Wakeworld (18 page)

N
o.” Jared infused as much authority as he could into the word and tried to summon up a forbidding glare, but he was at a disadvantage. He lay flat on his back on a large four-poster bed. Most of him was discreetly tucked beneath a clean coverlet, but the wounded leg was stretched out and exposed like a science specimen, with three healers hovering over it. Vultures. Greedy, garrulous birds of prey, feasting on his misery and rotting flesh.

This was, he’d been told, Castle Surmise. The information rang true with certain dim recollections of dreams that he was attempting to suppress. What he didn’t know, no matter how hard he dug into his brain, both conscious and subconscious, was how he came to be in Surmise and under the care of the healers in the first place. His last clear memory was of lying on a dirty blanket on the makeshift stretcher Zee had cobbled together, jolting and bouncing over what he wanted to think of as rocks. But the shapes and colors were all wrong and the stink of decay still lingered in his nostrils. Bones, flesh . . .

“No,” he said again, tugging at the covers to twitch them up and over his leg.

Hands prevented him, and two voices said, in unison, “My Lord, the leg must come off.”

“If we do not amputate,” said the third voice, in the condescending tone of a long-suffering teacher to an unusually stupid pupil, “the contagion will spread and you will die.”

Jared shuddered at the thought of the disfigurement. There was an attorney in his office who was an amputee—had lost a leg along with a wife and child in a car accident. Jared had always been repelled and slightly sickened by the sight of the empty pant leg, would find himself imagining what the stump looked like, and then wishing he hadn’t.

“If I’m going to die, it will be with all of my limbs intact,” he said.

“Your leg is hardly what I’d call intact.” The youngest of the three, a curvaceous little blonde who couldn’t be more than eighteen, wrinkled up her nose. “It reeks of putrefaction. The muscle has melted away from the bone.”

In response, the dream memories forced their way into his consciousness.
I would have owned her once. She would have done my bidding in all things, would have come into my bed at a single command and would not dare to complain if my whole body reeked like a corpse.
Jared blinked as the thought went through him, foreign and familiar at once, leaving a trail of cold on the back of his neck that made him shiver.

One of the older healers, the woman, laid a work-worn hand on his forehead. The touch was soothing and cool, a gesture he’d seen repeatedly throughout his life and envied. No one had ever touched him that way, certainly not his mother. Vivian had come closest, but even Vivian, who so easily fell into a caretaker mode with everybody else, had never touched him in that way. She’d approached him cautiously at first, almost reverently, acolyte to priest rather than healer to patient. He’d liked that, the way she deferred, let him guide and direct and shape her.

Until something went wrong. In part it was medical school, and then working as a physician in the ER. She tasted power, leading her team, making decisions. Bit by bit she slipped away, finally moving to that godforsaken little town and telling him it was over. Jared knew he could have fixed it, though; he would have won her back given time. If Zee hadn’t come along and spoiled everything.

Jared’s hatred flared at the thought of Zee. It was bad enough that he’d stolen Vivian’s love, that he was fearless and strong and adept with a sword. The fact that Jared now owed the man his life was insufferable; he would rather die than look up in Zee’s face and see pity for his disfigurement.

“Fever,” the older woman was saying. “Treating it will do no good as long as the source of the infection remains.” She looked familiar, and he caught her hand and clasped it in one of his.

“Do I know you? Have we met?”

“Of course, Chancellor. I’m Nonette. I dealt with your—knife wound.”

Chancellor.
Flashes of memory, blindingly vivid, then gone.
Bowing deeply to a woman both sorceress and Queen. A black-and-white bird skewered on his sword. A fountain and the fragrance of roses in the dark. Vivian’s body beneath him on a stone bench, unwilling. Vivian stabbing a knife deep into the flesh of his buttocks.

Jared rubbed his forehead, fitful and confused. That couldn’t be right. Vivian would never hurt anybody. As for himself—an image of the Chancellor, blood spurting from his throat, hands grasping at nothing—turned his limbs to water.

It made no sense. He had clear memories of a regular life—his house, his office, the courthouse—normal activities for a law-abiding man. That’s what he’d really been doing. Not running around some fairy-tale kingdom with a bunch of magic rocks, raping and pillaging and feeding people to dragons.

On the other hand, he’d known exactly where to look for the spheres and the Key. And he recognized the healer, Nonette, clearly recalling every torturous spike of the needle as she sewed up the wound in his buttocks while he lay facedown on a hard mattress, humiliated and furious.

Make it stop. Please, make it stop.
He twisted both hands in his hair and yanked until the pain made his eyes water, slamming the back of his head onto the bed, over and over.

“It’s the fever,” a voice said. “Sedate him.”

Strong hands took control, one holding his head still, others disentangling his fists from his hair, binding his hands to the bed.

When a cup was pressed to his lips, he sealed them together and tried to turn his head away, but somebody pinched his nostrils shut and when he opened his mouth to breathe, the bitter fluid poured over his tongue. It was a choice of swallow or choke and his body made the choice for him, over and over as the draught continued to flow.

A moment later, a soft warmth spread through his muscles and he slumped back into the pillows. A gray fog of silence drifted over his churning thoughts and muffled them, one by one, shrouding them in forgetfulness except for one, the last one, so real that he chewed it between his teeth even as he faded into sleep: revenge.

Hours later he surged up out of dream as though he were drowning, hands groping at his leg before he was fully awake. His fingers found a swath of bandages and an utter lack of sensation. Before he could cry out his distress and outrage a clear voice said, “Nobody will take your leg without your consent.”

Managing to get his eyes fully open, he blinked up into a face that he knew, only now the eyes were focused and keen.

“Isobel. What—how did you come to be here?”

She smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “Jared. Small worlds after all, yes?”

“You know me, then?” He hoped to all the gods there might be that she would not remember.

“I was crazy, not stupid. I saw you well enough.”

Isobel pulled up a chair and sat by the bed, her hands folded quietly in her lap. She was a beautiful woman, he realized. He’d never really looked at her before. She carried herself with grace and a quiet reserve that spoke of power.

He tried to smile. “I had hoped you would be my mother-in-law someday.”

“You hoped that Vivian would lock me up permanently in a facility somewhere. Don’t try to lie to me, Jared. When I say that I saw you, I mean that I saw what you try to hide beneath the looks and the money and the charm. It’s easier to see these things when you are broken.”

He swallowed, hard. “Look, Ms. Maylor—I was trying to do what was best for Vivian. You were not as you are now.”

“True. I was not. What you are, remains to be seen. As for Vivian, that is what I am here to discuss. You have done her much harm.”

“But it wasn’t me! Whatever happened here, whoever the Chancellor is, he isn’t me! Only a dream, however that works. Besides, he’s already dead. Do you have any idea what it is like to have your dream self die in front of your eyes?”

She sat and looked at him, not answering, eyes so much like Vivian’s that he felt an odd disconnect to see a different intelligence looking out through them. It was one of Vivian’s tricks, that silence, to just sit and wait until you spilled something to fill it.

“Let’s look at the evidence, shall we? You’ve met Zee.”

Yes. He had met Zee. Anger burned his throat and chest with acid. “What about him?”

“Well, he too had a dream self here, the Warlord. He saved as many people as he could, even when Jehenna tried to control him. He helped Vivian. Your dream self raped her and killed her companion out of jealousy.”

Beneath the anger, fear began to grow. A guard stood at the door to this room. He couldn’t feel his leg. They all believed he was this Chancellor, or that at least he shared the guilt for the man’s behaviors.

“He—the Chancellor—he tried to help her. He took off the silver bracelets so she had a fighting chance.”

“And left her to confront the dragon alone. The Warlord gave his life for her. At best, Jared, you are a coward. At worst . . .” She paused and looked deep into his eyes. He wanted to turn away, to close them, to flee, but he was not capable of movement. “At worst, you are the Chancellor. Now tell me, what happened to Vivian in the Dreamworld?”

“I—she—”

“You stood by while she was forced through a doorway. While Zee was attacked and overcome. And you did nothing.”

There was nothing he could say. Shame bubbled somewhere in the depths of him, overwhelmed almost at once by fear and rage. Zee again. Always the hero.

Freed from the searching, he closed his eyes to hide his own emotions. He heard the clink of a pitcher against crystal, the sound of liquid being poured.

“Drink.”

A hand behind his head, something pressing against his lips. He turned his head away, used his hands to shift himself more upright in the bed, and opened his eyes to look at the glass. Clear liquid. He sniffed at it.

“It’s only water.”

“How do I know that?”

“Because I have told you it is so. You do not trust me, but I have been nothing but truthful with you. Here, does this help?”

She lifted the glass to her own lips and took a long swallow, then held the glass out to him again. “You should drink—it will help to wash away the poisons.”

Jared licked his lips, feeling them cracked and fissured beneath the dryness of his tongue. A bitter, poisonous taste was in his mouth and he was deeply thirsty. He accepted the glass and drained it in several long swallows.

“Very good. I’ll fill it again and leave it here where you can reach it. If you need anything else, or feel you could drink another glass, ring this little bell and someone will come to you.”

“I’m afraid.”

“The healers won’t harm you.”

“And the Prince?”

She smiled. “It’s not the Prince you need worry about.”

V
ivian’s eyes opened on a bleak gray sky. Cold air crinkled the skin on her face and the inside of her nose, and her body felt chilled and stiff. Her mouth tasted foul. A chickadee called not far away, and another answered. Even that slight sound hurt her head, grating on her skin like a physical irritant. Still, she was grateful that she wasn’t tasting sounds this morning, and she pushed herself up to sitting. Poe stood at her feet, eyes black and unreadable as always.

Weston sat by the fire where she’d left him. He looked weary. There was still dirt in his beard from their grave-digging adventure. His face was creased with worry and fatigue, but he smiled at her. “I swear that bird is monitoring for dreams. He doesn’t blink. How are you feeling?”

She got up, moving carefully, as though her limbs were glass and might break if she set her feet down too harshly or made a move too sudden. Weston dragged a fallen log a little closer to the fire. When she’d lowered her body into a sitting position, he handed her a steaming tin mug full of coffee.

Grateful, she inhaled the fragrant steam and took a careful sip to see how her stomach would react. It remained quiescent and she gulped down a long hot swallow, already feeling her blood stir and waken, sending warmth to muscles cold and stiff. A few more swallows and she began to feel human.

“Well?” he said, back in his place across the fire, his own cup cradled in his woodsman’s hands.

The air was an affront to her skin, which felt extraordinarily sensitive, as though the top layer had been peeled away, leaving nerves exposed and vulnerable to the lightest sensation.

“I don’t suppose there’s an outhouse,” she muttered, trying not to shiver, which hurt, but clamping all of her muscles tight to stop it made her head ache and increased the pressure on her bladder.

Weston snorted. “Yeah. I built it with my bare hands while you were tripping.” He dug in his pack and tossed her a roll of toilet paper. “There’s a likely spot in the copse over there. I promise not to look.”

Despite her reluctance, the short excursion was good for her. The walk stirred her blood into warmth, loosened her muscles, reminded her of the gift of clear, untouched mountain air. Back at the fire she sat long in silence. It was difficult to find words, and Weston seemed to understand this. He silently refilled her mug and she drank the coffee black—bitter and bracing. Her eyes gazed into the flames and then flinched away; they were too bright.

The peyote had taken her to the border of reality and dream, had tipped her over the edge, and she hadn’t been back very long. Her usual rigid control was weakened. Against her will she slid into a dream memory so vivid it was flashback. It possessed her, held her, pulled her under.

It is dark but this is no barrier. Vivian’s eyes can see like a cat’s, into all of the shadowed and unlit corners. She is hunting. Her prey has taken to its heels. She waits. She is faster, her senses better tuned. Let the frightened thing run a little, let it experience what it thinks is deep and abiding terror and then she will show it what fear really means.

Enough waiting; she begins to follow. Her movements are ponderous and slow at first; it takes time to get the momentum up so that her heavy body will increase in speed. Flying is easier, but her prey is on foot and so she proceeds, alternating her poison-clawed feet, faster and faster. She can smell the sweat and the heat, the blood and the fear. No matter where the hunted one might hide, tonight she will search it out.

As if sensing this, her prey stops at last and makes a stand.

There is a clearing in a grove of trees. Somewhere nearby there is a door; it is closed and locked. The door is insignificant. What matters is the woman at bay, her big gray eyes in a face so white it is bloodless.

Vivian opens her dragon jaws, scenting both the clear, sweet wind and the agitated blood.

The gray eyes stare into hers, hopeless and dull, done with trying to escape. She strikes, engulfing flesh and bone, her teeth tearing, crunching, swallowing the hot salt of blood. She is sated, leaving nothing but a pendant shaped like a flightless bird; strong wings lift her skyward and there is no regret, no moment of sorrow for the one who has been consumed . . .

“Vivian?”

She shuddered, pressed her hands against the rough bark of the log to remind herself that she still had hands. Within, the dragon stirred and stretched its wings in a movement that reverberated through every cell in her body.

Jung believed that every character in a dream is a part of yourself. If there was any truth to this at all, the battle with the dragon-self ended with no more Vivian. The dragon was hungry; the woman was tired.

“Vivian?” Weston said again. There was acknowledgment in his voice; maybe he could see that she was slipping away.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen when I shift,” she said, as though he could follow all of her thoughts and knew where they had carried her. “I think I can get the door open. But I may not remember you.”

“Yes.”

“If I don’t—remember myself—promise me you’ll take care of Poe, and look for a man named Zee—”

Her voice broke and she turned her face away. For just a minute she let herself remember Zee as she had first seen him, sitting at the counter in the bookstore with a ray of sunlight illuminating his face. She remembered his eyes—clear agate rimmed in umber—looking into hers with that first shock of recognition, the collision of Dreamworld and Wakeworld vibrating between them like a plucked string. Whether he still lived or not, she was about to take an action likely to separate them forever.

She was about to voluntarily become that thing, the monster, that she had hated, feared, and run from all her life. The thing that she had also, against her will, longed and wished for. She was shaking now in good earnest, not with fear but with recognition, at long last, of this desire. All of her life she had been endlessly responsible—the caretaker, the protector and healer. The wounded child within had bided its time, all the while nurturing rage. It wanted to burn and destroy, to fly free and unencumbered, to eat what it wished and sleep where it willed.

The dragon heat flickered and flared and she focused her attention on that, building it, letting it grow and spread. Her senses deepened. She could hear Weston’s heartbeat, as well as Poe’s, smelled the heat of their flesh, and beyond that the trail of a deer that had passed in the night.

Prey.

Saliva welled in her mouth. Her body turned inside out, expanding, hardening, and this time she did nothing to hold it back.

A new awareness sang through her, a web of minds made up of a whole constellation of dragons. For the first time she truly understood the structure and hierarchy that made up the voices she had heard so clearly in Surmise. The individual dragon belonged to a Flight. Each flight belonged to a Consensus. And at the head of all there was one presence, stronger than all the others, that imposed order and structure and exacted punishment for those who strayed too far.

Vivian felt the will of this creature pulling at her, calling. All she needed to do was open a channel and the connection would be crystal clear. She resisted, and as she did so became aware of other, fainter signals scattered throughout the Dreamworlds and Between. Rogue and solitary entities, dragons without a governing body who performed their own will and went their own way. She understood now that the dragon on Finger Beach had been one of these. Mellisande had been ripped away from the others against her will, cut off by the web of enchanted silver with which Jehenna had bound her.

The voices that had been muffled since Vivian had been shut out of the Dreamworld and Between were clear again now, like radio channels. A little experimentation with focusing and she realized she could tune in or out, even to the overall command of the Queen, and for the moment she shut them off.

Distant memory said there was a reason she was in this place, this forest, that there was a task she needed to do, but she couldn’t remember what it was, or why it would matter. The sky was calling. She unfurled her wings, stretched them high, scented the air.

“Vivian,” a creature on the ground said. A two-legged. Afraid but standing his ground. “You are Vivian,” he said, and memories stirred of herself as also small and naked and two-legged. She lowered her head on the long neck to see him better, watched the blood flee his face, smelled the sweat on him turn to fear. He smelled also of blood and smoke, but there were other scents not far away, other bodies of heat bigger and better to eat.

Her wings moved, lifting her above the earth, above the trees.

“Vivian!” the man-creature cried again. His voice tugged at her, but he did not have the right or the power to command her, no strength of will that she should have to listen to him.

She wafted her wide wings, feeling the air flow around her, watching the wind blow back the man’s hair. He bent over to shield his face from the wind and dust and then she was so high above him that even to her eyes he was tiny. In the keen cold of the upper air her body was no longer heavy and awkward, but aerodynamic and free flowing.

She swooped and soared, lifting into a spiral and diving down toward the green earth so that it rushed up toward her, the trees, the grass, the stones, in a kaleidoscope of color as she flipped onto her back and then upright again. Almost brushing the tops of the trees with her belly, she watched the branches bend and sway.

From the man she still sensed fear and she dove down and shot a blast of fire toward him, teasing, just to watch him duck and stumble backward. The flames missed him, but a tree blazed up like a huge torch.

Then she was up and away, traveling fast and far over the forest. Her vision, crystal clear, showed her nests and birds and small moving things and then a larger four-footed creature.

Another dive, this time not for play, curving her wings for control and speed and aiming to intersect at the place where the creature’s frantic leaps would bring it and then there was only warm flesh filling her mouth and throat and belly, the taste of blood and the pleasure of satiating hunger. A contented drowsiness came on her then and she settled with her long left flank protected by a sun-warm rock and let herself slip into an almost sleep.

In the place between sleep and dream, when her defenses and will were also at rest, fragments of Dreamworlds came to her. She sampled them, tasting them as if they were flavors—dark and light, with and without animals and people. One of them called to her more strongly than the others. There was a man with a face she knew, eyes like agate, and a voice that had once called her back from dragon to Vivian.

Vivian.

She was a twin soul, joined in this body. The giant, powerful force of destruction driven by desire, and the small and frail being who defined herself as a healer.

All of the Dreamworlds were before her still. All of the dragon connections open for her to tap into. But she was free to choose whether to listen to the voices. Could choose whether to be Vivian or to be dragon.

She remembered the door she had seen with her vision altered by peyote, and found herself airborne once more, wings beating a deliberate course to the place where the two-legged calling himself Weston had said there was a door.

Smoke curled up into the air below, the forest obscured by its haze, bright flares of fire licking through as one tree after another incinerated. Where there had been a camp last night there was nothing but charred and smoldering black. No Weston, no Poe. The part of her that was Vivian sorrowed for this and hoped they’d found safety, but she was only a small spark of consciousness within the dragon who did not know or care anything for the loss of this human.

The door was visible as a shimmering in the air. Untroubled by the white-hot coals, she set down before it, heavy and cumbersome again now that she was earthbound. It should have been an easy thing to brush the cobwebby light aside with her mind, to open the door. An airy thought, a burst of power, and easy access. But there was something else at work, a dark shadow weaving through the light and locking the fabric in place.

She pushed against the black weave and felt it give a little. Spouted fire against it and saw the fabric of the weaving glow silver-white, except for the black, which remained obdurate and unchanged. She remembered the vision of dancing atoms making up the door, understood their fragility. The black thread held them together, an adhesive beyond her power to break.

Perhaps that would not be necessary. If she were to adjust the atoms
so
, unravel the threads enmeshed in the binding, like so, like so. At last the black weaving stood alone, a lacework trellis of negative space. She blew a breath of fire on it, and it collapsed and dissolved in tendrils of hissing steam.

And just like that, there was no barrier between her and the Between. The door was too small for her clumsy body, but it expanded easily to let her through. There was a thing she wanted, a thing that should belong to the dragons but had been torn away and lost, then stolen. Lofting her wings high into the air she set a course for the Cave of Dreams, the only real landmark she had in the winding mazes of the Between. Deep within, the part of her that remained human whispered, “Zee,” a faint thread of sound that hung in the air like smoke, and like smoke dispersed into the atmosphere and was gone.