Bridge of Dreams (5 page)

A bath and some sleep. Later he’d go downstairs and get something to eat.

As he ran water in the bathtub, he looked in the mirror over the sink. Tired green eyes looked back at him. His black hair had gotten long enough to look shaggy. He’d have to stop at a barbershop soon and get it cut. His skin was browned a bit from all the time he spent outdoors, but it wasn’t leathery or lined, so he didn’t look older than his almost thirty years. He wasn’t dangerously handsome like Sebastian, but women thought he was attractive, and that was good enough for him.

This was the second time in two weeks that his island hadn’t been where he thought it should be, the second time he had felt a resistance when he tried to bring it to him. The island was attuned to him, so that shouldn’t happen—unless something was interfering with his connection to it.

Glorianna? No. She knew how much he depended on being able to impose his island over other landscapes in order to tend all the bridges. She knew the value of having fresh water available and being able to camp out overnight without worrying about thieves or anyone else who might want to prey on a lone traveler. Glorianna knew these things. But what about Belladonna?

It was anyone’s guess what Belladonna knew.

It was anyone’s guess what Belladonna might do.

He still loved his sister. He did. But he was tired of not having the things other men took for granted: a partner, a home. He was tired of being a traveling Bridge. He wanted to do something more with his life, wanted to
be
more.

He didn’t know how to do any of those things without feeling like he had abandoned the people who needed him most—his mother, his sister, the rest of the family.

Currents of power swirled around him once, twice, leaving him a little off balance.

“Those are troubles for another day,” he sighed as he turned off the taps and stripped out of his dirty clothes. Settling into the water, he leaned back, closed his eyes, and tried to ignore the confusion filling his heart.

T
hey call themselves Tryad, children of the Triple Goddess. They crept into the city of Vision, pathetically hoping to gain a foothold here, but my wizards caught two of the creatures for my examination.

A Tryad is three beings who inhabit a core body, which consists of the brain (but the mind is distinct to each), the internal organs, and bones. Height doesn’t change, and there is no significant difference in weight between the aspects, as they refer to themselves. However, there are sufficient differences in muscle and body shape to be noticeable, especially between the weakest and strongest of the three. Each has a distinct face, and features like the color of skin, eyes, and hair can vary widely. Each has its own personality, its own memories, although they can share an experience to some degree.

One member of a Tryad has a brand on the left arm—a heart within a triangle. This allows them to identify others of their race, since they are never open about their presence in a city.

This ability for only one of them to bear the proof of a physical change fascinates me, so I have conducted some tests. Violations like burns or cuts on one have no effect on the other two. Despite being part of the shared core, a broken bone, if it is a clean fracture, only hobbles the one on whom the injury was inflicted, although the other two experience weakness and pain in that limb and are severely limited in its use. A fever produced in one will weaken the other two to some degree, or they may suffer a minor version of the same illness. However, if a hand is amputated on one, that hand is lost to all three. Interestingly enough, removing the eyes from one of the aspects does not blind the other two. Neither does destroying the eardrums carry over to a loss of hearing in the other two aspects. On the other hand, the teeth and tongue appear to be part of the core, and if lost in one are lost in all.

It took me some time to recall what I had learned during my training, but as I experimented with my specimens, I remembered the reports about this demon race.

Dark Guides found these creatures generations ago, before the world was broken during the war between the Guides of the Heart and the Eater of the World. Some of the Dark Guides sowed their seed in females whose hearts already fed the Dark currents of the world, so that offspring would be born with an instinct for discord—and maybe even some portion of the wizards’ gift of persuasion.

We helped them turn against their own kind. We helped them break their piece of the world away from the rest of Ephemera, and then salted their hearts with guilt and blame that soured their land, spreading those feelings like swift-growing weeds. Even after we abandoned them, our resonance in their hearts helped them crush their own hope, their own future. There is so much destruction a Dark Guide can accomplish when the hatred in one sibling is nurtured and disguised as love.

Yes, we have seen these creatures before. We have used them to change the resonance of other landscapes into something darker. When a race is so different, it becomes easy to blame them when things begin to go wrong, as things will when wizards put some effort into reshaping a place.

They call themselves Tryad. We call them scapegoats.

—an entry in the Book of Dark Secrets

Z
hahar hurriedly cleaned her teeth, then wet a cloth and washed her face and under her arms—and sent a prayer to the Triple Goddess to help her stay downwind of anyone important.

“Can’t be late,” she muttered as she grabbed underclothes out of drawers. “Not today.” She found a clean pair of trousers suitable for work, but the only short-sleeved tunic left in the closet was Sholeh’s. Fortunately, that shade of green favored her complexion and brown hair as well as her sister’s fairer skin and auburn hair.

One of them would have to do some washing this evening—and it would probably end up being her, since Sholeh had to keep up with her studies. Maybe Zeela?

She would have a better chance of teaching a pig how to fly.

=I’ll wash the clothes tonight,= Zeela said.

Startled by the offer, Zhahar almost missed a step as she rushed to the alcove that served as their kitchen. It was tempting to grab her daypack and run to catch the omnibus, but Sholeh tended to get shaky and disoriented if they didn’t break their fast in the morning and eat light meals throughout the day.

*Sholeh?* Zhahar called as she stuffed a couple of dates into her mouth and slathered soft sweet cheese over a piece of flatbread. *I had to wear your last clean tunic. I’ll try not to get it dirty, so you’ll be presentable for your class later.* When there was no answer, she stopped her hasty attempt to rush off to work. *Sholeh?*

=Leave her be,= Zeela said.

Zhahar’s hands began to shake. She put the flatbread on the counter. Zeela had
that
edge to her voice only when one of her sisters was hurt. *What happened?*

=She was dismissed from the school.=

*Why? She worked hard because she wanted this so much!*

=They said she missed too many classes.=

*But she did the work!*

Bitterness filled Zeela’s voice. =She couldn’t play by the one-face rules and be where they wanted her to be when they wanted her to be there. So she can’t study at the school anymore.=

*But we paid all that money.* Zhahar looked around. She and her sisters did their best to make it a home, but it didn’t change the truth. They lived in that shabby little room, eating cheap foods and wearing secondhand clothes to pay for Sholeh’s studies. *If they won’t let her study, will they give back the money?*

=Is that all you care about? The money?=

*No!* Zhahar snapped. *But we can’t afford to find another place for her to study unless we get it back!*

::Don’t fight. Please.:: Sholeh sounded broken, beaten. ::Zhahar, you have to get to work. We can’t afford to have you fail too.::

=You didn’t fail!= Zeela shouted.

::Let me rest. I don’t want to be in view today.::

Nothing to be done, especially because Sholeh was right: if they were going to stay in the city of Vision, one of them had to earn wages.

Zhahar grabbed her daypack and rushed for the door. Then she went back, folded the flatbread and cheese, and wrapped it in a napkin. If she wasn’t
too
late, the new Asylum Keeper might not notice her absence, and she might have the few minutes she needed to finish her simple meal.

Zhahar twitched with impatience as she waited her turn to exit the omnibus. Some drivers were more interested in maintaining their schedules than giving people time to get off at their stop. Fortunately for her and other passengers, the teams of horses that pulled the omnibuses knew what the bell meant and planted their feet when they reached a stop, regardless of what the driver wanted.

As soon as she stepped down, Zhahar hurried across the street, then trotted along the path through a weedy, overgrown piece of land that was supposed to be a small park for those whose minds had healed enough to meet the world partway. Since the people in the city were supposed to maintain the park as a kindness to those who had been hurt in mind or spirit, the neglected land felt like a shouted warning that
her
kind would never be accepted.

The one time Zeela had seen this park, she’d thought it was a sign that they were in the wrong place. But in the city of Vision, you could find only what you could see, and this piece of it was the one place they had found when they arrived that offered something for each of them.

Other parts of Ephemera where it had been safe for Tryad to work or trade—albeit showing only one face and never admitting they were a “demon” race—had turned dangerous or had disappeared completely. And the last time the moorings failed to hold a connection between their land and another place in Ephemera, parts of Tryadnea had vanished, along with the Tryad who hadn’t returned to the homeland in time.

A few months ago, Morragen Medusah a Zephyra, the leader of the Tryad, had sensed the presence of another land that was within reach. Using her magic, she twisted a little of Ephemera’s currents of power into six moorings between Tryadnea and the city of Vision. Then she asked some of her people to brave the unknown city in the hopes that the Tryad would be able to secure the moorings and provide a stable connection between Tryadnea and that piece of the world.

Sholeh speculated that what the a Zephyra Tryad could do with the currents of power was the equivalent of people putting down the gangplank
on a moving ship and rushing down to the dock to secure the lines before the gangplank fell into the water and the ship drifted away. A risky business, since those securing the lines could be left behind, and those left on the ship might not have enough supplies remaining to survive until they found another port.

But that was the truth the people of Tryadnea had faced for generations, so Sholeh Zeela a Zhahar and five other Tryad had crossed over to the city of Vision. Despite its vastness, the city had held little promise for her kind so far—and time was running out. The other five Tryads, perhaps feeling too desperate to be careful, had revealed too much about themselves. According to the letters Zhahar had received from the Zephyra aspect, the Tryad who weren’t dead and had managed to get home were too wounded, physically or emotionally, to return to Vision.

Now Zhahar and her sisters were the only Tryad left. Despite their best efforts to live in a way that secured Tryadnea to Vision, the mooring the a Zephyra Tryad had spun for them kept slipping, and that connection, the
last
connection, was now in the northern part of the city. If it slipped to a place beyond Vision or snapped completely, they would be left here with no way to get home.

She couldn’t think about that. Every day the a Zhahar Tryad remained here created another tiny thread that helped Tryadnea retain its connection to Vision—and that, in turn, gave Zhahar and her sisters another day to find
something
that would end a cycle that was tearing the hearts out of the Tryad people. Their homeland needed the sustenance of connection to another part of the world. When they were adrift, rivers and streams dried up. Rain was sparse if it fell at all. Crops withered in soil that couldn’t nourish them. Little by little, Tryadnea became a desert that couldn’t sustain its people. The only time there was a sign of the land restoring itself was when they were anchored to another piece of the world—and every time less of Tryadnea bloomed.

We’ll stay here until autumn,
Zhahar thought.
If we don’t find some occupation for Sholeh and Zeela by autumn, we need to move to another part of the city. Maybe head north so we have a chance of getting home before the mooring fails.

Of course, if she lost this job, they would have to move much sooner.

Zhahar pulled a ring of keys out of her daypack and unlocked the gate that separated the Asylum’s grounds from the weedy park. Pushing open the gate just enough to slip through, she locked it again before running to the staff room in the main building, where she could store her pack and pick up the blue jacket that indicated she was a Handler.