He blinked.
A hookah and a small antique timepiece on a chain.
Dreamtime.
“Wake me,” he said.
Suddenly, the lights in the room began to flash red and the people leapt to their feet.
“Spoke Three Breach,” came Reedy’s voice. “Dogs in the gap.”
“Damnation,” said Duck. “Let’s go.”
And like a black wave, the First Line marched out of the corridor, weapons in hand.
“Seven,” said Ward. “We have to go.”
“You’re not real,” said Solomon. “This isn’t real. This is Dreamtime. Winter Water and Snow. I hear him.”
Ward grabbed his arm. He could have sworn he felt it.
“Seven, you’re not well…”
“And you’re not real.”
He stepped back again.
“Seven, if those things get in here—”
He looked down at his hands. They were covered in spots.
“Sireth benAramis, I know you can hear me so wake me.”
Solomon? You hear me?
Yes I hear you
“Seven, please.”
“Wake me like you did before.” He closed his eyes, scrunched them tight. “Wake them all. All of them. Wake us, please. I can show you what to do. Just think it, like you did with me.”
Screens?
Yes, Screens
And he went back in his mind to the days when he’d been on the inside, when he’d sent people under and brought people back, when he himself had gone under and been brought back by a mongrel.
“Seven, you’re scaring me…”
Her voice the mirror, the dream, the lie
Dreamtime
All the way down?
Power
Yes
Turn it on
How?
Just think it on that’s how everything happens in Dreamtime
Damaris Ward gripping his shoulders, but he doesn’t feel her hands. Her face ripples, crystalizes like ice racing across a chilled glass. Her breath frosting at her lips, frosting at his lips, his face reflected in the case. Ice in his veins burning his fingertips, stabbing his limbs, eyelids frozen shut and with a silent scream, he inhales the CP70 deep into his lungs and wills Dreamtime to shatter and Reedy to go to hell and all these in Sleeplab 3 to wake.
What are you doing, Doctor Solomon? asks Matty Reedy
Waking up, you son of a bitch.
They are in Dreamtime, Sireth
Dreamtime Farsight Vision?
Yes the same
Sleepers?
Wake them Wake them all
***
Wake them all
***
“Dragons…” breathed the Alchemist. “I have never seen a dragon.”
“Neither have I,” said the Scholar. “Kerris has. Many times, although his stories always change. I always thought he was just making things up, but now…”
Four dragons, their snakelike bodies curling from floor to ceiling in vertical glass. One long, one gold, one pearl, one black. Long tails, short legs, great claws, rows of dagger teeth.
“Are they alive?”
“I don’t know. I think they’re frozen, like Solomon was. Although they’re not frozen. But I don’t know what it is. Does that make sense?”
“No,” but she stepped forward, baby propped on one hip, ran her long fingers across the plex.
“Four dragons,” she breathed. “The Weeping Dragons under the mountain…”
“Yes!” Fallon exclaimed. “I was just talking about them to Kerris! Wow…”
“Dragons have strong magic,” said Sherah. “If they wake, they may help us.”
“Well, I don’t think we should be the ones to wake them,” said Fallon.
The tigress turned to the center of the room, toward a tall station of plex and glass. It was impossible to see inside because of the grime.
“Why not?”
“It would require too much power and change too many things.”
“Change,” the Alchemist purred, “Is the very nature of Alchemy…”
Fallon raised a hand to the station and smoothed a section with her palm. The young bear did the same, and soon, they could almost see through the section of plex.
Her heart thudded in her chest.
“There are books in here.”
She glanced over.
“’Rah, we need to get these books.”
“How?”
“Well, I think you could ask, considering it thinks you’re the caretaker and all.” She looked down at the young bear. “I can’t even imagine the knowledge that would be inside those books.”
The Alchemst said nothing, lost in the scales and the clouds and the ice.
“Yuanfen,” she said finally.
“What has fate got to do with books?” murmured the Scholar, lost in the papers and pages and spines.
“Everything. This is the Nine Peaks Mountains and we have found the Weeping Dragons. We are here for a reason.”
“What reason?” Fallon turned.
“Destiny.” She stroked a long speckled finger across the frosted glass. “We need to wake them.”
“Oh, no. No, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
“I need to wake them.”
“No. No, not yet.”
“The Necromancer says to wake them.”
“Who?”
“The Seer says to wake them.”
“Sireth?”
“I hear him. He is calling me.”
“Why?”
“He needs me. I owe him.”
“Rah, I don’t understand—”
“Dharma is chasing me. She demands payment.”
“No, not this way.”
“If I wake them, they will be hers. It is a good payment.”
“No, ’Rah. This is dangerous. You’re not Seiya Fehr.”
Sherah locked eyes with the Scholar, clutched little Kylan to her chest.
“We are here for a reason, Scholar,” she said. “This is my yuanfen.”
Fallon’s heart stopped.
“This is Seiya Fehr,” the cheetah announced.
“Welcome, Seiya Fehr.”
“No, Rah. Please don’t.”
“Level Ten, Push.”
“Level Ten Push not recommended, Seiya Fehr. Please allow—”
“Seiya Fehr, Caretaker, commands Level Ten, Push. Now.”
Brilliant white light blazes from the darkness, blinding them and driving them to their knees. All the blazing, brilliant, blinding light as suddenly, the mountain roars to life.
***
Wake them
Wake them all
His mind stretching reaching across the world
A desert not Sahood or Hiran
Wheels within wheels
Wake them
He can see Solomon in the screens but Solomon is not there
He can see Solomon is the corridors but Solomon is not there
Deeper
Solomon in the wheels
Wheels within wheels
Focus on one wheel Solomon find Solomon follow his thoughts find him
You hear me?
Yes I hear you
Screens
Yes, screens
All the way down?
Power
Yes
Turn it on
How?
Just think it on that’s how everything happens in Dreamtime
Dreamtime Farsight Vision
Yes the same
Sleepers
Wake
Dragons have strong magic
The Alchemist?
Wake
The Court of Teeth and Claws
Wake
For the sake of the Empire and for the love of our Empress, kill the child within her. Kill
The yellow—
His wife
the red and then the white
An eye for an eye
Seiya Fehr Level Ten Push
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All the blazing brilliant blinding light as the mountain roars to life
Soundlessly, wordlessly, he screams and the palanquin bursts into flame
Mercy
There is a time when all times converge, when all threads of the world cloak come together before splitting apart. A time when all breath is stilled, all hearts have stopped and all history funnels down to a single event. No one is really certain how the events in a mountain in the New World could affect a Seer several hundred miles away on a narrow road to a subterranean monastery, or how his reaction could affect situations thousands of miles away in all directions. Some say Gifting; others say Magic. Others said it was because he had died and come back, but at that time, he was not the only one known to have done so. He had often joked about being the most powerful man in the kingdom. Perhaps, all things considered, he was.
Perhaps it was the Dragons, slumbering under glass in the Nine Peaks Mountain. Perhaps it was the young necromancer with the golden eye, bending fire and summoning rats. Perhaps it was the link the Seer shared with the Ancestor and his desperate need to awaken once again. Then again, Ancestral ‘power’ was always a dangerous thing, killing more often than not, and he would be the first to acknowledge first hand how it had claimed the lives of the Council of Seven. So this time, when the new Seiya Fehr initiated the Push, with all of them asking something of him all at once, unknowingly and unwittingly, it was bound to happen. And of course, there was always the matter of Alchemy.
Transcendence became trigger, setting in motion a chain of events that most certainly started the war with the Ancestors. Perhaps it was inevitable, perhaps not. Regardless, it began that moment, on the road to Agara’tha when Sireth benAramis told everything to begin.
***
WAKE
Nevye’s head split with the vision and he dropped to his knees. Beside him, Setse also dropped, as one by one, all the Oracles did likewise and a blood-chilling howl rose from the mountain as the Court of Teeth and Claws woke up.
Like a river of tar, rats swarmed down the snowy steps of Tsaparang.
Setse pushed to her hands and knees.
“Take the children!” she cried. “Run!”
But her words were drowned out by the screams of the Oracles, the roars of the Uürekh and the thundering, chittering mass that flowed like living lava down the mountainside. She grabbed two Oracles in her arms and leapt down toward the villagers, freed aSiffh from the ropes that bound him. The children followed and one by one, she loaded them on the young stallion’s back.
Nevye took a deep, cleansing breath and clapped his hands together. When he flung them apart, flame shot out in a fan, high up to rain down on the swarm like fiery hail. The Uürekh pulled their clubs and turned, lumbering up the mountainside to meet the rats with relish.
“Will you do nothing, men of Khumul?” Setse shouted. “You have insisted on your prowess as archers! Prove your worth by stopping this horde, or by saving the lives of these children! One or the other. There is nothing else!”
Soon, a volley of arrows rained down on the swarm and the rats stumbled over each other, impaled and burning as a second wave hit. Those that made it through were met by the Uürekh and were smashed into pebbles by the power of their clubs. From the lintel step, Nevye sent a second hail of fire and the smell of burnt flesh carried down with the wind.
Setse smacked the stallion’s haunch and aSiffh sprang forward carrying six children on his back. The older ones ran after him, not nearly as fast but spurred on by the horse ahead and the rats behind.
She glanced around. Zorig was not with them.
“No!” shouted Nevye but the man defied his age, pushing through the snow towards the swarm. He spun around at the sound of his name.
“I’m old!” he called down. “I can’t run! I can’t fight! But I can give them time…”
He spread wide his arms.
“Save the little ones, I beg you!”
And the wave struck his legs first, causing him to lurch. Quickly, the creatures climbed his trunk like a tree and his knees buckled and he fell. Soon he was nothing more than a mound of roiling blackness and bloody snow.
Nevye snarled and set him on fire. The squeals and the hissing smoke reached up to the skies.
A bellow from above and the black bear, Raal, whirled as the rats scaled his back. He flailed his twin clubs but the creatures soon covered him, their flashing teeth and manic claws rending his dark pelt to ribbons. Nüür lumbered toward him, swinging her clubs and sending scaly bodies flying, but once Raal dropped to one knee, he was gone in a heartbeat.
Like Zorig, Nevye lit him as well. The squeals sounded like claws on slate.
Above them all, Silence swept down, snatching rat after rat in his lethal claws and removing their eyes with a dagger beak. Dropping them with a flick of his wings, he spiraled down for another.
Nevye glanced back, trying to find Setse in the chaos. He saw her amongst the chorten, dagger drawn, dancing like she had on the Field of One Hundred Stones. She was bloodied and torn but still moving; stab, swing, leap, slice. She was beautiful and deadly and he was proud to have been her choice. He prayed she did not go down like Zorig or Raal. His world would end if she did.
Beyond her, the villagers sent volley after volley but they were only villagers, not warriors. Their quivers did not refill and soon, with only chains and axes, they would run or die or both.
Beyond that, past the chorten, aSiffh and the Oracles raised snow in their wake like dust. Good, he thought to himself. They might be able to live this day, although they would have no hope for tomorrow.
He frowned, spying another dark shape against the snow. It was Sev, separated from the rest and running away from them all across the wide plain. Together, they had little chance. Alone, she had none. That was the fate of Oracles, it seemed.
He turned back. The wave was almost upon him. He closed his eyes, flung his hands wide and fire rained down on the mountainside once again.
***
In the Prayer Room of the Empress, she is writing.
She kneels on a riot of silk cushions at a desk made of ebony, working on a declaration regarding the position of the Crown on miracles and magic. It will be read in the morning to the entire Royal Court and will reveal the existence of Ancestors to the kingdom at large. She is trusting her War Advisor when he says a virgin birth will be nothing if the people believe in Ancestors once more.
She pauses. It is her destiny to be War Empress. Everything in her short life has prepared her for this.
Her Bushona Geisha are hovering, filling both her tea and her inkpot with remarkable frequency but she knows they are terrified. They hate the new sham’Rai but they hate more the fact that she is necessary. Shame has come to the house Fangxieng. They, in part, have allowed it.
She dips her brush, wipes it carefully on the side of the pot, pauses once more.
This time she frowns. Her belly—
“Excellency?”
She is a warrior now, dragonborn in a Dragon year. She takes a cleansing breath and dips again.
WAKE
As if time is slowed, the brush slips from her fingers and drops to the desk like a child’s toy, end to end to end to end. Tok tok tok tok. Ink splatters across the parchment.
She doubles forward, arms folding around her belly, mouth open but bringing no sound. The Geisha rush toward her as the Dragon Crown slips from her head and into the cushions and the silk.
***
WAKE
A brief beta burst from the wire caused Tony Paolini to open his eyes.
He sighed, blinked once and took a long, deep breath, exhaling it slowly before sitting up on the cot. The light in the room was attuned to the wire, as was the room’s temperature. Normally, it would begin minutes before he awoke, gently teasing his consciousness back to the land of the living from the deep, thorough and programmed world of subterranean sleep. But this was different. Ever since Jeffery Solomon and his genetically engine
ered monsters set foot on the Mailand shore, everything had been different. Life was a disaster-management exercise now, thanks to Solomon.
“What now?” he asked.
“We got a spike, sir,” said the voice inside his head.
He tapped finger and thumb together and spread the ionspace in front of him. It showed pinpricks of light surging at a set of coordinates.
“Where is this?” he asked. He didn’t need to pinch the wire. The SmartALYK system was one of the few things that actually worked in SleepLab 2.
“NPM, sir,” came the voice.
He frowned.
“What about it?”
“Lit, sir. Levels off the charts.”
He cursed under his breath.
“I told her it would happen,” he said.
“Sir?”
“Nothing. Get Cece Carr rigged in. We’ll need to scramble.”
“Would you like me to alert the REDmarks, sir?”
“Yuh.”
The wire fell silent, and he sat in the dim light, studying the pips between his hands.
NPM was lit. He wondered if it was still underground or beginning the impressive rise from the rocky plateau that was Tibet. He had seen it only once before he’d joined the SANDMAN project, was dreading the moment when the REDmarks showed it to him again.
He reached for a protein square, slipped it between his teeth and his gums, feeling the enzymes fizzle and pop as they began to break down. God, he just wanted a java. Instead he’d just have to settle for a freeze-dried cube of tea.
Winter Water.
He shook his head.
The wire buzzed.
“I have Director Carr pulled, sir.”
He nodded, tapped his fingers and thumbs once more.
“Bring her up,” he said as he reached for the tea.
***
WAKE
Light blazed from the high ceiling and the ground shook beneath their feet.
“NPM Protocol Override, Seiya Fehr Caretaker. Elevation One.”
On the floor, Fallon wrapped her arms around the young bear as all around, cases hissed and shattered. Plex and ice rained like arrows around her. Screens flashed and spun, and the stations flashed and spun, and it just seemed like everything, everywhere, was flashing and spinning and Fallon was dizzy. Voices echoed through the room in languages she didn’t understand, and underscoring it all was little Kylan, wailing in infant terror.
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