The Familiars #4: Palace of Dreams (17 page)

“This way,” Skylar said.

She flew from the courtyard toward a main road lined with vendors selling trinkets and inventions advanced beyond anything Aldwyn had ever seen conjured by Vastian wizards or black marketeers. Great spellcasters often said that moments of profound insight about conjuring new magic struck them in their sleep. Perhaps, Aldwyn thought, Kalstaff or the original members of the First Phylum had walked down this same street and been inspired.

Skylar was already examining the fantastical creations cluttering a nearby table. One caught Aldwyn’s eye as well. It was a small chest with eight magical wands affixed to it like legs.

“Curious, are you?” the vendor asked Aldwyn. He looked like a cave troll, with ears the size of a small elephant’s. “I call it a wandling.”

The vendor laid a coin down on the table. The chest sprang to life, scurrying like a spider over to the piece of silver. Once it arrived, the wandling opened its lid and swallowed the coin whole.

“It’s an automaton,” the vendor continued. “Neither alive nor inanimate. You never have to feed it and it’s always at your service. Both protecting small treasures and collecting new ones.”

The vendor shuffled over to a hooded customer browsing on the other side of the booth. Aldwyn walked up to Gilbert, who also had taken an interest in a contraption: a mechanical box that spat out decorated confections when a lever was pulled. Gilbert took a peek inside to see how it worked, but as his face got closer, a square of chocolate mousse shot out of the machine and splattered across his forehead.

Aldwyn allowed himself just another moment to observe a bubbling cauldron. Inside, a spoon was stirring the stew of ingredients without the need of any hand to grip its handle.

Aldwyn walked back over to where the vendor was talking to the hooded customer.

“Excuse me,” Aldwyn said. “I hope you can answer my question. I’m searching for a remwalker. Do you know of any around here?”

“I am an Appnian,” the vendor replied. “Born of this world and content to never leave it. Remwalkers are my people, too, but their curiosity about Vastia and the Beyond is so great they have made it their calling to assist visitors such as yourselves. Really they just want you to stay so they can leave in your place.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Aldwyn said.

“Go back the way you came, past the River of Teeth,” the vendor replied. “There’s a shack deep in the Mud Basins. You’ll find some Red Eyes there.”

Aldwyn nodded and caught up with Skylar and Gilbert, who were looking at another peddler’s wares, amazing potions of a thousand colors. A list of ingredients was stuck with slug goo to each beaker. Skylar was studying one of the magic recipes.

“Bad news, I’m afraid,” Aldwyn said. “The vendor says if we want to find a remwalker, we’ve traveled the wrong way. It’s back down to the ground for us.”

“This is a goose chase if I’ve ever seen one,” Skylar huffed.

Just then a voice from behind them spoke: “Appnians have a tendency to tell lies, especially about remwalkers.”

The familiars turned to see the hooded customer—a young woman with pale skin and bloodshot eyes.

“I overheard you talking,” she said. “I can help you. What is it you’re looking for here?”

“The Palace of Dreams,” Aldwyn said. “Queen Loranella’s life is in danger, and she is the only one with the knowledge to save herself.”

“I see,” the remwalker replied. “The palace is far from here. I’ve been once before. But I assure you the route I took no longer exists today.”

“Then how will you get us there?” Skylar asked.

“Few are able to track the chaotic patterns of the Dreamworld. Lucky for you, I know someone who can. We’ll visit him and he will show us the way.”

Aldwyn looked to Skylar and Gilbert. They would all be proceeding with caution, but that was nothing new for the trio. They followed behind the remwalker, who was moving swiftly through the twisted streets.

“That building, up ahead,” Aldwyn said. “I could have sworn we passed the exact same one already.”

“The city changes, same as the clouds in your world,” the remwalker replied. “Drifting together and apart. You’ll see it more clearly once we reach the outskirts.”

“How do you not go crazy living in a place like this?” Aldwyn asked.

“It’s the only place I’ve ever known. But I long to visit the world you come from.”

“So why don’t you?” Gilbert asked.

“Some remwalkers have tried. They’ve attempted to escape through the dreaming rug portals of those they helped guide here. But something in the Dreamworld holds fast the ones born within it. Somebody would have to willingly take our place. I don’t believe any from your land have made that bargain yet.”

Aldwyn could see why. It was like being stuck in a dream you couldn’t wake up from. He was already starting to question his sanity, and he hadn’t even been there long.

“Why aren’t any of you carrying the string from your rug?” the remwalker asked.

“Our rug was destroyed,” Skylar replied.

“Then how will you leave us?” the remwalker asked.

“We thought we’d deal with one crisis at a time,” Aldwyn said. “And right now the more urgent one is getting to the queen.”

They reached the far edge of the city, where the big cloud they were on tapered off into islands of smaller ones. On each new cloud Aldwyn could see buildings floating, disconnected from the dream metropolis.

“The tracker we seek lives up there,” the remwalker said, indicating a house sitting atop one of the wisps of white.

“Is there a staircase I’m not seeing?” Gilbert asked. “Another ladder in the trees?”

“No, nothing like that this time,” the remwalker answered.

She approached a metal post. It had a translucent string tied to it that Aldwyn wouldn’t have noticed without the remwalker. She grabbed hold of the string and pulled it taut. With another tug, she began reeling in the island like a loose kite in the wind. Aldwyn, Skylar, and Gilbert watched as the remwalker dragged the cloud with the tracker’s house closer.

Soon, the remwalker had brought the cloud island to within a step of the familiars, and she tightened the line so it couldn’t float away. Aldwyn, Skylar, and Gilbert were easily able to cross from the gravel road they were standing on to the one paving the cloud.

They were close enough to see the tracker’s house now, which looked no bigger than a one-horse barn. The remwalker approached the front door and knocked. The door swung open to reveal an old man. His eyes were so red and so deep that Aldwyn couldn’t even see the pupils.

“Hello, Papa,” the remwalker said. “I need to borrow the Atlas.”

Without blinking, he stepped aside, allowing them all to enter.

“It’s not a good time to travel,” the old man said. “Night is coming.”

“They don’t have the luxury of waiting,” the remwalker replied.

“Very well, then,” the man said.

He led them inside the room. There was no bed. Nowhere to sleep. Just maps covering the walls. And a tome at the room’s center so huge it would take all of one man’s strength to turn the pages. It was as large as an ocean raft.

The remwalker stood before the massive book, which Aldwyn could safely assume was the Atlas. There must have been a hundred tabs, each a different color. The remwalker located the one that was maroon, then gave a heave, flipping the book open to a sprawling, three-dimensional map that seemed as alive as the world outside. The rivers flowed like real water and the illustrated trees blew as if they were in the wind.

The remwalker stepped across the Atlas, past mountains and making sure not to get her feet wet in the lakes. She found the Palace of Dreams hovering inside a glass ball.

“It’s just like in my dream,” Aldwyn said.

“Those mountains will be uncrossable for the animals,” the old man told his daughter. “Even you won’t make it.” Then he gestured to a large door carved into the side of the mountain range. “You’ll have to gain Elzzup’s permission to pass through his tunnels.”

“There must be another way,” the remwalker said. “The Dreamworld will surely shift again before we arrive.”

“I’ve been watching,” the old man said. “The mountains moved just a few hours ago. They’ll remain steady at least until morning. And besides, you don’t have that long anyway. You have to be out by midnight.”

The remwalker nodded, then turned to the familiars.

“What does he mean?” Gilbert asked.

“After midnight, things change here,” she said.

“How exactly?” Aldwyn asked.

The remwalker looked to her father.

“That’s when the Dreamworld turns into a nightmare,” the old man said.

T
he familiars stood on a hillside just beyond the Forest of Ladders, awaiting the remwalker’s next move. In the soft glow of the moonlight, she was staring out through a spyglass at the mountains in the distance.

“It looks like a straight path from here,” Skylar said.

“Your eye is not trained to see what I see,” the remwalker replied, lowering the spyglass. “We’ll go that way,” she added, pointing away from the mountain range to a tangle of jungle and forest.

“I don’t understand,” Aldwyn said.

“The direct route will have us traveling in circles and never getting anywhere. I’ve been through the jungle before. I know its tricks.”

The remwalker returned the spyglass to her satchel and headed west. Aldwyn, Skylar, and Gilbert followed.

“Why are you helping us, anyway?” Skylar asked. “You’ve never even asked who we are.”

“It’s not important to me,” the remwalker replied. “What you’ve done in your past or where you’ve been. Whether you’re penniless or as rich as a king. It’s not
who
you are that counts. It’s
what
you are. And I can see that the three of you are pure of heart.”

Aldwyn considered her words. It was a lovely sentiment, one that might have even been true in the Dreamworld. But in the real world, nothing was ever that simple.

“Have Appnians always lived here?” Gilbert asked.

“Not always. For thousands of years, it was inhabited only by those who dreamed. Our people came much, much later. The Appnians lived on a small peninsula across the Wildecape Sea. They were fishermen and farmers. Life for them was wonderful. They worked during the day and celebrated their bounties at night. They rested just enough to give them energy for the next day. Life was so good they didn’t want to sleep it away.

“Then everything changed. Barbaro al-Reqi, a warlord from the Colharp tribe, led an invasion. Once his army had conquered this new territory, they enslaved the Appnians, forcing the men to work tirelessly, building ships and armor.

“The one place where those who survived could escape the hardship was in their dreams. They believed their only chance at happiness was to dream permanently. A circle of elder women responsible for making the sails prayed to the moon gods for some guidance on how to do this. Their answer came in beams of silk that poured down from the sky. The next morning they began weaving them into a blanket with a swirling pattern at its center.

“Barbaro thought it was just another sail for his ships. He never knew what the elders were planning until it was too late. One night, after the blanket was complete, every man, woman, and child of Appnia gathered atop it. They closed their eyes and disappeared forever.

“When the warlord awoke to find his slaves were all gone, he was enraged. He had no idea where they had gone until that night, when he slept. For in his dreams, all the Appnians were there, more than happy to torment him.

“Believing the blanket to be the only explanation, he shred it to pieces. All the tiny threads were caught up in the wind, and when wizards discovered them, they used those very same threads to weave together the dreaming rugs you use today.

“There are many Appnians, like my father, who long to stay in the Dreamworld forever. But some of us still wish to see the outside, no matter how brutal it can be.”

The group’s journey to the tangle of jungle and forest was, as Aldwyn expected, a strange one. A field of fingers rose up from the ground like blades of grass, wiggling. Aldwyn gently tiptoed across them, but the remwalker was far less delicate with her footfalls. She was cracking knuckles with each stomp of her boot.

Aldwyn had taken only a few steps inside the forest when he saw a horrifying fanged beast dart past, chasing a young girl into the dark. The sound of feet breaking branches echoed from every direction. Dreamers all around them were running for their lives.

“What is this place?” Aldwyn asked.

“This is where the things that go bump in the night reside,” the remwalker said. “When you have dreams of being chased, it’s often through here.”

They continued forward, deeper into the tangle of trees and darkness, where all manner of bogeymen roamed.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” the remwalker said. “It’s fear that these creatures feed on. So long as they don’t sense any cowardice, you’ll be safe.”

“Easy for you to say,” Gilbert muttered.

From above, an owl as large as a dragon swooped down, pursuing a small finch. But it stopped in mid-flight and turned its attention to the familiars instead.

“Gilbert, get ahold of yourself,” Aldwyn said. “We just have to make it out of the forest.”

Gilbert looked confused.

“It’s not Gilbert who’s scared,” Skylar said. “It’s me.”

The giant owl was hungrily eyeing all three animals.

“Follow me,” the remwalker said. “We better hurry.”

She took off running. Aldwyn, Skylar, and Gilbert followed. The owl beat its wings behind them, knocking small trees over as it flew. The remwalker seemed to know her way through the dark maze, hurdling fallen logs and dodging jagged roots to reach a boulder hidden in the trees. She grabbed at a crack, and pulled a door open. The familiars hurried inside. The owl soared past.

The boulder had been hollowed out and a flame fairy danced above a small campfire to warm anyone who sought out this place for refuge.

As they caught their breath, Aldwyn asked Skylar, “Why were you so afraid back there?”