Waking in Dreamland (29 page)

Roan, remembering a summer day full of strawberries and whipped cream, ribbons and balloons, a glorious sunset and a first kiss, shook his head in wonder. “What else is in there?”

She drew out a folded piece of paper, and Roan recognized it as a love letter he had written to her during his first long trip on his own as the King’s Investigator. Leonora unfolded the creased bit of paper and read the few lines to herself, her lips parted in a gentle smile. Roan didn’t have to look at it to remember what he’d written. She folded it up and put it to one side with a gentle pat.

“I was worried you’d never come back,” she said.

“
I
was worried I wouldn’t make it back,” Roan admitted. “I think that’s why I dared to say so much. Was I too presumptuous?”

“Not presumptuous enough, I thought,” Leonora said, an eyebrow cocked humorously at him.

The tiny gold box also contained a handsome portrait of her parents, a minute jeweled brooch, a roll of breath mints, a thin glass flask of perfume, and one diamond earring.

“So that’s where it was!” she exclaimed, picking up the last. “I’ve been looking for this for months! It was in my locket all the time!”

“Thank the Sleepers,” Roan said. He finished the last bite of his toast. “We’d best be stirring. The sun is coming up. I must get the others up.” He watched her pack the treasures back into the locket, putting the knife in last. “I am astonished by what you can fit into that.”

“Heavens, this is nothing,” Leonora said. “You ought to look in Colenna’s purse.”

“I did once, thanks,” Roan said, with a grin. “There’s a rumor that she was married once, and her husband fell in looking for a handkerchief and he’s still down there somewhere.”

Leonora looked sentimental for a moment. “Do you think she and Spar might marry? He’s a good man, and she is so very kind.”

“I hope so,” Roan said, taking her hand and kissing it. “In my experience, she’s always been prepared for every eventuality before anyone else. She has probably already planned the wedding. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Leonora laughed, and Roan stood up, still holding her hand. There was much to do, but he hated to leave her. He felt fortified, and well supported by her esteem, and totally gratified by the extraordinary effort she had made to fit in with the party. He loved her so very much. She continued to inspire him. The very least he could do was follow her example. He wanted to go and prepare for the day, then do some reconnaissance of the area before everyone else was ready to go. He bent to kiss her fingers again. They were warm and soft, and one bore a minute dot of raspberry jam. He straightened and looked deep into her eyes.

“I . . . I hope they’ll be as happy as you make me.”

Leonora stood up into his arms, and he bent to touch his lips to hers. Her hair was silken under his hand, and the curves of her back fit in his arms as though they were one piece of warm, loving flesh. Roan felt fireworks zooming and exploding and heard thunderous band music as they kissed.

“All right! All right!” Felan protested, sitting up with his hands clapped over his ears. “Stop it! I’m awake! Sleeping Gods, it’s still before sunrise!”

“Where now?” Spar said, when everyone was packed shortly after sunrise. Lum started casting about for the trail.

“We’re setting out northeast again,” Roan said. He did not feel very confident about the decision, and it must have shown in his face. “Our road should be downhill all the way, after last night.”

“How do you know?” Lum asked, his honest face puzzled. “There’s no weirdness to follow. Nor any tracks.”

“Well, it is the only main road in these parts,” Roan said, reluctant to explain his reasoning. “Brom did come in this direction, and he’ll have to carry on going that way, unless he plans to turn right around and go almost all the way back to the bridge. I doubt he wants to take the time to backtrack again.”

“And how do you know that,” Felan asked suspiciously, “without any markings to guide you?

“Look at the map,” Roan said. Bergold obligingly offered it, but Felan waved it away.

“I’m not continuing this wild-goose chase unless you show me at least one feather.”

Leonora stood by, offering silent encouragement with her eyes. Her traveling cloak was fastened under her chin, and all of her parcels were ready on the back of her steed. She couldn’t help him, and he knew it. If he relied solely upon her support, the others would never respect him. Still, he felt unhappy to have his leadership doubted. He disliked being under the spotlight. It would have been so much easier to travel on his own. He was always at his best on a private investigation for the king, for if he made a wrong turning or a wrong decision, it wouldn’t inconvenience others. Besides, alone, he could both know a secret and keep it, something that couldn’t happen if he told them how he knew what he did.

“Trust me, Master Felan,” he said, displaying as much confidence as he could. “It’s only logical. He knows we are following him. He must hurry on to his destination, without any sidetracking.”

But Felan wasn’t satisfied. He continued to stare with gimlet-like hazel eyes at Roan as if he was thinking the word “freak.” Colenna and Bergold were simply waiting, nonjudgmentally. It was hard to remember that only two days had passed, and he clearly had yet to earn his party’s trust as leader.

“We’ve been going on traces and tracks all this time,” Felan pointed out. “Why strike out blindly now?”

“We aren’t going blindly,” Roan finally admitted. To reveal the truth might jeopardize the source of his clues. He started to speak, stopped again to bite his lip, uncertain, then in the face of the doubt in Spar’s and Felan’s eyes, he made his decision. He beckoned everyone away from all visible grapevines, and made sure there were no little birdies nearby to carry the tale.

“Well,” Roan began, “I’ve been receiving information from ahead of us. I haven’t heard from . . . that person this morning yet, but I’ve been finding clear and deliberate indications. I haven’t got any physical evidence at this moment, but I do know in which general direction they’re traveling. We’re sure to find the trail again soon. There’s only a limited number of roads in this region capable of carrying them. If necessary, we can split up to cover them later.”

“Ahead?” Felan asked. The rest of the party stared, open-mouthed. “You mean from Brom’s group?”

“A spy?” Spar demanded. “You’ve got a spy in Brom’s camp?”

“A friend,” Roan said.

Spar started laughing. “You canny brat, you.”

“Captain Spar!” Leonora exclaimed, shocked.

“So sorry, Your Highness. I beg pardon,” the guard captain said, still wearing a grin on his craggy face. “And you didn’t tell a one of us. All right. Follow my leader, then. Guards! Mount up!”

Chapter 18

Midday. Taboret felt the sun beating down on her from an implacable sky. After her long shift of the day before she wasn’t required to carry the Clock for at least another couple of days. That liberty meant she was free to act as a construction worker. She hadn’t known when she was well off. Luckily, her body was well suited to hard work, being lean and strong. Her tanned arms, bared to the shoulder, were well muscled. Quite a difference from the pasty, soft academic body she usually had back in Mnemosyne.

She kept pushing the thought out of her open mind that it was shortsighted of Brom to let Roan get ahead of them in a place where there was only one road. Now they had to build their own road through rough terrain to regain their lead. Forming their campground overnight had used up a lot of crucible power; this was draining the gestalt to its dregs and reaching down through the bottom of the vat for more. But no use in annoying Brom. He had plenty to irritate him without any additional grief from her.

The ground here was rocky and unstable, almost barren of vegetation. Bolmer had discovered a deposit of nebulosity in the narrow canyon. The apprentices excavated it and used it to patch together a decent roadway over the high points of the rocks. Nebulosity felt nice and soft underfoot, or rather, underwheel. As part of the highway most of it looked like black tarmac, but it felt like sponge rubber. With huge overinflated tires on their modified bicycles and motorbikes, those apprentices who did not have to carry the Alarm Clock went around behind the litter over the waist-high boulders and yawning chasms to pick up the sections of nebulosity and bring them around to form the next section of road as the bearers cycled over it. Taboret guessed that she’d handled each featherlight paving stone at least a thousand times already. It wasn’t the carrying so much as the bending and lifting and bending again. This was slow going, and she was getting very bored.

“Watch it!” Glinn’s voice barked out.

Taboret felt the Alarm Clock jangle before she actually heard it, and yanked her protesting steed off the pavement and onto the nearest real rock. There was a wild cry and a terrible squeal. She felt terror, not her own. Wheeling her steed around, she hurried to see what had happened.

Bolmer lay on the valley floor a dozen feet below them. His steed had fallen with him, and lay broken into two pieces over the back of a sharp-edged boulder. She revved her bike’s engine to hurry down to him. Basil flung the stone he was carrying to one side, and clambered over the boulders.

“What happened?” she called.

“He was bending over to lay a section of pavement, when the bells rang,” Glinn said grimly. He swung off his motorcycle, and climbed down to help Bolmer. “It dissolved, and he overbalanced.”

Bolmer was sitting up, gingerly feeling his head with his fingertips. He had a ferocious headache and a host of other hurts that spread out along the link. Taboret let out a hiss, as much from alarm as referred pain. Nebulosity was sensitive to the sound of the bells, and reacted in strange ways. Sometimes it changed, but most of the time it simply vanished like smoke.

“It’s not our fault,” Doolin said, angrily, sticking out his prominent jaw. He was strapped to the front of the litter. “We bumped on a crooked stone. This road’s not smooth enough.”

“No,” Dowkin agreed. “Everyone’s trying to make us trip up.”

Shock could be felt all the way through the link. The brothers sensed it, and sat with folded arms and shut lips as everyone stared at them.

“How dare you sit there and try to defend yourself when he could have been killed?” Taboret shouted at them. They tried to look indifferent, but she could tell they were scared.

“Enough!” Brom said, rising up from his machine. He appeared more annoyed than concerned, and they all felt his displeasure. Taboret subsided.

“You, you, and you,” he ordered her and the two apprentices nearest her, “help Glinn pick him up and bring his steed back up here. We will form the crucible and effect repairs.”

They used the remaining nebulosity to form ladders and slings down to the valley floor, and carefully raised Bolmer up to one of the intact paving stones. Glinn helped him to lie flat, and went over him to discover the extent of his injuries. Besides bruising on his head, Bolmer’s leg was broken. He was moaning with pain, and shifting in appearance with every twinge.

“Stop that,” Carina said, laying her hands on him to hold him still. She had the most extensive knowledge of first aid. “I can’t set your leg if you keep moving.”

“It hurts, curse it!” he complained. “Everything hurts.”

Taboret knelt down beside him and offered a little of her personal strength to ease the pain, and he gave her a grateful look.

“There, that’s better,” Carina said. She directed Taboret to sit down on Bolmer’s chest, and together, she and Glinn pulled the leg out until the bone popped back into place. She used some nebulosity to mold a cast around it.

“Can’t we use some gestalt energy to mend the bone?” she asked Brom, who was standing overlooking them from the next stone span.

“Of course. And we must put his cycle back together as well,” Brom replied. He held out his hand, and the others joined him. Taboret glanced back at him over her shoulder when she stood in her place in the pattern. His eyes were half-lidded. He wasn’t thinking of poor Bolmer at all. His mind was off somewhere devising devious traps. She shuddered.

Afterwards, Bolmer’s steed whimpered a lot and stayed near its owner, suspicious of everything that moved. It clattered at the other mounts when they came too close. Bolmer himself looked as if he was bearing a solid grudge. Taboret knew that it was aimed at the brothers, but because of the link, they all shared the blame.

“Bolmer, you will stay beside the litter and guide Dowkin and Doolin so they do not hit any more bumps,” Brom ordered.

“I’ll make sure of it,” Bolmer said grimly.

“Everyone! It is time to get back to work. We have a long way to go today to remain on schedule.”

Taboret, lifting a nebulous paving stone as large as she was, had a brief mental flash of a map. It showed their position as a point marked “X” in the middle of nowhere. The distance behind them to where they had left the main road was greater than it was to the point where they would rejoin it again. She was relieved, until her mind’s eye read the key to the distances involved, and gritted her teeth. Their goal was still quite far away, especially if they had to create every single yard of the road.

Because some of the paving stones had vanished when the bells rang, the apprentices had to find more nebulosity and shape it. Lurry discovered some not too far off to their left. This particular deposit was obstinate, wanting to stay in the form of turf with flowers. The apprentices were able to shape it into rectangular sections, but it became more bedraggled and crumbly every time they moved it.

Acton and Maniune sat guard at either side, watching them work. After dropping off her burden, Taboret looked up as she swung back onto her motorized cycle. Maniune noticed, and cracked a huge, exaggerated wink the next time he caught her eye. Taboret turned away, annoyed with herself for even looking at them.

“Why can’t those bruisers help us?” Gano asked, passing Taboret as she went back for another stone.

“They’re bigger than any of us,” Basil agreed, going by in his turn with a slab in each hand.