Dreamlander

by K.M. Weiland

  Chapter Twelve

  Chris opened his eyes. Something was wrong.

  The wind soughed in the treetops, harmonizing with the rivulet only a dozen or so yards away. Blue sky blinked overhead. He was back in Lael.

  So much for Dr. Mactalde’s grand plan.

  “Well, that was speedy, I’ll give you that.” The voice was Rotoss’s.

  Chris turned his head. The soldiers who had watched in silence while he inhaled the wrak had dispersed in a flurry of activity. In his tingling hand, the Orimere winked up at him, now a serene glow of cobalt strobed with violet.

  Someone had covered him with the top flap of the bedroll. His chest was bare, and a quick check revealed that so was the rest of him.

  “Get dressed.” A Koraudian held out a battered gray sneaker.

  He sat up. Remnants of the real world littered the ground: his T-shirt, his socks, his cargo pants, the maroon pillow he’d laid his head on, and his heavy metal watch.

  The stone had worked.

  A brown shape, squat and long, caught his attention some three yards away: Mactalde’s couch. He hurried into his clothes, stuffed the Orimere into the side pocket of his cargo pants, then left the bedroll and approached the couch. He ran a hand over the leather. The cushions were still warm from his body heat.

  A few yards from the couch, half a dozen Koraudians, including Rotoss and the medic, huddled around a prone figure. Mactalde lay on his back, unmoving. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow.

  Rotoss waved Chris over with a jerk of his hand. “How come he’s unconscious?”

  “He was awake a minute ago.” He craned his neck to see around the clustered soldiers. “You’re telling me that thing actually worked? It brought him across? He’s here?”

  “It worked, and he’s here.” Rotoss shoved him away. “And for your health and safety, you better hope he wakes up without scathe.”

  Chris stumbled back. Mactalde’s crisp white shirt and polished Oxfords gleamed incongruously in the dappled sunlight. “But what happened to him in the other world? He just disappeared? He’s not there anymore?” It could, of course, be that his crazy dreaming mind had just imagined a facsimile of Mactalde. But the knot in the pit of his stomach said otherwise.

  Rotoss pushed him back another step and gestured to one of his men. “Bind him and put him with the blue.”

  Before Chris could drag himself into comprehension, the soldier twisted his hands behind his back and lashed them together.

  “Hey, wait—” He tried to pull away and follow Rotoss as he returned to Mactalde. “If it worked, I shouldn’t be here. The dreams should be over! That was the deal.”

  The soldier hauled him back and toppled him onto his rear end. Chris scrambled to his knees and whirled to face the man, but instead found Orias standing with his back to a tree and his arms secured behind him. The Rievers huddled at his feet, tethered together with a foot of rope between their hands.

  Pitch looked at him reproachfully. “You brought him back.”

  “Of course he did.” Raz sat on a gnarled root, arms folded over his knees.

  Chris levered his feet under him and stood. “Why am I still here?”

  Orias looked at him, slowly, almost as if he were surprised to find him there at all. He appeared completely zoned out. Had they drugged him?

  “He’s here.” Chris faced him. “Mactalde’s here. And so am I. What went wrong?”

  The dazed look snapped, and Orias’s eyes went dark—dangerous. “Nothing went wrong.”

  “You’ve been lying through your teeth to me. Did this even help your people, or was that a lie too?”

  Orias’s arms constricted. “I had no choice. I was given the opportunity to stop this slaughter, this pointless persecution the Koraudians have been raining down on us for the last twenty years. I took it.” He looked away. “And I’d do it again.”

  “I thought you were Keeper of the Orimere. You were supposed to protect the Gifted. Lying to me fulfilled what part of that?”

  Orias shook his head. “My people are more important to me than any Gifted. If you’re anything like the last one, then you wouldn’t be worth protecting in the long run.”

  “And what happened to him?”

  “We killed him.” Orias’s voice was flat.

  “So the Cherazii have always been traitors?”

  His eyes blazed. “The Cherazii are not traitors. The Cherazii didn’t betray you today. I am the one who betrayed them and everything they stand for. But I betrayed them to save them. Can you understand that?”

  “Maybe Mactalde’s dead.” Pitch looked up hopefully. “Is he?”

  Chris turned half away. “If he is, they’re going to kill us.”

  Pitch slumped on the root beside Raz. “I wish he were dead.”

  Half hidden in the trees, the Koraudian tabards flashed red as they worked over their lord and master. A collection of shouts arose, and the crisp white shirt rose among them. Mactalde sat up, shaking his head as if to clear cobwebs. Then his men closed in around him again.

  Chris stood with his back to Orias and the Rievers. “If the Orimere can’t stop the dreams, then what can?”

  “Nothing,” Orias said. “Dreams are life. So long as you live, so do the dreams. And if you wish to live, then you had better pray you can escape and find someone who cares about keeping you alive. Such as the Searcher.”

  Chris looked at him. “And become her pawn?”

  “We are all pawns.” Orias hunched against the scaly bark of the tree. “The only distinction is not everyone bears the ignominy of knowing it.”

  Pitch peered up at Chris. “Don’t you know they lied about the Searcher? She won’t hurt you. It’s her job to help you.”

  “Just like it was Orias’s?”

  “Oh, shut your gob.” Raz glared. “If you hadn’t wanted out of here so bad, you wouldn’t have let yourself believe the lies. But you’re here now just like us. You’re tied up just like us. And unlike some of us, it’s your fault. So whyn’t you think on that for a bit.”

  Chris certainly wasn’t in the mood to be taking orders from a shriveled little stick figure with a bad attitude. But what was there left to say anyway? Maybe it was his fault just as much as it was Orias’s. Like an idiot, he had walked into this thing, and like an idiot, he’d done everything he was told, even when his instincts rebelled. He’d taken a gamble, and he’d lost. Just what he’d lost, he wasn’t yet quite sure.

  He sank down into the crackling leaf bed and waited. It was their move.

  _________

  The Koraudians left their prisoners for half an hour while they tended Mactalde. They moved with purpose and discipline, but there was a feel about them, a sense of excitement. They joked and laughed as they moved in and out of the meadow, probably looting the camp and securing their prisoners. They examined the couch, flipped open Chris’s cell phone, and rifled through the scant cash in his wallet before casting it aside.

  Always their eyes returned to the clump of trees behind which Mactalde had retired. Occasionally, they glanced at Chris as well. But a crazy dreamer just wasn’t as interesting as someone returned from the dead.

  A man, tall and broad, stepped into the clearing. He wore a knee-length leather coat, buckled up the front with half a dozen silver closures. A snowy undershirt gleamed through slits in the sleeves. Suede breeches, boots stretched above his knees, and a rapier dangling at his side completed the picture. Only the short trim of his tawny hair and beard spoke of another world.

  Chris sat up. Mactalde seemed to have grown six feet. In Chicago, he had been an ordinary man. Now he was a conqueror, a general. He exuded power.

  Harrison Garnett’s words crackled through his head. Mactalde will destroy you if he finds you! Destroy Lael! A fingertip of cold touched the back of his neck. What if the old man had been right?

  Behind him, Raz exhaled in a whoosh. “Sweet Garowai in the sky, it is him.”

  “Yalarin pitish sé,” Pitch wh
ispered.

  Mactalde made his way through his men, shaking hands and slapping backs. The troops parted before him. They touched thumb and forefinger to their closed eyes and slid them down their faces in some kind of salute. Mactalde accepted it as if he’d done it all his life. Evidently, he had, up until twenty years ago.

  When he reached Chris, he clapped his hands in front of him with a smile. His eyes were bright, ecstatic almost, like someone jacked up on crack.

  “Well.” He raised his voice. “Mr. Redston. How do you like your dream now?”

  Chris pushed to his feet and squared his shoulders as much as he could against the tension of his bound hands. “You’re telling me this is real? You’re real? You’re not some conjuring of my subconscious mind?” Even as he said it, he realized how stupid he sounded. If Mactalde was a delusion, how was he supposed to tell Chris anything he didn’t already know? And if he wasn’t . . .

  Mactalde just grinned. “Believe what you like. But when you’ve returned to Chicago, I believe you’ll find I am no longer there.”

  What he wouldn’t give for a good whack at the guy’s smug face. He strained against the rope. “You lied to me.”

  Mactalde shrugged. “You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

  “Forgive you.” Heat crept up Chris’s face. “You tied me up, you lied to me, you manipulated me. What part of that makes you think I’m going to forgive you?”

  “Ah, come now. I only told you what you wanted to hear.”

  Chris snarled. “You knew about this place? You knew about the dreams? How?”

  “You forget I lived here.”

  “Everyone is supposed to live here. But not everyone back in our world knows about it. You did.” He stepped forward. “From the moment I woke up on your couch, you knew exactly what I was talking about. You knocked me out back on Hunter Street so I would end up on your couch. You probably shot Harrison Garnett too.”

  “Harrison Garnett served his purpose. He led me to you.”

  Chris leaned away. “He was in on it?”

  Mactalde laughed. “Of course not. I’ve had him under surveillance for the last twenty years because I knew he would try to contact you. Twenty years ago, I made a deal with Harrison Garnett.” He exchanged a glance with Rotoss, then looked back at Chris. “I was dying. My body, here in Lael, was not so strong as the one you see me in now.” He raised a fist. “But a Gifted—ah, a Gifted can work the magic of giving someone two bodies. I promised Harrison Garnett the throne of Lael if he would use the Orimere to bring my other body back from across the worlds after I died here. Unfortunately, he was captured, coerced into revealing his plan—and killed. But we knew you were coming, so all wasn’t lost.” He spread his arms. “And here we are now.”

  Chris shook his head. “You’re not a Gifted. You shouldn’t be able to remember what happened here.”

  “In Lael for not even a day, and they’ve already indoctrinated you into the meritocracy of the Gifted.” Mactalde paced forward, hands gripping his empty gloves behind his back. “Anyone can break the mental wall between the worlds. The Searcher and her adherents will tell you that’s black magic.” He shrugged. “So be it.”

  “What happens to all of us now that you’re back?”

  Mactalde’s smile remained. “Speaking personally, I have a lot of catching up to do.” He stepped nearer and lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “You may not understand this, yet, since you haven’t been here long, but there’s a very good reason I’ve waited all these twenty years, hoping, keeping faith, forcing myself never to give up that this day would come.”

  He looked up at the intent faces of his men. The smile that stretched his beard was benevolent, fatherly, as if he were returning to his band of sons after a long captivity. “There’s something that must be done in this world, injustices that must be put to rights. The tyranny of Lael must end. It is time Koraud shakes off her shackles and regains her crown. I have not returned to sue for peace. I have returned to crush my enemies beneath my boot.”

  The troops cheered.

  Behind Chris, Raz hacked. “Ah, you’re as daft as my Granny Fizz!”

  A Koraudian smacked him.

  Chris’s airways clogged up on him. If this was all true, then what had he unleashed on this world through his stupidity?

  Mactalde stepped back. The lift of his mouth hinted at laughter. He raised his voice to address his men, but he looked at Chris. “I’ve come back to give you victory.” He raised a clenched fist. “The corrupted strongholds of Lael will fall! The men who have vilified us, we will trample beneath our horses’ feet!”

  The Koraudians roared their approval, and Mactalde faced them, arm still raised. “We will bring equality between nations. We will bring an end to tyranny. We will ride to victory!”

  “Victory!” Rotoss raised his own fist. “Victory!”

  The men took up the cry. “Victory! Victory! Mactalde the Victorious!”

  Mactalde laughed and turned back to Chris. “Do join us, won’t you? I wouldn’t have you think me ungrateful. I’m here now because of you. You’ve brought me home. You’ve ended my exile. And ended the voices.” For the first time a glitter of pain backlit his ecstasy.

  “What voices?” Could it be the shrink needed a shrink?

  A frown flicked across Mactalde’s face, and he shook his head. “You’ve helped me, and for that reason I am giving you the opportunity to learn from me and to fight at my right hand.”

  Chris breathed carefully. “And if I don’t?”

  “The same thing that happened to Harrison Garnett, I’m afraid.”

  Chris looked back at Orias and the Rievers.

  Orias stared right past him. His face looked like a corpse’s. Had he known this was coming? Had he known bringing Mactalde back and saving the Cherazii meant war upon the rest of the country? Or maybe worse, if Pitch was right about bad things happening when a Gifted used the Orimere to bring a living being across the worlds.

  Pitch gnawed his lip. His eyes pulled at Chris’s, intent and pleading.

  Chris breathed out. Raz had been right. He’d been in such a hurry to get out of here he hadn’t even listened to Pitch’s warning. This was his fault every bit as much as it was Orias’s.

  He shook his head.

  “As you wish.” Mactalde shrugged and turned away. “Put them with the rest of the prisoners.”

  A tubby soldier grabbed Chris’s arm. “Come on.” He and his fellow soldiers shoved Chris and Orias around and marched them out of the trees and into the meadow.

  Armored horsemen surrounded what was left of the Cherazii. All of the survivors—mostly women and children—were bound with their hands behind their backs. The Rievers had been tied together with lengths of rope and draped over Cherazii shoulders.

  In the center of the crowd, manacled with iron, the leader Cabahr Laith and a few other warriors stood in the midst of an extra guard. Blue blood seeped from visible wounds, and one male swayed against the shoulder of another, almost unconscious on his feet. All of them glared defiance at their captors.

  The Koraudians guarding them never took their eyes away from them. Despite the fact that they outnumbered their prisoners by at least twenty men, they flinched at the crack of every stick.

  Near the edge of the trees, Mactalde mounted a white charger. He reined the prancing animal around to face the Cherazii.

  “You see I have returned to you. As I prophesied I would.”

  Their faces paled to gray. Murmurs of disbelief and horror whispered through their ranks. Then, one by one, they looked past Mactalde to Chris and Orias. They knew. They knew now he was the Gifted. They knew what had happened. And they would kill him before Mactalde did if they got so much as half a chance.

  He couldn’t say he blamed them.

  Tubby shepherded Chris and Orias past the group of warriors. Laith lunged forward, and his guards dove to catch his chains and yank him back.

  “You.” He snarled. “This is how you repay Chera
zii hospitality? And so we will repay you! We took the blood of the last Gifted upon our hands for even attempting this sacrilege. You are ten times his worse! No Cherazii will ever serve the Gifted after this day.”

  The soldiers marched Chris and Orias to the front of the group. Pitch and Raz, their hands still connected by the long cord, were slung over Orias’s shoulder like two packs of meat.

  Raz snorted. “Serve the Gifted, bah. After today, there won’t be no Gifted to serve.”

  “Shut up, all of you.” Tubby slapped Raz’s head as he turned to go. “Or I’ll fricassee you meself.”

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Raz shouted after him. “Bah! You would choke on my bones, fatgut!”

  “Move out!” a guard commanded. As he rode by, he lifted his foot from his stirrup to kick Chris forward.

  “Hey!” Pitch said. “Don’t you touch my servant!”

  Chris staggered to catch his balance. “Planning to fight all these guys for me, are you?”

  Pitch twirled around on the end of his tether until he faced Chris. “If I must, I must.”

  “Even after what I did?”

  Pitch blinked hard and tucked his chin. “You’ll make it right. I know you will.”

  A cold weight settled in his guts. He didn’t have nearly that much confidence.