Dreamstrider

by Lindsay Smith

  “Let’s check on that house you saw,” Brandt says, shifting awkwardly.

  “Hold on to my hand.” We link our fingers together. “Try to forget that you’re not supposed to be able to fly.”

  Within moments, I’m drifting into the air, but Brandt keeps bobbing, raising up for a few seconds only to tug me back down as he recalls he’s doing the impossible. “Dreams of death,” he mutters. “I don’t know how you manage.”

  I tug hard and send him flying into the air with me, dangling from our joined hands. “You’re lucky you’re weightless here,” I say with a grin. I fly us to the city streets, in part so I can get my bearings before our next destination, but also so I can show Brandt this strange and wonderful landscape. We land on the cobblestones in the heart of the High Priest’s Plaza, right before my favorite dreamshaper structure of all: an undulating fortress covered in mosaic tiles of every imaginable color. I can taste its dazzling hues in my mouth like the bubbliest cider.

  Brandt spins in a slow circle, a smile lacquered onto his face. “Liv. This is just amazing!”

  “A far cry from the dreary black and white of Barstadt City, isn’t it?” I smile back.

  He fixes his sights on the towering Temple of the Dreamer beyond us, but as he’s staring at its golden disc, a priestess rounds the corner and shoots us a fierce glare. “This isn’t a place for you.” She charges toward me, her index finger waggling. “It isn’t safe.”

  I raise both my hands. “It’s all right. I’m not a lost sleeper—I can handle myself here.”

  “Only the most devout are allowed in Oneiros. We’ll have to usher you back into your own mind—”

  “Please! We’re doing no harm,” I say, but a crowd is gathering around us. Priests and priestesses, assuming all manner of surreal costumes, crowd around us. A hat has manifested in Brandt’s hand for him to worry over, which he does vigorously; he looks like he’s wringing it out to dry. “Listen.” I moisten my suddenly parched lips. “I think Oneiros may be in danger.”

  “What do you know of it?” An older priest surges forward, his flesh pulled taut like leather around the smooth knobs of his joints. “Did you invite this darkness?”

  “So you’ve seen it, too. We think there’s a rogue priest out there, and…” I slump forward. “He may have killed Albrecht Hesse.”

  “Hesse!” The word ricochets through the crowd, hissing and contemptuous.

  “Hesse. Hesse! A disgrace to the Dreamer. May Nightmare chew his soul for eternity.” The old priest sneers at me—daring me to contradict him.

  My face burns. “He only tried to do what was best for Barstadt. Why would the Dreamer give us Oneiros if not to use it to help our people?”

  “You call it help, what you do? Stealing others’ bodies, tempting the Wastes with your soul? It’s a disgrace!”

  I stammer, searching for a retort, but Brandt charges toward them. “Hesse and Livia have done more to protect Barstadt than your lot ever will. Hoarding the Dreamer’s world all for yourselves? That’s what’s disgraceful.”

  I cringe as the priests’ gasps wash over us. “That’s not quite what he meant,” I tell them. Even if I’ve wondered the same. I want to believe the Dreamer has a reason for structuring us this way, but after my last few conversations with Marez, I’m not so sure. I wonder if the Farthinger approach is better—let all those able to succeed do as they please.

  “It’s exactly what I meant. You treat her like an outsider, but what have you done to preserve this place?” Brant’s cheeks burn crimson; the hat he’s thoroughly strangled is stretching, long and sinuous.

  The lead priest jabs a finger to Brandt’s chest. “Hundreds of years ago, we stood against Nightmare. We shaped this all in the Dreamer’s name. Is it coincidence that this abomination, this…” He flicks his hand up and down the length of me. “This dreamstrider arrives in the same age as the winged beasts? Perhaps it’s her doing.”

  I shake my head, even as their hands grasp for my curls, assessing me like they expect me to turn into one of those horrible monsters. “Please, no. I’m looking for the same villains you are—a renegade priest, making false promises to the Commandant—”

  “Prove it!” the head priest cries.

  “Prove it!” the crowd echoes, their words bouncing back at us from the tops of their buildings, from all around.

  “Very well,” I say. Dreamer, I know you’re not in the habit of answering my prayers, at least not in any way that’s clear to me—but please, Dreamer, show me what I need to see now. “Come with me and I will.”

  We surge north, Brandt and I, like a great comet with an icy tail of disbelieving priests in their white shifts. My hands tremble as I search the mountainside. The hulking bones of Nightmare loom on the hill, mirroring the ones in Barstadt City, but I school my eyes away from them as I search for that flicker I’d seen two nights past. There—how such solid stone can look so frail and soft, I’ll never know, but I recognize it in an instant. We land on the path.

  “Livia?” Brandt asks, hand still tangled in mine. “This isn’t what I think it is, is it?”

  “An alabaster manor house? A flawless replica of the one in the Cloister of Roses, recently vacated by one Sindra Twyne?”

  He grimaces. “That would be the one.”

  Please, Dreamer, let Marez’s informant be wrong.

  That high-pitched humming again—fraying at my consciousness as we draw nearer. I feel it tugging me forward, across the steps, toward the entrance … The head priest pushes past us when we reach the front door. “What’s happened to this building? Is this your doing?”

  It takes me a moment, standing perfectly still on the porch, to realize what he’s talking about. I sense a tremor in the bowels of Oneiros, an aching like a tunneler’s empty gut. Chill that stings from the inside.

  “I didn’t cause any of this darkness to seep into Oneiros. I’m trying to stop it, same as you.” I meet his stare beat for beat, too terrified to blink. The earth rumbles under my feet as if some great beast has rolled over.

  “Dreamstrider.” His lips pull tight against his teeth. “Denizen of Nightmare.”

  “You think I’m in league with monsters? Which of your Shapers built this place?”

  He grips the doorknob, but it rusts away clean in his hand.

  We both stagger back as the door creaks inward. The darkness inside Twyne’s estate is hungry, threatening; I feel it tugging us toward the door like a living thing. The priest glares at me, takes an uneasy step forward, and pushes it open further. A stench like spoiled meat unleashes on us, hitting me square in the chest like a cruel memory—

  And suddenly Brandt and I are gasping for air in the darkened cargo hold of the clipper. I claw at my arms, trying to rake away the fear I felt in Oneiros, before I realize I’ve left it behind. Brandt’s hand gropes for mine; he seizes the silver vial from my hands. “We have to stop it! We can’t just leave them there.”

  I fumble for him in the pitch black of the cargo hold and jerk the vial back. “Brandt, don’t!”

  “But what about the priest?” He reaches toward me but only succeeds in overturning his cot. He spills across the floor with a horrendous clatter.

  “Hexers!” Jorn shrieks, leaping to his feet. He crouches into a fighting stance with flat palms raised before him.

  “Great work. You’ve frightened the nasty Hexers off,” I tell Jorn. “Go back to sleep.”

  Brandt narrows his eyes at me as Jorn crawls back into his cot. “That awful … wave. It was like a cloud of fear. I can’t even describe it properly. Liv, if that’s what I think it is…”

  Nightmare. I want desperately for him to be wrong—for both of us to be. But I feel the grim slam of terror hitting me, just like that oppressive wall, just like the pounding wings, just like the maddening chants. I can’t wish it or dream it away. I only hope the Shapers can find a way to contain it while we seek answers in Birnau.

  “Lady Twyne’s death is only the beginning, I fear.”
I swallow hard. “Something evil has been unleashed in Oneiros. We have to reach Birnau in time to stop whatever comes next.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  By the time we enter the River of Bronze Sunsets, the clipper has been thoroughly transformed to a Land of the Iron Winds fishing vessel, complete with a hold stuffed with the anemic fish we managed to scoop up a few hours before dawn. We wear simple, loose tunics and trousers in drab blues and grays, and we’ve lightened our skin by rubbing talcum powder into it, like Brandt and I did last time in our carriage drivers’ costumes. It won’t hold up to close scrutiny, but we’ll hail the dock patrols outside Birnau from a distance. Entering the City of Sacred Secrets, Birnau, will be another matter entirely.

  “Just smile and wave,” Brandt coaches us through gritted teeth, as we sail under the high-spanning bridges of the fringe town. “Smile like it’s a damned honor to toil away for the Commandant’s pleasure.”

  We dock between two shabby fishing boats, paint long ago peeled from their hulls, and the dock officials busy themselves with confiscating our entire haul for later distribution, as the official line goes. Jorn would stick out for his towering height, but he adjusts, adopting the same stooping hunch of the rest of the villagers. We shuffle through the streets with heads down and ears alert.

  In Barstadt, even the tunnelers do not live in poverty such as this. The Land of the Iron Winds’ citizens may catch a glimpse of the sun here and there, but there is nowhere else for them to aspire toward. When I was a tunneler, the dream of citizenship papers kept everyone warm at night—someone always had a cousin who knew someone else who’d toiled and saved and bought their way into daylight. We could see somewhere higher than where we were, and dreamed of climbing toward it someday—enough sunlight trickled into the tunnels to fuel our dreams. Here, the Commandant and his generals tower over each town in profiles carved from onyx monoliths, high above everyone else. There is nowhere for them to aspire toward. There is the Commandant, and everyone else, toiling to keep him afloat.

  The iron and black glass temple of Birnau glitters on the horizon. It’s styled similar to the Citadel, only slightly less ostentatious. Where the Citadel is meant for the Commandant alone, this city is where his favored (though not entirely trusted) councilors, generals, and concubines can be stashed away and called upon when he wishes their company or guidance. It seems no matter what street we follow through the village, we wind up facing that sealed city. While I can’t take my eyes off the strange spectacle, the villagers around us take great pains not to look its way. I force myself to follow suit.

  Though this village looks designed to support the fishing industry, we pass no markets, no fishmongers. The buildings are little more than shacks formed from scavenged sheets of lumber nailed together in odd shapes. No one loiters in the streets; they shuffle past in battered boots, big toes sticking out, or no shoes at all.

  No, I am mistaken—a pair of eyes glitters in the gap between two huts. I don’t dare look for long, but I see a man’s silhouette propped against the unsteady wall, watching our group intently from inside a stiff woolen coat. My throat tightens. Have we been marked as outsiders? The reward for information in the Land of the Iron Winds is high, far more valuable to the suffering people than the cost of five strangers’ lives.

  “Here we are,” Edina utters under her breath, “our contact.” She leads us down a dirt path between two shacks. An old woman greets her by throwing back the tattered curtain draped over the front of her hut.

  “Five’s too many,” the old woman says. She slips the words into the gaps between the sobs and moans around us, lets them ride the breeze like we aren’t even there. Her mouth is mostly pink with swollen gums. What teeth she’s kept stand like stubborn gravestones, refusing to surrender to nature’s course.

  “Well, it’s how many we have. So you’ll have to get all five of us inside.” Brandt matches her cadence flawlessly, like he’s throwing the words from a carriage window when he thinks no one’s looking. No one can remember our presence here.

  She makes a fuss of digging through her scant belongings, all of them some shade of gray or tan or filth. Knitting needles, unevenly spun wool, something that might have once been an apple smuggled in from Dreamer knows where. “Space for two in the fish cart. No more.”

  “That wasn’t our arrangement. What about the guards? Can we replace some of them with our own?” Edina asks. Jorn reaches for the dagger hilts tucked just under his sagging tunic.

  “Nah.” The word whistles through two crooked teeth. “Use General Sly Fox, maybe. Always too big of an entourage. Easy to slip into their group.”

  Edina starts to protest, but Brandt nods once, decisively. “We can work with that—promise,” he adds, the last to Edina. He turns back to the old woman. “General Sly Fox. When is he due to reach Birnau?”

  “She,” the woman corrects. “Noon, at the latest. She’s got her own chef, concubines. Men, women both. Good for you to disguise as.”

  “You’re changing the plans at the last minute?” Edina asks. “You assured me you’d made arrangements—”

  The woman meets her gaze, sharp as a lance. “Only if you want inside Birnau.”

  “All right,” Brandt says. “We’ll do it.”

  “It might not be safe,” Edina whispers to him.

  Brandt laughs. “Nothing about this is safe. But we have to try, don’t we?”

  And so we find ourselves in the carriage house on the outskirts of town, the tavern cleaned out in advance of General Sly Fox’s arrival, with an air bladder full of mothwood smoke. Once they arrive to shake the road dust from their cloaks and primp for Birnau, Jorn will flood their rooms with smoke. Edina paid the old woman in grain and gold both, but she just shrugged at her, as if neither is of any use to her. She has a point. Gold can’t be easily spent in a place like this—where could she have come across it, and what would she buy, anyway? Unlike at the port town, even the grain is of no use this deep into the Land of the Iron Winds. The soil here is cakey and shattered across the top like a broken mirror as far as the eye can see. No grain is stubborn enough to sprout through that.

  Hooves tear through the hard crust out front; the main door beneath us opens and finally slams. Dozens of feet pound up the staircase outside our cramped room.

  Brandt’s hand taps me on the knee; I meet his gaze. Ready? he mouths. I think of the darkness we encountered back in Oneiros, and I’m sure he’s remembering the same. I force myself to nod back. His smile makes it worth it to try.

  Jorn positions the bladder’s mouth at the base of the adjoining door and, at Brandt’s nod, begins to pump.

  Thump, thump, thump. Multiple bodies hit the floor in the other room.

  We tie scarves over our mouths and open the door.

  “How long do you think you can stay in her skin?” Brandt asks me as we survey our options: the general herself, her sleek black hair twisted in an elaborate braid that meanders across her scalp like a scar. Three courtesans—one man, two women—in perilously revealing garb. A valet, whom I immediately mark as Brandt’s likely standin. Two bodyguards. One is sure to suit Jorn.

  “Three hours at the most. Any longer than that and she’s sure to slip out of Oneiros.” I swallow. Three hours will barely get us inside Birnau and to the assembly. “If you can keep dosing her with the mothwood, though, I may be able to stretch it.”

  Vera looks like she could chew through iron. “Have you ever tried it before?”

  I give my head a tiny shake, unable to force myself to say no aloud. Vera rolls her eyes; Jorn grunts to himself. “Haven’t you cost us enough?” Vera asks. “Don’t risk our lives with an experiment.”

  My face stings as if slapped. She’s right, and I know it, but there has to be a way to do this. “Hesse always said it could be done. According to his calculations—”

  “But no one’s ever done it,” Edina says.

  “We’re short on time,” Jorn tells us. He’s already donned one inert bodygua
rd’s costume and tied up both bodyguards—one stripped, one not—and is setting to work on the courtesans with Vera.

  I look Edina hard in the eye, trying to summon up some of Marez’s steel. “I can do it—I have to at least try. If we re-administer the mothwood to Sly Fox’s body every three hours, and if you can add a few more drops of the dreamwort solution to my body’s tongue at the same time, there’s no reason we can’t make it work.”

  Edina nods after a heartbeat’s hesitation. “We’ll bring your body with us, then. Get to work.”

  “No. Absolutely not,” Vera says. “I know you’re all right at organizing our missions from afar—”

  “You really think I’m all right?” Edina asks, a faint smirk on her lips.

  Vera’s face turns brilliant red; she folds her arms with a huff. “But it’s different in the field. You haven’t seen what Livia’s like, the poor decisions she makes.”

  “Firsthand? No. I haven’t. But I’ve read every single one of the reports.” Edina grips a fistful of her skirts. “I know that every one of you bears some of the blame for what transpired with the Stargazers. And I also know that every one of you, Livia included, has shown remarkable skill at making the best of bad circumstances. I trust you—every one of you. Perhaps you should try doing the same.”

  I’m dumbstruck by Edina’s outburst; I shrink back, desperate to get everyone’s attention off me. Brandt’s eyebrows are lodged high behind his bangs as he looks from Edina to me—I can’t tell if he’s impressed or intimidated.

  Vera just nudges her toe against the floor, but manages a sharp nod. “Very well,” she says icily. “Let’s be on our way.”

  Marez would agree with Edina, I think. He would urge me not to stay shackled to my past. I must be stronger than my fear.

  No sooner does the vial touch my lips than I’m plunged into Oneiros, on a mountaintop this time. Snow speckles my hands as I stretch them out before me, but the cold doesn’t reach me. The only cold I fear is the cold of the Nightmare Wastes. But I don’t have time to fear them. I can’t let down my team. Even if Lady Twyne or whomever she worked with has unlocked some horrible way to reawaken Nightmare, surely the Dreamer would put an end to it. He has to.