Waking in Dreamland (16 page)

“We must’ve been following that tree all this way,” Lum said apologetically.

“My fault, Captain,” Roan said. “I insisted we try the southern route.”

“My guards are not supposed to make mistakes,” Spar said, tightly. “This is a serious matter.”

“Indeed it is,” Roan agreed. “But we’ve got a long way to go together. Let’s just solve the problems that lie ahead of us, without reliving what is past.”

“As you say, sir,” Spar said, without expression.

“Are you in charge of this expedition?” Misha asked.

“He is,” Spar said, nodding his head toward Roan. “The king himself gave him the assignment.”

“Oh, I just wanted to know,” Misha said. “I wasn’t there.”

“I hope you have no objection to that,” Roan said.

“None at all,” Misha said, pleasantly. “By the way, the Royal Geographer said things are expected to be very changeable today in this region, and we should be careful.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Roan said. “We ought to get on the road as soon as we can.”

“I left Hutchings at the place where the two paths intersect, in case the road tries to shift,” Lum said, keeping his usually cheerful face serious. “Alette’s followed the second path a ways to make sure. It won’t get away from us this time, sir.”

“Good man,” Roan said. “Thank you for your diligence in making up for my errors.”

Lum reddened under Spar’s glare, and said stiffly, “Nice of you, sir.”

Leonora’s nurse, Drea, stalked into view, and nodded at them with great dignity. From her knapsack, the old woman produced a large leather bottle, and stooped to fill it at the stream.

“Is Her Highness awake?” Roan asked.

“My lady isn’t ready to receive callers yet,” the nurse said, frostily. She turned her back on Roan and carried the bottle away. In her hands, it looked like an ethereal crystal ewer. Only for the princess would Drea bother with such a transformation. Where Roan only loved and adored her, the old nurse was her votary, idolizing her as a goddess incarnate. Small wonder that if Leonora had come away from Mnemosyne with only one servant, instead of the host that usually accompanied her, it should be Drea. She had dandled Leonora as a child, and coddled her

“Shouldn’t be long, now,” Colenna said.

“How many of them are there?” Felan asked Lum.

“About ten or twelve, I should say,” said the corporal. “Hard to tell, because I think they kept switching the load between themselves. The footprints change a bit when they do that, as they alter to bear the weight. But I think we’re outnumbered. Should we send for reinforcements?”

“We’re not going to meet them in combat,” Roan said. “All we need to do is to destroy that device of theirs. They can do what they like when that’s been disabled.”

“But they’ll just make another one!”

“I doubt it,” Roan said. “If they could make another so easily, they wouldn’t need to carry the one they have cross-country. They’d just have gone to the Hall of Sleepers, and built an Alarm Clock when they arrived.”

“Good morning, all,” Bergold said, stumping down the slope toward them. He’d added a short beard to his ensemble this morning, saving himself the trouble of having to shave under primitive conditions. “I’m last, eh?”

“Not quite,” Misha said. “Her Highness is still getting ready.”

“What a night! My fingers are still cramped from writing my notes.”

“So are mine,” Felan said, shaking out his wrist. “I’m just about ready to send my report.” He felt in his pouch, and came up with a book of stamps. He took one, licked the reverse side, and stuck it firmly to the corner of his folded parchment.

At once, the stamp expanded, took on bulk and feathers, and became a bald eagle. The white-headed bird crushed the envelope in its talons, and, with a fierce look at the humans, opened its great wings and took off. Above them, it wheeled and made northward. In just moments, it was out of sight.

“Nothing like airmail,” Bergold said. “We must be under a popular route. I saw another airmail fly overhead only a little while ago.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just stick stamps on ourselves and mail us to Brom?” Lum asked wistfully.

Felan gave him a rueful grin. “I didn’t bring enough postage.”

Roan glanced uphill but caught no glimpse of the princess yet. While waiting for Leonora to finish getting ready, they had a light breakfast and broke camp. The guards disassembled the invisible defensive wall, taking down each section with great care and exaggerated movements. Captain Spar had explained the danger of accidentally wandering into the wall during the night, and had carefully marked the exits for the others to see. Roan wondered briefly what would happen if a soldier dropped one of the invisible blocks. There’d probably be an explosion like they’d never seen. But since the bricks were invisible, would the blast be, too?

He rolled up his sleeping gear and mess supplies, folding them small so they would fit into his saddlebags. Bergold helpfully shook out the campfire, and folded it up in a rustle of red and silver foil. He tossed it to the soldier who was loading the pack animals.

Colenna had the most interesting outdoor gear. In her pack, she had one of everything that could be used as a base to transform into anything she might conceivably need on the road. Roan had seen the handsome pottery cup she was now putting away used as a bowl, a cooking pot, and a footbath. The item Roan envied most was a clever little stove that could be used in turn as a nightlight, torch, fire-starter, or bedwarmer. Some very clever craftsman must have fashioned it for her. Its base shape had to have been fire in its purest form.

When Roan went around the small stand of trees to stow his property in Cruiser’s saddlebags, he saw that the wash area had been transformed for the princess’s use. The curtain which had served as a privacy barrier for the others had become a solid and impenetrable wall with the cloak clasp reformed into the handle of a narrow but serviceable door. Roan heard Leonora humming over the sound of trickling water.

He went over to tap on the door. Before he could reach it, the nurse headed him off.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded, staring up at him defiantly. She had a bundle of clothes over her arm, and hastily tucked some fine, filmy garments out of sight among the others when she noticed Roan looking.

“I wanted to tell Her Highness that the rest of us will be ready to depart at her pleasure,” Roan said, pleasantly.

Drea looked mortified. “My lady hasn’t had her breakfast yet,” the old woman said. She tipped a hand to show Roan where a small table and chair had been set up. “This may be an emergency venture, but some things do take priority! You can’t ask her to take to horse without a decent meal inside her.”

“Well, no,” Roan began, uneasily. He glanced back at the others, aware of their impatience to be off, and his own. “Will it be . . . may we expect her soon?”

“One can’t just bolt down food and expect it to sit,” Drea said, with a touch of the old nursery manner. Roan felt chastised, but he noticed then that the humming had stopped. Leonora had fallen silent inside the washroom to listen to their conversation.

“Will you ask Her Highness to let us know when she is ready to depart?” Roan asked, keeping all traces of annoyance out of his voice.

“It’s already ten o’clock,” Hutchings muttered behind him. “She’s taking an amazing long time to get cleaned up.”

Roan turned and glared a warning, but it was too late. They heard a rustle from the washroom.

“How dare you talk about my lady like that?” Drea demanded, rounding on the guard. Instead of a dumpling, she looked like a dragon. Hutchings backed up a hasty pace.

“Drea!” the princess called. The claws and wings subsided at once. Drea hurried over and slipped in the door with the armload of clothes. It closed firmly behind her. Roan signed to the others to be about their business of loading the horses. To their credit, they looked abashed, particularly Hutchings, who went about his tasks with downcast gaze.

Within a few moments, Leonora emerged, fastening the blue cloak around her shoulders. The others tried not to stare, but she was aware they were aware of her. She met all their eyes in turn, wearing a fixed little smile, but her cheeks were red.

“My chicken, they can’t treat you this way. You’re a princess, beyond reproach. They ought to know that,” Drea said, trailing behind the princess bearing her night things.

“Be quiet,” Leonora snapped. “Please.”

“Oh, all right, my lady, but you know it’s true.”

Roan smiled and held out a hand to Leonora, but surprise at her abrupt appearance had made him pause, and he knew she had noticed the hesitation. She was near tears from shame. She held her head up proudly, chin out and shoulders back.

“It won’t happen again,” she said, and stalked past Roan without touching him.

“Here, someone, take this,” Bergold said, irritably, the tangle of accordion-pleated paper in his hands festooning him and his horse. “I can’t do a thing with it.” He pushed the map away. Lum took it. The young guard flipped it open, and folded it over and over again into a neat bundle. He beamed as Bergold snatched it back from him. “By the Seven, I hope that’s not your only talent,” the historian said. Roan, watching this byplay over his shoulder, hid a smile from his old friend. “Are we lost?”

“We’re on the right path,” Lum said, pulling his steed to the side of the dirt road to point northward. His horse danced and curvetted at yet another break in the pace. “It’s still a ways that direction, sir.”

“We came a long way in the dark,” Roan said, trying to make peace. “Don’t blame Lum for it. It was my fault.”

“Well, we’re going in circles,” Spar snapped, from the front of the file, where he was riding beside Colenna.

“No, we’re not, sir,” Lum insisted.

But, indeed, they seemed to be. Roan was certain he had seen that handful of blue-green spruce trees off to the left before, several times. There was a ring of toadstools on the bank of the stream to his right, and a broad field of daisies with rabbits running through it, just like one they had left miles behind them. Yet, they had ridden north for an hour with the sun on their right. It was now straight overhead in the clear blue sky, and the heat was making everyone irritable.

“Now, stop it, everyone,” Colenna said, holding out her hands. “We’ve run into a spot of Déjà Vu, that’s all.”

“No, we haven’t,” Spar said. “This young fool’s just lost.”

“I’m not lost, sir. It’s right here on the map.”

“It’s Déjà Vu,” Colenna said. “You’ll see.”

Roan rubbed his eyes. “We’ll get out of it. Just keep on.”

Beside him, Golden Schwinn’s hoof pecked at a stone, and the horse shied off the path into a patch of marshy grass. The princess, an excellent horsewoman, managed to control her mount, and steered it back onto the road. Schwinn trod on a toadstool. Roan was sure it was the same one the steed had crushed three times before. The road curved to the left and went uphill, away from the stream.

The group rode in silence. In spite of the dangers, Roan would almost have been willing to take the risk of traveling alone to get away from all the bickering. Colenna’s back was hurting her. It was a long time since the senior historian had been on so long a journey. Drea kept breaking out of line to go forward and fuss over her mistress. Leonora, who felt delicate about being coddled after her embarrassment of the morning, kept shooing the nurse away, which made the old woman cross.

The princess herself shot furtive glances toward Roan, but every time he tried to meet her eyes, she would jerk her head forward and stare haughtily ahead of her. Today, she looked like the image in a centuries-old church missal: slim and almost sexless. Her face was long, narrow, and pale, with a high, bald forehead, thin eyebrows, heavily lidded eyes, and a small, folded mouth. There was hardly any color in her face, except her eyes, which were brown and watchful. To Roan, who had known her from childhood, this was the mark of an intensely bad mood. She’d had to bolt her breakfast, her mount was misbehaving, and she had been shamed in front of the whole party, whom she knew didn’t want her along. She had also curtly refused Colenna’s offer of a muscle-ache remedy, though she rode as if she needed one. Roan didn’t dare approach her to offer small talk.

Even the usually cheerful Bergold was in a pet; the map the Geographer had given them resisted being folded the same way by the same person twice. He was lost again behind a mass of accordion-pleated paper, while his horse wandered back and forth across the trail, occasionally bumping into Lum’s patient mount.

“Well, we’re going in circles,” Spar said, pointing ahead. “Look, there’s those trees again.”

“It’s perfectly possible that a feature of the landscape repeats itself,” Bergold said, without coming out from behind the map. “Such things have not been unknown in history. Why, remember the Building Booms fifty years ago?”

“These children are all too young,” Colenna said peevishly, shifting her hip to look behind her at Roan. “After the Second Mud Battles, the Dreamland started to fill up with plots and plots of identical houses. Even mine fell into the scheme, right there in Mnemosyne. Any night, you didn’t know if you were coming home or housebreaking. I was glad when that ended, and we went back to some individuality of construction.”

“Yes, but who’d make identical rings of toadstools?” Alette asked, as Golden Schwinn backed over the same one for the fourth or fifth time.

“This isn’t just alike. This is the same,” Spar insisted.

“Just wait it out,” Colenna said.

“Where exactly are we?” Roan asked, reining in to ride beside Bergold. The historian poked his head out from under the map folds, and pointed at a middle panel of the document that was inside the tent over his head.

“We are here. If I could get this dratted thing folded . . .” Roan took it away from him, and by dint of fate, the map obediently collapsed into a neat pleat.

“Cheek!” Bergold exclaimed. “Wait until I see Romney!”

Roan smiled, and studied the map. If he could believe the geographical features he saw around him, they had come only ten miles from where they had camped. He traced the line of the stream that ran parallel to the road, and found the place where it almost touched.