Anne Bishop - Bridge of Dreams

Naked grief, there and gone. “You have any soap?” Lee asked, his voice subdued.

“Yes. First, lean back so you’re on the headrest. There’s a secondary basin for washing hair. I’ll do that first.”

“Couldn’t you just cut the hair?”

Zeela hesitated as she reached for the jar of hair cleanser. “Why do you want to cut it?”

“Short hair will be cooler in a hot climate like this.”

She narrowed her eyes as Sholeh piped up, ::How does he know it’s not just a hot summer?:: She repeated the question.

“It doesn’t feel like a hot summer in a cooler climate,” he replied.

*Ask him,* Zhahar said, while Zeela washed Lee’s hair.

“We— I haven’t been there, but I’ve heard Vision’s northern communities have cooler weather than here in the southern part. Is that where you’re from? One of the northern communities?”

“Never heard of the city of Vision until I landed here a few weeks ago—or however long it’s been.”

Zeela hesitated before asking Zhahar, =Isn’t that part of his mind-sickness, thinking he’s from a place beyond the city?=

*I’m not so sure he isn’t,* Zhahar said. *After all, we aren’t from the city either.*

“Where are you from, then?” Zeela asked.

Lee hesitated. Then he smiled. “I’m a madman. How would I know?”

I cast out the Light.

Glorianna Belladonna had built her cage with five words.

I’m a madman. How would I know?

He had built his with seven. As long as he played the madman, he would be kept at the Asylum—and kept out of the hands of the damn wizards who were trying to gain a foothold in this city. As long as he didn’t play his part too well, he would, eventually, be free of the restraints and be allowed to move around the grounds. Not that a blind man could go anywhere or do anything. Maybe that should bother him, but it didn’t. If nothing else, it gave him time to solve the mystery of Zhahar and her sister. Sisters? Sometimes he heard three voices in unison when she spoke to him. One of the voices was Zeela’s. The other voice wasn’t the Helper’s, so whose was it?

A man with a loose grip on sanity could ask all kinds of questions without giving offense. Couldn’t he?

I’m a madman. How would I know?

Seven words that equaled a strange kind of freedom. Or would once they let him out of the restraints that secured him to the damn chair.

Danyal paused at one entranceway to the porch and watched Zhahar cut Lee’s hair. His wrists and ankles were strapped to the chair, and Kobrah and Nik, one of the male Handlers, were standing nearby, ready to assist or restrain.

Lee’s muscles twitched and his face looked tight, but there was control. A lucid madman.

Was he truly mad or simply a troubled man who had gotten lost in the world? Or was Lee something more?

Danyal silently stepped over the threshold. Lee immediately turned his head, although those cloudy eyes didn’t quite look in the right direction.

“Hold still,” Zhahar scolded lightly.

“May I join you?” Danyal asked quietly.

“Of course,” she replied.

Lee said nothing, and Danyal had the impression that not offering an opinion was unusual—especially when he had the equally strong impression that Lee didn’t want him there. And that was why he needed to be there. To observe. To try to understand.

“How long have you been blind?” Danyal asked.

“For as long as I’ve been in this city,” Lee replied.

Which either meant all his life or not that long.

“The southern part of the city is hot for most of the year,” Danyal said, keeping his voice pleasant. “That’s why there is this wide, screened porch that runs around the outside of the building on all four sides, only broken by the two outside doors. The isolation cells are inside rooms that are completely enclosed, but the rooms inhabited by the less-troubled inmates have a window that opens onto the porch.”

“What are you telling me?” Lee asked. “To enjoy the fresh air while I can? Or that if I behave I’ll be given a room with a view?”

The sharpness in the question surprised Danyal. Not just clean summer rain now in Lee’s heart-core. There was a storm building.

“All done,” Zhahar said brightly. She handed the scissors to Kobrah, who slipped them into a jacket pocket. Then she began undoing the restraints that held Lee to the chair—a sensible precaution when she’d held a potential weapon. “Would you like to sit out here for a while longer?”

“I have something else in mind,” Danyal said. He stepped closer and saw Lee tense. “I think it will help you.”

He closed his hand around Lee’s arm, then waited for Lee to accept the contact. When Zhahar put her hand on the other arm, there was no resistance, no tension, no hesitation to accept.

“Where are you taking me?” Lee asked once they left the building. His steps were hesitant at first but grew more confident.

How many times had the hired muscle let Lee stumble around, walking into walls or tripping over furniture? How many times had they frightened him into trying to escape and deliberately put him in harm’s way?

“I am a Shaman,” Danyal said. “When I came here to be this Asylum’s Keeper, I set up a small temple. That’s where we’re going.”

“Shaman,” Lee said softly. “That explains why I’ve been sensing a Landscaper’s presence, but no one knew what a Landscaper was.”

“While I enjoy being outdoors, Shamans tend to the city and its people, not its gardens.”

“Shaman, Landscaper, Magician, Heartwalker, Heart Seer. Different words for the same thing, although how the power manifests in them reflects what their piece of the world needs.”

“What do you think these people are?” Danyal kept his tone politely curious, but his heart began to pound, especially when he noticed how Zhahar was glancing between him and Lee.

“Someone who has a special connection to the world,” Lee replied. “Someone who acts as a landscape’s bedrock, as the sieve through which Ephemera responds to all the other hearts in that place. And a rare few are true Guides of the Heart and have such a strong bond with Ephemera, they can reshape the world.”

“They don’t sound human,” Zhahar said softly enough that Danyal was sure she hadn’t meant to say it out loud. It was one thing to think that about the Shamans; it was another thing to say it to one’s face.

“They aren’t human,” Lee said. “Ephemera made the Guardians of the Light and the Guides of the Heart. And it made the Dark Guides too.”

“How do you know all this?” Zhahar asked.

Danyal didn’t look at Zhahar, but it took effort. One moment he sensed the summer lake of the heart-core he identified with her. The next moment he sensed the summer lake and the bright water, meaning another of those unexplained heart-cores had suddenly appeared, making it feel as if he were addressing two women when only one stood before him.

And the way Lee cocked his head made him think the madman was sensing something too.

“How do you know?” Zhahar repeated.

A long pause. Then Lee wrinkled his forehead. “Know what?”

“Hold for a moment while I open the door,” Danyal said as he released Lee’s arm.

A lucid madman or a cunning man playing a strange game? Were the men claiming to be Lee’s uncles his enemies or were they his accomplices?

To speak an unspoken truth about Shamans so matter-of-factly…

The Shamans, as the voice of the world, were not human as others were human, despite coming from human families that had no touch of demon, and there was nothing in the city’s history to explain how or why that could be. In order to earn a place for themselves—and a piece of the city in which to form their own community—they became Vision’s spiritual guides. And sometimes they channeled their will into the world in order to shape justice on behalf of those who had been harmed.