Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

Orfuin paused for a long sip of tea. “The River is the dark essence of thought,” he said at last, “for thought, more than anything else in the universe, has the power to leap between worlds. It belongs therefore to all worlds where conscious life exists. And yet strangely enough, consciousness tends to blind us to its presence. I have even heard it said that the more a world’s inhabitants unlock the secret workings of the universe-its occult architecture, its pulleys and gears-the deeper the River of Shadows sinks beneath the earth. Societies of master technicians, those who trap the energy of suns, and grow their food in laboratories, and build machines that carry them on plumes of fire through the void: they cannot find the River at all.

“But we are straying from your tale, Felthrup. You were speaking of these dream-windows. You fall through them helplessly, you say?”

“No longer!” said Felthrup. “Once again the Polylex came to my rescue. In a footnote to the Dreams entry-I revere the humble footnote, sir, don’t you? — the book provides a list of exercises for taking conscious control of the unconscious. And what do you suppose? I mastered those exercises, and found I could slow the approach of my dream-window. Eventually I learned to stop it altogether and examine the dream from the outside, like a wanderer looking in on a firelit home. If I wish to enter, I do so. If not, I simply wave my hand, and the window shatters like a reflection in a pool. But the most astonishing part was yet to come.

“Several nights ago I noticed a second window, a second dream, shining at some distance from the first. It was the sorcerer’s, Mr. Orfuin: somewhere on the Chathrand, Arunis was asleep, and sending his dream-self out to prowl the ship. I dared not approach it: suppose my new skills failed me, and I tumbled into the sorcerer’s dream? Suppose he sensed me outside the window, and by some magic drew me in? Ramachni gave me the power to master my own dreams, a task I am barely equal to. But should Arunis lay hands on me within his own-”

“You would become his slave, in waking as in dream,” said Orfuin with conviction. “And when he had finished with you, he could break your mind like a sparrow’s egg, between two fingers. Or toy with it, for the rest of your natural life.”

He stood abruptly, as though shaking off a spell, and walked to the edge of his terrace, where the wind of the lightless River tore at his sparse hair.

“To be held in that mage’s invisible cell, prey to any torture that occurs to him, forever. There could hardly be a more awful fate in all the worlds.”

Felthrup said nothing. In the club, someone was tuning a mandolin.

With his back still turned, Orfuin added, “You knew this in your heart, did you not? Before you leaped willingly into his dream.”

“Ah,” said Felthrup, “you guessed.”

“Only now,” said Orfuin. “You were the little yddek that hid under my chair. The first such creature I had seen in many months. The one who swam out of the River some twenty minutes after Arunis himself.”

“I was,” said Felthrup, “though I did not know I would become that strange creature, all tentacles and jointed shell. I only knew that I must learn what he was doing, for even from a distance, gazing fearfully at the window of his dream, I knew he was preparing for a decisive step. Maybe the decisive step in his struggle with us all. How could I simply watch him take it, and not even try to learn what it was about? So yes: I drew near, and watched him pacing through your club, pretending to be no one in particular at first, but shedding the pretense little by little as his impatience grew. And when his back was turned I summoned all my courage, and jumped.”

The innkeeper turned to face him again. “You are fortunate that you became an yddek. I saw the sorcerer turn in surprise the moment you appeared. He sensed your intrusion into his dream, and raced from door to door, to see if it was Macadra who had come. His glance fell on you, but he has seen many yddeks in his time and thought nothing of it. But had you taken this form-”

“He would surely have known me,” said Felthrup, raising his mangled forepaw and twitching his stumpy tail.

“You were fortunate in another way, too,” said Orfuin. “Yddeks have very sharp ears. I assume you heard what they said on this terrace?”

“Much of it, Mr. Orfuin,” said Felthrup, “and all that I heard was terrible. Arunis seeks the complete elimination of human beings from the world! And that woman Macadra seems to share his wish, although she denies it-and something he whispered, something I did not hear, came to her as a brutal shock. Yet I still have no idea who she is. Can you tell me?”

Orfuin took a rag from his pocket and walked to one of the windows looking out onto the terrace. He breathed on a small square pane and rubbed it clean.

“Macadra Hyndrascorm,” he said with distaste, “is a very old sorceress. Like Arunis, a cheater of death. All mages tend to be long-lived, but some are satisfied with nothing less than immortality. None truly attain it. Some, like Macadra and her servants in the Raven Society, deploy all their magical skills in its pursuit. They may indeed live a very long time-but not without becoming sick and bleached and repellent to natural beings. Others, like your master Ramachni, are granted a kind of extended lease: the powers outside of time stretch their lives into hundreds or even thousands of years, but only in pursuit of a very great deed.”

Felthrup jerked upright with a squeak, almost upsetting the little table. “Do you mean that once Ramachni completes his allotted task he will die?” he cried.

“Death is the standard conclusion, yes,” said Orfuin. “But Felthrup, you must hasten to tell me what you came here for. I have a roast in the oven. Besides, my dear fellow, you might wake at any time.”

“That is precisely why I have come!” said Felthrup. “Master Orfuin, my Polylex tells me that the wall between two dreamers is not the only sort of wall. There is also, of course, the wall between dream and waking. But by one of the most ancient of laws, most of what we learn, and all that we collect or are given, must be left on the far side of the gate when we return to waking life.”

Orfuin chuckled again. Then, with an air of scholarly formality, he recited: Never night’s mysteries are exposed

To the weak mortal eye unclosed.

So wills its King, that hath forbid

The uplifting of the fringed lid.

“Or something to that effect. Have you read Poe, Mr. Felthrup? A dlomic writer of some interest; there’s a book of his in the club.^ 6 Yes, it is a balm to the soul, to travel and converse and gain wisdom in the land of dreams. But only mages can carry that wisdom out into the daylight. The rest of us must leave everything but a few stray memories on the far side of the wall.”

“But Master Orfuin, I am denied even those!” cried Felthrup, hopping in place. “If I saw Arunis’ face looming over me, or held on to some brief snatches of his words, then perhaps I could fight him. But he has placed a forgetting-charm upon me. Ramachni told Pazel Pathkendle of this charm, and Pazel told me. But Ramachni cannot dispel it, he said, until he returns in the flesh.

“And that will not do. Here as a dreamer I know all that has happened to me, in waking life and in dreams. But my waking self knows nothing of those dreams, and so I cannot warn my friends. I cannot tell them what I overheard, here on your terrace. That this Macadra and her Ravens are sending a replacement crew-isn’t that how she put it? — to seize the Chathrand. That all the wars, feuds and battles of the North are watched with pleasure, and even encouraged, by forces in the South bent on conquest. I know the most terrible secrets in Alifros! But what good is this knowledge if it vanishes each night at the end of my dream?”