

  “But you—” She turned to stare at the glaring radiance. “You activated the Portal. Only a Sorcerer like Kathang, who had worked on it, would know how to do that. If you’re a stranger in his body, how did you know?”

  “It must have been reflex,” he muttered. “Like using the wings. I don’t know what I did. I just let my fingers work by themselves.”

  But she still stood back from him.

  He gave up the thought of trying to convince her. He laid his hands on a jewel. The disk of light vanished, leaving the hoop of metal as cold and harmless-looking as before. He walked on among the machines.

  He looked ahead, at the room’s far wall. His vision blurred, then cleared. He saw a door that pierced the wall, and he approached it. He pushed the door open and stepped through into a dim, smaller room—like the room his blurred vision had seemed to show him when he had looked at this tower from the open room of the Water Witch’s Aerie.

  Before Doug were four table-like pieces of furniture. Two were bare. The other two bore the figures he remembered seeing—each a dead body dead some little time. One body had wings while the other had not.

  The one without wings was his former self.

  The body was dried and shrunken inside its clothes. The skin of the face was gray-white and fallen in upon the bone beneath it, so that the broken nose and scarred jaw seemed emphasized. The hands were as bloodless and dry as the face. And their knuckles were like massive bony knobs swelling the dry-dead skin.

  “So…” said Anvra softly beside him. “It’s you. That’s what you looked like.”

  He turned
to her, suddenly bitter.

  “You’re sure it isn’t just one of your slaves?” he snapped. “With his wings cut off?”

  “A Cadda Noyer slave it would be. Not mine,” she answered. “But look at it. That body was never born on this earth.”

  She turned to the other dead winged figure, the one with wings.

  “Kathang,” she began, her eyes glowing. She broke off and seized Doug’s arm with fingers that dug in. “What’s your name—your real name? I can’t call you Kathang any more!”

  “Doug—” said Doug. There was no point in trying once more to wrestle with the unpronounceability of the rest of it.

  “Doug…” she said. “Look at this body. Look! It’s Kathang! The body of Kathang!”

  Doug frowned.

  “Look at his neck,” said Anvra. “Jax said that if you had the fighter’s body, Kathang wouldn’t have any place to go but back to his own!”

  Doug looked. He had not noticed it before because the wings had propped up the head, but the neck itself was at an unnatural angle to the shoulders.

  “The Cadda Noyer must have killed him right there at the fights, under cover of the confusion of you running away.” Anvra said. “Of course! They couldn’t risk leaving him alive. If they had been able to kill you, too, they would have done it right then—to make sure you couldn’t talk. Don’t you see? That Portal machine back there has to be unregistered with the Magi!”

  She broke off, the color suddenly draining out of her face.

  “I was wrong,” she whispered. “No matter what you know, the Cadda Noyer can’t afford to make a deal with you. They’ve got to hide the fact you ever existed—or be declared outlaws if the Magi find out about the unregistered Portal!”

  “What I can’t understand,” he replied, “is this. With all the knowledge you people have about things like that Portal, nobody but you wants to believe I could be from another world.”

  “Nothing living ever came through a Portal,” she said. “Until you. If the Cadda Noyer have found a way to bring souls from other worlds to ours, no wonder they—”

  A brazen voice, amplified beyond the power of any flesh-and-blood throat, rang out in the big room behind them.

  “Anvra Mons-Borroh!” it thundered. “Anvra Mons-Borroh! Leave this aerie immediately by the route you came, and you can go unhindered. Anvra Mons-Borroh, leave alone, at once, and leave safely. The elevator and corridor by which you entered will remain clear for you three minutes more …”

  “I won’t leave alone,” Anvra shouted at the walls. “I’m a contract-mate. I’m self-obligated. The Water Witches will call you to account for any harm you do me.”

  “You have trespassed on territory of the Cadda Noyer,” roared the walls. “The Water Witches have no authority here.”

  The voice stopped abruptly as if the power source activating it had been interrupted.

  “Quick,” gasped Anvra to Doug. She ran back into the large room and Doug followed her. They twisted and dodged at a run through the maze of equipment and reached the small room where the elevator waited—just as the elevator doors opened. Standing within the box of the elevator, facing out, were three winged men.

  Doug stopped at the sight of them, then took a menacing step forward.

  “No,” screamed Anvra, catching at his arm with both her hands. “They’ve got interferers.”

  Doug saw that each of the three held something like a black cone six inches long and perhaps four in diameter at the base.

  While one stayed back in the elevator, holding his weapon on them, the two other Cadda Noyer walked out. Methodically they proceeded to tie up both Doug and Anvra, binding each in rope so that their wings were held in folded position. Doug also found his hands clumsily but effectively roped tightly against his sides.

  “All right. Into the elevator,” said the Cadda Noyer holding the weapon.

  The ride up was longer than Doug had expected. When the doors opened, he understood why. They had reached a large room with one open side. Looking out, Doug could see that they were now high in the tower, the city spread out below them.

  “Release the woman,” said a voice.

  Doug turned. The speaker was standing behind a long table. Seated on either side of him were two other winged men in Cadda Noyer livery. There was a darkness of age to their still-unlined faces, and the long primary feathers of their wings were gray-brown.

  “And rack those interferers,” added the standing Cadda Noyer, as the last coil of rope fell from Anvra. “Do you want it said we held a Sister of the Water Witches at weapon-point?”

  “Are you trying to pretend that isn’t just what they did?” blazed Anvra.

  “Mistress,” said the standing official behind the desk, “the Cadda Noyer has no quarrel with the Water Witches.” He turned and gestured toward the open side of the room. “The sky is yours. Why don’t you leave us now to our business?”

  “Because it’s my business, too,” said Anvra. She had her temper back under control and spoke coldly. “I’m self-obligated.”

  “To a man who gambled his body away to the Cadda Noyer?” said the winged man. “There’s nothing for you to obligate yourself to. Kathang duLein is legally dead.”

  “As you said,” answered Anvra quickly, “Kathang’s legally dead. I chose this man to take Kathang’s place as my contract-mate. My self-obligation lives.”

  The smile vanished from the lean face behind the table.

  “Remarry a legally dead man? Don’t talk like a fool, mistress!”

  “I so declare it. Who’s the fool now?”

  “You, woman!” exploded the Cadda Noyer. “Do you think this is some little trespass that we’ll overlook for fear of offending another Aerie? If you declare yourself contract-bound to this man and your self-obligation leads you to interfere, we can kill you, too. There’ll be no question of criminality to be raised against us by the Magi. All your Brotherhood can do is sue for damages. And even if we have to pay those, it won’t matter. We’re not a poor Aerie now.”

  Doug’s vision blurred, briefly. A curious feeling of understanding woke in him.

  “Now,” he said.

  The single emphasized word turned every eye toward him. For some moments there was a curious silence in the room.

  “Now?” echoed the Cadda Noyer official softly.

  “I think you must know what I mean,” said Doug.

  “Yes,” said the Cadda Noyer, stroking his chin with a narrow forefinger. “I’m afraid I do. You’re a fool, too. You could have died quickly. But you’ve made it necessary for us to know all you know before we set you free of life. There’s a madness in you and the woman both.”

  He turned back to Anvra.

  “Mistress,” he said, “think before you answer me—for your own sake. Do you know what this man is talking about?”

  Anvra was staring at Doug.

  “No,” she said. “But if I did, don’t think I’d be afraid to admit it.”

  “Then you don’t know,” said the official with relief. “Good. The Cadda Noyer have their secrets, mistress. But bravery and pride is as honored among us as among your own Water Witches. I’m glad we can save you from yourself, after all.”

  He turned to the three who had captured Doug and Anvra.

  “Two of you take the Mistress Water Witch into the air, away from the tower, and hold her until I’ve shut the wall. Then let her go.”

  “No!” cried Anvra as a pair of winged men approached. Her wings were half-spread and cupped.

  “Don’t touch her,” Doug said softly, “or you’ll regret it.”

  The two who had been closing in on Anvra stopped, confused.

  “Anvra,” said Doug, “pay no attention to what I’ll be doing. Get one of those weapons. Now. Don’t ask questions.”

  For a fraction of a second, Anvra hesitated. Then she spun toward the wall where the three interferers had been pushed into slots.

  The three guards lunged for her. Doug took two quick st
eps after them, stopped and half turned, balancing on his left foot with his body tilted over to the opposite side. His knee drew up to his chest like a spring—and lashed out.

  His lightly shod foot, flat soled, thudded into the spine of one of the guards. There was an ugly crack. The guard dropped and lay still.

  Doug staggered, off balance with the effort and the untrained muscles of his body. He managed to get his kicking foot down on the floor and kept himself upright. He kicked again, this time toe-up in conventional fashion. The point of his shoe drove into the neck of the closest of the other guards. The man flipped backward to crash, wings half-spread, on his back. His hands were at his damaged throat as he fought for breath.

  The remaining guard drove hard into Doug in a kind of a high tackle. They both went to the floor.

  “Stop!” It was Anvra’s voice, high-pitched and fierce. But Doug drove a knee hard into the winged man’s middle. The Cadda Noyer grunted. His grip relaxed and he rolled away. Doug jumped to his feet.

  A black cone in her hand, Anvra was covering the three winged men behind the desk. The guard with the crushed throat was still fighting for air. The one who had tackled Doug was struggling up.

  “Don’t move,” Anvra said tensely to the men of the Cadda Noyer. Covering them with her weapon, she walked to Doug. Her free hand went to work on the ropes that bound him. When they fell away, he flexed his released arms and stretched his wings.

  She turned and plunged out into the air. The guard now on his feet hurled himself courageously at Doug, wings partly extended and cupped to strike. Instead of retreating, Doug stepped forward inside those wings and struck a quick, short blow at the other’s face with the cast enclosing his broken hand. The man dropped.

  “Stand still,” shouted the voice of Anvra from empty air behind him. He saw that the three Cadda Noyer behind the desk had moved to attack him, but her words froze them. Anvra was hovering with spread wings upon a warm current of air fountaining up the side of the tower.

  “Doug,” she shouted. “Come on!”

  He looked out and down at the dizzying depth of air separating him from the ground. Furiously he took his instinctive fear in hand and flung it aside. He jumped blindly out into the unsupporting space.