“This way, sir.”
A man wearing a mortarboard cap, a diagonal shoulder sash in velvety turquoise, and a magnificently oiled mustache above a broad smile was gesturing down the steps.
I looked around.
The moon and stars glinted above the city like gemstones studded in a diorama, bathing the two of us in a soft blue light. Around us, the city itself was of a form that could, if one squinted, be compared to the squat shape of the city I had fallen asleep in. But here it was as if it had awakened from hibernation. Torches flickered in every street; crowds thronged. In the place of the short, stubby buildings with flaking paint stood great towers and domes, arcing gaily toward the sparkling heavens. Even the great heights above us bore human traffic; silhouettes could be seen conversing in lit balconies, and traffic moved across great bridges that spanned nearby towers. Every space and every corner was filled with light, color, noise, and life. We, ourselves, stood on some wide, raised, tiled patio overlooking the city, ringed by an intricate brass railing. A set of steps directly in the center of the railing opposite us led down a story to street level, which was thick with revelers.
It was, in a word, magnificent.
“This is your first time, I know. It is captivating, is it not?”
I laughed; it sounded hollow and lightheaded to my own ears. I was just so surprised.
Then, as I thought about walking where he had gestured, I collapsed, remembering my leg.
“Oh!” the man said. He rushed to my side and began helping me to stand, and then he had a crutch he was sticking under my arm. “My apologies.”
“None needed,” I replied. “I just thought captivating was a funny choice of words, is all.”
We spoke more as he helped me down the steps and then through the city streets. He was Sahid, a spirit of this place, an extension of Lady Iltara’s will. I was not speaking to the lady directly just yet—the lady’s will was Sahid’s will, but he was independent in senses and thought. Sister Gena and Sir Hester had been through just before, he mentioned. I asked if this meant that they had fallen asleep earlier—that this realm of dreams was entangled with the physical realm by the passage of time. He nodded, wearing that same cheerful, enigmatic smile. “I cannot say Her Highness has gifted me knowledge of the… true nature of it all,” he said. “But a minute as passes here is a minute as passes there, it does seem.”
We were in the thick of the crowds then. It was by no means a crush, but it was a rather larger number of people than I had been used to seeing in one area, after long weeks in the desert and the open veld before that. I was struck by the wealth and glamor of it all. Richly dyed and exquisitely woven clothes were draped across every body. Fingers were adorned with gems and clasped around gorgeously smithed goblets. People lounged on chairs before the buildings, exchanging gossip and song. One couple of friends was hauling their pleasantly drunken friend somewhere, perhaps home. A group of six children played some sort of street game with balls and chalk.
Many of them glanced our way. There seemed to be interest in my garb, which would mark me for a traveler, and my style of beard, which would mark me for an outsider. But nobody interrupted our journey, stopped us for questions, or so much as scowled at me before returning to their celebrations.
I was about to ask Sahid if this was because of his company, but then a more important question occurred to me. “Are they all…?” I began, not sure if what I was about to say was rude.
“The fair citizens of the city,” Sahid finished. “Mortal folk like yourself, yes.”
My mind turned over the possibilities. I forgot my aching body, lurching automatically along the street at Sahid’s direction, while my brow furrowed in thought. “Of course, I suppose. The Lady of Dreams. But… why? Why else? Or perhaps why not?”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“They dream. I have the sense that they have not awakened for a long time. I don’t know what to make of that.”
Sahid’s smile faltered for the first time. “It is… perhaps best that you ask Her Highness about that, if you wish to know.”
He quickly returned to his usual cheer, though, and he introduced me to the geography of the place as we wove our way along the patchy grid of streets into which the grand towers and temples had been set. He pointed out places of worship, civic administration (architects, planners, tax officials, and a few he was rather more circumspect about), taverns, workshops, wineries, manufactories, places for gathering and for artwork, and public squares for dancing and for festivities.
We crossed the last of these squares, ringed by golden braziers cradling bright-red flames, and we began the long, slow climb up the steps, through a line of grand marble columns, across the wide porch, and into the temple proper.
The temple took the form of a cylindrical tower, admirably proportioned so it would feel both tall and broad. The ground level here (or, I suppose, the first story above street level, given the climb up to the entrance) consisted of a raised dais in the very center, about half the diameter of the structure. Down two wide steps from the dias, in every direction, was a reflection pool, and a brilliant rainbow ring of torches blazed above it1. Here and there, mostly near the edge of the pool, devotees were carrying out little rituals, or prayer, perhaps, or other acts of faith with which I was unfamiliar.
In the center, a few stiff-looking woven mats had been laid out. Sahid led me onto one, and standing upon it himself, he looked up, and I with him. Balconies ringed the tower for ten stories up, and in the shade of their colonnades more people could be seen sitting, standing, or moving to and fro in unknown activity. Then, the balconies began to grow closer: our mat was rising in the air, carried by an unseen force. Sahid smiled at me, and I realized that he had placed a hand on my back to steady me.
A few minutes later we disembarked on the top balcony. Voices, footsteps, and gentle laughter echoed up here beneath the dome. I had the sense that one need only lean on this balcony and look down to hear and know of the whole bustle of goings-on in this splendid place, even if the specifics of any given activity were indistinct. We climbed another set of stairs, and the sound faded as we passed through an archway, outside into the night.
The overlook was quieter, more intimate. The sounds of the temple were audible, but distantly, as if to remind you that they were there, close, but you were in pleasant seclusion. It was laid out in the pattern of a throne room: a broad space, laid out in depth, watched over by a gilded throne upon a dais directly opposite the entryway. Sahid and I stood only about a dozen paces from the throne. There was seating: woven chairs with cushions. A gentle night breeze tugged gently at the white-and-lilac-flamed torches set into the balustrade.
Lady Iltara sat idly cross-legged upon the throne, just as I remembered her—leisurely, dressed exquisitely (tonight, a swan-white gown laced with gilded pearls), and confident. Her left hand ran benevolently through the mane of a tremendous lion that lounged by her side. The lion had gigantic wings, tawny-feathered like a desert eagle. It must have had a wingspan of at least twenty feet unfurled. It looked well-fed2.
Gena and Hester sat in two of the chairs, in audience with the lady, and a few servants clothed like Sahid were engaged in various servantly activities at the margins of the room.
The three, and the lion, turned to regard us.
Iltara offered a smile and an intrigued tilt of the chin. She motioned for some servants to bring me a chair and help me into it, relieving me of my crutch and replacing it with a goblet of wine in a well-practiced waltz of service. Sahid had vanished.
“You come late,” she said. “But welcome to this great house. Please,” she said, gesturing to the wine in my hand.
“I told you he would come,” Hester said, satisfaction writ plain on his face and his crossed arms.
“The point is yours,” she said. “And now that he has come, we should waste no more time.”
“I agree,” Hester said, which struck me as a frighteningly impertinent note of agreement.
The lion shook its great mane (also bringing about a voluminous ruffling of feathers) and huffed.
“I welcome you to this court and this city to solicit your service. Pledge your fealty and render unto me your talents. Partake in the splendor of my vision—our vision.”
“Why?” Gena asked.
The lion’s ears twitched. Lady Iltara took a sip of wine. “Should I not think you talented? Your services worthy of me and my people? You have come far and braved great danger.”
“But you wanted our service before that. Before the great journey, before the great danger. We’ve known all along.”
“And you’ve known, too,” I added. “You’re not asking us just because we’ve handled the journey here.”
Lady Iltara swirled her goblet around, her lips hidden behind it, her eyes peering over at us.
“You want my service,” Gena said. “You did all this to get to me. Why?”
I remember thinking that when Gena solved riddles before I did, the solutions were often very, very scary.
Lady Iltara smiled, fierce and hot like the desert sun. “I will admit it, then,” she said. “I need you. An apprentice wizard and a fine knight have accompanied you and they would make fine agents of my court, no doubt, but they are not the object of my desires. You, Sister Gena, are a scholar of impressive raw ability. You would surely become among the finest in the realm if left to hone your skills at that monastery.”
I felt my limbs growing numb and cold with fear. Hester knew something was wrong, too. His jaw was set, ears pulled back, face paling. What had we done?
Had we been simply escorting Gena into danger this whole time?
Lady Iltara stood and turned her lovely back to us, leaning onto the rail, overlooking her domain. “You are needed here. This city, this place of life and splendor, will come under siege, soon. The king in the south will march on it.” She turned and locked eyes with Sister Gena.
“And you need me to arm you with Ae’s weapon,” Gena said.
“What?” Hester yelled, bolting to his feet.
Three pairs of eyes fixed onto him.
Four pairs, counting the lion’s.
I bolted to my feet, too, only I didn’t, because one of them was still held in place by a splint, and my chair pattered out from under me as I fell. Hester was moving, his two feet pounding on the tile, tap-tap-tap directly to his doom. And what was I going to do about it, grab him by the shoulders and hold him back? In the moment as my chin sailed toward the tile, a better idea popped into my mind, buoyed from my heart to my head by a wild froth of fear.
I shouted the words of power and seized their meaning in a frenzy, and I clung to them as they pulled me from the realm of dreams.
“Mhhhhuuuuu,” I mumbled, as the muscles in my face thawed from sleep. “Hessssss-Hester. WAKE UP.” I yanked with my left arm to roll over onto my right side. “Before that cat can…”
“Don’t move,” Aliyah hissed, holding her blade to Hester’s throat.
A similar effect can be produced, of course, by adding a variety of carefully selected, strictly purified metals to the torch fuel. But I could only have identified a handful of the necessary metals, and I was unsure if the process was even necessary in a realm of dreams and wonder. ↩
This may sound like an ominous observation to make, but let me assure you, the opposite observation would be much more concerning. ↩