Waking in Dreamland (2 page)

In years to come, Roan would never be able to decide if the Sleeper had relented, or if he had saved himself by a desperate act of will. His first steps toward the castle were shaky, but he recovered his usual jauntiness quickly. The May air was fresh and full of the scent of flowers. He’d landed in the middle of a green meadow bounded by a white fence. A nearby herd of odd-looking black-and-white cows stared at him dispassionately while they chewed their cud. He looked around for a gate, but there wasn’t one. Well, what was a mere fence after the height he’d just fallen? Roan swung himself over the white boards, and headed toward the castle.

Under the warm spring sun, shadow pooled around the base of the high stone curtain wall surrounding the Castle of Dreams. Roan guessed the time to be about noon. Just inside the moat, between a pair of narrow, battlemented towers of the gatehouse was the high, arched entrance. When Roan got a little closer, he could see the sentries standing on either side of the gate, their fierce, toothy, green-scaled faces jutting out over their supple ring-mail shirts. They were crocodiles. They watched dispassionately as Roan advanced over the drawbridge, until he was within spear’s reach.

The first crocodile leveled the point of his halberd until it touched the center of Roan’s chest. The other guard stood stiffly erect beside the iron portcullis.

“Stand and be recognized,” the first guard growled.

“That presents no difficulty,” Roan said. He stopped and raised his arms until his hands were level with his shoulders. He knew what the guards saw. Before them was a tall, slenderly-built man with wavy, dark hair. His deep gray eyes wore an untroubled expression, and when he smiled, two lines drew from the corners of his narrow nose down the sides of his well-shaped mouth to his square chin.

“You know me, gentlemen,” he said. “I’m Roan.”

The scales of the crocodiles’ faces melted away until more human characteristics became visible.

“O’ course we know it’s you, Mr. Roan,” the first guard said, lowering the spear until its butt rested on the ground. “But we’ve got to ask, you know. It’s our job. You . . . haven’t changed at all since we saw you last, sir.” He shook his head in wonder.

“No,” Roan said, pleasantly. “I haven’t. I never do.”

“Are you all right, sir?” the second guard asked, his brow drawing down in concern. “That was quite a drop!”

“I’m fine,” Roan said, shivering a little. “I hate falling dreams.”

“Same as us, sir,” the second guard said. The first one nodded vigorous agreement, then they both looked around with guilty expressions. “Uh, o’ course, it’s the Sleeper’s will.”

“Their will and whim,” Roan said, with a sympathetic grin. “But it was a handy rescue, wasn’t it?” The guards grinned back. Their teeth were still very sharp. “May I go through?”

“Right you are, sir,” the second guard agreed. His brown hands, now fully human, set aside the spear and reached for the chain bellpull hanging against the stone wall. The bell clanged loudly inside the castle demesne, battling with squawking, clucking, neighing, clattering, and the hubbub of dozens of voices Roan heard through the portcullis. “Nice weather today, eh? Mighty changeable, it is.”

“Always is. Busy morning?” Roan asked pleasantly, as he waited for the iron gate to be raised high enough to accommodate his unusual height.

“Oh, garn, sir, you can’t believe it,” the first guard said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. The air was hot, drying the beads of sweat almost as soon as they appeared on his skin. “Comings and goings! All them scientific types, you can’t keep up. All as curious as cats, and twice as bad as cats around doors.”

“Some of ’em even look like cats,” put in the second guard. “Right, sir,” the first guard said. “They want in, then, they want out. Begging your father’s pardon, sir,” he added with an expression of shocked embarrassment.

“No offense taken,” Roan said, amiably. His father, Thomasen, was a prominent historian of the court, and indeed, rather like a cat around doors. Thomasen was an active man who liked to take a close look at things, and was always on the move. Unlike the “scientific types” of the Ministry of Science, the historians were observers only, not interfering with the events they were meant to record. Quite likely the guards didn’t distinguish between one Ministry and another. And the guards might well take Roan for one of the “scientific types,” too, since it was his job as the King’s Investigator to observe phenomena, but he was passive as he could be in this activity.

“Look out there!” the first guard cried.

Roan spun just in time to see his bicycle, Cruiser, fall out of the sky. He ran to catch it, but long before he could leap over the fence into the pasture, the silver racer hit the ground with a tremendous bang.

“No!” Roan shouted. “Cruiser!”

The frame lay still, and the front wheel spun loosely. Then, as Roan watched with concern, the bicycle heaved itself up unsteadily onto both its wheels. Roan put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. The bicycle turned its handlebars until it was facing him, and wheeled slowly over, its gears squeaking pathetically.

“I wondered where you’d gotten to, old fellow,” Roan said, giving him a pat on the frame. “All right?” The handlebars turned slightly under his palm as if responding to the caress. He swung the steed up and over the fence onto the road. The bicycle creaked unsteadily beside him back to the castle.

“Aw, there’s lucky, then,” the second guard said, eyeing the bike critically. “Barely a scratch or a dent.”

“The stablemaster’ll see to that squeak,” the first guard suggested. “No trouble.”

The guards were already beginning to alter again as Roan passed into the courtyard. Their clanking mail unkinked and flowed into long silk robes and head coverings, and their spears became curved swords. The first guard touched his forehead in a polite salaam as his skin and hair darkened, and a mustache sprouted on his upper lip. With the Lullay, fount of the Sleepers’ influence, running right through the castle demesne, things changed here almost constantly.

Chapter 2

The heat was the second clue to the Sleeper’s changing mood. In the short time it took for Roan to walk between the castle gate and the first row of outbuildings inside the stone walls the weather shifted from temperate summer to sweltering heat. The Sleeper’s attention must have turned to a realm of deserts.

The cackle of chickens became the bleating of goats, and the cry of sheep became the impatience of camels. Roan smiled at the herdsmen suddenly being dwarfed by their charges, who added spitting to their usual forms of disobedience. Yet, Dreamlanders were accustomed to constant alteration. Such was the will of the Sleeper of this region who dreamed this realm and everyone in it. Everybody who lived in the Dreamland was used to changing from his or her basic shape, altering looks, sex, even species, when it suited the over-intelligence of their Creator. Everyone, Roan reflected wryly, except himself.

His father, and those of the historians who were of a charitable turn of mind, used to say that Roan was the exception that proved the rule that all things in the Dreamland changed. Roan Faireven was considered to be an oddity, even a freak by some. Where it was natural to shift from paradigm to paradigm like the tumbling clouds in the sky constantly forming new pictures, Roan remained firmly fixed as himself. Oh, he’d changed as he had grown up from tot to child to teen to adult, but what he looked like a year later could have been pretty well predicted from the way he had looked the year before. It was not out of stubbornness, nor of disrespect to the Sleepers that he adhered to one basic form. He simply couldn’t help it. He couldn’t change himself. Roan was always male, always tall, always gray-eyed and dark-haired and broad-shouldered and long-handed—in other words, always himself. Whoever that was, Roan thought with a sigh. He often felt he’d know more about his inner self if his outer self altered now and again to tell him what was in his subconscious. He was frequently troubled by strange dreams full of portents and weird sights, but then, his dreams were probably no stranger than anyone else’s in or out of the Dreamland.

He had the wisdom to know exactly what he could change. Blessed with a decent measure of intelligence and sanity, he had a high degree of control over his surroundings and his possessions. It was his very immutability that made it possible for him to take such a dangerous job as King’s Investigator.

He became aware that his good suit of dark wool, tailored silk shirt and necktie were far too hot for this desert. Whereas clothing, like all other inanimate objects, tended to follow the Sleeper’s design, anything touching, or indeed immediately near Roan stayed as it had last been put. Roan set his mind to conforming his clothes to a more suitable costume. The fine tailoring shifted and flowed like melting wax, picking up lights from the sun and the heady-scented gardens that blossomed along the pebbled path. Now he was clad in an ankle-length robe of scarlet and blue silk, over silk trousers draping cool around his legs. His formal top hat drooped and became a broad-brimmed sunshade.

Much better. Roan sighed, and worked his shoulders under the smooth cloth. He scuffed in soft boots along the narrow path bounded by round stones. His steed, following on his heels, had remained a bicycle, instead of turning into a destrier or a camel. He wheeled Cruiser to the stables, a welcome oasis of coolness in the noon heat, and turned it over to an ostler, who clucked through his mustache at the dents in the frame.

“Good as new in an hour, by my word of honor,” the man said, touching his forehead, lips and heart.

“There’s no hurry,” Roan said, returning the gesture. “I’m home for a while.”

He went out into the sun, and turned toward the main keep. There were a few minor shifts in the landscape, as was normal, while Roan made his way along the crushed stone paths, but the place remained largely fertile-crescentish in flavor. Whatever outward stimulus had prompted the Sleeper to dream of desert kingdoms, He or She had created a place of beauty.

The castle itself looked different than it had when Roan had departed on his last assignment, but then it had surely changed a dozen or a hundred times in his absence. Instead of the drafty, gray stone keep covered with lichens and spiderwebs, with arched cloister windows made up of multiple palm-sized panes of glass, and banshees on the battlements, the great keep was smooth white marble, limned here and there with gold and inlays of multicolored glass and gems. The heavy bronze doors bore deep designs of knots and arabesques. Pillars bearing statuary nestled in recesses at intervals along the walls, and fountains played in the courtyard. All of the window casements were pointed arches, too. He had to admit that this face of the castle was very pleasant. There wasn’t a single bat in sight. Obviously, the Sleeper was in good spirits this day. Roan gave thanks. The sun was blazing gold in a clear, blue sky, and green and scarlet birds croaked at him from tree branches. Servers, wearing layer upon layer of diaphanous silk, passed swiftly between the many buildings of the castle’s inner courtyard. The individual garments would have been transparent, but the layering lent opacity so that the true forms within could not be seen. Much like the Dreamland itself, Roan thought.

He heard an outburst of noise coming from one side of the central keep. A collection of young men and women hurtled around the perimeter of the building with long measuring tapes slung between them. Oblivious to the heat, they made energetic measurements, jotted down copious notes on pads and slates, or flicked the beads on an abacus. Roan laughed as they disappeared around the other side of the building, djellabahs fluttering importantly behind them. Their quest looked like a cross between a scavenger hunt and a math test.

Those young people looked different than they had before, too, but he knew who they were. The Ministry of Science always assigned its newest apprentices to keep track of the castle’s dimensions. Roan thought the task futile, since the basic layout of the keep was always a thousand paces by a thousand, but he never claimed to fully appreciate the analytical mind. If the scientists thought they could learn something fundamental about the Dreamland or the Sleeper by measuring the castle every time it changed, Roan hadn’t a clue as to what it might be.

“Roan!” a voice hailed him. He turned from his study of the castle to see a short, stout, scarlet-haired woman, wearing multiple sheaths of crimson silk that fell enticingly over her rolling middle, fall in beside him and take his arm. She beamed up at him, her fat cheeks creasing engagingly.

“My dear fellow, how are you? It’s been an age.”

“Bergold!” Roan exclaimed, recognizing the pattern of his good friend’s speech, if not his current form.

“Indeed,” the historian said. He held out a fold of his costume. “Isn’t this a fine color? I am partial to red.”

“Very nice,” Roan said, thinking that it disagreed violently with Bergold’s current hair color, but perhaps the historian hadn’t seen himself in a mirror. Bergold altered so often and so rapidly it would drive many Dreamlanders mad, but he took it in his breezy stride. Most people had a base shape, and their many changes were variations upon that one. After a lifetime’s friendship, Roan was still not certain he had ever seen the historian in his natural form, if indeed he had one.

“Did you come by train?” Bergold asked, guiding him toward the castle entrance.

“Not this time. I just flew in from Somnus, on the wind.”

“You lucky soul!” Bergold exclaimed. “Did you fly all the way?”

“Very nearly,” Roan said, relishing the memory of his adventure. “I kept hitting fortunate circumstances. My steed Cruiser and I passed through an influence that made him a motorcycle, then another that made him an airplane.”

“An airplane!” Bergold said. “Goodness me!”

“Yes, indeed,” Roan grinned. “Suddenly I was flying without the plane, flat out on the wind like a bird. Most exhilarating. It took days off my journey.”

“This modern air travel is positively astonishing,” Bergold said, pulling a notepad and pencil from somewhere in his diaphanous robes. He jotted down a few words. “Someday I hope I can try it, but I’m not sure my noble steed is up to it, nor I. How was the landing?”