By Robin D. Laws A tale of Dreamscape Part of Cathedral of Thorns
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Kendra landed on her backside in a field of red-lacquered, gigantic locusts. The insects fluttered angrily into the sky, buzzing into a crimson funnel cloud. A pair of cloudy lips opened in the sky, swallowing the thrumming mass of bugs. A few nights ago, Kendra would have paused to marvel at the strangeness of it all, but now she paid no attention. Lifting her bronze axe into the air, she commanded it to fly. She headed for the spot she'd bounced off of a few moments before.
She'd been prevented from proceeding, as if she'd slammed into an invisible wall, and a nagging hunch told her there was an important rule to be figured out here. Her reasons for heading to that stupid spot in the first place had been vague. Now they were a sideline issue.
In her waking life, as an attorney, her mastery of laws and precedents gave her power. If she was going to prosper here and gain the skills to save her sister, she'd have to work out the underlying fundamentals. Until she understood how it worked, people like the Provider would keep rolling over her.
She approached the site of her humiliating bounce: a pile of crates, now covered by mushrooms, beside a meandering stream. Kendra redoubled her speed, hoping to push through the invisible barrier.
Slamming pain coursed through her muscles. She'd collided with the barrier yet again, and now flew faster than ever, tumbling backward through the air. Kendra struggled to control her flight path. The world blurred around her. Unable to tell up from down, she flew freely, until she splashed down into the chill blue waters of a desolate beach. Gasping, she lurched from the waters and trudged, her clothing soaked, to the stony shore. Dozens of remote-control cars, bearing glowing pyramids or smiley faces of punched tin, patrolled the beach, whirring and bumping into one another.
If she tried it one more time, she'd maybe have enough evidence to figure out what was going on. This time she'd take a different tack. She'd try to go in sideways, slow and easy. Kendra flew to the spot, landing several hundred yards away from the place from which she'd been bounced. Essaying her best nonchalant stroll, she advanced on it in a sloppy zigzag. As she drew nearer, her boots grew progressively heavier, until she couldn't lift them. If she moved back, the pull of gravity gradually ceased, until she could move unimpeded again. She tried heading forward; again, her steps became leaden. Retreating from the barrier, she roared in frustration.
Tendrils of illuminated fog reached out for her; she stomped past through, chewing through the available evidence, groping for a theory. What was so important about that spot?
The Provider had beaten her there. They'd fought without stakes, a condition she hadn't fully understood. Did her loss to him explain this new barrier?
A deep voice sounded, so resonant that Kendra could feel it vibrate in her chest. "Hrm," it said.
She spun on her heels. Behind her towered a glittering dragon, its scales like sapphires. A silver crest jutted from its head, matching the shining line of frontal scales running from its chin to the end of its torso. Though nearly twice her height, with enormous semitranslucent wings spread at its sides, it radiated a sense of benevolent calm. A thin tail, topped with a knob of gold, seemed to test the air, as if sensing vibrations of unknown import.
Kendra kept her hands tight on the handle of her axe. "Where'd you come from?"
The dragon let the question hang in the air for a moment before responding. "Do you mean at this moment, or in a broader, more philosophical sense?" Its words rolled like waves against a beach. In the waking world, the dragon could make a fortune as a voiceover announcer. "These are two very different questions," it continued, "one more interesting than the other."
Kendra concealed her annoyance at the distractingly discursive answer. It was a favorite trick of expert witnesses under cross-examination. "How did you sneak up right behind me without my noticing?"
The dragon sighed indignantly. "Horatio the Resplendent does not need to sneak. I merely dreamed myself here. And thence I am."
"You're a dreamer, then?"
"Not in the sense you mean, fledgling. We dragons are pure creatures of this place, having dreamed ourselves into being. Some of us believe we dreamed your waking world into existence, as well. Though you will excuse me for saying that I do not feel we could have imagined such an unpleasantly turbulent place, even while unconscious."
Kendra warily shifted her weight. Another technique of the expert witness: to drown you in torrents of apparently useless information. "So to what do I owe the honor of this visit?"
"You are the one the werewolves spoke of, are you not? Kendra Vale?"
She braced herself. "Listen, I don't know what those Heart Renders told you, but --"
Horatio waved his clawed forearms in a gesture of peace. "Do not fear. They are an untrusting lot, prone to conclusion-jumping. I do not consider you a threat. To the contrary, from what I have heard, and what I sense, standing here before you, you possess great potential."
Kendra took a step back. "Well I've had quite enough of being shaped to my potential, thank you. I feel like a weapon everybody here's trying to grab hold of. I'm not working for you, dragon, or for anyone else."
The dragon smiled. "Good. But surely it will be no threat to your autonomy if I volunteer a snippet of intelligence?"
"What's in it for you?"
"Good question. We'll get to that momentarily. You've been trying to get to that spot over there, with the crates, yet you cannot pass. Presumably you wish to understand why."
She managed a grudging nod.
"Am I correct in surmising that you were recently bested by another dream lord?"
"Yes, that's right."
"You did not duel for stakes?"
"He wanted to, but I didn't know what that meant, so I said no."
The dragon reached up to tear a chunk of mist from a low-hanging cloud. He popped it into his mouth, where it melted like cotton candy. "Thus, as the loser in a duel, you face the default penalty for your defeat. You cannot re-enter the territory you fought in. If you keep trying to get there, it will be like one of those dreams where you try to get somewhere, but never can."
"How long does it last?"
Horatio considered the question, chewing slowly on his cloud. "The period of banishment? Many months, as you wakers reckon them. A year, perhaps. Who was your enemy?"
"He calls himself the Provider. You're supposed to think of him as a protective superhero, but what the name really means is that he provides recruits to this nasty bleached-out character with a swordcane."
"The Sweeper. Nasty indeed."
"He's the one who has my sister."
"By defeating you, this Provider has banished you from a large swath of valor territory. Thus you will find it difficult to find allies among the dreamscape's noblest denizens."
"So I should have agreed to fight for stakes?"
"No, whatever he wanted from you was surely worse. Dream lords may agree to fight for anything, and the dreamscape makes it so. They may even fight to the actual death, which applies also to your waking world." The dragon sniffed her, then the air around her. Its elegant snout pointed toward a row of crayon-bright hills on the western horizon. "Follow me, and I'll take you to where you wish to be."
"And where is that?"
"To be asked such an obvious question is mildly insulting."
They walked along a carpet of cactus fronds, declarations of love carved like gray scars into their green flesh. "And what do you mean by valor territory?"
"The following is a useful oversimplification. Each denizen of the dream lord is tied to one of four emotional states. We noble dragons have classified them as valor, passion, fear, and madness. The creatures tend to group together, to control territory, and to ally with like-minded dream lords."
"My enemies -- they're obviously fear and madness."
The dragon nodded. They came to a canyon of writhing spines; he lifted her into his arms and flew her over it. "You must ask yourself which impulse you wish to embody."
"Well it's obviously not fear or madness."
Horatio smiled. "To achieve victory, find the primal state within you. Feel it as you summon your creatures. Infuse them with your inner drive." They touched down on the other side of the canyon, in a valley of demented-looking plaster garden gnomes. Kendra expected them to come to life and attack, but they remained stonily still.
"And you're telling me this," Kendra ventured, "because you're aligned with either valor or passion. So if I defeat fear and madness, that's great for you. Listen, all I intend to do is save my sister."
"Kendra, you have doubtless been told already that the beings of this sphere can subtly determine events in the waking world. Your enemies affect dreamer's minds, spreading fear and madness. These dark impulses seem to be winning now, but dream lords may also bring courage and hope, if they so choose."
"And that's your agenda."
Horatio chuckled, causing his silver throat-plates to pulse in and out. "If you wish to call it that."
"You know where I fight to change the real world? In the real world, where I understand the rules. As far as this crazy realm's concerned, I have one goal, period. I'm getting Emily and getting out. All the other dreamers will have to look after themselves."
The dragon snatched a sunbeam from the air and used it as a backscratcher, hitting a difficult-to-reach spot between his wings. "You can't win that way," he said, off-handedly. They had reached the ridge of the crayon hills. Horatio sniffed the air and checked his wristwatch. "But you are where you ought to be."
He plucked an object from nowhere and tossed it at her feet. It was an oblong amulet of polished onyx, on which was mounted two cameo emblems of a ceramic material, glazed in a bright turquoise shade. One was a scarab beetle; the other, a glowering face. The amulet fit snugly in the palm of Kendra's hand.
"What's this?" she asked.
"If you deserve to wield it," the dragon blithely replied, "a moment of need will come, and you will understand." With a lazy flap of his wings, he took flight, disappearing behind a flock of airborne stone angels.
Cold winds pulled at her jacket. She surveyed the twisting landscape in all directions, wondering why the dragon had left her in this spot. Kendra tensed as the unmistakable whine of the Provider's boot rockets cut through the chill air. She ducked down; he landed a few dozen yards away, beside a sleek black sports car.
The dragon had taught her more than it had said out loud. Kendra found herself abruptly able to read between the lines, to intuit the rules of dreamland, as if she'd learned them by osmosis.
This spot, which Horatio had located for her, was the Provider's touchstone point, the place he habitually landed when he started dreaming each night. It made sense to start out from the same spot each time. She'd have to find herself a good touchstone, once she learned the geography a little better.
More to the point, she recognized that car. Right down to the vanity license plate. She felt her motivating impulse rising in her. It wasn't courage, which would be the most unquestionably admirable of the four choices. She'd been betrayed, hoodwinked, played for a fool. What that made her feel was passion. The passion for justice, for honesty, and, as long as she was being totally frank with herself, a good-sized fistful of old-fashioned vengeance.
She took the Provider by surprise, propelling herself at him, slicing the air to conjure a pair of doctor apes and an improved version of Liam the killer redcap, this time with his head stuck firmly to his shoulders. They slammed into her enemy, grabbing his chainsaw, smashing his faceplate.
Chunks of translucent plastic fell away, confirming what she'd already guessed.
The Provider was her so-called helper on this mission. Emily's ex-fiancé, Virgil Lucier.
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