Dreams of the Compass Rose (21 page)

You must contain it!
cried the familiar minds into her own consciousness, straining against passion, against the abandon that was all around them now, ready to swallow up the world.

The outlines of the bedchamber began to grow transparent, to fade in and out of this plane. Curtains blew open on the great window, letting in weak moonlight and a screaming wind.

And suddenly Ierulann saw ghosts of a million cities superimposed like crystals outside the window.

Transparent towers came into focus and were displaced by tall spires and walls of violet marble, obelisks sprang up into the marrow of heaven, only to collapse into sand, structures of pale sandstone and clay spilled and popped like mushrooms after a rain, ancient gilded domes stood up like bubbles of water, globules of dew from a distance.

The vision danced, and times and directions were mixing, and madness was upon her. . . .

Guard of Law!
cried the voices of her fellow minds from afar.
Contain the destruction! You must do it, for you are the only one close enough to touch it!

And Ierulann knew that, if she did not, then the city—indeed, the whole world—would collapse around her into a common Dream of insanity.

And thus she allowed herself to look forward into the future for just an instant longer, using the clairvoyance of her very being to piece together the fabric of things just behind and just ahead of her.

I am the moment. Nothing exists outside of the moment, and the past and the future line up to fall in tandem to precede and follow me.

I am the order and the law.

The madness howled around her tiny point of calm. For an instant, grotesque contorted faces out of hell threw themselves at her, and the walls around the room were gone, while the floor of what had once been the Palace sank and reformed below her feet.

The forms of the man who had killed and the ancient one who had died froze into stone of timelessness upon the Royal bed of firmament, which had once contained pillows and silk coverlets, but now was the surface of an ocean.

Contain the chaos, now, or never!

Even the voices of the minds had grown muffled, and were coming from such a great distance now, receding in the maelstrom.

“
How can I?” cried Ierulann desperately in her mind. “How can I hold it and not be overwhelmed, and not myself go mad?”

I am the anchor point of the compass.

And suddenly she saw a second ahead, into the future, and she saw the assassin before her. She saw him from an odd tripled perspective—present, past, and future. His body was strong, his mind vital, and he was young. . . .

And seeing him in temporal chorus thus, Ierulann reached out with her mind, and she drew a part of her being that was cold calm order, and she forced it to come and wrap around the whole city like a great net.

Inward she pulled the madness, forcing it into her and then directly out into
him.

She moved near him, and took hold of his stilled hand.

His name danced into her mind immediately, with a shock of contact.

Zuaren.

She saw and knew him inside-out, past and present and future.

She knew what he had been, what he was now, and what he could be.

And then Ierulann released the river of chaos, focusing it in a single fixed direction, letting it flow through her fingers into his ice-cold palm, into him. . . .

The one who had once been Zuaren shuddered, opening his intense eyes—pale as water—upon the world of moonlight and swirling homeless dreams, and in they rushed to populate him, their new strong vessel.

The night had grown still all around them. Transparent Palace walls thickened and began to solidify, and once again shut out the outside. But this time there was something solid and definite about their shape, something very new. . . .

Permanence.

Having dropped both his swords, Zuaren stood looking out, past Ierulann, past the walls, and past this reality into the dreams that were now forever anchored within him. And yet the insane spark was barely contained under his strong willful surface.

“
What has come to pass?” he said softly. “What am I?”

“
You are the new King of this city,” said Ierulann, watching his glass-eyes. “It is your Lawful punishment. You who have come in ignorance and death now carry the burden of the Law, which is impassive order and can alone contain chaos. Now at long last we can trust the oblivion of sleep.”

“
G
uard of Law!”

Ierulann turned. She was walking slowly along the King’s Road, having gone automatically on her morning patrol through the fractured carcass of a city that had somehow stilled, frozen in time—for her senses no longer felt a doubling, a shifting. . . .

The woman from the night before stood a few steps away, dejectedly, holding onto a small sack of belongings.

“
Here are all my earthly possessions!” she said. “I’ve come to deliver them myself, since no one came for them last night, and I want no more punishment. When I woke up, everything was the same as before! Is it not strange? My children are crying with hunger, but at least they are at my side!”

Ierulann watched impassively the joy in her eyes. “Keep your belongings,” was all she said. “The new King cares not how fast you drive the Road.”

At which point the woman started to weep in a joyful fit, and once again ended up on the ground watering Ierulann’s boots. “Law is indeed merciful!” she repeated between her sobs. “Blessed Law!”

Ierulann said nothing, not wanting to spoil this one’s last illusion—since there would be none tonight. Law is Law, she wanted to say. It is neither harsh nor merciful, merely new or old. But it is your position in relation to it that makes it deadly or gentle.

I too am like the Law, neither one nor the other.

Or at least I was once. . . .

And then Ierulann yawned deeply, watching the sun of morning ride up over the stilled city. It was time for her to sleep, and, possibly, to dream.

For, she also contained madness now, a tiny bit of it—would harbor it forever under her still surface, secretly helping to share the burden of the one who was now King.

No Law had required her to do that.

* * *

T
he city of No-Sleep is said to be old now, older than the world itself, ever since it stopped reshaping itself every night.

But the king is young here, and sane, and filled with peaceful reason. They say he has cool blue eyes and no memories of his past, sleeps soundly every night, and never dreams at all.

Miracles fill the city, for multitudes are now rebuilding their lives, and the greatest miracle of all, contentment, stands in a cloud above the rooftops.

If you visit, you will surely find something to your liking.

But you must promise to find one woman, once a Guard of Law, now a storyteller. Supposedly, she still owns a sword and a Serpent Whip, and is the only one who can tell you your dreams.

T
he garden seemed to fill the whole world.

Nadir walked through air thick with the perfume of blooming flowers and the moisture of early morning. The dawn mist was fading, settling in the form of dew upon the mosses of earth and the trunks of trees, but visibility was still low. Shapes of green surfaced out of translucence, appearing to float over earth that had no surface, no bottom. And the great mountains in the distance had their tops rubbed off by the clouds, peaks dissolving into the silver darkness of heaven.

Nadir followed a narrow path toward the ornate structures of the ancient monastery that had been built upon the uneven ground. Parts of it were upraised on a hill—concave curving rooftops with shingles painted in deep jewel tones and encrusted with gold leaf, with sharp spires raised in the center—others lower down, and a great wide staircase lay winding up along the verdant slopes of the hill toward the pinnacle. At the pinnacle of the hill, at the foot of the ghost mountains that blended into heaven, was the Secret Temple of ancient wisdom that he sought.

And within that Temple was the world’s truth.

Nadir was tall and strong, a young man with a straight back, carrying himself with the sureness of a warrior, and yet treading softly like a panther. His skin was dark as rich, newly watered earth, not because of exposure to the sun but because such was the color of his race.

There was a long sword in a scabbard at his side, with a blade that was heavy and curved and sharp. It was discreetly hidden by a travel cloak of simple bleached cotton. A cotton wrap covered his head, protecting him from the wind and sun, for he had come from afar—days and weeks and months away from here—from the scalding heart of the desert that filled with desolation the distant West and South of the Compass Rose.

Nadir had come here to the Kingdom in the Middle, the land of grace and harmony and the birthplace of the Princess Egiras, whom he was bound against his will to serve.

“
Go and find the land of my birth, Nadir,” proud and petulant Egiras had said to him many moons ago. “And when you get to the place of jade forests and jagged mountains and endless lilac heaven, take a deep breath in my stead and absorb everything so that you can remember it. Then, pluck for me any blossom that grows there and bring it here to me still living, together with a bit of my native soil, so that I may plant it in my garden and remember. . . .”

“
But my Princess,” Nadir replied. “How can I leave you without my protection, even for a day? I have been at your side all these years, never leaving you.”

“
I suppose I will have to manage somehow,” the Princess said with her usual sarcasm. “Now go, for I order you to do this, else I pine away with homesickness, and it will all be your fault.”

“
I will be gone for a long time . . .” he whispered, bowing.

“
Indeed,” she said, turning her back to him, so that all he could see was the smooth waterfall of her ebony silk hair falling upon the lesser silk of her gold robes. And then, still with her back to him, she added, “I will expect you to be gone for so long that you will never come back.”

He could not determine if her words were mockery or bitterness or disdain.

H
is breath was short, for he had climbed hundreds of steps to heaven. And now he stood before the gates of a building that was a monastery or a temple or a faceted jewel set in a mountain.

Nadir stood breathing harshly, gathering himself before going inside, and listened to the living silence.

Soon he could discern the sounds of the wind as it moved the metallic bell-chimes that hung in clusters at the entrance, and of the occasional bird call. Once earlier, as he had been climbing the endless stairs, he had heard the deep rumble of echo that was the great Temple Gong, but it sounded only on the hour.

And now there was nothing, and not a soul around. Only insects hung in the air.

Nadir took one last deep breath, and he put his hand on the mallet which he then used to strike the hanging copper plate. He waited.

And he continued waiting for long moments, for no one came to the doors.

There was a basin of water just at the entrance, and he watched its placid stillness. The water reflected the dove-gray morning sky, and the upside-down mountains without tops.

Eventually, Nadir put his hands on the wood of the door, and he pushed it gently.

The door swung inward with a soft creak of old ungreased joints. Twilight was revealed in the depths of the building.

Nadir stepped inside.

He blinked, and was met by the sight of a sterile chamber, completely empty of any furnishings. There were two wooden pillars that supported the roof on two sides, two small simple windows that let in daylight on the right and left walls. And on the wall directly before him there was another door, shut.

Before that door, blocking it, stood the motionless figure of a man in a robe of persimmon orange, that of a priest or monk.

Nadir inclined his head in a bow and put his hands palms together in the greeting of this land. Then he said in a stumbling accent, carefully pronouncing the sing-song syllables that he had learned in his travels through this land, “Are you well, sir? Be well. I seek to enter and to learn. For days I have followed the endless Yellow River and for many moons I have traveled through grass plains and forests past towns and great cities, all the way from the land of nothing but desert sand.”

“
Did you travel all this length just to come here?” asked the priest. He was indeterminate—neither young nor old—but his head was clean-shaven, as was monastic custom, except for his brows, which were thick and dark, and thus implied youth. His skin was smooth and pale like yellow parchment, in sharp contrast to the deep orange of his robe, and his eyes were nearly pupil-less, black and slanted.

“
In truth,” said Nadir, “I did not. I am here at the bidding of the one I serve, a stern Princess who now lives in a faraway desert but was born in this land. She has sent me here to the Kingdom in the Middle to bring her back memories not her own. However, in my travels through this land I have heard stories of your Secret Temple with its hidden Wisdom. And having learned of its existence, I am compelled to learn more.”