A Warrior of Dreams (22 page)

Kessa, one of the arbalests now slung on her back, looked Joslyn up and down. "Not bad. Here..." She hooked the strap of the other crossbow around Joslyn's neck and shoulder.

"But I don't know how to use it!"

"
They
won't know that," Kessa pointed out, "and before the day is over, I might get a chance to show you."

Somehow Joslyn didn't think she meant target practice. Joslyn took a deep breath and gave her knife a reassuring pat. "I'm ready."

*

Ghost didn't usually speak without another voice to prompt him, and of course Tolas didn't speak at all, so the only sound was the wet, gritty rhythm of their footfalls, puny things that faded and died against the damp, cool stone on either side of the alley. All in all, not a good day for echoes.

Ghost frowned.
Why am I so aware of the silence
?

It was strange
—
a good part of his
self
was silent, silent in the way that only pure, chilling emptiness can be. And yet now it disturbed him. He glanced at Tolas, who paced steadily ahead, intent on the way Kessa and Joslyn had taken. No answers there.

Ghost had tried to thank Daycia for sending Tolas as guide, but she brushed it aside. "I'd be sending him anyway; I want to know what this is about, and I don't think asking would settle it."

"If you don't want them to go
—
"

"I don't. But my Kessa is like your Joslyn in many ways. So I do what I can. But a warning
—
Tolas will kill you to keep you out of the hands of the Watchers, to protect us."

"Thank you," Ghost had said, "that's very kind."

Ghost remembered Daycia's frown, and it occurred to him that she thought he was being sarcastic. He couldn't remember what sarcasm felt like, but he remembered the idea of it, and that made him smile. Ghost knew that, if he was ever made whole again, one of the first things he would do was be sarcastic about something. Anything.

Tolas brought him back to the here and now. The mute had picked up the pace, and he seemed agitated.

"What is it?"

Tolas shot him a venomous glance and kept moving; Ghost almost had to trot to keep up. All the while, Tolas's hands moved in odd rhythms: opening, closing, waving certain fingers, repeating.

All that anger and nowhere to go
.

Ghost thought of it bottled up inside Tolas, and wondered what that was like, too. Anger was difficult, harder than most of the other emotions. He wasn't quite sure what it meant anymore, but he saw what it could do
—
for instance, make a voiceless man mutter to himself in the only way possible...

Of course
.

It should have occurred to him before. Somehow Daycia had signalled Tolas when they were being brought into the ruined temple and passed on very detailed instructions. Ghost studied the signs, and it wasn't long before he recognized the basic pattern
—
the Brotherhood of Sleep. Another monastic offshoot of the Temple of Somna but, unlike the Travelers, they believed in the revelatory nature of dream alone, and so did nothing to interfere with it. They chose rather to study their own dreams in intense sessions that could last for days. The signs evolved out of the need to conduct monastery business without disturbing the brothers who were in 'meditation.' A very extensive vocabulary had evolved around the sign language, and Ghost wasn't terribly fluent. Still, he did make out one phrase:

KILL HIM THIS TIME.

Ghost drew Tolas aside, held out his hand when Tolas glared at him and signed "Kill who?"

The grammar was wrong, but Tolas understood. He grinned, and made his next signs slowly and distinctly.

THE MAN WHO WANTS TO DIE.

*

Kessa approached the bend in the alley with rapid strides, and Joslyn hurried to catch her. When they had first entered the alley, Joslyn had kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, but now shadowed doorways appeared on either side of them, and she tried to watch them, too. It was making her a little dizzy. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"Never said it was," Kessa said without looking back, "but you wanted to see
—
"

"No! I mean coming this way."

Kessa shrugged. "No worse than the street. Better, in a way. No witnesses."

Joslyn didn't understand that. She was about to ask when they turned the corner and found the man. He might have been young; Joslyn couldn't tell. His clothes looked lived in
—
but he didn't look quite alive. Joslyn thought of a dead man propped up on frozen joints. He leaned against the post of an open doorway, unmoving, eyes fixed on nothing or eternity. And then, like a statue discovering life, he spoke.

"It's today, Kessa girl. I mean it."

"I'm in a hurry, Phian. No time to play now." She started to walk past him, but he caught her arm.

"Now." He reached into his sleeve.

"Look out!" Joslyn shouted the warning when she saw the shine of steel, reaching for her own knife and knowing it would be too late to help Kessa.

Kessa didn't need any help. Phian's attack had all the brutal speed of a lame snail. Kessa merely stood there as the knife got closer and closer. And slower. And slower. About five inches from her throat, it stopped altogether.

The man's arms fell to his sides in disgust. "Damn it, girl, don't you know when you're being attacked?"

The unreality of it all left Joslyn standing bewildered on the cobblestones, watching Kessa hold up her end of the lunacy.

"I told you I have no time. If you want to die today why don't you go play with the Enders?"

"Enders!" Phian snorted. "You think that didn't occur to me before now? It almost worked, that first time... but then some genius among them realized I
wanted
death, and of course they wouldn't touch me after that. They greet me with little bows and big smirks, these days... Swine!"

For all the passion in the madman's words, his voice was as flat as old ale. He leaned back against his door frame, muttering. Kessa stepped past him and waved for Joslyn to follow. She did, but without once taking her eyes off Phian until he was hidden by another turn of the alley. She needn't have bothered; he seemed to have lost all interest in them.

"A friend of yours?" Joslyn asked, finally.

"We've met before," Kessa said. "I nearly did kill him the first time. He's not a threat to anyone, or even himself, for all his talk."

"Why does he want to die?"

"Lunacy, unhappy love... who knows? And don't ask me why he doesn't just kill himself. I don't know that, either."

Joslyn thought a moment. "Those 'Enders' you spoke of. Who are they?"

Kessa stopped so suddenly she looked as if she'd hit an invisible wall. "If that was meant as a joke it wasn't a good one."

Joslyn shook her head. "I didn't mean to offend you. I just wondered."

Kessa stared at her. "You really don't know, do you?"

"I never heard of them before I came to Darsa."

Kessa shivered. "Live with an evil long enough and you can't imagine life free of it... I envy your ignorance, girl of Ly Ossia. I really do." Kessa started walking again.

Joslyn stepped in behind her, annoyed. "I don't want your envy. I want to know about the Enders."

"Easy
—
they are maggots in an open wound, is what they
are
," Kessa hissed. "What they
do
... well, come along Joslyn. I did promise to show you the city."

*

Phian was dimly aware of the two men approaching him until he noticed that the younger one had a knife. He perked up a bit.

I'll give the world this much
, Phian thought,
it's full of possibilities
.

"I'm going to kill you both," he said, trying to sound as if he meant it. He started to get up, but the younger one shoved him back against the door frame. A sharp pain stung his elbow and his arm went numb. The numbness was like a comfortable old boot; he ignored it. The pain, on the other hand, was delicious. And the aggressive young man was approaching with his knife.
Better and better
.

"Tolas, no!"

The older man stepped between them. Phian was almost frustrated, but there wasn't time to savor the almost-emotion. "Tolas, yes! Don't you realize the danger you're in? Strike!"

No good. Tolas sheathed his knife, looking disgusted. He stepped to the near wall and leaned against it, arms crossed, frowning at the both of them as the older man leaned close.

"If you're not going to kill me," Phian said, "please go away."

The man just smiled, and the weariness in his eyes was a mirror-image of Phian's own. "Friend," he said, "how long since you lost your Nightsoul?"

*

"Sestoc is the last day of the week, by the Imperial calendar. The last of anything is sacred to the Enders."

Joslyn watched the black-robed acolytes put the finishing touches on the scaffold. It was of rough wood, set in the middle of the marketplace and carefully ignored by the patrons and merchants there. Joslyn saw several of them sneak furtive glances at the activity, muttering, but none packed their goods to leave. Joslyn asked Kessa about that.

"Maybe they did leave, in the beginning," Kessa mused. "I think they're used to it now. Like so much in Darsa."

Joslyn wasn't as certain. Whatever was about to happen, the folk in the market didn't seem too happy about it. Joslyn could almost taste their resentment, pulled in tight and close like...

Like the shell of their dreams. Here or the Nightstage, it's all one to them. No escape. No respite
.

Up until that moment Joslyn had wondered why the Darsans had never rebuilt their city. According to Kessa, the Emperor's orders not to rebuild only extended to the walls, and even with the loss of the Temple, they were still the largest port on the Southern Sea. Joslyn understood, a little. She stopped wondering.

"Almost time for the show," Kessa said. "Come on."

They found a vantage point at the top of a huge column cloaked with thick old vines of ivy. On the top plate, all that remained of the statue that once rested there was an exquisite marble foot. Joslyn looked down at the rubble nearby and found the rest: a cracked torso and breast, one slender hand. They were sitting on what had once been a tribute to the Dreamer, now broken and forgotten.

Small wonder. If there's any part of the Dream Somna no longer smiles on, Darsa is it
.

Kessa touched her shoulder. "Look there."

Joslyn looked, but she heard it first
—
a slow measured beat on a hide drum. Then the first shrieking trumpet, like a cry of pain. Again the beat, and the marchers came into sight around a bend in the ruins. They came by twos
—
first the black-robed acolytes, then the priest with brown robes and blood-red sashes. Their marching rhythm was no rhythm at all, an asynchronous step that made an art of never once matching the beat of the drum. Some carried small, shrill trumpets, others tabors, their staccato beat also at odds with the booming drum. There was no song, no unity, no harmony. There was only the ghastly noise.

"As hymns go," Joslyn said, drily, "I've heard better."

"A burning rat makes a more pleasing melody," Kessa snapped, "but as a bloody unsettling
racket—
which is what it's supposed to be
—
it has few equals. Now watch, and you'll understand as much about the Enders as you need to... Ah, the Honored One himself."

He came surrounded by an escort of acolytes bearing crudely forged, long, curved knives. Unlike the others, he wore a robe of thin white muslin belted with rope. Even at that distance Joslyn could see the ritual scars hacked into his face. "Who is he?"

"Today he is the actual Voice of the Dream, an offering to the God Malitus himself."

Joslyn shook her head. "The Emperor has forbidden human sacrifice!"

"He's also forbidden interference with the religious customs of the conquered. Quite a headache for the Watchers, when you think about it.... Oh, don't worry, they're not going to kill him. That would spoil everything. Now be still and watch."

Joslyn watched as they led the man to the scaffold where two rough beams had been arranged in an "X". Solemn priests removed the man's one garment.

Joslyn wasn't ready for what she saw.
Damn
...

The scars on the man's face barely hinted at what lay beneath the robe. Pale, puckered scars crossed and recrossed his chest and legs until his skin looked like wicker-work. He smiled serenely and stretched out his arms and legs for the acolytes to bind him to the frame.

"You'd think he was being led to paradise," Kessa muttered.

One of the priests stood at the far end of the scaffold platform while the rest of the noisy throng clambered to the ground. There was nothing like discipline among them; they talked, they laughed, they clapped hands in disjointed rhythm. The priest on the scaffold drew a coiled whip from his sash snapped it at the worshippers to limber his arm. They didn't bother to dodge; one went so far as to turn his face up to meet the lash as if accepting a sacrament. Joslyn saw the whipman smile benignly and take aim. The next instant the acolyte staggered back, blood welling in the gash in his cheek. The worshippers sighed as one breath and shouted in an ecstasy of joy. Joslyn felt a little sick.

The priest grinned, turned suddenly and struck at the sacrifice. A new welt blossomed on the man's chest, and he howled. The next strike was across his thighs and then again his chest. The last one reopened an old wound, and blood began to ooze along the line of the scar. The man's howls turned to shrieks, and all the while, except perhaps when the lash had just struck his skin, the smile never left his face.

Kessa hugged her knees, her face grim. "Sing, Malitus. We hear you."

Joslyn put her hand on Kessa's shoulder. "Why is he being punished?"

"He's not being punished
—
we are. He's bellowing his pain for us to hear."

Joslyn winced. "We can't help but hear. But why does it matter that we should?"