What sent him back he never really knew. His own wishfulness, perhaps. The fear he felt for the safety of his animals. The girl … the beautiful, dying girl falling asleep again, or perhaps the act of being ripped from her web of tubes and fires. Or maybe a combination of all working in tandem with the words he spoke, or a combination of none. What mattered was that he had returned to the world he knew. The only world, of course. The real world. It was exactly as he remembered it.
Except that there was a beautiful dying girl in his arms.
He was standing in the entry hall of the warlock Hinga Cathore’s dwelling. It was dark, as it had been when he had been cursed, as it had been when he had been sent to Somewhere Else. As he stood wondering what to do next the sylph in his arms yawned and stretched. The boy who had left Harup-taw-shet could never have held her so long. The stalwart figure that boy had become supported the girl’s attenuated weight effortlessly.
“Nurse, is that you? Maria, Annalee? Can you turn up the heat, I’m cold and …”
She opened her eyes. Even in the dim light he could see they were still violet. He could tell because they opened very wide.
“You …!” She started to look around. “My dream—what’s this? Another dream? I’m dreaming a dream inside a dream? I wondered about that. I guess it’s possible because I’m doing it, right? Then why am I asking you? Dreams don’t explain themselves, they just go on, like a movie without a pause button.” Reaching up, she jabbed him in the chest and giggled. It was the uneasy laugh of someone in distress. “No pause button. Hey, I remember your name. Madrenga, right?” He nodded. “Madrenga, I’m getting really scared now. They say it’s hard to scare somebody who’s dying of cancer, but I guess it’s not impossible, because it’s happening to me.”
He was looking around anxiously. “When the people where you come from are dying, do they all talk so much?”
“I don’t know. I don’t talk to other patients in the ward. Only to the living who come to visit me. My doctors and the nurses, and my friends from school, and my mom and dad.…”
She started to hyperventilate, her chest heaving, and though he couldn’t be certain he felt that the cause was rising panic and not her death curse. So he put a hand over her mouth to quiet her. She started to struggle then, flailing weakly at him, the panic moving from her breathing to her eyes. Slowly, he eased off his smothering hand.
“Be silent! Think what you will. You may be dying where you come from, you may be dying here, but I am not and do not wish to.” His gaze rose to the winding stone stairs that led to the rooms above. “Something was taken from me. I need to get it back.”
She swallowed. When she spoke again it was in a whisper. “I’m supposed to die from leukemia, not suffocation. I never knew a dream could kill you.”
“Then maybe,” he told her as he started up the tornado of stairs that were lit only by the last flickering embers of dying torches, “you might consider the possibility that this is not a dream.”
“I—I don’t think I can do that. I don’t want to go crazy before I die.” Realization struck. “That’s it! It’s the medication. It’s affecting my mind. One of the nurses got the cocktail wrong. It’s all such powerful stuff, they tell me. I’m getting the wrong mix.” Turning in his arms as much as she was able, she checked her right side, then her left. Where there had been tubes she found only needle holes. “My feeds. Where are my feeds?”
“If you mean the things that were sticking out of you, I pulled you free from all of them. You came with me. They did not.”
Thinking he heard footsteps, he paused until the faint noise disappeared entirely before resuming his climb.
“What a great dream,” the girl in his arms murmured. “A knight errant …”
“I am a courier,” he corrected her primly.
“A knight errant,” she repeated insistently, “in realistic surroundings. Really realistic. I know I’m not dead. The dead don’t dream, right? Right?” Letting go of his neck, she folded her arms across her chest. “It’s so realistic that I’m cold.”
“You’re wearing very little clothing,” he pointed out.
“Oh, you noticed that, did you? It’s a hospital gown. It’s what they give you so if you make a mess they can just throw it away, and because it’s easier to get at your body and all the stuff they hook up to you.” Her expression twisted. “I’m supposed to get my meds constantly. I guess in a dream I don’t need them. I don’t need nurses or doctors or friends or anyone.”
“I do,” he snapped. “I need Bit and Orania back.”
She looked up at him. He was handsome enough, she decided, though far from the rugged image she had invented for her gaming. “Your friends?”
“My dog and my horse. They have been with me all the way from Harup-taw-shet. They have been with me since I was a child.”
“You don’t have a childhood. I dreamed you up fully grown. And I never heard of this hup-two-three place. I did dream you a horse. One with a long, flowing golden mane and tail, but his name was Brucelus.”
“It’s Orania,” he said again, “and he’s a she.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. “And there was no dog. Of what use is a dog to a supreme warrior?”
“I’m not a supreme anything,” he shot back, “much less a warrior. Strange things have happened to me since leaving home, it’s true, but I am no warrior, supreme or otherwise.”
She considered the young man who was carrying her as easily as if she was a leaf. Broad chest, wide shoulders, arms like tree branches, legs like pillars. A heavy sword slung at his waist, armor like steel but something else gleaming on his limbs and torso.
“You should take a closer look at yourself,” she murmured. Her heart raced, which given her general physical condition was not a good thing. “Of course some ‘strange things’ have happened to you since you left home. They’re all part of the game I invented, to keep from going crazy before I die. Tell me: with each challenge you faced do you get bigger and stronger?”
That brought him to a halt. He stared at her. “I did, yes.”
She nodded knowingly. “It’s because that’s how I designed your character to react. With each enemy you defeat you gain power and stature.”
“Then,” he asked her after a long pause, “why didn’t I get big and powerful enough to defeat Hinga Cathore? Why were a bunch of ordinary seamen able to maroon me on a wooden platform? I didn’t fight my way out of that. I was just lucky that the shadows showed compassion toward me instead of filling my lungs with seawater. And if I acquired so much sway, how were a couple of ordinary minions able to trick me into coming here in the first place?”
She peered up at him. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe I turned the wrong way in my sleep or something.”
His voice was firm. “Or maybe there are just some coincidences here. Fate has a strange sense of humor. Maybe this world; now, here, in this stairwell, on these stones, is the real one. Maybe I’m dreaming you, and this netherworld of ‘Pittsburg’ is the invention.” Seeing that he was frightening her, he softened his tone and his expression. “You’re cold.”
“Or I’m dreaming that I’m cold. Either way, it’s uncomfortable.” She looked around: at the stone stairwell, the stinking smoking remnants of wooden, oil-soaked torches, the occasional small colorful banner. “I think I want my nurses now. I think I want to wake up. I don’t like this dream anymore.” Her eyes met his once again. “I don’t think I like you anymore.”
“I am sorry for that. I didn’t ask to go where you were. But you asked me to carry you, remember?”
“Only in my dream.”
“You’re shivering. We’d better find you some heavier clothing. Even though you’re dying of this curse of which I know nothing I would not wish for you to perish first from the cold. Then I would feel myself responsible.”
Growing colder, she continued to hug herself and press against him for warmth. When he stopped she assumed they must be near the top of the stairs because light was visible from above.
“Stay here and be quiet.” He set her down and she had to lean against the cold mortared stone for support.
“Nasty dream man,” she muttered. “Quit giving me orders or I’ll dream you awa …”
He’d put his hand over her mouth again. Remembering how uncomfortable it had been the last time he had done so, her eyes widened and she nodded slowly. Putting one finger to his lips he headed up the stairs, making nary a sound as he ascended. A moment later there was the muted noise of a scuffle. When he returned, he was carrying pants and shirt fashioned from a fabric like heavy silk. She did not need his gestures to tell her what should be done with them.
Though large for her slender form, she was able to make them work by folding back the sleeves and cuffs and tightening the included belt to the last notch. When she had finished slipping this new attire over her hospital gown and pulling the right sleeve down over her hospital bracelet, he showed her a short sword.
“Can you use one of these?” he whispered tightly.
She eyed the thick metal blade. “I don’t even think I can lift it. Where did you get …?” Before she could finish the question, he had swept her up in his arms again and was carrying her upward. She would have pursued the question and followed it with others, but the speed of the ascent was making her breathless and the tautness of the muscles in his arms was unaccountably distracting.
They reached the top of the stairs and burst into a high-ceilinged, moonlit room. Through an open portal in the far side she could see the lights of a distant city that was, even via a brief nocturnal glimpse, plainly not Pittsburg. Off to one side the source of her new clothing became apparent in the form of a prone, naked man. Still cradled in Madrenga’s arms, she nodded in the figure’s direction.
“I know it’s all a dream, but in it isn’t he going to be cold when he wakes up?”
“He’s not going to wake up.” Setting her down gently in one of four chairs, Madrenga began searching through the pile of books and artifacts that filled a large table to overflowing.
That was when she noticed the blood. Spending as much time as she had in hospitals she had become quite familiar with blood in all its many forms. Her particular incurable condition had made her intimate with its morphology, its chemical makeup, its moods and manifestations. What was leaking from the prone man’s neck and forming a spreading pool on the stone floor was indisputably blood. As if her dream senses were not heightened enough, she could not only see but smell it.
To her surprise she found that despite all the dream running around, she felt a little better than usual. Pushing against the arms of the chair, she tried an experiment. When she found that she could actually stand on her own her joy was unbounded.
“Look. Look at me, Madrenga! I can stand! By myself. Of course, anything is possible in a dream.”
He continued rummaging through the materials atop the desk. “Myself, I never believed that lying abed did anyone’s health any good.”
She turned a slow, hesitant circle. Once she nearly fell and had to steady herself by grabbing the back of the chair. Her fingers gripped graven images of fantastical animals and astronomical signs.
“Before I wake up, I’d like to know what you’re looking for so desperately.”
“A message. A scroll that I am sworn to deliver to its destination.” Anxiety was writ large in his expression. “It’s not here,” he announced despairingly.
She gestured at his left hand. “Then what’s that you’re holding?”
“A book. A book of curses and spells. The words within were used against me. If naught else I can see to it that they are never used against anyone else ever again.”
Walking tentatively toward him, conscious every moment of her precarious balance, she extended a hand. “Can I see it?”
He hesitated. “How do I know you will not use it against me?”
She almost laughed. “I’m a dying girl in a dream. What harm could I do to you that Fate hasn’t already done to me?”
He passed her the book. Opening it, she flipped through the pages. In oddly skewed fashion some of the symbols and words made sense to her. She had once invented a book of spells for her game, but it was much bigger than this. Far heavier, with a different and thicker binding and gold fore-edging. The book she held was fully functional and unlike the one she had envisioned, not intended for purely ceremonial purposes. Like so much else she had discussed with this Madrenga it was close but not quite a match for what she had dreamed. It was just off enough to be … what? Real?
She could not ever remember dreaming a dream that had gone on for so long, not even when under sedation for extreme radiation or chemotherapy, not even in the course of surgery. She hefted the modest tome he had handed her.
“This must be the paperback version,” she joked.
Her description held no meaning for him. “All books are made of paper, or something very similar. Come. Or do you need me to carry you again?”
I’d like you to carry me again was what she thought. “Let me try,” was what she said. She had to lean against him for support and several times while descending the spiral staircase she nearly fell, but by the time they reached the last step and the hall where they had materialized she was, inexplicably, feeling stronger than ever. Seeing that she was able to walk by herself he did not pause in the hallway but continued onward toward the large arched doorway.
“Where are we going?”
“To find my friends,” he told her without looking back.
The stables where Bit and Orania had been boarded were unchanged from when he had last seen them—if one discounted the iron bars that now formed an impenetrable cage around the mare’s stall. He worried about Bit’s reaction, fearing that the dog might start yapping uncontrollably and thereby draw attention, but his old friend was so pleased and relieved to see his master again that he forgot to bark. Pressing his face against the checkerboard of bars he licked Madrenga’s proffered hand until the youth worried the skin would begin to come off. Standing nearby, Maya frowned as she studied the two animals.
“This isn’t right. Again. The horse I dreamed for you was white and had a long, neatly combed golden mane and was slim as a thoroughbred. This creature’s hair is mostly reddish brown, its mane is cut way too short, and it’s built more like a rhino than a racehorse.” Her eyes shifted to Bit. “Like I said, I didn’t dream you a dog at all. I don’t much like dogs. I prefer cats.”
Turning away from his master’s hand Bit moved to his right and growled at the girl. Dream-growl or not, Maya drew back hastily.
“See? He doesn’t like me either.”
If not for the seriousness of the situation Madrenga would have smiled. “You said you preferred cats. How would you expect him to react? Just ignore his teeth and give him a chance. He’s really very friendly.” Looking anxiously around the open courtyard, the youth urged her forward. “Let him get a whiff of you, see that you mean him no harm.”
“Well, okay—why not?” Stepping forward, she boldly thrust her hand through the bars—and promptly got nipped.
“Bit!” Madrenga shook a finger at the dog. “No!”
Maya was holding her hand. Looking down at it revealed a tiny trickle of blood, dark-hued in the moonlight. “That hurt. It still hurts.” She looked up at the tall young man who was eying her with concern. “It’s not supposed to hurt, in a dream. I’m not supposed to keep bleeding in a dream. It’s not …” She broke off and looked around, clutching the small book he had entrusted to her. “I don’t remember dreaming anything like this place.”
Seeing that, at least for the moment, she was going to live, he started hunting for a key. First he would free his companions and then …
“You there! What are you doing! Guards, an intruder!”
A gong sounded. Before it ceased reverberating the courtyard began to fill with armed men. They came from two directions; some fully equipped, others struggling to pull on the last of their clothing or armor. Both columns headed toward the stables. Uttering a curse that was beyond his years and caused Maya to blink in surprise, Madrenga drew his sword. In the dim light it gleamed brighter than the moon.
She found it prudent to set the dream vs. reality debate aside when the first severed limb came flying her way. She wished she had accepted the sword Madrenga had offered her upstairs even if she could do no more than plant it in front of her.
The battle that raged in the courtyard was devoid of the grace and gallantry she had often choreographed in her mind. There were no gracile lunges, no delicate pirouettes, no balletic spins and twirls. Spinning and twirling would have meant showing your back to your assailant; a stupid and likely fatal mistake. What she was witnessing was more akin to setting a time limit for a dozen chefs de partie armed with very large knives to butcher a steer. The blood that flew made that lost by the single guard in the tower behind them look like red spit in the ocean. There was also, thanks to Madrenga’s enhanced size, strength, and skill, a great deal of active dismemberment. Behind her the dog and the horse were going crazy, but despite their own singular abilities were unable to break out of their stout prison. There was more to their cage, she suspected, than mere iron bars.
The one individual who knew by what means Madrenga’s companions were kept penned parted the surviving guards like a lion through a herd of gazelles. Disbelief gave way to anger as Madrenga, bloody sword hanging from his hand, met the other man’s burning gaze without flinching. Though panting hard from the fight the young visitor still found the words he needed.
“I’ve come back, Hinga Cathore.”
“How …?” The warlock flicked the rest of the question aside. “You should not have come back, Madrenga. By what means and effort it matters not.” Leaning slightly to his right he peered past the youth. “And brought something with you, it seems. Unfortunate for it.”
So engrossed by the confrontation was Maya that she did not express outrage at being referred to as an ‘it’. The night air was suffused, was saturated, with the smell of death of a kind very different from that to be found in the hospital.
Reaching down to his waist, the warlock removed a small metal cylinder from a pocket and shook it at Madrenga.
“This is what you came back for, isn’t it? Not for me, nor to justify and restore your own miserable existence. For this!”
“You’ve read it.” Madrenga spoke flatly, his fingers white-knuckled against the haft of the great dripping sword. “You know what it says.”
“No. There was no hurry. I had dispensed with the courier. Why rush what promised to be an unexpected delight? Expectation is savoring. But I will read it just the same, this very night. Later, after I have had time to regret my previous compassion.” He straightened, and Madrenga tensed. “I should have known better than to simply send you away.” Again he glanced toward Maya who, though she believed him to be only a dream figure, found herself nonetheless cowering behind the tall young man. “I send you to a place of disease and death, and instead of having the grace to die there you return with both in tow.”
How, she wondered in confusion, how did this creature know she was sick? How did he know she was dying?
Cathore slipped the corium cylinder back into his pocket. Raising both arms, holding his palms toward the ground, he aimed his fingertips at Madrenga.
“My store of mercy is small, youth, and you have used it up.”
Echoing a battle cry he remembered from the fight on the Thranskirr, Madrenga raised the massive sword fully over his head and charged. He got exactly two steps before both he and Maya were englobed in a sphere of pale blue flame. Before he even had time to realize the nature of the rotund prison, it began to contract around them.
Raising his sword he swung it in a mighty arc at the curve of pulsating fire. The blade did not penetrate. Maya crowded close but this time he did not respond to her proximity. Bit and Orania were in a frenzy now, barking and neighing their alarm and frustration. He turned to the girl standing behind him. She looked dazed. With his free hand he reached down and shook her.
“You said you could read!” Releasing her shoulder, he indicated the book she held. “Then read! Find something!”
“Find—something? Find what?”
“Something to let us out of this infernal conflagration! Out of this trap!” His fingers tapped the book, hard. “A counterspell. Try!”
“I …” She stared at him. The burning blue wall was closing in behind her and she could feel the rising heat. What burns first in a dream, she wondered? Clothing, or flesh? “I want to wake up!” she wailed.
There was no time for him to be angry at her. “Do as you wish but find something first. Find some words!”
“Words,” she mumbled, “yes, words.” To his immense relief, however transitory that might prove, she opened the book, lowered her gaze, and began skimming. As the ball of flame drew ever tighter around them and the heat continued to intensify, he silently urged her to read faster.
Using his hands he tried to bodily slow the fire globe’s contraction. Though for reasons unknown his fingers did not burn, neither did he succeed in holding back the shrinking globe. As the flames used up the air inside he was finding it harder to breathe. Realizing the hopelessness of his efforts he drew his hands back lest they suddenly start to burn. A man with blisters cannot handle a sword—though it was beginning to look as if that opportunity was unlikely to ever again present itself.
As with the first time she had laid eyes on the book’s contents, some of the symbols and images were familiar to Maya and some were not. It was the same with the words. It was only when she found a page that seemed as if it might be relevant and hesitantly began to chant its awful poetry that she felt reasonably sure she was pronouncing the words correctly. As she spoke into the night air and felt the end of her thick braid beginning to smolder she wondered if what she was doing in her semi-dazed state would have any consequences at all.
They did.
There came a great whoosh and gust of air as the fiery globe exploded and sent blue flame flying outward in every conceivable direction. Sheds, stable buildings, the remaining guards: anything and everything inside the high-walled stone courtyard that was combustible instantly burst into flame. Screaming men afire scattered in all directions until they fell, overwhelmed by the smoke and heat. They burned where they lay. Wasting no time in marveling at the overpowering effect of the countering spell, Madrenga sheathed his slickened sword and rushed to where Hinga Cathore had fallen. Her fingers touching her lips, a wide-eyed Maya followed haltingly.
The warlock’s clothes were completely gone. So was most of his flesh, the remainder blackened and steaming. Empty eye sockets stared vacantly at the night sky. Madrenga did not blanch as he knelt to search the smoking corpse. Behind him, Maya turned and vomited. Along with the slight contents of her stomach went a good deal of the certainty she held about being lost in a dream. But not quite all.
Skull, bones, flesh, clothing—all had been burned away from the warlock’s body. But the sealed corium container was fireproof as well as waterproof. An elated Madrenga picked it up—and promptly dropped it as the heat it retained threatened to set his own shirt afire. Only when the night air had cooled it sufficiently did he feel safe wrapping it in a fold of his shirt. Rising, he hurried toward the stable.
So intense had been the blast from the exploding blue sphere that it had partially melted some of the bars of the stable cage. At Madrenga’s command Orania turned ass-forward and kicked out enough of the weakened barrier for her to duck through. While recovering from the shock of the eruptive blue conflagration Maya had formulated more than a few questions. She didn’t get the chance to ask them.
Sweeping her off the ground Madrenga deposited her on the saddle between himself and the pommel while Bit leaped to his usual position atop the double backpack and took hold of the material with his claws.
“HUP—GO NOW!”
Snorting just a little bit of fire herself, Orania charged toward the gate. Several of the surviving guards had regrouped and prepared to bar the way. This proved an unwise decision, as those who were not decapitated by Madrenga’s whirling sword went down beneath his mount’s thundering hooves. One of those who perished thus was the Harund who had helped to deceive the youth into believing he had friends in Yordd. As he brought his sword straight down instead of swinging it in an arc, Madrenga neatly cleaved the stocky axe-wielder from the top of his skull all the way down to his sternum. Blood fountained and Maya, leaning forward, tried to throw up again. That her stomach was empty did not make the attempt any less raw.
They were forced to halt before a second, barred gate. From the parapet above, concealed guards sent arrows whistling toward the would-be escapees. While Madrenga warded them off with the blade of his sword Bit jumped down and began to gnaw through the heavy oak. When he had weakened it enough, Orania turned without having to be ordered and reduced the remaining wood to splinters.
As they fled down the hillside toward the city there was no indication of pursuit. Behind them jets of intense blue leaped from within Hinga Cathore’s compound as if the flames wanted to set the clouds themselves on fire. Leaning back against Madrenga’s solid bulk an exhausted Maya found her thoughts drifting.
“What a dream,” she murmured. “What a dream. Even if everything really hurts.…”