“What now, sir?” Lum asked.
“We go on,” Roan said.
Chapter 22
The remainder of the passage across the desert wilderness had taken the apprentices all morning. The last yards of block had been laid, depositing them onto an expanse that was smooth and strong enough to sustain them all the way to the road, which she could see only a few hundred yards away. Brom sent the apprentices to ride ahead of the litter, using influence to smooth the sand and soft dirt into a path for the Alarm Clock, without ever getting off their motorbikes. Taboret was glad to say good riddance to the nebulosity, which had been falling apart and growing soft when changes were least welcome. She flung her last piece aside. It bounced several times and lay still. Let the nasty stuff go back to grass and pieces of statue, and rot!
Just as they were riding along the last yards parallel to the road, Taboret thought she spotted a woman through the trees who looked like the princess. Dressed in flowing white, Princess Leonora was surrounded by piles of junk and people waving their arms. By their expressions, Taboret could tell they were shouting, although she couldn’t hear any voices or sound. She didn’t look as if she was in danger, for which Taboret was thankful. But the princess would be able to see them when they broke cover. What would Brom do?
“Sir! Ahead of you!” Lurry shouted.
The narrow booth seemed to blossom from the forest floor. Brom saw it, and raised his hand. The lights reading “You-Pass” across the top turned from red to green, and the wooden arm lifted. They drove through the channel, litter and all.
A tall man that Taboret recognized as Roan ran after them, putting his fingers into the corners of his mouth. A bicycle broke free of the pack huddled by the left-hand booth and rolled to him, but a large man stepped in the way, preventing Roan from mounting. That was all Taboret had time to see before she was past and onto the pavement. The hard road under her tires was a blessing straight from the Sleepers.
She was relieved. At least the princess and the others were alive and well. They’d no need for another arrow to point the way from her. She glanced back again toward the tollbooth, to see if Roan had managed to get past the guards and the gate. The orange framework wasn’t there. The road behind her lay empty for miles. Even the grove of trees was gone. She shook her head to clear it.
“What happened?” she shouted to the others.
“What in Nightmare’s name was that?” Glinn asked. “Are they that close?”
“We’re miles ahead of them,” Mamovas called over the motorcycles’ roar. She looked very pleased with herself. “That was the last trap. A double illusion with feedback capabilities. They could see us, but not touch us, even if they’d managed to get through. And we could see what they were doing. They should be stuck there a long time. They haven’t got any money. I took it.” She jingled a large purse and tucked it into her belt pouch. “That’s part of the trap.”
“You’re a sneaky one,” Carina said, admiringly.
“Artistic, too,” Basil said. Taboret felt she couldn’t help but agree with the others because of the link, but the private corner of her mind still harbored worries about what lay ahead.
“Hurry up!” Spar bellowed. “They’ve got to be up there somewhere.”
“But they were never here, sir,” Lum tried to explain, pedaling just behind his captain. “That was just an image. It could be imaginary—from the Sleepers.”
“He put it there to taunt us,” Spar said, dodging around two Holy Order sisters in an ancient carriage who were passing everyone else on the road. “Brom did. He was a sly boy, and he’s become a nasty man. Wait until I bring him before the king.”
“Captain, slow down!” Roan shouted. “Captain, even if they are ahead of us, we won’t be able to keep up this pace for long. For the sake of the princess, hold!”
Spar glanced back. Leonora had fallen hundreds of yards behind them. Roan caught up to Spar and nodded at him until the senior guard braked.
“It’s no use,” Spar said, as the traffic whipped past them on both sides. “We’re going to fail. They’ve got motors, and all we’ve got are foot-pedals. They’re going to set off that infernal device, and there’s not a damned thing we can do about it. Can we turn back, sir? Her Highness should be taken safely home before the end.”
“Don’t give up, Captain,” Roan said, making his tone as positive as he could. We’ll find help.”
“Hooonnnk!”
A huge truck bore down on them from behind, honking and honking.
“Ignore it,” Spar growled. “Let him go around us. It’s another one of those traffic nuisances.”
“No,” Roan said, after one glance. “It’s help. Pull over to the side!” Unlike all of the previous manifestations of highway traffic, this one vehicle looked real. The windshield was transparent, and through it Roan could see the driver’s face. He swerved over to the right, turned in his seat and stood up on the pedals. With his fist clenched and thumb out, he flagged down the driver. The huge horn sounded again, sending the bicycles into fits and bucking, but the truck slowed down and rolled to a halt just ahead of them. The engine snorted deafeningly and fell silent. Roan pedaled up toward the driver’s side door.
“Be careful!” Leonora cried. “It could crush you.”
“It’s all right!” Roan said.
“Goin’ far?” the driver shouted down from the window.
“We’ve got to catch up with someone,” Roan called up, “and it might be a long way.”
“I’m goin’ a long way,” the man said, grinning to show gapped teeth. “Hop in. I like company.”
“Thank you, sir!” Roan said. “We’d be most grateful for the ride.”
The driver jerked a thumb back toward the rear of the truck. “Toss ’em up behind.”
“Right you are!” Spar said, throwing a salute. “Guards!”
The captain ordered Lum and Hutchings to unfasten the metal gate at the back of the flatbed. They whistled the bicycles into line and sent them up the extendible ramp, then slammed the gate firmly behind them.
The driver leaned over and clicked open the passenger door. Roan helped Leonora up the steps into the cabin, and scooted in beside her across the front seat toward the driver. To Roan’s amazement, the upholstered bench expanded until it was wide enough to allow them all to sit side by side. The party clambered up one by one. Colenna, last in, yanked the door shut.
Swingy, whiny music came from grilles in both doors. It annoyed Roan at first, but once the driver turned on the engine, the music sounded pleasant, even homey over the baritone vibration.
“I’m Skorvald Nightcap,” the driver said. He pulled back a heavy lever and put his foot down on one of the three sloped pedals on the floor.
“That’s a good Dreamish name,” Roan said, watching the operation with interest. “I’m Roan Faireven, Mr. Nightcap.”
“Call me Skor,” the driver shouted as the truck’s transmission shrieked into gear. “Pleased to meet you.”
“May I make you known to her Ephemeral Highness, Princess Leonora?” Roan said.
The driver looked at her with bright eyes in a nest of wrinkles. His weathered face creased a thousand more times and produced a smile as he touched the bill of his cap.
“Glad to make your acquaintance, Your Highness. Here,” he reached over the wheel to a sheaf of folded papers on the dashboard shelf and handed her a map. “You navigate. I’d as soon take orders from you as anybody. We’re on Route 2. Where do we want to go?”
Leonora unfolded the worn, battered pasteboards, and found the red line of the road that led over the bridge from Celestia. With her finger she followed it northward to an intersection with a green line, and glanced up at Roan with a tiny shrug. They peered down at the piece of paper together. The red line, which ran closely against the border of this province, was marked with tiny black dots indicating towns. A long blue line ran concurrently with the red line from the bridge, diverted widely to the east for a while, run
ning through the desert, but rejoined it several miles south of the dot that marked the town of Reverie. Along the blue line were the words “They Went This Way.”
Leonora looked up at Roan, lips parted in a smile and eyes sparkling.
“What is it?” Bergold asked. She handed him the map, and he let out a merry chuckle. Each of the others wanted to see, and grabbed the chart out of the hands of the last one holding it until it reached Colenna.
“This was fated,” the older woman said, with a pleased nod. She leaned forward to twinkle down the line at Roan. Leonora held out her hand, and the map made its way back to her. “You were right, my boy. Well done for your perseverance.”
“It may have been meant,” Roan said, “but it doesn’t mean we can take less care. This way, please, Skor. We’re going toward Reverie.”
“Right you are, laddie,” Skorvald said. He slammed the shift lever forward.
Very deliberately, Leonora kept track of each turn of the road ahead with a finger placed on the blue line, nodding over landmarks as each appeared out of the broad windshield. The truck jostled and bumped along toward a Y-intersection.
“Turn right,” Leonora said, seeing an arrow next to the right fork on her map. Skor obediently pushed up the signal lever on the steering wheel column, and the truck angled off in that direction. The princess shared a glance with Roan. If she hadn’t told him to turn, he might not have gone the correct way.
They were in control of their destiny. No one was guiding them. Though the fate of the Dreamland rested on their shoulders, they still had to make the right decisions for themselves. The knowledge kept Roan silently thoughtful as the huge truck roared down the road.
“We’re passing over the place where the blue line meets Route 2,” Leonora said.
“Sir, the weirdness!” Lum exclaimed. And suddenly, they all felt it. Roan sensed it as a rubberiness in the air, similar to the waxy feel of his first encounter with the gestalt, but stronger than ever. He breathed out, an enormous sense of relief taking the place of the knot in his belly.
“There’s a big black dot on the map just ahead,” Leonora said, holding the chart up to Roan. “What is it? A town?”
Roan turned the ancient pasteboards over to find the legend. In a corner, the ink almost worn off, was a square showing a list of symbols and their meanings. Roan ran his finger down the list until he found a similar symbol, and flinched.
“Skor!” he cried. “It’s a hole in reality!” He shoved the map at the driver, whose eyebrows rose into the bill of his cap.
“Oh, no!” the driver said, staring out the window. Suddenly, Roan saw it.
Ahead of them, a huge pit in the pavement yawned. Trees, houses, even birds were being dragged into the maelstrom at its center. Roan watched a full-sized lamppost disappear into it like a spaghetti noodle being slurped down into a subterranean maw.
Skor hit his brakes and veered off the side of the road to avoid it. The pull it exerted could be felt even through the sides of the truck.
Nearest the hole, the landscape was seemed to be divided into sections mounted on huge spools. It rolled down into the mass of chaos, leaving gaps of darkness where the scenery had been torn from its moorings below the sky. In between, Roan could see a few bright lights, shadowy figures, and skeins of wires and ropes.
Skor shoved his right foot hard down on the accelerator. The motor whined, but its roar gradually increased in volume until it had the power to break free.
“My, that’s a big one,” Bergold said, peering out the window as the landscape returned to normal. “It’s affecting everything around it. Which nearly included us!”
“Lucky escape,” Skor said, wiping his brow with a red-spotted handkerchief. “Lucky for me you’re reading that map, Your Highness. That was a big one. I might’a gone right into that. Me and my rig are grateful to you.”
They studied the map with care, but no other disasters were noted on it between that point and the next town.
The truck crested a high hill overlooking a large, neatly laid out town in a deep valley, and began to descend. According to the spot on the map where the princess’s finger rested, this was Reverie. The blue line showing Brom’s progress ran concurrently with the red route line all the way into town. The truck coasted downward until it came to a narrow stone bridge that led over a stream into the town, and came to a halt in a lay-by.
“This is as far as I go, lads and lasses, and Your Highness,” Skorvald said, throwing the transmission into neutral with a flick of his wrist.
Leonora leaned up to hand back his map, and kissed his wrinkled cheek.
“I can’t tell you how grateful we are for your help,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
He blushed redder than he’d been baked by the sun, and pulled the bill of his cap down over his face.
“Thank you very kindly, ma’am. It was a pleasure. We’ve helped each other. Hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Roan led Cruiser over the bridge into town, looking carefully for clues of Brom’s passage. The smooth, hard-paved roads showed no tire prints, so they had to depend upon Lum’s instinct for spotting the “weirdness.” Odd little distortions, like postboxes with claw feet and pigeons feeding people, proved to them that they were on the trail. Bergold produced Romney’s useful map, and opened it up to show the town’s layout. They stopped beside a wrought-iron fence and unfolded the chart several times to see the street grid more clearly.
“Seems to head right along this street, and then into the heart of the city,” Bergold said, pointing at the main road. He ran his finger down the line of the road past where they were standing and into the town square. Nearby, church bells rang the noon hour, and the church’s image on the map quivered in sympathy with the bell tower they saw on the next corner. “Unfortunately, there it peters out. Where shall we try first?”
“This is a big place,” Leonora said, scanning the street layout. “Brom could be anywhere.”
“Are you sure he did come in?” Felan asked, peering at the map over Bergold’s shoulder. “You’d think he’d avoid well-populated areas because he’d be afraid of being stopped. The king will have telegraphed every city and town in the land.”
“They’ll need supplies,” Roan said.
“Then, they will want to leave without being noticed,” Colenna said. “That won’t be so easy.”
Misha shook his head. “In a city this size, travelers come and go all the time.”
“That big a group and that thing they’re carrying will be hard to forget,” Felan said. “And, there’s the distortion it causes.”
“Easier to hide in a town than in the countryside,” Misha argued.
“I won’t forget those daisies,” Leonora said, with a shudder.
“It’s a matter of distance,” Bergold said, reasonably, closing the map down to show a larger scale of the area. He pointed out several routes with his fingernail. “If he does pass through Reverie instead of skirting it, he’ll cut down his travel time. We’d have to go all around the perimeter and hope we find his trail. In town, his exits are finite. We stand a better chance of finding him.”
“All we can do is ask,” Roan said. “We can always backtrack if we are wrong.”
They asked a woman wheeling a baby carriage, but she shook her head no, and kept walking without looking up. The baby shrugged and offered Roan a look of sympathy. The party reached the end of the street near the church without finding anyone who had seen Brom, the litter or a gang of motorcycles.
“Perhaps we should find out where the marketplace is,” Colenna said. “If they’re buying supplies, it’s the most logical place to try.”
“We’re on the way to it,” Bergold said, struggling with the map. Hutchings took it out of his hands and folded it to the correct plate. He handed it back, trying not to look triumphant. “Thank you. That’s better. You can only go one way on this street. Do you see? There are no other outlets. Straight up this street, and first right.”
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“We should get valuable leads there,” Spar said.
“And we can get some supplies for ourselves,” Colenna said. Felan looked daggers at her. They fell short, clattering to the ground. Bergold stopped suddenly and put out his arms to halt the others.
“Uh-oh,” the senior historian said, despair in his voice.
“We’re in trouble now.”
“Do you see Brom?” Roan asked, squinting into the crowd.
“No, it’s worse,” Bergold said. “Look. It’s a bookstore. A big one.”
“Oh, no!”
Roan stared up at the brightly colored sign hanging over the sidewalk only twenty yards ahead. A bookstore! It was the biggest hazard of any town. What could they do? The route they needed to take to the market led directly past it. He made as if to turn the party back and lead them on a more circuitous route, when the expandable aura of pleasure and joyful anticipation the bookstore exuded engulfed him. The smell of coffee wafted past his nose. He rotated on his heel, facing the bright sign again, his mind clouding.
How nice it would be, he thought, just to browse for a while, perhaps sit and drink a cup of coffee and read . . . No! What was he thinking? He was on an important mission! He had to save the Dreamland! Perhaps there were how-to books on heroism in the sociology section. . . .
The others were falling under the spell, too. The pupils of Leonora’s green eyes spread across the irises as she stared at the sign. Bergold was shifting his shoulder bag as if to judge whether there’d be some room in it for a volume or two. They all moved a step closer, and had the opposite foot raised to take the next step. Roan tugged them back, and the spell broke momentarily.
“This must be a very good store,” Leonora said, clasping her hands around Roan’s upper arm. “I can feel the urge from here. Hold on to me or I’ll fall in.”
“So will I,” Bergold said. “We’ve got to help one another.”
The urge to go inside was overwhelmingly powerful. The siren call of the books was such a loud howling in his ears that Roan put his hands up to stop them. Leonora put her head down against his shoulder, her eyes screwed shut. If they fell into the bookstore, they’d be trapped for hours, pulled along by sheer curiosity to scan every title, or draw an especially tempting book off a shelf and read, lulled by a hypnotic, lazy atmosphere to forget about the cares of the outside world. Their cause would be lost.
Waking in Dreamland Page 28
