Jovann sighed. Sometimes he wished the bird would just tell him clearly what it meant and what it wanted. But then, he decided, most birds don’t talk at all, so it was perhaps a little unfair of him to expect this one to do more than it did. “Another vision?” he asked.
“No,” said the bird. “Another path.”
Even as it spoke, Jovann felt the path open beneath his feet. He looked down but saw only the Grandmother Tree’s great roots and the gentle green grass that spread across the clearing floor. There was nothing to indicate a path, and yet he knew it was there. He knew that he looked right at it, that he could follow wherever it led, even to the Netherworld and back.
He addressed himself once more to the bird. “My Lord,” he said, “I must find the phantoms who plague my Lady Hariawan. Will this path take me to them?”
“It will,” said the bird.
“Ah.” He’d almost hoped for a different answer. “Well. That’s good then, yes?”
“No,” said the bird. “But it will be good.”
With that, it spread its wings and swooped down so close that one wingtip brushed Jovann’s hair even as he ducked. Then it sped off, flying in the same direction Jovann felt the invisible path must lead. It disappeared into the trees and the deeps of the Between, but Jovann could still hear its song ringing gently through the shadows.
The Grandmother Tree rustled its leaves again, and one of its old boughs groaned. Jovann glared at it. “Yes, yes, I’m on my way!” he said and, straightening his shoulders, stepped off the root and pursued both path and bird. He hesitated again at the clearing’s edge. He’d only ever passed over in company with Lady Hariawan who was, he believed, far more powerful in this world or worlds than he himself. But the path was clear to his heart, if not to his eyes, and he did not think it would lead him astray.
The leaves overhead burst into sudden earnest rustling. At their urging, Jovann shook himself and passed out of the clearing into the great Wood.
He walked. Trees slid from his path, and undergrowth of brambles, ferns, even wildflowers seemed to slide away from his footsteps, always just a few paces ahead of him. Even the shadows dispersed, leaving his way filled with golden light, though the canopy of leaves above him never cleared enough for him to glimpse the sky. Sometimes he picked up his pace and trotted. Sometimes he even ran. But mostly he walked, on and on. Sometimes the path led him down into low, rocky valleys, and he felt that things watched him from behind boulders. Sometimes it led him up hills lined with young saplings of a type he had never seen in Noorhitam, with strange lavender trunks and silver leaves that chimed like various musical instruments. Sometimes it led him through ferns so tall and thick they could have hidden any number of beings, though his own way remained clear before him.
But always there was more Wood. Unlike when he walked with Lady Hariawan, the trees did not thin away and vanish into mist. There was no sign of the Dream.
“How am I supposed to find it?” he whispered, speaking to a friendly-looking young pine that stood nearby, watching him curiously. “She always led me there before. She knew the way. But this path . . . it seems to go on and on forever but never get anywhere! Did the songbird—” He stopped, not liking to voice aloud the thought in his heart. But the thought was there anyway.
Did the songbird make a mistake?
The pine, which did not need to hear words in order to understand, looked suddenly disapproving. It is an unsettling feeling indeed to be disapproved by a tree. Jovann scowled at it and continued on his way.
Time followed him wherever he went, for he was mortal and could not escape it entirely. It flowed around him like water or light, and thus he could not count the hours as he would have in his own world. Since he had left his mortal body behind, he did not tire so quickly as he might have. But a mortal mind will eventually become exhausted, and Jovann suddenly found that his was spent.
So he sat there in the middle of his path. Around him stood tall trees with rich red trunks and broad leaves so dark green they may have been black. The shadows were deeper here, and the ground was covered in thick-growing ivy from which tiny flowers, shaped like stars, peered out and shone with their own secret light. They were pretty, Jovann thought, and also kind. He reached out a finger and gently touched the face of one. It felt no different from a flower in his own world.
But he discovered, a few moments later, that the vine had crept into his lap and lay there like a kitten, flowers gently touching his arms and hands and even reaching up toward his face. This startled him at first, and he wondered if he were being smothered alive. But no, this was a friendly vine. He stroked a nervous finger down one of its long, winding stems, and soon found his hand wrapped, but not restrained or constricted, in green leaves and shining flowers.
“How am I supposed to find the Dream?” he whispered again, speaking now to the flowers. “I fear I am lost, though I know I haven’t strayed from the path.”
The flowers looked as though they wished they might help. But since he didn’t understand the language of flowers, their wishes were in vain. He sighed heavily and bowed his head, resting it in one of his hands, elbow propped on a vine-draped knee. “What am I supposed to do?”
Let me help you.
Jovann screamed. The flowers and vines vanished, racing back into the shadows with a great slithering, leaving Jovann alone with that voice, which reverberated inside him like a hammer striking an anvil. A brilliant light fell through the heavy leaves to the forest floor, blinding and glorious beyond the words of men. Jovann fell back, flattened and ready to die.
Then the light shook itself, dimmed. Cé Imral, the blue star, stood before Jovann in the shape of a unicorn, gazing upon him with inquisitive, endless eyes.
When it spoke, its voice was singular, not the vastness of the starry host all rolled into one.
“I have been watching you,” said Cé Imral.
Jovann, panting hard, propped himself up on his elbows. Then, slowly gathering his strength and courage, he got back to his feet. The last time he had looked upon this particular star, it was flaming and furious and, he had believed, ready to kill him. But it seemed much smaller now, here in the Wood, away from Hulan’s Garden. Its flanks were dappled with shadows from the trees, but no shadows could touch the horn on its brow, which gleamed with all the richest, deepest opal fire.
It was a creature of beauty, and infinitely lovable. Jovann felt himself a little boy, longing to fling his arms around the creature’s neck as he once had flung his arms around the neck of his father’s oldest, proudest hunting dog. But he would never dare.
“I have been watching you,” Cé Imral repeated, “since you came to my Mother’s Realm. I do not usually take interest in mortal doings. But my Mother entrusted you with her Great Secret. This makes me curious.”
Jovann didn’t know what to say, so he kept his mouth shut.
“You search for the Dream, do you not?” the star persisted. “And for that which hides inside the Dream?”
“I . . . I am trying to find those who have twice now set upon my Lady Hariawan when she walked there,” Jovann said, his voice small and stammering.
“Yes.” When the unicorn nodded, its horn flashed and its mane shimmered. “I know of whom you speak. The Chanters, who do not sing, but who build and sustain with their voices. I have seen them. I have sung of them. I will take you to them.”
And with that, the unicorn turned and began walking through the Wood. Jovann took a step after, then paused. After all, he had been given a path to walk. Yes, it had proven an endless, infuriating path that led him nowhere at all. But was it wise to leave it?
Was it wise to not?
After all, what was a songbird compared to the glory of a unicorn? Compared to the glory of one of the great Dara, children of the Moon?
The debate lasted mere moments, but in the Wood it felt far longer. And he might have debated with himself for longer still, had he not glanced down at his feet.
The path he
had been following was gone.
“Are you coming, mortal?” called Cé Imral from the shadows.
Jovann bit back an angry curse. Then he hastened after the unicorn, leaving behind the starflower vines and the tall red-bark trees. The unicorn, seeing him coming, turned its horn forward again and took three paces.
Within those three paces, the Wood gave way. By the time Jovann had caught up to the unicorn, he found himself no longer sheltered by trees but standing on the edge of the Dream.
How could he have been so very near without realizing it? But then, distances were not the same here, beyond the mortal world. A thing might be near and far all at the same moment. Mist shrouded him, at his feet, in his spirit. But his eyes were filled still with the light of Cé Imral.
“Come,” said the unicorn, and moved off into the formlessness.
Jovann followed, and together they penetrated the Dream. Shapes began to emerge from the mist, and Jovann glimpsed the forever-distant mountains, green and gold and magnificent. The Highlands, Umeer’s daughter had called them. But they vanished again, replaced by a different range of mountains, much lower, much nearer, much more forbidding. And now the mist gave way beneath his feet, and Jovann stood on a cracked, dry wasteland of endless dust.
The chanting reached him. As though it had been going on for ages, but his ears only just now opened to receive it. A rich, deep boom of many voices working together as though building a tower of sound. Each voice was its own brick, fitting with all the others to form the enormous whole.
Cé Imral stopped, and a shiver rippled over its body. Its light flickered and lessened so that its flanks turned deeper blue, and it looked more solid as it stood on the dry dirt. Its cloven hooves stamped uneasily, churning up the dust.
“What is it?” Jovann asked, drawing up alongside his guide. He almost could not make himself ask the next question, but forced the words out anyway. “Are you afraid?”
“No,” said the unicorn. “I am . . . hungry.”
In the depths of its midnight-blue eyes gleamed a spark of red fire.
Jovann shuddered and turned away. And when he turned, he found himself suddenly gazing upon the temple.
“You’re asleep.”
Sairu startled awake with a gasp and shook her head violently. She looked down and saw the shining eyes of the cat, who stood upon his hind feet, his front paws resting on her knees. “Oh, Monster!” she breathed in relief, though her heart raced like mad in her breast. Then she shook herself again, realizing that she had, indeed, fallen asleep while on watch.
“Two nights sitting up and a busy day between,” said the cat quietly. “You shouldn’t have tried it. Not tonight.”
Her whole body shuddered with the chill of exhaustion, and she wrapped her arms around herself. Lady Hariawan’s bedchamber was as still as a tomb save for the snores of the three soundly sleeping dogs.
The cat hopped into her lap, purring, but she quickly pushed him off and got to her feet. Moving stealthily so as not to disturb either Dumpling or Rice Cake, she crossed the room to Lady Hariawan’s bed. Sticky Bun was curled up in a ball against the lady’s side, and one of her hands rested on his back. Sairu reached out and lightly touched that hand.
“Oh no,” she breathed.
For she knew in that touch that Lady Hariawan was not in her body.
“No, no, no,” Sairu said, and her voice woke all three dogs. Dumpling growled to see the cat, but was too upset by his mistress’s tone to give chase. All three crowded to her, wagging their tails as though offering their help. But Sairu ignored them. She grabbed Lady Hariawan’s shoulders and pulled her upright. Her mistress’s head lolled on her limp neck. She breathed, but only just, and her spirit was not entirely within her.
The cat jumped up onto the pillows, ignoring Sticky Bun’s warning growls. He sniffed Lady Hariawan’s cheek. “She’s gone,” he said. “into the Dream.”
Sairu patted her mistress’s cheeks and frantically rubbed her hands and wrists. But to no avail. “She’s beyond my protection,” she whispered and collapsed onto her knees beside the bed. “What can I do?”
“Nothing,” said the cat. “You must wait and see what comes.”
The temple was built entirely of sound, but the sound was made solid and dark and forbidding. Jovann recognized the structure in an instant, though he could not at first recall why. Then he remembered the vision he had glimpsed only just that afternoon, of a temple far greater than Daramuti, as magnificent as the Crown of the Moon itself, if not more so. And he had known even then, though he could not explain it, that it was built of voices. Of minds.
So it was here in the Dream. Jovann stared at the enormous structure surrounded by a huge wall, and he knew that, somewhere, mortal minds concentrated with such intensity that they called brick and mortar into being and, as they imagined, so they created. Only in the Dream. But in the Dream, it was solid and strong.
And, Jovann knew at once, it was evil.
Though he hated to say it, he whispered, “I must get closer. I must learn more of these people who seek to harm Umeer’s daughter.”
“Yes,” Cé Imral responded, and its voice so little resembled a star’s just then that Jovann could have believed it had been born and reared in the form it now wore. “Yes, I must see this thing of which I have only sung.”
It started forward, its hooves stirring up the dust as it went, and Jovann fell in behind it. The dust choked him and blocked his vision at first, so that they stood in the very shadow of the temple before he quite realized how near they had come.
Now, as the dust cleared, he saw that the temple was incomplete.
The walls, which at a distance had seemed impassable, were as insubstantial as any dream. Many bricks were missing from its construction, and it looked as though a child’s breath might knock the whole of it tumbling. But the chanting went on and on, reverberating from within. And even as Jovann stood there beside the unicorn, he saw portions of the wall become more solid, shimmering into existence.
“What is this place?” Jovann whispered, though he did not expect an answer.
Cé Imral said, “It is built by the minds of mortal men, but not at a mortal’s direction. There is another power at work here.”
“Who?” Jovann asked.
“The Greater Dark,” said the star. There was a strange, haunting quality to its words.
Then it shivered and said again, “I am hungry.”
With that, it began to walk around the wall, and Jovann, not knowing what else to do, followed. They came at last to an enormous gate, and it, like the wall, was unfinished. All of the other temples Jovann had seen in his life had boasted round Moon Gates at their entrances, in honor of Hulan. This gate was square: two great posts of black stone, and a crossbeam of blood-red. Through the swirling dust, Jovann saw that one of the posts was carved in the likeness of man. But when he blinked and looked again, he thought that it wasn’t a man after all, but a dragon.
The other post, by contrast, was unfinished, uncarved. As Jovann drew nearer to it, however, he half thought he saw the figure of woman. Not on the outer surface, but hidden down inside the stone, waiting for the hand of a master craftsman to set her free. But the stone itself was rough, unpolished. A huge column set to support the crossbeam and nothing more.
Jovann drew nearer to Cé Imral. But he pulled back again almost at once, for a tremendous heat emanated off the star’s physical body. He glanced at the star, and saw that beneath the blue dapples of its coat a red light was gleaming.
The unicorn’s eyes rolled in its head, and it uttered a moan.
“Are you unwell?” Jovann asked, which struck him even then as rather an odd thing to ask a star.
But the unicorn shook its head, its horn flashing. “Come,” it said. “I must see within.”
Together they passed under the crossbeam of the gate and into the temple courtyard. The chanting filled all of this space, dark and throbbing and full of strength. There was nothing to be s
een, for the mist of the Dream was too thick. Jovann put up a hand, trying to wave his vision clear, but he could discern nothing. Only the chant. He felt rather than saw the forms of the phantom chanters around him, but they were so occupied in creating and sustaining the form of the temple, they took no notice of him. So intense was their concentration that not even the near presence of a star could divert them.
Jovann lost sight of Cé Imral and stumbled several paces, alone in the formlessness. Then he glimpsed, to his left, a flash of light, and he turned toward it, thinking it must be the star. He wanted to flee, to find his way back to the gate and run from this place as fast and as hard as he could, never to return.
But he could not. These phantom chanters wanted something from Lady Hariawan. He must try to discover what. He must try to protect her. So he pursued the light, which flashed, vanished, and flashed again. The chant weighed upon him, making each new step more difficult than the last. But suddenly the mist cleared. He found that his feet stood upon paving stones, and he saw the towering buildings of the temple all around, surrounded by the great wall.
Before him, suspended between two pillars carved like dragons, was an enormous gold gong.
Jovann stared at it, uncertain what he saw. It was five times taller than any man, huge and heavy. When struck, it must make a sound that could bring this whole temple tumbling to ruin. Even as it hung there, barely shivering between its pillars, it gave a hum that underscored all the chanters’ voices, forming the foundations of the temple.
The gold was intricately etched in words, characters he did not recognize in a language he did not know. They swirled from the center of the gong, all the way out to the edges.
As those characters filled his mind, they shifted, changing shape so that he could read the first few lines:
I see them running, running, stumbling,
Running, as the heavens
Break and yawn, tear beneath their feet,
Devouring, hungry Death!
Jovann closed his eyes, unwilling to see more. But the words danced within his brain, like the flames of a bonfire lashing the night sky. He turned his back on the gong.