by Andre Norton
“So…” she said as if to herself, “so far that they cannot alter.”
“What is all this?” Burr asserted himself to demand, and his voice came out almost embarrassingly loud above the slight whisper of the wavelets.
“Listen,” she turned a little to fix him with a very direct gaze, “they have us locked somehow. When you tried to break, I could not make it. Do you understand? They have us both locked in this dream, and it is only partly out of Uahach’s memories. The ruins were hers… and the qwakers. They actually exist, or did exist, on Altair IV. But they are not hostile. Now…”
“Uahach’s memory,” Burr caught the part that he understood the first. “Then you are…”
She laughed harshly. “I am your backup, the dreamer. But I am now caught in my own snare. You gave the signal to wake, I would have obeyed. But there was a barrier. However, they did not, as least yet, manage to inhibit movement within this dream. We are now here,” she gestured to the beach, “instead of dodging qwakers back on those hills. I do not know if they can control us within the dream, or just keep us here. But we dare not count on any safety.”
Burr tightened hold on the spear haft. He understood her well enough. They were caught in this exceedingly real dream and at present there was no escape. “Can you keep doing this… move us around if they threaten us?”
She shrugged. “Some. I can call on Uahach’s memory in a little. But if they force me to reach the end of those, then…” she shook her head. “Beyond her memory I have no pattern to follow. I knew of this sea in this particular dream. There are perhaps four other sites we can switch to.”
“And after that,” he finished for her, “we will be really trapped?”
Slowly she nodded, and echoed him. “Really trapped.”
V
Burr examined the point of the spear which he still held. The metal was three-ridged, though dull of color. He had been schooled in the use of such barbarian arms as the sword, dagger, and primitive weapons which fired projectiles. But he had never attempted to use such as this before.
“You know this dream,” he said slowly, “what is the pattern Uahach set in it for Osdeve? Can you see that ahead enough so that we will know what might come up next?”
“So far it is the same, as to background, even to the qwakers. However there are subtle alterations. The qwakers were meant to be hunted, not to hunt. Osdeve enjoyed such hunts. Here…” she hesitated. “Be warned—he was dreamed here to meet with Sea Rovers and join them on an expedition against the ancient sea Lords of the Isles. There were three such episodes within the dream: a hunting of the birds, the sea voyage, and at last the venture to take him to the Tower of Kiln-nam-u. Each has potential danger if the dream does not proceed as it should. Now there is a pressure which I do not understand…”
She spoke slowly, a slight frown marking her forehead.
“You understand that you are now a different personality. Your name is Gurret and you are the Warrior of the Right.”
Burr scowled. “How much of this…” he began.
“The dreamers create a form of reality,” she struck in before he could complete his question. “You are a part of this world, which is an ancient time on Altair IV, yet not quite that either, since each dreamer adds her own touches. I am Kaitilih, a War Woman of the Left. Traditionally we would have been enemies. But it seems that Uahach altered that point also. By her plan we are united on a quest whereby, in the manner of legends on each world, we must find certain things. Having these in hand we are to return to the Three Towers and there…” She smiled faintly, “I gather from dreamer memories our reward would be spectacular. Of course, even though there was a strong element of risk in this dream, Osdeve was at no time in great danger, just enough to satisfy his need for the action he craved. But now, with the alterations, I cannot foresee what may lie ahead within the general frame of the original dream.”
“If we are warriors,” Burr returned, “why no real weapons?”
“Because this quest was meant to be a testing. I carried the spear, the whirling cords, but neither was used. It was set on you to go barehanded.”
“You snapped us out of that attack. Can you dream up a stunner, or something better than this?” Burr banished the spear.
Slowly she shook her head. “I can add nothing of my own, only use the material provided from Uahach’s memory. You know I am not a trained dreamer. And…” she turned her head to look up and down the deserted beach, “there is pressure on me. There is someone else who meddles and changes so subtly that I cannot trace that interference to its source. lust as the hunt in the hills was reversed. I believe we can look for other reverses to come.”
“Fine!” Burr snapped. “Best if we stuck it out right here while you try to break the dream.”
“We cannot halt the flow of action,” the dreamer replied. “We have to play the pattern through to the end.”
Burr knew she was speaking what she believed to be the truth. So roles were reversed so far in the dream. Might they then take it that that would continue?
“Two more pieces of action then. What should they be?”
“You are to light a beacon of the drift,” Kaitilih, as she had named herself, motioned toward the bone colored, sea-cured wood which was caught among the shore rocks. “This should be done at twilight. Then a boat will come in from a raider named the Erne. You have already, or Gurret has, contacted the Captain of the Erne, promising him rich loot at the Sea Keep of Eastern Vur. All you want from Vur is the Cup of Blood Death kept in hiding there. There will be great peril, but the Erne will be lucky, getting in and out without dire mishaps. With Cup in your possession you can then bargain with that which holds the Tower of Kiln-nam-u—”
Burr laughed harshly. “This is like some tale for a child’s reading screen! Do you mean that Osdeve actually wanted to live out this wild nonsense?”
“It is not a story, but a legend with a core of truth,” the girl corrected him. “Much research was done to provide the very old bones of a hero tale with the proper background and contemporary details. Part of it is history. There was a Gurret who was the first Supreme Arms Lord of half his world. And he gained that position because he pursued such a quest. The dreamers are adept in returning to the past, not only of their own world, but any other planet whose history appeared in their study tapes.”
“But if it was… is, history, then how can it be altered? I gather I was supposed to do something else upon awaking than run from those qwakers as I did.”
“Yes. You were to capture two who would then make you free of their nest place. There in the debris you would find a very old cylinder of metal in which lay a map of Vur…”
“It’s unreasonable!” Burr interrupted. “I can’t believe that any adult would be serious about this… even if it is supposed to be history!”
“I assure you Osdeve was. As a man who had lost much use of his own body he craved this outlet as a drug addict craves the powders which will give him entrance to another world for a space. This was Osdeve’s last dream before he died and it was the most elaborate and complicated one Uahach was ever called upon to plot, for he had good warning that he was very close to the end.”
“I thought that anyone in poor condition was not allowed to dream,” Burr countered.
“An off-worlder, yes. But a native of Ty-Kry is not bound by such rules. Some have chosen to die in dreams.”
“But that… I thought that was impossible. It was because men died that we are here.”
“Then the situation was entirely different. Those victims were off-worlders, known to be in good health, and they had not signed any dismissals. Also the dreams they had selected were not dangerous ones.”
Burr shook his head. “But a man can be dreamed to death?”
“If that is his recorded desire. And it must be recorded and certified by the Lords in Council, also the First Person of his name clan. It is not permitted to any off-worlder.”
“All right,” B
urr knew that she was doubtless well schooled in this dreaming business. “But this dream has been already altered. I did not get that map or whatever that Gurret is supposed to have. What if I don’t build the signal fire and the raider does not come? Will that break the dream?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps you will be forced to take the next step.”
Burr dropped down on the sand, balanced the spear across his knees as he sat cross-legged. “That I do not believe.”
She seated herself a little away, her head bared to the sea wind which tugged at the length of her hair. “Good enough. We can so test the strength of what stands against us.” Her reply was calm.
Some moments later he broke the silence between them with a question:
“You still cannot wake?”
“No. And there is this also,” she hesitated as if considering the wisdom of telling him, then she added: “I am no longer in command.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just what I have said. Before I was aware of what lay before you… us. Now,” she lifted a handful of sand and let it shift through her fingers, “I cannot be sure of the future. It is… blurred… is the best word I can find to describe it. As if you might take one picture and lay another over it so that two different scenes strive to cancel out each other.”
“Then there is another dreamer?” Burr asked.
“I cannot be sure. Only that the dream I knew is being overlaid with another and…”
She was gone. Burr stared at the place on the beach where she had been sitting. There was still a vague depression in the sand. But Uahach, or Kaitilih (whoever she was) had vanished before his steady gaze, winked out in an instant!
He got to his feet, still staring, and reached forth with the butt of the spear to touch with caution that slight mark in the sand. No one… nothing there!
That this was of her own doing he doubted. The other pattern she had sensed over the dream which had been Osdeve’s… had that strengthened to obliterate her, take over his own future?
She had saved him from the qwakers. It might be that he was not to be saved from the next ordeal of the ancient legend. But she had said he must light the beacon to bring in the ship, and that he could refrain from doing.
In fact, he was going to get away from here right now! Though he could not travel Uahach’s instant roadway, he could move away from what was suddenly a treacherous shore inland, give himself time to find some way he could defeat the unknown dreamer, since he had not the slightest hope, he thought, of his signal to wake being answered… except by refusal.
VI
Burr faced sharply away from the sea. Before him the land was wooded by small, dense appearing clumps of what was either very tall brush, or stunted trees. The leafage was thick and dark in coloring, making each copse appear like a blot. There was something sinister about that landscape. Whereas the mound country had seemed eerie and alien, this gave him the impression of being actively threatening in a manner he could not define.
Also he had to struggle against a very definite and growing compulsion not to head inland. Perhaps the new dream pattern was trying to force him to light the shore beacon, follow the original dream into the raid on Vur. Now Burr set himself to a grim battle of wills, fighting his way on.
The same tough grass which had clothed the mounds covered the ground, and the long, sharp edged ribbons of that tangled about his feet, jerked him nearly off balance, as if it were moved to make this journey as difficult as possible. He only knew that he was advancing against the desire which fought him, and for the moment that was all he could hope for.
Such was the foreboding atmosphere of the region ahead that he expected any moment to see some peril leap or slink out of the tree blots avid to do battle.
Choking for breath Uahach-Kaitilih-Ludia (who was she in truth?) swayed back against a support she could feel but not see clearly, and tried to regain full consciousness. She was no longer on the seashore. Nor had she been summarily returned to her couch in the Hive. No, she was back again on the mound where she had entered the dream. Beyond her she saw the man crouched against the monolith, the qwakers about to leap for his perch. Her hand had already gone to her belt to free the throwing cord.
Only… this was wrong!
Her thoughts were hard to order into clarity. She must save the man.
But it seemed to her that the whole scene before her quivered. It had none of the in-depth reality of the first time.
Her will sharpened and her mind awoke fully. No instinctive action… This was not her dream, but that other’s. She was being presented not with the man who was her companion in their adventuring, but a dream simulation.
The qwaker leaped, its bill flashed down, transfixed the chest of the man whose fending blow had been easily deflected. She heard his sobbing cry, the triumphant screech of the qwaker. But she was fighting her own battle, the one to tear the false dream to pieces.
Now the whole scene rippled, fought desperately to remain, tore, like rending cloth, from top to bottom. In that instant she caught a single glimpse of a shadow form far removed from her own place, but operating on what must be another plane. She saw the enemy, but she could neither identify that lurker, nor even discover where was its normal position.
Dying man and qwaker vanished, the mound melted into a mist which thickened about her, so that she breathed faster and faster in frantic gulps of air. For it seemed that she was being enclosed in a monstrous blanket of damp. If she did not fight… bring her own natural Esper powers as well as all she had learned from Uahach to the highest pitch she would meet death here.
This was a dream, an illusion. And a spinner of dreams could not be caught in another’s dream, not without her full consent. Therefore, she could not be killed unless she accepted the illusion. She forced herself to breathe deeply and slowly, to fight the evidence of her eyes. She was not enmeshed in the enemy’s dream, but a part of the one whose pattern lay deep in her own mind! That only was truth!
The mist rolled back. She knew a moment of triumph which she would not yield to. This happening was beyond the knowledge she had acquired from Uahach, beyond any records she had had access to. Only it was plain that, in spite of the enemy’s efforts, a hallucination could not be held once she knew it for what it was. She was so armed, but what of Burr?
They had been separated deliberately, and she believed that he could well be governed by the other dreamer, strong as his will might be. He had no Esper talent or he would not have been chosen for the part he was playing, he lacked her only weapon.
There was only one hope for them both, she must find Burr. Only together did either of them have a chance.
The mist had rolled back a little, but not enough for her to see the country now about her. She could only be sure that her instant defense, her refusal to be caught in the reaction of the mound duel, had broken the pattern the other had set. She had only one way to find Burr, that was, by concentration of will. They had been on the shore… she shut her eyes and concentrated on the shore even as she had on that first move which had so swiftly snapped them from one point of the altered dream to the next. Shutting her mind to every outward sight, every inward fear, she pictured the shore as she had seen it last, and fiercely willed herself to be there again.
There was that sense of weightlessness, of sharp pain. She looked about her. Yes, here was the sand, the turgid wash of tideless ocean, the rocks… But one portion of the beach was exactly like the next. And there was no Burr.
She had half expected to see him busied erecting the beacon. For she was sure that the other dreamer still tried to move within the general framework of the original dream. But there was no sight of him.
Swinging around she faced inland. There was nothing pleasant about the landscape. She was chilled by the sight of those trees the outlines of which against the lighter grass had hints of strange shapes. As if the trees could dissolve their nature at will and assume other and far deadlier forms.
N
othing there…
Yet she could feel… What did she feel? A very vague tugging as if a cord as light as a thread spun out from her body and was anchored to some object out of sight but among those threatening trees. That must be Burr and he had left the shore, was striving in his own way to break the threat of the dream by moving directly against the future she had sketched out for him.
That he had been able to do so surprised her. She had been sure that any dream will strong enough to snap her back at the beginning of all action would have had no difficulty in moving Burr to the new pattern. He had made himself vulnerable by playing the role of client, so accepting the original dreaming.
Perhaps it was the struggle she had fought her way through which had served him indirectly, removing a greater part of that unknown other’s will from him. Thus he had had a chance to change course.
At any rate they must come together or they would have no chance at all now. For client and dreamer were bound indissolubly together and entered and exited so or not at all. While all she had to follow was that very tenuous sense of a tugging. Resolutely she began to walk inland.
The sky was darkening. She believed that night was not far off. In the true dream they had spent that night on board the Erne. But this was the new pattern and what dangers could be fashioned to attack any wayfarer in the dark? The rising wind was chill, she drew her cloak more closely about her, but she kept on, hoping that her guide would not fail.
It was getting dark. Burr had avoided the scattered copses of trees, making detours to skirt even the shadows they threw upon the ground. He was very tired, not of the walk itself, but rather from the constant struggle against the will which would enforce his return to set the beacon. That came now in surges of strength which were more disquieting than the first steady pressure, for there were intervals between, as if to encourage him to hope that he had won, then a blow sharper and more insistent. And that other seemed untiring, so that Burr wondered how long it would be before he did turn, and start back to pile the drift, light the beacon, and bring down upon him some fate he was only too sure awaited him in the altered dream. Since the qwakers had nearly finished him, he thought he could well expect no friendly Sea Rovers, but perhaps men equipped with steel and a strong desire to have his life.