by Mark Albany
Right, I realized, as I remembered the last time I’d felt something like this. Of course, at the time there had been more of a sense of urgency as I was in the middle of a losing battle and was looking for a solution. At this moment, there was nothing but weightless freedom, and I enjoyed the dream, fully aware of what I was doing, and why.
Almost fully aware, anyway. Something tugged at my attention, drawing me closer and closer to the mountains in the west. Even as I struggled against it, my mind drawing me to a variety of interesting places along the way, I was inexorably pulled toward that spot in the world.
I wasn’t sure where it was, but as it felt like hours had passed in this little slice of heaven for me, and the sun still wasn’t showing, I decided that I had time.
I descended when I found a ruin that was almost completely overrun by the forest. Rocks jutting out from the undergrowth were what attracted my attention as I dropped and looked over the buildings. Old, ancient, all reminiscent of the ruins outside the Imperial City. I wandered over to them and placed my hand on one of the rocks, not entirely surprised when my fingers slipped right through.
I smiled, feeling a little sad. The other ruins, and even the cave I’d visited the last time had felt vibrant somehow, like they were full of mysteries that wanted and indeed needed to be discovered, but nothing like that struck me in this place.
To my mind, there was nothing here but emptiness, the way a house felt when its occupants were gone for good. Nothing there but memories that would not mean anything to me.
I shook my head and pushed off the ground as I looked west, toward the mountains that drew me. There were a handful of cities lying between me and them.
As dreams went, this had to be one of the oddest I had ever experienced. Then again, I didn’t remember too many of my dreams, so I couldn’t be utterly sure. An oddity in a world of oddities, but this was something I could enjoy. There were other enjoyable things about my life, of course, and like those, I fully intended to make the most of this opportunity.
My body seemed to follow my eyes, which gave me the impression that what I saw was real, but my body had to be some kind of projection, like it had been during the battle when I’d found the elves trapped in the cave. Something my mind did to come to terms with what it saw.
Were all dreams like this? I couldn’t really remember. I did remember some rather intense dreams back in my teenage years, where I was very aware of my body, but aside from that, I wasn’t fully sure.
I was pulled toward the west until I stopped in a small town nestled between two peaks. It looked like a trading post that had grown out of proportion as more and more people saw the likelihood of making a living in supporting the caravans that passed through this point. I looked around and realized that there was a very vital night life. Dozens of people were out in the street, talking and dancing to loud music.
As I dropped to the ground among them, I realized that they were moving a lot slower than I would have thought they could. I wasn’t sure why. From up in the sky, I hadn’t been able to make it out, but now it was noticeable. They couldn’t see me, and at one point I found myself actually stepping through them as they circled around a fighting match between two half-naked men who were already bloodied and bruised.
I narrowed my eyes and made out a handful of elves mixed in and joining in the revelries. I had wondered just how many of them had returned from where they’d been isolated for centuries. The fact that they had helped to hold the Imperial City from assault seemed to have spread, since the usual distaste for elf-kind wasn’t present in the faces of the humans they mingled with.
That was an interesting point, I mused, as the tug from the west became a bit more insistent. I growled, irritated, but finally decided to follow the sensation which drew me away from the festivities, and pushed myself away from the ground.
I hadn’t expected there to be any reaction to finally just following the draw to the west, but as I gave in and decided to see what was so enticing in that direction, I picked up speed. Now that I wasn’t aimlessly drifting through the sky like a leaf on the wind, it appeared that I could travel a good deal faster than any bird in this state.
As dreams went, this one became more fascinating by the moment as I realized that I actually had a good deal to discover in this world where everything was hard to see unless I focused my mind on it.
I finally dropped to the ground. My mind had been wandering and as it realized that I was falling, my stomach flipped, leaving me breathless, somehow, as I landed as lightly as a feather.
The spot itself was beautiful. There was a tall waterfall a little way to the left, dropping into a large pool right in the center. The cliff had to be at least thirty feet high, and at first, I wanted to see what the view was from the top. Hell, I might even choose to jump, considering the apparent lack of consequence in this dream of mine.
And yet, that wasn’t what had drawn me here. Now that I was closer, I felt something pulsing, vibrating into my consciousness, wanting to be found.
No, that wasn’t quite the sensation. I made a face as I tried to comprehend, focused on doing so since I apparently had little else to do until I woke up. A sudden movement in my peripheral vision distracted me.
Combat instincts kicked in before I realized it. My left foot quickly slid a little behind the right as I turned to face the possible threat while reaching for a sword that wasn’t hanging at my waist.
A hint of panic made me taste bile as I realized that, unlike the rest of the people I’d seen in this dream, whatever moved did so at a natural speed, or one that was comparable to mine. The fluid way it moved through the shadows cast by the almost-full moon through the trees drew chills from me. Goosebumps rose all the way up my back and over my arms. It looked dangerous.
I wasn’t sure what made the movement dangerous, but that was my initial instinct. I reached for my sword again and cursed softly when I reminded myself that it hadn’t followed me into the dream.
The noise impossibly caught the attention of the shadowy figure. It froze, and I made out a pair of pale blue eyes that refleced the moonlight before the figure stepped out from under the trees and into the small clearing where I stood.
A woman. An elf, too, if the pointed ears and long, turquoise locks were any kind of indication. She was tall, lean, and had an elegantly crafted recurve bow in her right hand, an arrow in the left.
But the most noticeable fact, aside from the way that she moved at regular speed, was that she looked right at me.
I turned around to make sure that there wasn’t some beast behind me that she might be looking at, but with nothing but the waterfall there, I realized that she actually was looking at me.
She nocked the arrow and raised her weapon as she took another tentative step forward, saying something in a language that I recognized as elvish. Time spent with three elves who sometimes forgot that I didn’t speak their tongue allowed to make out a couple of words. She was saying ‘who’ with the inquisitive intonation, and there was a threat involved along with a curse that I’d heard from Braire, which meant that she wasn’t playing around. When I failed to answer, she pulled the arrow back and let fly.
I blinked, and only thought to duck once the arrow was already in the air. A surge of pain rushed through my body as the arrow cut into me.
And then, it shot right through.
I touched my chest as I looked down to make sure my body wasn’t damaged. The arrow hadn’t even cut my clothes, I realized, as I turned to watch the arrow sail off and bury itself in one of the trees behind me.
“Impossible,” she said, which drew my attention back to her. She’d already drawn another arrow from a quiver at her hip. I stepped back and instinctively raised my hands, suddenly at a loss for words. What the hell could you tell someone who had just tried to turn your chest into a pincushion?
Wait, had she just said something in my language? Something that I could understand?
I looked at her as she walked o
ver to me. She wasn’t going to shoot me again, not immediately, but she did seem curious about whether or not I was real. Her left hand was extended, and her right held onto the bow and arrow. I stood my ground, not sure why I didn’t back away until I realized something that should have been obvious from the moment I saw her.
She was the one I had been drawn to.
I opened my mouth to say something. I fully expected her hand to pass right through me, but something touched my shoulder. I blinked. It didn’t go through. I looked down at her hand as I realized she’d touched me. I wasn’t the only one who felt it. Her fingers dug into the admittedly sore muscle and pushed me back a step.
“What the fuck?” I asked. She seemed equally shocked.
Before either of us could say anything else, though, something tore me from the place. I still felt her draw, but something dragged me at an impossible speed back over the mountains to our campsite, and back into my body.
As with most dreams that I dropped out of with a shock, I jumped, annoyed by the sudden weight that my body took on, but acclimating back to my natural state almost instantly as I settled back against the tree I’d been leaning on and gently rubbed my neck.
Aliana groaned and looked up from her spot on top of me, opening an eye to make sure that everything was all right before she resettled her head on my chest. “You okay?” she grumbled, still half asleep.
“Yeah,” I replied, and stroked her hair. “Just a bad dream, is all.”
She nodded, and within seconds she was asleep again, grumbling softly.
Sleep wasn’t going to come as easily for me, but I remained in place and watched as the sun started to rise. Unlike most other dreams, I remembered every second of the night before in every vivid detail. The freedom I felt. The emptiness of the ruins. The beauty of the little glade that I’d been in. The shocking feel of an arrow cutting through my chest, and the even more shocking sensation of someone touching me in a dream where I didn’t think that was possible.
That, and the very annoying thought that what I’d been in wasn’t a dream at all. Or maybe if it was a dream, it wasn’t only a dream. The state of my somewhat-drained pool of power told me that magical energy had been used, but not as much as during the battle.
I drew a deep breath and tried to shift into a more comfortable position, craning my neck a bit until I had a proper view of the sunrise.
4
“So, what happened last night?” Aliana asked, looking at me as I helped pack up the camp. As it turned out, we hadn’t actually used most of the bedrolls we’d brought for the occasion. We really needed to account for the fact that the four of us would generally sleep close together and probably wouldn’t need four sleeping mats. I faced Aliana, still not sure what I was going to tell her.
“I… had a bad dream, is all,” I said, not lying, but covering up the truth. I’d started to realize that it hadn’t been a simple dream, and in fact was something magical. Not something that I could understand. The last time I’d been in a situation like that, I’d needed to take three of the most powerful mages as familiars to pull it off.
And now I could do it in my sleep? How did that add up?
“Well, you said that,” Aliana replied with a small smile.
“I wasn’t sure you’d remember that,” I grumbled. “You looked like you were more than half asleep.”
“Of course?” Aliana asked as she tilted her head.
I shook my head. “Anyway, are you saying that you don’t believe me when I say it was a bad dream?”
“Well, everyone has bad dreams,” Noral said as she joined the conversation. “But you forget that the four of us are bonded together in more ways than one. Something is bothering you, and your mind is turning toward this dream of yours to the point of distraction.”
“What makes you think I’m distracted?” I asked, as I narrowed my eyes at her.
“The fact that you’ve been packing the pots without washing them might have something to do with it,” Braire muttered, loud enough for us to hear.
I looked down and realized that she was right.
“Fuck,” I snapped. I shook my head, pulled the pot back out and poured some water into it.
“You can talk to us, Grant,” Aliana said softly. “Just tell us what happened. It’s not unusual for mages to have bad dreams. If it was something prophetic, it might help us find wherever Abarat hid himself.”
“Nothing like that.” I shook my head. “There were… I don’t understand how it happened, but I think it had to do with the sex last night. Something happened that... “ My voice trailed off as I looked up from washing the pot.
I wasn’t sure why I heard it first, but the three sisters quickly reacted as well. I didn’t think that I was more attuned to my senses, so I assumed that they were distracted by what I’d said.
The sound of hooves pounding the ground was enough to drag anyone’s attention away from any conversation. I put the pot down and picked up the sheathed sword from where I’d placed it on the ground. Aliana drew her blades from thin air, as did Braire, and Noral drew magical power. We didn’t expect any kind of trouble from two horsemen—that was the number I guessed, based on their hoofbeats—but the sound could draw other things from the wilderness which would require a good deal more fighting prowess.
The horseman came into view. The horse itself was enough evidence to show that the rider had come a great distance and hadn’t paused for rest all the way there. It was a beautiful beast, but it was lathered in sweat. The previously pristine saddle and bridle were stained from previous exertions. I’d heard the term ‘don’t spare the horses’ before, but I’d never actually seen the effects of it until now. The man had two horses, which indicated that he’d alternated between them to allow some rest while still travelling at a hectic pace.
Both horses looked like they were ready to drop, as did the man, who swayed in his saddle. From the way he was dressed and the sigil on his chest, I realized that he’d come from the Imperial City, which was three days’ ride away. Since finding us would have required some tracking, I assumed that he’d stopped by the villages around us to gather information on our whereabouts, which would make it closer to four days since he had left the Imperial City.
From the look of the man and how he’d put his horses through their paces to reach us, I assumed that he would have caught up with us well in advance of our arrival here if we hadn’t used one of Aliana’s portals.
The question of whether he came looking for us or not was quickly answered as he dropped from the saddle, struggling to keep his feet as he walked the rest of the way. His horses remained in place, lowering their heads and browsing at the grass for nourishment that I assumed hadn’t been freely supplied.
“My lord… ladies…” The man looked little more than twenty years old as he came closer. Not much older than me, I thought with a small smile.
“Take a moment, lad,” Braire said as she narrowed her eyes. I realized that while I’d lowered my weapon, and so had Aliana, and Noral retracted her magic, Braire still had a knife in one hand, ready to attack if it was needed. “You look like you haven’t had a minute’s rest in days.”
“True enough,” the young man said with a small smile. “I have a message from the Imperial City, and was told to find you four in all haste. The origin of the message left no room for debate. My instructions are to find you and bring you back to the Imperial City at once, with no delay in returning.”
I looked at Aliana, who shrugged. She could get us back to the city in an eyeblink. Well, maybe more, if we were going to pull the boy and the two horses along. Definitely more than an eyeblink, though certainly less time than the days it would take us to get there on foot.
It wasn’t my decision to make, not really. I wasn’t fully all right with being summoned back when we were still cleansing the local area of the beasts and monsters that tore through their towns. We had taken care of most of them, but the few that remained were too much trouble for these
people to handle on their own. The Lancers that remained from the battle were doing their best, but were focusing more on the areas around the city proper, with smaller, outlying regions left to fend for themselves. I didn’t want to leave them just because one of the lords back in the city wanted help dealing with problems that the local mages could handle.
But then again, I hadn’t been a ‘my lord’ for too long, and I still wasn’t sure how such a summons should be treated. Did we say no and send the poor boy packing with the message that we were too busy to help, or did we send something a bit more civil?
Noral was the expert, since she’d dealt with these pompous lords and ladies for decades. I finished up with the pot instead, as Noral stepped forward. Through the bond, I felt her annoyance. She was still a little tired, and trying not to snap at the boy. There was something to be said for not killing the messenger, and certainly not taking our frustrations out on him for following orders.
Noral wanted to, I knew, but she appreciated that I wouldn’t take that sort of abuse well. A bond worked both ways, I realized, and it was her way of telling me that she was keeping control of herself.
I packed everything away as she turned her attention to the boy, who didn’t seem to mind the quiet pause as he tried to catch his breath.
“We are conducting important and dangerous business on behalf of the citizens of the Empire,” Noral said. She kept her tone calm and still a little sly, I thought with a smile as I belted the sword to my hip once more. “It is a task that we will not abandon easily. Who summons us so, and why should we abandon our task with such haste?”
The messenger pulled himself back up from leaning on his knees and sucked in deep breaths while trying to recover enough to deliver the message properly. I walked over to him and placed a light hand on his shoulder.
“You may not think it, but we’re not quite like the rest of the lords and ladies back in the Imperial City,” I said with a small smile as he turned to look at me. “Well, I think you could have guessed in my case, but the three of them aren’t quite what you would expect, either. Just deliver your message. I assure you, we don’t care about any of the pomp and circumstance.”
