Beyond the Dream

  *

  Before he opened his eyes, Anthony felt that this could be much like one of the many hangovers that he'd had before. His head was pounding and his eyes stung, but when he opened his eyes he saw that the thundering noise existed beyond the space between his ears. Now this, this must be a dream, he thought as he lay there. The black-clad prince was just about to pull him to his feet but Anthony waved his arm away and stood of his own accord.

  Anthony had visited galleries before, seen pictures of battles. He'd read books in which there were descriptions of battles. He'd even seen a re-enactment at Tilbury Fort, stood and applauded as Sunday hobby soldiers fired blank muskets at each other and pretended to run each other through with swords. He'd watched documentaries in which there was footage of the great battles of the twentieth century, and of course there was the news where one could sit and watch a battle unfold in the midst of some doomed suburban hell somewhere in a less fortunate part of the world.

  But to be there, to stand there; the flight of fantasy which his imagination might take him on paled in comparison to what he saw now with his own eyes. The wars of men are brutal affairs. The wars between their dreams are no less filled with attrition and a thirst for blood, a desire for victory no matter the cost.

  To the south he saw a giant wading in blood, some of it blue some of it red. He waded through a host of knights which assaulted him with sword and cannon. He raged and rumbled and stamped them into the ground, pounded on them with fists the size of double-decker buses. Some of them ran past him, through the bloodied snow, and he knew they were coming for him. But he did not care, his mind had had its doors blown off by the scale of what was happening around him.

  It was raining, but not water, nor snow. That which fell from the sky was larger, heavier and deadlier. Winged beasts with no name that he could give them were crashing into the ground around them with shredded wings and broken claws. They writhed and painted the thinning snow with their blood, or they lay still in defeat and death. The fiends were not the only subjects of the canvas in the sky. Angels flew there, with large white wings and swords of light. So noble they looked, so dignified, yet even as Anthony looked he thought something was awry. The angels surely fought the demons but it did not appear so, for not a blow landed between them. Instead they flew together against a common foe, one he recognised, for there were the kin of Kannis, the talented jackals and their hawks, filling the sky with magic, filling his mind with wonder, filling their enemies with fire.

  From the backs of their sorrow hawks they brought merry death to their enemies and all the while the hawks sang, that long sad note over and over. The sky was a myriad of colours which competed with each other through fiery flashes and constant waves, the purples, the blues and the reds. Above it all Anthony could only see black, a dark cloud in which there was a face, but unlike those which he'd seen on the journey to Snowdell. This was no benign formation, it was a living moving mass twisted in rage.

  In the face of all this who could feel fear? What was the point of being afraid? No, in Anthony's mind there was no room for fear. But his mind could not revel in its amazement for too long; the clawed murderer grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and began pulling him along, north, away from the bloodied giant and the marching knights. Though it seemed senseless to run, it did not matter where they went. It still rained demons, they could not escape the tumbling sky. But he ran with them, the pale prince and his ruthless protector.

  Every now and then a demonic form would descend and land in front of them, laughing gleefully and coming at him with claws and teeth. But the murderer and the prince would leap in front of him and hack at the beast with the sword and the silver. It was only days ago that Anthony had come here with George. Their trails might have still been seen in the snow were it not for the footsteps of tens of thousands of grey knights marching the same way. Only a few days ago he'd gazed in wonder at the beauty of Snowdell and been introduced to the friendly passive people who lived there.

  “Where are the Snowmen?” he shouted above the din as he ran after Prince Karmalaine. The Prince just shook his head and kept running. That could have meant anything, he thought, he would press him on their fate later, if they survived. Scanning the battlefield Anthony could see no sign of the city or its people, but that meant nothing. The beautiful valley was fast filling up with a collection of dead demons and the odd fallen hawk, some with dead riders still attached.

  The demons were still a frightening sight when dead. Their sizes and forms were so varied. All had wings, all had claws, all had maws but these were the only similarities. Some were shaped like giant flying slugs with many mouths on their underbelly, some were grey-skinned and looked like flying dinosaurs. Others were coloured red like blood and could bear no comparison to any living creature which Anthony could name, bulbous and covered in spikes, thin and spindly and covered in pussy sores which exploded with bright green acid. As he ran beside the prince he saw them all, some living, some dead.

  For a time Anthony had no idea where they were going. The giant had covered a large amount of ground in a short period of time and now they seemed to be heading back into the middle of the basin, but it was taking much longer than it had when they were heading away. Then he saw where they were going. Up ahead was a small mountain which Anthony had not noticed before. The mountain looked to be made from snow and ice, Anthony wondered whether or not the Snowmen might be in there.

  A hundred feet from the cave several demonic forms dropped to block their path. The clawed one leapt through the air like he was dancing, impressive given the weight of his armour. One of the demons took a claw while the other received the sword. The third was just about to be engaged when a bolt of fire hit it in the back. Black blood exploded from its mouth as it crashed to the floor in front of them. Behind it a talented jackal on the back of his sorrow hawk had landed and as he looked down on them another flame appeared in his hand.

  The Prince grabbed Anthony and started to shove him along while the clawed one engaged the jackal. Anthony saw several fire-bolts head in the armoured killer’s direction but he dodged each one with cat-like reflexes. The last Anthony saw, he'd leapt up onto the back of the hawk and joined in close combat with the jackal. Then they were around them and Anthony was forced to turn away from the fight and look ahead to where they were running.

  It did not take long before they reached the mountain. There was an opening at its base which the Prince ran into without hesitation and Anthony followed him into the gloomy passage. Once inside his eyes adjusted to the dark quickly, for the snow and ice seemed to hold a faint glow, and he had no difficulty in finding his path. They moved under the mountain for quite a way before the Prince finally called a halt.

  Prince Karmalaine crouched low and listened intently. The sounds of the battle could still be heard raging outside but the hostilities did not appear to have followed them down the tunnel.

  “Worried about your hired goon?” said Anthony.

  “Hired goon?” said the Prince, unfamiliar with the phrase.

  “Your friend with the claw and a propensity for using it on people.”

  “Oh, Vulthian”, said the Prince sounding unconcerned, “he is more than capable of taking care of himself.”

  Anthony also crouched down, glad for the respite. He leaned back on a wall of ice and took several deep breaths.

  “What happened to the Snowmen?” he asked. The Prince did not respond, nor would he turn his piercing blue eyes to meet Anthony's gaze. “I said-”, started Anthony again.

  “I heard you”, said the Prince, who now turned to face Anthony. “They are all dead”, he said bluntly.

  “You killed them.”

  It was not a question but the Prince responded anyway. “I killed no one, that was the work of the silver dragon. If it is any consolation he is now dead, slain by one of our companions.”

  “It is not”, said Anthony, folding his arms and leaning back. Just like that, George and his peo
ple, George and his family. Anger started to build in him. Misdirected or not it was still there, seeping into every pore of his being. Anthony had been sad for a long time, for a decade he'd wallowed in his despair, but something always kept his anger in check. Some part of his melancholy always succeeded in suffocating his anger at what had happened, perhaps because there had been no one to be angry at and he could not hate the sea. Or perhaps the only person who he had to blame was now the only one left to him, the only love which still lived.

  Anthony stood up and started to stagger down the corridor of ice. It came as a surprise to him that the dreams of mankind could act as cruelly as people themselves acted in life. Naively perhaps, he believed that one’s dreams were the only place where they might be truly noble, unbound by the prejudices and afflictions of mortal life. But thus far it was not so, perhaps they were even more vicious for a race of dreams had been exterminated for reasons that even the most fanatical human would find hard to justify.

  The prince in black grabbed him by the shoulder as he walked away.

  “Where are you going?” he hissed.

  Anthony turned and aimed a punch which caught the Prince on the chin. Anthony was not a fighting man, most of the fighting he'd done in life was at school and consisted of curling up into a ball until it was over, so his satisfaction at landing the blow was tainted by the fact that the Prince’s chin felt like it was made from granite and he barely flinched.

  “We do not have time for this”, shouted the Prince. But Anthony ignored him and aimed another punch, which the Prince caught in his hand. Anthony was disappointed to find that despite being slightly smaller than him, the Prince possessed great physical strength. He held Anthony's arm in a vice-like grip and try as he might Anthony could not move it an inch. He aimed with the other fist which was similarly caught and the Prince flipped him through the air like a rag doll so that he struck the roof of the tunnel with force and fell to the ground with a bang.

  The Prince loomed over him, knocking aside Anthony's kicks with contemptuous hands and then pinning the dreamer to the floor. The rage was overpowering, Anthony felt a warm sensation starting off deep down inside, but growing to encompass his whole form. The heat began to build rapidly until it was searing, pain erupting in his mind accompanied by a kaleidoscope of colour. When it abated, Anthony opened his eyes to see a war-torn sky above him. There was a huge hole in the roof of the tunnel the led right to the outside, and no sign of the Prince.

  Anthony started to run along the tunnel back where he’d come from. He exited the mountain and looked around. Amidst the carcasses of demon, jackal and hawk he saw the Prince laying some distance from the snow mountain. Anthony ran over to him. The Prince was in better shape than the wolf had been in that his arms and legs were all the right way round and his torso was relatively undamaged, however blood was oozing from his ears, nostrils and even from beneath his closed eyelids. Anthony noticed the Prince’s chest rising and falling gently, though he was not certain if there was any relief to be felt at such a realisation.

  He was reaching down to check the Prince’s pulse when he was knocked sideways by a heavy metal hand. He looked up to see Vulthian advancing on him, though his advance was checked by a fire-bolt which hit him in the chest. He scrambled elegantly to his feet and stood over the prone form of Prince Karmalaine.

  Anthony turned to see a large group of sorrow hawks with talented jackals riding them had set down behind him. Above them the main bulk of the flock had pushed back the demonic-angelic horde in order to give the grounded party a brief reprieve from battle. The lead jackal got down from his Hawk and walked over to Anthony. His fur was more grey than black, except for the eyes which were deep black and filled with the wisdom of the ages. Though older, he still walked with the same wolf-like grace that all of the other jackals did.

  “Hello Anthony”, said the jackal in a sharp crisp voice stamped with authority.

  “And you are?” asked Anthony. He was past caring about civility, the dreams which had promised such had turned to nothing and he was beyond tolerating being a pawn in the political power plays of the inhabitants of this world.

  “My name is Rostrom”, he said.

  The name rang a bell. Anthony recalled Kannis having mentioned a Rostrom what seemed like a very long time ago in the forest below the Mercurial Chambers.

  “The sons of Geddon do not suffer hurts easily”, he commented, nodding towards where the Prince still lay with the clawed one standing over him.

  “I do not know what happened”, said Anthony, reluctant to admit any part in it. He was not a violent man and would have found it unconscionable to have hurt someone like that back home.

  “I understand”, said the jackal, “this must have all been very confusing. However, it pleases me that we have met each other and that your path here can continue as was intended.”

  “I am nobody’s pawn, Rostrom. There is a part of me which strongly wishes I'd never got on that sorrow hawk with Kannis, and I'm certainly not going to climb onto another one with you. So if that's what you’re thinking then I suggest you get on your bike.”

  “On my bike?” said the jackal, confused.

  “It means you should leave”, said Anthony. The jackal stared thoughtfully at him. Despite the battle which still raged and the attentions of Rostrom’s fellow jackals constantly wandering to a sky torn apart by battle, the leader of the talented jackals seemed totally focused on the dreamer.

  “It was windy that day”, started the jackal, “there were warning signs of course, but in your world there are warning signs everywhere from cliff tops to pieces of fruit.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Anthony, even though he knew full well.

  The jackal ignored the question. “You blame yourself of course; it is a natural mortal response. You were a hundred miles away, you were not driving the car, but somehow it was your fault, and it is that blame, that guilt, which has followed you for years. You have become your sadness, Anthony Hallow, and it has inhabited you like a parasite. It gets up, it eats, it drinks, it sleeps and it cries. But it is not a person any more, it is a shade, it is a memory, a ghost who has forgotten to die.”

  “You don't know me and you have no right to-”

  The jackal interrupted him with a wave of his hand, “Please, enough of the self-pity. You want a reason, Mr Hallow? You want me to tell you why you are here and why you should get on this hawk with me?”

  Anthony could only nod in answer. Though there was nothing the jackal had to offer he would allow him to finish his tirade before walking away.

  “Come with me Anthony, and I can reunite you with them.”

  Anthony stood dumb-founded. The jackal was not saying what he thought he was saying, that would be too cruel even for a dream.

  “Zachary, Marcus, Luke, Ellie, Row and Clara.”

  He knew their names, how could he know their names?

  “Follow me, Anthony Hallow, and I promise that you will see your children again.”