Seven Dreams (26 page)

Lead on,
Captain,
she said crisply, and Teyo did.

As if being an
unwelcome, unwanted and uncongenial companion were not enough,
Farran Bron had the bad taste to be extremely good-looking
underneath all the false hair and ageing make-up he had been
wearing as Baron Anserval. He was no more than thirty in truth,
Serena judged, and he was blessed with all the regularity of
feature, blueness of eye and glowing good health that tended to
bestow considerable beauty.

Which wouldn’t
matter at all, except that he appeared to expect Serena to be
impressed by it. As though good looks had ever made up for an
obnoxious personality, she thought grumpily. His manner towards her
was only slightly less condescending than it had been as the Baron,
and he regarded her with a knowing twinkle in his eye that said,
I know I am gorgeous, and you know it too? Don’t
you?

Serena took great
pleasure in ignoring him.

The inhabitants
of Orlind were aware of the circling winds over the tallest peaks
that neighboured their domain, as it turned out, though they had
not yet launched an investigative expedition. The rejuvenation of
the realm was difficult and sometimes dangerous work, and their
numbers were, as yet, relatively few. They were willing enough to
explore to the peak, in preparation for which Serena and her
friends were honoured with a tour of the land on draykon-back,
which thrilled Serena enormously. Serena and Fabian were assigned
to be carried by a pair of draykoni who, in their human forms, were
slight and diminutive and looked to be of Ullarni heritage, if
anything. As draykoni, they were shimmering green and pale yellow
respectively, and as fearsome and impressive as any of their
brethren.

‘
We
have been reclaiming the land,’ Llandry explained. ‘It wasn’t as
far sunk as we initially thought. It’s hard work, but it’s worth
it.’

It was indeed,
Serena thought, as she flew over grassland and valleys and woods
surrounded on all sides by that strange, blue-purple sea. Compared
to the other realms, it was still tiny, a mere insignificant
island. What it lacked in size it made up for in lushness, rarity
and beauty, however, and their work was but barely begun.
Reclaiming sunken land was one thing; how they had contrived to
populate it with so much vibrant life in such a short space of time
confounded her completely. Draykoni sorcery of some kind, no doubt.
Perhaps Teyo would understand it.

‘
Come
back in about five years,’ Llandry said to Eva with a smile. ‘Then
it will be truly remarkable.’

The same company
assembled the next morning to explore the winds at the peak. Bron
was mounted draykon-back as well, much to his disgust. He had been
forced to admit that his precious airship was not best suited to
the requirements of the day, and fear of damaging it had obliged
him to consent to leave it behind. It did not suit his consequence,
Serena supposed, to travel as merely one of a group, rather than in
splendour as the captain of a grand airship which nobody else could
contrive to boast.

Eva and Serena
had asked a great many questions of Llandry, Pensould, Avane and
their companions, but no one had any more notion what the keys were
for, or what the rhyme in the sky meant, than they did. They were
able to establish that the words had appeared over Orlind at the
same time as they had materialised for the other six realms, but
the draykoni of Orlind had no further information to
offer.

They were as
intrigued as anybody else by the mystery, and several volunteers
were speedily found to carry the human members of the exploratory
party through the winds. Remembering the severity of the currents,
Serena had her doubts about the success of the mission. Llandry and
Pensould seemed unfazed by it, however. Draykoni must be stronger
than Serena had ever realised. Once again she missed Teyo, and
wished she had brought him along.

Given the risks
involved in penetrating the cyclone, the draykoni passengers had
been securely strapped to the backs of those carrying them. This
held its own dangers, and Serena had endured a lengthy lecture
first thing in the morning regarding What Not To Do If Your Draykon
Gets Into Difficulties. The lecture had mostly served to put
horrific ideas into her mind, which she tried and failed not to
dwell upon.

But once the
expedition launched and they were underway, she began to forget her
fears in enjoyment of the journey. The sensation of flying was
always delightful to her, and she could gaze at the flourishing, if
peculiar, vegetation and dazzling colours of Orlind all day. It did
not take long for their party to reach the high peaks separating
Orlind from the realm of Irbel, and the glittering scenery fell
away behind them.

These peaks had
been considered part of Irbel for longer than anybody could
remember. But it was Eva’s theory that, long ago before the
destruction of Orlind, they had been part of the Seventh Realm
instead, and hence, it was Orlind’s key they were now seeking. The
notion piqued Serena’s curiosity, and she pondered the arbitrary
nature of geographical boundaries and their inevitable fluidity all
the way to the tops of the peaks.

The winds could
be felt some distance away, initially as a moderate breeze but
rapidly swelling to grander proportions. As the winds grew to a
gale and began to snatch violently at her clothing, Serena’s fears
returned a little more than she would like. When the enormous,
powerful draykoni beneath her began to be buffeted about by the
winds and had frequently to adjust his course, those fears grew a
little more. She set her jaw, clung tighter to the makeshift
harness she’d been strapped into, and thought grimly determined
thoughts as their party’s leader gathered himself and plunged
headlong into the cyclone ahead of her.

Two draykoni had
volunteered as the advance party, neither of whom bore passengers.
Their task was to ascertain whether the circling gale could be
successfully penetrated at all; whether it could be safely done
with passengers in tow; and whether there was, in fact, anything on
the other side. The prospect that the winds might have nothing to
do with a Dream or a key or anything of interest at all had
certainly occurred to them, and it was a most unwelcome
reflection.

Serena, Fabian,
Eva, Tren, Bron and their mounts waited outside the pull of the
winds for their comrades to reappear. It took much longer than
Serena might have expected, and her nervousness grew. What if they
had got into trouble down there? Serena could see nothing at all,
for a thick, white mist obscured her vision in every direction. She
could not even see the tops of the mountains that surrounded them;
she could barely discern the tips of the wings of Fabian’s mount,
which hovered perhaps twenty feet away.

Draykoni had
mind-speak, though, she reminded herself. If anything appalling had
happened, their friends would be aware of it by now. Her draykon
mount shifted beneath her, and Serena wondered helplessly what it
meant. If only she could speak mind-to-mind with draykon-kind as
well!

Abruptly, her
mount gathered himself and charged forward, and Fabian’s moved as
well. She guessed that the all-clear had been sounded, and spared a
brief wish for more advance warning. She had no time at all to
prepare as her draykon dived into the mists and winds that
surrounded the icy peak, and her vision dissolved into nothing but
fog.

The next minute
or two were some of the most horrific of Serena’s life. If she had
thought that the circling gales of a moment before had been
alarming, plunging into the heart of the cyclone was...
indescribable. Her world descended into pure chaos; a confusing,
terrifying mess of mist and clouds and winds pulled violently at
her clothes, her hair — her mount was circling and descending and
then rising and circling and spinning about and — and then it
stopped. All of it, all at once. Even the mist vanished. Serena’s
draykon mount landed on something blessedly solid and stopped
moving.

Serena took a
moment to breathe, hoping that her wildly pounding heart would slow
to a more reasonable pace. She was trembling and sweating with fear
and shock, though the sight of her brother calmly dismounting not
far away soothed her a little. If Fabe was unfazed by it, she could
pretend to be as well.

After a few
minutes she untangled her freezing hands from the leather straps of
her harness and began to think about getting down. Her legs still
felt weak, but they would probably hold her. She gazed down
doubtfully at the ground they had landed on. ‘Is this... a
cloud?’

It looked like a
cloud. It was whiteish, and fluffy-looking, and plumply billowing,
and pouring billows of eerie mist, and damp-looking; all the things
one would expect of a cloud. But her draykon not only did not
plummet straight through, his feet were not even sinking. He stood
perfectly solidly, making slight bouncing movements which she
interpreted as invitation to dismount.

Nobody heard her
question. All the draykoni had landed around her, and their
passengers were swinging themselves down from their mounts with
every appearance of insouciance, enthusiasm and eagerness. Abashed,
Serena hastily unstrapped herself from the harness and slithered
down the draykon’s back to the ground. Despite the evidence of her
eyes, she half expected to sail straight through and fall about
eighty thousand feet to the ground. But she didn’t. The ground felt
soft and spongey beneath her feet, like very wet mud. But it held
her.

She drifted
towards Fabian, who stood not far away, and then stood staring in
awe. The cloud, if it was that, was vast, stretching away
apparently for miles in every direction. Its surface, shrouded as
it was in translucent mist, still revealed splashes of colour
dotted everywhere — flowers growing cheerfully in this environment
that wholly lacked soil, their delicate petals unfurled in the
eternal light. Serena saw rose and peach and lemon and cerulean,
jade and violet and lavender and all manner of hues. It was like a
rainbow shattered into splinters and then shaken all over the
surface of this peculiar place.

There were trees,
too, of sorts. Some were mere bushes, while others rose some way
over Serena’s head. These were eerily insubstantial: their trunks
and branches appeared to be wrought from nothing but silver and
golden light, and in place of leaves they bore tufts of pearly,
cloudy... something, which pulsed slightly as Serena
watched.

She saw no
animals at all save for one species: a flying creature resembling
the irilapters that were familiar to her. Their tiny, sinuous
bodies were covered in soft, downy fur of all manner of colours,
and their prismatic wings fluttered busily as they darted from
flower to flower, sticking their long, curling snouts into the
heart of each bloom.

It was no more
fanciful and bizarre than a lush forest and attendant wildlife
growing merrily underground, but it felt much more remarkable to
Serena. Perhaps because she had seen forests before, albeit never
one quite like the specimen at the Balbater dig site. But the
experience of standing with blithe unconcern atop a cloud
surrounded by trees made of light was wholly new.

A clear sheen and
a sparkle caught her eye and she followed, frowning. An expanse of
something like glass rose up before her, some forty or fifty feet
away from where she had been standing. Following its curving arc
upwards with her eyes, she guessed that it formed a dome enclosing
some part, or perhaps all, of the cloudy Dream she stood in. But
while it looked like glass, when she reached out to touch it she
found it to be insubstantial; her hand went straight through. There
was a point in there somewhere, though, where the temperature
changed from acceptably chilly to painfully frigid, and she hastily
withdrew her hand back into the relative warmth of the
Dream.

‘
Very
well, let’s not get carried away,’ Bron called grandly, even though
nobody was doing anything more questionable than wandering about
looking at everything. ‘All of this will need to be properly
studied and catalogued.’

He was right
about that, more or less. The other sites had been swarmed under
the moment they had been discovered, which was terrible for the
archaeological finds contained therein. At Balbater, Serena had
seen several teams of archaeologists desperately trying to salvage
and record as much as possible before it was trampled over or
stolen by heedless enthusiasts. This site had the advantage of
being inaccessible to the majority, so it offered the first real
opportunity for serious study.

That much
acknowledged, Bron’s attempt to assume control of the proceedings
irritated her. He had no authority, for they had not even used
G.A.9’s airship for this part of their journey. But he liked to be
in charge.

Nobody paid him
any attention, which gave Serena a moment’s reprehensible
satisfaction. Admittedly, it was partly because at that moment a
wave of purple colours washed over the cloud they were standing
upon, emanating from Avane. She looked up at Eva and Tren, and
grinned. ‘Looks better that way, doesn’t it?’

‘
Hmm.’
Tren poked at the purple cloudy stuff with his toe. ‘Draykon magic,
then?’

‘
Most
certainly.’