“Speaking of dry camps,” Bergold said, poking Roan in the ribs as he retrieved the map, “do you remember staying in that wadi town in the desert near Bukara?”
Roan laughed, jostled out of his present misery. “I certainly do! I thought it was the nicest place I’d ever been, until we found out the whole thing was a mirage.” He turned to explain to the others. “We were there to meet a fleet of ships of the desert that had sighted a living sphinx and get their report. We’d been drinking sherbets and lying about the pool in a luxury hotel, when everything vanished, and we were flat on the sand by ourselves. The real wadi was miles away.”
“You’d nothing to worry about, but I was taking a bath when the illusion collapsed. Sand, sand, sand, and more sand,” Bergold chuckled, folding and refolding the map. Suddenly, he bundled it into Colenna’s hands. “Here, will you do it, dear lady? It just doesn’t like me. Ah, those were the days.”
Roan smiled. Those had been happier days than these. He and Bergold had shared many good times. Reminiscing about them just reminded him how much he liked and respected the historian. It was a relief to have him along on this journey. When he thought he would give up hope, Bergold kept their spirits going. He was a man of surprising resources.
It seemed unbelievable that it had only been a few days since the party had set out from the capital city. Roan felt he had changed since then, albeit all inside. He’d become both more confident, and less. More, because he’d been made to lead, and had surprised himself with the cooperation the party had given to him. Less, because he had never appreciated before what it took to be responsible for so many other lives. Bergold, bless him, seemed exactly the same, affable and unflappable, whatever his external appearance.
Roan eased his sore bottom to find a place that hadn’t been battered to a bruised pulp on the hard ride. He was looking forward to using the salve in his pack when they stopped.
Twilight on the plain brought with it an icy chill. Winter was coming on quickly in Wocabaht. The Sleeper’s will evoked animals and sights strange to those who’d been brought up in Celestia. Little gray bears with double thumbs and big sad eyes hugging tree boles stared at them as they passed. Night birds swooped down over their heads. Exclaiming sharply, Spar ducked one that came within a hair’s breadth of his cap.
Shadows deepened among the scanty trees and bushes, casting odd, unexpected shapes on their path. The horses trod warily. Roan thought that this thicket was what the Nightmare Forest looked like millennia or billennia ago.
“Did you hear something go ‘bzzp’?” Lum asked, into the sudden silence.
“Ray gun noise, bug zapper noise, or possibly an animal noise?” Bergold asked, fumbling in his pack for his useful book.
“Couldn’t say, sir,” Lum asked, swallowing deeply. “I don’t know all those technical terms.”
But a noise that needed no explanation came from behind them on the trail: a constant rhythmic thudding.
“Horses!” Misha exclaimed.
They stopped to listen. Roan strained his ears, picking out the sounds.
“It could be them,” Felan said, pulling his steed safely behind Hutchings and Alette.
“I think it’s only one horse,” Lum said.
Captain Spar drew his sword. “Could be a trap. Soldiers, on guard! Show a light, Colenna. Let’s see what it is we’re facing.”
Roan gripped his quarterstaff, and bent low over his horse’s neck, trying to get a glimpse of their pursuer. Cruiser, between his knees, let out a low nicker. What did the steed sense?
Colenna hoisted her lantern high. The strong beam burned away the shadows, and lit up the figure of a golden horse with a golden-haired girl on its back. She threw up her arm to shield her eyes. Roan knew her at once.
“Leonora!” he shouted.
“Turn that thing down!” Leonora snapped. “You’re blinding me.” Colenna cranked down the intensity until the torch was a simple flaming brand.
“Your Highness!” Spar yelled. “What are you doing here?”
Roan didn’t wait for the answer. He spurred Cruiser to her side and swept her up in his arms across his saddlebow, kissing her with all the intensity of ten essay tests behind him. She looked tired, disheveled, in an obvious temper, but beautiful as always—and there.
Her eyes, luminous and dark in the flickering light, twinkled as she sat back against his arm to see his face.
“That’s a marvelous greeting,” she said, touching his cheek playfully. “Oh, don’t put me down yet. I am so sore on the bottom I can hardly sit.”
“Where did you spring from?” Bergold asked. “I thought the Night was driving you home.”
“I couldn’t leave all of you to go on without me,” Leonora said, cuddled comfortably against Roan’s chest. Golden Schwinn rubbed noses with Cruiser, and nibbled at his bridle as if glad to see him. “I waited until we stopped to ask directions. When Sir Osprey was asking directions from that signpost, and not paying any attention to me, I sneaked my steed out of the car, made him a simulacrum out of some sticks, and made off through the woods. Now, Sir Osprey will get home with what he thinks is me, and by that time, I hope we’ve caught up with Brom. I had to chain the dog to the seat and mix up my scent. I was sorry to do that,” she said, with evident regret, “but he might have been able to track me, otherwise. After that, I just followed the roads north.”
“Well done, my love,” Roan said. “A heroic job of orienteering.”
“Thank you,” Leonora said.
“You could have missed us completely,” Bergold said, worriedly, although he was as glad to see her as Roan. “You could have been set upon by vandals, or—or swallowed up by a pothole, or disappeared into an anomaly.”
“You must be exhausted, my dear,” said Colenna.
“Oh, I am,” Leonora said. The arm she had wrapped around Roan’s ribs tightened for a moment in a quiet hug. Then she nestled in more closely. “I’m also a bit sorry to have missed the inn he said we were to have stayed at this evening, with real baths! But I had to get back. I’m part of the group, am I not?”
“Of course!” Roan exclaimed, holding her to his pounding heart with a mixture of delight and dismay. The regret he’d felt at having her depart had changed to guilt. She was at risk again. Should he try to persuade her to turn back on her own? He sought Captain Spar’s eye. The chief guard shook his head no, slowly but sadly. It was no use.
“But you wait until I see Brom again,” Leonora said, and the tone of her voice boded no good for the renegade scientist. “Just wait.”
“How far to this hill?” Felan asked, a few miles down the road. It was growing darker by the moment. “I haven’t galloped at double time all the way from Reverie, but I’m sore, too.”
“Not too far ahead,” Bergold said. “It says it’s just the other side of a small town. Ah! And there’s the town.”
Felan peered at the few little cottages with warm, flickering lights showing in the windows and tiny curls of smoke winding up from the chimneys.
“That’s the minimum definition of a town, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
“I came from a place like this,” Misha said, defensively. “It functions in every way as a community. You can’t say fairer than that.”
“Ah, well, that’s all that counts,” Bergold said. “It’s as well to live simply, since one never knows what the Sleepers will give or take away next.”
Almost as he said it, the little huts swelled suddenly into huge mansions with gleaming carriage lights and paved areas in front of them, and crowded the small road. Roan caught a glimpse of a big black disk of metal with a skinny metal arm sticking out of it, mounted on a pole in the back yard of one establishment, and a swimming pool in back of another.
“Good heavens,” Leonora said. She was back on her own steed, restored after an application of Roan’s healing salve. “Is this modern, or old-fashioned?”
“Modern, dear,” Colenna replied. “No ornamentation to speak of, you
see.”
A man and a woman heard the sound of their passage, and came out to see what was going on. In spite of their grand homes, they were dressed in simple, loose clothes, carefully patched, suitable for working in the field. The man had a peaked cap and a beard. The woman wore a kirtled gown and a cotton scarf on her hair. They stood on the stoop of their great house and watched the party go by as if it were a parade.
“Evening,” Roan called to them.
“Evening, sir,” they called back.
“Brom came this way, sir,” Lum said, scanning the ground. “But we’d better stop soon. I can hardly see the signs.”
“We’re not far away,” Bergold said. “There’s a crossroads, and then the hilltop is along a little way after that.”
“What’s that up ahead?” Colenna said, peering ahead. She lifted her lantern to see, but hardly needed its help. The orange object on the road gleamed brightly, and it had a round barrel light on top that flashed on and off.
“Why, it’s a sawhorse,” Bergold said, as they approached it. “What’s it doing here? There’s no road repairs beyond it. Look.”
“Warning us that there will be some soon?” Felan asked. But the road appeared to be perfectly smooth and in good repair.
“Wait a moment,” Roan said. He spotted something else on the side of the road just short of the barricade, and spurred Cruiser to the front of the line and urged them to halt. Swinging out of his saddle, he went to retrieve the object.
“It looks like a button, dear,” Colenna said over his shoulder.
“It is,” he said, fingering it. There was a strand of thread still caught in the holes. “I wonder how it got here.”
Roan pondered it for a moment longer. He started to put it in his pocket, when a body landed heavily on his back.
“Down, sir!” Lum shouted in his ear, pushing his head down against the pavement. “Everyone, down!”
The others scrambled to the ground, and pulled their beasts with them as a noise like a hundred thunderstorms roared overhead. Roan glanced back to make certain that the other guards were protecting the princess, then buried his head under his arms. Something impacted against the ground not six feet from him with a sucking, devouring sound. He squinted out from under his arm. Where there had been bushes and grass, there was a huge, jagged hole in the ground.
“There it goes!” Misha cried.
Roan and Lum sprang up to see. Roan had seen visible waves of influence before. He’d been inconvenienced by nuisances, and skirted holes in reality, but this was the first time he’d seen one that looked like a hole turned inside out. Against the darkness of oncoming night, it was a greasy mess of glowing color: green, orange, sickly brown and gray, all tied together by a swirling mass of black. It skittered along the ground like a tornado, picking up trees, rocks, grass, and anything else it touched.
“It’s heading toward those houses,” Bergold said.
“Great Sleepers, you’re right!” Roan leaped onto Cruiser, and spurred the steed toward them. “We have to warn those people!”
Cruiser leaped over the trench carved in the road, with only the backward twist of his ears betraying his fear. Roan was too concerned for the fate of the villagers to be worried about himself or his beast. They could always dodge the dancing hunger. The villagers were on foot, and unaware.
“Get out!” Roan shouted, trying to make himself heard over the roar of the wind. “Danger! Get out of your houses! Run away!”
“What?” The man who had come outside to wave at them appeared at the door of his house with a lantern, and leaned out to look. His mouth dropped open. “What in Nightmare’s name is that?”
“Run!” Roan shouted at him, as the hole veered sharply right and made straight for the house. “No, not that way!” he cried, as the man, frightened and disoriented, dropped his lantern and started toward the hole itself. “Stop! Turn away!”
The whirling vacuum split a tree and swallowed half, leaving the torn remainder standing at a cockeyed angle. It carelessly wrenched the corner off a nearby house. Then, it bore down upon the man, who stood looking up at it helplessly as it picked him up. With a wild cry, he disappeared in the swirl of angry color.
“Damon!” His wife ran out of the door to where he had last been standing. She stood on the spot, wringing her hands and crying. “Damon, no! No!”
The hole in reality passed her as if she had been a stranger on the street, and tore through her house. The building shuddered, then exploded outward in a hail of splinters and shards. Roan reached the woman, pulled her up onto Cruiser’s back, and turned the steed out of the path of the debris.
Pieces of house rained down upon them, but the woman didn’t seem to notice. She muttered to herself when Roan set her down in the midst of the group, not looking up at any of them.
“Are you all right?” Leonora asked, coming up to put an arm around the woman’s shoulders.
“He’s gone,” the woman said, staring back over her shoulder at the ruin of her house. Her face was pale with shock.
“He’s gone.”
“You couldn’t stop it,” Leonora said, in a soothing voice. “There’s nothing you can do about influence.”
“Sleeper’s will,” the woman said, blankly.
“That’s right. Someone, find her something to drink,” Leonora said, leading her toward Golden Schwinn. The steed obediently became a bench, and the two of them sat down on it. “How long were you together?”
“All our lives,” the woman said. Then she burst into tears. “Oh, I can’t believe he’s gone!”
“There, there,” Leonora said. She reached into the air for a handkerchief. The woman sobbed into the square of cloth. The princess patted her shoulder and murmured kind words. Colenna filled a tiny silver cup with brandy from her bag, and Leonora urged the woman to drink. She choked down the liquor, and color returned to her face. She had looked forty before. Now she looked eighty.
Roan stood by, speechless in the face of such a tragedy. What could he say to someone who has just lost the most important person in her life? He knew how he would feel. He had had a taste of desolation when Leonora had been taken away from him in Reverie, and never wanted to feel worse than that in his life.
“Let’s find your neighbors, dear,” Colenna said, always ready to cope in a crisis.
“I’ll go,” Spar said, wanting to take any kind of action to help.
“No, send Alette,” Leonora said, appearing plump and motherly. She rocked the grieving woman against her shoulder, letting her cry. The guard sped off in the darkness. “The rest of you, will you find her things?”
Roan hurried off at once. Other villagers started to come out of the other big houses, lanterns and torches in hand. Roan explained the situation to them.
“We’ll take Jennet in, of course,” one woman said. She seemed to be about the same age.
“Better,” said a tall, thin man. “We’ll build her a new house, nicer than the one she had. It’s the least we can do. I’ve got wood I was going to build an addition on with.”
“I’ve got a raft of extra shingles,” another said.
“We have paint,” a woman put in. Suddenly, they were bubbling over with plans as they bustled around picking up Jennet’s scattered possessions. Roan listened to them with admiration. He knew that even if the donations were insufficient, they would burgeon into the right amount for the job to match their donors’ generosity.
When he returned to the others, a couple of neighbor women had taken Leonora’s place, and were comforting their friend.
“That thing cannot have been an accident,” Leonora whispered to Roan. “It was waiting for us, wasn’t it? It was Brom’s doing.”
“Almost certainly,” Roan said. “These traps are getting more dangerous each time. I think he’s going mad.”
“It’s full dark, Your Highness,” one of the neighbor women said, coming up and bobbing a curtsey to her. “You ought to come and stay with us. It’d be an honor.”
“Thank you, but we have to go on,” Leonora said, exchanging glances in the torchlight with Roan. He knew the same thought was in her mind as in his. If any more traps had been set for them, she didn’t want them sprung on innocent bystanders, not with such grievous results. She leaned over, took Jennet’s hand and kissed her.
“You have good neighbors,” she said. “They’ll have a new house for you in no time. You’ll be able to pick up and keep going with your life.”
“What’s life without him?” the woman asked, not really caring. “My son has always nagged at us to come and live on the border, where it’s safe. We can get away from Changeover, he said. It’s too late. If Changeover comes, I’ll let it take me.”
“You can’t think that way,” Leonora said, firmly, shifting back to her girlish figure for travel. She squeezed Jennet’s hands. “Please. Don’t let your negative thoughts affect your life. What about your influence? You have some, too. Everyone does.”
“There’s that,” the woman said, drying her eyes. She stood up. “Don’t want to make the crops fail by being negative. My husband would never have stood for that. He always worked so hard.” Her eyes started to well up again, but she dried them, and set her chin, firmly. “Thank you, Your Highness. You’re as good as you are beautiful.”
She kissed the girl on the cheek. The neighbor women led her into another house, where inviting amber lights burned in the ornate glass windows.
“Will that be enough to help her?” Misha asked, watching her shut the door.
“No,” the princess said, sadly, “but it’s all we can do.”
Chapter 28
The action of setting up camp was beginning to settle into a routine, almost pleasant because one knew exactly what was expected of one. Taboret took her assignment from Basil, who was the officer of the day, and began tying together branches for torches to put around the perimeter. Crucible power would soon make them into beautiful iron sconces. The neat and orderly parts of her mind that Taboret knew were indeed her own took pleasure in creating something from raw materials in ways that had been hitherto unknown in the Dreamland. In spite of her misgivings, she was enjoying the use of great power.
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