Keith Baker - The fading dream

“Why stop at wings?” Thorn said. “Perhaps I could have fiery breath that can melt stone and bring the citadel itself tumbling down.”

The manticore laughed, the sound a low rumble. “Were the walls made of stone, it would surely be that simple. But how long must we play this little game? How long until you ask for the strength of my wings again?”

“And what will I pay this time?” Thorn said. When she’d first met the creature, she’d thought its price of a story to be a gift; seeing it again, she was beginning to wonder what she had given up.

“You’ll only know if you ask.”

“Then tell me, my dear, old friend: Will you carry me through the air and to my destination?”

The manticore nodded. “That I shall. You may even bring your companion, if he has the courage to look me in the eye.”

“And the price?” Thorn said.

“I asked no price,” the beast replied. “Not this time. I will have what I seek soon enough.”

Thorn didn’t like the sound of that, but the offer of a swift flight across haunted woods was difficult to resist. “You can come out now, Drix.”

The tinker slowly crept out of his hole. When the manticore made no hostile move, he carefully lifted the black cloth from the board and folded it up.

“So gliding over the walls,” Thorn said. “That’s what you’d suggest if I had wings?”

The manticore scratched out a rough map in the soil, traces of blood rubbing off on the grass. “I do not know what it is you seek within,” it said. “There is a courtyard, yes. And many towers, each one dedicated to a different terror.”

“And since you know so much about it, I imagine you’d know if it’s filled with guards, people watching the skies, and such.”

“Yes,” it said. “And of course it is. They are preparing for battle.”

Thorn looked to Drix. “Bad enough that we’re likely to be seen going in. We haven’t even discussed what happens once we get there. This is a fortress girded for war. How do we find the stones once we’re inside?”

Drix seemed honestly surprised. “You can’t feel them?”

“No. How would I?”

Drix put a hand over his crystal heart. “In here. I can feel them. Far, yes, but stronger than before. I thought…” He looked at the shard in her neck. “I thought you could feel them too.”

“No,” Thorn said. “All right. So we can find the stones. All we need is a plan to survive after we fly over the walls and into certain doom.”

“Not merely doom,” the manticore said. “Dream. The fortress you seek exists in two worlds. Your enemies have become living nightmares. When we cross that wall, we leave the reality you know behind.”

“Good, good,” Thorn said. “Because it was starting to sound a little too easy.” She rubbed her hand against her forehead, feeling the smooth leather against her skin. She stopped and rubbed a finger across her palm.

“What is it?” Drix said.

“An idea,” she replied.

Thorn could feel the wind in her hair and hear the steady beat of the manticore’s wings, but all things considered, it was far more pleasant than the last time she’d flown with the beast.

“So this is it,” she said to Drix. “Heading into the fortress of nightmares. You’re sure that you’re ready for this?”

“It may seem strange,” he said, “but I think I am.”

They were sitting in the portable hole. Outside, the manticore was carrying the board in its mouth. Inside, Drix was testing the string on his little crossbow. Satisfied, he produced four small bolts. Instead of metal, the heads were dragonshards; he’d used the shards he’d taken from the Pit.

“Just be careful,” she said, sorting through her tools. “Try to be quiet. Hopefully our friend will prove a sufficient distraction. You focus on finding the stones. If there’s fighting to be done, leave it to me.”

“Of course,” Drix told her. He handed her the wand she’d taken from the Orien guard. “I did the best I could; I think you’ll get one more use from it.”

The manticore snarled, the deep growl shaking their sanctuary.

“That’s our signal,” Thorn said, taking the wand and tucking it into her belt. “Get ready.”

A moment later, a bloodcurdling howl filled the air. Thorn had never heard its like; there was a touch of the wolf to it, but if it was a wolf, the life was being torn from it slowly. It was a cry of pain and a warning of pain to come. A flash of brilliant light illuminated the hole, and they caught a glimpse of a tall, spindly tower as the manticore banked sharply. Thorn saw it for only a moment, silhouetted against one of the moons, but the image was fixed in her mind. It was no turret of stone, no crenellated rampart. It was tall and curving, and she knew it was a tower only because of the flickering lights of the windows scattered across it. Otherwise, she would have guessed that it was the curved talon of a fierce beast, reaching up for the sky.

The howl came again. And they were falling. They could see the sky spinning through the opening of the portable hole, walls and moons and lights whirling around.

“Face me, Children of the Fading Dream!” The voice of the manticore was louder than thunder, surely shaking the walls of the fortress. “LOOK WITHIN MY SOUL, IF YOU DARE TO SEEK MY FEARS!”

The whirling landscape was suddenly still.

“Now!” Thorn said. They grabbed the edges of the hole and pulled, as Drix had shown her, widening the opening. Another moment and she was outside. The manticore had dropped them on a narrow ledge; there was a window just next to her.

“Good thing we didn’t end up with the hole pressed up against the wall,” Drix said, looking out.

Thorn froze for a moment as she took in the scene around her. The towers rising up were indeed like talons; she could think only of the claws of a dragon buried in the soil, reaching up to tear out the stars. Down below she saw a wide wall, and even from that height, she could see that it was made of bones-human, dragon, and every creature she could imagine.

The moat that lies beyond is filled with the tears of the fallen, extracted in the moment before they die.

The thought came to her mind without warning. The manticore had told her that the fortress stood in dreams, and she understood, for that’s what that feeling was-the crystal clarity that sometimes came in a dream, when she remembered a life that she’d never lived.

The manticore was swooping around another tower, and there was something pursuing it, a creature shrouded in smoke. As she looked, the shadow began to gain substance. It howled again and the howl shifted, becoming more familiar.

She forced her eyes away. All things in this place thrive on fear, the manticore had told them. Do not let them reach into your thoughts.

“Don’t look,” she told Drix. She took his hand, and they slipped inside the tower.

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The floor was slick with blood, and the scent of it filied Thorn’s sensitive nose, drowning out all other sensations. It was worse than the slaughterhouses of Droaam. Yet she somehow knew that the blood had yet to be spilled, that it was the carnage from murders only dreamt of, as of yet uncommitted.

It didn’t help with the smell.

She drew Steel, tracing a cross on his hilt.

The energies in this place are almost as strong as those of the Mournland itself, he told her. No specific wards that I can sense. As for divination… I feel as if the tower itself is watching you. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Illusion, conjuration… I’m not sure anything is real.

The bloody hallway descended in a tight spiral turret; Thorn had to fight to keep her footing on the slick stone. At last the floor leveled out, a dim, flickering light flowing through a large archway. The only sound Thorn heard was a low and steady rustling, the sound of paper blown in the wind. She glanced at Drix, tapping the stone in her neck then gesturing at the chamber, a questioning look on her face. The tinker’s crystal heart pulsed with a flash of light and he nodded.