Waking in Dreamland (23 page)

“The Alarm Clock,” Bergold said, in a whisper to Roan. “Incredible.”

“Is there another twist farther up the line?” Roan asked.

“Just the one, lad,” the stationmaster said. “I’ve walked a mile in either direction. Lucky thing it is only the one. My men can help fix it as soon as they stop lollygagging in town. They ran off to have tea with the others in honor of the princess— Oh, hello, Your Highness,” he said, offering her a half-bow. “Royalty and fancy meals are all very well, you know, but the trains have got to run on time.”

“Are the grapevines still intact?” Leonora asked, frowning at the tracks. “Please send a message to my father the king. He’ll dispatch engineers to help you.”

“We’ll do it ourselves, lass,” the man said. “We do cope with change. It’s the nature of things, after all.”

“So it is,” Colenna said, with an approving nod.

“So there’s nothing you need do, Your Highness,” the stationmaster said, smiling at her paternally. “But it’s nice of you to take an interest.”

“It is our duty,” Leonora said. “But if you require assistance, please do ask.”

“I’ve . . . already heard from Your Highness’s father,” the stationmaster said, with an inquiring look at Leonora. “We got a message with all sorts of details, last night already. Shall I tell him I saw you, Your Highness?”

“Just tell him I’m all right,” she said, turning away hastily, and sent a meaningful look to Spar. The guard captain took his place as head of the party. “Thank you for your service.” The stationmaster bowed deeply to her back.

“You didn’t tell your father you were going, did you?” Roan asked, as they rode over the tracks.

“He knows now,” Leonora said, rather flatly. “What’s important is that I’m helping to bring a menace to justice and saving our homeland.”

And that’s that, Roan thought.

The moment marked a decision for him, too. If he was going to send her home, this would have been the time. He could have made her wait safely here in Hark for the next train, whenever that would be. All the train lines led back to Mnemosyne. But he knew he couldn’t force her to go. Yet, he still worried he was risking her unnecessarily. His conscience troubled him. If he had any sense he should have begged her to wait here for the next train home. Georgeton would have been delighted to take care of her in the grandest style of which his little town was capable. And yet, Roan agreed that Leonora had as much at stake as anyone else. His dilemma remained unresolved.

She rode quietly on the tall, awkward bicycle, staring straight ahead of her as Spar led them out of town. She didn’t blink for so long Roan finally interrupted her reverie.

“Did you have a nice time in Hark?” he asked.

She blinked and started. “Oh, yes. Yes, I did. They were kind, weren’t they?”

“They were thrilled to meet you,” Roan said. She turned wide, worried eyes to him.

“We must protect them, Roan. I was just thinking how awful it would be if they all . . . went away. We have to stop Brom.”

“We’re trying,” Roan assured her. “We are doing all we can.”

Chapter 14

Just outside of Hark, the road was a generous two lanes wide. After the narrow forest paths and lanes in town, Roan and the others were glad to spread out across it and give one another space. Within a hundred paces, the pennyfarthings changed again. Roan stopped pedaling mid-push when Cruiser manifested as a fine horse and protested having his sides scraped by Roan’s boots.

“Ah!” Bergold said, settling himself happily on his pink and gray palomino. “Now we can make up some speed!”

The horses were eager to stretch their legs after the constricted ride through town. Misha’s playful beast let its legs go very long, propelling itself far out in front of the others with two spiderlike jumps. Its strange gait spooked Colenna’s mare, which broke into a wild canter and ran off with her, past the young continuitor, and away.

“Whoa-aa!” she cried, hauling back on the reins.

“Wait! Stop!” Misha shouted. He turned his beast to follow her, but it evidently decided it had stretched its legs enough, and turned into a wooden sawhorse. Misha grabbed for a handhold, but pure momentum took hold and propelled him forward over the horse’s head onto the road. The horse laughed a long, braying whinny. As Spar and Roan passed him, Misha stood up and dusted off his rump with a look that boded no good for his steed.

The two men hurried their mounts to catch up with Colenna, who was disappearing ahead of them in a cloud of dust. Beyond her, Roan could see a bend in the road. Trees blocked the view of the terrain ahead. It could be stones, or mire, or a cliff where no one was dreaming anything beyond it.

The older woman lost her flat straw hat, and her long hair flew out behind her, bouncing at every gallop. With a burst of speed, Roan urged Cruiser into the race, running until he was a neck ahead of Colenna, and reached for the mare’s reins. He pulled back, slowing Cruiser at the same time. The runaway trotted to a walk, blowing through its lips. The older woman was crouching over the mane and laughing, her face now decades younger than her silvering hair.

“My dreams, but that felt good!” Colenna said, sitting up as the mare checked her pace.

“You could have broken your neck,” Spar growled, and Roan realized he seemed personally concerned for Colenna’s safety. “Oh, I’m fine,” she said, playfully slapping the guard captain’s arm. He grunted, and looked away hastily. Colenna shook her head, and patted her hair back into its plait.

Roan, relieved that she wasn’t in danger, surveyed the highway. It was well made, with a bed of stones covered by a layer of screened gravel, and went on for miles through an arcade of widely spaced trees. Ahead, another similar avenue intersected their road at right angles. The other riders caught up with them. Misha had retrieved Colenna’s hat, and restored it to her with a flourish.

“Thank you, my dear,” Colenna said, putting it on again. “I’m sorry to frighten you all, but you must admit this is an excellent road for a run.”

“I thought you’d be killed,” Leonora said.

“Not her,” Felan said, darkly. “She’d rather have us die of fright.”

“It’s nice that you care,” Colenna said, without a trace of sarcasm.

Felan looked startled, then hastily turned his mount to the back of the file. Colenna smiled after him and trotted placidly alongside Spar to the crossroads.

“Corporal! Which way?” Spar bellowed.

Cautiously, Lum spurred his horse to the front of the line, and swung off to examine the road. Roan admired his orienteering skills; there wasn’t a hope of footprints or tire prints on the stony surface. Lum’s bay horse danced nervously at the end of his reins. The guard corporal squinted in both directions down the intersecting road, and shook his head.

“I still say it’s the same way, sir,” he said. “The weirding only goes ahead.”

“The weirding is all over the place, if you ask me,” Felan said, under his breath.

“They didn’t go off on a path to one side?” Roan asked, peering down the avenue.

“No, sir! We’ve got a nice clear trail to follow,” Lum insisted. “They’re on this, sir. They need a good road, what with that heavy load of theirs.”

“On we go, then,” Roan said. Spar clicked his tongue, and his horse led the way.

More confidently, they pressed on, admiring the pleasant grassy downs and hillsides. The avenue opened outward and began to wind, until they could no longer see very far ahead of them. The trees became shorter and more scanty.

“Hooonnnk!”

The horses danced and shied as a huge black automobile swung around the bend ahead and bore down on them. Roan grabbed for Golden Schwinn’s reins and pulled Leonora off the road just as the car hurtled past, spewing black smoke.

“Someone’s in a hurry,” Alette said, sourly. She had resumed female form as soon as they had left Hark though she had retained her uniform. The double-breasted wool coat with its silver buttons was rather becoming to her. “If there’s too many of those about, we should get off, Captain.”

“Let’s go on,” Bergold said, guiding his horse back onto the road surface, now paved with black asphalt, “or we haven’t a chance of catching up with Brom before dark.”

“Don’t worry,” Lum said. “This should be easy going.”

The clop-clop-clopping of the horses’ hooves was a peaceful sound under the clear, bird-filled sky. The road not only remained paved, but widened out still more. A white stripe dashed down the center of each side, dividing the two lanes into four. Instead of riding two abreast, the party was able to move freely up and back. When Misha thought of a joke to tell the princess, he’d urge his steed into a trot beside her without edging Roan into the ditch. Only Spar and Colenna continued to trot along side by side at the head of the party, not paying much attention to anyone else. Roan felt no need to disturb them. They were making good time.

“Hooonnnk!”

At the sound of another car behind them, Roan signaled to everyone to move onto the shoulder of the road. A small gray automobile shot past them, and vanished over the hill.

“Aayyyrrrruuunnnggg,” its horn whined as it went by.

Just as Roan was about to gesture them back onto the tarmac, a red car zoomed by in the gray’s wake, beeping a shrill, staccato protest. Then three vehicles, a blue, a red, and a green, roared towards them side by side on the opposite half of the road, which obligingly opened out to six lanes. Cars began to come from both directions, at first a few at a time, then in tens, then in hundreds, filling the lanes, crowding Roan and his party off the road. The horses huddled together, twitching, on the graveled shoulder as thousands of cars and trucks sped by in both directions.

A sharp honk startled Roan. Cruiser bucked under him, and Roan controlled the steed with difficulty. Golden Schwinn had fled off the road entirely, and had to be coaxed back up from the shallow ditch beside the shoulder. Roan made Leonora ride on the outer edge, and put himself and his mount between her and the speeding steel boxes. Spar and his guards spread out to protect the others.

“Is it a nuisance?” Roan shouted over the roar of the engines to Bergold.

“No,” the historian shouted back. He lifted the protective goggles that now covered his eyes. His coat had changed to a long, white duster, and he had a cap with a wide bill on the front and a veil on the back. “This is a vision from the Waking World. It’s real. It’s called traffic. It appears to be a growing phenomenon everywhere!”

“Horrible!” the princess exclaimed.

Roan stared at the dismaying spectacle of endless streams of cars, all belching smoke and revving their engines. Spar ordered the panicking horses into a double file, and led them northwards, staying to the far side of the shoulder. Cars snarled and honked at them. The horses shied and showed the whites of their eyes. Roan thought that their riders looked just as wary.

They traveled uneasily beside the perilous river of steel. Roan witnessed hundreds of near-collisions where the bad-tempered vehicles accelerated, tires screeching, to get past one another in a single narrow lane. A low-slung red vehicle with its windows so darkly tinted they couldn’t see inside howled past, knocked into another car, and spun out of control, right off the road, coming to a rest facing Spar. Its headlights glared insanely at them, and steam hissed sideways out of the front wheel-wells. It revved its engine, once, twice. It was going to run them down! Roan rushed forward, unfolding his quarterstaff from his red knife, to put himself between the metal monster and the princess.

“Get back!” he cried.

The soldiers and their captain went on guard beside him with swords drawn as the car accelerated toward them, its grille grinning a death’s-head smile. From nowhere, Roan heard a trumpet playing the staccato challenge to single combat. He braced himself for the impact, ready to smash the monster right in the hood ornament. He knew the beast could crush his staff into splinters. He wished he had some more fearsome weapon, but he was not accustomed to having to carry one.

Only seconds before it would have struck them, the red car veered sharply right, and shoved its way back into traffic.

“Whew!” Lum whistled, blowing out the flames on his sword and resheathing it. “I thought we were going to have to fight it back.”

“Too bad we don’t have cars, too,” Felan said, glancing at the endless stream to his left with envy. “Then we could really eat up the miles. Can’t we do that?”

“Excellent notion!” Bergold said. “We can try.”

Roan thought of the white sports car that the king’s messenger had driven to the Castle of Dreams, and tried to will Cruiser into a similar shape. He concentrated hard, thinking of wide mag tires and a five-gear transmission instead of horseshoes and muscles. The horse’s shape wavered and shifted between animal and mechanical. Roan actually dropped into a driver’s seat for one moment, before Cruiser snapped firmly back into animal shape. He looked over his shoulder at his master with reproachful eyes.

“I can’t do it,” Roan called. “The paradigm is beyond me. Has anyone else had any success?” The others shook their heads. The most that had happened was that the guards’ uniforms changed to khaki jackets and trousers, and their sword belts became heavy and laden with all sorts of mysterious small pouches of leather and fabric. Roan was fascinated by the round blue dome that replaced their saddlehorns.

“We’ll just have to endure going slowly,” Bergold said. “Just keep your eyes open, everyone.”

Roan did keep his eyes open. In the lines of traffic, he observed fourteen more near-misses, a dozen or so minor impacts, and one more spinout that resulted in the vehicle landing upside down in the ditch. Still, there were rules to the road. He saw that the lane farther away was moving faster than the one nearest them. What if they could get into the fast lane? If they were very careful, it might boost their speed, and help them catch up with Brom.

He explained his reasoning to the others, who reacted with open horror.

“You’re mad,” Felan said, watching sports cars whizz by. “We’d all be killed.”

“I’ll try it, Captain Spar, sir,” Hutchings offered. When his captain gave him a wave of permission, the guard wheeled his horse, and, blue saddle light rotating, began to trot alongside the stream of cars. With care, Hutchings watched until another pair of speeders had another near collision. Then he spurred his horse out into the resulting gap. The horse began to gallop. The cars seemed to respect the blue light, and hung back the split seconds it took for the horse to gain speed. Miraculously, it seemed to keep pace with the line of traffic, which was moving several times faster than a swift steed could canter.