by Andre Norton
She willed to see beyond, and was straightway, after the manner of a proper dream, in that chamber. Here the walls were hung with the same sparkling web of stuff which had lined her chamber in the sky tower. Seeking Kas, she had returned to her own world. But she held the dream, curious as to why her aim had brought her here. Had she been wrong and Kas had never come with her? If that were so, why had she and Starrex been marooned in the other dream?
There was no one in the chamber, but she felt a faint pull drawing her on. She sought Kas; there was that which promised he was here. There was a second room; entering, she was startled. This she knew well: it was the room of a dreamer. Kas stood by an empty couch, while the other was occupied.
The dreamer wore a sharing crown, but what rested on the other couch was not a second sleeper but a squat box of metal, to which her dream cords were attached, and Tamisan was not the dreamer. She had expected to see herself. Instead, the entranced was one of the locked minds, the blankness of her countenance unmistakable. Dream force was being created here by an indreamer, and seemingly it was harnessed to the box.
Given such clues, Tamisan projected the rest. This was not the same dreaming chamber where she had fallen asleep; it was a smaller room. Kas was very much awake, intent upon some dials on the top of the box. The indreamer and the box, locked so together, could be holding them in the other world. But what of that faint vision of Kas in uniform? To mislead me? Or is this a misleading dream, dictated by the suspicions I detected in Starrex concerning his cousin? This was the logical reasoning from such suspicions, that she had been sent with Starrex into a dream world and therein locked by an indreamer and machine. Real, or dream… which?
Am I now visible to Kas? If this were a dream she should be; if she had come back to reality… Her head reeled under the listing of things which might be true, untrue, half true. To prove at least one small fraction, she moved forward and laid her hand on Kas’s as he leaned over to make some small adjustment to the box.
He gave a startled exclamation, jerked his hand from under hers and glanced around. But, though he stared straight at her, it was plain he saw nothing; she was as disembodied as a spirit in one of the old tales. Yet if he has not seen me still he has felt something…
Again he leaned over the box, eyeing it intently as if he thought he must have felt some shock or emanation from it. The dreamer never moved. Save for the slow rise and fall of her breathing, which told Tamisan she was indeed deep in her self-created world, she might have been dead. Her face was very wan and colorless. Seeing that, Tamisan was uneasy. This tool of Kas’s had been far too long in an uninterrupted dream. She would have to be awakened if she made no move to break it for herself. One of the dangers of indreaming was this possible loss of the power to break a dream. That occurring, the guardian must break it. Most of the dreamers’ caps provided the necessary stimuli to do so. But the cap on this dreamer’s head had certain modifications Tamisan had never seen before, and these might prevent breaking.
What would happen if Tamisan could evoke waking? Would that also release her and Starrex, wherever he might be, from their dream and return them to the proper world? She was well drilled in the technique of dream breaking. Those she had used when she stood in reality beside a victim who had overstayed the proper dream time.
She reached out a hand, touched the pulse on the sleeper’s throat and applied slight massage. But, though her hands seemed corporeal and solid to her, there was no response in the other. To prove a point Tamisan aimed a finger, thrusting it deeply as she could into the pillow on which the dreamer’s head rested. Her finger did not dent that soft roundness, but went into it as if her flesh and bone had no substance.
There was yet another way; it was harsh and used only in cases of extremity. But to Tamisan this could be no else. She put those unsubstantial fingers on the temples of the sleeper, just below the rim of the dream cap, and concentrated on a single command.
The sleeper stirred, her features convulsed and a low moan came from her. Kas uttered an exclamation and hung over his box, his fingers busy pushing buttons with a care which suggested he was about a very delicate task.
“Awake!” Tamisan commanded with such force as she could summon.
The sleeper’s hands arose very slowly and unsteadily from her sides and they wavered toward the cap, though her eyelids did not rise. Her expression was now one of pain. Kas, breathing hard and fast, kept to his adjustments on the box.
So they fought their silent battle for possession of the dreamer. Slowly Tamisan was forced to concede that whatever force lay in that box overrode all the techniques she knew. But the longer Kas kept this poor wretch under, the weaker she would grow. Death would be the answer, though perhaps that did not trouble him.
If she could not wake the dreamer and break the bonds which she was certain now were what tied her and Starrex to that other world, then she must somehow get at Kas himself. He had responded to her touch before.
Tamisan slipped away from the head of the couch and came to stand behind Kas. He straightened up, a faint relief mirrored on his face as apparently his box reported that there was no longer any disturbance.
Now Tamisan raised her hands to either side of his head, spreading wide her fingers so they might resemble the covering of a dreamer’s cap, and then brought them swiftly down to cover his head, putting firm touch on his temples though she could not exert real pressure there.
He gave a muffled cry, tossed his head from side to side as if to free himself from a cloud. But Tamisan, with all the determination of which she was capable, held fast. She had seen this done once in the Hive; however, then it had been used on a docile subject and both the controlled and the dreamer had been on the same plane of existence. Now she could only hope that she could disrupt Kas’s train of thought long enough to make him release the dreamer himself. So she brought to bear all her will to that purpose. He was not only shaking his head from side to side now, making it very hard to keep her hands, in the proper position, but he was swaying back and forth, his hands up, clawing as if to tear her hold away. It appeared he could not touch her any more than she could lay firm grip on him.
That fund of energy which had enabled her to create strange worlds and hold them for a fellow dreamer was bent to the task of influencing Kas. But, to her dismay, though he ceased his frenzied movements, his clawing for the hands he could not clutch growing feebler, his eyes closed and his face screwed into an expression of horror and rejection of a frightened child. He did not move to the box.
Instead he slumped forward so suddenly that Tamisan was taken wholly unaware, falling half across the divan. In that fall he flailed out with an arm to send the box smashing to the floor, its weight dragging the cap from the dreamer.
She drew several deep breaths, her haggard face now displaying a small trace of returning color. Tamisan, still startled at the results of her efforts to influence Kas, began to wonder if she might have made matters worse. She did not know how much the box had to do with their transportation to the alternate world and whether, if it was broken, they could ever return.
There was one precaution, if she could take it. If I return to that prison cell in the High Castle, I must, or leave Starrex-Hawarel lost forever, then to leave Kas here, perhaps able again to use his machine, no! But how, since I cannot?…
Tamisan looked to the stirring dreamer. The girl was struggling out of the depths of so deep a state of unconsciousness that she was not aware of what lay about her. In this state she might be pliable. Tamisan could only try.
Leaving Kas she went back to the dreamer. Once more touching the girl’s forehead, she sought to influence her.
The dreamer sat up with such slow movements of body as one might use were almost unbearable weights fastened to every muscle. In a painfully slow gesture she raised her hands to her head, groping for the cap no longer there. Then she sat, her eyes still shut, while Tamisan drew heavily on her own strength to deliver a final set of orders.
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br /> Blindly, for she never opened her eyes, the dreamer felt along the edge of the couch on which she had lain, until her hand swept against the cords which fastened the cap to the box. Her lax fingers fumbled and tightened as she gave a feeble jerk, then another until both cords pulled free. Holding those still in one hand, she slipped from the couch in a forward movement which brought her to her knees, the upper part of her body on the other couch, one cheek touching that of the unconscious Kas.
The strain on Tamisan was very great. She was wavering in her control now, several times those weak hands fell limply as her hold on the dreamer ebbed. But each time she found some small surge of energy which brought them back into action again, so that at last the cap was on Kas, the cords which had connected it to the box in a half coil on which the dreamer’s head rested.
So big a chance and with such poor equipment! Tamisan could not be sure of any results, she could only hope. Tamisan released her command of the dreamer who lay against the couch on one side as Kas half lay on the other. She summoned all that she had, all that she sensed she had always possessed, that small difference in dream power she had secretly cherished. Once more she touched the forehead of the sleeping girl and broke her dream within a dream.
It was like climbing a steep hill with an intolerably heavy burden lashed to one’s aching back, like being forced to pull the dead weight of another body through a swamp which sucked one down. It was such an effort as she could not endure…
Then that weight was gone and the relief of its vanishing was such that Tamisan savored the fact that it did not drag at her. She opened her eyes at last and even that small movement required such an effort that it left her spent She was not in the sky tower. These walls were stone, and the light was dusky, coming from a slit high in the opposite wall. She was in the High Castle from which she had dreamed her way back to her own Ty-Kry in a dream within a dream. But how well had she wrought there?
For the present she was too tired to even think connectedly. Bits and pieces of all she had seen and done since she had awakened first in this Ty-Kry floated through her mind, not making any concrete pattern.
It was the mind picture of Hawarel’s face as she had seen it last while they marched toward the spacer which roused her from that uncaring drift. She remembered Hawarel and the threat the ship’s Captain had made, which the Over-queen had pushed aside. If Tamisan had truly broken the lock Kas had set up to keep them here, then it would be escape. There was no strength in her. She tried to remember the formula for breaking, and knew a stroke of chilling fear when her memory proved faulty. She could not do it now; she must have more time to rest both mind and body. Now she was hungry and thirsty, with such a need for both food and drink that it was a torment. Do they mean to leave me here without any sustenance?
Tamisan lay still, listening. Then she inched her head around slowly to view the deeper dusk of her surroundings at floor level. She was not alone.
Kas!
Had she successfully pulled Kas with her? If so, was it that he had no counterpart in this world and so was still his old self?
However, she did not have time to explore that possibility, for there was a loud grating and a line of light marking an opening door. In the beam of a torch stood that same officer who had earlier been her escort. Using her hands to brace her body, Tamisan raised herself. At the same time there was a cry from the far corner.
Someone moved there, raised a head and showed features she had last seen in the sky tower. It was Kas in his rightful body. He was scrambling to his feet and the officer and the guardsman behind him in the doorway stared as if they could not believe their eyes. Kas shook his head as if to clear away some mist.
His lips pulled back from his teeth in a terrible rictus which was no smile. There was a small laser in his hand. She could not move; he was going to burn her. In that moment she was so sure of that she did not even fear, but only waited for the crisping of her flesh.
But the aim of the weapon raised beyond her and fastened on the doorway. Under it both officer and guard went down. With one hand on the wall to steady himself, Kas pulled along until he came to her. He stood away from the stone, transferred his laser to the other hand and reached down to hook fingers in the robe where it covered her shoulder.
“On… your… feet.” He mouthed the words with difficulty, as if his exhaustion nearly equaled hers. “I do not know how, or why, or who…”
The torch, dropped from the charred hand which had carried it, gave them dim light. Kas swung her around, thrusting his face very close to hers. He stared at her intently, as if by the very force of his glare he could strip aside the mask her body made for her and force the old Tamisan into sight.
“You are Tamisan—it cannot be otherwise! I do not know how you did this, demon-born.” He shook her with a viciousness which struck her painfully against the wall. “Where is he?”
All that came from her parched throat were harsh sounds without meaning.
“Never mind.” Kas stood straighter now; there was more vigor in his voice. “Where he is, there shall I find him. Nor shall I lose you, demon-born, since you are my way back. And for Lord Starrex, here there will be no guards, no safe shields. Perhaps this is the better way after all. What is this place; answer me!” He slapped her face, his palm bruising her, once more thumping her head back against the wall so that the rim of the Mouth crown bit into her scalp and she cried out in pain.
“Speak! Where is this?”
“The High Castle of Ty-Kry,” she croaked.
“And what do you in this hole?”
“I am prisoner to the Over-queen.”
“Prisoner? What do you mean? You are a dreamer; this is your dream. Why are you a prisoner?”
Tamisan was so shaken she could not marshal words easily, as she had to explain to Starrex. She thought, a little dazedly, that Kas might not accept her explanation anyway.
“Not… wholly… a dream,” she got out.
He did not seem surprised. “So the control has that property, has it; to impose a sense of reality.” His eyes blazed into hers. “You cannot control this dream, is that it? Again fortune favors me it seems. Where is Starrex now?”
She could give him a truthful answer she was glad, as it seemed to her she could not speak falsely with any hope of belief. It was as if he could see straight into her mind with those demanding eyes of his. “I do not know.”
“But he is in this dream somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“Then you shall find him for me, Tamisan, and speedily. Do we have to search this High Castle?”
“He was, when I saw him last, outside.”
She kept her eyes turned from the door, from what lay there. But he hauled her toward that, and she was afraid she was going to be sick. Where they might be in the interior of the small city which was the High Castle she did not know. Those who had brought her here had not taken her to the core towers, but had turned aside along the first of the gateways and gone down a long flight of stairs. She doubted if they would be able to walk out again as easily as Kas thought to do.
“Come.” He pulled at her, dragging her on, kicked aside what lay in the door. She closed her eyes tightly as he brought her past. But the stench of death was so strong that she staggered, retching, with his hand dragging at her, keeping her on her feet and reeling ahead.
Twice she watched glassily as he burned down opposition. His luck at keeping surprise on his side held. They came to the foot of the stairs and climbed. Tamisan held to one hope. Now that she was on her feet and moving, she found a measure of strength returning, so that she no longer feared falling if Kas released his hold on her. When they were out at last in the night, the damp smell of the underways wafted away by a rising wind, she felt clean and renewed and was able to think more clearly.
Kas had gotten her this far because of her weakness, so to his eyes she must continue to counterfeit that, until she had a chance to act. It might be that his weapon, so alien to this wo
rld and thus so effective, might well cut their way to Starrex. That did not mean that once they had reached him she need obey Kas. She felt that, face to face with his lord, Kas would be less confident of success.
It was not a guard that halted them now but a massive gate. Kas examined the bar and laughed before he raised the laser and sent a needle-thin beam to cut as he needed. There was a shout from above and Kas, almost languidly, swung the beam to a narrow stair leading from the ramparts, laughing again as there came a choked scream, the sound of a falling body.
“Now.” Kas put his shoulder to the gate and it swung more easily than Tamisan would have thought possible for its weight. “Where is Starrex? And if you lie…” His smile was threatening.
“There.” Tamisan was sure of her direction, and she pointed to where there was a distant blaze of torches about the bulk of the grounded spacer.
VII
“A spacer!” Kas paused.
“Besieged by these people,” Tamisan informed him. “And Starrex is a hostage on board, if he still lives. They have threatened to use him in some manner as a weapon and the Over-queen, as far as I know, does not care.”
Kas turned on her, his merriment had vanished; his laugh was now a snarl; and he shook her back and forth. “It is your dream; control it!”
For a moment Tamisan hesitated. Should she try to tell him what she believed the truth? Kas and his weapon might be her only hope of reaching Starrex. Could he be persuaded to a frontal attack if he thought that was their only chance of reaching their goal? On the other hand, if she admitted she could not break this dream, he might well burn her down out of hand and take his chances. She thought she had a solution.
“Your meddling has warped the pattern, Lord Kas. I cannot control some elements, nor can I break the dream until I have Lord Starrex with me, since we are pattern-linked in this sequence.”