Dreamweaver

by C. S. Friedman

  “Won’t it? There are hundreds of worlds that we know about, probably thousands more that we haven’t discovered yet. What are the odds that we’ve tracked down every single person who has a trace of that Gift, on every human world? There must be others out there, Russell. You and I can’t find them, but another Dreamwalker might be able to. That’s what I’ve been waiting to see if Jessica would do.”

  “Does she know that’s what you want?”

  She shook her head. “I needed to test her first. To make sure that the stories of her Gift causing insanity weren’t true. Because if she does go down that path, and she has knowledge of our business . . .”

  “She can take us all down with her. I get that. But when you’re satisfied about the insanity issue, then you’ll fill her in?”

  She laughed gracefully; it was a practiced sound. “What am I supposed to say to her? ‘I’m so sorry that I arranged for you to be abandoned on an alien world and raised by strangers, then did all sorts of terrible things to awaken your Gift and test your sanity, but would you mind helping me out in a little political matter? Which will, as a side note, make every Shadow on this continent want you dead?’ I’m sure that will go over well.”

  “I don’t think you have a choice, Alia. If Virilian figures out what you’re doing and gets hold of the girl, it’ll be bad news. For all of us.” He sighed. “You need to talk to her. Reveal the role you intend her to play, and see if she’ll cooperate. If not, then cut your losses and end this, lest we all be dragged down with her.”

  Years of practice in hiding her emotions enabled Morgana to keep her expression blank, but it took effort. “I appreciate your counsel.”

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “She’s travelling with someone who is carrying a fetter that I can trace, so as long as they’re together, yes, I know where she is. But unless I miss my guess, they’ll both be out of reach soon.”

  “Well, when they come back within reach, think about what I said.” He shook his head. “Jesus, the stakes are high here. Be careful, Alia.”

  “Always,” she promised, offering her cheek to be kissed before he left. My personal stake in this is greater than you can imagine.

  15

  ROUELLE

  TERRA PRIME

  JESSE

  SUNLIGHT WOKE ME UP. Isaac and Sebastian were still sleeping, and for a moment I was torn between waking them up to tell them my news and checking on my tablet so I could gather more information first. The tablet won.

  The sun must have just come up because the device didn’t have much of a charge, but I was able to turn it on. I felt a wave of relief when the screen lit up, as if having a working tech device had healed some unseen wound in my soul. My files were all intact, and while I couldn’t access Google Maps for obvious reasons, I’d copied so many images that I almost didn’t miss it. That said, it took me forever to find our current location on Colonnan maps. None of the city names here were the same as on my world, state borders didn’t exist, and even the forested areas seemed to be shaped differently. But at last I found a series of small canyons that reminded me of an area we’d passed through. From there I could trace our path down to the flat land surrounded Rouelle, and . . . yes. That’s where we were. I could even see where El Malo probably began, which offered some possible insights into its nature.

  “Jesse?”

  It was Isaac. As he threw off his blanket the motion woke Sebastian, and then both of them were looking at me like eager puppy dogs waiting for breakfast. I smiled despite myself.

  “Did you dream?” Isaac asked.

  I turned off the tablet so it could devour more solar energy while I told them about my dream. They were less enthused than I’d expected, which frustrated me. Granted, it was only the first piece of our puzzle, but now that we had that much, surely we could figure the rest out!

  When I was done, Sebastian was very still. “I’m sorry,” he said at last, “I must ask. Is it possible it was just a dream?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You do still have normal dreams, don’t you? Dreams where your Gift is not involved?”

  The question startled me. “I guess. Yeah.”

  “Because you didn’t mention seeing doors, or any of the other signs that might indicate dreamwalking.”

  But I saw the other Dreamwalker! I wanted to protest. Doesn’t that mean something?

  But he was right. In my excitement, I’d forgotten that I was still capable of having normal dreams, without any special significance. My brain might simply have been processing all the data it had accumulated during my waking hours, venting my hopes and fears in an imaginary landscape while it figured out how to cope with everything. Like normal people. The fact that I sometimes was able to enter the dreams of other people didn’t mean that I never needed REM sleep beyond that.

  But it had felt so real, so significant! When I’d dreamed about the abbie building near Shadowcrest it had felt the same way. I’d sensed then that something, or someone, was guiding me toward important information, and last night had felt exactly the same. But you don’t know that the first dream really meant anything, I reminded myself. Maybe there was nothing about the abbie mural that mattered. Maybe I had dreamed about the avatar last night because I wanted so much to dream about the avatar, and there was nothing more to it. “She was there,” I told Sebastian. But despite my defiant tone, I was no longer as sure of what I had seen.

  My tablet had charged enough during my recitation that I could now bring it over to the sitting area to show them my topographical maps. I pointed out the place I’d found, just west of town, where elevation dropped off suddenly, marking a steep escarpment that cut across the map from north to south. Unless I missed my guess, that was where El Malo began. If so, might it not explain the presence of the haboob? Dry, dust-laden winds swept across the open desert until they hit a natural obstacle, then were forced upward. Why they never moved from that spot still begged for explanation, but it was reassuring to be able to apply science to the phenomenon. One tiny thing in this crazy world that made sense.

  “If we climbed down the cliff face,” I said, “we’d be on flat ground after that. Which wouldn’t make El Malo any less dangerous, but at least we wouldn’t be trapped at the bottom of a canyon or something.”

  “What was it you saw in your dream?” Sebastian asked. “Razor-sharp whirlwinds and a field of human bones? Refresh my memory.”

  “All right.” I sighed. “Point taken.”

  “Dreams aren’t enough for this,” Isaac said. “We need to go take a look at the real thing up close, so we know what we’re dealing with. Because if we’re even thinking about going down there, I for one don’t want to try it with no more information than what’s in the tourist brochures.” He looked at me. “But before we go anywhere we need to know that the message from the avatar was real. I’m sorry, Jesse, I hate to question you on this, but there’s no point in going further without that.”

  “I understand,” I said, and I did, but I was also getting frustrated. How the hell was I supposed to prove my dream information was accurate without checking out the site I’d dreamed about? I couldn’t verify the abbie dream either without going back to Shadowcrest.

  Suddenly I realized that I had a way to test the abbie dream. It would be risky, but what wasn’t risky on this journey? And I’d get the answer to another question, which might prove equally important. “I have an idea. What time is it?” I asked.

  Isaac looked over at the clock. “Seven thirty.”

  Still early. Allowing for time zone differences, the person I needed to contact was probably asleep. That seemed as clear an omen as any Dreamwalker could ask for.

  “Okay,” I said. “Who’s on reaper watch this time?”

  Devon thinks: Something is wrong.

  The street outside his home looks normal enough. The air is f
illed with the usual suburban smells: newly cut grass, rose bushes in bloom, a faint whiff of diesel from the main road. But there’s a sense of wrongness that he can’t give a name to, that makes him wary. At one point he might have ignored such a feeling, but after Terra Prime he tends to trust his instincts.

  I should go inside, he thinks.

  He turns back to the house and sees Jesse standing there. For a moment he’s too surprised to speak. Tommy had told him about her going back to Terra Prime, so the last thing he expected was that she would show up on his doorstep.

  “This is a dream,” she says. “And we have very little time.” Her voice has the suppressed energy of a tightly wound spring. “I need you to become aware.”

  Suddenly he has a dizzying sense of dual existence. He’s still standing here talking to Jesse, but he’s also lying in his bed asleep, and for a moment it’s hard to sort out the conflicting input. He feels himself losing control of the dream, and the streets and trees and houses begins to fade around him.

  “Stay with me!” Jesse says. “Forget your body. Focus on the dream. You can stay here if you want to.”

  He does his best to concentrate on his surroundings—on her—and slowly the sense of duality fades. He knows that his body is still out there, but he’s no longer aware of it.

  “Okay,” she says. “Listen carefully. If I tell you to wake yourself up, or you see anything that looks out of place, go back to your body immediately. Don’t ask questions, don’t try to understand what’s going on, just end the dream as fast as you can. Got that?”

  The sense of urgency in her voice is unnerving. “You’re afraid reapers will come.”

  She nods. “I’ve been trying to stay under their radar by not dreamwalking, but I really need some information from you, and this is the only way I can get it.”

  And I have some information for you, too, he realizes suddenly. He hadn’t expected to have a chance to talk to her, but now that she’s here he needs to make sure she’s fully updated. “What do you need from me?”

  “You remember back at Shadowcrest, when we went through the abbie house, there was a mural on the wall?”

  His brow furrows as thinks back to that journey. “Somewhat.”

  “Can you remember any of its details?”

  “I didn’t look at it very long. That was the whole point of taking a picture, so I could study it later.”

  “Try, Devon.” There’s an edge of desperation in her voice now. “I need you to try.”

  “Why? What’s in the mural that’s so important?”

  “I’m honestly not sure. I sensed in a dream that it’s significant, but I can’t remember enough details to figure out why. You’re the only one who paid any real attention to that thing, Devon. I know how organized your mind is. Try your best to recreate it for me. Any parts you can remember.”

  He nods and shuts his eyes, trying to envision the events of that day: sneaking through the abbie house, coming into the common room, seeing that the far wall was painted with random images. What a shock that had been—what a revelation!—to discover that the abbies had the same artistic drive as humans. Devon had promised himself while they stood in that room that he would help them.

  But he hadn’t. He’d come home and returned to his comfortable life, and now there is no way he can help them. His soul aches with guilt over his failure.

  As he recalls that day, details of the mural start to surface in his memory. He opens his eyes and looks around for a flat surface to exhibit them on. The best candidate is the side of a nearby house, but it’s covered in aluminum siding. Can he alter his own dream? He concentrates on that element of the dream, trying to take conscious control of it. After a few seconds the edges of the siding began to blur, eventually disappearing altogether. Now there’s only a flat white expanse, like a movie screen.

  “Good,” Jesse approves. “You’re getting it.”

  Focusing on the few details he does remember, he tries to make them appear on the wall. First a row of handprints along the bottom. A horse. A waterfall. Nothing seems like it’s in the right place, but Jesse is staring at his work with an intensity that suggests he’s giving her what she needs, so he keeps going. Clouds appear. A sunset. A few geometric scribblings. A building—

  Jesse gasps.

  Startled, he loses control of his creation; the images start to fade. “What is it?”

  “Just keep going.” Her voice is strained. “Give me everything you can remember.”

  He returns his full concentration to the task and tries to add details to the building, a tall conical tower with a spiral running around the outside. The coloring was so strange that it stuck in his memory, each window a different hue; he works to reproduce it for her. As he does so her eyes slowly grow wide. “They saw it,” she whispers. “The Dreamwalker tower. One of the abbies saw it!” She points to it. “Every time I’ve seen it the windows have different views. That must be what the colors mean. This is what my dream was trying to show me!”

  She closes the distance between them and hugs him. It takes him by surprise, but after a second he wraps his arms around her and holds her close. He feels her trembling against his chest and tightens his embrace. “Thank you,” she whispers. “I knew you’d come through for me.” Her hair smells sweet; he resists the urge to touch it.

  After a few seconds she draws back from him. For the first time since the mural started taking shape, she checks the sky. “I need to leave before they find me.”

  He puts a hand on her arm. “Jesse, there’s something else you need to know.”

  She looks at him.

  “They’re going down into Mystic Caverns.”

  Her eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

  “They think they can dig out enough of the debris to explore the place. They’ve got some high tech Israeli robot that’s shaped like a snake, that’s used in disaster rescue, and they’re going to send it down to take pictures.”

  “I thought excavation was supposed to be too costly to attempt. Wasn’t that why they gave up on it when we first came home?”

  “Yeah, when all that was at stake was evidence in a mundane kidnapping. But now there are people in the government who know about the changelings—who know about us—and if they suspect there’s some kind of global network connected to that site, they may be willing to spend the bucks needed to investigate. I don’t know, maybe they think someone is tinkering with DNA, or there’s a high-tech weapons lab down there. It doesn’t matter what they think. We know what’s down there, waiting to be found.”

  “Pieces of the Gate,” she says hollowly. “And bodies. Maybe no more than skeletons at this point, but they’ll still be identifiable as bodies, and they’ve got those crazy toe tags on them.”

  “And think about what could happen if the portal’s still active. Because it’s a natural phenomenon, right? The Gate was just there to stabilize it. So if people were able to get down that far, they might be able to go through it.”

  “The Shadows would never let that happen. They’d—” She stops suddenly, eyes wide.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Go,” she orders. “Now!”

  He follows her gaze to the mural and discovers that half of it is gone. The images he worked so hard to create are bleeding down the wall like wet paint, colors diluting, bright blues and golds and reds transforming into lifeless gray. The trees and grass surrounding his canvas are also being sapped of color; the entire world seems to be fading.

  He remembers her warning and tries to wake himself up. Nothing happens.

  “End the dream, Devon!” There’s panic in her voice now.

  “I can’t,” he chokes out. He tries again—and again—but no matter what he does, he can’t regain awareness of his sleeping body. It’s as if everything outside the dream has ceased to exist.

  The leaves of the r
osebushes are turning brown now, curling back on themselves. Even the smell of diesel is fading. It’s as if reality is being leached from the universe.

  He hears a voice cry out Jesse’s name, but he doesn’t know where it’s coming from. Clouds are beginning to gather overhead, congealing into a single black mass the size and shape of a man. The mere sight of it awakens a primitive fear in Devon, and every instinct screams for him to turn and run, as fast and as far as he possibly can. But where would he run to? If a reaper has taken control of his dream, he’s got nowhere to go.

  Jesse! He hears the voice again, louder than before. Jesse hears it too this time, and seems to know where it’s coming from. Someone must be trying to wake her up, he realizes. Her Gift is channeling his voice into the dream. It’s clear from the way she’s looking at him that she doesn’t want to abandon him.

  “Go,” he says. The thought of being left alone with the reaper makes him feel sick, but if she stays for his sake she’ll die. And maybe he’ll die, too. “It’s you they want, not me. Go!”

  Suddenly the dream starts falling to pieces around him, reality shattering like broken glass, and then he’s falling, falling, and somewhere at the bottom of the blackness his sleeping body waits, and the reaper vanishes like smoke as he surfaces—

  Awakening was a physical shock. For a moment it was all I could do to lay there and try to breathe steadily. I half expected a reaper to burst into the room at any moment.

  “Your pulse was racing,” Isaac said. “We took a chance on waking you.”

  “You did right,” I told him. “Probably saved my life.” And maybe Devon’s, I thought. I had sensed him breaking free as I left the dream, so he was probably unharmed—albeit badly shaken—but the fact that he wasn’t able to do that while I was present was pretty damn frightening.

  As I raised myself to a sitting position, Sebastian offered me a glass of water. Drinking it made my throat less dry, but I still felt weak. “He couldn’t wake up.” My voice was shaking. “He tried, but he couldn’t wake himself up.” I shut my eyes for a moment, shivering as I remembered that moment. “They must have figured out how I was avoiding them and learned to compensate. Which means they’re not just mindless hunters. They’re learning. Adapting.” I drew in a deep breath. “I can’t rely on other people to end their dreams when reapers show up. We’d both be trapped.”