“Horrible!” the princess exclaimed.
Roan stared at the dismaying spectacle of endless streams of cars, all belching smoke and revving their engines. Spar ordered the panicking horses into a double file, and led them northwards, staying to the far side of the shoulder. Cars snarled and honked at them. The horses shied and showed the whites of their eyes. Roan thought that their riders looked just as wary.
They traveled uneasily beside the perilous river of steel. Roan witnessed hundreds of near-collisions where the bad-tempered vehicles accelerated, tires screeching, to get past one another in a single narrow lane. A low-slung red vehicle with its windows so darkly tinted they couldn’t see inside howled past, knocked into another car, and spun out of control, right off the road, coming to a rest facing Spar. Its headlights glared insanely at them, and steam hissed sideways out of the front wheel-wells. It revved its engine, once, twice. It was going to run them down! Roan rushed forward, unfolding his quarterstaff from his red knife, to put himself between the metal monster and the princess.
“Get back!” he cried.
The soldiers and their captain went on guard beside him with swords drawn as the car accelerated toward them, its grille grinning a death’s-head smile. From nowhere, Roan heard a trumpet playing the staccato challenge to single combat. He braced himself for the impact, ready to smash the monster right in the hood ornament. He knew the beast could crush his staff into splinters. He wished he had some more fearsome weapon, but he was not accustomed to having to carry one.
Only seconds before it would have struck them, the red car veered sharply right, and shoved its way back into traffic.
“Whew!” Lum whistled, blowing out the flames on his sword and resheathing it. “I thought we were going to have to fight it back.”
“Too bad we don’t have cars, too,” Felan said, glancing at the endless stream to his left with envy. “Then we could really eat up the miles. Can’t we do that?”
“Excellent notion!” Bergold said. “We can try.”
Roan thought of the white sports car that the king’s messenger had driven to the Castle of Dreams, and tried to will Cruiser into a similar shape. He concentrated hard, thinking of wide mag tires and a five-gear transmission instead of horseshoes and muscles. The horse’s shape wavered and shifted between animal and mechanical. Roan actually dropped into a driver’s seat for one moment, before Cruiser snapped firmly back into animal shape. He looked over his shoulder at his master with reproachful eyes.
“I can’t do it,” Roan called. “The paradigm is beyond me. Has anyone else had any success?” The others shook their heads. The most that had happened was that the guards’ uniforms changed to khaki jackets and trousers, and their sword belts became heavy and laden with all sorts of mysterious small pouches of leather and fabric. Roan was fascinated by the round blue dome that replaced their saddlehorns.
“We’ll just have to endure going slowly,” Bergold said. “Just keep your eyes open, everyone.”
Roan did keep his eyes open. In the lines of traffic, he observed fourteen more near-misses, a dozen or so minor impacts, and one more spinout that resulted in the vehicle landing upside down in the ditch. Still, there were rules to the road. He saw that the lane farther away was moving faster than the one nearest them. What if they could get into the fast lane? If they were very careful, it might boost their speed, and help them catch up with Brom.
He explained his reasoning to the others, who reacted with open horror.
“You’re mad,” Felan said, watching sports cars whizz by. “We’d all be killed.”
“I’ll try it, Captain Spar, sir,” Hutchings offered. When his captain gave him a wave of permission, the guard wheeled his horse, and, blue saddle light rotating, began to trot alongside the stream of cars. With care, Hutchings watched until another pair of speeders had another near collision. Then he spurred his horse out into the resulting gap. The horse began to gallop. The cars seemed to respect the blue light, and hung back the split seconds it took for the horse to gain speed. Miraculously, it seemed to keep pace with the line of traffic, which was moving several times faster than a swift steed could canter.
“It works!” Hutchings shouted.
“Come on, then!” Roan said. He kicked Cruiser into a run, and galloped until he was side by side with Hutchings. The guard pulled up his horse slightly to let Cruiser in front of him. Horns honked furiously, but stayed behind Hutchings’s official light. One by one, the others joined the queue. Leonora spurred Golden Schwinn into the lane ahead of all the others, leaving an appreciable gap between her and the car ahead. A large automobile at once veered in front of them, nearly clipping the shining golden horse’s hooves. Schwinn shied and neighed with terror.
“Show no fear,” Roan insisted, spurring his way to her side. Narrower than cars, the horses had more maneuverability on the road. “Show no fear. Don’t look them in the lamps, and they won’t challenge you. Keep close! Watch out for Brom!”
They cantered on. Roan was pleased that his hypothesis was correct. The landscape seemed to roll by with amazing speed. He allowed the others a short time to get used to the noise and the jarring of the road under the horses’ hooves.
“Now for the fast lane!” he cried, signaling to Hutchings to lead the way leftwards.
Using the same tactics, they managed to move through the middle and into the inner lane. Now they were passing car after car on their right, moving amazingly fast but only riding at a normal trot.
“Whhhooonnnkkk!”
A louder noise than any of the car engines erupted behind them as the road opened into four lanes on each side. A huge, multiwheeled vehicle joined the fray. It came up on their right, towering above their heads, and merged in front of Cruiser and Golden Schwinn without hesitation. The truck spewed black fumes out of a tall smokestack affixed next to the cabin, and the contrail enveloped the riders in clouds of greasy, reeking ash. Everyone coughed, squinting through tears. Spar swore a blue oath, leaving smoke trailing behind him.
More trucks appeared, filling the lane nearest Roan, and started to edge over into the fastest lane, threatening the speeding horses, even those adorned with blue lights. Roan felt they faced a new danger now. The ditch beside the road was too steep for them to ride down, and the shoulder was hard concrete. If they left the lane, they would have to keep running to keep the animals from stumbling, perhaps fatally. The noise was overwhelming, and the smog stupefied him.
“Can’t . . . keep . . . going,” Leonora said, coughing. She had put a veil over her face to keep out some of the smog, but the air was full of it.
“We must,” Roan said, coughing, too. “We’ll get off as soon as it’s safe.” He made himself a gas mask, which bumped uncomfortably on his chest, but filtered out the noxious fumes from the air.
Just ahead of them, the land beside the road crested, then started to drop away precipitously on both sides, and the surface under the horses’ hooves changed from thudding asphalt to clanking metal grillwork. Roan could only spare a moment’s glance at a time to see, but he realized they had moved onto a bridge. He glanced down through the metal mesh under Cruiser’s feet, and felt his stomach fall a thousand feet. A river, a tiny, blue thread, wound its way along the bottom of the deep gorge. It was the giant Lullay on its first spiral turn around the Dreamland. It looked deceptively narrow at this height. They were leaving Celestia, and heading into the northeast province of Wocabaht.
They had come a long distance on this fast highway. Hark had been only two-thirds of the way from Mnemosyne to the border. Looking down gave Roan the horrible feeling that he might fall. The more he thought about it, the more spongy the mesh became under Cruiser’s hooves. The wiggly wire netting could give way at any moment! Roan willed himself to stop being afraid of falling. The others could fall through the hole he created. He must not let his fear cause an accident. The bridge is solid, he insisted to himself. Solid! He stared straight ahead of him, refusing to look down.
He was relieved when the ground started upwards, and the grillwork gave way to hard road surface.
As soon as they were over the headlands, plants and trees reappeared along the roadway. The leaves were turning red and brown, in sharp contrast to the green they had just left behind. Roan thickened his coat against the sudden chill in the air, and noticed that the others’ gear did the same as soon as they had crossed the bridge.
He hadn’t been in Wocabaht in years. The temperature was lower here because the seasons were on a reversed schedule to the other six provinces, which meant that here it was nearly winter. The historians didn’t have an explanation on which they agreed for the phenomenon, except to reiterate that every Sleeper was an individual. This Sleeper was just more individualistic than the others. The exhaust belching from the roaring cars’ tailpipes turned into gray clouds in the chilly air.
Suddenly, behind them, there was a louder roar than ever before. Alarmed, Roan glanced back over his shoulder, and gawked. A single vehicle was hurtling towards them, but what a vehicle! Its enormous, black wheels were each over a lane wide, and the silver-grilled front covered the rest of the road. It bore down on them at astonishing speed.
Instead of getting out of its way, the other cars and trucks ignored it. They continued to jockey for position, honking and revving their engines. The monster rolled right over them, and where it passed, it left nothing in its wake.
“Get over!” Roan called, pointing toward the slow lanes. “Hurry! Get off the road!”
Lum, Hutchings, Alette, and Spar threw themselves into the near lane, forming a barrier of flashing blue lights to provide safe passage for the others. The road machine loomed closer and closer. Roan made sure Colenna, Bergold, Misha, Felan, and Leonora all got into the middle lane before he abandoned the innermost lane to the thundering trucks. One by one, they crossed the road, narrowly avoiding accidents, all the time glancing behind them at the approaching monster. He urged the princess off onto the hard shoulder. She fell behind, and Roan lost sight of her. One by one, the others leaped out of traffic, leaving only Roan and Spar.
“You’d better jump!” the captain roared, just barely holding back a surging pickup truck. “Here it comes!”
“Together!” Roan shouted. “One, two . . . !”
The monster road machine was nearly upon them. With a wild neigh, Cruiser leaped off the road and cantered down into the ditch. Roan, lying bent over the horse’s mane, held on with both knees and hands, plunging through stones and slippery grass, and finally sandy mud, until they bumped to a stop at the bottom of the trench. He sat hunched in the saddle for a moment, until his head stopped ringing. Cruiser stood, head hanging down between his forelegs. Roan swung out of the saddle on wobbly legs to examine him. The horse seemed fine: no broken legs, no flat tires. His coat was muddy and grass-stained, but so was Roan’s. He patted Cruiser’s neck, and the beast leaned against him, panting. Roan didn’t feel too steady himself.
“Roan! Are you all right?” Bergold’s voice called from high above him. Roan looked up, and saw the plump figure of the historian peering down over the edge at him. “I can’t believe you survived that! This pit is sixty feet deep!”
“We’re fine!” Roan called back. Cruiser raised his head and gave a faint but affirmative neigh. “Is everyone else all right?”
“Yes, we’re all safe,” Bergold shouted down. “Can you get up here? You must see what happened.”
Roan looked around him. He was at the deepest point of the drainage ditch. Ahead of him, the ground sloped upward until it was almost level with the road. He pointed forward, and Bergold’s head nodded before it was withdrawn from view.
Something was different, Roan thought, as he rode to join the others. Something was missing. Suddenly he knew: the noise. All the cars and trucks had fallen silent.
Cruiser found footing in between the rocks, and propelled himself along gradually toward where the others were waiting. Roan let his feet hang slack in the stirrups, and stared at the roadbed in disbelief.
The monster machine had literally eaten up the miles. Nothing remained of the vast paved surface as far as Roan could see. His companions stood in the midst of an unbroken sward of grass.
“Now, that, that was a nuisance,” Misha said, pointing in the direction the vehicle had last been seen.
“Well, thank the Sleepers for it,” Colenna said. “I thought a hundred times that we’d be killed by those unspeakable cars. Now we’re rid of the honking, smelly pests. And those trucks! Good riddance!”
“Yes, but now we have nothing to go upon,” Felan said, his narrow face full of disapproval. “Literally and figuratively! We were making good time, too.”
“Too dangerous,” the princess said, shuddering. She changed her veil and tiara into a warm hood and tied the strings under her chin. “Brr! I hate traffic.”
Roan sniffed. The smell of the cold air improved by the moment, and another wind of change came toward them, bearing the smell of wet grass. It began to drizzle.
“With change comes its perils,” Bergold said lightly. “The Sleepers often give and take away with the same hand.”
“Must have amazingly broad palms,” Felan said in an undertone, earning him another sour look from Colenna, and, to his evident surprise, one from Spar as well.
“You must have been at the bottom of your class, sonny,” Colenna said. “How did you become attached to the Ministry?”
“We’ve no trail now,” Spar said. “Blast this meadow! We’ll have to go back and figure out where we lost them.”
“There is a good side,” Roan said. “The steeds were uncomfortable on a paved road, but they’re perfectly suited to riding over smooth grassland, better than any other mode of conveyance. And we have less fear of skidding on an asphalt surface in the rain.”
“Cold comfort,” Felan said, darkly, making a rainproof hood out of his hat and clapping it on his head. He, the historians, Roan, Misha and the princess had no trouble in waterproofing their garments against the mist, but the guards lacked transformation ability, and needed some assistance in providing themselves with rain gear. Roan helped fit them out with regulation slickers and hats.
“Which way do we go, then, on this perfectly suitable surface?” Bergold asked, as his steed pawed the grass.
“I would hazard that we should continue to head northwards,” Roan said, carefully. “Otherwise, Brom would not have bothered to cross the river here.”
Lum searched the terrain for indicators, and came back to the group with his amiable face puzzled. “It looks like the trail got swept up with the rest of the road. I don’t know where to start.”
“Stands to reason that we’ll find traces farther on,” Spar said. “But how far?”
Roan squinted around them. It was as if they had been sealed into a box with the key on the outside. The others looked at him hopefully. They expected him to make a decision. He felt under the dual pressures of being in charge and knowing that at least some of them thought he was inferior because he was different. If he’d been alone, he wouldn’t be so worried about making a mistake. There was nothing here to go upon. He’d led them this far, only to come to a dead end.
No, wait, he thought, staring at one of the clumps of trees a hundred yards or so distant. Signing to the others to stay where they were, he rode toward it to confirm his hopes. There was a mark on one of them, a white arrow as long as his little finger. Then he thought for a moment. Was it mere chance that provided this clue, an impulse of the Sleepers? The mark was not well drawn. It could be a random smudge shaped vaguely like an arrow, that meant nothing at all. Or did they—could they?—have a friend ahead? If it was chance, then thank the Sleepers. But if it was deliberate, he had an advantage he never had counted on. He glanced back at the others. He mustn’t tell anyone until he was certain. It would be wrong to give them false hope. As Roan bent down to rub dirt into the mark, he saw what he was hoping for and stood up to wave.
“This is it,” he
called. “Come on!” He knew he was beaming all over his face.
Spar and Lum came at a trot, and the rest followed.
“What have you found, sir?” Lum asked.
“The way, I think,” Roan said, gesturing to the left of the clump of trees. Lum rode to where he was pointing, and let out a wordless cry of joy.
“You’re right, sir! Look at this back here, tire prints! Clear as anything. But aren’t they odd ones?”
Veering off at a westward angle were the familiar cluster of tire prints. Roan examined them with care. He recognized the tread patterns from the blighted glade where Brom and his minions had picked up their bicycles. Lum was correct. There was a difference: many of the tracks were several inches wide, but if he accounted for the heavier cast, they were the same as others he had noted before. Brom had increased those bicycles’ nature in some way. The gestalt was powerful. Roan had no idea what else they might be capable of.
“And it’s weird here, sir,” Lum added, happily. “Just like the other warping and strangeness. We’re on the trail again.”
“How do we know they haven’t left another false track?” Spar demanded, looking from his corporal to Roan. “I don’t want to spend another unnecessary night in the open, like last night. This was supposed to be a rapid pursuit and apprehension.”
“But that changed. We simply must go on following,” Bergold said. “His Majesty has put out bulletins all over the Dreamland to stop Brom if he is spotted, but I believe we are still the ones with the best chance to apprehend him.”
“Bergold is right,” Roan said. “We’d best be on our way. There’s no way to tell how far ahead of us they are.”
“If they’re still together,” Felan said, sourly. “Who says they haven’t divided the party as they did before. What if we’re after the wrong half?”
“We don’t know,” Roan said, a little more sharply than he intended. “Have you had any reply to your airmail?”
Waking in Dreamland Page 19
