Perilous Dreams

by Andre Norton

  That terrible hate which had struck at her… she was free of it. Tam-sin set one hand to the side of the coffer, her fingers clamping on the edge. And by that hold she fought to draw herself upright again.

  That within the globe coiled back and forth as might a serpent sore wounded. She longed for an ax and the power to strike without mercy or hindrance.

  “Tam-sin!”

  Though the howling had lessened she could barely hear her name. Rather she was staring down into the coffer. There Kilwar’s sword stood hilt upright, caught between the ribs of the sleeper. But this was no sleeper… the flesh fast shriveled, dropped away, to pull skin tightly over bones.

  ’Tam-sin,” there was an arm around her shoulders as she fought the heaving nausea which gripped her.

  “Kas,” she pointed a shaking hand into what lay there, now with the seeming of a man many months dead.

  Anger, incredulous anger, impotent anger. Though she felt an arm about her she could not look away from the globe. That was no longer a perfect sphere of light, it bulged as if that which lay within were fighting to be free.

  “Out,” she mouthed the word twice before she could say it aloud, “out.”

  The arm about her was drawing her back toward the rope, away from the coffer, the globe. The greenish glow in that still writhed, but its struggles were weakening. Another’s hands swung her around to face the rude ladder, lifted her body from the noisome mass on the floor. Only half conscious of what she did, Tam-sin gripped the rope.

  But there was no strength left in her. To climb… she could not make it.

  “Tam-sin, climb!”

  The sharpness of that order broke through the daze, long enough for her to weakly strive to obey. There was someone still behind her urging her up. Somehow she gathered a last spurt of both courage and energy and fell out upon the mist-clouded deck.

  There was not even strength enough left in her now to raise herself from where she lay.

  “Stay!” Again that sharp order. “I go for Trusend and Lother.”

  Her eyelids dropped, never had she been so tired. That which now fought in the globe had seemed to suck from her all energy and purpose. She no longer cared, it was enough to be out of that pestilent hold, into the sea wind.

  But at length she edged around so she might see the hatch. The rope was drawn very taut, and it moved in little jerks.

  A head arose over the hatch edge and a man stood on deck.

  Kilwar. She did not even feel relief at seeing him. Too much had gone from her. He turned and began to pull on the rope, until a second head drooped limply into sight. Then he drew that still body to fall beside her own, and once more disappeared into the depths. Only to bring out a second man as unconscious as the first had been.

  Hard upon their rescue there came a flare of eye blinding light. Flames spurted up from the hatch, clawing spitefully at the rescuer as he drew the second man to safety.

  “Fire!” Kilwar shouted. “By the Face of Vlasta there is no fighting this!”

  He stooped and caught at her, dragging her to her unsteady feet. “Get you down,” he had pulled her as far as the rail.

  As she clung to that she watched him jerk at the open cover of the hatch, hacking at part of it with a sword. Then he drew the length of seasoned wood to the rail, heaved it over. Having seen it hit the waves, Kilwar turned and shook Tam-sin.

  “Get down! I will lower them to you. Hold them on that raft.”

  Somehow she was able to leap out and down, cleaving the water not too cleanly, but welcoming the wash of the cleansing sea about her body. She swam for the raft and worked her way up on it. Then Kilwar lowered the bodies of his liegemen to that half-awash surface, leaped to swim and join her where she lay flat, one hand locked upon each of the unconscious men’s belts.

  Behind the mist glowed as if it, also, had caught fire. Tam-sin watched dully a line of flames creep along the rail she had left behind only moments earlier. And something, perhaps the heat of the burning ship, was conquering the mist, drying it away as they bobbed off from the side of ghost vessel.

  Kilwar unhooked her fingers from the belts, rolled the bodies together in the center of his improvised raft.

  “That,” he gestured toward the burning ship, “should bring them to investigate. We can hold here until that happens.”

  “The fire…” Tam-sin watched the destruction of the ghost ship with no emotion. Feeling seemed to have been wrung out of her by the experiences of this night.

  “The thing, that which rested in the globe,” he told her, “it broke its dwelling place, and this is the result.”

  There was something else she must tell him, but her mind seemed unable to think logically. Something important, but she was too spent to care.

  “Rrrruuuu!”

  Out beyond the derelict someone had sounded a shell horn. Kilwar rose to his knees, balancing carefully on the bobbing raft. He sent back a call as ringing as the blast of the horn. A second later a shout answered him.

  “Tam-sin,” his hand was warm and gentle on her shoulder, “they are coming for us.”

  She could not answer, even when he raised her head to rest upon his knee. Through the haze of fatigue she saw one of those others Kilwar had saved, turn his head, look to his Lord.

  The mist was fast going. She could see the wink of a star overhead. While the fierce burning of the ship sent a full light over the water. The nose of a ship cut into that light, heading toward them.

  She was hardly conscious of being hoisted aboard, carried to a bunk where Kilwar left her, a soft quilt pulled over her. He was back before she was aware fully that he was gone, holding a goblet. Bracing her against his shoulder he put the container to her lips, and, because she was too tired to protest, though she smelled the strongness of the wine it held, she swallowed what was liquid fire.

  “The… the thing,” she half whispered. “If it got out…”

  A nightmare shadow built in her mind. What if the thing, now freed from its container, could follow to haunt them?

  “It is dead, or at least it is gone,” he reassured her quickly. “Now sleep my lady, and know that naught can harm us here.”

  She allowed him to lay her back on the bunk. Sometime she must sort out what had happened. Now she no longer cared, and sleep waited.

  X

  There was an edge of gray light spreading from one of the cabin windows, touching upon Kilwar as he sprawled in a chair, his head thrown back, his eyes closed. Tam-sin watched him sleep as she marshaled a host of broken memories from the immediate past: the ghost ship, and what lay in its hold. Once more she looked down upon one who seemed to sleep under the baneful light of that globe.

  Kas!

  Then only did she understand what might have come from her attack upon that sleeper. The three of them were bound together in this dream which existed seemingly beyond her control. And if Kas was dead…

  But the evidence of her eyes, the body which, when she had used the sword, certainly it had withered, shrunk into the corpse of one who had been dead, not for moments, but for days, or longer. Could this have been the same ship which had haunted the coast off Quinquare? If that was so, then Kas on this plane had been dead for a long time, or in a half-life secured by the globe.

  What matter of strange and frightening sorcery lay behind what had existed in the hold of that ship?

  Kilwar stirred, his eyes opened, and he straightened in the chair. Then he looked quickly to her and from somewhere Tam-sin drew the strength to smile.

  “My Lady!”

  He was quickly at her side.

  “My Lord!” She warmed to his concern, felt his need of her as an anchor in the midst of so much she could not understand.

  “You dared to go… there.” He caught her hands, held them in a grip too tight for comfort, but she would not have it otherwise.

  “When there was such a need, how else could it be?” she asked. “But it was your strength that got us forth in the end, Kilwar. What wa
s that thing?”

  He shook his head slowly. “That I cannot name. It… it fed… upon the life force of those it took. And it had many victims.”

  Tam-sin shivered, remembering what had lain about that coffer. Now she slid her tongue over her lips. If he did not know she must tell him at once. And it was a thing which laid heavy on her.

  “Kilwar, did you see what lay within the coffer?”

  “Another of the dead…”

  “Not wholly… I think. Not until I slew it with your sword. Kilwar, it was Kas who lay there.”

  “Kas!” He stared at her. “You saw him so?”

  “I saw him, knew him. He was not changed as are you and I, but wore the face I first knew. And… do you understand, Kilwar… I killed him!”

  The astonishment had not left his face.

  “Kas?” he repeated wonderingly. “But that ship, it must have voyaged so for a long time.”

  She knew a sudden sickness rising in her as the full meaning of what she had witnessed flashed into her mind. Kas transported to this dream world, imprisoned in his counterpart here, part of a dead-alive body ruled by the globe thing! Had he been conscious of what had happened to him? No, she could not, dared not believe that!

  Kilwar’s arms were about her, drawing her close to the warmth of his body, as if he would keep her safe even from her thoughts… those thoughts now spinning out sheer horror.

  “If that was the Kas in this world, then you had no part of it.”

  “But, Lord, it was my power and will which brought us here.”

  “Out of very certain death,” he reminded her. “I do not know what was the reason for the death ship. Since the globe strove to keep alive the counterpart of my cousin, perhaps he was the one who fashioned such a trap in the beginning. It must have been that the two were close linked for as you slew him, then the globe went wild. It was a murderous being whatever its nature. And the blame for none of this can you take upon yourself, Tam-sin.”

  “But I brought him here… to that…” her voice was near a whisper.

  “You brought us all to what meant safety as you could see it. Kas on this plane must have dealt with devilment, or he would not have been linked to that eater of men’s life force.”

  “We cannot be sure,” she wanted to be comforted, to believe that Kilwar had guessed rightly, but how could they ever know?

  “I was there, remember,” he brushed her hair from her forehead with a tender hand. “I was the prey that thing sought. If it meant slaying half a hundred men and them all blood kin to me, then I would have given the order, for that unclean thing was not fit to endure in this world. It had slain and slain again, ruthlessly and for a greed which sickens a man to think on. Kas, dead or alive, was what tied it to that trap. Do you think that any will say that his death under those circumstances was not merited?”

  “You do not yet understand,” Tam-sin tried to pull out of his hold. “Kas is dead… I cannot now break this dream! We can never go back.”

  The expression smoothed from his face, even his eyes seemed turned inward. He knew now, and he would not, could not forgive whet she had done. They were lost in a dream… there would be no return to Ty-Kry where he ruled a sky tower kingdom.

  “This is so, you are sure?” his question came evenly, in a voice as expressionless as his face.

  “It is so,” she replied desolately. She had hated Kas for what he had tried to do, his plot to see Starrex dead within some dream she herself had spun. But she should have preserved him, if she could, that they might return.

  “So be it!”

  Kilwar was smiling, his face lighting as she had never seen Starrex appear.

  “Do you not remember, my Tam-sin? In that Ty-Kry I was but half a man, tied to a body which would no longer obey my commands. As Hawarel I was half a man in another way, for there was a simplicity of thought in that one which I could not live with for long. But here,” his head lifted proudly, “here I have what I sought! Do I think the past is better than the present? Not so! I am lord in LochNar and I have my lady. If Kas is dead, then let us accept that as a fact and turn our faces to the future. Look,” gently he lifted her higher, took her up and bore her to the cabin window.

  There was the sunlight topping the waves without. A dark body leaped from the water, hung a moment in the air, its snouted face turned in her direction and Tam-sin had no doubt that the loxsa had seen and recognized her.

  “Tam-sin, this is another day. We have won from the night of mists into the day which is given us to use… that we shall do. Do you regret the past?”

  “No!”

  Nor did she. Dreamer she had been, but whether this was a dream without substance in which they were now entirely entrapped she no longer cared. Perhaps her real body lay in Ty-Kry’s tower, but she refused to believe that that was real… not now. She was Tam-sin and this was Kilwar not Starrex; and they were both free to follow, not the devious path of a planned dream, but life itself. She laughed joyfully until Kilwar’s lips closed upon her own and another kind of happiness followed.

  PART THREE:

  GET OUT OF MY DREAM

  Every world had its own rites, laws and customs. Itlothis Sb Nath considered herself, in position of a Per-Search agent, well adjusted to such barriers and delays in carrying out her assignments. But inwardly she admitted that she had never faced just this problem before.

  Though she was not seated in an easirest which would automatically afford her slim body maximum comfort, she hoped she gave the woman facing her the impression she was entirely relaxed and certain of herself during their interview. That this… this Foostmam was stubborn was nothing new. Itlothis had been trained to handle both human and pseudohuman antagonism. But the situation itself baffled her and must not be allowed to continue so.

  She continued to smile as she stated her case slowly and clearly for perhaps the twentieth time in two days. Patience was one of the best virtues for an agent, providing both armor and weapon.

  “Gentle Fem, you have seen my orders. You will admit those are imperative. You say that Oslan Sb Atto is one of your present clients. My instructions contain authority to speak with him. This is a matter of time, he must be speedily alerted to the situation at his home estate. That is of utmost future importance, not only to him, but to others. We do not interfere on another world unless the Over-Council approves.”

  There was no change in the other’s expression. By the Twenty Hairs of Ing! Itlothis might as well be addressing a recorder, or even the time-eroded wall behind the Foostmam.

  “This one you seek,” the woman’s voice was monotonous, as if she were entranced, but her eyes were alert, alive, cunningly intelligent, “lies in the dream rooms. I have told you the truth, Gentle Fem. One does not disturb a dreamer. It would be dangerous for both your planetman and the dreamer herself. He contracted for a week’s dreaming, provided his own recorded background tapes for the instruction of the dreamer. Today is only the second day…”

  Itlothis curbed a strong desire to pound the table between them, snarl with irritation. She had heard the same words, or those enough like them to seem the same, for six times now. Even two more days’ delay and she could not answer for success in her mission. Oslan Sb Atto had to be awakened, told of the situation on Benold, then shipped out on the first available star ship.

  “Surely he has to wake to eat,” she said.

  “The dreamer and her client are nourished intravenously in such cases,” the Foostmam replied. Itlothis did not know whether she detected a note of triumph in that or not. However, she was not prepared to so easily accept defeat.

  Now she leaned forward to touch fingertip to the green disk among those she had spread out on the table. Her polished nail clicked on that ultimate in credentials which any agent could ever hope to carry. Even if that disk had been produced off world by an agency not native to this planet, an agency which held to the pretense of never interfering in local rule, yet the sight of it should open every door in this
city of Ty-Kry.

  “Gentle Fem, be sure I would not ask you to undertake any act which would endanger your dreamer or her client. But I understand there is a way which such dreaming can be interrupted… if another enters the dream knowingly to deliver a message of importance to the client.”

  For the first time a shade of expression flitted across the gaunt face of this hard-featured woman, who might well have played model for some of the archaic statues Itlothis had noted at this older end of the city where the sky towers of the newer growth did not sprout.

  “Who?…” she began and then folded her lips tightly together.

  Within Itlothis felt a spark of excitement. She had found the key!

  “Who told me that?” she finished the other’s half-uttered question smoothly. “Does it matter? It is often necessary for me to learn such things. But this can be done, can it not?”

  Very reluctantly the other gave the smallest nod.

  “Of course,” Itlothis continued, “I have made a report to the Council representative of what I wish to do. He will send the chief medico on his staff, that we may so fulfill regulations with a trained observer.”

  The Foostmam was again impassive. If she accepted that hint as a threat or a warning, she gave no sign that Itlothis’s implied mistrust caused her any dismay.

  “This method is not always successful,” was her only comment. “Annota is our best A dreamer. I cannot now match her skill. There are unemployed only…” She must have touched some signal for there flashed on the wall to her right a brilliant panel bearing symbols unreadable to the off-world agent. For a long moment the Foostmam studied those. “You can have Eleudd. She is young but shows promise, and once before she was used as an invasion dreamer.”

  “Good enough.” Itlothis arose. “I shall summon the medico and we will have this dream invasion. Your cooperation is appreciated, Foostmam.” But not, she added silently, your delay in according it She was so well pleased at gaining her point that it was not until the medico arrived, and they entered the dream chamber, did Itlothis realize that she was facing a weirder adventure than she had in any previous assignment. It was one thing to trace a quarry through more than one world across the inhabited galaxy, as she had done for a number of planet years. But to seek one in a dream was something new. She did not think she quite liked the idea, but to fail now was unthinkable.