Steven Harper - Dreamer

Fen seemed different, too. Gone was the fawning, puppyish attitude that she had found so irritating. He was far more engaging when he wasn’t hitting on her or going out of his way to impress.

“Is that Benjamin’s holo?” Fen said at one point, nodding toward Ara’s desk.

Ara automatically twisted in her chair to look at it, though she knew it was there. “That’s him, yes.”

“You told me you fell out of touch with him,” Fen said. “What really happened?” He paused. “Is it bad?”

Emotions welled up in Ara’s chest. For a brief, odd moment Pitr’s face flashed before her, and all she could do was nod at Fen.

“I’m sorry,” Fen murmured. “God. How did it happen?”

“Hull breach,” Ara said, barely managing to keep her voice flat. “Some clueless idiot didn’t perform the inspection properly and missed a weakened section. After a week in vacuum, the plate blew and took Bejamin with it. The inspector was charged with negligence, but that didn’t help Benjamin any.”

Fen looked stricken. “God,” he said again. “I haven’t seen him in years, but all of a sudden I feel like shit. It must have been horrible for you.”

“It was,” Ara said. “But we cope. I named my son after him.”

“You have a son? Now this one you need to explain. I can’t imagine you’ve got a husband who lets you keep a holo of your…former fiance out in plain sight.”

“Ah. Well, that’s a story. You want some tea now?”

“Not if you have anything stronger. I’ll need something to cushion my system against more shocks.”

Grandfather Adept Melthine always held Council meetings in a medieval stone hall. Brightly-woven tapestries hung from the walls to hush echoes, and two enormous fireplaces stood at either end of hall. Shuttered windows opened on a lovely green garden. One of the walls was purposefully blank, as a result, the cracked chaos on the horizon was not visible to anyone present. Kendi, however, could feel its wrongness, just as he could hear the muffled whispering of millions of Silent in the Dream.

The meeting hall had no doors because the Silent didn’t need them in the Dream. A circle of fifteen sitting places made a ring in the center of the room. Some seats were common padded chairs for humans. Two other chairs were only large enough to seat a human child, and one chair was tall enough that Kendi’s feet wouldn’t touch the floor if he sat in it. Still other seats were simple cushions piled on the floor.

Grandfather Melthine, as head of the Council of Irfan, occupied a thronelike chair just in front of one of the fireplaces. He looked like his title-tall and silver-haired, with kind blue eyes and a lined face. A twisted walking stick leaned against his chair, and he wore a somber brown robe embroidered with fine gold thread. An amethyst ring, the symbol of his office, gleamed on his right hand.

Kendi sat next to Ara a quarter-turn clockwise around the circle from Grandfather Melthine. Because Kendi could not transport himself instantaneously through the Dream, Ara had been forced to bring him into the Council chamber, and it had taken Kendi a great effort of will not to throw up at the Grandfather Adept’s feet. The pangs of nausea were only now wearing off. He and Ara were both dressed in the formal brown robes and gold disk medallions that marked them as Children of Irfan. Kendi wore a ring with a stone of yellow amber, indicating his rank as a Brother. Ara’s ring was blue lapis lazuli, indicating her rank as a Mother Adept.

Despite his tension and the recent nausea, Kendi suppressed a yawn. He couldn’t seem to get a good night’s sleep lately. Every night he bolted awake at least once, slicked with sweat and breathing hard. He supposed he should talk to someone about it, maybe a doctor, but so much was going on lately, it didn’t seem likely he’d be able to.

One by one, other Silent appeared in the center of the circle. The first four were human, two women and two men. They were followed by a Ched-Balaar, the species that had beat humans to Bellerophon almost a thousand years ago. They were a centauroid race, tall and wide. The Ched-Balaar, a male, blinked a moment to get his bearings. His body was covered with short blond fur, and his forelegs were longer than his hind legs. All four feet were heavily clawed, suitable for digging dirt and ripping logs. His neck was almost two meters long and flexible, topped with a round head impressed with two wide, round eyes and a single round hole in the forehead. He had wide, shovel-like jaws and broad flat teeth. A pair of muscular arms were set below the neck. They ended in four-fingered hands. An indigo fluorite ring graced one finger, meaning he was a Grandfather in the order.

The Ched-Balaar settled in among a pile of cushions next to Grandfather Adept Melthine just as another Ched-Balaar appeared, and another. In all, four Ched-Balaar showed up, all ranked as Grandparent or Grandparent Adept.

The remaining four chairs were taken up by other races-a short, furry Grandmother Adept who was the same race as the Empress’s Seneschal, a ponderous elephantine Grandfather with wrinkled red skin, a multi-legged Grandmother who resembled a cat-sized centipede, and an upright, lizardly Grandfather Adept who came to Kendi’s waist.

Kendi fingered the amber ring he had conjured for his own finger, realizing with some nervousness that he was the lowest-ranked member of the order present. Then he shook his head. The Real People taught that there was no need for rank and order. Such things were artificial and arbitrary. Only the individual knew how well one’s talents had been developed or how much one had learned. But Kendi had spent over half his life among people who took rank and order very seriously, and it was difficult to hold the concepts at arm’s length.

Once everyone had settled in, Melthine rapped his twisted walking stick on the floor, and all eyes turned to him.

“Well, we all know why we’re here,” Melthine said. “No point in wasting time and drugs. Brother Kendi, Mother Adept Araceil reports that you have located a new Silent who has some unusual abilities. She also reports that, against her better judgement, you wish to take this Silent as your student.”

Kendi glanced at Ara. Her face remained expressionless. When she had first told him that Melthine was convening this Council meeting, Kendi had wondered if Ara had gone to Grandfather Melthine to tattle on him, complain that he was acting against her wishes. But then he had realized that Ara would have been lax in her duties if she didn’t report something so clearly unusual as Sejal Dasa. He noticed that he had lately regarded Ara as an adversary, and that disturbed him. They had certainly had their share of disagreements, but he would never have suspected her of trying to sabotage his career until now. He didn’t like it.

“I want to make it clear, Brother Kendi, that you’re not in trouble,” Grandfather Melthine continued. “I think it’s best if we hear what happend directly from you instead of through a recorded report. That’s why you’re here.”

Kendi relaxed a bit. “Yes, Grandfather. Where should I begin?”

“When you first noticed something odd in the Dream, if you please.”

The monks in the hall turned their full attention on Kendi. Eyes of varying sizes, shapes, and colors focused on him, and Kendi’s mouth dried up. Public speaking had never been one of his strengths. Ara conjured up a bottle of water and handed it to him. He sipped from it, grateful for both the water and the gesture. Without a word, Ara had told him that she still knew him as well as any mother and that her support lay firmly in his corner.