Waking in Dreamland

by Jody Lynne Nye

  “It’s beautiful,” Carina said, standing in the center of the room to admire her handiwork.

  “It certainly is,” Taboret said. “I can’t wait to crawl in that tub.”

  “Me first,” said Gano, taking fluffy towels out of the linen closet next to the mirror.

  “Second dibs,” said Carina, raising a hand before Taboret could speak.

  “I’m third, then,” Taboret said goodnaturedly, stepping out of the door and closing it behind her. “Come and get me when you’re done.”

  Outside, Taboret felt suddenly sick, and had to shut her eyes to stop the roller-coaster sensation in her midsection. She took a pace away from the bath, and the sensation stopped. She stepped back again, and her belly rolled the other way. For some reason the influences felt funny in the vicinity of the bath. She wondered if something had gone wrong with the construction, but the sink ran hot and cold water perfectly, the toilet flushed, and the shower was producing beautiful hot steam. She decided she was just tired.

  “Nice job,” Glinn called to her. He knelt on the ground in the homey red glow of thirty shaded lanterns hanging in the trees around the perimeter.

  Taboret forgot about the nausea as she took in the transformation of the camp. For all their lack of social graces, the Countingsheep brothers were hard workers. They had set up the dozen camp beds, each with a mosquito curtain suspended above it. Lurry, a scrawny, big-nosed apprentice, whose latent pyromania always a subject for reprimand in the laboratory, straddled a tree branch as he put up the last of the lanterns. Bolmer and Mamovas, a man and woman both slim and dark, were putting the finishing touches on a thin curtain wall that circled the camp to discourage animals and other pests, and to hide the light from outsiders. Glinn grinned up at her as she came over to see what he was doing.

  “I’ll be glad of a bath,” he said. “I’m sore from my heels up to my ears. Today was rough going. And Basil’s a slave driver. I helped him set up his kitchen. You’d think from the fuss that he was making a sterile facility.”

  “Today was miserable,” Taboret said emphatically. “We can’t slog along on forever on foot. We’re moving so slowly because of . . . the thing. We can’t make good time. Someone will catch up with us.”

  “We’re not going to be so easy to catch,” he said cheerfully, dumping his pack on the ground. “And we’re not going on foot. Voila! Transportation!” Taboret bent to look at the heap of small sacks.

  “Paperclips?” she asked, letting handfuls sift through her fingers. “You’re mad. Those’ll take forever to mature.” One of the scientific principles about metal that she’d learned way back in grade school was that bicycles were the adult form of paperclips. “The process will take months!”

  A sensible person never stored too many paperclips together, because when the day came that you needed one, there wouldn’t be any around, but there’d be a tangle of coat hangers hanging in the closet. The larval form liked that kind of dark, dry place to mature. Then, one day, the coat hangers would disappear, and you’d trip over a knot of bicycles the second you stepped outdoors. Taboret’s first bike had come from a litter at the house next door. She wondered why Glinn was grinning.

  “Aha,” he said, tapping his own temple. “You’re thinking in pre-crucible terms. We can do this overnight.”

  Taboret raised her eyebrows. They could. He was right. That was why he was Brom’s second in command and she was rank and file.

  “Okay,” she said, shaking her head at her own failure to adapt. “But I want a blue one.”

  “Frivolity?” Brom demanded, walking up to stand between them. “This is a serious scientific expedition, young woman.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, making herself meet his eyes. “I continue to observe, sir. I am merely trying to ease the stress of travel by controlled levity.” It sounded like a load of philosophical cod-swallop to Taboret’s own ears, but it seemed to satisfy the chief.

  “As long as you know what you are doing,” Brom said, in his ponderous lecturer’s fashion. “Do not allow the . . . levity to get out of hand.”

  “No, sir.”

  “It’s my fault, sir,” Glinn said, gallantly, standing up between Taboret and their superior. “I encouraged it. I enjoy comradely badinage, particularly Taboret’s. You could consider her a candidate for morale officer.”

  “This is not a military organization,” Brom said magisterially, but the crisis had passed. He beckoned over the others who were nearby to form the gestalt around the sacks of paperclips. The metal twists were well on their way to report-binder size by the time the circle broke. Taboret was grateful when Basil rang a triangle with his cooking spoon to summon them to supper.

  During the meal and the cleanup that followed before bedtime, Taboret kept feeling eyes following her. Every time she turned around, Brom was watching her. When she turned her table scraps into compost, when she came out of the bath, even when she glanced up from turning down her camp bunk, he was there, standing under one of the hanging lanterns, staring.

  What have I done? she wondered.

  “I heard you,” Glinn said, in an undertone, appearing unexpectedly at her shoulder. She jumped when he spoke. “Don’t think like that if you can help it. The link is getting stronger. Can’t you feel it?”

  “Yes, I can,” Taboret said, thinking of her experience with Carina and Gano. “But why is he watching me that way?”

  “He’s watching everyone. Making sure that there aren’t any king’s spies among us.”

  “What? Who would want to jeopardize the project?”

  Glinn shrugged apologetically. “Well, it could happen. You saw what went on in court. We were told to cease and desist, right?”

  “Shortsighted,” Taboret snorted, feeling the knot of tension ease. She sat down on the camp bed and undid her boots. If that was Brom’s problem, she could disabuse him at once. “The Sleepers could . . . roll over in bed one day, and wake each other up. Then we’d all be gone—maybe—and no one would know why. We want to do it under controlled conditions, so everyone knows what actually happens.”

  “Exactly,” Glinn said, letting out a sigh. More people were coming into the sleeping area, so he lowered his voice again. “But, Brom is worried. You’d be, too.”

  “No one would betray him,” Taboret said, confidently, remembering the way the chief ’s eyes bored into her. “They’d be too frightened.”

  Chapter 11

  The sun tiptoed silently up over the horizon, blushing pink with mischief, and stuck a finger of light in Roan’s eye. He started in his sleep, and came awake all at once, turning his face away from the glare with a groan. The tendril of light recoiled, and crept off to look for another sleeper to pester.

  Roan stretched to unknot the kink in his back. The nice flat piece of ground where he’d unrolled his sleeping bag seemed to have taken undulation lessons from the Nightmare Forest. He’d had smoother rides on lame camels.

  From the look of those of his fellow travelers still huddled in their covers, they were sleeping no better. The twitching bundle next to him was Bergold. Roan watched with fascination as his friend’s nose and ears changed size or bent upward to avoid contact with the stony ground.

  On his other side Roan could see a square, white pavilion which had been set up to shelter the princess and her servant, Drea, from the night. The slight figure on the pallet beyond the translucent, hanging gauze seemed hunched up and miserable. The modest shelter was far less than Leonora was accustomed to, but the party had been dangerously tired by that time. They had given every element of the tent their best attention, but it was makeshift, at best. In the early sunlight it looked like faded, hanging rags.

  Forced by the lateness of the hour to choose the first likely campsite they came to, the party had concentrated less on comfort than on safety. Using what strength they had left to gather influence, Roan and the others had built an invisible but protective wall around the place where they intended to sleep. Two guards were posted on t
he perimeter for a very short first shift while the others bedded down as quickly as possible. Roan didn’t remember anything after that until the dawn woke him up. Even as he gazed at the lightening sky, a large obstruction interposed itself between Roan and the landscape, and grinned down at him.

  “Good morning,” Misha said.

  “You’re here sooner than I expected you,” Roan said, squinting up at the large young man. His hair was the color of sunshine, his eyes a clear and untroubled blue, and his cheeks were pink. He looked disgustingly hale for someone who had made the round trip to and from Mnemosyne in the time it took Roan and the others to get lost in the Nightmare Forest and have a miserable night’s sleep.

  “It is a terrific day for a ride,” the young continuitor said, offering Roan a hand up. “I’m not sore on the bottom because the steeds are horses today.” He gestured toward the stand of trees where the bicycles had been tied up the night before. Instead of two wheels, all of them stood on four legs. “I slept the night in the palace on a bed, and I’ve been riding since about false dawn, but I didn’t have to pedal a yard.”

  “Thank the Sleepers for small mercies,” Roan said, yawning. “My calves wish they’d been cast out of iron, and I’m accustomed to long, forced rides. The others are no doubt in worse shape. What can you tell me about the man you brought back to the palace with you?”

  “When I left they still hadn’t managed to get anything out of him,” Misha said, shaking his head. “Nothing of use, anyhow. He would only repeat what we already know: Brom’s going to wake up the Sleepers. The interrogators are having to resort to drastic tactics. The acting head of security sent for his mother.”

  “Brr!” Roan said, shivering in sympathy for the prisoner. “Is anyone else up?”

  “Almost everyone. Spar and the guards are drilling down that way, by a stream,” Misha said, pointing. “Felan is on the other side of the steeds, writing furiously. I surprised him when I rode up.”

  “Writing?” Roan asked, pausing again for another good stretch.

  “Yes, writing,” Felan said, when Roan stumped down the hill to ask him. Felan wore gold-rimmed half-spectacles over myopic blue eyes. He held up a scroll of parchment half covered with minute script. “I’m composing a message for Micah. Someone has to keep the court apprised of our progress. I’d send a message in by grapevine, but there are none near here.” He gestured backwards over his shoulder with his quill pen toward the edge of the clump of trees. “You can wash up first if you want to. I’ll just finish this and get it sent off.”

  “Can I help add anything, Master Felan?” Roan asked, leaning over the historian’s shoulder to read the document.

  “Not really.” Felan glanced up at Roan, and his brows drew together, puzzled. He readjusted his glasses to full-frame lenses. “Don’t you get tired of shaving the same face day after day?” “Not really,” Roan said, uncomfortably. He moved away, and Felan turned to concentrate on his writing, almost certainly unaware of the sting his question had raised. Roan hated feeling like a freak among ordinary Dreamlanders. Usually, when he traveled, he wasn’t around anyone long enough for them to notice that he never changed. He felt as if he had brought the court with him. I’m functional, responsible and respected, he thought, gritting his teeth as he stumped back up the hill. The king himself entrusted this mission to me. Why does my sameness rob me of respect I have honestly earned?

  Hanging from the trees just out of reach of the horses was a draped enclosure that appeared to have been made out of someone’s cloak. Roan pushed the cloth aside and found a pitcher and bowl balanced on a tree stump. From the soggy place next to the cloaked area, Roan guessed that the water had been changed several times already. Behind the stump was a makeshift seat suspended over a hole in the ground. Beside the crude facilities was a large, thin-leafed book with several of the front pages torn off.

  “All the amenities of home,” Misha said cheerfully. “Think I’ll scare up something to drink. I brought some pastries from the palace cook.”

  “I’ll look forward to them,” Roan said, heading back to his sleeping place for his razor and sponge bag. “Anything to help me wake up. We need to be on our way as soon as possible.”

  Washing out of a small basin was something Roan never enjoyed while he was on the road, finding it uncomfortable and inefficient. Instead, he took the water pitcher and extended it so that it formed a makeshift shower, perpetually refilling itself from the basin, which he widened enough to stand in. The water was cold, and the cloak-curtain kept blowing against his body, but it refreshed him to be clean again. He hung the mirror on the edge of the pitcher handle, now an elongated ear of porcelain attached to the shower pipe, and shaved while the water cascaded over his head.

  He opened the curtain to dump out the dirty water as Misha was coming back down the hill. The young historian’s eyes widened with interest at the pitcher arrangement.

  “Very clever,” he said, picking up the basin to fill. “Please leave it this way for me.”

  “All the comforts of home,” Roan said.

  Roan found Spar and the others in conference around the map on a flat rock beside the stream. Colenna smiled sweetly up at him, her gray eyes bright in a weather-worn face leaner and sharper in outline than the one she wore at court. She was an old friend, and an ally against such detractors as Datchell. Her gray hair was longer today, tied back in a braid with a leather thong. Felan raised an eyebrow at Roan in greeting.

  “Good morning,” Roan said, pleasantly. “Did everyone sleep well?”

  “My back’s killing me,” Colenna said, gruffly. “It’s been a long time since I slept on the ground. Too many rocks.”

  “You could have softened them up,” Felan pointed out.

  She shot him a shocked glance. “Young man, you’d never make a field observer. Touch, but don’t alter. I’ve had to make a general distribution of painkillers for sore legs and seats,” she said, turning back to Roan. “Lucky I had some with me.”

  “You’re always prepared, Colenna,” Roan said. Colenna threw him a friendly grimace.

  “Lum’s just come back from scouting, sir,” Spar said. He turned the map toward Roan, who knelt down to see it. “We clean missed the trail last night. They turned off miles back. Just about here.” He put a thumbnail on the paper where the road left a small wood two thirds of the way from Mnemosyne to the Nightmare Forest.

  “We must’ve been following that tree all this way,” Lum said apologetically.

  “My fault, Captain,” Roan said. “I insisted we try the southern route.”

  “My guards are not supposed to make mistakes,” Spar said, tightly. “This is a serious matter.”

  “Indeed it is,” Roan agreed. “But we’ve got a long way to go together. Let’s just solve the problems that lie ahead of us, without reliving what is past.”

  “As you say, sir,” Spar said, without expression.

  “Are you in charge of this expedition?” Misha asked.

  “He is,” Spar said, nodding his head toward Roan. “The king himself gave him the assignment.”

  “Oh, I just wanted to know,” Misha said. “I wasn’t there.”

  “I hope you have no objection to that,” Roan said.

  “None at all,” Misha said, pleasantly. “By the way, the Royal Geographer said things are expected to be very changeable today in this region, and we should be careful.”

  “We’ll keep that in mind,” Roan said. “We ought to get on the road as soon as we can.”

  “I left Hutchings at the place where the two paths intersect, in case the road tries to shift,” Lum said, keeping his usually cheerful face serious. “Alette’s followed the second path a ways to make sure. It won’t get away from us this time, sir.”

  “Good man,” Roan said. “Thank you for your diligence in making up for my errors.”

  Lum reddened under Spar’s glare, and said stiffly, “Nice of you, sir.”

  Leonora’s nurse, Drea, stalked into view,
and nodded at them with great dignity. From her knapsack, the old woman produced a large leather bottle, and stooped to fill it at the stream.

  “Is Her Highness awake?” Roan asked.

  “My lady isn’t ready to receive callers yet,” the nurse said, frostily. She turned her back on Roan and carried the bottle away. In her hands, it looked like an ethereal crystal ewer. Only for the princess would Drea bother with such a transformation. Where Roan only loved and adored her, the old nurse was her votary, idolizing her as a goddess incarnate. Small wonder that if Leonora had come away from Mnemosyne with only one servant, instead of the host that usually accompanied her, it should be Drea. She had dandled Leonora as a child, and coddled her

  “Shouldn’t be long, now,” Colenna said.

  “How many of them are there?” Felan asked Lum.

  “About ten or twelve, I should say,” said the corporal. “Hard to tell, because I think they kept switching the load between themselves. The footprints change a bit when they do that, as they alter to bear the weight. But I think we’re outnumbered. Should we send for reinforcements?”

  “We’re not going to meet them in combat,” Roan said. “All we need to do is to destroy that device of theirs. They can do what they like when that’s been disabled.”

  “But they’ll just make another one!”

  “I doubt it,” Roan said. “If they could make another so easily, they wouldn’t need to carry the one they have cross-country. They’d just have gone to the Hall of Sleepers, and built an Alarm Clock when they arrived.”