A Warrior of Dreams

by Richard Parks

  "You're right," Ghost agreed.

  Joslyn felt her headache coming back. "An argument," she said, "would have been nice."

  *

  Ghost met Daycia in the garden. She was weeding a row of late harvest peas by hand, pulling up the interlopers and leaving them to dry and wither on a stone walkway. Her hair was tied back in a kerchief she'd worn as part of her disguise in the marketplace; sweat glistened on her brow.

  Without a word, Ghost went to work beside her, pulling a weed, carefully shaking the precious soil free from its roots before tossing it onto the pile with the others.

  Daycia smiled. "Ghost, for an incomplete man you've many talents."

  "Incompletely remembered. I think I've done this before, but I didn't know that until jogged by the sight of you at it just now. I get pieces of my life back from time to time, brought to me on the backs of someone else's like pack freight in a caravan. Sometimes I can't wait to see what comes next."

  They worked silently for awhile, until Ghost finally spoke. "There's another reason I'm here."

  "I sent Tolas to fetch you, remember? But I do appreciate the help. The young ones have no patience for it... I wanted to tell you that we've found you a boat."

  "How large?"

  "About thirty feet—eight across the beam, by Kessa's reckoning. Will that do?"

  "Admirably, assuming she's seaworthy."

  "You'll have to judge that for yourself; I'm afraid there are no sailors in my little family." Daycia put both hands in the small of her back and stretched herself upright. "I hope it is, since you need to leave as soon as possible."

  "Before the precise method of our leaving becomes a moot point?"

  Daycia smiled. "I do like you, Ghost. We understand one another."

  *

  The inlet nestled under the remnants of the southwestern wall. There was no beach on the side nearest the wall; the land rose stony and defiant against the crashing waves. The water was a deeper shade of green here than it had been on the outlying shallows; a few fishing boats bobbed against a serviceable pier.

  Kessa and Joslyn kept out of sight high up on the sea-cliff, watching through a crevice in the ruined wall. Down below, a tiny man in boots, baggy pants and smock gesticulated widely while Tolas stood patiently by. Ghost poked about on a small vessel lashed broadside to the pier.

  "He's certainly taking his time," Joslyn muttered.

  "Which probably means he's found nothing seriously wrong yet," Kessa said.

  "I have. That thing is entirely too small."

  Kessa laughed softly. "Compared to the sea, yes. Compared to a piece of driftwood, not so bad."

  Joslyn smiled, then glanced at Kessa again and asked the question. "Have you spoken to Tolas?"

  Kessa nodded. That was all.

  Joslyn wasn't content to let it be. "Well?

  Kessa shrugged. "Maybe—"

  She was interrupted by a crashing noise in the undergrowth behind them. Kessa whirled, her arbalest ready. "Who's there?" Silence. "Come out or I'll shoot!" Kessa took careful aim where the sound had been loudest and waited.

  More silence. More waiting, and then finally a bitter voice. "Liar."

  Kessa lowered her weapon in disgust. "Phian. I should have known."

  He came out of the bushes and bracken, looking even more disgusted than Kessa did. "You gave your word, you know. 'Come out or I'll shoot', that's what you said. And I didn't come out and you didn't shoot. The logistics were perfect! Dense ferns too thick to see through but not so thick as to deflect the bolt, myself placed to best advantage... what a perverse creature is man!"

  "I'm a woman," Kessa pointed out.

  "You are a nasty, willful little girl," corrected Phian. "And you tell lies." He sat down on a sunken crenelation and rested his chin on his hands.

  "Phian, we're busy. Please go away," Joslyn said.

  "What will you do if I don't?" Phian asked, glumly unhopeful. "Kill me?"

  Joslyn put her hands on her hips and glared at him. "Master Phian, it should be clear by now that Kessa isn't going to cut your cord. So why are you following us?"

  "Because you're a possibility, and I see do few of those."

  Joslyn looked at Kessa. Kessa gave her an 'oh, why not' look. Joslyn went on. "Phian, I know you're mad, but are you deaf as well? I said—"

  "I know what you said. By 'possibility' I don't mean that you'll necessarily kill me yourselves, understand. But you might make it possible for me to die."

  "How?" Kessa asked.

  "Because," he said, "you're a locus of events; I knew that the first time I saw you. Things happen around you and your friends; events will be altered, people will live and people will die. Possibilities."

  "That's comforting," Joslyn sighed. "Yes, very... but if you really want to die, all you have to do is walk off the edge of the cliff. It's a good eighty feet to the water, assuming you missed the rocks, which is doubtful. Why not take advantage of the opportunity?"

  "I'm a coward," said Phian.

  You're a stripped cog, Joslyn thought, and then, caught up in the spirit of it all, added a sprung roof, a cracked mirror, a fogged window --

  "They're coming," Kessa said.

  Joslyn peered down the path to the dock and saw Ghost and Tolas headed up. Their hands were weaving and gesturing in spirited conversation. "You know those signs?"

  Kessa nodded. "Some, but they're too far to make out—"

  "Three. So many..." He came silently; Joslyn hadn't heard him until he stood on the very edge of their small clearing. His voice was full of child-like wonder, his eyes full of nightmares.

  The boy in the dream.

  Just as in the dream, only now his robes were ragged and dirty, his young face bruised and streaked with filth and sweat. The long curved knife in his hand was crusted with dried blood.

  Kessa recovered quickly and covered the Ender with her crossbow. "Stay where you are."

  He blinked, and the tip of his blade flicked several times as a tremor shook his body. "You're pretty," he said, "and I can't kill you from here..." He smiled and started forward.

  Joslyn struggled with fear and guilt. Fear won. "Kessa, you'll have to kill him."

  The boy stopped, looking confused. It didn't last. He broke into a broad smile. "I know you..." He came on, eyes now fixed on Joslyn. Kessa sighted carefully, her finger closing on the trigger.

  "Just like the young, to waste death on those unable to appreciate its finer points."

  They had forgotten Phian. In the next moment two things happened: someone stepped over the wall, and Phian stepped directly into the lunatic's path.

  "No!!"

  Joslyn didn't know who shouted. Maybe it was Kessa, maybe it was herself. Phian glanced back, grinning broadly. "Don't listen to the—"

  The knife interrupted him. The thrust was solid, but blind. The mad boy's gaze was still fixed unblinkingly on Joslyn, and he didn't even bother to stab again. It wasn't needed. Phian crumpled to the ground, and only Joslyn saw him smile.

  The boy grinned. "You are my failure. When I kill you I'll be free."

  Phian was out of the way; Kessa had a clear shot. She chose it with care. Perhaps she thought that, with the acolyte's slow advance, she had plenty of time. She was wrong.

  "Joyous!"

  "Joslyn, look out!!"

  Joslyn remembered her knife and made a frantic grab for it. Kessa fired, but her aim was spoiled. The bolt took the youth high in the left shoulder, staggering him. For someone still interested in life it would have been enough. The acolyte didn't even pause.

  Kessa drew her own knife and tensed to spring, but something beat her to it. Joslyn saw only a brown blur as something passed her with the speed of an arrow.

  Ghost...?

  It was. The curved knife bit him once before he managed to trap the boy's wrist. Ghost had the advantage in size and strength, but the boy was no longer fully measurable in human terms. He was a force of nature given form and he came on, dragging Ghost
with him. Kessa darted in and managed to stab once before she was swatted aside like a stinging fly.

  They all heard the sound. They all stopped. Even the acolyte paused. Later, Joslyn tried to recapture the heart of that moment, and all she could think of was the time she looked out over Ly Ossia from her window during a thunderstorm, and how all the people scurrying for cover in the darkness below were frozen for an instant in time by a flash of lightning. It was like that when Tolas screamed.

  It was a scream. Though choked off by the nothing past the root of his tongue; all that came out was a gurgling bellow. Tolas strode past Joslyn just as the mad boy surged forward again, pulling free of the startled Ghost. There was a flash of steel in Tolas's hand; Joslyn was vaguely aware that her knife was gone again. The acolyte raised his own knife as Tolas drew near, but what happened after that was mostly a blur. Then Tolas was past the acolyte and hurrying to where Kessa had fallen, and there was nothing, nothing at all, between Joslyn and walking Death.

  "Joyourrrsss..."

  Numb, Joslyn traced the thin red line that began at the front of the boy's throat and swept outward to cross the left carotid artery, and then the line was still red but not so thin, and his wildly beating heart began to pump the life out of him.

  "Hold still. Hol—" The knife fell from his hand; he looked at his fingers, vague surprise on his face, and then at Joslyn. "Srrange..."

  He came on after her, and didn't stop until he fell at Joslyn's feet. The last of his blood puddled in the dust.

  Bless Somna...

  Relief and horror fought a brief skirmish in Joslyn's stomach. Horror won. Joslyn looked at the emptied sack of the mad boy and doubled over, retching. Pretty lights danced in front of her eyes, and she felt the world spinning like a fortune wheel. She almost let herself spin away with it, no longer dreading or even caring how the wheel would turn.

  Ghost brought her back. "Wasn't that marvelous?"

  Joslyn didn't think that was marvelous—anger was the only marvel Joslyn knew. It always seemed to work just when she needed it most. "Ghost, why don't you Greet Gahon at the Door?" It was a child's curse, but Joslyn's venom gave it new power.

  Ghost didn't even notice. He took a kerchief from somewhere in his robe and dampened it with a flask from somewhere else. He made one or two ineffectual swipes at her face.

  "Give me that!" Joslyn wiped her mouth clean and spat the last of her breakfast into the bushes. Ghost stood silently by, that infuriating smile on his face. "I nearly got killed! Is that something to smile about?"

  "But you didn't," he pointed out, "and that certainly is. And I almost did, too. I think I understand why Phian—"

  "Damn!" Joslyn remembered the other folk involved. She started to where Kessa had fallen, but Kessa was already back on her feet, meekly submitting to Tolas's rather grim examination. All he found was one small welt on her cheek, but it seemed to take him a very long time to make sure it wasn't mortal.

  Maybe... thought Joslyn. Somna guide you both.

  Ghost looked at her. "Now you're smiling."

  Ghost kneeled beside Phian. There was a dark stain at Ghost's shoulder now, but it was nothing compared to the one that spread from Phian's abdomen. Ghost held one of the fallen man's wrists, and Joslyn saw Phian's eyelids flutter.

  Oh, no.

  "He's alive," Ghost said.

  Not for long, if he's very lucky.

  The pain must have been terrible, but Phian still had that silly little smile on his face. The frightening part was that it looked just like the one Ghost wore.

  Phian smiled even wider. "Told you! Pos... possibilities." Blood in his throat choked off speech; his breathing became more tenuous.

  Ghost supported his head with both hands and spoke urgently. "You didn't mean it go this far, did you? It was the threat you wanted."

  Phian nodded, trying to laugh. He died trying, and only then did the smile fade on both of them.

  Kessa and Tolas stood by silently. Joslyn ignored them. "What did you mean about him not wanting it to 'go this far?' He wanted to die!"

  Ghost shook his head emphatically. "He wanted the threat of dying; actual death was just the risk he took."

  Kessa frowned. "Why the threat?"

  "Because that was the only time he felt alive. I felt it, too, when that poor lad stabbed me. It was marvelous..." He swayed slightly, looking pale.

  Joslyn muttered a curse and tore at the rip at Ghost's shoulder, revealing the wound. The blood was starting to flow, and the cut didn't look very deep, but it wasn't likely that the acolyte had bothered to wash his knife beforehand. "We've got to get this cleaned before it poisons you."

  Ghost smiled again. "You mean there's another chance?"

  Joslyn hauled him to his feet. "Kessa, help me."

  Kessa got under Ghost's other arm, and Joslyn could almost read her thought. Caught up in her own worries, it wasn't likely that Kessa had noticed what a disconcerting fellow Ghost could be. She spoke as if he weren't there. "Is he—?"

  "Insane?" finished Joslyn. "In a way... yes."

  Ghost beamed at them both. "Marvelous!"

  *

  At their best, Ghost's emotions made the mayfly seem immortal; his new-found exuberance fared no better. he grew more and more solemn while Daycia tended his shoulder; when she left, he was well past solemn into melancholy.

  "I could borrow Kessa's arbalest," Joslyn said, "and use you for target."

  Nothing. Ghost flexed his arm, seemed satisfied, but his expression didn't change. Joslyn tried again. "Daycia says you'll be well enough to leave tomorrow as planned. That should please you a little."

  "It does, though I fancy Daycia would say that if my life hung by a rotten cord. We have to leave."

  "Then what's wrong?"

  "What's wrong? Joslyn, sometimes you can be an infuriatingly thick young woman. It's Phian."

  "Phian is dead and beyond further pain. You're not."

  Ghost shook his head. "Give you that much... Yes, I'm alive, but, like Phian, it takes a handshake from Death to provide enough contrast for me to realize it. When I felt that knife bite I was alive, alive in a way I haven't been since your augury."

  Joslyn grunted. "That's useful, if anyone ever asks what my auguries and a knife-wielding lunatic have in common."

  "Joslyn, that's not it at all. The first was hope, the latter, fear. Hope comes in its own sweet time and way; fear is easier to arrange. What's to stop me from seeking it out, as Phian did?"

  Joslyn leaned over the bed until her face was but inches from Ghost's. "Me," she said.

  Ghost folded his hands on the coverlet. "Girl, I almost believe you can. But for how long?"

  "We leave tomorrow, Ghost. And if that was an Aversa, we'll find her. She can help us."

  Ghost's smile was as thin and taut as a spider's thread. "I don't know that," he said, "and neither do you."

  *

  Joslyn walked the Darsan nightstage for what she hoped would be the last time. She looked at the hard, cold dreams around her and her nose wrinkled in disgust.

  South, she thought, definitely south.

  She lingered for a moment by Kessa's dream but wasn't even tempted. If there were echoes of Kessa's waking world there and hints of how she would deal with it, it wasn't for Joslyn to listen. She owed Kessa that much.

  There were other echoes in the mist that did concern Joslyn; ranging southward, she came to the place that made eddies and currents in the mist, a phantom sea that reminded Joslyn too clearly of the dark waters that had claimed Alyssa and the acolyte. Joslyn wanted to wipe the image away, to give the ghostly sea shape and scent and feel, to raise a warm yellow sun to chase the shadows away. But there were no dreams forming near the water; no one slept on the beach.

  Dream it yourself.

  Joslyn smiled to herself. No, no, mustn't. No telling what might happen.

  What could happen?

  Joslyn frowned, and as she thought, the furrows on her brow deepened. What could happen
? She could fail again. That was all.

  You don't trust yourself.

  Joslyn smiled. What a silly thought. Of course she didn't trust herself. Dreaming was different from entering another's dream; the first thing you lost was control. You had to live the moment just like the Daysoul moving in a world made by Somna the Dreamer and shaped by everyone with the strength and will to play a part. But a dream on the Nightstage was its own master, always. The Nightsoul played the part assigned.

  What was your part, Joslyn?

  Cat's paw. Bait...

  The thought was free; she couldn't call it back. But now, only now she realized that the questioning voice was not her own.

  "Who are you?"

  Laughter.

  Joslyn was aware of the Other. Too late. She saw nothing, but she felt its stare, its concentration, on her. She turned away from the dream-ocean, abandoning any notion of searching for the Aversa tonight. She was being hunted herself.

  Show yourself!

  She kept the words silent, intent on reclaiming the inner voice that had been stolen from her so damn easily.

  SHOW YOURSELF.

  The words were echoed in a voice so very much like her own. The difference was the delicate shimmer of malice that coated them like an oily sheen of poison. This wasn't like before, with Alyssa—this one hid well, slipped into her thoughts like a thief and was gone again before she knew he was there.

  He.

  The Other sent her an image, a dream-fragment thrown like a sharp stone. Joslyn saw herself, beaten and cowering before the Other, a shadow with the form of a man.

  THIS WILL BE YOU, JOSLYN.

  That was the truth. Joslyn knew it. Without another's dream to work with she couldn't even send out a were-light to seek out the Other, or cast a circle to light the area around her. She turned frantically, saw nothing. She darted this way and that in the Darsan nightstage, found nothing.

  SOON, LITTLE GIRL.

  Joslyn never found him, but his laughter found her. It started as soft as an executioner's smile, but it grew: bigger, more powerful, the booming, merciless laugh of a mad god.

  Sweet Somna...