“Enough chitchat,” Sydelle said, annoyed. “Release my companions.”
The king gestured. The cages opened. We were free.
“He still has his magic,” Harriet murmured. “I don’t trust this.”
“Trust it, mortal girl,” the king said. “My magic is at her option.”
“Now tell me,” Sydelle continued grimly. “Why is it better to keep you alive than to kill you?”
“Ah, yes, that,” the king said. “The reason that I preferred to recruit you rather than kill you, once I understood the extent of your power, as I did not before. It is that the Cloud faces an extreme danger of extinction. If it occurs, all of us will die, and all our works will be destroyed. Then it will not matter who was master and who was servant. All of us will be gone. I fear that only our combined powers, along with the special skills of the mortals, can hope to stop it.”
“Be more specific,” Sydelle said sharply.
“It would be easier to show you via illusion image. This requires more space. Shall we adjourn to the main hall?”
“Yes.”
The king led the way out of the bedroom and down a grand flight of steps. No courtiers or servants were in evidence; they must have gotten the word to stay clear until summoned. “Topsy, convey our guests,” he said, and Sydelle did not challenge it. It was almost as if he remained in power.
“You’ll have to use the cage,” Topsy told us.
We returned to the cage, as it was obvious that we could not readily manage the four foot high steps. Then Topsy picked it up by a handle and carried it down to the main hall. There she opened the doors so we could emerge again. We were now in a huge chamber.
Just in time for the show. The king gestured, and a picture formed before us. It was like a monstrous window overlooking a strange scene: the edge of the Cloud. Beyond it was empty air.
“Look beyond,” the king said.
We did as we were told. In the distance was some kind of disturbance. It looked like a fiery tornado, whirling rapidly, hurling out sparks.
“I have been aware of that thing for some time,” the king said. “It seemed to be stable, no threat to my domain. But recently it has expanded, and started to move toward the Cloud. I fear that when it gets here, it will burn the trees, melt the rocks, incinerate the Castle, and evaporate the Cloud itself. I have tried to repel it with magic, but it seems to be immune. It just keeps coming. I am concluding that it represents a rogue dream, an alternate realm generated by some hostile dreamer or dreamers whose purpose is to wipe out the Cloud, whose fundamental nature is Air, and replace it with another element: Fire. I see no way to stop it except perhaps to locate the dreamer in the mortal realm and deal with him. I can’t go there; no giant can. It has to be done by natives of that realm, ones with formidable special powers. When I saw that Deli was recruiting exactly such people, I knew that I would have to convert them to our cause.” He smiled briefly. “I hope I have succeeded, albeit not in quite the manner I intended. This is your problem now, Deli. My resources are at your disposal. We are actually on the same side.”
“I did not anticipate this either,” Sydelle said. “I must consider. How long before the Fire Tornado intersects the Cloud?”
“My estimate is three days at its present velocity. That could change.”
“Go publish the news of my ascendancy,” Sydelle said. “You are now my lieutenant, answering directly to me. Change the rats back into their original children and see that they are properly cared for. Do what else you can to smooth the way. If you are effective, you may win some small token of my favor.”
Wow, I thought. She knew who was boss.
“I hear and obey,” the king said, and departed. Topsy followed him out.
“Just like that you’re letting him go out on his own?” Joe demanded. Apart from the rest, I suspected that he was jealous of any favors the sorceress might show the king.
“Yes. He is now my love slave. He will not betray me. He will do anything I ask of him, anything at all, hoping for a smile or another kiss.” Sydelle took a breath. “Also, I wanted some temporary privacy so we could consult. I trust you realize that I did send the group of you into a trap—a trap for the king. I could not tell you my plan, because he would read it in your minds. You had to be innocent in that respect. I never planned to betray you. And as you can now appreciate, it worked.”
“It worked,” I agreed weakly. “Even our suspicions of your motives fostered the deception.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “He called you folks my cohorts. That’s accurate enough; I depend on you for advice and assistance. What do you recommend?”
We looked at each other, Henrietta included. What, indeed?
Chapter 22:
The Gods
I did the math, or tried to.
If one hour on earth was one week in the Cloud...and the firestorm was set to hit in three days, that meant the dreamer—or dreamers—back on earth, were maybe thirty minutes away from dreaming of the Cloud’s destruction.
I didn’t want to see the Cloud destroyed. Sure, the king was a bastard, but that was set to change. Additionally, Harriet and I had been offered a good life here, a life I planned on cashing in. A land of hellfire didn’t sound quite as appealing. Yes, we needed to act now and save Giantland.
Sydelle was following my train of thoughts, and said, “Jack makes a good point.”
“And, er, what was that?” I asked.
“You dolt,” said Joe, stepping forward. “She means that once we get back on earth, we will have only minutes to locate the dreamer or dreamers and stop them.”
“Oh, right,” I thought. I had inadvertently stumbled upon our greatest problem. Once on earth, time would be greatly accelerated.
“We need to locate the dreamer from here,” said Joe, “and not waste any time down there.”
“And once we’re down there,” said Carl. “We can pounce quickly, and take him—or her—out.”
“But what if this dreamer is accidentally dreaming of the Cloud’s destruction?” asked Harriet. “What if it’s, say, a nightmare? A child’s nightmare? I don’t want us to hurt anyone innocent.”
“Innocent, my ass!” boomed the king, returning from his mission with Topsy in tow. “They’re destroying my kingdom!”
“It’s no longer yours to destroy,” snapped Sydelle, and the king gave her a small bow, along with a tight smile. She looked at Harriet, who had made the point about a possible child.
“Yes, of course,” the king said. “I stand corrected. Anything for you, my love.”
“Oh, God,” said Topsy, and looked physically ill.
“Innocent or not,” added Sydelle, “they must be stopped. And you,” she said to Topsy, “may leave us now.”
The concubine gasped, offended and enraged, until the king motioned for her to do as she was told. She left, but didn’t like it, shooting Sydelle a hateful look.
Harriet ignored the ensuing drama, and stood her ground. “I won’t be party to hurting someone innocent.”
“Innocent, my arse,” said the king. “Let me be perfectly clear: this is a coordinated attack upon the kingdom. Someone is looking to destroy us all.”
“But who?” asked Harriet. “And why?”
“Not necessarily who,” said Sydelle. “You see, millenia ago, this realm existed beneath the seas.”
“And prior to that, we were in the mountains,” finished the king.
“Earth, air, water,” said Joe, catching on quickly. “Fire seems the natural next state.”
“Who is this guy?” asked the king.
“He is necessary,” said Sydelle. “For now.”
The king grunted and looked like he would enjoy nothing more than turning Joe into a rat...or just frying him right there. He held back, for the good of the kingdom. Joe seemed oblivious to how close he was to being toast...or having claws.
“To respond to your statement, yes, the inevitable course is for the kingdom to take a fiery turn...but
to do so would destroy us all, and I’m not ready for that. None of us here could cope. We would all die.”
“Then who would live here?” asked Harriet.
“No one, for a while,” answered Sydelle. “It is the way. Many more ages would come and go before this world saw life again. What type of life, I could only guess.”
“But something suitable to fire,” suggested Joe.
“Yes, I suppose.”
“Why do these cycles exist?” asked Harriet.
“Ask the gods?” asked the king. “It is just the way.”
“Then this person—whoever is creating this rogue dream—is a pawn of the gods?” I asked.
“Indeed,” said the king.
“If we were to stop the dreamer,” I said, “what would stop the gods from using another human for another such dream?”
“Nothing,” said the king glumly. “We would be at their mercy.”
“Or lack thereof,” said Joe.
“It seems to me,” I said, “that we need to convince the gods to spare the world. Cut it off at the source.”
Joe shook his head. “Do you have any idea how foolish you sound, man? Gods don’t really exist. They’re just made up, like this whole goddamn dream. I demand to be returned to my life, to my bed, to my wife, and to my gold!”
“You will stop talking now, or die,” said the king.
“You don’t scare me, asshole. I know you need me—”
The king waved his hands and Joe’s lips turned into a long beak. Chains appeared next and wrapped themselves magically around the beak. A heavy padlock manifested last, so heavy that Joe nearly toppled forward. He grunted and writhed and tried to hold his head up.
The king, looking pleased, turned his attention to me. “You were saying?”
“We need to talk to the gods,” I said, “and ask for an extension.”
“An extension?” mused the king, stroking his chin. Joe, meanwhile, fought his new beak and struggled to stand straight, he pitched forward...and his beak promptly lodged itself between two thick floorboards. He was stuck and silent and we were all happy. But we would need him soon, I suspected. “How long of an extension?”
“As long as they will grant us,” I said. “That is, of course, if the gods are accessible.”
“They are and they aren’t,” said the king.
“What does that mean?”
“They are only accessible within a dream.”
“But we’re dreaming now,” said Carl.
“And Giants don’t dream,” said the king.
“That’s impossible,” I said. “Everyone dreams.”
“Humans dream,” said Sydelle. “Giants don’t. It’s true.”
“So that’s another reason why we’re here,” I said. “To perhaps appeal to the gods in a dream.”
“A reason I did not foresee,” said Sydelle.
As Joe continued to struggle with his beak, jerking violently to free himself, all eyes turned to me for reasons I didn’t quite understand.
You’re still the leader, Jack, thought Sydelle.
But you’re going to be the queen!
I’m not queen yet. What do you think we should do?
I thought about it. In fact, I thought about it harder than I had ever thought about anything in my life. Finally, I said, “I’ll go to the gods. Myself and Harriet. Carl and Joe will go to the sleeping human and stop him. Preferably Joe will be minus his new beak.”
“Oh, bloody hell. Can’t a guy have a little fun?” said the king. He snapped his fingers and the beak disappeared. Joe, who had been yanking hard on his trapped beak, veritably flew backwards, tumbling head over heals, until he crashed into the leg of a chair.
“Not funny,” he said, dusting himself off. “Not funny at all.”
“Carl,” I said, “keep your eyes on him. You two do whatever it takes to stop the sleeping menace in the human world.” I looked at Harriet and took her hand. “We’re going to meet the gods.”
“And say what?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I suppose we better get to sleep soon.”
Chapter 23:
Fire Me
“Use the king’s bed,” Sydelle suggested.
“Never!” the king snapped, outraged. “That’s sacred.”
Sydelle reached out and literally touched her finger under his chin, lifting his face in the manner she might a child whose attention she wanted. “Their mission requires them to sleep. Your big bed is the safest place; they won’t fall off it no matter how much they may toss and turn. In due course, after we save the Cloud, you will be using it again with Topsy.” She paused. “And possibly, if you behave really well, with me. I am not unmindful of favors rendered.”
As she had shown with Joe, not that the man had deserved it, I thought privately. If it kept the king in line similarly, good enough.
The tough king seemed to melt. Just that merest hint of a promise completely overwhelmed him. That love spell was a killer, in its fashion. “Of course,” he said immediately.
“What about me?” Henrietta demanded. “I have no mission.”
“You’re with us,” I said. “I have a role for you.”
Sydelle picked us up and carried us upstairs to the bedroom, the king following meekly behind. Well, maybe not so meek; he was surely eying Sydelle’s shapely backside as she mounted the stairs. He was a man, wasn’t he?
I love the way she handles him, Harriet thought.
The way you handle me?
Of course. It’s a womanly art.
Surely so. Unfortunately we had urgent non-romantic business to attend to.
Or did we? I was getting a notion.
Harriet eyed me suspiciously, because I had snapped my mind closed to her. I hadn’t meant to cut her off; it was just that I feared my creativity would dissipate if I shared my idea prematurely. Artistic types can be like that, though I wasn’t much of an artist.
Sydelle set us gently on the center of the plush twenty-four foot square bed, and the hen flew in to join us. “Sweet dreams,” the sorceress said, and departed, towing the king.
“Now here’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “These elemental gods surely have good reason to maintain the Cloud and its predecessors and inheritors. They can’t dream.”
“No, that’s giants who can’t dream,” Henrietta said. “The gods dream up the Cloud.”
“In a manner,” I said. “What I mean, is, I bet they can’t dream creatively the way we can. They have a setting that they all contribute to, and one god gets to run it for a while, an eye-blink of maybe a thousand years, and then another takes over. But they need mortal dreamers to really animate it. That’s why we’re here. They provide the stage, as it were; we provide the animation, the drama, the feeling.”
“Why?” Harriet asked. “Don’t the gods have supreme powers?”
“They do. But power without imagination is helpless. They literally don’t know what to do with it. They need storytellers to bring it to life. Without us it’s like a chessboard with pieces but no players. Pointless. We make it all worthwhile.”
“We’re the real movers?” Harriet asked, surprised.
“Yes. Some mortal must have dreamed up the giants, ages ago, and the original story line, then moved on, and the giants continue their routine without doing anything really original. The same old story. Few of them even know.”
“The king does,” Henrietta said.
“Yes. That’s why he was so set on getting rid of Sydelle: she was a person with the potential to summon new dreamers and revolutionize the existing order, making him toast. Of course he had to squelch that. Only then she outsmarted him and got the upper hand. And the changeover of elements loomed, preempting that quarrel.”
“So now we’re all on the same side,” Harriet said slowly. “Because if Fire takes over, the giants are doomed, and we won’t have the Cloud to visit any more.”
“That’s it,” I agreed. I turned to the hen. “Now we need
to scope out the gods. All we know so far is that they take their turns with the dream realm, and Fire’s turn is coming up. For purely selfish reasons we want to get them to delay that changeover. What would persuade a god to mess with the status quo?”
“A good diversion,” Henrietta said. “If they get better entertainment by letting the Cloud remain a while longer than by letting it dissipate, they’ll do it.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Key question: what would divert a god?”
“A story. But I have no idea what story. I know what’s what, but I’m not creative.”
“A hot romance,” Harriet said. “Forbidden love.”
“Forbidden love,” I repeated. “That’s a human thing. Why should gods care?”
“That I can answer,” Henrietta said. “If humans craft the dream story with sufficient detail and feeling, the gods will think in human terms. They are vicarious livers, if you will.”
“So we can humanize the gods,” I said. “Make them relate to our concerns?”
“Yes, to a degree.”
“So what we need is to craft a good tale of forbidden love that depends on the existing setting, the Cloud, for its completion,” I said.
“But does the God of Fire care about the Cloud?” Harriet asked.
Good question. “Obviously not,” I said. “We need to relate it to Fire, somehow.” I smiled. “Me Fire. Fire Me.” But the attempted joke fell flat, without even a cluck from the hen. I wasn’t much of a comedian.
“Maybe we can sell the gods on us,” Harriet said thoughtfully. “And since we’ll be gone with the Cloud, if they want to keep us around, they’ll have to keep the Cloud. Like Scheherazade.”
“Who?” I asked.
“You don’t know that story?”
“Never heard of it,” I said. “She’s a movie star?”
“Your fantasy education has been neglected. Here it is, in a nut shell: an Arabian king was so annoyed by the infidelity of his wife that he killed her and married a new girl every night, killing her in the morning, so she would not have time to be unfaithful to him. It was getting so that the kingdom was running out of nubile maidens. They had to do something, but nobody could broach the matter to the king, for fear of losing his head, literally. Finally the prime minister’s lovely daughter, Scheherazade, tackled the problem. She volunteered to marry the king, then after he had had his way with her, told him a wonderful story filled with action, magic, and romance. But it was so long that she wasn’t able to finish it by morning. The king, hooked on it, and knowing that he would never hear the end of it if he killed her, postponed the execution for a day. Next night she continued the story, but it was still unfinished, and he postponed the end again. When she did finish it she immediately started a new story, just as exciting. Finally, after a thousand nights of this, she had borne him three babies and he was in love with her and canceled the execution. In this manner she saved herself and all the remaining maidens of the kingdom.”