Dream Finder

by Roger Taylor

  He reached up and extinguished the single lamp that was illuminating the room, then lay back and closed his eyes. As he drifted into sleep, however, he was aware of Tarrian’s presence, unusually alert and vigilant, prowling the fringes of his mind.

  It seemed that he had scarcely drifted off when he was awakened suddenly. A moving lamp came into focus in front of him, then its holder: a tall, hooded shadow, towering ominously over him.

  Chapter 5

  Antyr opened his mouth to cry out at the apparition, a mixture of nightmarish fantasies and wild fears of palace conspiracies flooding into his mind.

  At the same time, his mind involuntarily cried out to his Companion. ‘Tarrian!’

  There was no reply.

  He tried to sit up, but some force restrained him. More thoughts of palace conspiracies swirled around him. The food had been drugged. He had been taken silently to some Lord’s torture chamber to have the secrets of the Duke’s dream torn from him . . .

  No. This couldn’t be true. There was the law. He was a Guildsman. He couldn’t be arrested without warrant like some ruffian from the Moras, but . . .

  . . . power and wealth were power and wealth.

  He dragged his scattering thoughts back to the dark figure above him.

  The lamp swung from side to side as if it were being shaken by an unsteady breeze, but it did not illuminate its holder. Indeed it seemed to obscure the figure, almost to make it darker in some way.

  And were there other shadows at its back?

  Antyr felt a hand reaching out towards him.

  He tried to cry out again, to demand of this strange visitor, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ But no sound came.

  Though his voice was bound, however, his mind remained free. ‘Tarrian, Tarrian,’ he cried out desperately. The figure hesitated and inclined its head to one side as if catching an unexpected sound. But still there was only silence.

  Then Antyr became aware of a strange quality in the silence. It was absolute. That the figure made no sound was frightening in itself, but worse than that was the silence in his mind. There was nothing except his own increasingly frantic thoughts. Nothing. No sign of those faint stirrings that had marked the constant presence of Tarrian for as long as he could remember, even when they had been far apart. A chill gripped him. Such a silence could only mean that Tarrian was dead.

  But how? he thought, before even shock could take hold. Despite his long life among humans, Tarrian retained fully all his natural faculties; he was wild, cautious and suspicious to his very heart. It couldn’t be that he would be killed without at least a desperate cry. Was it perhaps some subtle poison in the food? A swift, unexpected sword stroke? Antyr recalled Ciarll Feranc reaching readily for his knife. And the city was not short of men and women skilled in killing.

  The feeling of loneliness was fearful and appalling, and Antyr felt a terrible cry of fear and grief forming inside him. But the cry could find no release and he began to tremble as it grew and grew.

  The swaying lamp began to shake as if in sympathy, and the watching figure seemed to merge hesitantly into the shadows behind.

  Antyr felt the unseen hand withdraw and in some way he knew he was no longer the focus of attention. The shadows shifted uneasily. Then deep inside him, in answer to his silent cry, he heard a faint sound like the frantic scrabbling of a tiny insect. And for the briefest instant he saw, somewhere, a tiny distant light, motionless and calm like the evening star. It too was moving and flickering, like bright sunshine on distant armour.

  The image was gone almost before he could register it, but like some alchemist’s trickery, its brief appearance irresistibly transformed the whole in the instant, and Antyr’s grief and fear was suddenly transmuted into a boiling anger while his trembling body began to tear him free from whatever power held him.

  The figure seemed to make a final effort to reach him, lurching forward sharply like a striking snake, but the shadows were drawing it away and the strange scrabbling was growing louder and more frenzied.

  Then it seemed to him that for a moment he was at the heart of a great battlefield, one hand clutching a torn and bloodstained standard, the other a hacked and battered sword.

  ‘To me! To me! ’

  His voice filled all that was, echoing and echoing, and with a final exhalation of loathing and hatred, the shadows were gone.

  ‘Where were you? Where were you?’ Tarrian’s voice crashed over him, frantic and desperate. ‘Where did you go?’

  Antyr found himself still on the bed but staring now into the wolf’s eyes, bright yellow and feral as if he had been dream-searching.

  ‘What . . .?’ he muttered, bewildered.

  ‘Where did you go? What happened?’ Tarrian repeated the questions, seizing Antyr’s shirt in his mouth and shaking him violently. ‘Are you all right . . .?

  Antyr reached out and put his arms about the wolf’s neck both to stop him and for needed solace. He could feel the powerful animal trembling, as he himself had trembled. And, he realized, he had never known his Companion so distraught, so out of control.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he managed to say as slowly he recognized the palace room and remembered the events of the evening.

  ‘Don’t know? Don’t know! Ye gods, man . . .’ Tarrian’s voice showed his relief, but was still full of a barely controlled hysteria.

  ‘Please, Tarrian. I’m all right. I don’t know what happened. Just give me a moment to gather my wits,’ Antyr said, tightening his hold on his friend. ‘Just a moment.’

  Tarrian lay still briefly, then wriggled free and jumped down on to the floor.

  Antyr struggled upright until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. A rectangle of dim grey light indicated a window he had not noticed when he first entered the room, and indicated also that it was dawn, or later. He sat motionless some time with his head resting in his hands, then he looked up and stared into the watching wolf’s eyes.

  ‘I need a drink,’ he said.

  Tarrian’s anger overwhelmed him. ‘It’s probably the drink that did this, you jackass,’ he thundered. ‘Eroded such enfeebled discipline as you have and left you defenceless against . . .’ He stopped for a moment, unable to finish the sentence. ‘In all the time I was with your father I never met anything like this – never! And your father ventured into regions where many others wouldn’t go, I can tell you.’

  Despite himself, Antyr responded in kind. ‘I don’t want to know,’ he shouted out loud. ‘All this is madness. What am I doing wandering about other people’s dreams? Scrutinizing their fantasies like some quack priest peering into entrails. Hell knows what phantoms I’ve let into my own mind. I’ve had enough. I wash my hands of it all before I lose my mind. I’m . . .’

  ‘Going into the country. Get myself a simple job on a farm somewhere, tending vines, cutting corn.’ Tarrian completed his plaint for him with blistering scorn. ‘Somewhere where there’s peace and calm. Somewhere where I can get my throat cut by bandits . . .’

  ‘Damn you, dog,’ Antyr said through clenched teeth. ‘Go back to your pack.’

  A silence came between the two protagonists, such as can only exist between two old friends; sour and bitterly unpleasant.

  Tarrian lay down and rested his head on his front paws. His eyes were still brilliant and fixed resolutely on the Dream Finder. Antyr swung his legs back up on to the bed and lay down again to avoid the gaze.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ Tarrian said simply, after a moment.

  Antyr shook his head. He was about to swear at the wolf, but the brief explosion had been cathartic. ‘I don’t know,’ he said resignedly. A spasm shook him and he wrapped his arms about himself. ‘I don’t know. But it was terrifying. We were apart. Truly apart. As if you’d been . . . killed. And there was someone here. A figure . . . with a lamp . . . and shadows at his back. Watching, waiting . . . trying to reach me . . . I . . .’

  His voice faded and the silence descended again. Gradually the sounds
of the awakening palace began to seep softly into the room.

  He looked up and met Tarrian’s gaze. ‘It was like a dream,’ he said, his voice flat but fearful.

  Tarrian did not reply, but his concern and denial flooded into Antyr’s mind. Dream Finders did not dream; could not dream, seemingly. Yet despite this response there was doubt also.

  ‘You were gone . . . somewhere,’ he said eventually. ‘Your body was here, but your Dreamself was gone. Gone as if it had never existed. And all ways were closed to me. Like when your father died.’

  The wolf’s very quietness brought chills of fear to Antyr again.

  ‘Do you really think I’ve brought this on myself,’ he asked, almost plaintively.

  This time there was confusion in Tarrian’s response: the habitual anger that inevitably arose when Antyr’s indiscipline was discussed, and a newer, deeper anxiety; a sense of the need to set old matters aside and to both give and receive companionship in the face of some unknown threat.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tarrian concluded soberly. ‘Let the daylight in and then tell me exactly what happened . . . what you saw and felt.’

  Antyr was surprised how unsteady he felt as he walked to the window to draw back the curtain. Nevertheless he was mildly expectant. He had a vague impression that behind it would lie some splendid view of the city, the palace being a high and dominating building. Instead, however, he found himself overlooking a small, enclosed chasm of walls, gloomy and lichen-streaked in the grey morning light that filtered down from a ragged skyline high above. Looking down, he saw a paved yard littered with random and ill-repaired outbuildings, their roofs shiny with the morning’s dampness.

  A small piece of the Moras district in the very heart of Ibris’s palace, he thought wryly. The light, however, brought with it some optimism.

  ‘Well, at least the fog’s gone,’ he said as he turned away from the window. ‘And we’ve survived to greet another day.’

  It was a phrase he had not used since he was last in the army. Tarrian, however, was indifferent. ‘Tell,’ he demanded.

  It took Antyr only a few minutes to relate the events he had experienced but he found that the daylight did little to mitigate the deep alarm which he had felt and which was on the fringe of returning even as he recounted the tale.

  ‘Well?’ he asked when he had finished.

  Tarrian had been silent during the telling, and now he offered no observations.

  ‘Let’s leave,’ he said, standing up and stretching luxuriously. ‘Let’s get out into the country for a while. We both need to think.’

  Antyr hesitated. ‘Do you think we should?’ he said. ‘The Duke said we shouldn’t leave the city.’

  Tarrian was dismissive. ‘He meant travelling abroad,’ he said. ‘As if we ever did. He won’t mind us wandering the countryside for an hour or so.’

  Antyr was unconvinced. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should tell someone.’

  ‘Open the door, for pity’s sake,’ Tarrian said testily. ‘After what’s happened – whatever it was – I need room to move, and air to breathe. And you need . . . something . . . I don’t know what. Exercise probably. Come on, no one’s going to be bothered about us and we’ll be back before noon.’

  Antyr bowed to his friend’s insistence and cautiously opened the door. He had half expected to find a guard standing there and was uncertain whether to feel relieved or disappointed to find the corridor deserted.

  ‘I told you no one would be bothered,’ Tarrian declared in offhand triumph. ‘Come on.’

  Antyr, however, had no idea where he was or how to go about finding his way out.

  ‘You should pay more attention,’ Tarrian said impatiently. ‘It’s this way. Just follow your nose.’

  They had no difficulty in leaving the palace. Tarrian guided them unerringly through a bewildering maze of corridors, hallways and staircases, and such people as they met paid them little heed, seeming intent on tasks of their own. Indeed, as they passed through the palace gate, some of the guards acknowledged them. Their escort from the previous night, Antyr presumed.

  The weather was cold and damp, with a residual taint of the night’s fog still lingering, making the grey sunless sky yellowish. The streets too bore the glistening signs of the fog and were virtually deserted except for the Torchlighters’ apprentices dutifully extinguishing the public torches. A forest of ragged black pillars of smoke rose up like slender supports to the greyness above.

  Tarrian trotted on relentlessly through the waking city, occasionally stopping to wait for Antyr, but making his impatience quite clear.

  Eventually they reached the great Norstseren Gate. As it was still early in the day, the main gate was closed except for a wicket just large enough to admit a horse. This had been opened to allow in those travellers who had been benighted outside. Later in the day there would be carts and caravans and innumerable travellers arriving and leaving, and both leaves of the gate would be thrown wide in welcome.

  ‘Tarrian taking you for some exercise,’ guffawed one of the guards, echoing the wolf’s own comment, as they passed through the wicket into the shelter of the broad arch of the gate. Antyr gave a self-conscious shrug, disoriented for the moment by the surge of disapproval that came up from Tarrian.

  ‘One of your drinking cronies, I suppose,’ he said scornfully.

  The guard came over to them and gave Antyr a look of knowing confidentiality. ‘Make sure you see the Exactor,’ he said softly through barely moving lips. ‘He’s new and a real son of a whore. He’d Gate Tax his mother for the mud she brought back on her shoes.’ He terminated the advice with a broad wink.

  Antyr nodded his thanks, at the same time throwing a small jibe at Tarrian. ‘You see. My cronies sometimes prove useful. You’d be less than pleased if I’d to spend half the day proving you were mine when we came back, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yours?’ Tarrian replied with withering disdain. ‘You people are unbelievable.’ Then, despite his preoccupation, a small flood of righteous, very human, anger burst out. ‘And you’re as stupid as you’re barbarous. Exactors! Who in their right mind would pay taxes to pay for wars to make more money to pay more taxes . . .?’ The brief diatribe ended in an incoherent snarl.

  Antyr grunted. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said dismissively, walking across to the small enclosure that housed the Gate Exactor. ‘You’re right. You’ve said it all before and your logic’s impeccable. I know exactly where we fit into your scheme of things. In the meantime, a little less philosophy and a little more pragmatism, please. Just make sure this one remembers you for when we come back if you want to get home before sunset.’

  Their short, familiar skirmish ended, the two became trusted conspirators again and Tarrian bounded into the enclosure.

  Antyr, several paces behind, heard the startled cry from within and as he stepped through the door he beamed his friendliest smile.

  Tarrian had his feet on the collecting table and was leaning forward and panting dubiously into the face of a wide-eyed official who was sitting motionless, his red cap of office incongruously askew.

  ‘We’ll be back before sunset,’ Antyr said heartily. ‘No goods in or out.’ The Exactor’s eyes flicked an appeal for rescue which Antyr wilfully misconstrued as an acknowledgement and, with a friendly wave, he turned and left. Tarrian stopped panting and, craning forward a little further, abruptly licked the Exactor’s face wetly, before dropping back on to the floor and following Antyr.

  Outside the Norstseren Gate, Antyr and Tarrian made their way through the tents and temporary dwellings that were always clustered there. Known as ‘The Village’ by the residents of Serenstad, this strange, ever-changing community consisted of all manner of people drawn from all manner of distant places by the fame and splendour of Ibris’s city. Merchants, scholars, entertainers, travellers, seekers after fame and fortune, seekers after anonymity; all were there from time to time.

  It was often a colourful and exciting place, but t
oday the cold dampness of the morning following on the night’s dank fog gave the place a sodden, down-at-heel appearance and such gaudy signs as there were looked glumly futile while streams of pennants and buntings hung listless and unmoving like some weary fisherman’s unsold catch.

  For a little while, Antyr and Tarrian walked on in the self-satisfied glow of the small mischief they had wrought on the Gate Exactor, but the only signs of life they encountered were four dour-faced riders, and as the mournful atmosphere of the Village gradually weighed in upon them, the strange events of the night soon rose to dominate their thoughts again.

  ‘Where are we going, Tarrian?’ Antyr asked eventually, some time after they had left the Village.

  Tarrian started from some silent reverie. ‘Er . . . west,’ he said absently, as if he had only just thought about it.

  ‘West,’ Antyr echoed neutrally. ‘To the cliffs, I suppose?’

  There was another pause before Tarrian replied vaguely, ‘Yes . . . yes.’

  Serenstad was built by the river Seren in a lush and fertile valley, but the practical difficulties of building in the soft valley soil and the incessant need to maintain defences against many enemies had led successive rulers to expand the city up the side of the valley until, in the west, it had reached a ridge which dropped away sharply in precipitous cliffs and afforded the city at least one boundary that needed little or no defence.

  Antyr offered no comment. There was little point. Tarrian needed to walk, needed to think, needed to do whatever it was a wolf did when it was burdened with human follies and happenings that ran contrary to everything it had ever known. It would be a long walk, and steep at the end, where the city’s walls began to dwindle as they merged into the rising rocks.

  Antyr felt reluctance dragging at his feet like soft dune sand as his long-held doubts about his calling surfaced again. What was he doing searching the Duke’s dreams? Keeping the company of the likes of Aaken Uhr Candessa and Ciarll Feranc? And what was he doing, following Tarrian on some chilly and pointless ramble around the city? He knew that Tarrian was not listening to his thoughts but, fearing the wolf’s acid responses, he tried to dismiss his fears and the longings he had for some other, less . . . bizarre, calling.