Dreamseeker

  “I presume you ordered your men to bring me in.”

  Her pale eyes glittered. They were mostly grey, he noted, the color of fog, smoky crystal, the sky before a storm. Subtle blues and greens played in their depths as she moved. “Ah, but those were not my men who attacked you.”

  “Whose, then?”

  “Think, Private Hayes. Whose authority have you repeatedly defied? Who might have reason to suspect that you played a part in the death of one of their leaders?”

  There was no safe way to respond to that, so he said nothing.

  “Apparently the Shadows heard rumor that you assassinated one of their own. It’s easier for them to interrogate a bound spirit than a living man, so no doubt that’s what Lord Virilian intended. However, you’re of more use to me alive than dead—for now—so I’m forced to disappoint him.” She paused “You understand, it’s no small thing for me to frustrate the plans of such a powerful man. I would expect my efforts to be . . . appreciated.”

  For a moment Sebastian said nothing. She was asking him to serve as her agent. And perhaps much more. He’d heard whispers about a secret consortium that sought to gain through conspiracy the kind of power that could not be obtained otherwise. Morgana was rumored to be a member of it. Which meant that if he became indebted to her, he would effectively become a pawn of that group.

  Their agenda was unknown. For all his sources, he had been unable to verify their membership.

  “Or I could just deliver you to Lord Virilian,” she said affably. “I’m sure he would be generous in his gratitude, after I stepped in to capture you when his own men failed.”

  I have no choice, he thought. Some debts could not be denied. “I owe you my life,” he said quietly.

  “Excellent!” The pale eyes glittered; something in their depths made him shudder. “Then we do understand each other. I’m sure we’re going to have a most productive relationship.”

  She withdrew a handful of items from a pocket of her silk slacks and held them out to him. He hesitated, then put his own hand out beneath hers, palm open. Slowly she dropped his fetters into his hand, one by one. All except the last. She held that one up to the light, so she could see it better.

  “Fetters from the Guild of Obfuscates are very rare,” she mused. “It’s almost unheard of for a Grey to share his Gift with an outsider.” She looked at him. “You must have done something quite remarkable to earn this one.”

  He shrugged stiffly. The motion hurt. “Simply a trade of information, your Grace. In this case regarding an assassination plot against a high ranking Master of the Greys. He was grateful for my warning.”

  He continued to hold his hand out. After a moment she dropped the last fetter into it. “I have sufficient influence to turn the Shadow’s attention away from you,” she said. “For now.”

  “I would be most grateful if you did that.”

  “You would be well advised to keep a low profile for a while.”

  “I understand.”

  His heart skipped a beat. Low profile suggested he would not be kept a prisoner here, that he would be allowed to go about his own business again. At least until she needed him. His hand closed around the Grey fetter. All he needed was a moment when she wasn’t looking directly at him and he could use it to escape from this place.

  He nodded. “I believe I can manage that.”

  “Good. I may have a task for you soon. In the meantime, I trust that if you come across any information that would be of interest to me . . .”

  He bowed his head ever so slightly. “It would be my honor to share it with you.”

  “Excellent. Rest here for as long as you like, then. My people will bring you whatever refreshment you require, and will see you out when you’re ready to leave.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace.”

  She walked toward the door, the fine white silk of her garments rippling like water. But at the threshold she paused, then turned back to look at him. “Did you really kill Guildmaster Durand?”

  The words were more than a question, he knew. They were a test of his commitment, and perhaps of his value. He chose his own words carefully. “Durand was killed by a rival Shadow, who slit his throat with a sacrificial knife. There were so many death-impressions on the blade already that no one could draw forth from it any useful information. Hence the killer remained undetected. Rather clever, actually.” He paused. “Of course, I have no idea what sort of information Durand’s rival might have come across, that convinced him such drastic action was necessary.”

  For a long moment she just looked at him. One corner of her mouth twitched slightly; he could not tell whether it indicated disapproval or amusement. Perhaps both.

  Without further word, she left him to his thoughts.

  1

  BERKELEY SPRINGS

  WEST VIRGINIA

  JESSE

  THE BLACK PLAIN feels unsteady tonight.

  Normally I have better control over my dreams than this. Normally I can force the energy under my feet to take whatever shape I want it to. It’s only an illusion, after all. The space that lies between the worlds is a realm of utter chaos, with no real physical substance; it’s hardly the sort of thing one can walk on. But in my dreams I can make it take whatever form I want. If I want the primal chaos that separates the worlds to look like a sheet of black glass, a field of obsidian gravel, or even a dusty linoleum floor, that’s my choice.

  It’s always black, though. I’ve tried a thousand times to give it color, but I can’t.

  Tonight the dreamscape seems unsteady. Energy shivers beneath my bare feet as I walk, squelching up between my toes like mud on a beach. Is there some special meaning to that? Should I worry about it? Or is the dreamscape just harder to control some nights than others? I look behind me and see my path marked in thin lines of golden fire on the plain, as always. And as always, I take a moment to memorize its pattern, in case I need that information in the future.

  I’m only now beginning to learn the rules of the place. And of my own abilities.

  The doors scattered across the black plain look like cavern entrances tonight. Not naturally shaped caverns, but gaping, surreal mouths with crystal teeth jutting inward, like something out of a grade B horror movie. Waiting to swallow me whole. That’s what the Gate in Mystic Caverns looked like, before we destroyed it. Now it’s what all my dream doors look like, every night. Apparently that image has been burned into my brain, and no conscious effort can banish it.

  But tonight the openings seem different, somehow. I can’t put my finger on how, but it makes me uneasy.

  I pass the nearest doors without looking inside. I already know what’s behind them. Each archway allows me to gaze into a parallel world, and the closest ones will be similar to my own. Maybe a universe where my brother got an A in History instead of a C-, or Mom decorated the living room a little differently, or Star Wars bombed on opening night. Little changes. Such worlds have nothing to teach me, and peering into them, I have learned, is a waste of time.

  I still don’t know if those worlds are real or not. Oh, parallel worlds do exist—I’ve still got a nasty scar across my belly from the last one I visited—but whether my dreams give me access to the real thing or just show me the kinds of worlds that might exist, is something I haven’t figured out yet.

  As I walk along the black plain, crystal maws gaping on all sides of me, I suddenly feel a chill. Something is wrong, very wrong. I sense the wrongness without knowing its cause, and I feel the sudden urge to run.

  But no. The world of the black plain is mine, I tell myself. My dream, under my control. Nothing can hurt me here, because nothing can exist here without my consent. So I have no need to flee.

  That calms me a bit, and I start to look around, seeking the source of my unease. When I find it at last, the shock is so great that for a moment I can hardly think, much less abso
rb what I’m seeing.

  She’s standing maybe ten yards away from me, a slender young girl with wind-mussed hair and enormous eyes. Or maybe it’s a boy; the lean body offers no clear sign of gender. Complex geometric patterns flow across her body, sketched in golden light, and they change when I try to look directly at them. It’s as if my brain can’t decide exactly what the patterns are supposed to be, so it keeps trying different ones.

  A stranger. In my dream!

  I can sense the otherness in her, and I know instinctively that she senses it in me. This isn’t just some image my mind has created, but an alien presence invading the landscape of my sleeping mind. An intruder, where no intruder should be.

  I open my mouth to speak, but words never have a chance to get out.

  She turns.

  She runs.

  I hesitate for a moment, then begin to run after her. But her legs are longer than mine, and she seems to know the twists and turns of the dreamscape better than I do; I’m hard pressed not to lose her. Several times she makes a sharp turn to pass behind one of the crystal arches, and I have to slow down to keep from impaling myself.

  What will I do if I catch her? Block her path? Tackle her to the ground?

  “Hey!” I call out. “Stop! I just want to talk to you!”

  She glances back at me for a second but doesn’t stop running. Now we’re approaching a place where the spiked arches are clustered together so tightly that it’s hard to make out any space between them, but she’s not slowing down at all. I can’t see how she’s going to make it through that tight maze, so I brace myself for whatever evasive maneuver she’s about to come up with. But instead of avoiding the arches, she heads straight toward one of them. Then into it.

  And she’s gone, swallowed by the darkness of another world.

  I skid to a stop in front of that arch, and for a moment I just stand there, struggling to absorb what I’ve just seen. I’ve been dreaming about these doors for years—though I didn’t understand what they represented until recently—but never, ever, have I been able to pass through one of them. Yet beyond this arch I can see the misty shadows of another world, and I know that the girl I’ve been chasing is out there now, somewhere on the other side of the gate.

  Holy crap.

  Slowly, warily, I reach out a hand, trying to extend it through the arch. Always before, such efforts have failed.

  It fails this time as well.

  Standing in the middle of the black plain, I experience a kind of fear I never felt before. This dreamscape is my territory. MINE. How can someone else enter it? Why would this invader be able to enter a doorway that was conjured by my dreaming mind, while I, its creator, am stuck at the threshold?

  It matters. I know that instinctively. This is more than just a dream.

  But I don’t have a clue how to make sense of it.

  When I first woke up, it took me a moment to remember where I was. The ceiling overhead was unfamiliar, with thick crown molding where none should have been, and an antique lamp of painted glass hanging from its center, now dark. The furniture was weathered pine with dark brass fittings, wholly unfamiliar. The cotton quilt I had thrown off while tossing and turning was country calico, not something I would ever have chosen for myself.

  Then I remembered.

  I shut my eyes for a moment, trying to come to terms with the recent changes in my life. Mom, Tommy, and I were living in Berkeley Springs now, in the home of Rose and Julian Bergen, distant relatives who we’d been told to call Aunt and Uncle. They’d generously taken Mom in after our house had burned down, and when Tommy and I returned to this world we’d joined her there. Their house was a rambling, century-old creation with period gingerbread details adorning its wraparound porch, and plenty of guest rooms for visitors. It was packed to the brim with antiques, and original works by local artists hung on every wall. A museum curator would have been envious. Normally it was the kind of house I would have enjoyed visiting, and I could have spent many days exploring its nooks and crannies, but given the circumstances that had brought us here, it was hard to take pleasure in anything.

  I reached out to the nightstand and took up the sketchpad I kept next to it. I knew from experience that I had to record my dream as soon as I woke up or the details would fade from mind. Each time I returned from the black plain I recorded the path I had walked through the dreamscape, along with notes about any doors I had opened. Their patterns reminded me of the glowing lines that had appeared inside the Shadows’ Gate just before we crossed through it, as well as the codex that I’d activated later to get us home. They were all maps, I understood now, only they charted metaphysical currents instead of roads. Maybe if I studied enough of them I could learn how to read them—or even design them—and then I could—

  Do what? Travel between the worlds again?

  The mere thought of it made me shiver.

  “Jesse!” Aunt Rose’s voice resounded up the staircase and through my bedroom door. “Breakfast!”

  I glanced at the window. There was light seeping in around the edges of the heavy shade. I’d slept longer than usual.

  “Jesse?”

  “I hear you!” I yelled. “I’ll be right down.”

  I tried to do a quick sketch of the girl (boy?) I had seen in my dream, but my drawing came out looking like a cartoon. Try as I might to capture the patterns that had flowed across her body, they were already fading from memory, angles and lines slithering from my mental grasp before I could commit them to paper.

  Start without me, I wanted to yell down to her, but I knew that she would never do that. Food was more than physical nourishment to Aunt Rose, it was a vehicle of emotional bonding. Which meant that family meals had existential significance, and she wouldn’t start this one until all of us were present.

  With a sigh I finally closed the sketchbook, slipped on a robe, and turned the lamp off. Then, with the pad tucked under my arm, I headed downstairs to join my family.

  Coming home.

  It should feel good, shouldn’t it? Especially after spending time in a parallel universe as terrifying as the one called Terra Prime, being hunted by shapechangers and angry undead. Home was familiar. Home was safe. Home was the one place where you could relax and be yourself.

  That was the theory, anyway.

  But the home that I’d known all my life was gone. The house I’d grown up in was ash. A lifetime of artwork, into which I’d poured my very soul, ash. My journal, my computer, my schoolbooks, my jewelry, the dolls that I’d kept since childhood because they brought back special memories . . . all of it gone forever. You didn’t appreciate how much those things kept you grounded until you lost them all.

  Tommy was still around, and in some ways we were closer than ever, but he wasn’t the same kid he’d been before. We both slept with kitchen knives under our pillows now, and I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to use his if he had to. Granted, some of the nasty things that might come calling were not flesh and blood, but at least we’d be prepared to face those that were.

  He told me that late at night he sometimes heard voices. As if people were whispering by his bedside, too softly for him to make out the words. He said they sounded like the ghosts in Shadowcrest, so these were probably ghosts as well. But were they local spirits, drawn to the strange boy who could sense their presence, or something more ominous? Shadowlord spies, perhaps. Spirits of the dead who had followed Tommy home from his prison cell in Shadowcrest.

  Neither of us sleep much these days.

  As for Mom, she was alive, but her spirit was sorely wounded. The night our house burned down she’d managed to escape the flames, but not before inhaling more smoke than human lungs were meant to contain. She’d stopped breathing altogether on the way to the hospital (the EMTs told us later) and though they managed to bring her back to life, apparently something in her brain had gotten damaged in the process
.

  Don’t be discouraged, the doctors told us. She may get better over time. But it was clear from the way they talked to us that they didn’t really believe that.

  Some days weren’t too bad. Some days she seemed almost normal. Other days she might not remember who we were staying with, or the names of her own children. It was heartbreaking to witness, and I couldn’t help but feel that I was responsible. I was the one with the forbidden Gift, who had drawn the Shadows’ attention to us. I was the one whose dreams had caused the Greys to kidnap my brother, thinking he might be a Dreamwalker, and burn our house to hide the evidence of their visit. If I’d just been a normal kid, with normal dreams, none of this ever would have happened.

  And then there was Rita. I still didn’t know if my former traveling companion was dead, or a prisoner on Terra Prime, or trapped between the worlds. If not for me, she would still be safe at home.

  Breakfast that morning was pretty stressful. Not because the food was bad. Aunt Rose made killer french toast, and the mere sight of it made my mouth water. And not because the company was lacking. She and her husband Julian were genuinely warm people, hospitable to an extreme. They’d taken in our whole family when we were homeless, hadn’t they? And they were both pleasantly quirky. Rose was an accomplished ceramics artist, and her husband . . . well, hunting wasn’t my thing, but Julian had taken me out target shooting once and taught me how to clean, load, and shoot a variety of guns, which might be a useful skill someday.

  No, everything about breakfast was just fine, except that my brain was still buzzing with details of my strange dream, and what I really wanted was to show Tommy my drawings and see what he thought about them. Sometimes he had insights that a person more firmly rooted in reality might not. But first the ritual of breakfast had to be satisfied, so I put my sketchbook beside my plate, and after a moment’s homage to the pile of luscious french toast in the middle of the table, went to the pantry to fetch my second favorite breakfast, toaster strudel. I didn’t want to risk having all that syrup around my drawings.