A Warrior of Dreams

by Richard Parks

  With that Tolas again became one with the people around him, sharing the old jokes of comrades at arms. "Now then... oh, I know. Ess, give me the rope."

  No doubt acting on some signal, the rat vanished into the depths of the pack and reappeared with the end of a hempen cord in his teeth. Tolas thanked him and began to pull it out of the pack, but the more he pulled, the more cord ribboned out, until there was a small pile at his feet and no end in sight.

  "Think you got enough?" the rat asked.

  "Well... maybe we'll put a little back." Tolas measured out a single span of the hemp and held a section of the rat's muzzle. "Would you mind cutting this?" Ess obligingly gnawed the cord in two, and Tolas shoved the rest back into the pack. "That'll be all for now."

  The rat retreated after the cord, though not without several muttered opinions on Tolas's conjuring talent. There was good-natured laughter from the crowd; Tolas acknowledged it with a wry grin, saying, "Easy for him to talk—if things go wrong he's got a place to hide."

  For the next several minutes Tolas worked the roped for all it was worth: tying knots that disappeared, knots that moved up and down the rope, one that even slid off the rope entirely. Finally he looped the rope double over his arm and took a small knife from his belt. "And now..."

  Ess never missed a cue, though Joslyn had no idea how they were given. He appeared beneath the flap and yawned hugely. "Is that the best you can do? They've seen the healed rope trick a thousand times. Am I right?"

  More laughter, and one or two nods from the crowd. Tolas took the knot he had pulled off the rope earlier and threw it at the rat's nose. Ess withdrew, squeaking indignantly. Tolas gazed ruefully at the cord in his hand. "He is right... but Ess, don't you know how hard it is to think up impossible things? That no one hasn't already seen, that is."

  A muffled reply from the leather bag. "You could scale a lesser mountain, Great Magician."

  Tolas smiled. "I could, at that." He turned to the crowd, and his gaze seemed to touch each person there individually, separating them one by one from the identity of the crowd. He came to a little girl near the front rank. She was dirty and ragged, her hair falling in thick, dark rivulets to her shoulder like a muddy river.

  Street orphan, thought Joslyn. It wasn't just her appearance—ordinary neglect could do that. It was in the eyes—the certainty of nowhere to go, no one to help. The child in those eyes was nearly dead; when the spark was gone, nothing like it would ever come again. Joslyn found it hard to look at her, hard not to remember.

  Tolas kneeled in front of the girl, and for a moment Joslyn thought she would turn and bolt into the crowd, but Tolas's friendly smile was like a lasso; it caught and held her long enough for Tolas to complete the snare with his voice. "What's your name?"

  "Aynfyr," she said, looking at her feet.

  Tolas took her chin in a gentle grip and made her look at him. "Aynfyr... that's a pretty name. Like the princess in the story?"

  The girl nodded sheepishly. "She made it up," a man in the crowd said, but he was quickly shushed.

  Tolas ignored the interruption. "Then you know all about Aynfyr and her Marvelous Horn. It was supposed to give her whatever she needed. Trouble was, she didn't always know what she needed. Are you like that?" The girl shook her head and Tolas grinned. "No, I didn't think so. Well, I'm no 'marvelous horn', Aynfyr. I can't give you what you need, but maybe I can give you something you'd want, something you've never seen before. Would you like that?"

  The girl nodded, and there was the faintest promise of a smile on her face. Joslyn glanced at Kessa—no help there—then back at Tolas.

  What's he doing?

  Tolas stood up, and when he spoke again, he included the rest of the audience in the sweep of his voice. "Aynfyr, what would you like to see?"

  Without a moment's hesitation, the answer came in a high, piping voice. "A butterfly."

  Tolas, if that child's not working for you, you're in deep trouble.

  Joslyn half-expected Tolas to produce a butterfly from his bag of tricks, perhaps a thing of silk floating on gossamer threads too fine to see, guided by artful gestures. Tolas did no such thing, and Joslyn was relieved, though she couldn't say why.

  Tolas smiled at the girl. "Of course... and how many of the rest of you have never seen a butterfly? Not so many of them in Darsa, are there?" There were muttered assents from the crowd, and Tolas paused just a moment to acknowledge them. "No... not so many. Roaches? By the bushel. And rats," he said, turning a pointed look on the leather bag. There was a muffled obscenity from within, but nothing else. Tolas rubbed his chin with the knuckles of his right hand. "Yes, I think we could all use a butterfly today. Thank you, Aynfyr."

  He sat down cross-legged as if before a campfire. Some of the people there moved to the side to get a better view; others went down on one knee. The effect was that of a large family gathered around a tale-spinner, and Tolas took his part immediately. "Now then... I'm sure all here have at least heard of a butterfly, but maybe everyone doesn't know what it looks like, what it is. Then one could land on your head and you'd know no more than you did. So let's picture it together." He spread his hands, palm up, and the put the edges together to form a rough butterfly outline. "The wings move like this..." Tolas's nimble fingers lifted and fell in long wavelike patterns, showing the motion of languid wings.

  He's got that perfectly. Joslyn remembered a butterfly of her own, and for an instant could almost see Tolas's hands as a butterfly, drifting over a meadow filled with flowers... Nonsense. If he doesn't give these people something soon, they'll turn on him.

  Joslyn had seen street magicians before, and to a man and woman, they kept moving—talking, doing their tricks and schemes, never for a moment giving the audience time to get restless. But Tolas set his own pace, oblivious, and the crowd marched to it. He was in control; it was as simple as that.

  Tolas moved on without pause. "And the colors of the wings, well, you'll just have to imagine those. Like spatters of a rainbow, meeting and blending one into the other, and such patterns! Like nothing else." He went on, drawing the image of a butterfly in fluid detail: the rainbow wings, the long, fragile legs, the delicate spiral tongue. And all the while his fingers mimed its fluttering motion, Joslyn found herself almost captured by Tolas's word-portrait, but her unease was growing by the moment. Just what was he up to?

  There was a gasp for the crowd, then another, then what sounded like one long, communal sigh. Aynfyr laughed and clapped her hands together, her eyes on Tolas's hands... no, on a spot about six inches above his spread fingers. The audience pressed closer, obscuring Joslyn's view, and their voices buzzed with mixed excitement and wonder.

  Joslyn felt Kessa's fingers digging into her arm. She glanced to the side, saw the odd light gleaming in the girl's eyes. She's within the dream.

  Kessa gasped and shook with excitement like a child. "Joslyn, isn't it wonderful!?"

  Joslyn didn't answer; she didn't know how. She saw the audience now looking up above the circle they made about Tolas, and still she saw nothing. Has he hypnotized them? I saw what they saw, heard what they --

  She knew. It wasn't whether she was hypnotized or not, tricked into seeing something that wasn't there. She was outside, as Kessa and Tolas's memories were not. And it was a memory, Joslyn was sure. Those people long ago had seen something, as Kessa did now. Joslyn was the only one who didn't see, and it occurred to her that she very much wanted to see. It would be simple; all she had to do was enter the dream... only she was already in the dream and still apart. But she was not seeing and accepting it, as Kessa did. For that she would have to take one extra step and become a part of Tolas's dream.

  Come on, Joslyn. You know how.

  It seemed so strange to think of it that way—she knew how. Part of the Dreamer's basic stock of skills. Kessa lacked the dreamer discipline; she didn't know how not to accept the dream. Right then Joslyn envied her ignorance very much.

  It's easy...

 
; It sounded like an argument. Joslyn frowned and began to go through the preliminary steps to relax the Nightsoul's conscious control and fade into the play, to blend in like one more drop of water in a stream. One deep breath of the air of the night world and...

  Nothing. It didn't work.

  Joslyn tried again, but with the same result. Must be a little out of practice... Her thought was rudely interrupted by the laughter. Joslyn glanced at Kessa, but she still stood, eyes shining in wonder at nothing Joslyn could see.

  "Did you hear that?"

  Kessa barely glanced at her. "I didn't hear anything."

  Of course not, Joslyn thought, Only I can hear a harpy laugh. And that burst of laughter was like cold water in the face of her delusion. Joslyn knew how to enter the dream. She wasn't going to do it.

  THAT'S RIGHT, DEAR—DON'T LOSE CONTROL FOR AN INSTANT. NO TELLING WHAT YOU MIGHT SEE.

  The harpy hovered over the crowd, sounding its cackle while it crudely aped the flutter of a butterfly with its large, dark wings. The crowd didn't change, didn't react at all. Joslyn knew the harpy was for her alone.

  Damn you to every hell there is!

  Joslyn wrenched Kessa out of the dream. It was a rape; she didn't tell herself otherwise. Joslyn went into the part of the dream that Kessa claimed for herself, and for that instant, just before Kessa lost the dream, Joslyn saw the butterfly through Kessa's eyes.

  Sweet Dreamer.

  And then it was past, the vision fading into memory. Kessa was again outside, looking dazed.

  "What... what did you do?"

  "I pulled you back," Joslyn said, "It was time." It wasn't exactly a lie, but close enough. Joslyn felt angry at all of creation, but when she looked at Kessa and knew that she no longer saw Tolas's butterfly, Joslyn was mostly angry at herself. "Kessa..."

  Kessa didn't seem to hear. She was looking through the haze of the dream at the crowd of people. "It was there a moment ago... Did you see it, Joslyn?"

  "Yes," Joslyn lied.

  "Did he—I dream that?"

  Joslyn shook her head. "No. I believe Tolas actually made them see a butterfly."

  The crowd was now looking as one toward a spot in the sky as if a huge butterfly with brilliant blue and gold wings were disappeared in the distance. Some continued to stare, others blinked like sleepers awakening, milled about; some few others came by to put money in Tolas's upturned cap. The show was over, and soon the audience began to disperse. Aynfyr lingered for a moment; then she too wandered off, using her new-found notoriety to beg a few coppers from the scattering audience. Tolas packed the rest of his equipment, pausing to feed his sharp-eyed assistant.

  Joslyn took a firm grip on Kessa's arm and a firmer grip on the dream around her. "This is where I came in before. Watch now, and for Tolas's sake don't try to interfere!"

  Tolas hoisted the pack, slung it over his back, and set off down one of the small side streets that spoked into the central hub of the marketplace. He turned off that street into another that was little more than an alley between two ruined buildings. Tolas opened a door and slipped inside part of one that was still standing. Joslyn and Kessa got a glimpse of the bed and a few simple furnishings, but their attention was on the Enders.

  There were three of them, and they were waiting for Tolas. It was carefully planned, and they wasted neither time nor talk. They caught Tolas unaware; two pinned his arms, and the third struck him in the head—not enough to kill; that wasn't on their minds. While Tolas was dazed, the leader took a shaving razor from his robe, pried open Tolas's mouth, and mutilated him. It wasn't his skilled, nimble hands they destroyed, damn them. They knew where the magic was.

  "No... No!!"

  Kessa was separate from the dream now, as was Joslyn; the shout was not heard. It was all Joslyn could do to restrain Kessa from attacking the hateful memory like a wildcat. "Let me go! Joslyn, don't you see what they're doing!?"

  Joslyn did not let her go. "Doing? It's a memory, Kessa. Done long ago." Joslyn could well understand Kessa's anger. The dream—the memory—was vivid and spared nothing. When Tolas fainted, the leader made a bandage of a wad of cloth and put it behind Tolas's teeth to catch some of the blood. One of the others dropped Tolas's pack on the floor and stomped it; the sadistic light in his eyes was oddly reassuring. When the leader did his part, that look was missing; he might have been writing a tally of account instead of cutting out a man's tongue, for all the emotion on his face. The other was different; he enjoyed what he did. Joslyn saw how the blanket Cult of Malitus sheltered all: those who truly believed in the rightness of their cause and those who would have been the killers, the savages, in any case. Only now they had a cause and religion that absolved them of whatever they did. Whatever they wanted to do.

  Kessa had stopped fighting, but she was still seething. "If this was true memory then I've seen the devils' faces," she said. "I'll hunt them, I'll kill every last one!"

  Joslyn laughed harshly. "You'll be denied, girl—remember? Tolas saw them, too."

  The scene faded like a curtain rung down, and then there were three short vignettes: Tolas, white faced and trembling, ambushing an Ender in an alley, and that was one. Tolas now not so white faced, not so trembling, confronting another Ender in an abandoned building and leaving him twitching on the floor, and that was two. Tolas saved the leader for last, but Joslyn didn't think there was much savor left in that morsel by then. The Tolas that killed the first acolyte was not the same one who slipped into the darkened temple, found one acolyte out of hundreds, and quietly slit his throat, muffling his death throes in his own blanket. This Tolas had the cold smile and hard eyes that Joslyn remembered from her first meeting; the Tolas that created butterflies out of words and need had died a slow death with every blow, every cut that called itself revenge until there was little—perhaps nothing—of him left.

  Until the dream began again. The marketplace crossroads appeared; the crowd and Aynfyr appeared and finally Tolas himself—reborn. Joslyn waited just long enough to confirm what she already knew; the dream would repeat. "Aynfyr, what would you like to see?"

  Joslyn took Kessa's hand and drew her, dazed and unresisting, from the borders of the dream. "There was much that I didn't see before, but nothing changed. I wager this dream repeats every night."

  Hope was nearly gone from Kessa's face, but what flicker there was made a feeble attempt to salvage something. "What if you stopped that part of the dream where they... you know. I think you could do it."

  Joslyn sighed. "I could. And if the shock of interference didn't end the dream, he would awaken to find nothing changed at all. How kind would that be, Kessa? How would that endear me—or you—to him?"

  Kessa looked beaten, her voice barely a whisper. "I just thought..."

  Joslyn waited, but it seemed Kessa wasn't entirely sure what she thought. Joslyn remembered cutting her from Tolas's dream and decided to tell her. "You thought what Tolas thought—that his anger could be given names and faces and lives separate from his own to be taken away. You thought of accounts settled and enemies defeated. Now those three young lunatics are past hurting, but Tolas tries again every damned night, hoping it can make a difference. But it never does."

  "We—I, pitied him," said Kessa, softly, "but I don't think any of us understood how much he had lost, why he couldn't accept it. I wanted to help."

  Joslyn spent a long moment before she said what she said. It wasn't her business; it was trouble, it was danger, and she had enough of her own. All true. And still she said it. "As long as it wasn't too much bother."

  Kessa frowned. "What does that mean?"

  "It means you wanted to help so long as it was a quick cut into his dreams and all the pain ebbing like a lanced boil. Well, you've seen that it isn't so easy and you're giving up."

  Kessa tried to leave the Nightstage, but Joslyn was too quick for her. "I realize," Joslyn said, "that come morning you'll be able to do all sorts of unpleasant things to me, but right now, right here I'm bigger an
d stronger than you can imagine, and you're going to listen."

  Kessa was nearly spitting with rage. "You arrogant bitch! You don't understand—"

  Joslyn laughed in her face. "I don't? I've seen you with Tolas, and the only thing that makes you different with him is that your face goes a little more unconcerned, a little more of a mask, a little more a study in indifference. You wanted to help him, but you didn't want to let him know why. So you used me to get to Tolas through his dreams. It was safe—for you. Only it can't be safe, Kessa. Care for someone and you've given them a power to hurt that an Ender would envy. All you have to do is let him know, and you'll never be safe again as long as you live. And you won't take that risk. Now, little girl—tell me I don't understand."

  Kessa looked stunned. "I don't know what you are," Kessa finally managed, "but I don't think you're human."

  Joslyn smiled sweetly. "Are you afraid of me, Kessa?"

  Bravado gave a great effort, but truth won. "Yes, Joslyn. I am."

  "As afraid as you are of Tolas?"

  Kessa slowly shook her head.

  "Very good. Tolas is still lying to himself; don't do the same if you still want to help him."

  "What do I do?"

  Joslyn shrugged. "I have no idea," she said, and smiled, "but I can't wait to find out."

  *

  Joslyn sat in the mist, knees pulled close under her chin, eyes closed, mind drifting. She felt incredibly weary; she felt her time in dream growing short. Kessa's dream shone with the soft glow of dying embers; it was a good piece of work. Joslyn felt a certain pride of craftsmanship in the way she had eased Kessa back into her own dreams, giving her a little respite before morning came and the problem of Tolas followed it like a persistent puppy. Time enough to worry about that then—for now Kessa dreamed a dream of long, lazy flights through clouds of oblivion.

  Joslyn yawned. Must go soon.

  MUST.

  It sounded like an echo. Joslyn listened, but there was nothing else.