Mad Moon of Dreams (23 page)

Authors: Brian Lumley

BOOK: Mad Moon of Dreams

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There are places on the banks of the Skai where it flows down from Ulthar to Dylath-Leen, which are oases in an otherwise veritable desert. Birdsong is sweet there, and the water runs deep, cool and quiet. When travelers rest in these places, they sleep deeply and dream wonderful dreams within dreams; so that all such places have acquired something of reputations and are sacred. No towns or villages are built there; no rude dwellings spoil Nature's handiwork; only the songs of birds and crickets and the trickling of gentle waters break an ancient silence.

One night some months after the menace of the mad moon had been met and crushed, when the moon sailed in her old orbit, full and round and smiling as of old, a singularly strange thing came to pass. Down from the now tenuous aerial Gulf Stream dropped a pair of large, pitted seeds which, when they encountered the denser atmosphere of dreams, put out vanes that brought them spinning down like the airborne seeds of any simple plant or tree. Except that they were not.

They fell gently down through the foliage of just such a haven as previously mentioned, upon fertile ground by the edge of the Skai itself. There the next day, a pair of greeny-gray shoots were seen to grope upward toward the light; and as spring became summer so the shoots became saplings. Growing faster than mundane trees, and better nourished by
far than any moontree before them (for of course, that is what they were), with one more turn of the seasons they reached maturity and put out gourds.

Now upon the strongest branch of each tree grew one gourd bigger than all the others put together, grotesquely huge and monstrously shaped; and these, when ripe, fell from the twin trees on the selfsame morning to shatter softly on the green banks of the Skai.

Within their sundered husksâunwrinkled, unmarked, naked and hairless as babesâthe figures of two dreamlings lay curled in a sleep from which, with the fall, they slowly began to stir. Stretching out and drying in the warm sunlight, their at first shallow breathing grew stronger as their chests filled out with clean, sweet air. Then their fingernails hardened and hair grew on their heads and bodies; old scars appeared on skin which roughened momentarily, while worry lines etched themselves into faces full of character; yes, and there were laughter lines, too. A great many of the latter.

A fern, tickling the nose of the younger-looking of the two, caused him to start and sit up, shaking off sleep like an itchy blanket. Frowning, he stared at his nakedness, and that of his still slumbering companion. Then, pushing aside large fragments of gourd, he reached over to tug on the other's ear.

“Eh â¦ What? â¦ Who?” Eldin grumbled, coming yawningly awake. “Oh, it's you!”

“Eldin, old lad,” said Hero, “I've just had the damndest â¦ dream.” And again he stared all about him.

The Wanderer sat up, yawned again, said, “You've had the damndest dream? Well, let me tell you â¦” And he too paused to stare all about.

Slowly they turned their heads to gaze wide-eyed and wonderingly at each other, and all about them the startled birds settled down again and returned to their singing.

Look for these Tor books by Brian Lumley

In paperback:

The DREAMLANDS series
Hero of Dreams
Ship of Dreams
Mad Moon of Dreams
Iced on Aran

The PSYCHOMECH series
Psychomech
Psychosphere
Psychamok

The NECROSCOPE series
Necroscope
Vamphyri!
The Source
Deadspeak
Deadspawn

Demogorgon
The House of Doors

In hardcover:

Blood Brothers
Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi
The Last Aerie

The Moon-God's Bride

First there were the eyes. A dozen, circular, burning and unblinking, big as plates, staring out in all directions from a dark, half-seen, half-suspected bulk.

Thenâtentacles! Tentacles like nests of fat pink worms â¦ tiny feet to carry the larger, heavier, true tentacles. And out from the pit, out from beneath the luminous eyes, those true tentacles now uncoiled, pink and translucent but pulsing with a green fluid. Thicker than a man's body, one, two, threeâten in all. Like the suckered arms of some sentient squid, but huge beyond belief!

The tips of the hovering tentacles opened like mouths as they descended on David Hero and his companions where they lay against the pit's wall. An open tentacle tip touched Hero's thigh.

Hero screamed thenâmore in agony than horror. Green juices flowed from the open mouth of the pseudopod and dissolved away a patch of his tough leather trousersâdissolved, too, the skin beneath. And now that mouth became a sucker, slurping back the
solution
which the green juice had become.

David Hero cried out againâthis time in true horrorâfor now he knew how Oorn fed!

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

MAD MOON OF DREAMS

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y 10010

TorÂ® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

Cover art by Tim Jacobus

eISBN 9781466819054

First eBook Edition : April 2012