Waking in Dreamland (54 page)

One by one, the apprentices were carried off by nuisances. The twin brothers, stripped stark naked and painted blue, were carried off on horseback by the Seventh Cavalry. The two older women joined a mob of happy people dressed in loud, flowered shirts and short pants doing a dance that involved rhythmically touching their arms and heads, and shimmied off into the shadows. In a short time, the scientists were all gone except one young woman who was wrapped in Glinn’s arms and staring up rapturously into his eyes.

Roan had no time to congratulate himself. Suddenly, he was blindfolded and spun around in a circle by a bunch of little girls in party dresses with bows in their hair. When the blindfold was taken off, he was left alone facing Brom.

“It is only the two of us now,” said the chief scientist, his broad face a mask of hate. He brushed away a Sleeper-sent shower of pillows as if it was confetti. His madness might have robbed him of control, but it gave him strength.

Roan steeled himself. All right, he thought at the Sleeper with his face. If I am any connection to you at all, aid me now!

Brom raised his hands, and they were full of fire. Rounding them together, he made a ball, and flung it two-handed at Roan. Roan threw himself to one side. The fireball whizzed past him with a crackle. Brom formed another, and another. Roan countered with handfuls of anti-air that snuffed out the fireballs as if they were matches. Brom clapped his hands together. The fireballs vanished, but invisible walls full of spikes began to
press in on Roan from all sides, crushing him.

Don’t scream, he told himself, though he was gasping with pain. Think! With a surge of his own influence Roan blunted the spikes, but Brom’s mad power crushed the walls inward. Roan felt his bones grind against one another. He called upon his reserves to save himself from being mashed flat. The flames around the Alarm Clock abruptly went out. Roan looked at Brom. The chief scientist smiled.

With a burst of influence, Roan destroyed one wall, but the other three formed a triangle, tighter than the square. Mustering his strength, he knocked out another, and was sandwiched between the two remaining. Roan pushed out at them, drawing painful breaths sideways. He was getting tired, but he must not flag. All existence depended upon him. Brom closed in on him, grinning, enjoying the sight of his enemy in torment.

Roan managed to dissolve one of the two walls, but the last and strongest wall shifted until it was in front of him, and pressed him back against the bedstead belonging to his enormous avatar. Roan put all the strength he had left into a single thrust. The wall shattered loudly into invisible shards.

Brom howled with anger as the recoil of power hit him. The last vestige of humanity vanished from his face. A change came over him. He sprouted coarse, black fur, and his teeth became
twisted, razorlike spikes. He was truly dangerous now, but also more vulnerable. Roan looked around for Bergold, or Misha, or any of the others to help him. He saw no one. He knew his friends were there in the Hall somewhere, but the Sleepers had chosen him to make this final battle. He must succeed alone.

Brom advanced upon him, his eyes glowing red slits. Roan knew Brom was truly vulnerable to change now. His heart still insisted upon mercy, regardless of his anger. Render him harmless, his mind said, even as the beast raised its talons to tear out his throat. Defensively, Roan reached out with all his influence. He dragged the coarse hair out into long ropes that wound themselves around and around the Brom-monster, pinioning his arms. Roan made the beast’s clawlike toenails lengthen and penetrate into the honey-brown stone floor, stopping him in his tracks. Perhaps when the chief scientist calmed down, he’d be more manageable.

The beast struggled in his bonds, growling and snorting his fury. Roan backed away, preparing another change if it should be needed. With a roar that was swallowed up in the vastness of the Hall, Brom thrust out his huge arms and tore the ropes of hair asunder. As Roan watched in astonishment, Brom picked his feet out of the stone a toe at a time, and moved in on Roan. Brom could only just manipulate reality, yet he could break down the barriers he made like a scythe cutting grass. The beast grew in size, until he was nearly as high as one of the Sleepers’ beds. Roan tried to control it, but influence behaved so strangely that it outstripped his control.

The pupils of Brom’s eyes slitted. Smoke poured out of nostrils grown huge in a long face. He tore at his chest with his claws, revealing scaly skin of poison green. His arms lengthened and flattened out into translucent green sails that spread, blotting out the rest of the chamber. Roan recognized the dragon Brom and the gestalt had brought into being in the royal court of Mnemosyne. He threw more influence, hoping to control the beast, but all his thrusts went wild, adding to the stuff of the dragon. Brom’s eyes glowed with glee. The dragon was a manifestation of himself, but it was also a true part of the Collective Unconscious. Because it was a natural creature, a mere Dreamlander couldn’t destroy it, and Roan had less effect upon it than he would on an ordinary nightmare beast such as Brom had just been. Roan scooted backwards, scrabbling for control over those parts of the dragon which were Brom, but they were indistinguishable from the rest.

The Brom-dragon drew in a wheezing hiss, preparing to incinerate him with its fiery breath. Roan made a shield of all his remaining strength, and dropped to his knees behind it on the floor. Brom exhaled. Roan braced himself against the flood of fire that smashed against his shield. He cringed from the heat, mentally begging the Sleepers for help. Send something, he pleaded. Anything!

“Sell IBM! No, buy! Buy IBM!”

Suddenly, he was enveloped in a crowd of men and women, all in white shirts and ties, chattering into their cellular telephones. They pulled Roan to his feet, and took the dragon by its paws. They twirled Brom around, chanting arcane invocations.

“Microsoft at 130! AT&T at 45! P&G at 80!”

“No!” Brom shouted in a terrible roar. “I must not be robbed of my revenge! I must kill him! Let me go!”

Still shouting bids, the investment brokers formed a conga line, sweeping Roan and Brom up with them, hustling them toward the door. The Brom-dragon struggled to get loose, but they kept a tight hold on him, walking and talking and dancing. As he was pushed along, the dragon became a human again, and slowly, his white-and-blue robes turned into a charcoal gray suit. A cellular phone suddenly appeared in his hand, and his face assumed an expression of the utmost horror. He, too, was becoming an investment broker.

They cha-cha’ed toward the threshold. On it, a tunnel opened up, full of whirling green numbers and flowing rows

of strange acronyms. Roan fought against the arms that held him around the waist, but this nuisance had been sent by the Sleepers, and was far stronger than his influence. The conga line moved inexorably towards the tunnel. Brom screamed in terror. Roan fought with every ounce of strength he had.

Just before they reached the threshold, the man behind Roan gave him a hard shove that sent him sprawling on the tiled floor, and tipped him a merry salute as he disappeared through the round portal. The investment brokers vanished down the glowing tunnel, taking Brom with them. He had the phone to his ear, and he was talking to it as if he’d done it all his life.
Appropriately, Roan thought, the chief scientist had become part of the nuisance. The tunnel shrank out of sight, and the great room fell quiet again.

Roan clambered to his feet, and ran to see where the other scientists had gone. He dashed out into the antechamber, searching for signs of life. No one was outside except Spar and his guards, four lanky, mustachioed soldiers in wool uniforms with gaiters and flattened tin helmets, sitting at their ease on the stone shelf around a small campfire. Spar pinched out a cigarette between his fingertip and thumb, and nudged the others. They rose respectfully to their feet. Roan scanned the room. The two mercenaries were lying on the floor beside them, neatly trussed up with standard military knots. Brom was nowhere to be seen.

“Is it all over?” the captain asked, looking up at Roan.

“Yes,” Roan said, hardly daring to believe it himself. “It’s
all over.”

On tiptoe, Roan led them back into the Hall of the Sleepers and looked around. The chamber was serenely quiet. All illusions were gone. His boots stood neatly beside the threshold with the others where he had left them. They’d been cleaned and polished.

In the middle of the floor stood the Alarm Clock. It was sealed into a block of amber, probably by the last vestige of the Sleepers’ attention before they settled back into their slumbers. Roan walked over and tested the integrity of the matter with all his strength, and found he couldn’t budge it at all. It was solid, on every level. Perhaps his friends were right that he and the avatar had a lot in common: they, too, preferred to render harmless without destroying. He was satisfied. The Alarm Clock could never be used again to disturb their repose. The Dreamland would never have to fear it. The Sleepers would sleep on soundly, as they had from the beginning of the world.

Beside the block someone had made a transparent dome like half a soap bubble. Underneath, Bergold, Misha, Colenna, Glinn with his ladylove, and the princess Leonora were standing together, staring up at the Sleeper that was and was not Roan. Roan and the guards passed through the pliant wall and joined them inside. Leonora looked up at Roan lovingly, and he put his arm around her. She was safe, and so was her realm. They had succeeded.

“It’s a silence bubble,” she explained, pointing up at the clear dome. “We can talk in here. They haven’t budged an inch since we put it up.”

“Good thinking,” Roan said. Leonora smiled.

“I had the example of a good leader before me.”

“It’s a wonder in here, sir,” Lum said, looking around with his eyes popped halfway out of their sockets. He caught a glimpse of the Sleeper above them. “Great night!”

“It’s not me, Corporal,” Roan said, but it was no good. The young soldier regarded him with delighted awe.

“Think of the benefit to historians everywhere,” Bergold said, happily making notes in the blank pages of his pocket archive. “Being able to observe the Sleepers themselves at close range. Every single one will want to take a turn.”

Roan chuckled.

Glinn presented his young woman to Roan. “This is Taboret. I could not have succeeded as well as I did without her.”

“I did try to help,” the young woman said, shyly. “I was careless, but I’m glad it all worked out. I did what I could. Princess, I’m sorry I had to . . . do those things to you.”

“I understand,” Leonora said, patting her hand. “No hard feelings.” Taboret looked relieved and awed. Glinn hugged her closely.

“We owe you our thanks,” Roan said to them. “Both of you. It will be in my report to the king.”

“I hope you’ll speak to Carodil on our behalf,” Glinn said. “Someone will have to answer for Brom’s actions and we’re the only ones left.”

“That will not be a problem,” Leonora said, definitely. “I will explain everything to my father. Everything that I can explain, that is.” She looked significantly at Roan.

“How strange,” he said, staring up at the great face. “So all along, there was a reason why I never changed. I was an image dreamed by another who looked like me.”

“Incredible,” Colenna said. “You, or rather, he must have a very stable personality. There’ve been a thousand Sleepers since the world began, and I have never before heard of a man who stayed the same all his life. Someone should have guessed the connection.”

“How could they know?” Leonora asked. “No one has ever found their way here before.”

“Do you know,” Bergold said, with a chuckle, “I never checked the dates.” He pulled the little archive out of his pouch and thumbed through it. “Yes,” he said, pointing to an entry. “You were born at the time of a Changeover, you know.”

“Yes, I know. My mother told me,” Roan said.

“Which province was it?” Leonora asked.

“Celestia,” Bergold said, with a broad smile. The others let out wordless exclamations. “Yes, that’s right. It looks as if you’re dreaming the center of the Dreamland. And I can’t think of anyone in whose hands we would be better off.”

“Bergold!” Roan protested. “He’s not me!”

“It’s a fact, my boy,” Bergold said, slapping him on the back. “You can’t get away from facts, any more than you can change the face you were born with. And now we see what a noble countenance that is, eh? It would explain why you never have changed. You were born to the job. You’re dreaming us all.”

“I am not a Sleeper!” Roan protested. “He is. He’s dreaming me, too!”

“Shh!” Bergold said, a finger to his lips, as the Roan-giant stirred and nudged his blue and red blankets with his foot. “Calm down. He feels your agitation, even if he can’t hear you.”

“This puts you far above us poor mortals,” Leonora whispered, solemnly. Her eyes were huge and luminous, and she looked very lovely. “What does it mean when you are dreaming me?”

Roan swept her into his arms and kissed her.

“It proves that you truly are the woman of my dreams,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine a more perfect love than you, or I suppose I—He—would have. Why are you smiling?”

“I was just thinking,” she said, twirling the locket at her throat with a dreamy look. “Now my father can’t possibly have any objection at all to me marrying you.”