Dreamstrider (36 page)

We open our eyes.

Kriza screams and lunges for me before I can even see clearly. Without use of her hands, she uses her shoulders to bash into my jaw.

“Guards!” Vera shrieks. She throws herself onto Kriza, as Kriza strains at the bindings with a snarl. “Want me to use the mothwood?”

“No! No, keep it away from her! It’s better that she stays here. In the waking world,” I rasp.

The carriage clatters to a stop. Someone throws open the door—one of the Commandant’s guardsmen. “What’s going on in here?”

“Take this one away,” I say, thrusting my thumb at Kriza. Vera can barely keep her arms wrangled back. “And be careful—she’s a biter.”

The two guardsmen exchange glances before reaching for Kriza. She charges one of them, bowling him over, and the other pounces on her, wielding a baton. After a brief scuffle, they’ve knocked her unconscious once more. Once we’re safely away from Kriza’s unconscious body, Vera slips the vial back to me. It’s far too light—only one more dose left, if that. Without access to the Ministry’s supplies, this body is probably my last chance at getting back to my own.

If I can ever find myself again.

“All right. Marez has to meet with the Commandant—with me—to perform the binding ritual. As far as I know, he’s still got my body.”

“So I need to force him out of it. You. Whoever you bloody are.” Vera rolls her eyes. “But how?”

“There’s Lullaby in the pocket of my dress—my body’s dress,” I tell Vera. “It should pull my body’s tether out of Oneiros … and his consciousness out of my body.”

She purses her lips. “But if your body isn’t close by for you to take hold of its leash in Oneiros … then how will you get back inside it?”

I squeeze my eyes shut. The thought of the Wastes, lapping at my soul, consuming me with despair …

But it’s a sacrifice I have to be willing to make. All of Barstadt is worth more than my life. My willingness to sacrifice is what makes Barstadt my home instead of Farthing—I’m not purely interested in advancing myself. It’s what will give us the advantage we need. “If it has to be done … It has to be done.”

Vera glowers at me. “Livia. No.”

“If that’s what we have to do to stop him, then you have to do it, all right?”

Vera gives a curt jut of her chin. It’s about all the acquiescence I’ll get.

We’re in a narrow stone passageway, lit by gas lamps but otherwise unremarkable. Is this near the palace? I don’t recognize the scenery, or the sloping cobbles hemmed in by rock instead of buildings. The path appears to have been cleaved straight through the stone, as if by some great ragged claw.

“My Commandant. The mystic awaits you,” a guard says from the mouth of the cleft. “He has taken a new form, but I assure you it won’t impact the ritual.”

Vera and I climb upward. The slope overlooks the whole of Barstadt City, from the splash of red brick at Banhopf University and the glittering gold of the Imperial Palace to the pointed black slate roofs of everything in between; the sailboat masts tower in the docks, and the Iron Winds fleet floats beyond the horizon.

On the ridge above us, strung out like a child’s broken toy, stretch the bones of Nightmare.

The ravine we just climbed through was gouged out of the mountain ridge hundreds of years ago. The sharp, geometric bones of Nightmare’s claws beckon me to walk through them like an archway. As we pass to the other side of them, lurking below Nightmare’s suspended ribs, I see the Emperor, Minister Durst, the Farthing general, and … myself. A thick piece of gauze is wound around Emperor Weideger’s forehead, drops of blood beginning to seep through from where Marez must have torn the ruby out. His eyes are glassy, as if he’s lost in a dreamless sleep, but he can’t be, not entirely—he stands upright and slowly turns his head toward me. Durst and the Farthing general appear much the same way, wearing the looks of men who see Death’s shadows crossing over them and are not afraid. Marez has drugged them for whatever’s coming next.

“I promise this won’t take but a moment,” my body says, beckoning us forward. She is smiling in a way I’ve never felt, smiling with every muscle and bone. The rest of the small group stands rigid, without guards or bindings on their hands. Only my body’s eyes turn to follow me as Vera and I step forward.

The Commandant’s breeze whispers across me in Oneiros. It’s my sole comfort—everything else has turned rotten. I hear the distant groan of building supports giving way. All the creations of the Dreamer’s faithful are shattering into nothingness, sucked up into the Wastes. Lady Twyne stokes the final shard like it’s an ember; its glow grows with each passing moment. Her gaze catches mine and she grins. “Use this body all you like,” she tells me. “We can’t be stopped.”

“This is not part of our agreement,” the Commandant says through me, addressing Marez in the waking world. “You were to turn over Barstadt City to me.”

“Oh, but you wanted your weapon. And I shall deliver it to you. Better still, I shall make it a part of you—and you a part of it.” I see my amber eyes twinkle as my lips speak. “It’s what your father wanted.”

My body lurches toward me in the Commandant on the rocky slope, but a horrendous slurping sound stops it short. The noise ricochets off the mountain walls, off the buildings below us. It gurgles like a dying beast drawing its last breath through shattered lungs. It sounds like death, sucking us all into the darkness of the Wastes.

A black swirl appears at the center of Nightmare’s ribcage, rotating with lazy, oily arms. It pulsates, and the sucking noise grows louder as the slimy center of the orb stretches and expands to fill those massive ribs. It belches nauseating rot into the air. I raise my arm to cover my nose.

“It’s time,” my body says.

Two Farthing soldiers seize the Commandant’s wrists, pinning them behind my back. Another pair wrestles Vera to the ground. The Commandant is out of shape, but strength lurks beneath his softness; I struggle against the soldiers, yanking at their arms, but they fend me off with a sharp crack to the temple. The Commandant’s vision goes blurry, and briefly, I’m thrown back into Oneiros, nearly dislodged from the Commandant’s body.

Lady Twyne stares down at me, a low laugh emerging from her. The constellation of shards pulse, illuminating her face with a sickly glow. I claw my way back into the Commandant. If I can just get close enough to my body in the real world, maybe I can force Marez out of it within Oneiros …

The soldiers drag me to where my body stands with its silent companions just beneath the void of Nightmare’s heart. Within the dreamworld, the Commandant’s breeze turns harsh, ferocious. It fights against me, chattering with wordless anger.

“The blood of each nation to stoke the fires,” my voice chants into the falling night. “The blood of each to fill dreamland veins and give new life to the master of this world and those beyond.”

My body’s hands grasp a silver knife. Marez rakes it across the Emperor’s palm, and then holds the Emperor’s bleeding hand up to the oily void. “The Dreamer’s priests would tell you that the Dreamer slew Nightmare, but it was a lie,” Marez continues. “It was the ancestral leaders of the Central Realms who stood against him long ago, using their own power to slay him. They shed their blood to bind him in death. Now, their blood will give him new life.”

The truth of the binding ritual—the truth he hinted at about Nightmare’s death. The truth even Hesse acknowledged was too dangerous to let loose. The truth he died to protect—that people slew Nightmare, not the Dreamer, and that people can return him as well.

The dark sphere that glows in the center of Nightmare’s ribs laps greedily at the blood; it sucks and sucks until the Emperor’s face turns the color of old snow. The Emperor falls to his knees and then slumps backward into the rocks.

I choke back a scream. His chest still rises and falls, but for how much longer? There is no time for me to wonder. The Farthing general is next. I hate the blackened glint in my body’s eyes, on my face, as Marez uses it to carry out this vile deed. The general, too, crumples, drained and dried, next to His Imperial Majesty.

Marez reaches for me; my body’s lips curl back like an animal. “Come, Commandant,” it hisses, flecking spittle across the Commandant’s chest. “We have an arrangement.” My body grips the Commandant by the arms and tugs him forward.

I take a deep breath, filling the Commandant’s lungs, leaning into Marez’s grip.

“Vera, now!” I shout.

Vera twists her wrist back to break free of her captor at the same moment as I throw all the Commandant’s weight to the ground, sending his body and mine both crashing down. Marez briefly loses his grip; as he does so, I dive toward my body, aiming for the pocket with the Lullaby. But Marez is too quick. With a speed I’ve never been able to demonstrate, he uses my body to block my attack while my feet shove away Vera. She stumbles backward into the snow. My body leaps back up to standing and presses its heel into my—the Commandant’s—throat, pinning us to the ground.

“I should have known that was you in there,” my body says, tone dripping with Marez’s venom. “Sorry to spoil your fun, but I’ve got a binding ritual to complete.”

Marez snaps my fingers. I never was good at snapping, whistling, any of those things—but now I know my body is capable, and the fault is mine alone. Is the power within me to be a better dreamstrider too? Is failure just inside my head? A soldier shuffles forward with a handkerchief. But it’s not mothwood—at least, not mothwood alone. Something sweet, sticky, cloying that sticks in your teeth and seeps into your gums. Lullaby.

Marez smears the resin against the Commandant’s lips, and his body shudders as the Lullaby works through his blood. I straddle both worlds for a second, hovering over that ravine—and then I’m falling.

The Commandant’s breeze dissipates like a halted melody, note by note, and then all at once it’s silent. I’ve completely left the Commandant’s body. I crash to the cold temple floor, if it can still be called a temple. Deep fissures snake up the walls, spreading even as I watch them, and the entire building heaves like a diseased lung. It robs the air from me and makes each pounding of my heart feel like cannonfire under my ribs. I will drown in here. I will drown, or be consumed by the Wastes.

But there isn’t even a distinction between the Wastes and the dreamworld now. The Nightmare Wastes have flooded our safe haven and consumed it like a parasite devouring its host.

I need to find a new body to inhabit fast if I want to keep from being devoured myself. I run for the archway of the temple, sliding on mud as I go, crashing into thick sinuous trees and leathery stalks of reeds that snake around my ankles and wrists. I reach the arch and skid to a halt just in time—the cobblestone streets are gone. There is nothing below me but a yawning canyon.

Dreamer.
I want to curl into a ball and weep; the Nightmare air is crushing me like the depths of the sea, and through the poisonous haze, I want to let it.
Please, Dreamer. I need the strength to serve your people, your worlds. Please, please help me.

The only sound I hear is my blood singing through my veins and the distant collapse of the priests’ monuments.

I bite down on my fist to keep from crying out. Where is my Dreamer? Where are his golden arms, plunging down from the heavens to snap Nightmare’s neck and shatter its heart? But if his priests couldn’t summon him, then who am I to think myself worth his time? I’m clearly not as faithful as I ought to be. I only use his world for petty human tasks.

Maybe this is why he doesn’t help me. It’s people like me—dreamstriders, Professor Hesse, and Marez—who have brought this upon his world. We must pay for our heresy.

The tower quivers; its core expands like massive bellows to draw in a deep breath. The stone of the spire begins to crumble, columns and archways turning into bone—the skeletal dragon form of Nightmare. The binding ritual is complete. Nightmare is Marez’s to command. I grip the archway—it’s become Nightmare’s bones, now—with weary fingers as wings, ragged and torn, unfurl from around the monster’s sinuous ribs.

Nightmare’s wings stretch wide, and we take flight.

Chapter Thirty

I scream, but the poison air robs the sound from me. The temple and spire have finished transforming into Nightmare; his wings beat out their grim dirge. We soar across Oneiros as it disintegrates beneath us. The earth bucks and ruptures wherever Nightmare’s shadow falls; Shapers’ homes crumble into the yawning chasms that open up beneath them. With each surge of wings, the stone tower yields into mottled, scaly flesh that drips away, as if from a rotting plague. Three heartbeats thunder through the hallways of the nearly decayed spire—the passages are hollow bones now: one for each nation’s leader, subjugated within this demon’s veins. Nightmare’s head, growing out of the golden prongs, whips around to spy me on its flank—me, the intruder, the bodiless soul. A grinning rictus glimmers around the golden disc, and Nightmare’s laughter threatens to shake me free.

A lost soul, still clinging to overripe hope.
Nightmare’s words rumble inside my head.
Still screaming into the Dreamer’s deaf ears.

I squeeze my eyes shut and flatten myself against Nightmare’s flank. My hands sink into the flesh that’s growing over Nightmare’s bones; I try to pry them out, but I’m sinking, sinking.

Brandt once warned me about quicksand. Be quick, and you will rush to death’s open arms; walk slowly and death cannot meet you.

My muscles unclench, but it’s hard not to panic as the Nightmare Wastes consume me. Each prickle of the tar shoots another failure through me: Minister Durst’s disappointed stare; Professor Hesse’s body a limp doll, tumbling to the ground; Brandt’s hand slipping from mine. My nightmares. Here, my mother’s dead dishwater eyes, as my siblings eat the meat from my bones. Here, the tumbler wolf from Lady Twyne’s party, removing its mask to reveal Marez.

Here, the executioner’s block; as the winking blade falls, Lady Twyne seizes my severed head up by the hair for all to see.

And there: Brandt. Lifeless and smelling stale. Brandt: his skin like worn velvet as his insides rot away. Brandt in his wedding suit, a Stargazer knife jutting from his ribs. Tunnelers swarm his body like carrion birds, plucking away every last scrap of value.