“He must be the one,” Glinn said. “You know, you’d have caught up with us days ago if it hadn’t been for him.”
“What?” Spar asked.
“What?” Bergold asked, his usually mild face turning purple.
“Who is this?” Leonora asked, spinning to study the scientist. Her eyes widened when she saw the blue-and-white tunic and the pocket protector. She clenched her fists.
“This is a brave man, and a true friend of the Dreamland,” Roan explained, putting his hands on her shoulders to reassure her. “He was the one leaving trail markers for us.”
“You’re the spy?” Spar demanded as Felan squelched back to the group, shaking water out of his shoes. “You never sent any reports home to Mnemosyne? You dragged us through the Nightmare Forest on purpose?” The historian changed his sheepish look for an arrogant one.
“Ha!” he said. “I thought you’d forgotten about that.”
“Forgotten!” Spar shouted.
“Is it true?” Roan demanded.
“Of course it is,” Felan said, impatiently. “I’m not surprised that a one-faced freak like you was never able to figure it out on your own. Not one of you understand what Brom is trying to do. All our life is a lie unless we find out the truth about the Sleepers.”
“But I do understand,” Glinn said. “I was one of the apprentices who drew up the design parameters for the project. Ringing the Alarm Clock could mean utter destruction. If not that, then certainly upheaval, terror, and danger for countless Dreamlanders.”
Felan pretended not to care, but Roan could tell he was upset by Glinn’s speech. Leonora was angrier than ever, but Roan never anticipated how furious Felan’s betrayal would make Bergold. He had never seen his dear friend so angry.
“You young fool.” The senior historian grew to a giant, eight feet tall with hands the size of watermelons. He picked Felan up, and threw him overhand back in the river. Felan sank with a splash.
“I for one don’t care if he never comes up,” Spar said, scanning the surface of the Lullay. A dark head broke water. “Oh, too bad. He can swim.” The figure that climbed out was a changed man. Felan was smaller and humbler-looking, almost wormlike. But this time he didn’t come back to them when he waded ashore. Keeping well away from them, he started walking south, and slunk in among the trees. The leaves closed behind him, and he was gone.
“Good riddance,” Spar said.
In as much detail as she could, Leonora told them about the rise and collapse of the gestalt-being. Roan listened, horrified.
“Thank the Sleepers he failed,” he said.
“It won’t stop them,” Glinn said. “But they’ll be moving much slower. This is our chance to catch up with them at last.”
“What about you?” Bergold said, holding up the blindfold. Glinn shook his head.
“I won’t need that now. The gestalt is broken. I’m free. Besides, it won’t matter if he can see through my eyes now.
He is nearly there.”
The party took to horse again, and rode west along the banks until they came to a place where the shore was churned into mud.
“There’s weirdness everywhere,” Lum said.
“This is where they took to the water,” Roan said. “But on what?”
“Brom is endlessly inventive,” Glinn replied. “He can make a sailing ship out of a brick and a bedsheet. He might truly have had to do something of the kind. He has a way of using opposing forces to his benefit.”
“Which way do we go?” Roan asked.
“Upstream,” Glinn said. “To the source.”
“Follow me,” Roan said. He backed Cruiser up a dozen paces, and spurred him straight at the shining water.
Chapter 34
Taboret hung on to the bow of the speedboat. It wasn’t a pretty craft, but it worked. Brom had transformed the remaining steeds into a single water vehicle that skipped along the river. He had hooked the remaining bicycles together with paperclip chain and coathangers, and the craft looked as if it had been constructed out of odd bits. The chief scientist held onto the tiller at the stern, staring straight ahead with his glowing eyes.
The gestalt was nearly burned out. It would never again be able to raise enough power to make them into a single entity, but it was just enough to impel their engines. That was all that mattered. Brom was fixed upon a single goal, and was pushing them to succeed. To keep the crucible power going, they had to maintain physical contact with one another. Brom had taken one of the remaining coat hangers and made handcuffs out of it to hold them all together until they got to the waterfall, which Taboret could see ahead of her. It reached all the way to the sky.
Every time the boat hit the waves, the bells would chime, transforming things. Taboret was tired of changing form every time it happened. She clutched at the side of the boat with fingernails grown into talons and longed for the journey to be over at last.
They must reach the Hall of Sleepers before Roan did. He wasn’t far behind them. The King’s Investigator wasn’t the only peril facing them. Sharks large enough to swallow them whole had been pacing the vessel since it took to the water. Giant lizards with strange eyes stared at them through the trees. Titans the size of trees threw rocks at one another and laughed with deep, earth-shaking voices. And Taboret was certain she had seen at least one dragon. If they didn’t win through to the Hall soon, their noisy engines would attract more unwanted attention.
“Hold tight!” Brom shouted at them, as they entered the waterfall’s great pool. The spray soaked them, and the thunder of the falls drove the little boat out and away again and again, threatening to capsize it. Water serpents circled the hull, looking for little tidbits, like humans, to fall over the side. Taboret drew back into the shell and found herself flattened against the Alarm Clock’s draped side. “We must pass under the curtain,” the chief scientist said. “Pay attention, all of you! Open the way for us. Focus on driving straight through! Use all the influence you have! Join it all in the gestalt! Now!”
Taboret thought there was nothing left inside her, but slowly, the pillars of the thundering, gray torrent parted. A narrow, dark slot opened in the great cataract. She stared at it, blinking water off her eyelashes. That couldn’t be large enough to let their boat pass! Brom leaned over, and turned the throttle up to full. The sound of the bells was drowned out by the deafening boom of the falls. Terrified, Taboret huddled in the bow and helped will the boat through the opening in the cascade and into the cave she knew was beyond. The water hammered down against the invisible substance of their barrier. Taboret was afraid it wouldn’t hold. She prayed Roan was close behind them.
Cruiser splashed his great splayed hooves on the surface of the water, kicking up little sprays like clouds of dust. The others rode strung out in a long file behind him, leaping waves and dashing over whitecaps. Roan glanced back at Leonora, who was clinging to Golden Schwinn’s mane with a grim expression on her face.
Because every vehicle is appropriate to its circumstances, the steeds had become water horses when Roan rode them at the river and turned them upstream. The hippocampi had two great finlike forefeet, a long back, and fishlike tails. Roan thought that they were very beautiful, but their looks were not as important as their speed. It was as hard as galloping uphill to ride upstream, but the steeds were willing, and their riders’ influence was oddly strong. Roan was sure it was because they were so close to the Sleepers.
The current of the mighty river was as powerful here at its point of origin as it was one and a half turns of the world away where it flowed into Nightlily Lake at the heart of the continent. This was the origin of all life in the Dreamland, the symbol of the Collective Unconscious. All along the shore, things were climbing or flying out of it, some things Roan had never seen before. Most of them were beautiful, true reflections of the Sleepers’ minds. Many were terrifying, living nightmares, manifestations of the troubles they sought to solve. This happened at other places along the banks of the Lullay, but much
more frequently here. He wished the errand was less urgent, so he could study some of the emergent life forms, and bring back a report to the king. But there would be no reports if they didn’t succeed.
The sound of the great waterfall filled their ears. It seemed to be falling from the very top of the Mystery massif, falling from heaven itself. though they were still miles away from the cataract itself, the spray of it filled the air. Roan blinked away the wet mist, and kept his eyes on the falls, arched over by rainbows, roofed by clouds, and streaming over many-colored rocks the size of palaces. They were glorious, terrifying, and huge.
“There they go!” Lum cried over the roar of the water. He leaned over to point. Roan sighted down his arm until he saw the tiny gray craft in the heart of the basin. A dark hole seemed to open up in the wall of water, and the craft vanished.
“Did they go down?” Leonora shrieked.
“No, they went through!” Roan shouted.
“Through!” yelled Misha. “Impossible!”
“Not for the gestalt!” Glinn shouted at him. “It still has power!”
“We need to go faster!” Bergold yelled. “We must fly if we are to catch them!”
Fly? Roan wondered. Could they? They hadn’t been able to achieve flight before. But this close to the Sleepers, even the smallest thought should be enough to precipitate change. Keep thinking of the job at hand, Roan thought. Concentrate. All things depend upon this. He pulled back on Cruiser’s reins, pulling the water horse’s head higher and higher. Cruiser lifted up. He grew wings, finned feet became hoofed and with a mighty leap, he was airborne!
“Follow me!” Roan shouted.
Roan heard cries behind him as the others pulled their steeds up and into the air. He heard Leonora scream. Roan turned, worried that she was frightened, but her face was filled with wild delight. Bergold added his whoop of joy as his beast spread pink wings beside Schwinn’s gold. They were airborne. Spar and the other guards flew by in bubble-shaped craft with a big gold star on each side, a spinning propeller on the top, and a flashing blue light on the tail.
It was a glorious feeling to fly again. The exhilarating wind whipped his cheeks and hair. If only it hadn’t been such an urgent errand, Roan would have enjoyed the experience more. The sky here seemed more blue, and the clouds whiter and higher than anywhere else he’d ever been.
The face of the cataract was just ahead, a pillar of sapphire stretching upward to the very edge of the sky. The spray soaked them all, and the wind caused the flying horses to dip and flutter their great wings. No one in recorded history had ever passed into the great cataract and lived to bring the story home to the Historians. But Brom had gone in. Roan must repeat the feat he had just witnessed, and bring them all safely through or all existence was forfeit. Would the force of the water dash them down into the pool? Could their mission end in watery failure? It must not, Roan thought. They had to catch Brom. If the scientists could pass through, so could they. Onward!
“Have no fear,” Roan shouted, steeling himself. “Believe you can do it, and we will!” He aimed Cruiser straight at the moving wall of water. Pumping his great wings, Cruiser shrilled a war cry. Roan bent over his neck and held tight to the steed’s feathery mane, willing the cataract to open, willing them through.
He was so full of determined force that the thundering flood felt no stronger than a shower on his back as he passed under the curtain, and into a giant cavern. He was alive. He pinched his arm just to make sure. He steered Cruiser toward a shelf of stone. The pegasus spread his wings and soared lightly in a descending spiral.
“Please don’t let me crash this time,” he prayed the Sleepers. “Too much is at stake. No falling dreams! Not here!”
The Sleepers must have heard his plea. The winged horse touched down onto solid footing, trotted a few paces, and shook himself dry. Roan swung off Cruiser’s back and looked around him, filled with wonder.
What a place this was! He had never seen such a huge cave. It felt older than time itself. The waterfall seemed to be both above and below this place, but the sound was oddly muffled. The river also ran underneath the floor of the cavern. The second flow joined the first behind the curtain of the falls, as if adding a secret ingredient that the cook didn’t want anyone else to see. Lit by the azure light that filtered through the waterfall, the cavern’s walls and floor were a rich, amber-colored stone. Glittering chunks of bright gemstone glowing from within were inlaid in patterns too complex for simple human minds to comprehend. At the back of the cavern, on the peak of a smooth stone ramp, stood the arch of a vast doorway through which came the softest light Roan had ever seen. There was no sign of the scientists or the Alarm Clock. They had to have gone through the door already. Doom could come at any moment. He started running toward the threshold. The others would follow.
“Hyahhhh!” came a wild cry. A body landed on him from behind, driving him down to his knees.
The bigger of Brom’s two mercenaries dragged Roan up, and the smaller aimed a fist for his stomach. Quickly, Roan drew on his influence to wiggle free. He tried to drop down into the stone shelf, his old trick, but it resisted him. The material of the Sleepers’ own home threw off ordinary influence. Instead, he made himself too slippery to hold. The big man grabbed for him as he squeezed free. Roan ducked, and came up directly into the way of the small man’s punch. The blow stung, but squirted off, doing little damage. Roan hit back, dodging blows as best he could. The mercenary struck doggedly, driving him back against the wall of the cave, where the other thug was waiting. Roan glanced at the high doorway, and his heart pounded. Brom must be nearly ready to set off his device. He must get free!
A stuttering splash and a cry made them all look up. Bergold had won through the cascade. His winged steed lost altitude for a moment, its waterlogged wings and the battering of the water pounding it down. In a heartbeat, it recovered, flying toward the ledge. Bergold’s eyes were wide with alarm. He was followed swiftly by the others, popping through the translucent wall one at a time.
“Help,” Roan shouted to them. Seven combatants against two, they should be able to take care of their foes in no time.
Leonora and Colenna remained on their steeds fluttering in the air above the stone shelf. Misha, Bergold, Glinn, and the guards’ air choppers arrowed in towards Roan. But as soon as his friends touched down, two more mercenaries popped up and rushed toward them. Those two split into more and more, until Roan lost count of the throng. The two holding him started hitting him again, heading him off each time he tried to change direction. Roan realized they were trying to push him toward the edge of the shelf. If he fell into the falls, he would be sucked under. He couldn’t save himself from drowning in that current. He had to use his wits. With a snap of his wrist, he opened the staff attachment of his pocket knife, and went on guard.
Captain Spar climbed out of his helicopter, and took immediate assessment of the situation.
“Don’t you worry, sir!” he shouted. “His Majesty’s royal guards are prepared for any eventuality! You, Lum, over there! You, Alette, that way! You, Hutchings, up the middle. The rest of you,” he cried, swinging his arm forward over his head, “follow me!”
And dozens of Spars clambered down the helicopter steps after the original. The other three guards multiplied until they, too, were legion. With a cry of “The Dreamland!” the army of guards joined battle.
Roan ducked under the arm of the larger ruffian attacking him, and jabbed the smaller one in the kidneys with the end of his staff. The latter fell flat, but the originals were joined by plenty of reinforcements, all roaring obscene war cries. Roan threw himself back against the wall, striking and striking with the staff. Its length was slowly whittled away by the endless blows of swords and clubs. Every time he knocked down one foe, another took his place. The enemy never seemed to grow any fewer.
Suddenly, dozens of Hutchingses, side by side with as many Alettes, broke through the line of identical ruffians. Three Lums formed a defensi
ve barrier, and pulled Roan to a stone ramp where they were defending Bergold and the women.
Down below, Roan watched a hundred Spars form a flanking maneuver against a sea of mercenaries, who began to recede. A host of Alettes in formation marched Glinn up to join them. Then, Misha tumbled through the crowd to land at their feet, his long limbs splaying like a spider’s.
Behind him, one of the smaller mercenaries broke through the cordon, sword out, lunging for Roan’s heart. Roan fumbled with his folding knife. There wasn’t room in such tight quarters to open out his quarterstaff. Instead, he leaped back, and the enemy charged again. Bergold flipped open the map, dropped it on the mercenary’s head, then bonked him on the head with his condensed archive. The villain swayed on his feet and dropped to the floor, unconscious.
“There,” Bergold said, shaking the map. “It’s the most good it’s done all this journey.” Miraculously, he was able to fold it up and put it away in his knapsack. “Wonderful! That’s the last time I’ll use that until I see Romney.”
All of the Spars lifted up their heads and shouted at Roan. “Get, get going, going, lad, lad. This is your, your chance!” Without waiting for a reply, they waded back into battle.
“How do you suppose they multiplied like that?” Roan asked, as he, Leonora, Bergold, Misha, and Glinn ran up the ramp toward the inner chamber.
“I seem to remember a slip of poetry from the Waking World,” Bergold said. “ ‘My strength is as the strength of ten . . .’ I can’t remember the rest. It seems to have hit a multiple chord with the Sleepers.”
Chapter 35
They stopped upon the huge stone threshold, and paused, staring into the chamber beyond. The first thing that struck Roan was the silence. They could no longer hear the fighting or the waterfall behind them. On the far side of the portal, all was quiet. It felt as though it had been silent since the beginning of time.
Waking in Dreamland Page 41
