The Queen of Dreams (The Dashkova Memoirs Book 6)

by Thomas K. Carpenter

  "This seems familiar," I said, keeping my attention split between the objects ahead and watching for more fliers. "It reminds me of Stonehenge. Have you heard of it?"

  Nasrine shook her head.

  "It's a ring of stones like these in England, except Stonehenge is not as expertly manufactured. No one knows who made them or why," I explained.

  When the object in the center came into view, my breath quickened. It was a vertical ring, like a circus hoop made of silvery metal with intricate designs across the surface. The material was the same as the silvery gauntlet that we'd taken from the Uthlaylaa and then later lost. At the center of the ring, a hazy darkness formed like mist at midnight. The space swirled and shifted by unseen winds.

  "It's a portal," I said.

  Nasrine's face brightened. "We can get out of here?"

  "I...I don't see why not," I said.

  Moving within the inner space between the standing stones and near the silvery ring made me nervous since we couldn't see the rest of the massive space outside of it. Straight up, the sky was golden orange. The inner surfaces of the giant monoliths were ragged and irregular, like molting skin.

  Nasrine reached out to touch the portal.

  "No," I said, waving my hand to caution her away. "Not until we understand it."

  Her lips were flat, her brow knitted. The words came out thick with accent. "I want to leave."

  "It doesn't look right. I've traveled by portal, but this doesn't look entirely the same. You don't want to get stuck in some place worse," I said.

  After a moment of contemplation, Nasrine agreed, though her shoulders were slightly slumped to show disappointment.

  Upon inspection, the ring revealed further secrets. There were three inner pieces that were covered in symbols. Though I did not want to disturb their position to confirm my suspicion, I thought that the three rings could rotate, aligning different symbols. At the top of the outer ring, a line formed, suggesting the symbols that rested there were meaningful. I noted symbols that matched what our mystery woman had written on her parchments.

  "She was trying to figure out how it worked," I said. "Or where it went."

  Nasrine spun around as if something was coming in fast, but when I turned to match her direction, she smiled sheepishly.

  "I thought I heard something. I guess not," she said.

  "I wonder if she figured it out and went through the portal," I said.

  "Or one of those winged creatures got her," said Nasrine quietly.

  The three symbols at the top were the bird symbol with lines over its head, a skull, and the outline of a woman.

  "Maybe they don't go south as you suggested. Rather they leave the planet entirely through this portal, headed to safer realms," I said.

  Nasrine's sharp intake of breath worried me. "That is not good for us. If true, it means the sun will be going down for a long time. If we cannot leave before then, we won't survive."

  We stared at the portal in silence.

  "Now that we've seen it, let's return to the hut and go through her notes. Maybe we'll understand them better," I said.

  "I want to go through it," said Nasrine with urgency. She was wild-eyed, with a manic energy about her, like one more bit of trouble would pop her like a soap bubble.

  Going back to the hut would only encourage her to foolishness. I had to prove to her that we needed more investigation. After searching around the ground, I found a chip of stone. I faced the portal and, with grim nonchalance, threw it through the ring. When it landed on the other side, I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

  "We can't go through it right now," I said. "It's dormant, and we don't know how to wake it. Trust me. We need to go back."

  A darkness welled up in Nasrine's eyes, but she nodded. She had a warrior spirit, but even the fiercest warrior could be broken eventually. I hoped the horrors of the last few weeks would slide off her shoulders.

  The return to the hut was uneventful. We threw ourselves into the documents, scouring them for new clues now that we understood the reason for our mystery woman's interest in the center of the city.

  Nasrine's frustration remained. I could see it in the tension in her shoulders each time she reviewed the documents.

  I wasn't much better. Adding to that discomfort was an ache in my stomach from eating the tangy bacon for weeks on end. I dreaded eating. It was bacon no longer to my tongue. Eating had become a ritual. My teeth were getting looser. I could move one in the back with my tongue, and my gums bled often.

  But the tension wasn't just about the portal, or the fact that we were stranded on a dying planet. We'd never resolved the conflict between us, the one revealed at the time pools. I tried to wait for the proper moment, when Nasrine wasn't so tense, when her frazzled hair wasn't being wound around her fingers like a spring. But I knew things were only getting worse. She was taking long walks in the city between study sessions, each one getting longer and longer. I worried she'd lose track of time and the beetles would find her. So when she was sitting on the porch, a few hours after waking, watching the sun creep along the horizon, one third of it hidden, I approached her.

  "Tell me about your father," I said.

  Nasrine flinched as if I'd poked her with a hot stick. Anger smoldered off her brow.

  "You don't deserve to know about him," she said, keeping her gaze on the bloated sun.

  I chose my words carefully before I spoke. "I promise I will tell you anything I know, if by chance I know something meaningful, if you tell me about him and the circumstances of his murder. But know that I was in and out of court over the years, so I make no guarantees."

  Nasrine glared at me, half in tears, half in anger. Thunderclouds bloomed on her forehead, raging until she closed her eyes. Then tension disappeared like smoke.

  When she opened her eyes again, she was as calm as razor. The intensity worried me.

  "My father, Asil, was Chief Inventor to the sultan. He'd been charged with creating weapons to defend our noble empire." Her eyes, dark with accusation, flickered across me. "At first the sultan was only worried about the technological advances of the Americans. But then he became worried when he heard rumors of ambitions from your Catherine about restoring Byzantium. My father had been working on an electricity weapon that would launch ball lightning over great distances like a cannonball, killing nearby soldiers and exploding on impact. He was close to solving the fundamental technological problems when the assassin Yakov Bulgakov poisoned my father, killing him before he could complete the project."

  A chill settled on my bones. My face was numb. "I remember that—not the assassination, but the war and Bulgakov. The Ottoman Empire attacked Russia, and we responded quickly and ruthlessly."

  "The sultan was only retaliating, striking back to show your empress we were not afraid," Nasrine said defiantly.

  "I always wondered why our troops had been positioned so well to respond to the attack. At the time, I thought it the luck of the gods that we could hit back without losing valuable positioning," I said, fingertips hovering over my lips.

  "So you are admitting that it was an assassination?" she asked.

  A tremor had formed in Nasrine's voice, signaling the dangerousness of the territory.

  "I was not aware of the plan to assassinate your father," I said carefully.

  She frowned. "Your tone suggests otherwise."

  I waffled between an outright lie and a shaded version of the truth before finally speaking my mind. I settled on the latter, reminded of my reliance on my Russianness to get me through problems. Eventually, I needed to discard that part of me.

  When I spoke, I did so carefully and deliberately. "I was not aware of the plot specifically, but Catherine did ask my advice about a matter during that time period. She asked me whether it was better to wait until the weeds were high enough to bother or cut them down while they were still freshly grown—"

  Through clenched teeth she said, "My father was not a weed!"

>   After a suitable pause, I continued, "Even if it meant losing a valuable scythe."

  Nasrine faced away from me. The tendons in her neck could be plucked like a violin string. "And what did you say?"

  "I told her that weeds always had to be taken care of before they could take root and ruin a good garden. I'm sorry, Nasrine. While I did not know the name of the man who would die, I knew that someone's life was on the line. To me at the time, one man's life wasn't worth the safety and security of the empire," I said.

  Nasrine sat quietly for a long time. When she stood up, I flinched, but she didn't notice. She went to the rope ladder, climbed down, and set off into the city.

  I stayed behind, stewing in the realization that I should have lied to her. Events were delicate already, but now I'd stirred up old emotions, putting both our lives in danger. More than ever, with the sun disappearing for what could be a long, long time, we needed each other.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Nasrine returned the next morning, or at least what I designated as morning by my pocket watch, bedraggled with bed hair. Her eyes were puffy and red. I assumed she'd slept in one of the many abandoned nearby buildings.

  I was sitting at the table, examining the symbols on the parchment for the millionth time, when she came in and wordlessly added wood to the fire, crouching on her heels and blowing on the coals until flames erupted.

  "I want to go through it," she said without inflection.

  We both knew what she meant by it. The refusal died in my throat when she turned her head and I saw the determined look in her eyes. I got up and gathered a traveling bag. I wanted to take notes of my own when we returned to the portal.

  "Leave the fire, it'll just go out while we're gone," I said.

  Nasrine ignored me, blowing on the base until it was blue red and sparks crackled around her breath. She kept adding wood, shoving log after log into the fire until it bulged with flame. The roaring flame sucked air into the room, pulling a breeze past me.

  "Nasrine? Are you trying to burn the hut down?" I asked, but the words felt incomplete.

  Flames licked out of the hearth, blackening the bricks. Nasrine stood too close to the fire. I wanted to pull her back to safety.

  She glanced back to me. Pain, sorrow, relief—these emotions were on display, unmistakable, undeniable.

  Guessing her intent, I took a step towards her, too late. She shoved her upper body into the raging inferno. An explosion of sparks blew from the fireplace around her body. The clothes on her body charred black and flaked off.

  I tried to grab her by the hips and pull her away, even though I knew it was too late. But the heat was a shield keeping me away.

  I held my arm across my face, scooting forward and then back. Nasrine stayed in the fire.

  Then, like a great in breath, the fire sucked into the hearth, into Nasrine. She pulled herself out with such grace, like a giraffe's long neck, that the motion was inhuman.

  Nasrine's dark skin was richly bronze. Every bit of hair had been burnt from her body. A pile of ash from her clothes lay around her feet. Those painfully pale blue eyes, a reminder of her family name, revealed the depths of sadness upon her soul.

  "Nasrine," I whispered.

  "Yours is not the only Otherland heritage," she said. "I wanted this to remain a secret, but without my true form, I would not be able to touch the magic of the portal."

  Naked and bald, she was alien, sensual, beautiful. I found it hard not to reach out and touch her. But I sensed no reciprocity. Whatever humanity she'd shown me before had been wiped out when she assumed her new body.

  "How did you know about your true form?" I asked.

  She answered without inflection. "One of my ancestors was burnt at the stake for a trumped-up crime. His accusers paid the price for that mistake."

  "You are Jinn?" I asked, to a nod from Nasrine.

  She widened her eyes, their brilliance flashing with a hypnotizing quality.

  "Be warned that I am a danger to you in this form," she said.

  "Can you change back?" I asked, but somehow I already knew the answer. It was the reason for the sadness.

  When she didn't answer, I asked another question. "Are you planning on killing me? For my role in your father's death."

  "I haven't decided," she said.

  Before, when Nasrine had just been a woman with a small knife, I hadn't been worried. Now that she had powers that could equal or exceed my own, the danger had become real.

  "We should get to the portal then," I said, hoping to keep her on task.

  Before we gathered our bikes, Nasrine collected a cream sheet from an apartment, wrapping it around her body as a Roman stola. Whenever she stilled, even for a brief second, she resembled a statue.

  The ride to the portal seemed shorter this time. It was much darker due to the sun's straddling of the horizon. We left the bikes just outside the building-sized monoliths. As we approached the inner stones, I noticed a faint glow coming from Nasrine's bronze skin that wasn't a reflection from the sun's rays.

  "I bet you're handy in a blizzard," I said, trying to lighten the mood, but Nasrine stared back without emotion.

  I wondered if she knew she'd left part of her humanity behind when she'd changed. Just like the girl Nell had when she'd become a brook horse after drinking the potion from Matka.

  The flapping of wings disturbed us briefly, but the creature never made an appearance, leaving us to crane necks until we were certain it was gone.

  The portal was as we had left it. The midnight mist swirling within the loop.

  After watching the empty space between the three rings for a few minutes, I realized what the notations on the parchment meant.

  "The markings, the dots and angled lines, indicate the position of the symbols," I said.

  Nasrine spoke with firm purpose. "The symbols indicate the hut. Bird legs, house, and death. Baba Yaga's hut."

  "You've known that for a while, haven't you?" I asked.

  She nodded.

  The withholding of information was a sign she didn't trust me. Or had plans to move against me should the opportunity arise.

  Nasrine approached the portal, arms hanging at her side. The normal ticks and sways that made her a woman had been erased, though it made her no less sensual. After a brief examination, Nasrine's head rotated as she reviewed the object in a circular pattern, then she stepped forward, lifting her leg high to make it over the bottom edge of the loop, and moved through.

  A few sparks jumped from her body, like static on carpet in a dry winter, but otherwise there was no sign of her passing through the portal. Nasrine faced the opening squarely and stepped through again, with the same result as the first time.

  "It's not active..." I said.

  Nasrine ignored me and leaned her face near the symbols at the bottom of the silvery ring. Rather than crouch, she leaned at the waist, bending like a crane leaning over to take a drink.

  Her simple knife appeared in her hand. She tapped the portal a few times, testing, before hitting harder, keeping a steady pace. The tinging rang clearly through the cool, dark air. I thought she would stop after a few seconds, seeing that her percussion did nothing, but she kept it up.

  The rhythm tickled my memory, lurking there from some distant event I couldn't remember. Tilting my head to think, I saw signs of movement on the inside of the giant monoliths. Flakes peeled away from the surface and then dropped into the open space, extending wings to thrust back into the darkness. More and more of the creatures were releasing themselves from the walls, but I could only see the ones that passed through the narrow cylinder of back dropped sky. Judging by the quivering surface, there were thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of those creatures.

  "Nasrine," I hissed. "Nasrine."

  When she didn't stop, I hurried to her side and grabbed her arm. She snapped her head at me and glared.

  "Look. Up."

  Her eyes went up before her head followed. A frown formed on her lips.<
br />
  "We should leave now," I said. "While we still can."

  Wordlessly, she nodded. Together we hurried from the center of the monoliths while shapes circled in the upper reaches. A few times, the flap of leathery wings came near the bottom, and I reflexively ducked, but we made it out safely.

  We reached the bikes and began our return, pedaling in silence, until the earlier rhythm announced its origin. I blurted out the answer before I considered the implications.

  "It's from the ice room with William's body!"

  Nasrine gave me an odd look. Then I realized I couldn't reveal Santiago's part in the investigation.

  "I wanted to figure out who might have killed William, so I went to see his body. While I was examining the wounds, I heard tapping coming from the back of the ice cave. Your tapping was exactly the same. The portal goes into the hut, into that room, I think," I said.

  Nasrine asked a question, but not the one I expected. "What did you find on Williams' body?"

  Her question sent a spike of worry through me. Why would she ask that? Did it indicate she might have something to do with his death?

  "A few marks, but nothing that might indicate how he died," I said.

  She faced the street ahead, pedaling steadily. My worry did not evaporate.

  "As you noted by the symbols," I said, hoping to change the subject, "the portal goes into the hut. The tapping would indeed confirm it. As well, it would indicate relative time. Do you remember how long ago William was murdered before we came here?"

  Nasrine quietly mulled my question. I thought she was ignoring me but she finally answer, "Eighteen days."

  "Eighteen days? Are you sure?" I asked, thinking she was right, but not wanting to believe it.

  "Eighteen days."

  "I have a theory," I said. "Neva told me once that only one version of a person can exist in each reality at any one time. That's why only one of the Baba Yaga's can be in the hut. The others aren't allowed. What if the portal isn't allowing us through because we exist in that time in the hut?"

  "How can we exist here?" she asked.

  "It must mean we're in a different universe. But the tapping has revealed the relative time difference. Which gives us the date upon which we can reenter the original hut," I said. "Though Neva also said that time in different universes might pass at different rates. That could complicate things."