The Red Queen (19 page)

Then suddenly I was flying over another settlement!

I felt sure
this
was Pellmar Quadrants, until I realised it was not much larger than the settlement alongside Habitat, and though it had high scrapers, they were few and not terribly high, and once again I could not find any sign of life! The most striking thing was that there was a link of some sort running away from the settlement. Full of curiosity now, I followed it to a third settlement. This was about double the size of the previous settlement, but it lacked scrapers and it was also devoid of life.

For some reason, this made me think with unease of my poor abandoned body lying sprawled on the floor of my hut. I had considered the idea that someone might have drugged me in order to harm me, and had all but dismissed it, but now I wondered at my stupidity in leaving my body helpless and undefended, because what other reason could there be for drugging someone save to do them harm? I had gone far in spirit so it took some time to return to my flesh, but when I was once more hovering over my body, I was relieved to find the pulse of life beat as strongly as ever. In truth I felt puzzled at the strength of the sudden urgent fear that had driven me back to my body in such haste.

Suddenly I caught myself thinking of the high strange realm where Straaka had waited to deliver a message to me from the merged spirit of the oldOnes. He had promised to try to rouse Miryum’s sleeping spirit to see if he could get more information from her about where she was and what had happened to her, only many months had passed since our last encounter, and despite time passing differently on the dreamtrails, he must wonder what had happened to me. Unless the oldOnes informed him that I had been trapped in a sleep like Miryum’s. It might be that he had succeeded in his promise to try to wake Miryum’s spirit and learn more about where she was, if only I could rise up to where he could reach me. But it might also be that I could ask him to seek out the Agyllians to discover how I was to break free of Habitat. Then it struck me that perhaps the memory of visiting Straaka had been planted in my mind by the oldOnes, because once again there was something they wanted to speak to me about and they could not use Maruman as they had done before. They might even be responsible for the urgency of the sudden fear that had sent me flying back to my unconscious flesh!

Eagerly, I willed myself above consciousness and rose up until my spirit-form began to gather substance. Then I felt the full weight of the black sword at my hip. It had become as familiar to me as the weight of my spirit-wings. Between them, they balanced me, I thought lightly, then wondered if that was not a deeper thought than it seemed. But now was not the time to ponder such things. Inattention in the spirit realms could lead to my being caught up in a time-consuming dream of past or future. I unfurled my wings and beat them to increase the speed of my ascent, and so came to the outer edge of the high realm of merging colour where I had first encountered Straaka’s ephemeral spirit-form. The dead tribesman had looked exactly as he had done in life because he had no connection to the physical form that had once contained his life. For Straaka there was only his spirit-form, and it was the whole of him.

I thought of Ariel and the ravenous madness that had been his unconscious spirit hunting mine the last time I had come to these heights. Atthis had warned me against travelling the dreamtrails, saying the Destroyer was seeking me there, but I had not imagined anything would be able to reach me in that strange high realm of melting colour. But he
had
found me there and had pursued me with such savagery that he would have destroyed me if not for the fiery, fused, red and purple spirit-form of Gavyn and Rasial.

Yet so many months had passed while I lay unconscious and unreachable in the cryopod that Ariel must surely have forgotten about me. At least it was hard to believe he would still be roving the dreamtrails seeking me urgently minute by minute.

My doubts had slowed my ascent, and with a thrill of fear, I became aware that I was losing cohesion. I concentrated on the black sword, and felt my spirit-form solidify, harden, gain substance. Imagining myself holding it, I grasped the hilt of the sword with my mind as much as my spirit-hand, and again, willed myself higher. As I floated upward, my thoughts drifted. I remembered the first time Maruman had shown me how to create and transfer my consciousness to a spirit-form. How clumsy I had been, and how difficult I had found it to move once I had achieved that form. My ease and ability to manage my spirit-form on the dreamtrails had grown gradually over the years, but I had learned far more quickly to negotiate the high realm of merging colour. The first time I had found it difficult to hold my form and I had needed Straaka’s guidance to create an anchoring vision. Now I needed nothing more than the black sword.

Not for the first time, I wondered if drawing on the dark spirit power it represented and focused, while awake, had been a misuse of spirit power. Yet it was hard to see it as wrong when I had saved Rushton and myself by using it to strike at Alexi. And what did it mean that Jes had struck out at soldierguards at Beldon long ago, using the same killing power, from Rosamund’s account. If it was wrong, then it might be a wrongness in our blood. Or maybe it was only something that came about as the result of extraordinary need. Gavyn had merged his spirit with Rasial’s and the wolves had originally judged the merging of Rasial’s and Gavyn’s spirits as
najulk
, meaning unnatural and wrong, but after the boy had saved all of us in the
graag
, they had changed their attitude, seeing the spiritmerge as they saw Maruman – as something unnatural born to serve an extraordinary purpose.

Hearing the drifting, ethereal music that marked the upper region of the realm of merging colour, I disciplined my mind to focus on my ascent and on the black sword, for I could feel how the sound wanted to draw me in, absorb me. Combined with the warm, melting allure of the shifting colours, a moment of inattention would be all it would take for my spirit-form to lose cohesion. I knew instinctively that this would mean death.

Then I saw Miryum, or the ravishing warrior shape her spirit had taken.

The coercer’s spirit-form was floating horizontally, just as it had done the last time I had seen her, but the eerie blue glow given off by her flesh was stronger. I had thought the blue glow might be the result of deepsleep, and I lifted my own hand to see that it no longer glowed. So the blue glow
was
the spiritual reflection of deepsleep, but did its intensification mean Miryum was falling more deeply asleep?

I felt suddenly frightened, for I had thought she was in a stable state, and that I could take as long as I needed to find and wake her. For the first time, I wondered if she could fall into a sleep so profound that she would become unreachable, her spirit and Straaka’s trapped forever.

I looked around but there was no sign of Straaka’s spirit-form. This was strange since he had been trapped at this level by her sleep. Was it possible he had found some way to separate his spirit from hers? The overguardian of the Earthtemple had told Straaka that I would wake her, but maybe in the months I had slept, the tribe had found some way to release him. I could not imagine him abandoning her, but perhaps it had not been willingly done.

I reached through the blue glow to touch the coercer. She felt quite solid, which startled me in that strange realm where things did not hold their form, but she was ice cold. It was like touching a statue that had stood in the winter snow for days on end, and when I took my hand away, my fingertips burned. I reached out again and tried to shake her but this was as effective as shaking a statue.

I stared down into her sleeping face, trying to think how I might wake her. Then a memory came to me of Rushton lying in the red-tinged darkness in the Beforetime complex under Ariel’s residence. While he was unconscious and hurt, I had entered his mind, and in the great silent space inside him that was the manifestation of his Misfit Talent, I had found his brutalised spirit-form. I had entered it and there at last I had found his essence.

Without stopping to consider what I was doing, I dived into Miryum’s spirit-form. For one second I thought I might simply crack against this stony impenetrable Miryum. But my will had been to enter her spirit and, armoured by the dark spirit power, I did exactly that, only to find she was not stone within but a tempest of wild winds and flying debris. It was such a shocking contrast to the stillness of her spirit-form that I forgot to defend myself, and in seconds I was tumbled into the ferocious heart of the wildness. It was painful and shocking, and to my horror, I felt my spirit-form beginning to lose its shape. A spear of pure terror pierced me at the thought of being lost inside the churning spirit of a person who might sleep forever.

‘Miryum, where are you?’ I whispered desperately.

Without any sense of transition, I was on my hands and knees on a black plain in the midst of a dust storm. My body felt strangely unfamiliar and I was trying to stand when I heard a cry. I looked up to see Miryum standing some distance away at the edge of a drop, looking down into the distance. The wind was blowing so hard that dark earth was being lifted up to fly in black clouds beyond her. There was no source of light, and yet light similar to the strange non-light of the dreamtrails shone on her.

Unable to stand, I crawled closer and was startled to find how easily and lightly I could move in this way. As I approached Miryum she turned to glance at me, and I realised that she was neither the sturdy coercer-knight I remembered from Obernewtyn, nor the eerily serene sleeping warrior queen in her shining armour. This Miryum was a voluptuous giantess with long black tresses that rippled in the wind, save where they were bound close to her head under a filigree cap of gold with small wings fashioned to rise from each temple. She wore a short tunic of shimmering gold belted at the waist, and her arms and legs and feet were bare.

When she turned to look down at me, her eyes shone gold with flecks of orange fire. ‘Who sent you?’ she roared. Her voice hurt my ears. She had a golden dagger in each hand and now she lifted them.

I bared my teeth, determined to defend myself, knowing that I could be harmed or killed on the dreamtrails. My hands felt strange. I glanced down and was amazed to see that it was a black cat’s paw. Was I a cat then? That would explain why Miryum looked like a giantess. But when I looked back over my shoulder, I saw that I had a pelt of cream running to black at the tail and the paws. The tail snaked back and forth and I was fascinated to discover that it was an extension of my emotions. This shape change was not my doing, therefore it must be Miryum’s. Obviously the dreamer had power over the dream even to the extent of being able to choose the form of those who invaded the dream. So had Rushton’s mind transformed me into Elspeth the goddess, and Dragon had turned Rushton into a wounded bear.

I looked up at the looming giantess, drawing on the dark spirit-strength and hoping she would allow the form I was in to speak.

‘Don’t you know me, Miryum?’ I asked.

The coercer’s eyes widened in shock. ‘What sort of trick is this?’ she demanded. Then her eyes narrowed. ‘Are you a messenger from the foul sorcerer who has enchanted my beloved, dooming him to sleep forever in a glass case which cannot be broken? Did he give you a human voice and send you to taunt me?’

I blinked, trying to make sense of her gibberish.

Inside Rushton’s spirit-form I had discovered a dream world where reality and fantasy merged seamlessly, and it had been the same with Dragon, only unlike Rushton, she had not retained any awareness of herself, nor had she had any idea that she was dreaming. Indeed, the dream, born of her need to come to terms with the murder of her mother, had translated the real world into a vivid alternative reality in which the truth was hidden inside fantastical forms. It must be the same with Miryum. In her invented reality, it was not Miryum locked in endless asleep but Straaka, and in a sense the dream was true. According to Straaka, the coercer could not unbind the link between them until she woke. But who was the sorcerer?

Miryum’s eyes had become wrathful and I realised that if I was not careful she would cast me as a villain.

‘I have been sent to help you,’ I told her firmly, hoping her subconscious would remember my voice and enable her to accept me as an ally.

‘How can you help me?’ Miryum demanded now. ‘You are not even human. Speak swiftly, beast, or die.’ She lifted the twin daggers.

‘I was sent to help you defeat the sorcerer,’ I said quickly.

‘Who sent you?’ she demanded.

‘You know who sent me,’ I insisted, praying that Miryum would supply her own answer.

‘The blind Guanette bird?’ she asked uncertainly, after a long moment.

That gave me a shock, for Guanette was the name Landfolk gave to Agyllian birds. Then I remembered that the Agyllians had always used Maruman’s damaged mind because they had been able to reach him more easily. Perhaps it was the same with Miryum. I had to force myself to ask with calm certainty, ‘Did she not speak to you of me?’

Miryum looked confused and finally she said, ‘She told me help would come. That I must wait for . . . for . . .’ Her words trailed off and I guessed that she was trying to fit whatever Atthis had told her into her imagined world.

‘We must be careful. Where is the sorcerer?’ I asked quickly, knowing that Miryum had always been more comfortable with action than talk, knowing that if the dream collapsed without the coercer realising the truth, it would simply begin again.

‘Come,’ she said, and lowering her hands, she slid the twin daggers deftly into her belt and set off at a run. I followed, relishing the sinuous strength and agility of the cat form, which moved in a way that was completely different to the way a human moved. The snaking tail seemed to offer both a counterbalance and a sort of commentary, and I wondered if that was how it was for real cats, for how should Miryum know so much about what it was to be a cat? Unless I absorbed the knowledge during all the times Maruman’s mind had overlapped mine and Miryum had simply used my knowledge to shape me? But maybe the shape was actually something that I had taken spontaneously, after all, I had been thinking about Maruman, and Rushton’s spirit had taken its bear form even when he was not inside Dragon’s coma dream.

‘Gnawing!’ I scolded myself.

Then I saw buildings ahead, half visible under the swirling clouds of dust. I realised that this was what Miryum had been looking down on. The buildings looked to me like a chaotic amalgamation of a Beforetime city and the buildings at Obernewtyn. Interestingly, they gave off the same bluish glow as Miryum’s spirit-form, but what did that signify? Miryum stopped and crouched down, squinting against the wind and the sand. I flattened myself beside her as she pointed to a tower rising up in the midst of the settlement, topped by a peculiar onion shape. Despite its oddness, it seemed familiar and I realised I had seen something like it behind Maruman, in my dream of him in Pellmar Quadrants. Was it possible I had been wrong about him being there? Maybe he had been here, in Miryum’s dreams. Unless what Miryum had created inside her mind arose partly from glimpses she had got of Pellmar Quadrants when the Tumen had brought her here, out of her mind with fever.

Certainly Straaka had said he had seen her being brought to a city, but he had also said he was not sure how much of what he had seen in her mind had been delusion. It seemed she had seen truly at least some of the time, and that was all the more reason to wake her from this dream so that she could help me to find her, maybe even to get free of Habitat. Was it possible I thought, suddenly breathless, that this was how Miryum was connected to my quest? Was it her task to get us out of Habitat, after I had wakened her?

Miryum laid a hand on my back and I forced myself to concentrate. This might be a contorted fantasy Miryum’s mind had concocted to reflect its own confusions, but in order to wake her, I had to bring her through the dream, which meant solving the puzzle it embodied. In this case, presumably, she needed to free Straaka. Obviously the dream was largely a reflection of the coercer’s guilt at having trapped Straaka.

‘There are the sorcerer’s guards,’ she said, pointing to figures moving around a walk that circled the tower just below the bulb. There were other figures on the ground, clearly patrolling its base, and I was not surprised to see they were encased in shining silver armour and wore helmets of silver that hid their faces. These were obviously reflections of the Tumen, which told me the coercer had seen them and understood the role they had played in her predicament.

Since she had cast Straaka as the victim, she had likely put him in some version of a cryopod. Fortunately Miryum had never been subtle.

‘Where is your beloved being held?’ I asked, knowing I must work within her dream framework.

‘My lord has been taken to a dungeon under the sorcerer’s keep,’ Miryum said. Her voice sounded strange and I looked at her to see that there were tears of molten gold running unchecked down her face. It was a splendid and terrible sight. ‘It was my fault the sorcerer took him,’ she said. ‘He loved me and I spurned him. I thought him beneath me because he was only a lord. He followed me and when the sorcerer would have killed me, he offered himself in my place.’

‘He sacrificed himself for love of you,’ I said, fascinated by how intricately Miryum had turned reality on its head, yet retained the heart of truth in her imaginings. Straaka
had
sacrificed himself for her, and now his spirit was trapped because she was caught in deepsleep.

‘There is the sorcerer!’ Miryum hissed, pointing towards the keep.

I turned to see who Miryum had cast as her enemy: a powerful-looking man with close-cropped grey hair above a billowing grey cloak, striding along the battlements. He was too far away to see clearly, and yet there was something familiar about him. I watched until he came close enough for me to recognise him, and drew in a breath of shock and loathing.

‘Malik,’ I snarled, remembering how those merciless grey eyes had bored into me as the rebel leader had beaten me and then put a knife to my eye.

Miryum looked at me. ‘I do not know the sorcerer’s name but he is evil.’

I hissed softly, thinking what a perfect person she had chosen to play the villain, for it was Malik’s treachery that had resulted in Straaka’s death. My own loathing of the renegade rebel caused my tail to lash and my fur to fizz and stand on end, but I asked, ‘Is there a way into the part of the keep where your beloved is being held?’

‘We must wait until the sorcerer leaves,’ Miryum said, and she sat down cross-legged on the dark earth, keeping her eyes on the tower. I stretched beside her on my belly and she rested a hand on my head. I was startled to feel a purr rumble deep in my throat. ‘Tell me how much the bird told you,’ I said carefully.

‘She said that I must break the sleep that imprisoned me,’ Miryum said. ‘I told her it was my beloved who was caught in an enchanted sleep. I asked if she could help me but she said she had no power any more. I begged her, saying I would do anything to save my beloved from the sorcerer who held him captive. At last she said one would come to help me vanquish the sorcerer.’ She looked at me. ‘Then you came and knew his name. Did the bird send you?’

‘I have come to help you,’ I said, then felt movement as a tingling in the end of my whiskers and turned to see the sorcerer Malik lift his arms and fly into pieces and the pieces were all dark birds, a shrieking keening flock that spiralled into the roiling black sand clouds. Only as they passed in a black swarm overhead, did I see that they were not birds but
rhenlings
– the mutated winged rats that dwelt in the
graag.

‘Now,’ Miryum said abruptly, rising to her feet and sprinting towards the sorcerer’s keep. I followed, flowing after her effortlessly, but just before she reached the gate, she turned to run around the outside, not stopping until she came to a small free-standing building half the size of the sleeping hut I had been given in Habitat. There was a Beforetime symbol on its closed metal door that I had seen before: a black circle inset with three yellow triangles almost touching at one point. I did not know what it signified other than that it was some sort of warning, but Miryum pressed her hand against it and the door responded by swinging open. One step inside was a metal door with a seam down the centre. I recognised this as an elevating chamber, and realised Miryum meant to bring me to some subterranean place.

That fitted with what the Tumen had told me of the Galon Institute, and this, along with the Beforetime symbol on the door, told me that, as I had hoped, Miryum had awakened as she was being brought into Pellmar Quadrants and then to the Galon Institute, and now she was using what she remembered in the construction of her dream realm.

The coercer moved towards the door, which immediately split open along the seam. But instead of an elevating chamber, as I had expected, there was only an empty shaft beyond, going down into shadow.

‘Come,’ Miryum said calmly and held out her arms. Steeling myself, I leapt into them. Judging by her arms, I was more the size of a dog than a cat, but Miryum had no difficulty in holding me. She was as powerful in her dreams as in life, and as brave, for she carried me unhesitatingly to the empty shaft. Even though I knew it was a dream, my heart began to pound, for I realised with dismay what she intended to do.

And she did it. She leapt into the shaft. I would have screamed but my feline form simply flattened its ears and dug in its claws. We dropped down into the darkness but not as swiftly as we would have done in reality, or maybe my cat senses read it more clearly than my human senses would have done. And my physical form was not disorientated by the fall, as my human body would have been, so that I was ready when Miryum landed heavily with a grunt. Unhurt and unfazed, she straightened, and I leapt from her arms to the ground. I then had to stop and groom my ears and whiskers to attune them to this new space. Miryum had set off immediately, without waiting for me, and I finished my wash composedly, despite feeling anxious about losing her, then followed, realising I could smell her scent quite clearly, even though she was out of sight.

The passage I was walking along and the one into which it flowed, where I could again see Miryum striding ahead, were white, as so many of the passages in Beforetime buildings seemed to be. That meant these passages might also come from Miryum’s memories of Pellmar Quadrants or the Galon Institute. There were no overhead lights, but the hall had a bluish glow. We came to a door and Miryum opened it without hesitation.

Beyond lay absolute blackness but Miryum stepped into it. I followed, having caught up with her, but could see nothing, although I could tell that we had entered a narrow hall. Somehow this information came to me through my whiskers.