Waking in Dreamland (17 page)

“Is this Déjà Vu a surprise Brom planted for us to walk into?” Roan asked, handing the map back to Bergold. “A booby trap?”

“Not at all,” the historian said. “This has the feel of a natural phenomenon.” Bergold pulled a small volume from his saddlebag and thumbed through it. “Yes. Déjà Vu. Yes, Colenna’s right. Hmm. Could be tricky.”

“Yes, indeed. We’re winding ourselves up in reality,” Colenna commented, her chin on her shoulder. “As we keep heading north—and we are—we build up a tremendous forward energy that’s trapped like the potential in a stretched bowstring. Physically, we are riding through the same terrain, but in linear time, we’re quite far from here. Prepare yourselves. When it lets go, the reaction might be powerful.”

“Ah!” Misha said, at the back of the line. “So the collateral force is building up around us. How do we release it?”

“We won’t have to. The Dreamland itself will trigger it, or a nuisance, or an influence, or one of the Sleepers changing his or her mind. You don’t know. Just be prepared.”

“The tension’s appalling,” Felan said, in his bored voice. “Look, we’re a lot of strong, influential minds. Let’s break the bond ourselves.”

“Young man! And you call yourself a historian?” Colenna was outraged. She turned full around in her saddle and glared until her eyes became fire red. “This is the Sleepers’ will! You must take what comes, when it comes.”

Unmoved, Felan clicked his tongue. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. All this heat over nothing.” Colenna glared at him. Roan believed Felan enjoyed baiting her. It was his way of passing the time.

They rode by the stream, and Golden Schwinn crushed another toadstool, or the same one. As the road curved and turned uphill, the horses turned into bicycles.

“And at the most inconvenient moment, too!” Felan said, irritably, standing up on his pedals to ride up the slope.

“That was a fundamental change,” Colenna said, sitting up taller on her saddle. Roan felt forces brush past his cheeks like warm wind.

“There’s a strong influence around here,” Roan said, alarmed. “A very strange one. Do you sense that?” he asked.

“Yes! We’re coming to the edge of it,” Colenna said, as they crested the hill. “Hold tight to your handlebars, and
try not to fall oo-off
!”

Colenna’s last words were drawn out into a wail as her steed was yanked forward by an invisible hand. It vanished down the road at incredible speed.

“Well, will you look at thaaa . . .” Spar began, when he, too, was captured by the influence. The others looked at one another in alarm, watching the captain disappear after Colenna.

“Help, it’s got meee,” Leonora cried, alarmed. She clutched Golden Schwinn’s handlebars as she was swept away. Roan grabbed for her and missed.

“Just hold ti—” was all he had time to say before the breath he was exhaling was knocked back into him by the wind in his face. He planted his hands on the handlebars, and squeezed the brake levers with all his might.

The landscape streamed past him in a smeared, ribbonlike tapestry. He had brief impressions of trees, hills, rivers, and animals. Small mud and thatch huts in the distance seemed elongated into whole terraces of houses. Roan ordered his hat brim to descend over his eyes to protect them, because he didn’t dare lift his hands. He hurtled forward faster and faster, until the landscape around him was a thousand-color jumble with no identifiable features. Then everything went dark green, and the air filled with a heady fragrance that made him gasp. Just when he thought he might pass out from the force, he felt the brake levers close under the pressure of his hands, and he slowed to an abrupt halt. His hat dropped forward over his eyes. He pushed it back.

He found himself in the middle of an evergreen wood, which explained the color of the landscape. His feet and tires rested on a thick bed of yellowed pine needles yielding their deep, resiny odor. The riders who had been carried away before him were waiting for him, safe and well, except that the princess’s hair was blown into a wild aureole about her head, and Spar looked even more disapproving than usual.

Drea came screaming towards them. As soon as she stopped, her mouth snapped shut. She jumped off her steed and hurried over to fuss over the princess. Though her own hair was windblown into a fluffy bird’s nest, she tidied Leonora’s hair and patted her veil back into place.

“Leave me alone, Drea,” Leonora said, impatiently.

“You can’t go along looking a sight, Your Highness,” the nurse said. Roan saw Leonora glance at the others, who quickly turned their eyes away so they wouldn’t be staring at her, and her cheeks turned even pinker than the wind had made them.

“Wooo-hoo-hooo!” Bergold hurtled into view, his face flattened by the g-forces. “What a ride!” He was followed closely by Lum and the other guards, their knuckles white on their brake handles. Felan appeared a few moments later, more sour-faced than ever.

“There,” Colenna said, with satisfaction, smoothing her long gray queue. “We’ve snapped out of it. And there’s the trail.”

“All that for nothing,” Spar said.

“No,” Bergold explained, smiling literally from ear to ear. He produced the map and opened it to the appropriate panel. “This is where we would have been if we had kept riding straight.” He indicated a place on the map along the main southern road out of the capital. “And this, unless I’ve lost all my skills with this wretched atlas, is where we are now.” He put his finger on a spot much farther north.

“Remarkable,” Roan said. “I’ve traveled all over the Dreamland, and I’ve never been propelled in that manner before.”

“You’re usually on your own,” Misha pointed out. “Collective mass equals more energy. The more of us there are, the greater the power of a Déjà Vu.”

Roan raised his eyebrows, interested. “Can you duplicate the effect artificially?”

“Ask Brom when you see him next,” Felan said, with a leer. “That’s clean out of either of our departments, isn’t it, Colenna?”

“You are disrespectful, you wretched youngster,” the older woman said. “If I get big enough at any time on this journey, I’m putting you over my knee.”

“We must make a note of the event,” Bergold said. “Micah will be very interested in a Déjà Vu. Felan, you ought to put it into your next report home.”

“I certainly will,” the younger man said, pulling his sleeve cuff out over the back of his hand until there was enough surface to write on. He reached behind his ear for a pencil, and made a few jottings.

“We’re past the place where we turned off,” Lum said, after leaning over Bergold’s shoulder for a moment’s inspection of the map.

“We have to turn back? Into that—that effect?” Leonora asked, her eyes huge. She had forgotten her temper in her curiosity.

“It has passed,” Colenna assured her. “It’s a time effect; very unstable. We’ve nothing to fear from it.”

“We could go around the area,” Roan suggested, glancing at the princess to see if the suggestion made her feel better. As soon as she caught him looking at her, she turned up her nose. Roan sighed.

“That’s the road, though, sir,” Lum said, glancing up with a puzzled look on his mild face.

“Never mind,” Roan said, embarrassed. “It was just a thought. We turn back.”

They found the turnoff for the eastern road without trouble. Roan immediately recognized the heavy tread of the Alarm Clock bearers, and wondered how he had ever mistaken tree roots for those footprints. Spar didn’t say a word. He just pedaled stolidly at the head of the line. Colenna, bad back and all, was more gracious. Her eyes traveled over every feature they passed, observing everything. Occasionally, when she looked back over her shoulder at Roan, she gave him a comradely smile. He was grateful to her. Her philosophy of accepting what couldn’t be changed was much easier on his nerves than the guard captain’s blanket disapproval.

“Do you smell that?” Lum asked, as they left a deep valley and began their way up a long, low hill. “Something burning. Something big.”

Roan sniffed the air, and a sharp odor curled the hair in his nostrils. It didn’t quite smell like firewood or cooking. It had a metallic heaviness that made him uneasy. The tang grew stronger as they crested the hill and rode into a small glade, where it was gaggingly strong. They had found the scientists’ camp.

“Not five miles off from where we lost them!” Spar growled resentfully, and coughed. “We could’ve been done with this last night.”

“They’re long gone, sir,” Alette said, gazing about her as they rode into the clearing.

“Nightmares!” Misha said, staring about the glade.

Roan, too, was shocked at the condition of the grounds. The grass had been thoroughly trampled, and there were burned patches on dozens of trees around the center where lanterns must have been slung. He found two more scorched places, both of substantial size. One, near a long, clinical-looking stone table, was surrounded by spatters of fat and charred particles of food, in the center of a pile of stones that must have been used as a makeshift cookstove. The other, rectangular in shape, lay at the opposite end of the clearing. Fumes still rose from both sites.

Beside the stream which ran near the table, the ground was churned up into a stiff ring of dirt that looked as if a cylinder of earth had melted down. A curtain of dead and rotting moss lay draped over all.

“They had to have camped here last night, but it feels as though it has been abandoned for years,” Roan said. “It’s like a ghost town.”

“All the vitality has been sucked out of this place,” Bergold said, his round nose twitching. “It’s rotting away.”

“Conservation of energy,” Misha said, shaking his head. “They use a lot of power for their tricks, don’t they? It has to come from somewhere. What they do pulls the life right out of the land.”

Colenna was looking at the boulder table and shaking her head. “They built this for one night’s use. Wasteful!”

“Others can make use of it,” Felan said, coming over to look at it. “Very nice design.”

“It’s cold,” Leonora said, in a small voice, standing by herself in the center of the ruined clearing.

“Now, all of you stop trying to scare my lady,” the nurse said, bursting in between them like an angry pigeon. “She can’t take this kind of fright. She won’t sleep. Stop it at once.”

“Drea, don’t,” Leonora said. The nurse put her arm around her charge.

“I’m just trying to protect you, my sweet.” Leonora pulled away.

“I don’t need protection!” she said, a little wildly. “It’s the Dreamland that needs protection, not me!”

“You’re not thinking of yourself,” Drea said.

“I’m not supposed to be! Leave me alone.” Leonora set her chin and hugged her arms around her more tightly. She turned her back on Drea. “Yes, leave me. Go away.” The nurse shook her head and made as if to hug her.

“You don’t want me to leave you now, pet. Not in all this desolation.” Leonora shook loose.

“Yes! Yes, I do. Now, go away. Don’t come back,” the princess said. There were tears in her eyes. Roan took a step towards her, wanting to hold her, but the stiffness of her posture kept him from coming close. “I don’t want you any more, Drea. I don’t
need
you.”

“Well, my kitten, if that’s what you say. . . .”

“It
is
what I say,” Leonora snapped. “I mean it. I can get along on my own. And don’t call me baby names.”

The old nurse looked sad, but there was a kind of satisfaction in her wrinkled eyes. “All right, Your Highness. You know best. You’re all grown up now, aren’t you?”

“Yes!” Leonora snapped, without really listening. “Now, go away!”

Shaking her head fondly, Drea vanished in a puff of steam that smelled of fresh ironing and cinnamon oatmeal. Leonora’s eyes spilled over, and tears ran down her face.

She stood beside her bicycle in the midst of the ruin, looking stricken and lost. The air seemed colder than ever. The spell broken, Roan and Bergold hurried to her side to reassure her. She leaned into Bergold’s arms, shivering, not a remote symbol, but a frightened young woman.

“Oh, Bergold, they’ve destroyed this glen,” she said, forlornly.

“It will be all right again in no time,” the historian said encouragingly, patting her back. “The Sleeper will clean it up just as soon as his mood shifts again.”

“Or an influence will come through,” Roan suggested. “You know how quickly things change. It won’t take long.”

“But it’s so desolate,” Leonora said, with her face buried in Bergold’s jacket shoulder. Roan put a comforting hand on her arm. He understood what she meant. It wasn’t only that the scientists had left a mess. There was something wrong with the area. The colors were dulled. The leaves and flowers were thin, paperlike, artificial in feel. Like the desert in the first hours Roan had pursued Brom and his minions, the camp lacked life. He didn’t even hear insects buzzing. Leonora must have felt the destruction even more keenly than he did. The king was the heart of the Dreamland, and she was the king’s daughter.

The Sleeper must have felt a twinge of discomfort in this area of his dream, because a light wind began to blow, stirring the grass around their feet.

“There, do you see that?” Roan said. “He heard you.” The princess looked up. Her face was tragic, with eyes larger than before and colored a deep, mournful blue, but she watched where he pointed.

As the wind passed slowly, the mossy glade shifted into an open field full of daisies, like a curtain being pulled over the scene of an accident. The sun broke through the clouds, and brightened the grass to an astonishing emerald green. A trill of birdsong startled them with its clear beauty, and the singers wafted above them on open wings. The horrid stench thinned away. In its place, Roan smelled wildflowers and the rich scent of earth after a rain.

The people were not unaffected by the winds of change. The palace guards’ uniforms changed to bright scarlet tunics and black trousers, their hats became flat-brimmed and high-crowned, and their faces grew more noble. The rest of the party transmuted slightly to become more beautiful or handsome, and their bicycles took on a polished gleam. Roan, as always, remained the same, but he felt cleaner for the blessing of the wind. The sorrow in the princess’s eyes lifted a little.