"I would like the Raven back," Musa said. "It's just the least bit difficult to get around in my true form."
Joslyn shook her head. "First you'll answer my question."
Musa laughed. "Child, I may be at your mercy here, but I honestly don't know. Tagramon thinks you're a threat to him, and that's really all the excuse I needed to help you. I'm not very fond of the man."
"Help? Is that what you call it?!"
Musa smiled. "Between the Spider-child and Belor's petty nastiness you learned to fear true dreaming before you learned its powers. So much easier to cloak yourself in self-pity and guilt. To hide from this pitiful monster." She shot a scornful glance at the incubus. "And all the lectures in the Temple Archives wouldn't have made a scratch in it. But if there's one thing stronger than fear, it's anger. I did help you, Child. And in the only way you could accept help."
"I didn't need you," Joslyn said, softly. She was speaking to the incubus. "I did it much better myself. But as long as you're here you'll be useful."
"Joslyn, we've wasted more time than we can afford. Let him go!"
Joslyn glanced at Musa, and the raven was back. "You said yourself I need anger, and your barrel is empty. His isn't. In fact, I'm just the least bit annoyed with him." She moved forward, and the incubus scuttled into a corner. She filled it with snakes, and he yelped in terror and scrambled past her, half running, half crawling toward the corridor where Joslyn had come in.
Not that way.
There was no corridor, only another wall. Joslyn conjured horrors out the air, herding the trapped Nightsoul until there was only one way out of the chamber. He stopped there, his back to darkness. Joslyn came for him.
"I'll say it," he gasped, "if you want me to. I'll say it."
"Say what?" asked Joslyn mildly.
"That you've won. You have, you know. I'll go away."
"You stole my memories," she said. "You tried to keep me from something that belongs to me. I don't know what it is, just yet, but you're going to help me find it. It's the least you can do."
All shape and form belonged to Joslyn there, but she kindly gave him one. Smaller, true, and a few more shiny black legs than he was used to. But for running down the dark narrow way it was just the thing. All that was left was for Joslyn to choose the shape of the hunter.
"Spider," she said. The chase was on.
Chapter 16—God-Dreaming
The incubus lay whimpering in the corner; Joslyn ignored him. As far as she was concerned his part was done. Her only fear now was that her part might be done, too.
They stood at what looked like the end of their journey. Joslyn put her fingers to a flat wall of dark-veined stone; felt the cold hard reality of it. "I had only a glimpse of it before. Maybe... maybe this is all there is."
"Maybe," the raven said, its voice echoing harshly in that silent place. "I grieve for you, Child."
Joslyn glared at her. "The Dream needs your sadness, Musa. Not me."
"So certain? Ghost's soul may stay lost; we don't really know what that means. But this," she waved her wing at the wall, "I understand as well as you. If there's nothing else, then you've stood in the deepest place you have and known that there's nothing else to find, nowhere else to go. If you know of a sadder journey's-end, I'd love to hear it."
The incubus had stopped shivering as he listened to the raven's words. A sly little smile crept onto his face; he cherished it, keeping himself close to the floor so no one would see. Slowly, carefully, he began to crawl closer.
Joslyn saw him. "I've done with you. Go now." He pushed himself closer to the floor but otherwise didn't move. Joslyn frowned. "I said go!"
He shook his head. "I won't," he said, sullen, "it's my right—paid for..."
The raven eyed him curiously. "Your right to what?"
He glanced nervously at Joslyn. "... don't understand this, but it matters... to her. Joslyn hurt me—I want to see her fail."
Joslyn smiled, and hoarfrost formed on the walls of the passage. "Like hell, Little Bug." She turned back to the wall, but she didn't touch it this time. The sight of it was bad enough; she didn't need the feel of its reality, too.
I don't understand either, she thought, but if the normal Nightstage is a reflection of the waking world, then this place did not arise from nothing. And everything here so far belongs to me.
Joslyn took a deep breath. "Door," she said.
And there was a door. It was a pretty thing of sandalwood carved with woodland scenes and borders of vein and leaf; the scent was sweet and delicate on the cool air. Joslyn reached out and turned the latch. It wouldn't open. She took both hands and pulled harder, but the wood didn't so much as creak. Joslyn looked again at her door, saw where the edges blended smoothly into the stone.
The raven eyed it up and down. "Well, you did say 'door.' It's a handsome one."
The incubus snickered, but Joslyn ignored him. A door is not always an open door. What's needed is a way in. Unless of course there was nothing beyond to enter. Joslyn tried not to think about that. She vanished the door, leaving a hint of wood fragrance in the air.
Laughter, now. The imposter had an ear to the sloping floor, and he slapped both hands down on the stone in staccato rhythm. "Like everyone else. Go deep enough and all you find are dark waters. Listen, Joslyn. Listen close and you'll hear them rising."
Joslyn heard. Without really trying, or meaning to, she heard them, as she had heard them before, in other dreams. Never in her own. She wondered if that made a difference. She decided to find out.
The incubus was rocking with glee. "Mighty Joslyn, powerful Joslyn... I'll have you yet!"
"You'll have nothing that doesn't belong to you."
Joslyn created a fountain of pale gray stone, a simple dry basin. The raven's eyes grew much too large. "Child, you don't—"
"Be still, Musa." Joslyn eyed her work critically. "Something seems to be missing... Come here, Little Bug." He only looked at her, and with a thought Joslyn picked him up and stood him in the center of the basin. His mouth opened wide in surprise and at that moment Joslyn turned him into soft clay. The raven watched, fascinated, as Joslyn molded the form like a potter, turning, shaping. Another moment and the shape glowed in a sudden kiln-blast of heat. When all was done, an ugly little gargoyle graced Joslyn's shrine.
"What are you doing?"
Joslyn shrugged. "The Dream Master said every dreamer is a god—or goddess—in his or her own dream. I dream a hole in the wall and how do I know that I haven't created what I see? Just one more dream, and me no closer to breaching the wall. That doesn't leave me much." Joslyn patted the gargoyle's head and the fountain began to flow. The water rose first in the basin, flowed upward and began to spill from the statue's open mouth. Joslyn scooped up a double handful of the water, an inky black liquid darker than the raven's wing.
The bird fluttered up to the fountain and perched on one of the gargoyle's horns. "Joslyn, stop this! We've come too close—"
Joslyn nodded amiably. "Too close. There's no going back for me, Musa." She was thinking about the dream with the spider-child, and of the visions that could strip flesh from bone with their power. I think it might help to be a little mad, just now. She brought the water to her lips.
The thing that impressed Joslyn the most about madness was its clarity. Every crack and grain of the gargoyle, each individual feather of the raven stood in such sharp detail Joslyn was almost overwhelmed. Even the hallucinations glowed with a living fire that cast reality into mist and shadow. Tagramon grinned at her from the depths of the pool as he played games of pitch and toss with the souls of men.
IT'S RATHER FINE BEING A GOD, JOSLYN, he said. TRY IT.
So how would a goddess break a stone? Joslyn approached the wall; again she traced the deep quartzite veins that penetrated the rock. She remembered how Ghost called lightning, but she found the idea vaguely distasteful. Too showy. She still held a bit of the fountain's water in her left hand. She dipped her fingers one at a
time until a fat droplet sat on each fingertip; her hand looked like a pale five-pointed star inlaid with black opals. Joslyn giggled.
The raven eyed her suspiciously. "Why are you laughing?"
Joslyn didn't answer. She touched the stone and the droplets flowed into the rock, growing, spreading, until the white crystalline veins of the wall ran dark.
Winter.
It came. Joslyn saw her fingers go white with frost as it moved from her and into the stone. Snowflake patterns etched themselves into the surface of the wall; the water that ran into the veining of the stone turned into ice as white mist rose like smoke.
Pretty...
Joslyn's fingers glowed in a thin sheeting of ice, but she did not feel the cold. All she felt was her power moving within the wall, all she heard was the first low groan of growing ice against stone. When the wall broke it was with the boom of glaciers cracking. Joslyn moved her fingers again, saw the last shards of ice splinter and fall away. She took her hands away from where the wall had been. There was nothing left of it, not even rubble. Created by me, removed by me. She didn't know what that meant. Beyond that place, the image of a corridor held, but there were branchings now, many doors. And at the place where all the corridors met, there was a door larger than the rest.
The raven perched on the gargoyle's head and ruffled her feathers. "Another door. Like the first."
Joslyn shook her head. "This one will open." She reached out, grasped the handle. "Coming, Little Bird?"
The raven didn't move, didn't look at her. "No."
There was just the faintest hint of gloating in Joslyn's smile. "I didn't think so."
*
Joslyn's dream died slowly. The raven was the first to go; Inlos caught a glimpse of changing shapes and faces before it flew away into darkness. Then the walls and the doors began to melt and flow together like candle-wax. Inlos thought of a portrait painted on water, the currents tearing it apart.
Just a little more...
Everything came from nothing at Joslyn's thought; everything now returned to the formlessness from which it came. The fountain sank into the floor, the dark waters receded. Inlos' gargoyle skin split up the back like a cicada's drying shell. Inlos wriggled out, saw the husk collapse into mist. The echo of wings showed the way out. He did not take it.
She thinks she's won, he thought.
She has.
Another thought. Perhaps his, Perhaps an echo of the dying dream. It didn't matter—it was true. He had thought himself the master of other folk's madness, his first and best weapon. But Joslyn had mastered her own, called it out and used it like any other tool. The same way she used him --
She didn't even ask my name.
The colors smeared and flowed away, ink on parchment left in the rain. With Joslyn gone the dream was returning to whatever dreams were without a will to shape them. But it wasn't like others, the countless feeble dreams he'd shattered just to see them die. This death had nothing to do with him, but it would take him with it—one more formless piece of nothing—given a chance.
Follow the raven.
Sensible thought, but still nonsense for all that. There was no going back. Joslyn had seen to that. He was what he did, and now there was nothing left of him. Nothing... Inlos smiled at his new thought, admiring its crystal beauty. Now Joslyn has something that belongs to me.
There was just enough left of the door to be a door. There was just enough left of Inlos to open it.
*
The very first thing Joslyn noticed was the glow of distant dreams. The second thing she noticed was the cold. It meant something. Something to do with time.
Wasted too much...
And the only thing beyond the wall was more dream. She had to move carefully, sort out the meaning. And there was no time to move carefully.
Nightstage? Joslyn imagined herself trapped in a child's rondel-song, all her struggle and concentration and pain just to get back to the beginning. It was quite possible. It was not acceptable. In the places Joslyn had come to know, that refusal could make a difference.
Joslyn hugged herself, forced away a thought of the sea that came like a wave across the sand and disappeared as quickly. She still felt the wet chill of it on her body. She shivered. If there's nothing to find, may as well find it now. She moved toward the nearest light, but it seemed to take a very long time to get there. Must be farther than I thought... Soon she realized the truth of it—they were even farther than she suspected. And larger. Impossibly large. Joslyn finally stood at the foot of a mountain of light. It shone with secret fire like a volcano made of glass, its heights and depths beyond her sight and understanding. It was a Nightstage—or at least something she could only perceive as one—and she was connected with it, somehow. But the scale... Joslyn shook her head, very firmly. No one can dream like this.
"No one." She said it aloud, very clearly, but the dream did not accept its impossibility. It remained. Joslyn reached out as if to touch something that might burn her. Her hand slipped inside, unscathed. Joslyn shivered again, and again thought of what the cold meant, and matched the fear of what might be against the certainty of what would be. It wasn't even a struggle.
Joslyn went inside.
*
Inlos knew where he was. Joslyn had herded him to the very core of herself and beyond. Inlos did not know who dreamed giant dreams in that hidden place, but it had something to do with Joslyn and that was enough.
A dream is a dream.
*
The dream was more than large on the inside. It contained an entire world, and that world was a forest. Joslyn stood on a mossy bank by a rushing stream; dark stones broke the water into white currents; oak and mountain-ash lined the bank.
At least in the beginning. In a moment the stream turned quiet and sluggish, the dark stones sank from sight. Joslyn watched the mountain-ash shrink, saw the leaves grow longer in the breeze, turning graceful like seaweed moving in a slow current. Willow. Changeable, aren't we? That was her first thought, but Joslyn knew there was more to it than that. There was something odd about the dream, something more than just its size. She saw the dream almost as if through a window with panes of differing colors. In a moment she had another word for it.
Mosaic. Like the floor tiles in the Chamber of True Dreaming; all the parts assembled and working together to make a picture.
First an impossible scale, and now a way of dreaming Joslyn had never seen before. She wasn't sure if the dream was real; she did know that the boundary line between the dreams she found and the dreams she made had never been so sharply drawn. Perhaps her own dreams, newly discovered, granted the perspective she commanded now, but Joslyn had no doubts; she had dreamed to get here, but the dream wasn't hers. Her role was another, more familiar one. She sought the dreamer.
She found something else.
When Joslyn was fifteen, the Emperor and his Court had paid a visit to Ly Ossia. There were parades and celebrations, and tight-packed throngs of people. Joslyn practiced her fledgling thievery at all of the events except one. In the great open-air theater near the market of Ly Ossia there had been a play, and Joslyn let many a good chance pass that day as she watched with the rest. It was a grand tragedy with more parts than there were players to fill them. So, between acts, the players changed: girl to boy, king to lover, harlot to goddess. All done so deftly that the story moved with barely a pause.
That play was nothing compared to the woman in the dream. Joslyn found her wearing many costumes, playing many parts, and every one of them at the same time. In the open forests she was a wild huntress with long red hair and hounds that ran at her knee. In the meadows she was a slim maid with yellow and blue wildflowers braided in her hair. And in a deep shaded grove, she was something older than the mossy stones, with twig fingers, tree-bark skin, and a smile like bloody thorns.
Spara.
It wasn't her many faces that gave the goddess away, just the parts she played. Joslyn watched the tragedy of the Leper King
in the forest, smiled a little as the goatherd's One True Rose played out in a sunlit meadow, even enjoyed a little sigh of regret as, by a shadowed grove, the Stagman paid the price for Spara's love. Someone was dreaming of sylvan Spara in all her guises at once, retelling the legends endlessly. A devotee, perhaps, but even that wasn't certain. The stories were as much at home in the nursery as the temple; everyone knew them.
Everyone. Joslyn turned the thought this way and that, looking for meaning like a Windfolk shaman casting knucklebones. She watched the mosaic dream a little longer. The colors changed, the shapes, even the faces, but the stories did not. Different arrangements, perhaps, different perspectives, but, at the end, the same design --
A flicker of an idea. Not much—maybe not anything. It was all she had. Joslyn withdrew from the massive dream, moved on to the next. It didn't take so long to find the core this time—it was all thunder and fire and the clash of steel on steel.
Kreik Tal. God of Mad Courage. One by one she entered the dreams; one by one she added names to her pantheon: Akkrakcys, God of Winter Ice. Doban Lo, Patron of Wisdom and the Long Hours of the Night. Even Deverea's Ajel Kar, Dancer on the Wind. There were others she didn't know and other dreams not so large, not so powerful as those first few, but all alike in the one way that seemed to matter. Joslyn never found the dreamers, but just then it seemed more important to be certain who the dreamers weren't.
Not the gods, thought Joslyn. The gods do not dream. They are dreams.
*
Inlos watched Joslyn flit from one huge glow to another like a bee tasting flowers.
She isn't dreaming now.
That seemed important; that opened possibilities. Inlos was careful to stay out of sight until Joslyn disappeared into one of the smaller dreams. I'll let her come to me.
Inlos sought a dream of his own.
*
One more dream of a god. Joslyn had turned to leave before she understood what she had seen. She turned back, looked more closely, but there was no mistake.
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