Because it’s a dream,Joslyn realized. Because his body isn’t actually a body, just a dream of a body. And he knows it.
Rennus was right. Joslyn had experienced far more than simple dreamwalking. She’d fought and defeated the undatai in the Shadowlands, taught herself to turn a q’isson into a shield, and she’d even figured out how to use the power she could draw from the shadows to heal. Yet she’d never tried to manipulate reality the way Rennus was.
Fortunately, Joslyn had always been a fast learner.
The giant Rennus stabbed downward with one of his sword-hands. Joslyn had anticipated that. Wrapping one arm around Tasia’s waist, she leapt backwards with reverse frog, easily dodging the strike.
Three of Rennus’s sword fingers lodged themselves in the floorboards. He tugged on them, but he was thoroughly stuck.
Yet why was he stuck? Why not turn the floorboards into mist like he had his body, or turn the swords back into ordinary fingers?
The answer came to Joslyn almost immediately, just like the other had. Rennus could manipulate his body because he had brought it with him, but this was her dream-memory, not his. He couldn’t alter what had been here before he arrived, because Joslyn had created it, not him.
Joslyn grabbed a random glass bauble from a nearby shelf and hurled it at him. Halfway to its target, the bauble transformed into a mountain man’s spear, only five times ordinary size. The long bronze spearhead pierced Rennus’s flank, the force of the blow driving him backwards. His sword fingers pulled free from the floorboards as his giant’s back struck the bookshelf behind him. Books and scrolls rained down upon him, pelting his head and shoulders. With a thought and a glance, Joslyn turned the books into boulders, and Rennus disappeared under an avalanche of stone.
Something rumbled beneath the pile of rocks, and Joslyn suspected she didn’t have long before he recovered enough for a counterstrike.
“Tasia? Tasia, can you hear me?”
Tasia’s eyes fluttered for a moment, and one hand reached for her forehead. “Jos … lyn? What’s … where did the gardens go?”
Joslyn spoke in a rush. “It was a trick. The gardens were never really there – we’re being held by the deathless king in Persopos.”
“How do you – how do you know…?”
Joslyn opened her mouth to answer. But she stopped herself before she could speak. Rennus had been coy when she’d suggested this Tasia was a mere phantom of his own creation. What if that was true, and this Tasia was another trick?
“Tasia, when was the first time you said that you loved me?”
“Wh-why are you – ?”
Joslyn gave her a gentle shake. “When?”
“You came to me – in a dream,” Tasia answered. “I don’t know if that counts, because I’d told you I loved you in other dreams before that. But it was really you this time, and I think … a part of me knew that.”
I love you so much that I don’t even know how to fully express it.
Joslyn remembered Tasia’s words. Joslyn would never forget. She remembered how Tasia’s eyes had shone with tears when she said them, as clearly as though she’d uttered it the hour before. It had been the first time Joslyn had successfully dreamwalked into Tasia’s mind.
This was the real Tasia. Joslyn believed that Rennus could construct a convincing replica of Tasia within the dreamworld, but there were some details he wouldn’t know and therefore couldn’t replicate.
She scooped Tasia up. “We have to get out of here. I have to hide the sword again – somewhere they’ll never find it.”
Joslyn knew exactly where to go, but first, she would return to the fantasy in the gardens with Tasia. Tasia would be safe there, so long as she remembered none of what had just transpired.
The scene transformed again, and Joslyn laid Tasia down gently in the spongy grass beside the picnic basket.
“I dreamed … I dreamed Rennus was here, trying to kill you. Trying to kill both of us,” Tasia said, rubbing her forehead absently. “And you – your teacher’s sword …”
“Shhh,” Joslyn soothed. She felt the weight of the sword on her back, held in place by the dream-sheathe she had constructed as she changed the scene from Norix’s tower back to the gardens. “It’s all right. Only a bad dream.”
“It felt so real.”
“I know, love. I know. But let’s go back to sleep now. Both of us.”
#
“Milo,” Joslyn repeated, trying to get the boy’s attention.
Though he could hardly be called a boy anymore, at least not in his dream. The petite, gangly child she remembered was a teenager here. Milo was still gangly and still shorter than most young men, but now he reached Joslyn’s chin.
He sat at a long wooden table completely covered with piles of parchments and open books. On the other side of the table, Wise Men, a dozen of them, loomed over him. Each fixed a steely, expectant gaze on Milo.
“Twenty-seven – no, twenty-nine,” Milo said hesitantly.
“Milo, you’re dreaming,” Joslyn said behind him.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Not now, Commander. I have to finish my exam.”
She stepped around the corner of the table. “It’s not an exam. It’s a dream of an exam. You’re asleep, and none of this is really here. None of it is really here but me.”
Milo blinked, looking from Joslyn, to the table of messy parchments, to the Wise Men standing threateningly on the table’s other side. Instantaneously, the scene changed. They stood together on the beach south of Port Lorsin’s palace, just in front of the steps cut into the bluff.
“Commander?”
“Yes. It’s me.”
“I wish it really were you,” he said, sighing. “Everything’s been harder since you died. Since you and the Empress died.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Joslyn said. “I’m alive – we’re both alive. I dreamwalked here.”
He stared at her for a long moment, his face uncomprehending. “No,” he said at last. “If you were still alive, you would have found your way home by now.”
By now.Milo dreamed of himself not as a child but as a young man nearly full-grown. How long had the deathless king kept them trapped inside his dream-prison?
A fragmented memory flashed through Joslyn’s mind – a child-sized Milo peeking at her and Tasia through a shroud of flowering vines in the dream of the northern gardens.
But she had no time to explore that thought. In one realm or another, either the Shadowlands or the mortal realm, Rennus was recovering his strength. The moment he was strong enough to do so, he would track Joslyn down again.
“Listen to me carefully, because time is running out.” Joslyn placed her hands on Milo’s shoulders. “The Empress and I are in the Kingdom of Persopos, trapped in some kind of perpetual dream inside the Shadowlands… or perhaps a realm somewhere between the mortal realm and the Shadowlands, I’m not exactly sure. You saw us there, remember? Caught in a dream of the palace gardens.”
Milo frowned but said nothing.
“For you,” Joslyn said, “it might have been a long time ago. Years.”
Slowly, Milo nodded. “I tried dreamwalking to find you. I’d never done it before. And I thought I saw you, but … but I wasn’t sure if it was really you, I was so new at dreamwalking, I thought maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see. And I didn’t try again because the shadow arts …”
A troubled V formed between his brows as his gaze dropped away from Joslyn’s.
“Because practicing any of the shadow arts make you feel like you are stepping closer to the Shadowlands,” Joslyn finished for him. “Like you’ll find yourself there again, except this time you won’t leave. Trust me, Milo, I understand.”
“Yes. I suppose you would understand.”
Joslyn took the sword from the sheathe upon her back. “Hide this,” she said. “Not in the mortal realm – hide it within a dream q’isson that only you can find again. I know dreamwalking isn’t something you’re accustomed to, but I trust you, and I know you’ll find a way. Do not tell me where it is until I come back for it.”
“How will I know it’s you – really you, and not a shadow impersonating you or my memory of you?”
It was an astute question, the kind that reminded Joslyn that the boy understood the Shadowlands on an intuitive level she would never match. Both of them had unwanted connections to the Shadowlands – she was tainted by the bargain with the undatai, but Milo? Milo remained the gate between worlds. He was of the Shadowlands in a way that Joslyn was not and hoped she never would be.
Joslyn thought a moment. “Ask me where I hid you during the Battle of Port Lorsin.”
“You mean that basement pub?”
“The Spotted Dog,” Joslyn said with a nod. She pushed the sword into Milo’s hands. “I have to go. I will come back for the sword when I can.”
“Commander, wait. What if the sword isn’t enough? Tell me where you are, and we can come for you. Linna and I will come for you, take you out of there.”
“Absolutely not,” Joslyn said. “This place is too dangerous – a man inhabited by whatever’s left of the undatai has created a city as big as Port Lorsin filled entirely with shadow infected who are under his thrall. He calls himself the deathless king, and he’s … he’s the most powerful practitioner of the shadow arts who has ever lived. He may be too strong for me, let alone for you and Linna.”
“Then we will bring help,” Milo said insistently. “We can bring Brick – or, or, what about the Adessian rizalt the Empress hired to guide you to Persopos? Is she with you? Linna said she was almost as good a fighter as you.”
The last time Joslyn remembered seeing Akella, the woman had been in the process of fleeing the Order of Targhan assassins who’d cornered them. Coward.
“The pirate is not with the Empress and me,” Joslyn said. “For all I know, she escaped the Kingdom of Persopos entirely and returned to her career of raiding Imperial merchant vessels.”
“Well, then we can bring –”
“No, Milo,” Joslyn said firmly. “Hide the sword for me. That is the help I need from you. And be ready; I will come back for it as soon as I can.”
Milo looked from the sword to Joslyn. “All right,” he said at last.
Joslyn answered with a single nod. Then she opened her eyes.
Hovering above her, Tasia giggled. “I thought you’d never wake up.” She cocked her head to the side. “Who’s Milo?”
“Did I talk in my sleep?”
“Talk? You had an entire conversation,” Tasia answered. “Something about a sword, a king, and a pirate. You were whispering, so I didn’t catch everything. Who’s Milo?” she asked again.
“No one,” Joslyn said, sitting up. “Someone I knew in the army, that’s all.”
She’d wait for the fantasy to reset itself a few times before she went back to Milo for the sword. Let Rennus and the deathless king believe she had fallen back into their cage of dreams. And when she did go back to Milo, she’d be more careful. It wouldn’t do to have Tasia overhearing her conversations; that could put them both in danger.