torg 03- The Nightmare Dream (37 page)

her from far away, but she knew that was impossible. She shook off the feeling of paranoia and reached for her laser pistol.

"No, Mara," Djil said, coming out of his song.

"I think that's Uthorion walking toward us, Djil," Mara returned. "I'm not going to face another High Lord unarmed. Triple damn, I wish I still had the Heart of Coyote!" She grasped the pistol's handle.

"Mara, the priest, do you see him?" Djil asked.

"Yes," she responded.

"He is the one you built the jaz pack for. He is the one that desperately needs to see your world."

"Why?"

Djil did not answer her. He resumed his dream song.

"I hate it when you get all mysterious on me, Djil," she grumbled. "But you haven't led me wrong yet." Mara relaxed her grip on the pistol, letting it slide back into the holster strapped to her side. She opened one of her belt pouches, then reached into it with her right hand.

She pulled out the date plate/jaz pack assembly.

"I hope you know what I'm doing, Djil," Mara whispered, stepping forward to meet the approaching travelers.

138

"Do you see that, Angar?" Jean Malraux asked. "Do you see that young woman and the savage?"

"I see them," Uthorion said, his voice again filled with nervousness. Things were not going the way they usually did, and that made the High Lord of Aysle very unsettled.

The young woman stepped toward them. She was scantily dressed, with a wild mane of silver hair. Dark

paint covered parts of her face, and her body seemed to be partially made of metal. She stopped before Malraux, locking him with a fierce gaze.

"You look to be in terrible need of redemption, girl," Malraux smiled. "Perhaps I can lead you back to salvation. Shall we pray?"

"I don't think so," the girl responded. Then metal blades snapped from sockets in her left hand.

"Uthorion, beware!" Malraux warned, turning to protect the High Lord of Aysle. But the girl wasn't after Uthorion, and Malraux exposed his back to her by his action.

Claws flashed, slicing through the antipope's fine raiment. Then she struck him with her other hand, slapping it against the bare flesh of his back. Malraux felt the pinpricks of a dozen tiny needles and the cold of metal touching his exposed flesh. He reacted as swiftly as she, striking with a hard, back-handed blow. She crumbled to the stone path.

"How dare she assault my person!" Malraux raged. He stepped toward her, raising his cross-topped staff like a spear above her still form.

"No!" screamed another voice, and Malraux turned to see a man charging toward him from the Aysle side of the bridge. The man held a weapon of some sort, lifting it to use against the Vicar of Avignon.

"Blasphemy!" Malraux said in stunned surprise, pointing his staff at the heathen sinner.

"Tom, stay back!" another man yelled, and Malraux saw that there was a small army approaching them. It was led by Tolwyn of House Tancred. He invoked a simple prayer, and fire leaped from the cross. It wrapped around the man called Tom, engulfing him in all-consuming fire.

Malraux turned back to Uthorion. "Your prophecy has finally arrived," he said. "I leave you to settle matters however you see fit, for I have my own realm to conquer."

A spiral of light fell from the swirling sky, landing beside the antipope. He stepped into its glow, and immediately it retreated, taking him away from the strange scene that he had no desire to see to its conclusion.

139

Tolwyn watched in horror as unholy fire consumed Tom O'Malley. His killer stepped into a beam of light before the paladin could react, disappearing as the light retreated into the sky. But the one she was after was still before her.

"Uthorion!" Tolwyn shouted. "I have come for you!"

It wasn't Uthorion standing there, however. It was the Lady of the Light, and even though Tolwyn knew that the evil Uthorion possessed her form, she hesitated from attacking the leader she long-ago pledged her sword to.

"You have come to die, Tolwyn," Uthorion said through Ardinay's lips, in Ardinay's voice. "You and your companions shall fall before me!"

Tolwyn drew Battlestar from its scabbard, letting the enchantment flow from its ornate hilt into her sword arm. She started forward when she heard Djilangulyip call her.

"We are so much alike, Tolwyn," Djil sang. "We are both custodians of our land. The aborigines must use art to connect the land to the Dream Time. You must do the same, paladin. Put away your sword, set aside the warrior. Become an artist instead!"

"What does that savage mean, Tolwyn?" Uthorion

demanded. "Tell me!"

The paladin slid Battlestar back into its scabbard. An artist, Djil said. How was she to become an artist? She took the crys flower she had carried throughout her quest out of the folds that held it. It was still fresh, still alive. Its blue and red swirls vibrated with excitement as she looked upon it. Then she knew what she had to do.

"Let me tell you a story, Uthorion," Tolwyn began.

"Yay! A story!" yelled the dwarves behind her.

And then the Dream Time was plunged into a deep, eternal darkness.

140

Thratchen watched the unfolding scene through the mirror in the Gaunt Man's keep. He saw Malraux flee. He saw Tolwyn sheathe her sword. Then, when it looked like the final conflict was going to begin, he felt a powerful presence ripple through the mirror.

"What in ...?" Thratchen said, startled. It was as though something was pushing up through the depths of the mirror, reaching for the surface. Reaching for freedom.

Tentatively, he stretched out his own senses, searching for some hint as to the identity of the presence. He found it quicker than he expected as the presence grabbed hold of him. Like a drowning swimmer, it pulled itself along the line of Thratchen's consciousness, higher and higher through the mirror.

Toward freedom.

"The Nameless One," Thratchen gasped, struggling to maintain his own hold on reality.

And then the darkness engulfed him, spreading to fill the spaces of Dream Time that the mirror also looked upon.

141

Dark. So dark. Cold. Iam so cold. Iam... Bryce. Christopher Bryce. Father Christopher Bryce. And I am so utterly, completely alone.

Bryce slowly came awake, but no light greeted his opened eyes. He was floating in darkness so total that he almost believed he had ceased to exist.

Why is it so dark?

He tried to move, but his legs did not respond. Or, if they did, he was not aware of it. He was only aware of the darkness.

"Hello!" he yelled, but it sounded muffled in the expanse of nothing around him. "Is anyone there?"

No answer. He was alone. All alone.

"I don't want to be alone like this!" he cried. In the darkness, no one could see him weep. But he knew, and it shamed him.

Why is it so cold?

Time passed. It must have. Bryce continued to float in the dark, struggling to suppress the fear that played across his nerves and threw terrible images into his mind.

What happened to the others? Where had the dark come from?

Bryce waited, trying not to think, not to imagine. He was so lonely! Was this the way Earth felt, he wondered, floating all alone in a sea of darkness? No, he decided, for even space had stars to look upon. This had nothing.

"I don't want to be alone," Bryce said aloud.

A moment later, he heard something. It was low at first, and very far away. But he strained, and the sound became louder, clearer. It was another voice, reaching toward him through the darkness. It was a haunting voice, screaming with fear.

"I do not want to be alone!" the voice cried over and over. He heard it with his ears, but it also echoed within his mind, resonating with strong emotions. "I do not want to be alone!"

...in the darkness ...

... total darkness.

"You are not alone!" Bryce called back. "I'm here!"

Nothing, no response. But Bryce still felt the presence close to him, tentatively touching his thoughts. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Katrina," the sound and thought conveyed. "Katrina Tovarish."

Bryce saw a pinpoint of light far away in the darkness. It was a glowing point of blue and red, swirling alone in the vast blackness. "Katrina?" he asked.

"It is so dark," the young woman said, speaking not necessarily to Bryce but to the darkness itself. "And now I know what the voice that is not a voice feared so much."

The Nameless One.

The thought was so powerful, shooting from the point of light into Bryce's mind. What was the light, that it could know fear? That it could communicate?

Apeiros.

The second thought was still strong, but it did not batter Bryce's mind as it made itself known. The light was warm, like a tiny sun, and the priest welcomed the spot of heat in this place of utter cold. He listened to the thoughts it conveyed, and recognized it as something he had experienced before. Bryce reached into his pocket and grasped the shard of stone that was once part of the

Heart of Coyote. He pulled it from his pocket, regarding it solemnly. The shard was full of light, shining in his hand like a miniature sun. In the vast nothing, the swirling blue and red looked like endless potential, full of possibility. Like the far-away light.

He held the shard tightly, letting its light shine before him. "I don't want to be alone," he said.

"I don't want to be alone," Katrina repeated.

Then the light exploded into a rainbow of color, connecting to the far-away light, and another presence touched Bryce's heart.

The presence came from beyond the shard, beyond the darkness. Beyond all reality the priest knew. It came from very far away, but it also came from within his own heart. It was the presence of faith.

I am not alone. You are not alone.
We
are not alone.

The voice-thoughts flowed through him like a warm burst of air. It was the shard's voice, the far-away light's voice. And more, it was a voice from beyond even the swirling blue-red star that identified itself as Apeiros. For the first time in all the years that he had been questioning, Bryce finally received an answer. It filled him with joy and warmth and light, and not even this utter darkness could hurt him.

"I am not alone!" he called happily.

And everyone heard him.

142

The blue and red light extended in all directions through the darkness, thin ropes of energy searching for others. It found them, connecting them one to another in a knot of light. Tolwyn. Djilangulyip. Mara. Kurst. They heard Bryce's voice shouting through the blackness, somehow strengthened by other voices they could barely

hear, and the loneliness, the hopelessness, was banished.

"I am not alone!" Bryce called, and the realization echoed deep within each of them. And then it spread.

To Julie Boot. To Pluppa, Grim, Gutterby, and Toolpin. To all the people of Aysle, who heard the voice and saw the image of Dunad appear before them in the darkness. To a young woman named Katrina, and a man named Nicolai.

And then it spread to Uthorion, who was torn asunder by the light.

143

Thratchen experienced something different within the darkness. He knew that the darkness was but the tentative reach of the Nameless One, feeling out this place before entering it. He saw Bryce's shard of eternity, and realized that through the combination of both nothing and everything they could all be destroyed. But Apeiros made her presence felt. She took the connection of all of the people who heard Bryce's words and used the powerful possibilities of such a combined group ...

... to replicate the cosmverse that the Nameless One had found a million times ...

... to stretch his reach across an infinite number of cosmverses, across an infinite number of Earths ...

... until the darkness finally became thin, snapping apart as it stretched and stretched, losing its hold, severing its connection ...

... and the light returned to the new infiniverse.

144

... and the Earth, all of the Earths, began to spin.

Epilogue: The Near Now

Later today, early tomorrow, sometime next week ...

The Possibility Wars

145

Father Bryce stood beside Mara on the maelstrom bridge. The Dream Time connection was gone, and only the stone bridge remained. Bryce looked at Mara, who was holding a small remote control type box.

"What's that?" he asked.

"The remote for my data plate/jaz pack. I pressed it while I was alone in the dark," she said.

"What did it do?"

"I don't know."

They were silent for a time, standing together between two worlds. Bryce felt good. He hoped she did, too.

"What did we do here today, Mara?" Bryce asked.

"We created something new, I think. I have to figure it all out. But later," she said. "Much later."