The Queen of Dreams (The Dashkova Memoirs Book 6)

by Thomas K. Carpenter

  "No," I said, shaking my head, even though the blade was at my throat. "No. I'm sorry that he was killed—"

  "Murdered," she spat.

  "But we have to move. Now," I said.

  Eventually the fire in her eyes dimmed and she glanced around us. The growing time pools had almost closed us off.

  She shoved the knife in a hidden pocket on her belt. I threw the rope down and took her hand. We started running. The path narrowed. A pool blocked our way. I helped us leap across with use of my magic.

  But the pools kept growing. The whine was so high I thought my teeth might explode. The distance between us and the hut was growing despite our rapid movement. Then I realized the structure was walking away from us. The time pools were forcing the hut to retreat. The knobby yellow chicken legs picked a path across the alien stone, away from us.

  We ran and ran until I didn't think we could keep up. When Nasrine faltered at my side, I drew on the magic, flooding it into us like a restorative.

  After dodging around a pond-sized time shimmer, we made it within a dozen meters of the hut. It veered off the edge of the landscape and leapt towards a different twist of land hundreds of meters below. It landed with a puff of dust around its chicken feet.

  We stopped at the edge and watched the hut continue sprinting up and over a ridge, taking long ground-eating strides and then disappearing from sight.

  I mouthed the words, "Don't trust Morwen."

  Nasrine released my hand and turned to confront the growing time field. The shimmers rushed towards us like a wave, every piece of rock turning silvery. We were trapped, alone, and left behind.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Nasrine went for her knife as if she didn't want the approaching oblivion to steal her revenge. I made no move to stop her.

  "I should kill you."

  Tears streaked down her face as she strangled the blade in her fist. The blade reflected the approaching wave, but Nasrine appeared not to care.

  Dead or annihilated by the time pools? Did it really matter which one it was as long as the pain was brief? Once we passed into a time where we already existed, we would cease to exist.

  "I had nothing to do with it," I said, opening my arms wide, leaving my chest unprotected.

  Unless we went to a place we had never been. Hadn't I seen some pools reflecting unknown locations?

  The safe ground was disappearing by the second. I tried to spy over Nasrine's shoulder without inviting her to plunge the dagger into my heart. Realizing I had no time to determine which of the growing pools might provide an escape, I reached into the prophecies, and the moment I felt a tug in a particular direction, I dipped my shoulder and drove it into Nasrine's midsection.

  Nasrine brought her knee up into my gut. She clawed my head, and as we fell through the time pool, Nasrine stuck the knife into my back.

  Electricity crackled across our bodies. My mind expanded and contracted briefly before we landed, hard.

  The fall was mercifully short. I lay on top of Nasrine. Her head had slammed against concrete. The knife clattered to the ground, and my shoulder burned with injury.

  I rolled off, landing directly on the knife wound. Nasrine coughed and sputtered, trying to catch her breath. Before she could reach for it, I slid the blade away, regretting it the moment my peripheral vision caught the huge figure descending upon us.

  From my back, I sent a blast of sorcery behind me. The purplish-black wave slammed into the attacker. The magic curled around it as if it hadn't affected it.

  I prepared another burst, realizing at the last moment that my attacker wasn't what I thought it was when I first saw it. Suspended in a web of frayed ropes was a bronze statue of a warrior. In the red-gold sunlight, the androgynous figure had looked like it was leaping towards us. I was lucky my magic hadn't snapped the ropes. The statue would have crushed us.

  Nasrine cleared the spittle away from her mouth and sat up, hair plastered to her forehead. She looked like a madwoman, or a religious hermit, come out of the wilderness.

  "Where are we?" she asked, wiping her face with one hand and rubbing the back of her head with the other. She eyed the statue at first, then turned her attention to me. My demonstration of sorcery had reminded her that she was outclassed.

  We sat in the middle of a deserted city street. The limestone buildings were four stories high. Shops on the lower floors on both sides were dusty and appeared long abandoned. The reason for the statue's suspension wasn't immediately apparent. Ropes and pulleys held it above the ground in a flying pose, while the breeze rocked it back and forth.

  "We might want to move. Those ropes look frayed and ready to break. Would be a shame to travel to another time and then get randomly squashed by a falling statue," I said.

  "Another time?" she asked, disbelief echoing through her words.

  "You heard Morwen about where we were before. Those shimmering pools were portals into another time. Well, and place," I said.

  Nasrine dusted herself off and climbed to her feet, moving away from the suspended statue. I joined her on the other side of the street, holding my arm to my side because of the stab wound.

  Hanging in the sky was the largest sun I'd ever seen. The dull orange orb swallowed half of the horizon. Its burning face could be easily viewed without squinting.

  "What is this place?" she asked, then she saw me wincing and moved to investigate. "Mercy, Katerina. I've wounded you badly."

  I was about to chastise her tone, but then I remembered that I'd tackled her through the portal. She'd either reacted in self-defense or the motion had been a result of my shoulder into her midsection.

  When her exploratory finger poked through the hole in my jacket, I screamed.

  "Apologies," she said. "I'm not a very good nurse, am I?"

  "And I'm not a good patient," I said.

  I almost continued, saying: Catherine always complained that I was at my worst when wounded, before remembering her earlier accusation. A problem for another time.

  "We need to find a safe place, and food and water. We don't know how long we'll be stuck here," I said.

  "You think we can get out?" she asked, her jaw tightening.

  At this point, I didn't want to think about it. One problem at a time, which probably meant that I needed to get my shoulder stitched up. Sticky blood ran down my back.

  "Look for a clothier, or apothecary, or something like those," I said with a grimace.

  Each step jarred the shoulder, sending sharp pains through my side. Nasrine stopped me. Her forehead was hunched with concern, a far cry from when she was threatening to kill me earlier. I guess being stranded in a foreign place had changed the circumstances of our relationship.

  "Stay here," she said. "I'll go and find something. Moving is just making it bleed more."

  I tried to argue, but the shock of traveling through time had passed and the pain was making me unsteady. Nasrine led me to a cast iron lamppost with a glass globe on top. I couldn't tell if it was gas or electric.

  She maneuvered a folded handkerchief against the bloody wound and I leaned back to pin it against the post. The pressure was uncomfortable, especially along the ridges of the post, but better than moving.

  "I'll be right back." She smiled, scooping the knife off the concrete before she left.

  Which led me to wonder why Morwen had told us not to take weapons. Was this part of not trusting her? Had she tricked us into being stranded in another time?

  I wish I knew who'd left that other message: "Don't Trust Morwen."

  When Nasrine had been gone for longer than thirty minutes, I got worried. I also kept having the suspicion that someone or something was watching me. I couldn't move to check, and I didn't see anything in my field of vision, but the feeling was constant.

  When I wasn't checking for others, I spent my time studying the strange sun hanging in the sky. The dull orange red painted the city in faded autumn colors. I expected the sun to descend towards the horizon or rise to the
middle of the sky. Instead, it moved in a lateral motion. The edge started at the peak of a shop that had a weird ring as its sign and over the course of an hour, the edge had shifted two buildings over.

  At that point, I decided I needed to go look for Nasrine. Climbing to my feet resulted in a wave of dizziness. I had to hold on to the post so as not to fall over.

  My whole backside was soaked. I'd lost more blood than I thought. The handkerchief had absorbed enough blood to make it completely crimson.

  I staggered down the street in the direction Nasrine had gone. Maybe halfway to the corner, I doubled over and dry heaved. The pain from arching my back nearly sent me headfirst into the concrete road.

  Realizing that I couldn't take more steps without falling, I sort of compressed onto the ground like a drunk trying to sit on a short stool.

  When I opened my eyes after composing myself, I had the feeling again that something had been watching me. I tried to turn my head, but the pain was excruciating.

  "Nasrine," I whispered. It hurt too much to yell.

  I lay on my side. No matter how I held my shoulder, stabs of pain went down my side and through my arm. My fingers were tingly.

  "I'll just rest here for a moment."

  The world spun when I closed my eyes. I reached for the comfort of the prophecies, but they were dead silent. Like an inanimate metal ball in my head, where before they'd been a writhing mass of snakes.

  Something was wrong. I sat up, ignoring the heady rush, and focused on the prophecies. Despite their burden, they were the one thing that helped me feel safe. I knew they could lead to a Pyrrhic victory, but at least they continued. Which meant that I was still alive in the future.

  But I wasn't sure if we'd fallen through the right pool. What if we'd gone off course? The unresponsiveness of those coded-futures put a spike into my gut. While the prophecies weren't dead—I could sense faint movement within the sphere—they were dormant.

  I shivered with the implications. When I'd first received them, the burden of having them in my head and being manipulated by them had frightened me. Then over time, I realized they were a way for us to win the war against Veles.

  If they were no longer relevant, and we'd gone through the wrong portal, then it might indicate there was no way to leave this place and time to return to the hut. Possible futures swirled through my head: the best of them ending in slavery for the human race, the worst resulting in destruction of the multiverse. When I'd released the Star Eater, I'd known that I would encounter it again. The prophecies had indicated some final event upon which the fate of reality would hinge. But if I were stuck here, then I couldn't stop it at that fateful moment.

  A noise startled me to attention. Something had kicked a tin can, or something like it, on a rooftop a block away.

  A bubbling fear rose in my chest, reminding me that fates, futures, and Star Eaters meant nothing if I could not survive this deserted city.

  The slap of approaching footsteps spun me around. I whimpered in pain as I nearly unleashed my sorcery.

  It was Nasrine, returning. Her face was lined with worry. She had a bulging carpetbag in her arms.

  "The city is not deserted," she said, her accent coming out in her fear-laced words. She set the bag down and pulled out a needle and a roll of gut string.

  "Did you see someone?"

  She gave a tight shake of her head. "No. But a few times I heard things. Noises I care not to hear again. Like growling, but worse."

  She helped me out of the jacket as carefully as she could. I cried out a few times.

  "I'm so sorry, Katerina," she said, examining the wound. "I was angry. Furious even, but I did not really want to hurt you. The blade made a mess of your shoulder. I can't fix this right now. I need water and time to clean it up."

  She put the needle and thread back in the bag and pulled out a cream blouse. After a few starting cuts, Nasrine ripped the shirt into long strips. She performed the task on a second shirt before wrapping the pieces around my shoulder and midsection to hold the mauled flesh back and stop the bleeding. When she was finished, she helped me to my feet, putting a shoulder under my arm.

  "Which way?" she asked.

  "The city makes me claustrophobic. Let's head away from the center. Maybe we can find a place to hole up. Better chance of finding a well or water source," I said.

  Walking cleared up my dizziness, or maybe having Nasrine's support was doing the trick. I wanted to study her more, understand how she'd gone from murderous rage to helpful companion in the span of an hour. I didn't sense any duplicity, but if we were going to survive, I needed to understand.

  The city reminded me of Paris with its architecturally pleasing limestone buildings, except these looked a dull gray rather than crisp white. Wrought iron fences and balconies were frequent. Planting boxes filled with empty soil sat next to the street. Once, I saw the crisped brown outline of a long-dead plant.

  It was a wealthy city. The style and quality of its clear windows indicated their expertise. But why had they deserted it? Was it the massive sun? Had they fled its grotesqueness? But where would they go?

  It was strange to be able to stare into the face of the burning star. The radiated warmth was tangible, but insufficient to repel the chilly breezes that occasionally raced through the streets. This world was bathed in an eternal dusk.

  We marched for a few hours, taking frequent breaks. The feeling of being watched lessened the further from the center we traveled, but never completely went away.

  As the heights of the buildings changed from four down to two, and the iron fences disappeared to be replaced by concrete walls, I could barely keep my eyes open. I was about to ask Nasrine for another break when I heard her intake of breath.

  When I looked up, for a brief and powerful moment, I thought we'd been rescued. In an otherwise empty lot stood a rickety timbered hut with a front porch. The whole structure was suspended ten feet into the air by four wooden pillars.

  Both the similarity to Baba Yaga's hut and the incongruity with the surrounding buildings struck me as significant. We stumbled to the lot and stared up at the porch, too far above our heads to reach.

  "It's like a lesser version of the hut. Or someone mimicking it," said Nasrine, who was rubbing the blood back into her arm.

  "In the swamplands near Saint Petersburg, they build houses on stilts because of the floods and to keep wild animals away," I said.

  Nasrine glanced around. "I haven't seen a river near here and the air smells clean. We're not near an ocean either."

  At that moment, we both heard a distant noise and turned around, facing the city center. It sounded like thousands of coins being rubbed together. It was nearing.

  Far down the street, a wave of darkness slid across the concrete like a black cloth being pulled over a table. It went up and over the short walls along the buildings. Suddenly, the necessity of the house on stilts became apparent. Except we had no way of getting up there.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  "Let me boost you up," she said. "Then you can pull me up."

  I wasn't sure how I was going to do such a thing with my wounded back, but I didn't have a better plan. Climbing on her shoulders brought tears to my eyes. She lifted me in the air, and I thanked the fates that she was not a slight woman.

  My chest hit the edge of the porch. I would have to pull myself up the rest of the way. The first time I tried to put pressure on my arms, I nearly blacked out from the pain. Only Nasrine's steady base kept me from falling.

  "Quickly, quickly. Whatever it is, is moving faster now," she said.

  Due to the injury and the all-day hike, I barely had reserves to give, but drew on what I could, using what little magic I had available to struggle onto the porch. I might have been screaming the whole time, and when I was up, I lay on my side, heaving.

  "Now me," she said, holding her arms out.

  Who was I kidding? I couldn't pull her up. I barely got myself up.

  The black c
arpet approached. They appeared to be insects, millions of them. The clacking of their mandibles was horrible, so loud it was hard to think. If they reached Nasrine, there'd be nothing left but bones after they passed.

  "Hurry!"

  The wave of insects was about to overrun Nasrine. She was jumping up, trying to catch the edge on her own.

  Despite the impending danger, I forced myself to think. Whoever had used this place had to be able to get up and down without aid. There had to be a way up. I ran around the porch. The answer was on the other side. I kicked the rope ladder down to Nasrine.

  She scrambled up and we pulled it up behind her. She flopped onto the porch, eyes wide with fright. It was like an avalanche traveled beneath us.

  "I thought you'd decided to abandon me to them," she said warily.

  "I knew I couldn't pull you up."

  After a moment of thought, Nasrine nodded. "Thank you."

  We watched as the insects passed. It appeared they were beetles. I wondered if they were related to the flesh-cleaning beetles from my old bath, or possibly from Gallasid, but I wasn't willing to find out. Even those had been rather frightening.

  "What keeps them from climbing up here?" I wondered aloud.

  "When I ran under the hut to the ladder, I saw something hanging from the bottom around the pillars. Maybe they keep them away," she said.

  I pointed to the doorways of the buildings. Insects flowed under the doors and sometimes spilled out of open windows.

  "I wonder if this is why the city was abandoned?" she asked.

  I tried to shrug, but the effort was too painful, so I grimaced instead. "People who could make this city could defend against a few bugs."

  "A few?" Nasrine raised an eyebrow.

  The insects took another minute to pass, the trailing edge more of a tattered carpet. After a while we could no longer hear them as the wind was blowing the other way.

  Before we investigated the interior of the hut, Nasrine paused, her head tilted in thought.

  "Do you remember seeing any vehicles? Steam carriages, or carts? Anything?" she asked.