Dreams of the Compass Rose

by Vera Nazarian

  And with those words Ahiroon took a big breath and fearlessly offered the curved shimmering blade to Belta Digh.

  Looking from one to the other, Belta took the scythe.

  Here it comes, she thought, the moment of truth. Now we’ll know for a fact whether death lies. And it’s a good thing to know.

  The scythe was a cool rainbow of light in her large palm.

  Taking a deep breath, and secretly invoking long-forgotten gods from her distant homeland, Belta reached out and placed the shimmering blade into death’s silver fingers. There came a bright flash.

  A shadow sigh. . . .

  The candles sputtered and went out, while dark rushed in.

  Ahiroon gave a small shriek. And Belta felt her own heart sink, then make a wild jump in her ample breast.

  Silence.

  After minutes of hammering temples and held breath, Belta finally moved. She got up and by touch only relit a candle.

  Death was gone.

  Instead, there was a loud hiccup. There she was, Ahiroon, pale as parchment, but grinning, calmly sipping her mug. The young woman was now as drunk, as mortal, and as free as anyone else in Belta’s tavern.

  As I make my rounds each night, I admit I no longer see the two shadows, death and thief, racing through the midnight city.

  Ah, I sigh, for in that velvet ebony hour, I miss them. There’s now one less good tale to tell at Belta Digh’s tavern. . . .

  They say Belta’s tavern finally has a real name. Belta made it known one night, to the inebriated amusement of all.

  “Tsaveh Dahnem” she calls it, pronouncing those two foreign symbols that are painted on her sign. What does it mean? I think it means “I take your pain away.”

  And so she does, our Belta. She can take care of it all, solve your problem, as she pours you a mug and calls you a fool.

  Why, even death knows that.

  Or, at least, death must surely speak and read her native tongue—all tongues for that matter

  —as it reads and knows the hour of our parting. Surely, it had recognized the meaning of those glyphs when it first paid its needy visit to Belta Digh’s tavern.

  DREAM SEVEN

  CITY OF NO-SLEEP

  If you ever get lost, somewhere West of the Compass Rose, look for a city called No-Sleep. The city is ancient yet young—as each new day is young. And it’s filled to the brim with miracles.

  But the king here is old and mad like a mangy goat. They say his mind is broken; a fractured mirror, filled with disjointed, ever-changing images, which are his dreams. They reshape the fabric of the city every night.

  The old madman spends his waking hours attempting to put together the shards of the mirror in order, and then sleeps erratically, during which time chaos returns to him. And the residents are known to keep themselves awake for as long as possible, so as to delay the inevitable changes, for they come only after sleep’s oblivion.

  You are welcome to visit this place if you like, to marvel at the wonders. Only, whatever you do, don’t fall asleep here. For, the next time you wake, the city will have rearranged itself.

  * * *

  Ierulann stood above the woman. The woman was prostrated at her feet, groveling, and her tears were watering Ierulann’s boots.

  “Please forgive me, Guard of Law, grant me mercy! I wouldn’t have been driving my wagon so fast if I’d realized I was on the King’s Road, for it wasn’t here yesterday! And my employer will pay me a pittance for tardiness! I must deliver these goods, or lose my job, and I have children to feed. I beg you not to judge me by the letter of the law! Mercy, just this once!”

  “It’s true, the King’s Road was to be found two and a half leagues to the South of here, last night. But so what? You should’ve known better than to be late in the first place,” said Ierulann impassively, holding her tablet, and about to mark down the woman’s name and today’s place of residence. Guards would be dispatched there in a hurry to collect the Fine before the King Dreamt and the city was rearranged overnight according to some new chaotic pattern that lived in His mind. A day later the woman’s residence might no longer exist, and her meager possessions that now belonged in full to the King wouldn’t be there to be collected and deposited in the Treasury. No doubt, these worthless items will likely disappear from that very Treasury again on the morrow—indeed, the woman herself may end up on the opposite side of the city, and her children who knew where else—but that was not the point. The Law was to be upheld. The woman continued weeping, her sobs turning into dry heaving shudders of desolation. She was one of thousands.

  There were so many of them, thought Ierulann, each one often having gone without sleep for days now in a hopeless attempt to curtail the changes. This one’s reason was obvious—one of the starving multitudes, she was attempting to keep her family together, but was slipping up due to exhaustion, and had committed the trespass of carelessness.

  For everyone knew to drive slowly on the King’s Road. It was his earliest—and possibly most irrational—decree, and one he expected to be followed unfailingly. Most people took smaller inconvenient side-streets to avoid the Road wherever it might have popped up that day, and the patrolling Guards of Law such as herself. For no one wanted to crawl along at the speed of fifteen paces a minute. And no one wanted to pay the ridiculous Fine of all of one’s life possessions.

  Poor sleep-deprived idiot, thought Ierulann, and she jotted down the woman’s name. Beyond that, Ierulann felt no mercy.

  Zuaren crawled silently along the edge of the roof of the tallest structure in the city. Vines of verdant hue sprang and wound like snakes on both sides of him. They had grown, clinging to one another all the way from the ground, hundreds of feet, like messengers of the earth straining to convey something vital to the sky.

  From way up high as he was, perched dangerously on the edge of the abyss, on top of the world, he could see the whole accursed city illuminated by sunset like a terrible broken jigsaw puzzle, with rich buildings of rose granite intermingled in patches among the pale bleached limestone homes of the rabble poor. He could see chunks of roads and streets doubling upon themselves. He could see alleys ending in cliffs, and houses bursting from hillsides. All of this would be different, he knew, the next time he closed his eyes in sleep, the next time the sun rose. All he had to do was stay awake long enough to accomplish the deed that he had come here to do.

  Soon, he would rid this place of its malediction.

  Having dealt with the sad business of the King’s Road, Ierulann made her way toward her own austere residence. She walked confidently among the twisting clumps of uprooted and disjointed buildings—their foundations were oddly protruding in places, and patches of varicolored stone hinted at recent displacements—and meandering streets that often turned into dead ends. She had an odd true sense of the nature of the structures around her, and was never really lost in the impossible maze of the city.

  That was one of the reasons she had been chosen to be a Guard of Law. Guards preternaturally knew the physical pattern of things in the city in all its fractured disarray. They alone could traverse the city daily and find any given destination with the ease of a hungry dog following the scent of roasted lamb.

  Guards were also the elite warriors sworn to protect the very soul of this bizarre place. Ierulann’s swordbelt held a fine long blade and a Serpent Whip. She had no fear when walking these streets, for she was possibly the best.

  The sun began its golden leavetaking ritual of the night. And now there was another scent in the air of early evening.

  Death. . . .

  Ierulann absorbed it like a jackal. It plucked her senses, and suddenly a loud heartbeat was born in her temples.

  Danger. . . .

  She stilled. And then she turned about and rapidly began walking the way she came from, back to the center of the city. Alleys surfaced out of nowhere, and she took turns lightly, predicting their appearance seconds before openings came into view. She moved with her eyelids half-c
losed and her lips parted to the inrushing air that preceded her. Something terrifying was about to happen. . . .

  And she was the only one who was close enough to stop it. For she felt the pressing of many minds upon her, the entities of other Guards calling into her mind, directing her to move, faster, faster. . . .

  Even now the immediate future was unrolling before her, before them all, like a map of this renewing city.

  She must reach the Palace which stood higher than all other structures at the heart of this place, and which alone stayed in one place day after day. She must then gain entrance, and come within, and pass through innumerable corridors of marble and walkways trimmed with gold and sandalwood. She must race the final steps to the arched doors of the old king’s bedchamber, where even now he was being readied for sleep—an esoteric ritual in itself. There she must bare her sword and wait, hidden behind a drapery, or in the shadowed corner.

  For, when the candles would be extinguished at last, their gentle aromas fading among the musk of precious wood and oils, the old one would sink into immediate slumber, releasing the nightly chaos of mirror-shard images inside.

  And at that precise point, someone would come to kill him.

  Zuaren dropped down softly, taking on the crouch of a panther, and stayed still beneath the marble overhang of an ornate balcony. Where he was exactly in this place of nightmares, he wasn’t sure.

  Ahead, several arched windows, opening upon dark chambers. Behind him, an indigo darkening sky.

  And yet he needn’t guess, for the scent of musk and myrrh was strong here, and all he had to do was follow it in the absolute darkness.

  Which he did.

  Zuaren moved slowly and silently, having withdrawn a short slim dagger from somewhere on his body. Its blade was dull hueless metal, and sharper than a razor. It would slice cleanly and effortlessly through decrepit flesh and bone. . . .

  Moments later, he had passed through a corridor with extinguished torches on the walls, which terminated in a gaping maw of darkness. From beyond closed doors came the strong lingering aroma of incense.

  Soon. . . .

  Zuaren stilled his heartbeat to the level of a dead man, and his breathing became almost non-existent. Only assassins of the highest discipline could aspire to such living silence. He placed his fingers on the cool metal and pulled the door handle toward him. Then he slipped within.

  Inside, the curtains were drawn over the grand window, letting in minimal glimmers of the night.

  Directly ahead sprawled the royal bed. Like a turtle the size of a world it squatted in the sea of shadows, taking up the center of the room.

  In the middle of the bed, drowning in silk and pillows, lay a tiny shriveled form. It was the old king himself.

  His breathing came shallow and faint, and ragged upon occasion, as he moved restlessly in the very middle of his fractured Dream.

  The feeling of illusory chaotic images of madness was so strong here, nearly overpowering. Zuaren felt them encroaching upon his own mind, clamoring with the great tumult. . . . Soundlessly he moved closer—so close that he could see the outlines of the shrunken skull of the old king, and the sunken bones around his eyes—and began the measured strike with his dagger.

  From behind him he felt another mind, one like his own.

  Zuaren whirled around, beginning to leap into a defense-crouch, but it was too late. A thin coil of agony struck his cheek, slicing him as cleanly as though he’d turned his own razor dagger on himself.

  And only an instant later there came the hissing recoil of the Serpent Whip.

  “Do not move . . .” came a woman’s intense voice. “Drop your weapon by relaxing the grip of your fingers only. Else, you die now.”

  Zuaren was not a fool. He let go of the dagger so softly that it came down upon the floor like a feather. And he remained frozen, biding his time, recognizing this bitch out of the shadows to be one of the occult Guards of Law.

  “Good,” she continued. “Now take three steps slowly toward me, away from the King.”

  In the darkness, he grinned. He knew she would not sound an alarm, for that would take too much of her concentration. She was clever enough to recognize that any extra action on her part could cause the balance between them to topple. . . .

  “Move!”

  “Why don’t you just kill me?” he said then, beginning to pace toward her while speaking for the first time, and his voice was like song. “You know I will not give up so easily, that I will be back to finish this job—”

  “I know nothing,” she interrupted. “And if you speak another word without being prompted, I will strike you down.”

  He laughed openly this time. “You will not. For that would be unwarranted, and you are a Guard of Law. Yes, I know your kind very well. . . .”

  In answer, he felt lightning strike the other side of his face, as the Whip came cutting down out of nowhere.

  Damn, but she moved fast! He had never seen anyone act with such a classic minimum of movement. Almost as good as himself. He stood pondering it while both of his cheeks now screamed with agony.

  “You do not know me,” she said, like ice.

  And that was the moment he took to strike.

  Zuaren drove forward like a maelstrom, and out of nowhere two short swordblades snapped open and extended from his hands like angry twins. He lunged forward with both simultaneously, and fully expected her body to crumple under the impossible onslaught. This move had worked with all other opponents over a dozen times.

  And yet, she was not there.

  As though she had predicted his move before it was even conceived in his mind. . . . He swung, regaining his balance instantly, and this time saw her lunging shadow. This time his steel met hers with a clang, and they exchanged a lightning volley of hits and parries in the darkness, by preternatural sense alone, then disengaged.

  To his wonder, they were perfectly matched.

  “Why do you defend the mad one?” he hissed, stepping back, now trying to unbalance her with words. “Why not let me finish him off and rid you and this city of this excruciating curse of madness and mutability?”

  “You are an idiot,” she replied coldly, and then struck at him again. “You have no idea what you are about to do, and I promise you I will not let you do it.”

  “Don’t you want to be free?” he exclaimed, this time angry in earnest. The execution he had been sent to perpetrate was an issue of perfect justice in his mind. He had been hired to rid the city of madness, and that was what he would do.

  “No one is free,” she replied then, unexpectedly. “Not even you. Indeed, there is no such thing as freedom. And if you believe there is, then you surround yourself by an illusion greater than this city.”

  “Why?” he mocked, lunging below her guard on the left. “Will you now tell me that we are all but pieces of the same great mad pattern, akin to this city? That we are all fated by the gods to bear another’s madness? That it is our destiny?”

  “No,” she said, eluding his attack like an eel. “I will tell you only that there is more to this than you think.”

  At that moment, there came a moan from the bed, where the old king turned on his side and continued to sleep restlessly. Nothing would wake him now until the dawn, not even the clamor of battle. The sensation of whirling madness came closer than ever to touch the edges of their minds.

  Zuaren moved with impossible speed past the woman, and was again at the old one’s bedside.

  She gasped softly, revealing for the first and only time the true extent of her unease.

  “What would happen if I woke him now, before I extinguish his life?” said Zuaren, sensing her sudden fear with his very mind, past the whirling sea of madness.

  “Please don’t! Harm him and you will regret it . . .” she whispered suddenly, moving in on him from another side, so that she was almost between him and the old king. Almost, but not quite.

  The king moaned again, like a sad old banshee. His form was skelet
al in the semi-darkness. And for a moment it seemed to Zuaren that he could see the very Dream surrounding the king like a cloud, a vision of whirling city images, streets sliding apart and coming together like snakes, all striving to enter an almost coherent pattern, and above, a rose-gold sun. . . . And in that moment a stab of pity entered Zuaren’s heart.

  But then the assassin slammed the feeling down inside him like a wall, the way he always did.

  “No!” cried the woman, while at the same time he struck down with his right blade. . . . Steel penetrated the ancient flesh, and passed deep inside.

  In the cruel dark, the old one made no sound, only a single harshly expelled breath. Even in death, he never woke up.

  What came next was chaos.

  But, foremost, Zuaren felt terrible blinding agony. . . .

  “No!” cried Ierulann, as she felt the weight of minds come slamming down upon her, the storm of madness breaking free at last, no longer contained by the poor husk of the ancient King. Around her, the darkness howled. The assassin bent forward, the blade still imbedded in the dead one, as though suddenly stricken by a direct bond with his victim. You must contain it! cried the familiar minds into her own consciousness, straining against passion, against the abandon that was all around them now, ready to swallow up the world. The outlines of the bedchamber began to grow transparent, to fade in and out of this plane. Curtains blew open on the great window, letting in weak moonlight and a screaming wind. And suddenly Ierulann saw ghosts of a million cities superimposed like crystals outside the window.

  Transparent towers came into focus and were displaced by tall spires and walls of violet marble, obelisks sprang up into the marrow of heaven, only to collapse into sand, structures of pale sandstone and clay spilled and popped like mushrooms after a rain, ancient gilded domes stood up like bubbles of water, globules of dew from a distance.

  The vision danced, and times and directions were mixing, and madness was upon her. . . . Guard of Law! cried the voices of her fellow minds from afar. Contain the destruction! You must do it, for you are the only one close enough to touch it!