Chapter 2
The heat was the second clue to the Sleeper’s changing mood. In the short time it took for Roan to walk between the castle gate and the first row of outbuildings inside the stone walls the weather shifted from temperate summer to sweltering heat. The Sleeper’s attention must have turned to a realm of deserts.
The cackle of chickens became the bleating of goats, and the cry of sheep became the impatience of camels. Roan smiled at the herdsmen suddenly being dwarfed by their charges, who added spitting to their usual forms of disobedience. Yet, Dreamlanders were accustomed to constant alteration. Such was the will of the Sleeper of this region who dreamed this realm and everyone in it. Everybody who lived in the Dreamland was used to changing from his or her basic shape, altering looks, sex, even species, when it suited the over-intelligence of their Creator. Everyone, Roan reflected wryly, except himself.
His father, and those of the historians who were of a charitable turn of mind, used to say that Roan was the exception that proved the rule that all things in the Dreamland changed. Roan Faireven was considered to be an oddity, even a freak by some. Where it was natural to shift from paradigm to paradigm like the tumbling clouds in the sky constantly forming new pictures, Roan remained firmly fixed as himself. Oh, he’d changed as he had grown up from tot to child to teen to adult, but what he looked like a year later could have been pretty well predicted from the way he had looked the year before. It was not out of stubbornness, nor of disrespect to the Sleepers that he adhered to one basic form. He simply couldn’t help it. He couldn’t change himself. Roan was always male, always tall, always gray-eyed and dark-haired and broad-shouldered and long-handed—in other words, always himself. Whoever that was, Roan thought with a sigh. He often felt he’d know more about his inner self if his outer self altered now and again to tell him what was in his subconscious. He was frequently troubled by strange dreams full of portents and weird sights, but then, his dreams were probably no stranger than anyone else’s in or out of the Dreamland.
He had the wisdom to know exactly what he could change. Blessed with a decent measure of intelligence and sanity, he had a high degree of control over his surroundings and his possessions. It was his very immutability that made it possible for him to take such a dangerous job as King’s Investigator.
He became aware that his good suit of dark wool, tailored silk shirt and necktie were far too hot for this desert. Whereas clothing, like all other inanimate objects, tended to follow the Sleeper’s design, anything touching, or indeed immediately near Roan stayed as it had last been put. Roan set his mind to conforming his clothes to a more suitable costume. The fine tailoring shifted and flowed like melting wax, picking up lights from the sun and the heady-scented gardens that blossomed along the pebbled path. Now he was clad in an ankle-length robe of scarlet and blue silk, over silk trousers draping cool around his legs. His formal top hat drooped and became a broad-brimmed sunshade.
Much better. Roan sighed, and worked his shoulders under the smooth cloth. He scuffed in soft boots along the narrow path bounded by round stones. His steed, following on his heels, had remained a bicycle, instead of turning into a destrier or a camel. He wheeled Cruiser to the stables, a welcome oasis of coolness in the noon heat, and turned it over to an ostler, who clucked through his mustache at the dents in the frame.
“Good as new in an hour, by my word of honor,” the man said, touching his forehead, lips and heart.
“There’s no hurry,” Roan said, returning the gesture. “I’m home for a while.”
He went out into the sun, and turned toward the main keep. There were a few minor shifts in the landscape, as was normal, while Roan made his way along the crushed stone paths, but the place remained largely fertile-crescentish in flavor. Whatever outward stimulus had prompted the Sleeper to dream of desert kingdoms, He or She had created a place of beauty.
The castle itself looked different than it had when Roan had departed on his last assignment, but then it had surely changed a dozen or a hundred times in his absence. Instead of the drafty, gray stone keep covered with lichens and spiderwebs, with arched cloister windows made up of multiple palm-sized panes of glass, and banshees on the battlements, the great keep was smooth white marble, limned here and there with gold and inlays of multicolored glass and gems. The heavy bronze doors bore deep designs of knots and arabesques. Pillars bearing statuary nestled in recesses at intervals along the walls, and fountains played in the courtyard. All of the window casements were pointed arches, too. He had to admit that this face of the castle was very pleasant. There wasn’t a single bat in sight. Obviously, the Sleeper was in good spirits this day. Roan gave thanks. The sun was blazing gold in a clear, blue sky, and green and scarlet birds croaked at him from tree branches. Servers, wearing layer upon layer of diaphanous silk, passed swiftly between the many buildings of the castle’s inner courtyard. The individual garments would have been transparent, but the layering lent opacity so that the true forms within could not be seen. Much like the Dreamland itself, Roan thought.
He heard an outburst of noise coming from one side of the central keep. A collection of young men and women hurtled around the perimeter of the building with long measuring tapes slung between them. Oblivious to the heat, they made energetic measurements, jotted down copious notes on pads and slates, or flicked the beads on an abacus. Roan laughed as they disappeared around the other side of the building, djellabahs fluttering importantly behind them. Their quest looked like a cross between a scavenger hunt and a math test.
Those young people looked different than they had before, too, but he knew who they were. The Ministry of Science always assigned its newest apprentices to keep track of the castle’s dimensions. Roan thought the task futile, since the basic layout of the keep was always a thousand paces by a thousand, but he never claimed to fully appreciate the analytical mind. If the scientists thought they could learn something fundamental about the Dreamland or the Sleeper by measuring the castle every time it changed, Roan hadn’t a clue as to what it might be.
“Roan!” a voice hailed him. He turned from his study of the castle to see a short, stout, scarlet-haired woman, wearing multiple sheaths of crimson silk that fell enticingly over her rolling middle, fall in beside him and take his arm. She beamed up at him, her fat cheeks creasing engagingly.
“My dear fellow, how are you? It’s been an age.”
“Bergold!” Roan exclaimed, recognizing the pattern of his good friend’s speech, if not his current form.
“Indeed,” the historian said. He held out a fold of his costume. “Isn’t this a fine color? I am partial to red.”
“Very nice,” Roan said, thinking that it disagreed violently with Bergold’s current hair color, but perhaps the historian hadn’t seen himself in a mirror. Bergold altered so often and so rapidly it would drive many Dreamlanders mad, but he took it in his breezy stride. Most people had a base shape, and their many changes were variations upon that one. After a lifetime’s friendship, Roan was still not certain he had ever seen the historian in his natural form, if indeed he had one.
“Did you come by train?” Bergold asked, guiding him toward the castle entrance.
“Not this time. I just flew in from Somnus, on the wind.”
“You lucky soul!” Bergold exclaimed. “Did you fly all the way?”
“Very nearly,” Roan said, relishing the memory of his adventure. “I kept hitting fortunate circumstances. My steed Cruiser and I passed through an influence that made him a motorcycle, then another that made him an airplane.”
“An airplane!” Bergold said. “Goodness me!”
“Yes, indeed,” Roan grinned. “Suddenly I was flying without the plane, flat out on the wind like a bird. Most exhilarating. It took days off my journey.”
“This modern air travel is positively astonishing,” Bergold said, pulling a notepad and pencil from somewhere in his diaphanous robes. He jotted down a few words. “Someday I hope I can try it, but I’m not sure my noble steed is up to it, nor I. How was the landing?”
“I fell.” Roan gulped, remembering the hollow feeling in his middle during that near disaster. Bergold patted him sympathetically on the back.
“Poor old fellow. Falling dreams are always the worst. But you pulled up in time. You landed.”
“It took every ounce of sanity I could muster,” Roan assured him, bowing to a passing janissary.
“Luckily, you have a generous fund of that. I didn’t know you’d gone away. What did you do?” the historian asked, flourishing his pencil.
“Come and hear,” Roan said, striding toward the central keep. The guards stationed against the wall saluted the two in turn as they passed through the crowd toward the Privy Gate. The sentries had been right. The courtyard was full of bicycles, horses, carts, and every other kind of minor conveyance in the Dreamland. “I’m here to report to the king. The seventh province has not undergone another Changeover. There was some kind of noisy land disturbance that probably provoked the report. Very few casualties, and no discontinuations. Everything is settling in nicely. If I may be so bold to suggest it, this Sleeper has a peaceful and civilized mind which would be a great loss to the Dreamland should She or He wake.”
Bergold nodded. “Never been to Somnus. What’s it like?”
“Open savannah, mostly,” Roan said, calling up details in his mind. “Dry. Yellow clay soil, too poor to farm. Because of the windstorms there will most likely be emigrations in plenty over earthquakes, and some changes in terrain, so I must warn the king about that, too. They may look forward to good tourist trade: the animals are beautiful. Tall, long-necked giraffes. Elephants! Big cats. Big, yellow-maned lions, lazy, sharp-fanged, beautiful. I watched them rolling under green-leafed trees, washing their cubs.”
“Indeed,” Bergold asked, listening with a dreamy look on his face. “You’re positively poetic.” Without meaning to, he started to shift so that gold fur broke out on his broad face and arms. He caught sight of himself in the polished shield of a silk-robed janissary, and changed back to a harem woman. “Sorry, old fellow. You quite took me away.”
Roan grinned down at his friend. “You’re very suggestible today.”
“Bite your tongue,” Bergold said, straightening his robes with swiftly fluttering hands. “If anything, I ought to be prickly as cactus, reflecting the turmoil going on in there.” He pointed a red-nailed hand toward the keep.
“Ah, yes, the guards at the gate mentioned something of that,” Roan said, raising his eyebrows. “Should I stay away and present my report another day?”
“Great night, no!” Bergold said, holding up his hands to forestall such a thought. “The king will be grateful as can be to listen to a little sensible reporting instead of all this speculation nonsense. Carodil, the Minister of Science, has been giving one of her endless speeches again. She’s got a bee in her bonnet. It’s stung everyone except the people it ought to. The court is full of her supporters, all clamoring to try new things to test reality. Blasphemy. As sure as form follows function, she’s going too far this time.”
“Now, now, Bergold, there’s room in the Dreamland for a whole range of beliefs,” Roan said, patiently. His friend’s complexion had turned to beet red. Bergold needed to calm down before steam started pouring out of his ears.
“Not in my purview,” the historian said.
Bergold and Minister Carodil were old adversaries. So far as the historian was concerned, it was one thing to understand the signs and predict the outcome from previous experience, and quite another to experiment with circumstances and see what resulted. To the historians and the continuitors, who policed the reality that the historians recorded, that was a privilege reserved for the Unseen Imaginations.
Bergold took his job seriously. As one of the most senior of the Ministry of History, he saw it as his duty to keep good records of phenomena observed throughout the Dreamland. Historians were a combination of astrologer-soothsayers and recordkeepers. They gave Dreamlanders a sense of the historical base of an event, so that no change upset them to the point of discontinuation. They noted those things which were determined ubiquitous enough to be real in the Waking World of the Sleepers.
Some people, including the Ministry of Continuity, thought it was blasphemy that the historians were attempting to reconstruct the culture of the Sleepers, but the historians had the support of the king, who insisted that it was for the survival and well-being of the folk of Dreamland. For, the king reasoned, how much better can one serve the purpose of the Sleepers when possessed of an understanding of their day-to-day life. The historians located trends, so if one saw this coming, that event may follow.
Historians also publicized signs of upcoming changes that they observed, explaining them with such well-known phrases as Pepperoni Nightmare, Nameless Dreads, Pre-Examination Worries, Anxiety Dreams, Hormonal Maturation, Adrenaline Flashbacks, and the like. The Ministry of History recorded cultural details revealed to them by the Sleepers. Big books detailing the everyday world in which each Sleeper lived, as far as the historians could determine, were maintained in the castle archives, the Akashic Records. The books always remained recognizable as units of information during the Sleeper’s changes. “Form follows function” was one of the natural laws of the Dreamland—and a favorite saying of Bergold.
As the two friends reached the high, pointed arch of the castle entrance, the herd of apprentices appeared from around the far corner of the castle and thundered toward them. Their headgear and robes were askew from running, and they were laughing. Since the results of their task never varied, they tended to make a game out of it. Roan grinned at them.
“Too much energy for one hot afternoon, is it not?” Bergold asked, grinning back. His rancor didn’t extend to Carodil’s staff. The apprentices were nice, harmless young people, no matter what guise they appeared in.
“Yes, indeed,” Roan asked, hesitating a moment on the threshold. “By the way, is Princess Leonora at home?”
Bergold slapped him on the back with a plump hand and drew him into the cool shadow of the entry hall.
“Don’t ask me, silly lad. Come and find out. Don’t fight so hard against love! By the Sleepers, let the events take you forward.”
Roan took off his floppy hat and let his hood fall off onto his back as they entered the Great Hall. The first thing to strike him about the vast audience chamber was that even the high ceiling, picked out in gold arabesques and puckered here and there with elaborate carved bosses at the base of each huge brass chandelier, was not high enough to contain all the sound below. It was deafeningly noisy inside. An unctuous young man in sumptuous white brocade met Roan and Bergold at the door and bowed them into the midst of the mob. Men and women of every description, most of them clad in bright, cool silk clothes, stood shouting at one another, waving their arms, and gesturing furiously, as if to convey the import of their message by mime as well as by volume. Adding a soprano counterpoint to the loud babble was the splash and tinkle of fountains of mosaic tile and polished brass, and the cry of bright parrots perched on a high gallery that ran all the way around the walls. At one side of the room, three marble thrones on a dais attracted the eye. The thrones were empty. His Majesty had not yet arrived.
Roan and Bergold stopped short and diverted their path around a woman who abruptly evoked a blackboard on an easel from thin air and began lecturing her companion on some of the formulae written there. Servants darted between them with trays of pitchers and glasses. A messenger in a uniform and a pillbox hat added to the din by banging on a chime and calling out names.
“You came home in time for the annual reports. His Majesty is hearing from each minister,” Bergold explained over his shoulder, as they followed the page. “Naturally, everyone has brought between three and fifteen supporters, to prove they really have been productive over the last year.” Roan stopped to allow the passage of a small, important-looking man, followed by a trail of young people, all carrying books, scrolls, and reams of accordion-pleated paper.
“I haven’t been around for one of these in years,” Roan said. “The last one wasn’t nearly so well attended.”
“The last one wasn’t so full of controversy!” Bergold shouted, as he was swallowed up by a group of women pushing a huge map-stand toward the great golden throne at the far end of the room. He emerged on the other side of the crowd, and Roan caught up with him. “You’ve been away. You haven’t heard the rumors?”
“Not a thing,” Roan said.
“What?” Bergold shouted.
“Not a thing!” Roan shouted back, into a sudden, embarrassing silence. He was saved by the appearance of a leggy supermodel wearing a tiny red minidress and a puffy coiffure.
A head taller than anyone else in the room, the blonde woman cut between them and strode toward one of the doorways. The crowd parted before her.
“My hat,” Bergold said, watching her go by, “who’s dreaming her?”
“Wishful thinking,” Roan said, with a grin. “Probably province-wide.” The girl turned her head, gave him an appraising up-and-down glance, and winked. Roan felt his face flush, but he was flattered.
Bergold touched Roan’s sleeve, and pointed to the front of the room. By the dais, a knot of historians huddled, muttering to one another. They no longer resembled the cats the guards had mentioned. Instead, several of them wore camel faces. The lean, drooping snouts added to their expressions of sour discontent.
The two friends elbowed their way over to join them. Most of the men in the crowd stood aside to allow Bergold, in his female guise, to undulate past, and a few leered after him.
“Bergold,” one of the historians said, in terse greeting. “Roan.”
“Hello, son,” his father said in surprise, turning around and embracing Roan. Thomasen’s face changed from the visage of a camel to a human face rather resembling his son’s. “This is a pleasure. When did you return?”
“Just a short time ago,” Roan said. “Bergold met me on the way in.”
“Well, well,” Thomasen said, pleased, putting an arm around his son. “Your mother will be delighted you’re back safely. Come back with me after court and see her.”
“I’m not delighted to see him,” snapped another of the senior historians. It was Datchell, one of Roan’s oldest tormentors. “It’s the freak back again, I see.” He eyed Roan up and down with open distaste. The long camel’s lips moved as if he might spit. Roan held himself ready to jump out of the way. “I thought you’d done us a favor by disappearing. Why don’t you go and discontinue yourself, you abomination against sane dreams?”
“Datchell!” Bergold exclaimed.
“Shame,” said Micah, the senior historian, pounding his long cane on the ground. “The boy can’t help himself.”
Roan’s heart sank. No matter how hard he fought not to be stung by such abuse, he always failed. Datchell and others like him always managed to play upon his childhood shame of being constant in an ever-changing world. He was an adult now, Roan reminded himself. His sanity was undoubted, his command over his surroundings above average for any Dreamlander, not far short of that wielded by the king himself. He held a responsible job and was well liked. One man’s opinion did not matter, must not matter. Long practice let him keep his carefully bland expression.
“Greetings, Datchell,” he said, bowing very slightly, enough to be polite, but not enough to look subservient. Datchell had already turned away, looking disgusted. Some of the other historians offered Roan sympathetic looks.
“Don’t start the same argument all over again, Datchell,” said one fatherly historian, coming up to put an arm around Roan’s shoulders. “You mustn’t repeat yourself.” Datchell didn’t reply. His back showed rigid indignation.
“Tsk!” Micah said to Roan, with a shake of his head. “There are people who simply can’t stomach a new idea. Calls himself a member of the intellectual elite, does he?”
“Never mind him,” Thomasen said, blandly. “He hates giving reports.” He nudged Roan with a playful wrist. “By the way, son, the lass has been asking after you.”
Roan felt his breath catch on a warm feeling in his chest as he glanced to the right of the king’s seat, at the small throne with the white, marble pedestal as a footrest. It was still empty. He sighed, half with relief. Living as near the Dreamland court as he always had, it was ridiculous for him to feel as shy as he did about the princess Leonora. She had known him all her life. When she was born, he had been six years old. The two of them had made mud pies on the edge of the moat—when there was a moat. He’d helped her pull out her first wiggly tooth. They’d shared secrets, and chased butterflies, and he’d taught her how to make obnoxious whistles out of field grass. When there were minor threats, such as those times she provoked other children in the palace into chasing her, it was to him that she ran, and his pleasure as her devoted defender was to see off the attackers. He had always treated her as a beloved little sister.
But things had changed a few years ago, the month she had turned fifteen. Three days after her birthday, an angry red dragon had attacked the castle. Leonora had been trapped on the roof. The whole court was in an uproar, everyone getting in each other’s way to rescue their beloved princess.
Young Roan had managed to thread his way through the chaos and reach her before anyone else. Before he could think what he was doing, he had run straight at the fierce monster, shouting at it to get away from Leonora. It turned away from its intended victim to attack him, and he repelled it with an outpouring of powerful influence that surprised him completely. The dragon was thrown backwards in the sky and exploded in a shower of sparks. Roan couldn’t think what had possessed him to attack, alone, bare-headed and empty-handed, until he started to carry the shaking princess down the stairs. She clutched him, but when he wrapped his arms around her, she stopped trembling. He realized at that moment Leonora was no longer a child, but a young woman, one who was precious to him in an entirely new way. Moreover, he knew she loved him, too. But she was the king’s heir, the symbol of the future of the Dreamland, and the most beautiful woman in the land. He had been mortified at his audacity, but helplessly in love, and was so to this day.
He was constantly torn between his new knowledge and the long history they had shared as childhood friends. In the great scheme of things, Leonora functioned as that absolute to which everyone in the Dreamland aspired. She was admirable. She was beautiful as a sunrise, remote as the stars, competent, charming, compassionate—Roan’s thoughts ran on pleasantly through all the complimentary words he could think of that began with the letter c. She ought to be consorting with dukes, presidents and angels, not the boy-next-door-to-the-castle. The king’s thoughts must have run along similar lines. He appeared to look favorably upon Roan’s friendship with the princess, but whenever the topic of marriage came up, as it increasingly did over the last few years, he had sent the young man on endless remarkable and frustrating errands. Roan thought these tasks might be intended to test his fitness for the princess’s hand, but then, they might be delaying tactics, a father’s protective maneuvers to keep his daughter from forming an inappropriate liaison. When Leonora appeared in court or on state occasions with her father, she was on a pedestal, too far above for anyone to touch her.
Roan performed his tasks as well as he was able, never shirked an assignment, no matter how dangerous, and he always came back to Mnemosyne. He didn’t know if the latter dismayed the king or pleased him. The princess had always appeared to be pleased.
Leonora seemed to be amused by both her father’s obduracy and her suitor’s willingness to go along with the king’s whims. Roan sometimes wondered if she wasn’t putting him to some kind of test, too. Roan gave the small throne a final wry look. He hoped he’d know when, if, he passed. He caught Thomasen looking at him with a familiar, fond paternal smile. Reluctantly, he pulled his thoughts back to the present, away from past and future.
“Tell me, what’s all today’s fuss about?” Roan asked, moving closer to his father. The historians had gone back to muttering and spitting among themselves. Thomasen blew through his lips, a suggestion of the camel returning to his face.
“Pah! The usual doo-dah about improbable nonsense,” Thomasen said. “Rumor has it Carodil has the king’s ear, leaving the rest of us doing an elaborate kind of mime, so far as His Majesty’s concerned. I say the king keeps things well in balance. He’s just hearing the other side for a change, but for historians they’re remarkably reluctant to understand that facet of perspective.”
“No one likes having his ideas ignored,” Roan said, tilting his head humorously.
“Mmh!”
They were interrupted by a blare of trumpets. The herald, a stout man resplendent in seafoam green silk velvet and a remarkable hat that wound around and around his head like a snail shell, stalked out before the trumpeters.
“My lords and ladies, all rise! By gracious whim of their Creative Eminences, the Sleepers, His Ephemeral Majesty, Byron, King of Dreams!”
As everyone was already standing, little attention was paid to the herald’s command, but everyone turned to face the dais.