Waking in Dreamland

by Jody Lynne Nye

  “There,” Leonora said, pleased. “They’ll be fine, now.”

  Roan checked the packs. “Everything is still in the panniers,” he said. He patted Cruiser, glad to have his silver friend back with him. They followed the lights back to the path. Corporal Lum again took the lead.

  A hundred yards later, Roan could see murky starlight through the tree branches.

  Suddenly, a log ten feet thick crashed to the ground in front of Lum, strewing spiky branches everywhere. The bark was thickly coated with thorns as long as fingers. The bicycles reared and squeaked. Roan put a hand on Cruiser and Golden Schwinn, to keep them from bolting again. He threw his head back.

  “All right!” he shouted at the forest. “You win! You’ve driven us away! We’re leaving. We can’t take your horrors any more. All we want is to go!”

  The rocking log paused, appearing to consider his words. Then, just as abruptly as it fell, it broke in half. Each half, hollow as an eggshell, rocked on its spiky exterior, and collapsed into several sections no thicker than bark, spraying decayed wood-dust in every direction. Lum caught the full cloud in the face, and choked until Colenna pounded him on the back.

  “It’s dead and dust!” Spar shouted in surprise.

  “Let’s go before something else falls on us,” Leonora said.

  “Right you are, Your Highness.”

  The group tiptoed warily over the remains of the tree, looking around for more booby traps, but Roan knew there would be none. The Forest had released them at last.

  “Whew!” Bergold said, brushing himself off as they passed the last overhanging tree branch. The phosphorescent quality of his face began to fade, until he was merely grotesque. Gradually, he became an ordinary man again, though this time with a mass of curly dark hair going gray and a sharp nose. “Roan, how did you do that?”

  “I learned a lesson earlier,” Roan said, humbly. “Show respect, and menace loses all its power over you. I wish I’d known that twenty years ago.” He hadn’t completely banished the bogey of his childhood, but he’d beaten it back, for once.

  “Well, we’re exactly where we went in,” Spar said, in disgust, looking around at the night-bound land. “Waste of time. They never came this way. Brom must have skirted the woods, never passing through.”

  “No, but we had to check,” Roan said.

  “I’m truly sorry,” Felan said, humbly, striking himself in the side of the head with his hand. “The trail seemed so very clear.”

  “We could have been following the path that tree made,” Roan said. “I believed it, too.”

  “Well, so long as you forgive me,” Felan said, with a shame-faced grin.

  “What seems so incredible to me,” Roan said, thoughtfully, “is that after escaping from me, Brom and his minions made it as far as the Nightmare Forest, and turned back again.”

  Bergold pursed his lips together and emitted a long whistle.

  “Goodness,” he exclaimed. “I hadn’t thought of the difficulty of such a journey. Theirs is a very considerable power.”

  “Unique,” Felan said, in a low, respectful voice.

  “Well, we’ve lost them for tonight,” Bergold said, throwing his hands up. “I’m ready to drop. We’ll have to stop for tonight, and backtrack to where we lost them tomorrow morning.”

  “I agree,” Roan said.

  “Oh, no!” the princess protested. She had seemed to perk up once they’d left the forest, but she looked alarmed again. “We can’t stop! They’ll keep going. We can find the trail, now that we’re out here.”

  “My dear, we have to get some sleep to be of any use tomorrow,” Bergold said reasonably, taking her hand. Dismayed, Leonora looked from one person to the next for support. The others shook their heads apologetically.

  “Brom will stop, too,” Roan said, gently. “They have even more need for rest than we do. They’re running ahead of us, carrying heavy and delicate equipment through dangerous terrain, and they’re maintaining that link among themselves. They also must disguise themselves so we won’t spot them. All of that at once must be exhausting. They will sleep, I promise you. We need rest and food, or we won’t have the strength to pedal tomorrow.”

  “What if they’ve caught a train somewhere?” she protested, helplessly. Roan could see now how frightened she was, and just tired enough not to be thinking rationally. “What if this crucible of theirs can carry them all night long?”

  “Even if it does, they can’t reach the Sleepers tonight,” Roan said firmly. “I believe they’re going to the mountains, and it’s a long way from here, no matter which range they’re headed for. We can’t go any farther. The bicycles will dissolve if we don’t rest them,” he added, patting his steed. Cruiser slumped against his legs as if thankful for the break.

  Leonora’s own shiny gold bike collapsed suddenly to the ground and lay there, its front wheel spinning wearily. She looked at it, and a small, rueful smile touched the corner of her lips.

  “All right,” Leonora said. “They can’t take any more. I’m tired, too. But we go on at first light.”

  “Of course, Your Highness,” Roan said, offering her a smile and a very deep bow. “Uh . . . shall we camp a little farther away from the forest’s edge?”

  Chapter 10

  “Glinn! Glinn!” Brom’s voice came sharply through the twilight.

  “Here, sir!” Glinn said. He halted the small procession, and clambered onto a hummock in the field next to the road so his light-colored coat was visible in every direction.

  Taboret squinted down the hill, and unhooked a thumb from her backpack harness to point at the sticklike figure hurrying towards them, elbows jutting outward at every step. “Here he comes,” she said, unnecessarily, because anybody could see him. He must have been visible for miles, glowing like a living flame.

  “Feeding on the anticipation of our success,” Glinn muttered, as if he was reading her mind. “Must have gone well back there.” Several shapeless shadows trailed behind him less energetically.

  “They don’t look happy,” Dowkin said, shifting from foot to foot to ease the weight of the litter on his shoulders.

  “Not a bit,” echoed his brother, at the other end of the Alarm Clock’s platform. Brom closed the rest of the distance on his long spindly legs, and Glinn jumped down to meet him.

  “Report,” Brom barked at Glinn. “Is all well?”

  “Yes, sir,” the young man said. He was earnest and handsome, and sometimes a tedious bore when he got going on the Theory of Root Causes, his pet topic, but on the whole, Taboret liked him. She had always admired his ability to compartmentalize his thinking so that it seemed he was concentrating fully on more than one thing at a time.

  Such a skill was an asset in the lab. He was always decent and friendly, unlike some others she’d known. “No undue influences or nuisances. We ran into a weather pattern, but we pointed it off to the southwest.”

  “Four of you?” Brom gave him a sharp look. “With no loss of speed?”

  “None,” Glinn said, with pride. Yes, Taboret thought. They hadn’t slackened, and she’d had to run alongside the litter holding hands with Dowkin and Doolin as they carried it. Taboret had felt so drained when the crucible’s energy was pulled in two directions at once she had been close to resigning her position on the spot and running back to Mnemosyne alone. Luckily, she had made her traveling form sturdy, with splendid calf muscles. She had a long mane of dark blond hair braided behind her and keen hazel eyes in a heart-shaped face. Not beautiful, she thought, but not unpleasant to look at.

  “Good,” Brom said, flicking a glance over the rest of them. “We are progressing well toward remote control. We’ve lost Dalton. The palace investigator followed us, and captured Dalton during a nuisance that we were using as cover to get away from him.”

  “Roan did?” Glinn asked, surprised. “How did he find our trail? We swept those footprints for a hundred yards beyond the castle gates.”

  “I don’t know,” Brom said
, tersely. “But we’re rid of him now.”

  Taboret swallowed nervously at the finality in Brom’s tone. She hoped nothing horrible had happened to Roan. She liked the historian’s son. He was a nice man, although strange in a . . . changeless sort of way. She wanted the project to succeed, but not at the cost of other people’s lives.

  Suddenly, Brom spun on his heel and stared down at her, his eyes glowing from within. She gasped, hoping he hadn’t picked up what she had been thinking. His finger stabbed at her, then at some of the others.

  “We will stop just over the crest of this hill for the night. You, and you, will help the men unload the device. Carefully.”

  “Yes, sir,” Taboret said, her heart pounding like a trip-hammer. He hadn’t caught her being negative. Thank . . . thank something. She trudged down the hill behind the litter, through the small stand of woods to a glade that smelled pleasantly of flowers and sweet grass. Brom signaled them to a stop, and pointed at the clearing.

  “Here,” he said.

  Taboret halted well behind him. She had to be more careful to keep her mental tone light. The chief had already proved that he could sometimes read the thoughts of the others through the link. She was more than a little afraid of him. At twenty-three, Taboret felt lucky to have a job that she loved. She loved the exhilaration of knowing the very rightness of scientific discovery, and the tingle that went down her spine when a theory was proved a fact. Reading the old books and seeing how the great scientists of the past had come to their conclusions was the greatest adventure she could think of. With Brom dedication went deeper than that. He seemed to have a tap into the ways of Fate itself. His vision consumed him from within, and he felt that everyone should be as enthusiastic about his project as he was all the time. Thank the Seven that his telepathy was intermittent and not very accurate.

  Brom seemed to pick out feelings better than words, so she kept up a shell of pleasurable excitement when she was around him. Most of it was genuine now. She’d never been so far out of Mnemosyne before, and the land around her was strange and new. It was becoming such a good mental disguise that she occasionally caught Brom beaming at her with his mad eyes. Taboret flinched as she noticed the chief studying her now. She went to help Glinn unbuckle the yoke from the two men bearing it. Dowkin and Doolin were twin brothers, as stubborn as pigs. Whenever fate hit them and they changed, they always stayed identical. Among the apprentices, largely a gregarious lot, the Countingsheep brothers kept to themselves, as if the other sibling was all the company either one ever needed. They were so unpleasant Taboret was glad to let them be, whenever she could. Brom only kept them around because they were brilliant scholars and strong as oxen.

  “Watch it, you clipped my shoulder,” Doolin complained, as she unfastened one of the heavy clips on his harness.

  “Watch what you do to my brother, careless,” Dowkin snapped at her, while Glinn freed him.

  “She hasn’t done anything to him,” Glinn assured him, lifting the harness up so Dowkin could slip out of it. The brothers glared at her anyway, and Taboret retreated to the side of the framework.

  “Thank you,” Taboret said, peeking at him under the litter where the brothers couldn’t see her.

  “It’s nothing,” Glinn said. “Everyone’s touchy because they’re tired.”

  Taboret let out a long sigh. “Me, too.”

  “Together now,” Glinn said, and the group took the litter and set the Alarm Clock on the ground. Brom clucked henlike around them, grimacing when the huge swaddled mass settled onto the grass. The big bells on top of the unit swayed slightly on their posts, and touched delicately against the hammer between them, creating a faint humming. They made Taboret nervous. Once in a while they chimed together under the canvas. The resonance of the metal domes rang on and on in her head until it felt as if it would split. Taboret wanted to run away, dissolve her part in the link. She forced the thought out of her mind as the chief’s gaze upon her turned coldly speculative, and bent to tuck the canvas farther under the framework. She had agreed, as had the rest of the apprentices and the two mercenaries, to carry on all the way to the end of this mission. Once it had concluded they could continue in the service of the Ministry of Science, or move on, as they chose, with a testimonial in hand, but there were to be no quitters during the project.

  If someone had given her the choice this moment, Taboret might have turned back. She had never been so exhausted in her life. Her duties as a trainee member of staff were ordinarily light. Measuring, recording data, running errands for Brom and the other senior staff, minding the apparatus of an experiment in progress—nothing strenuous. Carodil always told them that one day their time to use their superior faculties, for which they had been chosen from the thousands of applicants, would arrive. Then Brom came forward with his proposition: increased creative power now for a select group of apprentices, a process they could use forever, if they would help him with a complex and intriguing investigation. Taboret couldn’t resist the combination. A Dreamlander might be capable of wielding only so much influence, but she knew she hadn’t as much as some people. To increase her personal strength was irresistible. She volunteered at once.

  The way Brom had explained his proposition brought to light the doubts Taboret had always harbored about the Sleepers. She wasn’t sure she really believed in them. They were part of a tale her parents told in an awed hush. Taboret didn’t respect tales. She believed in what she could see and touch and prove. The power of the link was perceptible and tangible. She heard people’s minds. She saw things come out of the ether that were too complex and large for a single mind, no matter how powerful, to create. As a result, she had been eager to go along with the chief ’s theory about the Sleepers, if only on a hypothetical basis. Proposition: If the Sleepers existed, then the chances were calculable that they behaved much as the legends consistently described them. They slept. If a living being slept, logic dictated that it could almost certainly be awakened. Therefore, the Sleepers, if real, could probably be awakened. Therefore, someone should seek them out and try, and see what happened.

  Taboret had been surprised by the shock on the faces in the audience chamber when Brom put forward his proposal. It hadn’t really occurred to her how much the unknown frightened people. Why weren’t they fascinated by the possibility? Didn’t they want to know the truth of their most overarching legend?

  She hadn’t been on the team that built the Alarm Clock. The machine had already been under way in the most secret and best insulated of the laboratories in Mnemosyne. The Clock was a completely new thing in the Dreamland, something that had been purpose-built, not found, not molded by will, not dreamed by the Sleepers, and did not appear anywhere in the records of previous inventions. The chief ’s design was revolutionary. The insides had been cut laboriously gear by gear out of metal forged for the project from ore someone had actually dug out of a mountain. To make the clockworks, the chief had copied the mechanical workings of a pocket watch he had taken apart. The Alarm Clock had to be absolutely reliable, because it couldn’t be tested complete until it was used. It might change shape, like all other things in the Dreamland did, but form followed function. It would still do its job no matter what it looked like.

  Brom waved them away from the litter so he could be alone with his great invention. Taboret went to help set up camp. The first night was more unstructured than the following nights would be, to give the apprentices a chance to work with crucible energies and learn how they felt. Brom had encouraged them to make use of their resources and design abilities.

  The grassy hollow was broad and gently sloping down toward a shallow stream. The cook had taken the flattest part of the clearing near the stream as his impromptu kitchen. Basil, a plump, dark apprentice with a knack for food preparation, had assumed the cooking duties. With the help of a few of the other apprentices, he set up a full-sized four-burner stove, and re-formed a huge boulder and two fallen logs into a stone refectory table with benches on either s
ide. Basil had made a pegboard for his utensils out of a net of vines hanging from a nearby tree. He looked up from chopping onions to smile at Taboret. Technically, crucible power could have made one thing to eat into something else to eat without all that effort, but Basil liked cooking. To him it wasn’t work.

  Taboret’s camp task was personal hygiene. From her pack, she took a ceramic washbowl and a zinc bucket with a lid, and put them both on the ground half a dozen paces from the stream. She took a glance around to see who could come and help her. The twins, Dowkin and Doolin, sat on one of the benches, watching Basil. As if they could guess what she was thinking, they gave her identical twisted-lip sneers, and turned their backs. Basil shook his head and pointed his knife blade toward Carina and Gano, who had just finished making camp beds and were heading towards the table.

  “Sure, we’ll help,” Gano said, impishly. She had red hair and full cheeks that creased when she smiled. Carina was older and shorter, with thick brown hair and very black eyebrows. “This way, we get first crack at the facilities. Will this have a shower?”

  “That’s the most efficient form of bath,” Taboret said, “but I hope we can do better things. Here’s my plan.” Unrolling her blueprint, she and the other two women joined hands around it.

  In less time than she had ever dreamed possible, the bathroom was finished. The transformation of one similar item into another with the same purpose was far easier than changing its nature even within the boundaries of normal influence. The washbowl became a carved marble tub and a pedestal sink with chrome shower head and taps. The zinc pail grew a tank with a chain and an elaborate seat that made it look, well, like a throne. The whole process was as close to being magic as a rational mind would allow. Crucible power was astonishingly efficient. Taboret drew down a curtain of moss hanging off the tree over their heads to make a handsome privacy drape as Gano and Carina finished making the walls from a cardboard box. They grinned companionably at her when she met their eyes, always seeming to look up at the same moment she did. There was a tangible joy in the cooperative process. If Brom accomplished nothing else, he had created an environment in which teamwork was stressed and supported. Only the twins were horrid and uncooperative.