The Tattooed Heart (Messenger of Fear 2)

“For him it will be a lifetime. Years and then decades, during which he will live out every aspect of his fear. He will rem

ember his old life, and what we have done, but he will not be able to escape or deny, as year follows year, decade follows decade. Until he dies at last in that time and wakes again to his interrupted life.”

The wraiths moved closer then, and both laid invisible, shrouded hands on him.

Trent spoke no more. His eyes rolled up in his head. His mouth hung open. He sank to the floor and sat there, crumpled. His strong arms hung limp.

Messenger frowned, but not because of Trent. He had heard or felt something. I suppose it was this universe’s version of a text message. How else did Messenger know when and where to be?

It was a question I should ask him.

Add that to the list of a hundred other questions I had for him.

“I must go,” he said to me.

“Where are we—”

“I, not you. I am summoned.” He drew a deep breath, not pleased at the nature of his summons.

“Should I stay here with—”

“No,” he said curtly. “Go. Trent will be . . .” I think he was about to say, “fine,” but stopped himself. Trent would not be fine. But this location in time and space could be returned to when Messenger chose to do so.

I returned to my abode.

It felt strange to be back after so little time, a thought that drew a wondering laugh from me. Had I reached the point where what had just occurred now seemed like a short day?

I read. Not the book of Isthil or any of the other more exalted texts left for my education. Instead I read one of the novels also provided for my amusement.

I wondered idly just who stocked my private library? Was there some sort of Messenger of Library Science who selected after careful screening? Or did some unseen servant scan the bestseller lists and run down to the local bookstore?

It was an amusing thought, and I needed amusing thoughts. I read for a while on the couch and then, finding myself more tired than the mere passage of hours could explain, slipped between cool sheets. Was there a maid who came and cleaned my room and changed the linens? There must have been, for these things were done. Someone provided me with clothing and laundered same after I threw them in a clothes hamper. Someone bought me food. Someone vacuumed. And brought me the book I was reading.

Maybe I should leave a thank-you note. But I suspected I would never meet whoever this person was. Just as I was confident that I would never really know where I was, how this place came to be.

When I had opened the door to the outside, only the brooding, sinister yellow mist had met me. This place might be on the same patch of land where I had first materialized. Or it might be deep within the earth. Or suspended in a cloud.

I wondered if Messenger had the answer to all these questions. I wondered if all would be revealed to me when I at last assumed his position.

I wondered if my mother missed me. Or if she didn’t even know I was gone. When I was young I’d read the story of a boy who went off on adventures but had a golem to take his place so that no one ever noticed he was gone.

Was it like that? Was there a simulation of me back at home, back at school?

I wondered and at some point fell into a troubled sleep full of dreams.

My dreams were visited by burning boys, demons in human shape, a figure with auburn hair who alternately drifted just out of sight or appeared with flesh eaten away like a leper.

I dallied in dreamland imagining the moment when Messenger offered Ariadne a game. I imagined his desperate hope that she would prevail, and his horror when he saw that she would not.

I dreamed of the way he must have felt when he dived into her mind, invading the sanctuary of the person he loved, and found there the one thing she feared most.

My God, how had he done it? How had he done that to the one he loved?

No choice, I thought, yet had not Oriax hinted that we still had free will, at least a little?

But most of all, I dreamed of Trent in his punishment. Those dreams had a peculiar reality to them. I saw him as he was, as a boy, as a mean young sadist with a mind full of hate, but now confined to a wheelchair.

I often remain aware in my dreams, but this was on a whole different level. I wasn’t just lucidly dreaming, I felt I was observing actual events. The scenes lacked the distortion of dreams, they were clear and sequential. The level of detail, too, was most un-dreamlike, for in these visions there was not only sight but sound, and not only the obvious sounds, but the subtler ones as well. I heard the electric whine of his wheelchair. I heard the strained quality of his voice as he learned to speak with diaphragm muscles affected by paralysis.