Dreamlands

by Scott Jäeger

  I finished my cocoa while she weighed her words, and despite myself began to drift off.

  “Your life may not be at risk Mr. Sloan, but death is not the only end. There are certain eldritch portals which open onto other worlds, and those who pass through them in dream may slip into a coma and never awaken, or wake physically healthy but incurably insane. Here, such a portal is so singular a person may search his entire life for one, and when it appears it will open but briefly. In the other place they are not so infrequent. Simply by swimming in a lake or climbing a mountain you may stumble through one. You may find, quite by accident, that you have gone much farther than you intended, and arrived in a much less hospitable place, a place from which there is no return.”

  She removed a weighty object from her carpet bag whilst I studied a ceiling beam, my fatigue having quite abruptly vanished.

  “I will leave the glass book on the floor just here. Relax your arm so the fingers of your left hand touch the surface.”

  “But I was advised never to touch–”

  “Shhh. When you are asleep I will retrieve the book and the world will know it no more. You will be safe here for as long as your journey lasts. Take care in your travels, Mr. Sloan.” She paused again, her expression now inscrutable. “Take a great deal of care indeed.”

  The Seventy Steps

  The massive stones of the Steps of Deeper Slumber were ravaged by weather and time, and smoothed by the feet of centuries of travelers. On either side the outlook was obscured by a gently eddying mist, which evaporated as the stair melted into an empty court. Two cyclopean pillars, carved from the luminous granite of the cliff face, framed the cavern entrance. I looked to the elaborately decorated lintel high above, hoping to see some legend or piece of wisdom. Instead, the frieze depicted a series of marching figures, some human, some animal –a cat, a fox, a gazelle– some harder to place.

  The Temple of Nasht and Kaman-Thah was sculpted from naked rock, the polished floor cool on my bare feet. I was arrested, as every visitor must be, by the towering flame burning at its center. I looked to the dimly lit passages about the perimeter, but no one else was present.

  There was no dais, altar, or other furniture of worship, however the walls were carved with a continuation of the procession above the entrance. The subjects of the relief grew wilder as they progressed towards the ceiling. The folk clutched their skulls and cavorted feverishly, arms raised to the skies, and their animal companions began to walk upright in a skewed anthropomorphism, and grinned as if full of some secret knowledge. On the uppermost tier the outlandish troupe’s backdrop changed from hills and forests to a scantily starred night sky, and the exact nature of the much larger figures there was, happily, obfuscated by restless shadows.

  Turning from the outlandish parade, I approached the focus of the temple. The flame danced in a heptagonal stone basin, feeding on no visible fuel and, despite flaring as high as two men, giving no heat. As the white firelight washed me, the troubles worrying at my conscience like a clutch of hungry mice seemed lessened, insignificant. Then I recognized by its cessation a sound that had been with me since my descent, a deep, ongoing reverberation, like that of a massive bell.

  “Welcome, Isaac Sloan.”

  A tall, avuncular man regarded me. He was dressed in a dun cassock, his flowing brown beard reaching almost to the floor. He had the ageless aspect granted to people of peaceable nature.

  “Do you know me?” I asked.

  “I know all Dreamers,” he replied.

  He added nothing more, standing like a Mandarin with his hands folded in the sleeves of his garment. I returned to my contemplation of the sacred flame. The stillness of this place denied, gently and utterly, any kind of discord or strife. I suspected it to be a dangerous sort of peace, the repose it granted more final than one might wish.

  “What must I do?” I asked.

  He gestured to an alcove, where sat a wooden trough and jug.

  “Kneel and wash your hands, and your journey begins anew.”

  * * *

  My awakening was ruder than my visit to the cavern temple. Coughing, I rolled off a low couch onto a damp and gritty floor, to sit guarding my eyes from the intolerable glare of a lone candle. I found a set of simple garments and rope sandals hanging from an iron hook. Beneath were my cutlass and the sheath with the pearl-handled dagger, all precisely arranged as if by a valet. I had supposed I would arrive happy and full of the sailor’s vitality I had left behind. I leaned on the wall to gather my strength. In this assumption I was disappointed.

  I shifted a makeshift plank door to look out on dreary midday. I had lain in an ancient stone shed, one of a row being consumed by the darkly thicketed hillside. They were the sort of long abandoned structures that children claimed to be the home of inexplicable lights and hauntings, stories at which adults laughed, though they too seemed to avoid such places after sunset.

  Outside I smelled the sea, and when the tepid breeze shifted, the tang of the port, along with something worse, an ill wind. I followed my nose east under the lowering sky. I did not know how long I had been absent from Zij and misgave what I would find as I approached the Groaning Gate.

  The Moonlit Pool

  The lingering unquiet of the bazaar was as palpable as a hand at my back urging me along. Though I walked head down through the aisles, I could not deny the number of merchants from Dylath-Leen had grown, and that of their wilt-addled hangers-on doubled. Whatever had happened in the coal burners’ camp, their drugs must still be in ready supply.

  I decided to stop at Gorice’s stall. The blacksmith would have the latest news, and more than that I needed a dose of his bluff amity. Arriving at his kiosk however, I was confronted by a pair of heavy-lidded, jaundiced eyes. Gorice’s metalwork, bench and tools had been replaced by shelves of dry goods, and he by one of his hated enemies. The merchant was not armed, but his two henchmen, eyes bugged and lips peeled back, made a shuffling circuit around the space, clutching cudgels studded with chips of scrap iron. Choking back an epithet, I forced my hand away from my knife and moved on without comment. The attack I had lead on the coal burners’ camp had been motivated by a similar rage. I did not yet know the consequences of that error, but I was not eager to repeat it.

  I was already on Iron Street when I spotted them: Gorice’s apprentice Cal and the blacksmith’s wife, Marina, small and round where her husband was large and square. They were loading crates and bundles into a cart, so many that I surmised they were moving house. Marina’s usually ruddy cheeks were pale, and her mouth set in a downturned frown. It did not break when she saw me. Instead, her load grew heavier in her arms as I approached until she set it down on the ground.

  “Marina, I must speak to Gorice. Did he move the stall?” I looked at the tables of the bazaar, at the crumbling walls, and at the swaying ships’ masts above the low buildings along the harbour, anywhere but at her grief-stricken face.

  “Isaac,” she said dazedly, “you’ve returned.” She swayed a little before adding bitterly, “Now you return.”

  “Where is Gorice?”

  “He’s gone, he’s left,” she said. “He’s left Zij.”

  "Left when?" I shook my head. “To do what?”

  Her answer set up a ringing in my ears, and for a moment I saw the world through a long, dark tunnel.

  “He signed on with the black galleys,” she said, her face a perfect composite of bafflement and pain. “He’s gone with the yellow-eyed merchants.”

  Without a word I began to run.

  * * *

  From the hall I could see that the Iron Street apartment had been ransacked, everything upset and trampled, though to what purpose I could not guess.

  “Isobel?” I cried in a cracked voice. Nothing.

  I crept inside, dagger drawn. A dim figure waited, motionless, within. As little as I had anticipated finding him there, still less did I expect Ajer Akiti's reaction, a dispirited sigh.

  “Dead?” I somehow found t
he courage to ask. He shook his head.

  Disappeared. He explained in a perfunctory manner. After my friends had returned from the coal burners’ camp, Isobel had been inconsolable, insisting she would learn the truth about the turbaned traders from the north. Ajer and Erik had endeavoured to watch over her, but the night before last they had come to the apartment to find it turned over and the girl gone. Erik was out searching even now.

  “The yellow-eyed merchants have all but taken over the market,” I said. “What happened at the camp?”

  Burned, was all he said.

  Ajer Akiti did not rise as I picked over the remains of Solomon’s and Isobel’s lives. The old man’s atlas had been tossed in a corner. I leafed through it, recalling how he would rest his hand on the cover as if it were a strongbox full of jewels. A lock of Isobel’s hair had been secreted inside, along with a familiar piece of translucent cloth. The hair I tucked away in my pouch, the cloth I gently unfolded. It was the second leaf of the palimpsest the blind shopkeeper had given me with the pearl-handled dagger.

  When I showed it to Ajer, he untied his pack and produced the other sheet. Despite the time it had spent in his bindle, it was in good condition, but without the final section two pieces made no more sense than one. My cutlass, which Ajer had also kept, would be of more practical use.

  We went to gather Erik and I quizzed them on who they had spoken to, where they had searched and how thoroughly. But however I worried at it, the gist was the same: Isobel had vanished utterly. To the question of Gorice’s departure, the two of them were equally grim and silent. For the rest of the morning we wore down our sandals on the streets and piers of Zij. The city’s wildflower inhabitants laboured under an unmistakable pall, their laughter restrained and their movements guarded. That is, everyone but the wilt addicts, who either worked feverishly for their masters or strutted jerkily up and down, jeering at townsfolk, sailors, and their comrades alike.

  Having spent my first wave of anxious energy, I stopped at a well for a dipper of water. Erik adjusted the sash with which he cinched his sword and stood straighter, plenty of notice that I would not like what came next.

  “There is an old mystic woman, a soothsayer,” he said. “She has a reputation for finding things, and people, who’ve been misplaced.”

  “So we are reduced to asking a witch for assistance?” How Gorice would laugh at that, I thought, but did not say. “We are desperate men indeed.”

  “I’m not so simple that I’d patronize any charlatan who sets up a tent,” Erik said, crossing his arms. “She has a good reputation, and we’ve exhausted all the sensible options.”

  I looked to Ajer, who shrugged in resignation.

  “You look like a dog’s corpse got up on its hind legs to walk,” Erik continued when I didn’t answer. “I will go talk to her myself in the morning. You take a rest and I’ll–”

  “I am done with resting,” I snapped.

  “Then come with me. If she cannot help us, we’ll–” He trailed off hopelessly. “We’ll think of something else.” But Ajer and I had no more confidence in his words than he did.

  The next morning, on the Street of Candlemakers, we searched out the witch among the makeshift structures which grew like mushrooms against the west wall. Her hybrid of tent and hut had been dashed together from a collection of canvas, branches and cobblestones. A young boy, grubby, unshod, and indiscernible from a gross of others in the port, rose from where he sat on a section of log to announce us. At a grunt from within, we climbed into a cramped space reeking of smoke. The woman was as wrinkled as a winter apple, and covered in a gypsy’s motley, washed by time to a uniform drab. Nevertheless, her girth pledged the success of her business.

  Given how little we knew, it was short work for Erik to explain Isobel’s disappearance. When he was finished, the old woman fixed her rheumy eyes on each man in turn, saying nothing. I bristled at having to wait out this charade, but kept my tongue.

  “You don’t expect me to snap my fingers and produce this friend of yours, I hope.” Her voice was surprisingly strong. Only around the edges did it show the wear of a long life.

  “No,” Erik said, “but we did hope you could advise us. You are in the business of finding people, yes?”

  “If the yellow-eyed merchants, as you call them, have your girl, finding her will be no easy matter. They are warded against the simpler techniques.”

  “Is it a matter of coin?” I interjected, as if a desire to be paid would confirm her for a fraud.

  “You will find my requirements very reasonable,” she said impassively. "Do you have something of your friend’s, some possession?”

  “No,” I said, swallowing, “nothing.”

  “If you could provide a brush or comb, a bit of her hair would do.”

  I did have the lock her hair, and produced it for her.

  The soothsayer rummaged for a few minutes among the undifferentiated junk crowding us on all sides, producing a bamboo tube, most of a meter long, within which nested a few scrolls. As there wasn’t room in her shack to study them, we moved outside and arranged ourselves around a great slab of stone which had long ago fallen from the city wall, and now served as a table for the commons. The soothsayer unfurled one of the documents, carefully weighting the corners with bits of rock, to reveal a nautical chart. Erik raised his eyebrows at me as if to say, See, here is something we all understand. The old woman indicated a blank space a few hours up the coast, not far from shore.

  “Nothing is charted there,” I said, studying it. “You think she’s been marooned?”

  “I haven't the slightest idea where she is. This is a place for divining, a hallowed and secret shrine. That is how you will find her.”

  “Do you know this area?” I asked Erik. He had for ten years sailed the waters around Zij.

  “A fog rises along the coast there every day at dusk,” he said, “but I have sailed it numerous times, by day and by night, and there is nothing at this location, not even a hazard.” He examined the document more closely. “According to the cartographer’s legend, this is over a century old. It is either a mistake or has long since vanished.”

  The old woman gave a slow and elaborate shrug.

  “Supposing there is an island,” I said, “what are we supposed to do there?”

  “You will find a cave near the beach on the west side. Follow the widest passage until you come upon a hand-carved stone pool, beneath an opening to the sky. When the moon is overhead you may see what you wish in the pool.”

  “I will see what I wish,” I said incredulously. “That’s all?”

  “The boy will assist you.” As if summoned by magic, he appeared at my elbow. He was so quiet he seemed to fade away when you had no use of him.

  “Why not come yourself?” Erik asked her.

  “I am too old to go scrabbling about a rock in the middle of the ocean. The boy is my apprentice, he will know what to do.” As an afterthought she added, “Ignore the other passages leading underground.”

  She handed Erik the chart and the boy a burlap sack that looked to contain a lunch, and we were dismissed.

  “I know where I can hire a sloop for a couple of days,” Erik said, already leading the way to the docks. “The tide will be in our favour. We’ll gather a small crew this forenoon and be off.”

  The boy followed several paces behind until Erik whistled for him to catch up. He trotted closer, but was leery of Ajer Akiti’s intimidating form.

  “Does your mistress often send you on errands with sailors?” Erik asked.

  The boy shrugged morosely.

  “If we’re going to be mates, at least tell us what to call you,” I said.

  “Mostly I'm called Boy, but my mum used to call me Lark.”

  “Can you sing?” I asked, feigning good humour I did not feel.

  “No, sir,” he said, staring at his bare and dirty feet.

  “To be called after a bird is fine for a sailor, providing the bird isn’t an albatross.�
�� I chuckled at my own joke, alone, since I was a world away from anyone else who would understand it.

  * * *

  The vessel Erik had secured for us was single-masted and shallow keeled. It was too small for freight and not rigged for fishing, or any other useful work that I could see. Ajer signed that it was built for speed. Smuggling, of cargo and people, would be its primary business. My two friends and I could have crewed the small craft, but Erik had thought it prudent to ask five sailors along as well. "In case we get lonely," he had said.

  Four hours later, looking up from the chart at the unbroken waves, I was thinking we had wasted their time as well as our own.

  “We’re here,” Erik declared, setting down the spyglass. We had checked and rechecked the coordinates but there was no island in sight. The foretold fog cloaked the horizon to the east.

  “We must have miscalculated,” I said.

  “Have a look at this.” Erik rested one finger on the glass of the compass, as if hoping to steady its wildly oscillating needle. Minutes before it had been working perfectly; now, it may as well have been seated in a lodestone. We would not need it in the near future anyway, for the fog was bearing down on us in a suffocating blanket. The sun would set a dim white disk over the sea.

  “This has been a fool’s errand,” Erik said, “and it’s my fault.”

  “I don’t mind so much,” I replied, “since you paid for the sloop.”

  “What next, Captain?” Marthin asked. I wondered a moment who he was addressing, before concluding it must be me.

  “Jome will keep a watch,” I said to him. Jome wore the long beard and blue-tattooed scalp favoured by sailors of the Cerenerian, and could about break me in half if he wished. If anyone else felt as anxious taking my orders as I did giving them, they hid it well. “Everyone else, rest.”

  * * *

  “Captain!”

  I rose at the lookout’s call, sea-fog clinging to me like icy sweat. From the volume of Jome’s shout, I thought to see pirates bearing down on us, but what I actually saw was more shocking still. When his cry faded, no other sound took its place, and the waves themselves seemed to pause in their lapping against the hull. No more than fifty meters away, a great gloomy rock rose from the waves like a dowager mantled in mist.