Dreams of the Compass Rose

  And Ierulann knew that, if she did not, then the city—indeed, the whole world—would collapse around her into a common Dream of insanity.

  And thus she allowed herself to look forward into the future for just an instant longer, using the clairvoyance of her very being to piece together the fabric of things just behind and just ahead of her.

  I am the moment. Nothing exists outside of the moment, and the past and the future line up to fall in tandem to precede and follow me.

  I am the order and the law.

  The madness howled around her tiny point of calm. For an instant, grotesque contorted faces out of hell threw themselves at her, and the walls around the room were gone, while the floor of what had once been the Palace sank and reformed below her feet. The forms of the man who had killed and the ancient one who had died froze into stone of timelessness upon the Royal bed of firmament, which had once contained pillows and silk coverlets, but now was the surface of an ocean.

  Contain the chaos, now, or never!

  Even the voices of the minds had grown muffled, and were coming from such a great distance now, receding in the maelstrom.

  “How can I?” cried Ierulann desperately in her mind. “How can I hold it and not be overwhelmed, and not myself go mad?”

  I am the anchor point of the compass.

  And suddenly she saw a second ahead, into the future, and she saw the assassin before her. She saw him from an odd tripled perspective—present, past, and future. His body was strong, his mind vital, and he was young. . . .

  And seeing him in temporal chorus thus, Ierulann reached out with her mind, and she drew a part of her being that was cold calm order, and she forced it to come and wrap around the whole city like a great net.

  Inward she pulled the madness, forcing it into her and then directly out into him. She moved near him, and took hold of his stilled hand.

  His name danced into her mind immediately, with a shock of contact. Zuaren.

  She saw and knew him inside-out, past and present and future.

  She knew what he had been, what he was now, and what he could be.

  And then Ierulann released the river of chaos, focusing it in a single fixed direction, letting it flow through her fingers into his ice-cold palm, into him. . . . The one who had once been Zuaren shuddered, opening his intense eyes—pale as water—

  upon the world of moonlight and swirling homeless dreams, and in they rushed to populate him, their new strong vessel.

  The night had grown still all around them. Transparent Palace walls thickened and began to solidify, and once again shut out the outside. But this time there was something solid and definite about their shape, something very new. . . .

  Permanence.

  Having dropped both his swords, Zuaren stood looking out, past Ierulann, past the walls, and past this reality into the dreams that were now forever anchored within him. And yet the insane spark was barely contained under his strong willful surface.

  “What has come to pass?” he said softly. “What am I?”

  “You are the new King of this city,” said Ierulann, watching his glass-eyes. “It is your Lawful punishment. You who have come in ignorance and death now carry the burden of the Law, which is impassive order and can alone contain chaos. Now at long last we can trust the oblivion of sleep.”

  “Guard of Law!”

  Ierulann turned. She was walking slowly along the King’s Road, having gone automatically on her morning patrol through the fractured carcass of a city that had somehow stilled, frozen in time—for her senses no longer felt a doubling, a shifting. . . .

  The woman from the night before stood a few steps away, dejectedly, holding onto a small sack of belongings.

  “Here are all my earthly possessions!” she said. “I’ve come to deliver them myself, since no one came for them last night, and I want no more punishment. When I woke up, everything was the same as before! Is it not strange? My children are crying with hunger, but at least they are at my side!”

  Ierulann watched impassively the joy in her eyes. “Keep your belongings,” was all she said.

  “The new King cares not how fast you drive the Road.”

  At which point the woman started to weep in a joyful fit, and once again ended up on the ground watering Ierulann’s boots. “Law is indeed merciful!” she repeated between her sobs.

  “Blessed Law!”

  Ierulann said nothing, not wanting to spoil this one’s last illusion—since there would be none tonight. Law is Law, she wanted to say. It is neither harsh nor merciful, merely new or old. But it is your position in relation to it that makes it deadly or gentle. I too am like the Law, neither one nor the other.

  Or at least I was once. . . .

  And then Ierulann yawned deeply, watching the sun of morning ride up over the stilled city. It was time for her to sleep, and, possibly, to dream.

  For, she also contained madness now, a tiny bit of it—would harbor it forever under her still surface, secretly helping to share the burden of the one who was now King. No Law had required her to do that.

  * * *

  The city of No-Sleep is said to be old now, older than the world itself, ever since it stopped reshaping itself every night.

  But the king is young here, and sane, and filled with peaceful reason. They say he has cool blue eyes and no memories of his past, sleeps soundly every night, and never dreams at all. Miracles fill the city, for multitudes are now rebuilding their lives, and the greatest miracle of all, contentment, stands in a cloud above the rooftops.

  If you visit, you will surely find something to your liking.

  But you must promise to find one woman, once a Guard of Law, now a storyteller. Supposedly, she still owns a sword and a Serpent Whip, and is the only one who can tell you your dreams.

  DREAM EIGHT

  THE GARDEN, THE WIND, AND THE GONG

  The garden seemed to fill the whole world.

  Nadir walked through air thick with the perfume of blooming flowers and the moisture of early morning. The dawn mist was fading, settling in the form of dew upon the mosses of earth and the trunks of trees, but visibility was still low. Shapes of green surfaced out of translucence, appearing to float over earth that had no surface, no bottom. And the great mountains in the distance had their tops rubbed off by the clouds, peaks dissolving into the silver darkness of heaven.

  Nadir followed a narrow path toward the ornate structures of the ancient monastery that had been built upon the uneven ground. Parts of it were upraised on a hill—concave curving rooftops with shingles painted in deep jewel tones and encrusted with gold leaf, with sharp spires raised in the center—others lower down, and a great wide staircase lay winding up along the verdant slopes of the hill toward the pinnacle. At the pinnacle of the hill, at the foot of the ghost mountains that blended into heaven, was the Secret Temple of ancient wisdom that he sought. And within that Temple was the world’s truth.

  Nadir was tall and strong, a young man with a straight back, carrying himself with the sureness of a warrior, and yet treading softly like a panther. His skin was dark as rich, newly watered earth, not because of exposure to the sun but because such was the color of his race. There was a long sword in a scabbard at his side, with a blade that was heavy and curved and sharp. It was discreetly hidden by a travel cloak of simple bleached cotton. A cotton wrap covered his head, protecting him from the wind and sun, for he had come from afar—days and weeks and months away from here—from the scalding heart of the desert that filled with desolation the distant West and South of the Compass Rose.

  Nadir had come here to the Kingdom in the Middle, the land of grace and harmony and the birthplace of the Princess Egiras, whom he was bound against his will to serve.

  “Go and find the land of my birth, Nadir,” proud and petulant Egiras had said to him many moons ago. “And when you get to the place of jade forests and jagged mountains and endless lilac heaven, take a deep breath in my stead and absorb everything so that you can r
emember it. Then, pluck for me any blossom that grows there and bring it here to me still living, together with a bit of my native soil, so that I may plant it in my garden and remember. . . .”

  “But my Princess,” Nadir replied. “How can I leave you without my protection, even for a day? I have been at your side all these years, never leaving you.”

  “I suppose I will have to manage somehow,” the Princess said with her usual sarcasm.

  “Now go, for I order you to do this, else I pine away with homesickness, and it will all be your fault.”

  “I will be gone for a long time . . .” he whispered, bowing.

  “Indeed,” she said, turning her back to him, so that all he could see was the smooth waterfall of her ebony silk hair falling upon the lesser silk of her gold robes. And then, still with her back to him, she added, “I will expect you to be gone for so long that you will never come back.”

  He could not determine if her words were mockery or bitterness or disdain. His breath was short, for he had climbed hundreds of steps to heaven. And now he stood before the gates of a building that was a monastery or a temple or a faceted jewel set in a mountain. Nadir stood breathing harshly, gathering himself before going inside, and listened to the living silence.

  Soon he could discern the sounds of the wind as it moved the metallic bell-chimes that hung in clusters at the entrance, and of the occasional bird call. Once earlier, as he had been climbing the endless stairs, he had heard the deep rumble of echo that was the great Temple Gong, but it sounded only on the hour.

  And now there was nothing, and not a soul around. Only insects hung in the air. Nadir took one last deep breath, and he put his hand on the mallet which he then used to strike the hanging copper plate. He waited.

  And he continued waiting for long moments, for no one came to the doors. There was a basin of water just at the entrance, and he watched its placid stillness. The water reflected the dove-gray morning sky, and the upside-down mountains without tops. Eventually, Nadir put his hands on the wood of the door, and he pushed it gently. The door swung inward with a soft creak of old ungreased joints. Twilight was revealed in the depths of the building.

  Nadir stepped inside.

  He blinked, and was met by the sight of a sterile chamber, completely empty of any furnishings. There were two wooden pillars that supported the roof on two sides, two small simple windows that let in daylight on the right and left walls. And on the wall directly before him there was another door, shut.

  Before that door, blocking it, stood the motionless figure of a man in a robe of persimmon orange, that of a priest or monk.

  Nadir inclined his head in a bow and put his hands palms together in the greeting of this land. Then he said in a stumbling accent, carefully pronouncing the sing-song syllables that he had learned in his travels through this land, “Are you well, sir? Be well. I seek to enter and to learn. For days I have followed the endless Yellow River and for many moons I have traveled through grass plains and forests past towns and great cities, all the way from the land of nothing but desert sand.”

  “Did you travel all this length just to come here?” asked the priest. He was indeterminate—

  neither young nor old—but his head was clean-shaven, as was monastic custom, except for his brows, which were thick and dark, and thus implied youth. His skin was smooth and pale like yellow parchment, in sharp contrast to the deep orange of his robe, and his eyes were nearly pupil-less, black and slanted.

  “In truth,” said Nadir, “I did not. I am here at the bidding of the one I serve, a stern Princess who now lives in a faraway desert but was born in this land. She has sent me here to the Kingdom in the Middle to bring her back memories not her own. However, in my travels through this land I have heard stories of your Secret Temple with its hidden Wisdom. And having learned of its existence, I am compelled to learn more.”

  “Then you are unworthy,” said the priest. “Turn back. You may not enter.”

  Nadir blinked. “Sir, if I may ask, why do you say this? You do not know me at all, so how can you pass judgment on my worthiness?”

  “You may not enter,” said the priest in the same lifeless monotone.

  “But I want to learn!” said Nadir, his eyes taking on a gleam of intensity as he took a step forward into the chamber.

  In reciprocation, the priest glided with one fluid movement toward him, just one step, to match the movement of Nadir. And then he stopped again. His dark eyes did not leave those of Nadir.

  “What must I do?” asked Nadir, watching the impassive face of the priest guard, seeing now that it was young and smooth and placid like the surface of the waters in a basin at the doors. And something about the sight of such impassiveness infuriated him.

  “Do what you will,” replied the one who guarded the door. “But you may not pass.”

  “Let me at least speak to your Master Xin An-Dwei, the one who is oldest and wisest in all of the Kingdom in the Middle. Let him make the determination and pronounce judgment upon me!” said Nadir.

  “No,” said the priest impassively. “You may not speak to Master Xin, and you may not pass.”

  “By gods, I will pass!” exclaimed Nadir. “What kind of logic is this, priest? Your words have no good reason and you are unfair in misjudging me! Why do you continue repeating this, and why do you refuse to give me a chance?”

  In response there was silence. The priest guard remained motionless and continued to look at him, without blinking.

  A sudden gust of anger came to overwhelm Nadir, a mindless elemental feeling. He frowned, pausing in consternation, while possibilities sped before his mind’s eye. In reflex, the fingers of his hand tensed in a grip.

  The priest watched his hand, saw the clamping of a fist in peculiar silence. And then he took a step back, bowing, with his own hands held palms together. Then he stepped back again, this time flexing his right, then left knee, and moving his hands in circular arcs in deceptively slow figures of combat. Finally he once again bowed, and stood still and relaxed, his hands at his sides.

  “I don’t want to fight you,” said Nadir. “But if this is what it takes—”

  In that instant the priest moved like lightning. A sword was drawn from out of the folds of his orange robes, and he spun it from one hand to the other in ornate dance-like warrior movements that Nadir had never seen in his life. So quick was the sword that it was invisible.

  “Very well . . .” said Nadir through clenched teeth, and he quickly removed his own curved sword from its scabbard, holding it with both hands.

  And it was not a second too soon. Because the next instant the priest struck in his direction, and Nadir had to parry impossibly quick multiple strikes, at the same as he was taking steps back from the onslaught.

  Never had Nadir moved so fast. He had to use all of his concentration and balance just to parry the sword strikes, and still he had to retreat. Within seconds he found himself backing out the same door through which he had come in the first place. The moment he was outside, the priest quickly disengaged, and then moved backwards and inside, and shut the front doors in Nadir’s face.

  Nadir staggered to regain his footing, his heels catching against gravel, then growled in frustration.

  And then with a yell of fury, Nadir ran forward brandishing his curved sword and was at the door, pushing it inward, and found himself back inside the empty chamber. He stopped.

  The priest was not there.

  But the next instant he felt a breath, a wind, a something at the back of his neck, and he whirled around only to see the priest’s sword crashing down on him, and he met the strike with impossible reflex, at the same time jumping wildly back, gulping air.

  “Who are you?” Nadir panted inbetween words. “You are not mortal, for no human man can move like this!”

  But the priest said nothing, and instead he continued to approach Nadir, whirling his sword so that it cut the air with a hiss.

  Nadir watched him, no longer moving, still
ed with amazement, anger, and a sense of fate. And then, just as the other was only a foot away, and within sword reach of him, Nadir straightened, and dropped his sword.

  He stood frozen, unflinching, hands at his sides, and felt the hiss of air sliced by a downstroke of the priest’s sword . . . which came down a hairsbreadth away from his neck and also stopped.

  “Why do you drop your sword now?” asked the priest, continuing to hold his sword blade poised at Nadir’s neck. The priest’s voice was calm and placid, and his breath had not even quickened after the violence of their sword exchange.

  “I am not sure . . .” whispered Nadir. “I am not sure why I dropped the sword. Maybe because in that last instant I felt that it was no use to fight you, who are my superior, and I resigned myself to your sense of justice.”

  And then Nadir exhaled in relief. “I see that I was right to trust your will. For you did not complete the strike when you could.”

  The priest suddenly smiled, and the shape of that smile transformed his face—no longer a placid empty basin of water, but bright and warm. He lowered the sword and with unexpected gentleness touched Nadir on the neck where the blade had rested only moments ago.

  “I am glad it was your choice,” he said. “If you had continued to resist, I would’ve had to kill you, and I do not want to kill yet another good man. Unfortunately we must maintain this test for all those who dare to seek the Secret Temple.”

  “Then what is the nature of this test, exactly?” asked Nadir.

  “It is a test of pride and awareness of one’s limits. Most who come here after all the travails

  —after having climbed up the stairs to the feet of the Sky Itself—most expect too much as the result of their extraordinary effort up to that point. Thus, they would fight me to their own deaths and never surrender, for they are blinded by their belief in their ability to win.”

  “I did not think I could win,” said Nadir. “I thought nothing. I merely wanted desperately to enter the Secret Temple. But I admit, one more bizarre moment of this and I would have turned away.”

  The priest nodded. “Ah yes. There are such also, the ones who come and find me guarding the door, and who turn away simply because they are too much in awe. Very few find in themselves the right amount of balance to try hard enough, but also to know when to give up and be resigned to the truth. Do you know, kind stranger, that this kind of balance, this openness and flexibility in the face of reality, is one of the first steps toward understanding truth?”