“TOKENS OF DOOM,” ARCHER WHISPERED. HE THOUGHT of Master Gabriel’s stern warnings from the night before. They bear an ancient and ominous significance, warning of deadly peril, especially for the Dreamtreaders. “They don’t seem so scary.” He picked up one of the dead leaves. It was shaped like a roughly hewn teardrop and looked like it might have come from a redbud tree or an ivy bush. Whatever it had been, it was completely dried out now. It felt brittle to the touch and its edges looked singed. Archer let it fall back to the tabletop and picked up the second leaf. He’d never seen a tree or shrub with foliage like this one. Though long dead and somewhat singed like the other, this leaf’s shape was like that of a bat’s wing. Its ribbed stem formed a kind of L, and a thin, scalloped membrane stretched between its two ends. It was weightless but gave off a faint odor, something Archer couldn’t quite place, but it was not a good smell.
He put down the leaf and let his eyes wander over the feather and then to the short length of chain. These were no hardware-store-bought links. These were old metal, rigid and severe like something you might find in an ancient dungeon. Archer picked up the chain, and it clinked dully. It was still cold to the touch, but there was something different. It was lighter, maybe. Or the texture of the metal was grainier . . . perhaps due to advancing corrosion.
He dropped the chain links and looked again at the clock. It showed 11:55, and still, sleep would not come. He turned on his side again. But before his next breath, there came an anguished, wailing scream. It was his father.
Archer bounded out of bed. He’d only heard his father scream like that once before: the night Archer’s mom at last succumbed to her cancer. Archer charged around the doorjamb, took three pounding steps, and pushed through his father’s bedroom door. He flicked on the light, raced to his father’s bedside, and froze. Archer’s father lay there on the bed. His eyes were wide open. His mouth was open too, locked now in a desperate scream . . . but there was no voice. His arms were raised, bent as if trying to fend off some unseen thing. His whole body trembled.
“Dad, Dad, wake up!” Archer exclaimed. “Dad, please! You’re having a nightmare!”
But Archer wasn’t certain that it was a nightmare. His father turned his head slightly in Archer’s direction but seemed to look right through him. His mouth worked, but there were still no words.
Archer heard movement in the hallway. He was terrified that Kaylie and Buster might see their father in this state, but he didn’t know what to do. “Dad, you’re having a dream!” he said. “A bad dream! That’s all. It’s not real!” He took hold of his father’s hand.
That did something. His father let out a groan. “I tried, Em, I really tried!” His voice was a wet whisper, but Archer heard each word. “No! No, don’t say that, Em! You don’t mean it! Please, Em!”
Archer’s father was sobbing now, the tears pouring over his cheeks and dripping from his chin. Archer embraced his father. “It’s okay, Dad,” he said. “We’re at home. We’re in the house. You’re safe now. You’ve got to wake up.”
“Daddy?” Kaylie said from the door.
“Dad, what’s goin’ on?” Buster asked. He stood just behind his sister.
Mr. Keaton blinked, pulled away from Archer, and said, “Archer . . . you’re here.”
“Yeah, Dad,” he said. “We all are.”
He pulled away from Archer and craned his neck. “Kaylie, Buster . . . but where’s Emily?”
“Dad,” Archer whispered gently. “Mom’s gone. She’s been gone for years now.”
Archer lay in his bed now and fumed. First Kara, now Dad, he thought bitterly. The Nightmare Lord needed to pay for these attacks. “I’ll take you down,” Archer whispered. “You’ll see. If I have to pick apart Shadowkeep brick by brick, I’m going to take you down.” He tossed and turned, trying to simply will himself to sleep. He wanted to charge right into the Dream, wanted to destroy each and every one of the enemy’s plans, wanted to make him pay.
“Trying to destroy my anchor too, aren’t you,” Archer whispered. “Not going to happen. I remember the well because my mom loved it. And she loved me.”
He sighed and focused on his breathing . . . and his thinking. “It all begins with the mind,” Archer whispered, quoting the Creeds. “That is the real battlefield you must master. The stronger the mind, the longer and stronger you Tread.”
He closed his eyes and began with forms. These were mental projections of his physical self, his breathing, his heartbeat, his movements. He felt the elongation and contraction of his muscles, choreographing their rippling through a series of mental exercises. He was very still in his bed, but mentally, a version of himself ran through an arduous chain of martial arts movements: lunges, sweeps, thrusts, kicks, blocks, throws, turns, and holds. After enough time, Archer switched to patterns. Spinning stars slid and wove themselves into place on a tapestry of ever-shifting shapes and colors. Seams unzipped and symbols danced, but Archer managed to lasso them all. One by one, he assigned them places until a brilliant mosaic was born.
Archer was about to move into verse when he felt the telltale heaviness on his eyelids, like feather-soft fingers were lightly pressing upon his brow. Each new breath was a release of tension and an infusion of relaxation. He felt weightless, weightless and drifting. Sleep had finally come.
Falling. That’s exactly what it feels like, Archer thought. Falling though the deepest, darkest, windless night until you hit the canopy, a dense layer of dream fabric. Archer had never thought to ask Gabriel if that was its name, but canopy sure seemed right.
Oof! Floof! Archer plowed into a cushion of air. Fuzzy, swirling air. At last there was a dim gray light. Archer felt the rotation begin to take him in. He’d broken through the canopy, and a sleeve of dream fabric began to whirl around him. Tornado slide! Archer thought as he reclined, arms behind his head. This was his favorite part. Booyaaaah!
The light increased, bathing him in a constantly spiraling swirl of turbulent indigo, electrically charged amethyst, and dark steel gray. Through the translucent funnel, Archer saw a dark, mountainous landscape. In the distance, more funnels dropped down. Many more, dragging slowly across the panorama like the tentacles of a giant deep-sea jellyfish.
A bell clanged. The low, echoing tone lingered a moment and then faded. Another chime, and another. Archer twisted in the funnel and saw it. Obscured by scarlet and lavender clouds rose the steeple and face of Old Jack, the great timekeeper of the Dream. Sometimes a looming giant, other times just a faint watermark near the horizon, Old Jack was almost always visible from any location within the Dream. Its measure of moments was absolute, and Archer knew to pay close attention to its chimes. Six o’clock and the next twelve—those were the ones to beware of. For now, he thought. Time to begin.
At last, the vortex released Archer. He fell to the ground, dropping to one knee. When he rose again, he was more than Archer.
Dark shades, cooler than Gabriel’s. Black vest and combat pants with armor plates sewn in. Black leather Australian bush hat and duster. Commando, cowboy, ninja, knight, warrior: 100 percent US Grade-A, absolute Dreamtreader.
Archer reached over his shoulder for his sword and anchor. He pulled the hat down tightly on his scalp and sprang away toward a Y-shaped tree. Anchor first. Anchor deep.
There, between the dark tree’s gnarled roots, Archer pounded his anchor. Once more, the well appeared. Archer ran his fingers over its stone. We all need anchors, Archer, Master Gabriel had said, in every area of our lives. If not, we drift far from the truths that matter . . . and the meaning of it all.
“Right,” Archer said aloud. “The anchor’s good. Time to Dreamweave some breaches!”
Archer looked out over the vast landscape. If Gabriel was correct, and he usually was, there were far more breaches than normal out there. It was difficult to tell with the Dreamscape in its rudimentary state, like an endless misty moor at twilight, a writhing sea of fog stretching to infinity. Here and there, craggy mountains poked up out of the gloom. There were structures too, indefinite castle-like buildings, begging to be explored. And, of course, there was Old Jack. Yet no breaches showed themselves, not at this level of detail, and time was ticking.
Archer took a deep breath. This was going to take a lot out of him, he knew. But it was unavoidable. He stomped his booted foot, and it sent a shock wave through the mists. The ripple surged forward through the Intrusions and began to change everything.
From the tip of his boot, patches of wind-waving grass rolled forth. Rich forests sprouted up. Meadows bloomed and spread. Mountains became mantled with snow. The sparse castle structures became grand fortresses, each one with a walled-in township to guard, and all vastly different from one another.
Archer wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow. “Much better.” It had taxed him dearly, but not as dearly as it might have to reveal this world for the first time. This was the world of the Dream, uncloaked. Archer’s Dreamtreading experience and a fair supply of sheer might had washed away the interfering Intrusions to reveal, once again, the realm he’d been chosen to protect. He’d been Dreamtreading for years, and had completed the revealing process many times. Still, any exertion of will this large left Archer winded.
Winded. Archer barked out a laugh. It was all mental, really. Dreamtreading was an ability locked away in the areas of the brain that most people never got to use, except for tiny spurts while asleep. Taxed was definitely a better word, Archer thought. But he knew his limits. As a Dreamtreader, he had to know. To overwork the mind in a dream could mean any number of unpleasant outcomes in the real world: coma and death chief among those.
Archer shrugged away those dark thoughts. Besides, he had plenty left in the tank. He lifted the dampening he’d just spread over the landscape and felt the ripples of Intrusions surge in. More than ripples. Waves.
“Sweet,” Archer said. He stomped his foot. The air shimmered, and a nine-foot surfboard, a longboard, materialized at his side. Archer released his concentration somewhat, allowing the Intrusions to have much greater impact. He grabbed the board, raced about ten yards, and leaped. He came down flat on the board and felt the current beneath him. It was rising fast; Archer rose to a knee, did the split-step to get to his feet, and then steered into the curl. “Man, if Buster could see me now!” he yelled. “Wooo!”
With a quick shift of his weight, Archer leaned down the length of the wave. Whole kingdoms raced by in a blur. The wing of dark red hair that usually half covered his eyes blew back.
“Yaaa!” Archer shouted, pumping his fist and exulting in the new speed.
Intrusions weren’t made of water. Like everything else in the Dream, they were made of dreams . . . the dreams of hundreds of millions of people within Archer’s Dreamscape district. In contrast to the coherent features of the Dream like Old Jack, castles, and mountains, the Intrusions were built of chaos. Every dreamer knew them, if not by name, by experience. Sudden, relentlessly changing random ideas and images blend seamlessly into one another. One minute, you’re in a classroom but your teacher has a watermelon in place of his head. The next minute, a Ferrari crashes through the chalkboard bringing a forest in its wake, and then you’re somehow camping with your cousin from Nebraska. Waking up from a flood of Intrusions was enough to make anyone give up eating spicy food before bed.
Not for Archer. For him, Intrusions were things of beauty, rising up in magnificent swells that propelled him anywhere he wished to go.
“Bavanda first,” he muttered, leaning back and to his right. His board dropped off the dying ebb of one wave and onto the curl of a monster jammer, as he called them, shifting his heading forty-five degrees. The wave was a violent thing, surging beneath the board as if it had a mind to throw Archer up into the sky. The Dreamtreader let the wave roll itself out right at the boundary of the kingdom of Bavanda.
Archer hopped off his board and let it vanish behind him. “Razz?” he called out. “You coming on this one?”
“Right away, boss!” a high-pitched voice answered from, well, nowhere. There was a purple puff of smoke, and suddenly, a flying squirrel hovered just in front of Archer’s nose: Razz. Razzlestia Celeste Moonsonnet was her full name, but Archer had given that one up long ago.
“Good to see you, Razz,” Archer said. “Ready for some breaches?”
“Am I ever,” she said, pulling out a barbed needle and a tiny spool of ether silk. She spun three revolutions so that her two fuzzy tails flapped together. It was Razz’s way of clapping. “Uhm . . . but where are we?”
“Bavanda, for starters,” Archer said. “Now perch, would ya? You’re making me dizzy with all the spins.”
“Oop! Sorry!” she squeaked. She curled once more and then lighted on Archer’s shoulder. He shook his head. Razz couldn’t be any cuter. A swirl of brown, gray, and white fur covered every inch of her. She had huge dark eyes, tiny angled ears, and a tapered face. Her nose, feet, and hands were all the same pink flesh tone, and the little black line of her mouth always seemed curled in a smile.
She had a dark, amber-colored stripe that flowed from her wrists down the length of the skin folds that served as her gliding wings. “Racing stripes,” Razz called them, and she meant it. For Razz, speed was the meaning of life. Unlike flying squirrels in the Temporal, Razz propelled herself. Archer wasn’t sure how. She flapped her arms a little, but seemed to get most of her speed in the air. Maybe she used Intrusions too, Archer thought. Aside from two tails and powered flight, there was one other feature that made Razz different from her earthly counterparts: she loved high fashion.
Razz bounced on Archer’s shoulder. “Well,” she said, batting her eyelashes. “What do you think?”
She wore a black acorn hat like a French beret, a bright red rose scarf, and a stylish pocketed vest that seemed cut from some dark blue glossy leaf. In the sun’s orange light, the vest looked very much like leather. She wore dark blue pantaloons that caught the air like sails as she posed on Archer’s shoulder.
Archer wasn’t sure what to say.
“I’ll take your speechlessness as a compliment,” she said, flicking the scarf over her shoulder.
Archer shrugged. He strode up to the vine-strewn gate of the walled city. “Hail, Bavandan Gatekeepers!” he called out to the pair of dream soldiers patrolling the perimeter.
“Hail, young Archer,” the portly guard called back.
“Hail and welcome!” his thinner companion added.
“I’m looking for breaches, as usual,” Archer explained. “And news.”
“We have both,” the first guard replied, his tunic-straining stomach jiggling. “Isn’t that right, Harp?”
“That’s full right, Jovi. Three breaches in Trellis Square. And you’ll get more news than a man can bear from Lady Kasia.”
“More than you can bear, Harp,” Jovi said. “You’ve got the patience of an itchy toddler.”
“That’s enough to beat you in chess any day,” Harp replied.
The bell chimed: Old Jack announcing two o’clock. The guards hadn’t changed expression, not the tiniest bit. They hadn’t heard it. Only Archer had.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” Archer said, leaving the guards to bicker in peace at the gate. Breaches in Trellis Square, Archer thought turning behind the main wall. Gabriel knew what he was talking about.
The kingdom teemed with villagers, light, and greenery. A gentleman and his ladylove rode by on their giant oblong bicycle. It looked like it had been built from junkyard materials. But what they lacked in material riches, they made up for with a wealth of kindness and courtesy. The man saluted Archer, and the lady blew him a neighborly kiss.
Candles burned in every window, on every rail and balcony. It was like touring an open cathedral the size of a football stadium. Archer loved the warm glow of so many flickering lights. He loved everything about the city. The folk of Bavanda took great pride in growing things: trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetables, and vines. Especially vines.
Trellis Square was a grand courtyard, a hundred yards across, and fully scaffolded in every direction by white trellises. There were vines with crimson thorns and blooms of purple and white that exploded to the hand-width overhead. There were dark green cables with elephant-ear leaves and plum-colored, low-hanging fruit. And there were web-like threads of white lace weaving among the other vines. The air was filled with their “wishes”: small, feathery floating seeds that glowed a faintly luminous blue.
“I’ll be right back,” Razz said. Before Archer could object, she catapulted herself into the air. The squirrel disappeared for a moment in the foliage, only to burst out in another place. She resumed her station on Archer’s shoulder and wore one of the giant dark purple petals as a kind of cape.
“Accessorizing,” she said. “It’s what separates us from the beasts.”
Archer couldn’t help the laugh that crashed through his nose in a monstrous snort. Bavandan villagers stopped and stared, giggled, and continued on their way.
“See what you made me do,” Archer grumbled, but he wasn’t angry. The whole incident had lifted his spirits. Yet as Archer delved deeper into the square, any levity vanished. The vast beauty of Bavanda gave way to heartache as only the corruption of beauty can. Cobbled stone, intricate wooden lattice, and lush trailing vines fell away to a shredding kind of rot. This corner of Trellis Square looked as if it had been punctured. Dream matter surged in and out of gaps torn right into the air. There were indeed three breaches and what looked like the start of a fourth. Villagers formed small circles at safe distances and spoke in hushed voices. Many stared. A few pointed. Some wept.
“He’s here!” a woman gasped.
A multitude of faces turned to Archer.
“She must mean, ‘They’re here,’ ” Razz whispered. “We are a team.”
“Hush,” he said. “Not now.”
“Please, sir!” a wide-eyed boy said. “Please close them up.”
The Dreamtreader came within ten feet of the breaches. He smelled the rot. He felt the heated air, the eerie tingling gravity. “I will,” Archer said, projecting as much confidence as he could. “I’ll stitch them up tight.”
The crowd cheered. But Archer felt uneasy. These breaches were larger than usual, larger and far too close together for comfort. Neglect them for too long, and Archer knew what could happen. puncturing breaches in the midst of a kingdom? It was the Nightmare Lord’s most brazen act to date. Brazen and deeply troubling.
Glowing with dark blue and bloody red vapors, the particle dream matter streamed in and out of each hole. Archer knelt within reach of the first blazing wound. He patted his side, and when his hand came away, he had a coil of glistening ether silk and a barbed needle. He went to work at once, plunging the seven-inch needle into the fraying borders of one breach, looping the silk through the chaotic particle matter, and then driving it down into the other border. Again and again, he stitched until he had an intricate set of laces. Finally, he pulled them tight, shutting off the pulsing flow of matter. Razz leaped down from his shoulder and went to work to patch up the tiny places where even a hint of matter flow still existed.
Archer heard cheers as he jumped to the next breach. And the next. His needle and thread moved with practiced perfection, and the Dreamtreader’s pace increased. He pulled hard on the thread, closing up breach number three.
The fourth site, not yet a full breach, was more of a challenge because the breach-eating culprits were still there. A dozen scurions, the Nightmare Lord’s parasitic workers, squirmed in and out of the Dream fabric. They looked somewhat like beetle grubs: pale, milky white, several pairs of caterpillar-like forelegs and back legs, and a dark globe of shell over its eyes. But scurions were not small. These were eight to ten inches long, and each one had three sets of jaws capable of tearing out scraps of reality or, if any Dream being were stupid enough to get close to them, tearing flesh from bone.
“Ooh, I hate these things!” Razz exclaimed.
Archer loosed his rendering mallet, held it with a two-handed grip high over his head, and stood over the teeming scurions. “You folks might want to stand back a bit,” Archer called to the villagers.
They listened and fell away quickly, but whether they hid by the trelliswork or behind walls of foliage, they kept watch. Archer slammed the mallet down on the nearest scurion. One blow cracked its segmented shell and certainly got the creature’s attention, but wasn’t enough to kill it. The thing screeched and lunged for Archer’s lower leg, but he’d been expecting it. The Dreamtreader slammed the mallet down once more. This time, the creature exploded, sending steaming spurts of yellowish-white gore spattering in all directions.
“I really—really—dislike this part,” Archer muttered. But he continued slamming down the hammer until the scurions were duly splattered. Razz surprised Archer by grabbing up a five-inch scurion he’d missed. She took the squirming thing so high into the air that Archer lost sight of her. A moment later, several pieces of scurion fell back to the ground, followed quickly by Razz, whose grin was quite triumphant.
“What did you do to it?” Archer asked.
“Wasn’t it obvious?” Razz asked. “I told you I hate scurions.”
It dawned on Archer why Razz so passionately hated the crawlies. She was made of the same dream fabric as the world around them now. Just as they’d eaten away at the Dream to create breaches, scurions could consume her as well.
“Don’t worry, Razz,” Archer said, “I won’t let them get you. Ever.”
Razz chirruped, landed on Archer’s shoulder, and nuzzled under his chin.
“Hey, that tickles!” Archer said, laughing and snorting. “Cut it out.”
Archer reddened at the laughter from the villagers. He knew they meant no harm, but still. It’s just the way I laugh, he grumbled mentally. They can’t help but laugh at all my snorting.
“Where to now?” Razz asked, tapping a foot on Archer’s shoulder.
“The castle,” he said. “Lady Kasia might have information we need.”
The words had scarcely left his mouth when the bell of Old Jack rang out five echoing chimes.
“Five?” Archer mumbled. Razz shrugged.
I lost track of time, Archer thought. He wasn’t sure how. It might have been while weaving up the breaches, or maybe finishing off the scurions. It didn’t matter how or when. Losing track of time in the Dream was dangerous. For a Dreamtreader, it could be deadly.