Seven Dreams (33 page)

‘
Oh?’

Iya shrugged.
‘Following her about, showing off all the time. I think he likes
her, but he doesn’t seem to get that undermining her authority and
trying to look cleverer all the time is just irritating
her.’

Teyo blinked.
‘Bron likes Serena? Surely not. He’s horrible to her.’

Iya nodded
wisely. ‘You know how there are some people who are really clever
about a lot of things, but completely stupid about people? I think
he’s one of those.’ She paused, considering. ‘Also he’s too happy
with himself. Not sure it’s occurred to him that Serena might
not
like him, considering how he’s obviously soooo much
better than everyone else.’

Teyo shrugged.
‘Well, he’s out of luck either way.’

Iyamar giggled
again. ‘Yeah! I wonder if he realises?’

‘
Probably not.’

Iyamar hopped
down off her bucket and went to the door. ‘Hang on, I hear
something.’

Teyo listened,
and discerned the faint, distant sounds of running feet. Damnit,
did the girl have to have infinitely superior hearing as well?
Getting older hurt.

Iyamar flung open
the door to the cupboard and bounced through it, returning a few
moments later. ‘Something’s up!’ she said with glee. ‘Fabian and
Egg are coming.’

Teyo hauled
himself out of his nest of cloths, ignoring the way his back
creaked and cracked as he straightened up. ‘Something exciting, or
something catastrophic?’ he enquired.

‘
The
former, I think,’ Iya said. ‘Nobody looks like someone
died.’

They both emerged
from the cupboard and met Fabian and Egg in the process of dashing
past.

‘
Oh,’
said Fabian with a puzzled frown. ‘There you are. What were you
doing in there?’

‘
Knitting,’ said Teyo.

Fabian blinked.
‘Okay. Well, we’re needed. The Glour site’s been found, and Mae
wants every warm body she can get her grimy little hands on to go.
She reckons it might get messy, this being the last
key.’

Teyo nodded.
‘Iya, stay with me.’

‘
Boss.’ Iya saluted and fell in with Teyo as he dashed up to
the main deck. Lady Glostrum and her husband were up there,
together with Mae, Ayra, Wrob, Serena and Bron. The latter was
standing a little too close to Serena, Teyo noted, and appeared to
be paying more attention to her than to Mae, who was attempting to
hold court in the middle.
Iya’s right again,
thought Teyo.
The girl really had remarkable discernment; he ought to listen to
her hunches.

‘
We’re
in two groups,’ Mae shouted over the bustle and chatter. ‘Half with
me, half with my charming descendent. It’s going to be a long hop,
so you might be a bit disoriented at the other end. Don’t worry
about it! It will soon go away.’ She paused to direct a beaming
smile at her little audience. ‘When we get there, it’s — what is it
that you say? —
all hands on deck
to find the key. I don’t
care what it takes, and I don’t care about the site either, because
you can be sure Ylona won’t. Whatever you have to do,
get me
that key.
’

There was a fair
amount of nodding and a quiet chorus of agreements. The response
struck Teyo as a tiny bit lacklustre, but Mae seemed satisfied.
‘All right. Wrob, Ayra, Bron, Iyamar and Egg with me. Serena,
Fabian, Teyo and Tren, with Eva. Off we go!’

Her allotted
passengers all joined hands — Bron with a reluctant glance cast in
Serena’s direction — and they soon blinked out of sight.

‘
All
ready?’ said Eva, with a reassuring smile. ‘It won’t be too bad, I
promise.’

Teyo doubted
that, but he gamely took the hand she held out to him. Serena took
his other hand. He barely had time to brace himself before the
world dissolved around him and he hurtled into
blackness.

‘
It’s
a tree.’ Fabian said it flatly, in the tone of a person both
confused and wholly unimpressed.

Their group stood
huddled together in some distant corner of the realm of Glour. Teyo
wasn’t sure exactly where. Tren had said “far north”, which meant
they were somewhere in the midst of the largely uninhabited areas
of the realm. It was Darklander territory, of course, and these
parts of Glour were darker than most; the valleys and mountains of
the north, largely uninterrupted by human settlements, were
extensively farmed for a variety of plants (and some animals) which
only thrived in darkness.

It made no
difference to Teyo. Though not a Daylander himself, he was used to
the daylight, and he had spent the last few years of his life
living primarily in Irbel where night never fell. He stood in
silence, struggling with a persistent feeling of nausea courtesy of
the abrupt and disconcerting journey, and an equally unpleasant
sense of disorientation. He couldn’t see a thing, and it was taking
his eyes a damned long time to adjust.

‘
It’s
not just a tree,’ Tren said from somewhere ahead of Teyo. His
nocturnal eyes revealed a great deal more of the terrain than most
of his companions were ever going to be able to discern for
themselves; they were collectively relying on the Glostrums to
orient them. ‘It’s about the size of several ancient trees put
together, as far as I can judge from down here. And it’s varied.
The part we’re standing in front of right now? It looks like a
glostrel tree, all silvery bark and white leaves. But if I walk a
bit this way...’ There was a pause, and the sounds of footsteps.
‘Round this side, the bark is much darker and the leaves are a
different shape. And also purple. And higher up, they turn green,
and then red and rounder, and the bark turns gold. In short, it’s
like at least five different types of tree all in one, and that’s
just the part I can see from the ground.’

‘
That’s more or less inkeeping with the other Dreams,’ said
Serena. ‘Although... it’s a tree. Not an underground cave, or a
bubble in the air, or something. Is there a way in? Is it a site or
an object?’

‘
How
do we know this is the place?’ added Mae. Teyo was slightly
reassured to hear a note of doubt and confusion in her tone; even
the lofty Lokants could be befuddled, sometimes.

‘
Not
sure,’ admitted Tren. ‘The report didn’t say. Have to assume,
though, that Ylona has something to do with it. She probably knew
that one of the Dreams was a tree, even if she didn’t know where it
was.’

Teyo’s eyes began
to adjust a tiny bit. He received the impression of something pale
and towering perhaps ten feet in front of him, which must be the
tree. Other than that, he could hear, feel and sense a great many
other people around, but he could see little of them. It was
unnerving. He inched a little closer to Serena, anxious not to lose
her in the confusion. The scent of her hair reached him, and he
felt a tiny bit better.

‘
I had
word on that,’ Lady Glostrum put in. ‘Some scholar in Glour City
found an obscure passage in an ancient, half-rotten book. You know
the routine. Apparently it didn’t make any sense until now.’ She
paused, and added, ‘As I recall, people have noted this tree
before, but nobody could figure out what it is, why it’s here or
how it works.’

‘
Is
there a way in?’ said Mae.

‘
Not
that I can see,’ said Tren, but he was interrupted by the faint,
distant sound of bells. Eerie and mournful, it wasn’t a pleasant
sound, and it gave Teyo the shivers.

‘
What
just happened?’ he said.

‘
A
ladder came down,’ replied Tren.

Teyo blinked.
‘What?’

‘
More
than one. They’re dropping all around the tree.’ Tren’s voice
became more distant. He was probably walking around the trunk, and
if it was as vast as he’d said, that would take him a minute or
two. ‘I’ve no idea how,’ he called back, ‘but they seem
sound.’

‘
I
called them,’ said a new voice: female, powerful and pitched a
little low. ‘The tree is part of the Dream, but what I want is at
the top.’

‘
Ylona,’ said Mae, flatly.

She was answered
with a soft laugh. ‘I remember this one, a little bit,’ said Ylona.
‘My sister Treah’s work. She had a more vivid imagination than some
of us. Dear father never
would
tell me where he put it.
Wasn’t that disobliging of him?’

Her voice faded
steadily as she spoke; Teyo thought that it was disappearing in an
upwards direction. She was climbing.

Everyone else
reached much the same realisation at the same time, and activity
exploded around Teyo. ‘Up, up!’ yelled Mae, in the kind of hearty
shout which could rally armies. Teyo was moving before the command
had even registered with his brain. He was still largely in the
dark, but his eyesight served him well enough to identify a ladder
not far from him. He swarmed up it, aware every second that he was
far too handicapped by his lack of night vision to be of much use.
Mae had said
all hands on deck,
however, and their employer,
Lady Glostrum, seemed to be in support of this venture. As such, it
was his job to obey.

Someone swung
onto the ladder directly behind him. ‘Serena?’ he
called.

‘
It’s
me,’ she confirmed. ‘Up, up! Keep going!’

Teyo climbed. He
didn’t need to see very far in order to stay on the ladder,
especially since, a little way up the tree, some kind of moss or
lichen clinging to the strange tree’s branches began to exude a
soft, silvery glow. The scene enlarged. He could see colours:
spiky, pointed leaves in pale, sky blue, and then fat, juicy round
ones coloured rich jade; frondy foliage painted crimson-red; leaves
as large as his head, sunny coloured and spotted with blue. Some of
the leaves began to glow, too, as he ascended, until he felt adrift
in the midst of an endless sea of branches twinkling and gleaming
in every imaginable colour. So much beauty met his wondering gaze
that he began to forget the urgency of his mission, lingering
longer and longer on his way up the vast, endless trunk.

‘
Tey?’
Serena called at last. He was holding her up, he realised with a
faint blush and a hurried apology.

‘
Why
don’t you fly?’ she added, and he blushed even harder. Why hadn’t
that occurred to him before? Hastily he transformed into a bird —
some bird, any bird, he wasn’t even sure if the slight, sleek,
nocturnal form he’d adopted was any kind of recognised species at
all — and soared upwards. His progress was much faster this way,
but the sense that the tree would go on for ever didn’t lessen one
bit.

He saw nothing
that hinted at any end at all. The branches kept on going and
going, turning ethereal and glassy and then richly painted by
turns. Tiny light-globes, or something of the kind, hovered in the
air higher up, drifting there like dreaming glowflies, and Teyo
began to feel distracted again. Their gentle, swaying motions were
mesmerising, truly dream-ridden...

He flew into a
branch. The impact broke the peculiar spell of the tree, and he
snapped back to himself. Was this all part of the Dream? A defence
of some kind, designed to divert all but the most determined before
they reached the top? Or perhaps he was just being a dreaming
idiot, and letting down the team. He flew on, trying not to focus
too hard on the lights, until the branches abruptly ended and the
sky filled his vision.

He’d reached the
top. The ladder ended just above a large, circular platform of
woven branches. Teyo landed carefully upon it, horribly aware of
how far away the ground was, and shifted back into his human
form.

He stood, panting
a little after his exertions, and waited while his human-again eyes
adjusted a little to the gloom. A nebulous haze of colour and light
hung in the air on the other side of the platform, rosy pink and
then sun-gold and then seawater-blue and on and on through an
endless array of colours. The form it took was vaguely door-shaped,
but it looked too insubstantial to be opened.

There was no sign
of Ylona, though somebody Teyo didn’t recognise hauled himself onto
the platform moments later and made straight for the door, or
whatever it was. She’d brought associates.

Teyo paused in
brief indecision. Should he follow the man immediately, or wait for
Serena? This dilemma was resolved moments later when Serena herself
appeared, swinging up onto the platform with enviable grace. She
paused a moment to examine the strange doorway, then set off at a
near run.

‘
Come
on!’ she called, and Teyo followed. She reached the coloured haze
ahead of him; as soon as her body came into contact with the
ethereal substance, she vanished.

Teyo didn’t
hesitate. He ran straight into the stuff, and with a sickening
lurch he found himself elsewhere.

Compared to the
splendour and magnificence of the tree, the Dream itself was a
little underwhelming. It was a bubble of some kind, or so it
seemed. The walls were the same misty swirl of colour as the door
they had stepped through, if it was a door? Teyo had the odd
feeling that they were actually standing
inside
the thing;
that it had become a great deal larger as they had entered, or they
had become a great deal smaller. Or, even more disconcertingly,
that relative size was somehow irrelevant in here. The patterns of
rainbow light threatened to mesmerise him once more, and he
hurriedly averted his gaze.