Dreamfever

 

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Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

 

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For Gosha,

my favorite

 

List of Characters

Family

Josh Weaver (Joshlyn Dustine Hazel Weavaros)

Will Kansas: Josh's apprentice

Deloise Weaver: Josh's younger sister

Lauren (Laurentius Weavaros): Josh and Deloise's father

Kerstel Weaver: Lauren's wife, Josh and Deloise's stepmother

Peregrine Borgenicht: Josh and Deloise's grandfather, Dustine's estranged husband

Dustine Borgenicht: Josh and Deloise's grandmother, Peregrine's estranged wife (deceased)

Friends

Winsor Avish: Josh's best friend

Whim Avish: Winsor's older brother

Saidy and Alex Avish: Whim and Winsor's parents

Haley McKarr (Micharainosa): Ian's twin brother

Ian McKarr (Hianselian Micharainosa): Haley's twin brother (deceased)

Bayla Sakrov: Whim's ex-girlfriend

Bash Mirrettsio: a dream theorist, Bayla's boyfriend

Mirren Rousellario: heir to the deposed Rousellario monarchy

Katia: Mirren's cousin

Fel and Collena: Mirren's aunt and uncle

Young Ben Sounclouse: the local seer

The Junta

Peregrine Borgenicht: a member of the junta, and leader of the Lodestone Party

Anivay la Grue: a member of the junta and leader of the Troth Party

Davita Bach: the local government representative

Ithay Innay: a member of the junta

Gor Speggra: a member of the junta

 

First Prologue

This is my last entry: I'm going into the Dream tonight.

I didn't know I was going to do it until this morning. I woke up to the usual pitiful celebration—coffee and pastries on the good china and everyone dressed as if we were going to visit a restaurant. Aunt Collena gave me yet another robe, mostly, I think, out of the subverted hope that I'll give her my silk one with the peacocks on it. Uncle Fel gave me a computer mapping program, which now holds top honor as the single most ironic gift I've ever received; how long does he think it will take me to map our little universe? Katia was the only one who actually took my preferences into consideration and gifted me with
Vampire Nazi Hunter 4: Mars.

A pity I won't live to play it.

At the end of the meal, Uncle Fel said to me, “So, how does it feel to be nineteen?”

At that moment, I knew I was going through the archway, because being nineteen felt like nothing. It
meant
nothing, just like my life has thus far and may forever if I don't do something to give it meaning. I will live and die here, in my perfectly mapped cell, having wasted my mind and extensive education playing video games and drawing comic books no one will ever read, a girl who never had cause to wear anything besides luxurious robes and will likely demand to be buried in the silk one with the peacocks on it just to spite her aunt.

Aunt Collena may be right that the dream walkers don't need me and that the people of the World—overcrowded as it is—don't need another rich white girl, but I know for certain that
I
need
them.

I must go now, before I lose my nerve.

Amiryschka Heloysia Solei Rousellario

Mirren

 

Second Prologue

Josh gazed out
the windows at Warsaw. Far below ran a wide, tree-lined boulevard set with ornate five- and six-story buildings. Streetcars rushed up and down the boulevard, but on either side, horses drew carriages loaded with crates and burlap sacks. Hundreds of people moved below, swarming and seething, climbing up and down from trams, dodging carriages, migrating in and out of buildings, the men in trench coats and fedoras, the women in calf-length skirts. From four stories up, Josh watched them, astonished at their multitude and how all of them seemed to have a destination to which they could not be late.

A sound—laughter?—made her turn, and she took in the sunny apartment. Here in the parlor, art predominated. Lamp shades boasted stained glass in shades of green and yellow; on the fireplace screen, three young women in Empire ball gowns dined on a green lawn; and above the mantel, an ornately carved wooden clock ticked away the time with generous lassitude. Someone had left a cloth-bound book open on the striped sofa, and a half-full teacup cooled on the marble-topped coffee table.

Feeling happy and at peace, Josh sat down at the spinet piano, opened the keyboard cover, and began to play. She couldn't have named the tune, but she liked how the slow notes resonated in the air above the din from the street below.

A girl with long blond sausage curls dashed through the room wearing a green velvet dress and white tights. Her skirt's pleats were in disarray, and the white satin sash meant to tie around the dress's drop-waist had come undone. A pure white puppy followed on the girl's heels, barking, and the girl laughed in the breathless, drunken way of children as she ran into the hallway.

“Bryga, stop!” a young man called, but he had more or less given up by the time he reached the parlor. Seeing Josh, he smiled. He was a handsome youth, perhaps fifteen years old, not tall but nicely proportioned, and very neat in his gray pants and white shirt. With his gray eyes and blond hair, he could have been a charcoal sketch come to life.

Josh's fingers missed a note when she saw him, and she fumbled the next few measures. She recognized the young man, she even remembered that his name was Feodor, but she felt uncertain about him. Despite his trim appearance, she sensed that he was dangerous.

Someday, his eyes would be shadowed by painful memories, hardened by horror like steel thrust into an ice bath, his glance turned strange and clever, his lips thinned by an ironic, grimacelike smile. Josh knew this. Someday, he would be unable to speak a single sentence without disgust or mockery or manic glee clipping his words.

But not yet. Now he was still a young man, a bit overconfident but full of wit and exuberance and, yes, even goodness.

“We'll never get her trained, will we?” he said.

“The dog, or the girl?” Josh asked.

Feodor sat down beside Josh on the piano bench. “Preferably the girl—she'll live longer.”

He began to play a gentle counterpoint. Bach himself could not have written a sweeter harmony, and for a time, they sat companionably and drew song from the instrument before them.

But Josh's eyes lingered on Feodor's hands. A scrape marred the skin on his left index finger, and she couldn't help thinking that soon there would be more scrapes, and cuts, and burns, and blood dried beneath the nails, and someday his scarred hands would build things, terrible things.…

“Josh?” Feodor said, so softly that her name blended with the notes of the piano.

“Yes?”

Without warning, he wrenched his hands from the keyboard and slammed the cover shut.

Josh jumped, and she would have run except that Feodor's eyes clenched her. He no longer smiled, no longer joked, and she had been wrong—he was not innocent—they had not gone back far enough—perhaps they never could—

“What are you
doing
here?” he asked in a low hiss. “And why did you bring
those
?”

He cut his head to the left, and when Josh looked behind them, she saw two devices sitting on the marble coffee table. Their curved metal panels and wire-wrapped crystals stood in contrast with the soft elegance of the room. Josh turned and moved from the piano bench to kneel beside the coffee table, and she reached out to touch one of the devices.

She explored the wire-wrapped circlet first. She knew it was meant to be worn on the head like a crown, even though it bore little resemblance to one. A bundle of wires and metal bands formed nearly a complete circle, with a jagged crystal on each side situated to rest above her temples and another cluster meant to press against the base of her skull.

The metal felt oddly warm, and she detected a faint vibration running through it. “What did you do to these crystals?” she asked Feodor.

She no longer felt afraid of him. In fact, seeing the two devices, she felt excitement stir inside her. She didn't know what these things were, but she knew they were powerful.

Feodor reluctantly knelt beside her. All his bravado had abandoned him. When a siren began to wail beyond the open windows, he sat up very straight and looked toward the street with alarm.

“Feodor,” Josh said. The siren held no interest for her; she knew what it meant. She touched his arm. “What did you do to these crystals?”

Frowning, he returned his attention to the circlet. “I reversed their polarity.”

Outside, an explosion. The apartment building shook and the windows rattled. On the coffee table, cold tea sloshed over the rim of its teacup. Feodor clapped his hand to Josh's back as if he meant to force her to the floor, but Josh didn't feel concerned.

“It's just the war starting up,” she said.

The second device was meant to be worn on the forearm like a vambrace. Inside a metal sheath, more crystals—some of them flecked with ash—were connected by a network of fused wires made of a variety of metals: copper, selenium, chromium, molybdenum.

Above the street, air fire filled the sky like a cosmic snare drum. The collapse of a nearby building began as the shattering of stone and evolved into deafening white noise.

“Feodor!” the little girl called from the other room. Her voice was high with fear.

“I'm coming, Bryga! Stay where you are!”

The apartment building shook again. A painted landscape behind the couch crashed to the floor, and in the other room, the puppy barked.