by Isaac Petrov
“A traverser halo.”
“Indeed, and thus very rare. Then Elder Ledeboer,” Rew keeps gesturing with her arm, “Man and Woman van Kley, Redeemed Siever, and,” she points at a gaping Gotthard that has just materialized with Qoh, “Man Kraker. All native to the same human settlement.”
“Remarkable indeed.”
“I do acknowledge that we are only to instruct twelve humans in the last step in the Path of Light, Overseer Yog. Yet, I hereby request official dispensation for a thirteenth one.”
“A dispensation? Do clarify.”
“One of the humans that missed the mark in the last trial, Junior Elder Ledeboer, has a very unique halo. I do hereby request his reintegration.”
“Junior Elder Ledeboer… I do remember. He did not perform with much distinction. What type of halo makes this human so exceptional?”
“He radiates the halo of a thought piercer, Overseer Yog. The only human we have scouted with such a trait.”
“A human thought piercer… Is that even physically possible?”
“We shall never know, unless we do proceed with his instruction. Thus, this official request.”
“A human thought piercer,” Yog says. “Remarkable.” She pauses for a few moments, as if considering the idea. “And inconceivable. No, Walker Rew. We shall not waste resources on futile enterprises. Furthermore, I do fail to see how a thought piercer could benefit our goals.”
“That is a regrettable lack of foresight on your part, Overseer Yog. A human thought piercer could be deployed—”
“My decision is final, Walker Rew. We shall not discuss this matter any further.”
Their attention is drawn back to the surface of the permascape. Qoh has just materialized there, and next to her, Edda is scanning the area with eager eyes. She is wearing her usual outfit: the plain white tunic with the black, ornate belt of the Redeemed hanging loosely on her waist.
“The last human is here,” Yog says. “That is your human, Walker Rew. Quite the disappointment. An appalling performance, despite the amount of personal time you have misspent in her instruction.”
“On the contrary, Overseer Yog. The context is not to be dismissed. Redeemed van Dolah was unduly attacked, and yet she did resist the illicit violence and managed to reach the exit. I doubt any other candidate would have made it under such duress. The Elders Smooks have subverted the spirit of the trial, and as such proved themselves unworthy of the Paths.”
“On the contrary, Walker Rew. There was only one rule: to make it out before others. The Elders Smooks not only fulfilled the goal adequately, but they had the discernment to sacrifice their ranking in the trials in exchange of gaining a tactical advantage over a dangerous rival. That shows an impressive array of high order skills: attentiveness, cunning and forward planning. Skills that shall prove invaluable to our first human Walkers of the Mind. Your human, on the other hand, showed weakness and unpreparedness for the unexpected. Without the assistance of another human, she would have surely missed her qualification.”
“That human who did assist, Man Kraker, is a relative, and thus an extension of herself, not unlike your limbs,” Rew gestures to the three bodies of Yog, “which are an extension of yours. I do fear such human nuisances like family and relations are beyond your comprehension, Overseer Yog. Thus, you shall trust my judgment as human whisperer when I maintain that Redeemed van Dolah’s ability to establish alliances with other humans is one of her key strengths. Which in this case proved indeed critical to her success. Such ability to weave a network of relations shall prove invaluable to our first human Walkers of the Mind.”
“I do fear you overestimate your human’s abilities, Walker Rew. She is weak in her core, broken by fear and trauma, and shall be exposed as such soon enough.”
“I do fear that what you identify as weaknesses are actually strengths, Overseer Yog. And indeed, we shall assess her abilities soon enough.”
Edda’s face is a few inches off Luuk Smook’s smug smile. Her eyes are wide, her frown sharp. Go, girl! Ximena thinks.
“Why?!” she yells, droplets of dream spit scattering across his ugly face.
Luuk’s icy blue eyes remain locked on Edda’s, unperturbed, his lips almost imperceptibly curved.
Ximena catches an abrupt side motion in the corner of her eye.
“Get off his face, bitch!” Mirjam Smook says, as she rams her full weight against Edda’s flank.
Edda falls with violence on the dark stone of the staging permascape. It is painful on her knees, but especially on her soul. Her bafflement, Ximena realizes, swallows the pain in a single gulp. Edda pushes herself up on her knees and turns her head towards Mirjam, her eyes still asking, Why?!
Ximena gasps at the rage she sees in Mirjam’s expression. Her narrow, fierce face, and short, blonde hair remind Ximena of the legend of the Amazon warriors. Her blue eyes seem injected with blood, her glower is murderous. Goah’s Mercy, this is not just rivalry. It’s… hatred.
As Mirjam takes a menacing step towards Edda, two men, running from behind, grab her arms and immobilize her in a tight grip. They are Pieter and—Ximena blinks in disbelief—Gotthard, working as one. Mirjam kicks and pushes, shakes and pulls, curses and yells. She cannot break free, but she is not making it easy.
“Could you please call your dogs off, Redeemed van Dolah?” Luuk asks in his deep, coarse voice. Oh, how Ximena hates that smug smile.
“Why should I?” Edda asks, standing and walking towards him. “Who’s going to stop us from dismembering her, here and now?” Edda turns her face to Mirjam, who glares back at her, panting, but quiet. “Certainly not them.” Edda stretches a hand at the mares, all of whom are watching their interaction. “They look like they want to see some action.”
“I suggest we call a truce,” Luuk says, his smile widening. “We’ve better things to do than fight each other.”
Edda chuckles, shaking her head. “You’ve got balls. Now you go civilized, yeah?”
Luuk smiles at her in silence.
Edda takes a deep breath. Fact is, he is right. “Mensas, thanks. Let her go, yeah? It’s okay. There’s no time for this horseshit.”
The two men grudgingly release Mirjam who walks to her brother, glaring back at Pieter. “You,” she says, “you are a fisherman.”
“I think the smell gave you away, rat boy!” Gotthard says with a chuckle.
“Don’t you have a backbone?” Mirjam asks, eyes locked on Pieter.
Pieter frowns at her in confusion.
“Look at you,” she continues. “You’re pathetic. A word of your master specialists, and you jump to do all sort of tricks for them.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Pieter asks.
“That mensa just insulted you,” she says, pointing at Gotthard. “To your face! And you just take it like that? Where in Goah’s Name is your pride?”
Pieter turns his head at Gotthard, who returns his gaze with a nervous smile. He takes an unconscious step back.
“He’s just an asshole,” Pieter says with a shrug. “Why bother?”
“And that’s the problem.” Mirjam points a finger at Pieter’s face. “That’s the problem, right there! They decide for us, they boss us around, they take all the karma from us, and they work for shit while we work our asses off.”
“They?” Pieter asks. “We?”
“They, the specialists,” Mirjam says. “We, the people.”
“They, the elite,” Luuk says. “We, the oppressed.”
“Oh, I see,” Edda says. She puts a hand on Pieter’s broad shoulder while staring at Luuk. “I think I know why you want to win the Trials. I bet a good ol’ class revolution is on the menu, yeah? What do you mensas have in mind? French style, or you rather go the Russian route?”
“You think you’re so much better than us,” Luuk says, “with your fancy words, your pretty tunic and your soft hands. But you are nothing,” he says the word like it is a curse. “And when the people take power away from yo
ur corrupted hands, you’ll be nothing,” he says the word, like it is a promise.
Edda is walking through a forested dreamscape not unlike the woodlands that edge the eastern rim of Lunteren—a maze of low, narrow birches naked of leaves. Only the occasional conifer offers a relief of green. The humid, dense fragrance of the winter wilderness spreads across the auditorium, acting like a balm on Ximena’s grateful dream lungs.
As Edda walks, she touches the white bark of passing trees, leisurely. She is grounding herself into the dream, Ximena realizes. With such naturality, she does it… yes, almost unconsciously.
Edda stops in front of a particularly large birch and studies it, tilting her head, her gaze intent and focused. The trees closest to the birch appear to react on their own by moving away, making space around the birch. Then, gradually, the birch grows larger, its branches thicker, its trunk wider, until it is not a birch anymore, but a magnificent oak.
“Aws Blessings to you, Redeemed van Dolah,” Rew says. She was not there an instant ago. She stares at the oak, impervious to the fact that her legs are embedded in a thorny bramble bush nearby. “Do you know what all this is?”
“Elder Rew.” She smiles at the mare. “Blessings. What is what?”
“This place.” Rew gestures with a clumsy sweep of the arm. “What is the nature of our surroundings?”
“Uh, the dream, you mean?”
“Indeed. A dream. You are aware.”
“Course I am.”
“Can you estimate how long you did require from the moment your dream began until you achieved awareness?”
“Uh, it was pretty much right away. There’s always something that makes me… wonder, yeah? Ask questions, like you said. Like,” she spreads her arms, palms up, “what am I doing here, inside this forest? Then I usually look at the palm of my hands, or pinch my nose, to confirm that it’s really a dream, although tonight I didn’t need to, because… It’s hard to explain. I was already sure of it, yeah? I could feel it.”
“I do understand. And that is remarkable, Redeemed van Dolah. You have developed the intuition of a master of the inner walking.”
“Thanks. I’ve been practicing non-stop, changing things all around me.” She points a finger at the oak and smiles with pride. “And I never slip from the dream. Not once! It wasn’t easy—sometimes stuff happens, like before, when a rabbit popped up from the ground, and I was tempted to follow it. There’re always temptations to lose myself in the… dream story, if that makes sense?”
“It does, very much indeed. You have developed a deep intuition for dream mechanics. It is the nature of dreams to engage your consciousness, your dream senses, your attention; to pull you into the logic of their narrative; to gnaw on your awareness until it dissipates completely.”
“Uh, thanks…?”
“You are welcome. Your ability to retain awareness makes you equal to a grounding master. But as pleased as I am to confirm that you comfortably tread the Second Step, it is the Third Step that concerns us during this session. You already appear capable of transforming your environment by just wishing to do so. I shall assess now to what degree.” Rew extends an arm at the large oak that Edda transformed from a birch. “Can you turn it back into the smaller tree with white bark?”
“Into a birch?” Edda stares at the oak, smiles, and waves theatrically at it. “Abracadabra!”
The oak changes at once—branches shrink, trunk thins, bark lightens. It is over in less than a second.
“Ta-dah!” Edda mocks a bow at Rew. “Now, let me guess. This… dream magic is the Third Step, yeah?”
“The Third Step indeed.” Rew nods. “Will-control—dream-substance manipulation by desire.”
“I’ve been practicing. I got really good at it!”
“Manipulation of individual elements is not evidence of mastery.”
Rew directs her expressionless white eyes at the birch. The tree changes again, shrinking rapidly into the shape of a person—into Edda herself.
“What the…! You can change my own dream! Do I really look like that? Wait…” She concentrates. The Edda between the trees looks down to her own bosom as it grows noticeably, tightening the tunic around her chest. “There!”
“Thanks,” the second Edda says with a wide smile.
“Sure, sexy thing.”
Rew waves an arm in silence, almost impatiently. The second Edda disappears.
“Hey! You started it!”
Rew ignores her. “Are your abilities developed enough to change the entire dream environment into something else completely?”
“You mean, like turning the forest into something else?”
“Indeed.”
“Wow.” Edda scans her surroundings. “I’ve never tried that. Into what?”
“That is up to you, Redeemed van Dolah. A full environment exchange. Anything that is not a forest.”
“Aha, let’s see…” She looks thoughtful, then closes her eyes and slows her breathing.
“Are you trying already?” Rew asks.
“Yeah, goahdamnit! It’s difficult!”
“Do picture the new environment. Do wish for it. Do want it.”
“Duh! What do you think I’m doing?”
“There is a technique that might be of assistance. If you do allow.”
“Hold on. Let me…” Edda’s face contracts. “Try…” The surrounding birches remain defiantly solid. “Oof! Okay, I give up. Tell me, oh dream master.”
“A gradual environment transition is hard to accomplish, even for a Walker in the Shadow. But a reset is simpler.”
“Say what?” Edda tilts her head.
“A reset. A clean beginning. Make this environment go away first, and only then wish a second environment into existence.”
Edda frowns in confusion.
“For instance,” Rew says, her feminine, psychic voice reverberating with calm patience, “you may close your eyes for a few moments, and then open them into your desired environment; or you may spin rapidly until the world around you disappears in a blur, while you visualize a fresh one to await you upon completion.”
“Okay. Uh, let’s try with the eyes first.”
The scene goes black in the auditorium, simulating the fact that they are watching the events from Edda’s perspective. Ximena leans forward in the darkness with expectation.
“Visualize…” She hears Edda’s voice in the darkness. She sounds like she is exerting herself. “What I want… A few moments… Okay!”
An almost blinding light returns to a transformed scene.
The forest is gone.
Edda and Rew are now standing on a wooden boat in the midst of a river. A very wide river, wider than any Ximena has ever seen. High hills along both margins are barely visible in the distance, ruined castles crowning some peaks. The sun illuminates lazy currents from a spotless blue sky.
“So sexy!” Edda raises her arms. “Did I just nail the third step of your Path?”
Rew scans the placid waters for a few seconds. Ximena would bet she is impressed. “It might have been the fortune of the apprentice. Do return us to the forest.”
“The Forest. All right.” Without hesitation, Edda utters a curt cry of joy, and jumps headfirst into the water, splashing through the surface in an instant.
A surface that spins around itself in a confusion of gravity and water. Ximena feels almost dizzy by the sudden explosion of motion and perspective as her eyes try to adapt to the new narrative of the dream.
Edda emerges upwards, headfirst, from a small puddle in the same forest they left behind a few seconds ago. Her body moves as if pushed up in the air, and has just the right amount of side momentum to make her fall softly on the grass beside the original birch tree.
“There!” she says, visibly pleased with herself. “The forest. Do I kick dream ass or what?”
“Dream control is indeed in your nature, Redeemed van Dolah. As your Second Wake halo reveals.”
“Second what?”
&n
bsp; “Matters not. Your dominion over the dream substance shall prove invaluable to exert suggestion.”
“Suggestion. Right.” She cuts a twig off a low branch and rubs it leisurely in her hands. “Is that what you did to Consul Levinsohn that first day, to make her nominate Lunteren for the Century Festival?”
“No, that was not suggestion, Redeemed van Dolah. That was persuasion. More powerful. It does require dominion over the Path in the Shadow. Should you ever reach such mastery, I am confident your natural talent for control shall make you a formidable persuader.”
“So what is suggestion good for?”
“The goal is indeed the same: to intrude into another’s mind in order to impose your will. But a Light Walker must rely only on the limited reach of willpower, and its cunning application by transforming the dreamer’s environment in the right way to achieve deception.”
“Deception.” Edda frowns. “Sounds… Not what a good person would do, Elder Rew.”
“Deception is the lightest application of power over others.”
“There’s also asking.”
“That is not power. That is mercy.”
“All right. Got it. Can you show me how to,” she wiggles her fingers in the air, “use this dream magic to do suggestion?”
“I do fear I cannot, Redeemed van Dolah. No marai can. As human, you are better suited to design your own means of deception on other humans than a marai can ever be. And you shall—suggestion is the core of the last trial that awaits you and your fellow human candidates at the end of the Path of Light. Suggestion will determine which two humans are selected to be instructed in the Path in the Shadow.”
“But then…” Edda’s voice hesitates slightly. Ximena can feel the hint of anxiety growing inside her. Now, suddenly, suggestion is the key to saving her father, if only because it is the key to persuasion. “How can I learn?!”
“You have already displayed a degree of proficiency, Redeemed van Dolah.”
“What?”
“With Consul Levinsohn indeed. I did persuade her to move the Festival to your Geldershire, as a demonstration to you humans of the potency of persuasion. And yet it was you that convinced her to select your own colony by the cunning application of words, seduction and sex. That was most impressive.”