Dreamweaver

by C. S. Friedman

  For a moment he just lay there in the darkness, pretending the fetter didn’t exist. Every joint in his body ached, and he had no desire to move one inch more than he had to. But then he realized there was a basic physical need he would soon have to take care of, so slowly, painfully, he unwrapped himself from his blankets and eased himself to his feet.

  The night was cold—surprisingly so—and with the campfire reduced to dying embers it was hard to see in the canyon’s shadows. He picked his way carefully past a turn a few dozen meters from the camp site, which offered enough privacy for him to deal with his body’s needs discreetly. After that was done, he leaned back against the rock, took out the com fetter, stared at it for a long while, and then finally activated it. “Be quiet,” he whispered, as Morgana’s image took shape in front of him. “Others are sleeping nearby.”

  “Have you any information for me?”

  He respected her information network enough to assume that she knew where he was, if not the fine details of what was happening to him, so there was no point in lying to her about the basics. “I’m travelling with Jessica. She’s looking for information that will help her get rid of some wraiths that are bothering her. Nothing has come of that yet. If we turn up any interesting information I’ll be sure to contact you.” There was an edge to his voice as he added, “As promised.”

  The face was too grainy for him to see Morgana’s expression. “I have another task for you.”

  He sighed. He could remember a time in the not-so-distant past when no one had given him orders, or asked him for favors that he couldn’t deny. It seemed a lifetime ago. “I’m listening,” he said, resigned to the inevitable.

  “I want you to arrange a meeting between Jessica and myself.” She raised up a hand to forestall any objection. “Only when it becomes physically possible. I realize that’s not the case right now.”

  So she does know where we are. “With all due respect, your Grace, I doubt that’s ever going to happen.”

  “I need you to make it happen.”

  “I think you underestimate how much she distrusts you.”

  “Trust is a luxury. We can’t always choose our allies, Private Hayes.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you’re offering her? Alliance?”

  “I have information she needs. Nothing more. But its nature is such that I can’t entrust it to messengers. Trust me, she wants it.”

  “She knows what you’re capable of,” he warned. “She knows how vulnerable she would be in your presence. And she’s not a fool.”

  “Well then, let’s be blunt, shall we? The Shadows are mobilizing against her, and other Guilds may soon join them. The last time her kind was hunted, none of them survived the holocaust. She needs allies in powerful places, or she won’t survive the coming storm. The information I have can give her the upper hand against her enemies. Can she afford to forego it?”

  The last time her kind was hunted. So the pretense was over. Morgana knew exactly what Jessica was, and probably always had known. Unless she’s bluffing, he reminded himself, and fishing for confirmation. Dealing with Morgana was like dancing with a cobra. “And that’s all you care about? Her survival?”

  “It’s not all I care about, no. But if the Shadows capture her nothing else really matters, does it?”

  He remembered the Soulriders who had tried to encircle them in Rouelle. The hunt for Jessica already involved multiple Guilds. If those Soulriders knew what the girl was, as Morgana seemed to, they wouldn’t let up until Jessica was dead.

  “If you do this for me,” Morgana said, “I will consider your debt to me settled. The moment she meets with me, you no longer owe me any manner of service or favor. It will be as if our previous conversation never happened.”

  His hand tightened around the fetter. He was glad she couldn’t see his expression. “I can’t raise the subject without her realizing we’ve been in contact.”

  “Then tell her the truth. Or whatever lie you need to. All I care about are results, Private Hayes; how you get them is your own business.”

  He winced slightly. “I’ll pass on your message. That’s the best I can do.”

  “Excellent. I look forward to hearing of your success.”

  Her image disappeared.

  It was several minutes before he could bring himself to return to camp. When he did, Jesse was lying there with her eyes open, watching him. “You okay?” she asked.

  “Had to piss.” He smiled weakly. “Thought I’d spare you the sight.”

  He sat down on his blankets and stared into space. After a few minute she said, “Sebastian?”

  He shut his eyes. There’s just the two of us here now, he thought. The setting won’t get better than this. “Alia Morgana wants to meet with you.”

  He heard a sharp intake of breath. “Seriously?”

  He shrugged stiffly.

  “She’s not here, is she?”

  “No. She means once you leave the Badlands.” If you leave the Badlands. “She says she has information you could use to stay alive, but she’ll only deliver it to you personally.”

  “How did you find this out?”

  He hesitated, then threw the fetter over to her. It landed on her blanket. “She gave me that a while back in case I ever came across information I wanted to sell her. She just used it to reach out to me. Keep it. You can use it to contact her if you want.” He paused. “I can’t imagine any circumstances under which I would want to do that.”

  He sensed she was staring at him in the darkness, but he couldn’t meet her eyes. At last she said, “Do you really think I should talk to her?”

  He sighed. “My first instinct is to tell you that wherever she is, you should run in the other direction as fast and as far as you can and never stop running. But we’re already three thousand kilos from home and Soulriders are hunting you. They’re servants of the Shadows, so at least two Guilds are involved. Maybe more. Honestly, Jessica . . . I don’t know if running away will accomplish anything.”

  She said it quietly: “You think I should meet with her.”

  “It’s your choice to make. But remember, once you’re in her presence you’ll have no secrets left; I warned you about that before. A Seer can read your emotions like a book, and someone as skilled as Morgana can leverage that into what might as well be true mind reading. Not to mention she’ll be able to detect your fears, your insecurities, your hungers, your needs . . . She’s a deadly creature, Jessica. But only if you’re in her physical presence.” He shook his head. “Might that be a price worth paying for what she has to offer? I honestly don’t know.”

  “Is that—” She hesitated. “Is that why you brought your musket with you? So you wouldn’t have to risk being in her presence?”

  He turned back and looked into her eyes. How like his daughter’s eyes they seemed sometimes! It made his heart ache. “You entrusted me with your secrets. This was the only way I could think of to safeguard them. Hopefully someday it will no longer be necessary.”

  “I was so afraid you were expecting to die—”

  He laughed. “Good God, no! Where did you get that idea? I’ve been fighting to survive on this miserable world for most of my life. I’m not going to abandon that struggle for Alia Morgana, or any other Gifted tyrant!”

  Jessica smiled slightly, then looked down at the fetter, turning it over in her hand. “I don’t have to decide right now, do I? The Badlands may kill us tomorrow. Or I may find what I’m looking for, and not need Morgana any more. Anything could happen.”

  “Since I doubt your enemies will follow you here—or could survive the crossing if they tried—you have some time. You should make a decision before leaving this place, though.”

  “Understood.” She tucked the fetter into her pocket and looked at him. “Thank you for your honesty, Sebastian.”

  He lay back down
on his blankets without responding.

  20

  BADLANDS

  TERRA PRIME

  ISAAC

  ISAAC DOESN’T KNOW where he is. He only knows that he’s lying on his back and the ceiling above him is rippling. It’s also glowing faintly, as if some light behind it is seeping through. The result isn’t bright enough for him to make out details of the small space he’s in, but sometimes when the ceiling ripples its light glints off small bits of metal and polished bone that seem to be hung everywhere. He can hear a soft murmuring, too, like voices of the dead, only much fainter, as if the spirits that once inhabited this place left their echoes behind. The murmurs are mostly peaceful, unlike the tormented cries of the dead in Shadowcrest, and are surprisingly soothing.

  With a soft moan he rises to a sitting position. His body is still weak from the summoning he performed at El Malo, but he knows he’s lucky to be alive at all. When he reached out to Jacob he was offering the very substance of his life, and while he knew it was a risky move—possibly a fatal one—he didn’t care. The dead boy’s spirit had been loyal to him, helping him survive those first few terrible days of his exile, and Isaac felt like he owed him loyalty in return.

  His father would have derided that sentiment. The spirits of the dead aren’t people any longer, he would have lectured, only semi-conscious reflections of people who once existed. We owe them no more loyalty than we owe to rocks or trees.

  Isaac doesn’t remember anything from after the summoning, only heat and pain and utter exhaustion. Nothing he sees now offers any enlightenment. After taking a few minutes to gather his strength, he gets up from the cot, intending to search for answers. He begins to look around the tent—and he sees his own body lying before him.

  As a necromancer he knows what that means, and he panics. Did his effort to restore Jacob drain him of so much life energy that his flesh could no longer sustain itself? Is he no more than a ghost now, looking down upon his own corpse? He has so much left to live for! So much left to learn! He’s not ready to die yet.

  But then he realizes that his body is stirring gently, its chest rising up and down with each breath, the subtle tremor of a pulse visible along the neck. Trembling with relief, he sees that a small circular item has been tucked into the bandages that are wrapped around his chest. A fetter for healing? Or some other kind that has allowed his spirit to leave his body without his flesh being harmed? His fear is slowly being transformed into wonder. Nothing in his apprenticeship prepared him for an experience like this.

  He finds a flap that allows him to exit the small room and discovers that in fact it’s a covered wagon, parked at the base of a canyon wall. He can hear running water in the distance and smell fresh greenery all around him, but he sees no other people. Overhead the full moon is shining brightly, but that’s wrong, isn’t it? Last night the moon was a crescent. Has he slept for a whole week, or is there some other explanation?

  A large bird flies across the face of the moon, black against the silvery backdrop. Isaac is familiar with the species commonly used by the Soulriders, so he’s able to identify this one as a raven. He watches as it circles around where he is standing, seven times in all, then begins to coast down into the canyon. As it spreads its broad wings to check its flight Isaac realizes with a start that the bird isn’t really black, as it appeared in silhouette. In fact its feathers are white—a glistening, ghostly white—with only a tiny bit of black on its forehead, right where his own mark of shame is located.

  It lands on a rock a few meters away, then cocks its head, studying him. There is an intelligence in its eyes that is so far beyond that of a mere bird he wonders if a Soulrider has found him. But no Soulrider has ever looked at him like this, with a gaze that pierces his soul, dissecting his spirit, deconstructing his very essence.

  Without warning it takes to the air again.

  He follows.

  The night air is cool on his wings, and he coasts in the draft of the raven’s flight with ease, as if he’s done this a thousand times before. Together they soar over a desert bathed in moonlight, stark and beautiful. Where are you leading me? he wonders, but of course the bird doesn’t answer. After several minutes of flying they come to a canyon wider than anything Isaac would have imagined possible, and the raven swoops down into it. As Isaac follows, he can see that dwellings have been built into the canyon walls, some housed inside natural crevices, others in neatly excavated arches. So many dwellings! The canyon’s entire interior is lined with terraces and walled gardens and staircases and windows and tile-framed doors, as if some vast apartment complex has sprung up organically from the earth. People are present, thousands upon thousands of them, and as Isaac and the raven fly over every type of human activity—celebrations and funerals, lessons and prayers, courting and conflict—the city seems to go on forever.

  Finally they leave the great canyon and return to the desert. Now they are approaching the red wave of El Malo, and Isaac feels a tremor of fear. But this time there is no assault on his mind. As they cross the border he can sense the presence of the spirits who guard it, and he suddenly understands that they have no malevolent power of their own, but merely unleash the fears that each man carries within himself.

  Now the raven is leading him past El Malo and over Rouelle, approaching a central complex that Isaac realizes must house the local Guilds. His confidence falters, and with it his wingstroke; he doesn’t want to have to confront his Guild, even in a vision.

  That is your weakness. The raven is speaking to him now, not in words but in the beat of its wings, the rippling of its feathers. You can’t master your Gift until you master yourself.

  Isaac sees Shadowlords wandering through dark halls. Each one is dragging bound figures behind him, dozens of writhing bodies struggling to break free. The chains that shackle them are wrapped around their masters as well, tangling their legs, adding a burden of weight to every step. He sees that as the necromancers perform their bloody rituals they are constantly struggling against that burden, though they are even not aware of it. Their own inhumanity is strangling their power.

  Behold your Gift, the raven tells him. Is this what you hunger to awaken?

  “Not like this,” he whispers. “Never like this.”

  The raven turns its head back to look at him, and once more he feels those piercing eyes take the measure of his soul. Then, without warning, the white wings dissolve into moonlight. The city beneath him crumbles to sand and is swept away by the wind. He is spiraling downward . . .

  The wagon’s interior was dark, so it took Isaac a moment to realize he was back there. There was no longer any glowing fabric, and if there were trinkets surrounding his cot, they were now invisible in the darkness. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, his mind still spinning from all that he had seen. Had the vision been no more than a dream produced by his fevered mind, or was there something more to it? He’d spent so much time with Jesse that he no longer took dreaming for granted.

  He got to his feet and looked back at the cot. There was no body sleeping there now; Isaac Antonin was whole. Even more than that: he felt strong now, and the cuts and bruises on his body no longer hurt. It was as if he had just awakened from a long, refreshing sleep, in which both his flesh and his spirit had healed.

  When he exited the wagon he saw the same canyon he had dreamed about, but this time there was a crescent moon overhead, and an old woman with long grey braids was sitting on a fallen tree trunk near the wagon, inhaling smoke from a clay pipe.

  “So you’re finally awake,” she said.

  It took him a moment to find his voice. “Where am I?”

  “Somewhere safe. Your friends are over there.” She used the pipe to point to an expired campfire a short distance away. Isaac saw that there were two mounds of blankets near it, one of which was snoring gently. Was Jacob here as well? Reaching out with his Gift to find the ghost, he located him near
by. The spirit, too, seemed to have recovered from their traumatic journey.

  The old woman was watching him. In the moonlight her eyes glittered like gemstones. “Did you sleep well?”

  Isaac wasn’t sure how to answer. “I had a strange dream.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I saw a vast canyon with a city built into its walls. Is that true? Are there cities here?”

  “There are. Though what world they belong to is another question. You’re in a place where that’s not always so clear.” She sucked on the pipe. “What else?”

  “I saw El Malo. It was . . . not malign . . . it just echoed people’s fears back at them.”

  She nodded. “Good.”

  “But if that’s true, how does it explain what we saw? Are you saying that one of us was afraid of blood, or lizards, or hail?”

  “A man carries two types of fear inside him,” she said. “One is personal, and reflects the life he’s lived. One is mythic, and reflects the life his people have lived. Such fears are communal.” She reached into a leather pouch by her side and drew out a pinch of fragrant herbs. “What else?”

  Isaac hesitated. He didn’t want to tell anyone about the Shadows he had seen, least of all a total stranger. “Who are you?”

  She held the herbs up to her nose, smelled them, and then added them to the bowl of her pipe. “None of you have earned the right to know my current name, but you can have the one I used when I last walked among the Anglos. Lydia Redwind. Doctor Lydia Redwind, if you prefer formality.”

  “You’re a doctor?”

  “I am, but that’s not what the title refers to. I have a doctorate in Comparative History from Bonaparte University.” She shrugged. “But that was another life. In this life, I rescue bands of weary travelers from the clutches of vengeful spirits and bloodthirsty azteca.” She gestured toward the wagon. “It’s late, necromancer. Go get some blankets and join your friends, so an old woman can reclaim her bed. There’ll be time enough for questions in the morning. Though please note, I’m not promising I’ll answer all of them.”