"Which one tonight, I wonder?"
She didn't tarry long; somehow she knew she didn't have long to tarry. She reached out to the nearest latch, opened the door attached to it and went through.
*
"Didn't I say, Master?"
Two men stood together on the mist plain, watching unnoticed as Joslyn finally returned to the warm safety of her own dream. The one who spoke was a wizened little man. A few wisps of iron
-
grey hair escaped from the hood of his deep blue robe, and his voice was like the whisper of a razor on the strop. The other was taller, rounder, with white hair and beard, weak blue eyes, and a face like a painting of some forgotten sage. He moved slowly; a man bearing more burden than was right for one person to carry.
"Yes. This girl's nightsoul, untutored, has managed to break free from its own dream and roam about the Nightstage. Remarkable! Belor, you've done well to find her."
"I fancy she'd find
us
if we let her be too long. She seems to have returned to her own dreams for now. Shall we observe, Master?"
The other shook his head. "I've seen more than enough. You know where to go now?"
Belor nodded. "Etched in my memory."
"Then go and give the acolytes their instructions. I'll remain here in case anything needs doing when the time comes."
Belor bowed low and then he just wasn't there. The other stood silently for a moment, then stepped a little closer to the faint yellow glow that was Joslyn's dream. After a moment he frowned.
You've gone too far, too deep for me to see you, girl. Where are you now, I wonder
?
*
Joslyn didn't know where she was. It was as if she'd stepped through the door into a stairway that only went down. She could see nothing except a blank whiteness, as if she were hopelessly lost in an endless blank of mist. Like the mist plain and... not like it at all. Somewhere else, and leading somewhere else. Joslyn had solid footing wherever she stepped, so long as those steps led down. She made a few feeble attempts to return the way she came, but became hopelessly confused on any direction except down. Joslyn was afraid, but she was curious, too. That made it impossible to try very hard to do anything except go on until her foot jarred on a step on the same level as the last one and she had arrived…somewhere.
Joslyn stood on what could have been an ocean beach. There was white sand beneath her feet, an ocean to her right, a high line of sea
-
cliffs to her left. Joslyn had never seen the ocean before, but she rather imagined it wasn't much like this at all
—
the sea was not green, or blue. It was black, blacker than the pitch torches at the entrance to the Street of Sighs, blacker than a rainy night. It struck against the white sands with a roar and hiss like a thwarted tiger, and left nothing of itself but the ripples on the sand. The beach itself was broken by pale granite spires that thrust out of the white sands like trees of stone.
"Where am I?" Joslyn heard her own voice then and nearly jumped. She hadn't meant to speak aloud, hadn't expected there would be anyone to answer her. She was wrong.
"Answer your own question, Child. You're the only one who can."
Joslyn glanced toward the cliffs. One bleached skeleton of a tree clung to the stone with gnarled finger roots, and sitting on that groaning perch was a harpy. It had feathers like shards of black iron, and wrinkled, pink breasts. Its face was familiar.
"Musa?"
The monster shrugged. "If you wish. It's your dream."
Of course. It was still unsettling, to be dreaming and know it. But oddly pleasant, for all that. Joslyn savored the moment. She looked around slowly, first at the black ocean, and then away to where the granite cliffs rose abruptly from the beach. The harpy was doing the same. It looked at the stone cliffs with one unblinking eye.
"Much of Ly Ossia is built of stone like this. I suppose that's why you chose to build your scene with it."
Joslyn was only barely listening. The ocean had reclaimed her attention. Joslyn had never seen so much water at once, and certainly none of this color. She stepped a little closer to where the sepia waves splashed the sand and sank into it without a trace. "That doesn't explain why the sea is black."
The harpy looked strangely pleased; it was all but preening. "No it doesn't. So clever."
"Will
you
explain?"
The harpy looked less pleased. "If there's an answer," she said, "why must you assume it comes from somewhere else? You want to know about the sea, then touch the sea and tell yourself what the sea is."
Joslyn looked at the black water. She didn't want to touch it. She didn't even want to take one step closer than she already was. Joslyn looked at the harpy, saw the disdain there, and did the thing she didn't want to do. She slid forward very carefully, until one inky wave, advancing just the slightest bit ahead of the others, washed over her pale foot.
Sweet Dreamer, save me
-
-
There was no saving. Joslyn felt the ocean reach out like a living thing, take hold of her. The pale sky exploded into all the jagged colors of a broken rainbow and then it was gone. There was nothing left but the darkness, could be nothing left but the darkness,
would
be nothing but darkness, ever again. Too late Joslyn knew what the ocean meant; she drifted with unseen currents for a time, for forever, sensed rather than saw the things that swam around her, things with long smooth bodies and teeth like needles.
One of them looked like Dyaros.
JOSLYN.
Too late, too late! No Joslyn here now. No Joslyn ever again. She was lost, lost...
JOSLYN!
She opened her eyes; it was as simple as that. Joslyn lay flat on her back on the warm sand. The harpy smiled down on her from its perch. "What is the Dark Sea, Joslyn?"
Joslyn licked dry lips, heard her own harsh voice. "Madness."
"You learn quickly," the harpy said. "and that's fortunate since you have so much to learn
—
"
The monster stopped talking when it was clear that Joslyn wasn't listening. She supported herself on one elbow and stared fixedly at the granite wall. Suddenly it was not so solid as she had imagined. She was certain that she could see through it, almost as if it was made of glass instead of granite. Joslyn looked closely, trying to see through the ripples and flaws in the texture of the cliffs; it was like trying to see through a poorly
-
blown glass bottle. But what little Joslyn could see was astonishing.
"The cliffs are glass," she announced, almost giggling."
The harpy shook its head. "That's the Dark Sea talking."
"No! I see it...."
"See what?"
"Someplace else."
Those were the only words to explain it. It didn't belong to her, not like the beach and the cliffs and even the Dark Sea did. She wasn't sure how she knew, it just
didn't
, in the same way that the misty plain far above did not. She felt its
separateness
, almost like looking at someone else's reflection in a mirror.
The harpy was looking at her strangely. "Child, I want you to tell me what you see."
"If you're part of me... part of the dream, then don't you know?"
The harpy smiled again. "Clever
—
"
Thunder.
Joslyn looked up, saw nothing in the sky but a high, wispy cloud. The thunder came again, louder.
The harpy looked up, too. "Pity. I wish we had more time, but someone's knocking on your door."
It's voice faded off like someone walking away. It took Joslyn a moment to realize that it wasn't the harpy who was leaving
—
the beach, the cliffs, the Dark Sea, all faded from sight. Joslyn felt herself rising like a swimmer toward the surface of the water. The glare grew brighter and brighter and at the last, just before she emerged from that deep place, strong fingers grabbed her wrists, pulled her the last little bit.
Joslyn lay blinking in the light of torches in her room. She looked to either side at the pale figures who held her wrists with very tight grips.
White Robes
..?
Joslyn tried to understand what it meant, and in that confused moment could only understand one thing
—
she was a thief. And she was caught.
"Let me go!" She struggled, but the acolytes did no such thing. They stood up, lifting her to her feet, and then moved apart just the slightest bit so that, pull though she might, she couldn't reach other one of them to bite or kick. "Damn you, let me go!"
"Don't be afraid... Joslyn? Is that your name, girl?"
Joslyn stopped struggling, partly because she knew it was useless, and partly because of what she heard in that voice. He stepped out into the torchlight; there was another man with him
—
the dark
-
robed priest Joslyn had seen earlier at the temple gates
—
but all Joslyn's attention was on the tall, strong
-
featured man in the white robe of an acolyte. His hair and beard were white, too, though Joslyn was uncertain about his age. He carried a small wand of ivory; clouds of gold thread were woven into his garb, though he didn't really need the distinction. Joslyn knew he was no acolyte.
He smiled at her. "Do you know who I am, Joslyn?"
She nodded, slowly. She knew. She'd never seen him before in her life, but she knew. All the stories passed around the thieves at table, all the rumors picked up with the loot on the streets of Ly Ossia came together in the man standing before Joslyn now. "Tagramon," she said. "Dream Master of the Temple of Somna."
He nodded, looking pleased. "A clever girl. That'll help."
Someone else had said that, too. Called her “clever.” Joslyn wasn't exactly sure who. She was still waking up, her sense of “here” and “now” coming back to her in bits and pieces. A large chunk of it suddenly arrived all at once, making her eyes grow wide. "Mers..."
The Dream Master frowned, and the dried
-
out little priest leaned over, whispered something to him. He smiled again. "Ahh, I see. The doorwatch. You're concerned about your friends, but don't worry
—
it's certainly not our purpose to harm anyone. We've come to honor you."
"Honor me? Why?"
"Because you're Chosen, Joslyn. Selected by sign and ability to become a Dreamer of the Temple of Somna."
Chapter 2
—
Hide, Seek, and Lose
Whoever the Blessed of Somna was who invented the robes of our Order, no doubt he lived in a very cold place
.
This somewhat impious thought occurred to Feran as he trudged in his heavy brown robes and backpack through a narrow valley somewhere between the Grass Sea and nowhere. As a member of the Order of Travelers, Feran was used to walking great distances, but it seemed to him that it was an easier thing to do a few years ago, when there were fewer gray hairs in his beard and a little more newness to the places he had seen. But now most of his pilgrimages had been fulfilled one after another: the Imperial Palace at Mekthos, ruined temples to vanished gods at the half-drowned city of Ly Manes, even the only known surviving Aversan shrine, little more than a few shards of marble and rumor hidden in the White Mountains. One by one he had visited them all, and dreamed the augury dreams at each place for himself, opening his Nightsoul to whatever the spirit and memory of the shrine had to teach.
And what exactly, had he learned? Feran wasn't really sure. It was hard now to think of anything worth seeing, worth going to that was a
place
, a goal and journey separate from the deeper places that were hidden in dream. As a young Initiate, Feran had thought that, when the older members of his order
—
those who survived a life of dangerous journeys and questing, that is
—
retired at last to their monastery in the west, it was because they were too old to travel, to see new places and dream new dreams. Now he understood it was because they were finished with traveling, and the new dreams were just beginning.
Feran thought that perhaps he should retire, also, but he shook his head. Not yet. There was one more place to go, one more thing to do. He was getting close. Feran kept looking for the sign, finally found it. Carved into a flat rock beside the trail was a long straight line ending in a small circle, the symbol any pilgrim would recognize if he came to this place
—
the Staff.
Old Kres was right—there is a Safe House near here
.
The far western lands had been little more than frontier before the time of the Empire, a dangerous place for anyone who normally traveled alone. In those days the Order had seen fit to establish havens for its members in strategic areas, their locations carefully mapped, concealed, and kept secret from outsiders. Times now weren't exactly safe, but the dangers were more defined and predictable and the need for the safe havens had declined. But it wasn't safety Feran needed now so much as isolation.
Feran turned down a side branch of the valley, a crevice so narrow and obscured that he might have missed it except for the pointing staff. A slow, steady breeze flowed through that narrow way; its walls blocked out most of the late afternoon sun and for a change Feran walked in cool shadow. He came to a place where a small spring bubbled out of the rocks and down into a natural basin about ten feet across. On the rock wall just beyond it he saw another carved staff.
Feran nodded. Bed and bath—anything more than that after a long hot day and it's pure greed
.
He tapped the wall with his walking stick, found the stone door behind a tangle of Morning Glory vines. It had been carved out of a single piece of sandstone, cracked now but still solid. It took a little effort and more sweat, but he finally got it open. Once inside, Feran could see how the builders had made use of a natural cave, enlarging and venting the space already there. The air was a little musty still, but with the door open it was changing rapidly. There were stone crocks along a near wall; they would have held dried beans and fruit at one time, but Feran didn't trust them now. He dropped his pack on the smooth stone cot and pulled out bread and hard cheese, then went back outside to fill his cup at the spring. The water was sweet and cold. He drained the cup and refilled it, then went back inside to eat.