Into Sleep "It is said that the fairies known as the Dreamless go abroad only at night, and that they steal the dreams of mortal men because they have none of their own. It is also said that the Dreamless make pets from the ghosts of mortals who have died without a Trigonate blessing and use them for a hunting pack." -from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand" THE CLOUD OF DARKNESS covered a sizeable portion of the sky above the river by the time Barrick began to see the first bridges across the Fade, signs of the approaching city. At first he didn't even realize the asymmetrical shapes were bridges because they seemed to be jagged slabs of natural stone eroded by wind and water. As he saw more of Sleep he came to realize that this was the way of the Dreamless: their most careful constructions looked like preposterous accidents, with scarcely a straight line to be found anywhere.
The Fade itself was becoming busier, too, although all the boats and ships they saw, small or large, rowed by gray-skinned Dreamless or headless blemmies like the one laboring in their own craft, seemed to pass in funereal silence. There was no question, however, that the occupants of the other boats noticed Barrick and Pick: even the humblest Dreamless fisherman stared at the Sunlanders as though they had never seen anything so odd and so unpleasant in their long lives.
"Why do they look at us like that?" Barrick whispered. "Like they hate us?"
Pick shrugged, then lifted his bowl over the side to get more water for his master. "They do not love our kind, of course."
"But you said there were many of us kept here as servants."
"Oh, yes, Master keeps many. Not all are wimmuai, either. Some came from the Sunlands like you and I."
"Then why are the Dreamless staring at us?
Pick paused as he was crawling back under the tent on the deck. "I'm sure they are only staring at our boat because it belongs to Qu'arus. Perhaps they wonder why they do not see him-he is well known to many in Sleep."
After that the man in the patchwork clothes returned his attention to his dying lord and would not answer anymore questions.
Soon they reached the first of the darklights, a beacon atop a high-backed bridge that appeared to be a cauldron steaming out pure blackness-not a cloud, like smoke, but something thinner and less tangible, a stain that spread across the gray day. It stretched across them like a shadow as they neared the bridge and then slid past it. Barrick felt a chill seize his heart.
As the labyrinth of the city began to grow around them the gloom grew deeper. They passed more and more darklights, perched atop bridges or leaking from sconces on rough walls. The world became darker and darker, as though night had finally fallen over the shadowlands, but it was a curious sort of night that stretched in pools from the darklights instead of arising everywhere and equally: for a long time twilight still hung over their heads, gray sky glaring through the spaces between the somber darklights as distinctly as bright noon. Soon enough, though, there were no more spaces: the twilight had vanished altogether, hidden behind a curtain of inky darkness.
And with full dark came the Dreamless themselves, spilling out like termites from a split log, although at first Barrick could barely make out anything more than dim shapes moving through the streets of Sleep on either side of the river and crossing the bridges overhead, figures gray and indistinct as ghosts. As his eyes became more used to the darklights he could see them better. The color of their skin seemed always the same, but the Dreamless themselves were as different as the Qar he had seen at Kalkan's Field: some of them could have easily passed for human, but others were so disturbingly formed that Barrick could only thank the gods for the robes they wore. He also could not help but feel every single one of the Dreamless was watching him.
The River Fade became a wide, stone-sided canal, its edges entirely covered with docks and buildings, some of them so tall that Barrick could not see their tops above the murk of the darklights. As they slid deeper into the city, the blemmy still tirelessly plying the oars, Barrick felt as though he was being swallowed by something.
The Fade soon began to split into a series of lesser waterways. The blemmy steered down first one, then another, as if it knew exactly where it was going. The smaller the canals, the fewer passersby, until at last Barrick could see nothing else moving in this part of the bleak stone city except their own boat.
They had reached an area of silent marble buildings that were almost impossible to see clearly through the darkness. Huge willows lined the canal bank, long limbs swaying in the breeze, but the entire neighborhood seemed otherwise as lifeless as a mausoleum. The blemmy slowed the boat and then brought it to a stop at an ornate dock jutting several yards out into the water. While Barrick crouched in the stern, surprised by the sudden end to their journey, a crowd of shadowy figures drifted toward them out of the darkness, filling the dock while making no more noise than cats-almost a dozen Dreamless men and women dressed in black. Then one last figure came down the dock and the others made room for her. When she reached the end of the pier she stopped, her hands extended before her as though she walked in her sleep. Pick had folded back the tent. She stared down at Qu'arus where he lay in the bottom of the boat. Barrick thought at first that the Dreamless woman wore some kind of cowl, but then realized that the top of her hairless head was covered in plate, like the shell of a beetle. Her features were slender and mobile-her face looked nearly human but for her corpselike pallor-but much of her exposed skin was covered in bony carapace. He could not be certain because of her strange, Dreamless eyes, but he thought she had been crying.
When she spoke her voice was soft, though the language itself was harsh. The brief words could have been either a blessing or a curse for all that Barrick could understand them.
Pick looked up at her with a strange sort of satisfaction on his face. "I have brought him home, Lady."
She stood silently for a moment, then turned and moved back up the dock, her filmy black garment billowing around her ankles like mist. Several of the others lifted Qu'arus from the boat with Pick's help, then carried him along the dock after her, then up the steps toward what Barrick now saw was a great, dark house.
"Come inside quickly," Pick whispered. "It will be Repose soon-the skrikers will be out." After this incomprehensible warning he hurried up the dock after his master's body. Another servant, whose gray skin was as wrinkled as a wasp's nest, had tied a rope around the blemmy's waist and led it off through the willows and around the side of the squat, stony house. Barrick looked down at the place where Qu'arus had lain and saw for the first time that a gray wool cloak had been folded beneath him, no doubt by Pick to protect his master from the hard boards of the deck. Barrick lifted it and something fell out of the cloak and back into the boat with a clatter, making him look around in fear, but he was alone on the dock. The thing that had fallen was a short sword in an unadorned black scabbard. When he drew it Barrick saw with approval that its edges were sharp as a shaving razor, the kind of weapon he had not had since he had fought the Qar with Tyne Aldredge. He wrapped it back up in the cloak, then looked around for a place to hide them both. Something rustled beside him and he jumped, so startled that he almost dropped both objects into the river.
"Not going in, us hopes," croaked Skurn, tucking his wings. "Not into a Night Man house."
"What else am I going to do? At least I might learn something about where Crooked's Hall might be. Maybe I'll even get something to eat that won't have too many legs."
"As you wishes, then." The raven leaped up onto the rail of the slowly rocking boat and turned his back on Barrick. "Stay out here, us will. Not for us, a nasty mazy place like that."
Like much of what Barrick had seen of the city of Sleep, the house of Qu'arus was as intricate as the interior of a seashell, a succession of mostly windowless hallways, the stone walls sometimes rough, sometimes smooth, but always damp. Moss grew on the gray stone and in certain corners water dripped to the floor to be carried away down shallow sluices, but the moss also grew on white marble statues of incredible delicacy, and the water gurgled down hallways next to sumptuous carpets that bore tangled yet beautiful designs in stark black and white. He could see all of this only because of the small, pearlescent green hemispheres set low in the walls and along some of the passageway floors, which Barrick assumed at first were some kind of luminous stones, but soon realized were actually mushrooms.
He caught up with the servants carrying Qu'arus' body in the main hallway. The house was unpleasant, the near-silence disturbing, and the darkness oppressive. Had it not been for the changes the Sleepers had somehow made in him he would have been beside himself with unease-nothing could make him like this house: after only moments inside it he wanted badly to get out again. Still, he knew almost nothing of the city outside, let alone where he needed to go. What was it the Sleepers had told him?
"There is only one way you can reach the House of the People and the blind king before it is too late-you must find Crooked's roads, which will fold your path before you so that you may step between the world's walls. You must find the hall in Sleep that bears his name."
Pick had not heard of a place called Crooked's Hall, but perhaps some of the other servants might know of it. He hoped so-Barrick couldn't imagine interrupting the mourning of the stony-faced lady of the house to ask directions.
In the past he might have despaired, but now he felt the new strength in his crippled arm, the way it moved without pain. He thought, Anything is possible. I am a story now, like Anglin the Islander, and no one can say what the ending will be-not even these unsleeping monstrosities…
"Come with me!" Pick had turned away from the others and was tugging on Barrick's arm. "We'll go to the servant quarters. You will be less obvious there."
"Less obvious? I thought they were used to Sunlanders."
Pick hurried him down a spiraling hallway. "Things are… strange here. Different than I expected."
"The master of the house is dead. What did you think to find, a celebration? "
They coiled around and down, passing through a garden of pale fronds, dozens of plants that looked as though they should grow at the bottom of a stream. It might have been the light of the mushrooms, but nothing in the house seemed to have any color.
"In here," said Pick, opening a heavy wooden door and hurrying Barrick through into a huge, low-ceilinged room. The air had a curious, sour stench, but for the first time in Sleep he found himself in something like natural light-the red and yellow flicker of a large fire burning at the center of a wide stone expanse surrounded by what looked like an empty moat. Confined by this stone ditch, draped over logs and perched on piles of stones, were a dozen or more huge black lizards, each the size of a hunting hound.
"By the Three, I thought you said servants' quarters!"
Pick pulled at his arm again. "We share the fire. The Dreamless do not care for too much warmth and light. See?"
At the far side of the wide chamber something close to a dozen man-shaped figures sat huddled together in the shadows. Like his guide, they all wore clothes made of rags and patches, and for the first time Barrick realized that Pick did not dress that way by choice: the human servants had clearly been given household rags and had made their own clothes from them. Despite the stinking heat of the room he felt a chill. "I thought you said Qu'arus valued his Sunlanders."
"He did! No other Dreamless will even have them."
Barrick whirled on the tattered man. "You told me our kind were common here."
Pick looked frightened. "In the house of Qu'arus, we are."
"You lied to me."
"I… I did not tell you all the truth. I was afraid to return alone." He lowered his voice. "Please, don't be angry with me, friend."
Barrick could only stare at the man in astonishment. He wanted to strike the miserable creature, but reminded himself that things could have been much worse: at least he had happened onto perhaps the one house in all Sleep where he could enter without being murdered.
One of the figures along the wall stirred. "Who's that with you, Beck? "
Barrick raised an eyebrow. "Beck? So you did not even tell me your true name?"
" 'Pick' is how Master says it-that is what he calls me. I did not lie."
"Who have you brought?" the man in the corner asked again. "Come where we can see you."
The man apparently called Beck made his way over to the others. As they whispered among themselves, Barrick shook his head and followed. The other sunlanders sat on loose straw, which they had piled together in one place to make a sort of nest. Except for the one who was talking with Beck, the rest looked as though they were half asleep, their eyes empty, their faces slack; a few looked up incuriously as Barrick approached but the rest did not even raise their eyes.
"Ah, the water flows thinner now, I see," said the bearded man beside Beck. He looked Barrick up and down from beneath long, straggling brows. "And the birds fly farther."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Barrick demanded, settling down into the straw. The stranger had a long, wispy gray beard and the lines in his face looked as deep as if they had been carved with a knife in soft wood.
"That the gods see all." The old man nodded briskly. "All they see will be."
"Finlae used to be a priest," Beck said. "He knows a lot of things."
"I know too much," Finlae said. "That is why the gods shot an arrow into my brain to set my thoughts on fire. Because I saw their tricks and sang the stories for the people. I warned them. But they laughed and threw stones and bones. Stones and bones!"
Barrick shook his head. Small wonder that Beck had lied to bring him back-the company of this old madman must become rather unfulfilling after a while. He looked at the other servants-or slaves, to put the right name on it-and saw little in the way of intelligence in their staring eyes. If they had been bred like cattle, as Beck had suggested, then the breeder had done his work well. They seemed as stupidly placid as any barn full of milkers.
"Where is Marwin?" Beck asked.
Finlae shook his head. "Carrying jugs and jars up from the cellar. All day the lady was weeping, but only I could hear it. And now they prepare the feast. To send the master's soul to the other side on tears and smoke." He turned and fixed Barrick with his weirdly bright eyes. "You have traveled sleeping to the between. He will travel sleepless to the beyond."
Barrick let his head ease back against the wall and closed his eyes. All he wanted to do was rest, perhaps sleep for a few hours, and then leave this den of madmen behind. Nothing here would help him-certainly not Beck or the demented old creature named Finlae.
He came struggling up out of the darkness when he felt a touch on his face-his hand, his injured hand, shot up and grabbed. Somebody-Beck, he realized, it was Beck-whimpered with pain.
"Don't… hurt me."
"Why did you touch me?"
"I… I know you."
He opened his eyes wide. Beck was cowering down on the straw. Old Finlae had fallen asleep. "What are you talking about? Of course you know me-I came here with you."
"I know you… from before. What is your name?"
He narrowed his eyes. "Why should I tell you?"
"I know you! I have seen you before. We have… I think we have met. In… in the before…"
He realized he was still squeezing Beck's fingers in his own, hard enough that the other man was grimacing in pain. He let go. "In the before? You mean before you came here?" It was possible, he supposed. It was not as though he had been unknown in the world on the other side of the Shadowline. And what harm was there in admitting it now? "My name is Barrick. Barrick Eddon. Do you still think you know me?"
A look of nothing less than gratitude swept across the other man's face. "By the gods, yes! I remember! You are… you are the prince! By the Three, yes, you are the prince!"
"Not so loud! Yes, I am." But it was strange-he did not feel much like it. In the past, for all his unhappiness, he had never doubted that he was the son of a king. Now it seemed to be someone else's life, a story he had heard but never lived himself.
"You and your sister…" Beck flapped his hands in excitement. "You spoke to me. You asked me questions. After the first time…" His face fell. "After the first time I saw the Twilight folk."
"If you say so." Barrick had no recollection of the man.
"Do you truly not remember? My name…" he paused, squinting. Clearly he had not summoned the memory in some time. "My name is Raemon Beck."
The name meant nothing to him, but Barrick liked it better that way: he wanted no more reminders of the past. He could remember quite a bit from what Beck called "the before"-names, faces-but the memories were distant and curiously flat, with little feeling attached to them, like the diminished ache of a very old wound. Even thoughts of his sister, which seemed as though they should mean more, seemed instead to be something that had been stored so long it had lost all savor. And Barrick was more than content to leave things that way.
"What are those creatures?" he asked suddenly, pointing at the black lizards, which lay clustered around the flames in the center of their pit like Kernios' slaves in the underworld. "Why are they here?"
"Salamanders-fire lizards. They are Master's pets. He likes… he liked to feed them."
Better than he fed you, I'll wager, Barrick thought but did not say.
Raemon Beck had more questions about how the prince had crossed the Shadowline, but Barrick would not be drawn into idle talk and eventually Beck gave up; soon the only sound was the crackling of the fire and old Finlae's thin snoring.
In his dream-for it must be a dream, he realized, even though he did not remember falling asleep-the lizard's eyes were as bright as the flames around it. The black-armored creature sat not beside the fire but in it, crouched in a split log that burned and blackened in the depths of the blaze.
"Who are you that comes here without Tile or Pool?" it asked him in a voice like music.
"I am a prince, son of a king," he told the creature.
"No, you are an ant, son of another ant," the salamander lazily informed him. "An insect with the gift of a little power coursing in your veins, but still an insect for all that. Hurrying here and there, soon to die. Perhaps you will see my return. That will be a glory that might lend your small life some meaning."
He wanted to curse this cruel, arrogant creature, but the lizard's stare held him prisoner, as helpless as if he truly were the small, creeping thing it had named him. His heart felt cold in his chest. "What are you?"
"I am and I always was. Names do not matter to my kind. We know who we are. It is only your kind, with blinkered senses and swift lives, who insist on the tyranny of names. But no matter what your wise ones believe, you cannot command something simply by naming it."
"If we matter so little, why are you talking to me?"
"Because you are a curiosity, and although I do not have long to wait now, I have been forced to remain idle for longer than I would like. I am bored, and even a crawling ant can provide amusement." Its tail whipped a little from side to side, knocking up a spray of sparks. The crackling of the fire seemed to be getting louder-Barrick could barely hear the last of the salamander's words.
"I would kill you if I could," he told the creature.
The laugh was as beautiful as the voice, singing and silvery. "Can you kill the darkness? Can you destroy the solid earth or murder a flame? Ah, you entertain me most graciously…"
But now the noise of the blaze had become as loud as someone else speaking-no, more than one person. The fire spoke with several voices, the tongues of reddish light leaping up and enveloping the black lizard completely.
"… When a poor man is trying to sleep," one of the voices said. "Burbling and bubbling."
"Shut your mouth, Finlae," Beck said.
"But why would they want to do that?" said a voice Barrick hadn't heard before. "They do no harm…"
Barrick opened his eyes. Raemon Beck and ancient Finlae were talking to a third man, a large fellow with his hair chopped in uneven swathes like hastily-cut hay.
"You misheard," Beck told the newcomer, then saw Barrick sitting up. "This is Marwin."
"I knew someone named Marwin," the big man said slowly. He had an accent a little like what Barrick had heard of Qu'arus. "That's all I said. Could be it was me, but I can't remember."
"Exactly," Beck said. "Your memory is bad and your ears aren't much better, so you must have been mistaken about what you heard just now."
The new man turned to Barrick. "I'm not. Mistook, that is. They were talking about them lizards-Master's sons and Master's brother, they were talking to the mistress. 'Then get rid of them,' she says. 'I can't stand the way they smell or the way they talk.' Then the menfolk went to get clubs and spears."
"See?" said Beck. "Marwin is a dullard and he gets everything wrong. Why would she say that? Lizards can't talk."
For an instant Barrick remembered something about a talking lizard-had it been a dream?-then the hairs on the back of his neck began to tingle. "You heard them say 'lizards'?" he asked.
Marwin shrugged his wide, sloping shoulders. "They said, 'o hasyaak k'rin sanfarshen'-that means 'animals in the cellar.' " He looked around the broad, firelit chamber, frowning. "And this is the cellar."
"You fools." Barrick scrambled to his feet, his heart suddenly thumping in his chest. "They are not talking about some filthy lizards-they're talking about us."
"They would not hurt us!" Beck's dirty face had gone quite pale. "Master loved us!"
"Even if he did, your master is dead."
"When I came out of the trees he sang to me with his eyes," Finlae said.
"I don't doubt it-but I don't care," Barrick said. "Help me out of here, Beck. The rest of you may stay and die if you wish."
"But I'm so tired," said Marwin like a cross child. "I've been a-working all the day. I want to sleep."
"Tired, yes." Finlae scratched his bearded chin. "The days are long since Zmeos was banished…"
Barrick did not have the time or strength to waste. He grabbed Raemon Beck by the collar and dragged him to his feet. "Then enjoy your sleep. I fear it will be a long one."
Beck still looked befogged as Barrick dragged him toward the door, as though he couldn't quite understand what was happening, but Barrick did not bother to explain it to him again. The huge black lizards did not even stir as they went by, but Barrick suddenly remembered the fiery gaze of something he had seen in a dream and hurried Beck past them as quickly as he could.
"Can you kill the darkness…?" the thing had asked him.
"Which way?" he whispered when they were in the corridor. Beck didn't answer immediately, but Barrick heard what he thought might be soft footsteps coming toward them down the passage so he pulled the tattered man in the opposite direction. "The boat!" he said into Beck's ear. "Take me to the boat."
Raemon Beck finally seemed to understand the situation. He shook off Barrick's hand and began to lead him through the house's underground corridors. As they hastened down a long hall lined with closed doors, each one marked with a different symbol, a dreadful, raw shriek echoed past them, a sound of terror and pain. Beck stopped as though he had been stabbed to the heart. Barrick shoved him forward.
"That's your loving master's family at work behind us," he said. "Faster! Or we will be next."
Whimpering quietly now, Beck led them out of an unmarked door and into a wide wooden building that was dark but for a single row of the glowing mushrooms. For a moment Barrick was badly startled by what looked like a man waiting on the walkway in front of them, but it was only one of the blemmies. The creature, which had been shackled to a post with a heavy chain and left standing, turned to watch them go by but made no move to stop them. Its wide, dull eyes glinted in the mushroom light; the little round mouth low on its belly puckered and stretched as though the monstrosity were trying to talk. For all Barrick could tell it might have been the same creature that had rowed them to the house of Qu'arus in the first place.
"This… this is the boathouse," Beck told him. "But I do not know how to open the river door."
Barrick remembered the cloak and sword he had left in the front of the house. "Is the other boat still out there? The one that brought us?"
"Master's skiff? It could be." Beck was clearly terrified, but doing his best to think. "With everything else that's happening they might have left it to sit there until morning."
"Then let's go look. Can we get there from here?"
For once Raemon Beck didn't waste any time arguing. He led Barrick out of the boathouse and into the greater darkness outside the house, into the darklighted copse of willows that grew along the riverfront. As they rounded the side of the house and sprinted for the dock Barrick thanked whatever gods had chosen to bless him for once that the Dreamless made their houses without windows. He and Beck had a chance to escape before Qu'arus' kin could guess where they'd gone.
It was not to be. Just as he found the cloak and sword Barrick heard voices from around the side of the house: somehow, the Dreamless had found their trail. He hurried out onto the dock, Beck now running right behind him. The black boat still floated there.
"Thank the gods, thank the gods, thank the gods," Barrick murmured. He untied the boat and slid the oars into the oarlocks as quickly and quietly as he could. A faint green glow was bobbing through the willows toward them-most likely a lantern being held by the searchers. Now two more joined it.
"It's the middle of Repose," Beck said frantically. "The skrikers…!"
"Curse you, shut your mouth and get in if you're coming!" When the man still hesitated Barrick began to shove the boat away from the dock with his hands. This helped Raemon Beck make up his mind. He jumped awkwardly into the skiff, setting it pitching so badly Barrick cuffed him on the head in anger even as he struggled to keep the man from tumbling overboard.
"Get down, you fool!" he hissed. With Beck huddled near his feet, Barrick dipped the oars into the water and began rowing as quietly as he could. The shadowy mass of the house of Qu'arus and the flickering lights of their pursuers slid away behind them.
Barrick didn't stop or even slow until they had followed a series of branching canals far enough that even the darklights began to fade and the twilight to reassert itself. As he leaned on the oars catching his breath, exhausted but marveling at the new strength of his formerly crippled arm, he saw that Raemon Beck was weeping.
"By the Three, man, you can't be sorry to leave those people," he snapped. "They would have killed you! They've probably already done for your friends." He himself felt almost nothing in the way of regret. He would never have been able to herd Finlae and slow-witted Marwin out of the house in time. They would have all been caught and Barrick's own mission would have failed. A simple choice. "Beck? Why the tears? We're out."
The man looked up, his thin, dusty face streaked by tears. "Don't you understand? That's what frightens me! We're out!"
Barrick shook his head. "You make no sense."
"It's Repose. The time when all the Dreamless shut themselves inside their houses."
"All the better. How long does it last? We might find Crooked's Hall before they come out again…"
"You fool!" The man's eyes filled with tears again. "The skrikers are out-they're a thousand times worse than any Dreamless!" He reached out and grabbed Barrick's arm. "Don't you understand? It would be better if we were back in Qu'arus' house, beaten to death by his sons, than for the Lonely Ones to find us." He stared out over the water. "It would be better if we had never been born."