contralto. Gamine’s voice. I could make no sense of the words; but Evarin halted to listen, swearing in a whisper. I thought the faraway voice sang my name and Evarin’s, but I could not tell. “What is it, Evarin?”
He gave a short exclamation, the sense of which was lost on me.
“Come along,” he said irritably, “It is only the spell-singer, singing old Rhys back to sleep. You waked him this time, did you not? I wonder Gamine permitted it. He is very near his last sleep—old Rhys. I think you will send him there soon.” Without giving me a chance to answer—and for that matter, I had no answer ready—he pulled me aside between recessed walls and again the shaft in which we stood began to ride. Eventually we stepped into a room at the top of another tower, a room lavishly, even garishly furnished. Evarin flung himself carelessly on a divan embroidered in silken purple and gestured me to follow his example. “Well, now tell me. Where in Time has Karamy sent you now?”
“Karamy?” I asked tentatively. Evarin’s raucous laugh rang out again. He said with seeming irrelevance, but with an odd air of confiding “My one demand of the Dreamer is—freedom from that witch’s spells. Some day I shall fashion a Toy for her. I am not the Toymaker of Narabedla for nothing. I demand little enough of the Dreamers, Zandru knows! I do not like to pay their price, but Karamy does not care what she pays. So—” he made a spreading movement of his hands, “she has power over everyone, except me. Yes; assuredly I must make her a Toy. She sent you out on the Time Ellipse. I wonder who brought you back?” I shook my head. “I’ve been out of my body too long. I can’t remember much.”
“You remember me,” Evarin said. “I wonder why she left you that? Karamy’s amnesia-rays took the rest of your memory. She never trusted me that far before.”
But I caught the crafty look in his face. I knew only this about Evarin; Karamy was right not to trust him. I said “I only remember your name. Nothing more.”
Because Evarin—I knew—was never ten minutes the same. He would profess friendship and mean friendship; ten minutes later, still in friendship, he would flay the skin from my body and count it only an exquisite joke. I did not like those perverted and subtle eyes. He seemed to read my thought. “Good, we will be strangers. Brothers are too—” he let the word trail off, unfinished. “What have you forgotten?”
Could I trust him with my terrible puzzlement? How much could I, as Adric— and I must be Adric to him—get along without knowing? What was even more to the point, how many questions could I dare ask without betraying my own helplessness? I compromised. “What are the Dreamers?”
That had been the wrong question.
“Zandru. Adric, you have been far indeed! You must have been back before the Cataclysm! Well—our forefathers, after the Cataclysm, ruled this planet and built the Rainbow Cities. That was before the Compact that killed machines. Some people say the Dreamers were born from the dead machines.”
He began to pace the floor restlessly. “They were men—once,” he said, “They are born from men and women. Mendel knows what caused them. But one in every ten million men is such a freak—a Dreamer. Some say they came out of the Cataclysm; some say they are the souls of the dead Machines. They are human—and not human. They were telepaths. They could control everything—things, minds, people. They could throw illusions around things and men—they contested our rules.”
He sat down; his voice became brooding, quiet. “One of us, here in Rainbow City, a dozen generations ago, found a way to bind the Dreamers,” he said. “We could not kill them; they were deathless, normally. But we could bind them in sleep. As they slept, under a forced stasis, we could make them give up their powers—to us. So that we controlled the things they controlled. For a price.” There was a glimpse of horror behind his eyes. “You know the price. It is high.”
I kept silent. I wanted Evarin to go on.
He shivered a little, shook his head and the horror vanished. “So each of us has a Dreamer of his own who can grant him power to do as he wills. And after years and years, as the Dreamers grow old, they grow mortal. They can be killed. And fewer are born, now; fewer to each generation. As they grow older and weaker, it is safe to let them wake; but never too strongly, or too long.” He laughed, bitterly. A fury came from nowhere into his face.
“And you loosed a Dreamer!” he cried. “A Dreamer with all his power hardly come upon him! He is harmless as yet—but he wakes, and he walks! And one day the power will come upon him—and he will destroy us all!” Evarin’s thin features were drawn with despair; not arrogant, now, but full of suffering. “A Dreamer—” he sighed, “A Dreamer, and you had been made one with him already! Can you see now why we do not trust you—brother?”
Without answering I rose and went to the window. This window did not look on the neat little park, but on a vast tract of wild country. Far away, curious trails of smoke spiralled up into the sunlight and a wispy fog lay in the bottomlands. “Down there,” said Evarin in a low voice, “Down there the Dreamer walks and waits! Down there—”
But I did not hear the rest, for my mind completed it. Down there—
Down there is my lost memory. Down there was my life.
Somewhere down there I had left my soul.
Flowers of Danger
I turned my back on the window. “Rhys is a Dreamer,” I said with slow certainty. “What is Gamine?”
Evarin nodded slowly, ignoring the question. “Rhys is a Dreamer, yes. He is old—so old he is almost mortal now; so he wakes, and he too walks. But he was one of us once—the only Dreamer ever born within the Rainbow City. His loyalty is double; but he will never harm Narabedla, because he is of our blood.” Evarin cleared his throat. “So Gamine takes what knowledge can be had from his old, old mind. And does not pay.”
“Who is Gamine?” I asked again. Evarin still hesitated.
“Karamy hates Gamine,” he said, after minutes. “So no man sees Gamine’s face. I would not ask too many questions—unless you ask them of Karamy.” A smile flickered on the mobile features, “Ask Karamy,” he said gleefully, “She will tell!”
“She will?” I said stupidly, because I could think of nothing else to say. Evarin’s grin was delicately malicious. “Oh, I am sure of that! Karamy is quick to strike. Gamine and I have little love lost, but we agree on one thing; that Karamy’s procession of slaves is monstrous. And that you are a fool to help Karamy pay for her—desires. Karamy is far too fond of power in her own hands, to pay to put it into yours.”
Karamy. Karamy who took my memory—
“She did.” Evarin murmured, and I realized I had spoken aloud. The room seemed full of a weighty silence. Evarin’s prowling footsteps made no noise as he came to my side. “I can give it back to you, though. I have made you a Toy.” His effete voice rather disgusted me, and I moved away, but he followed. “Look here, and find your memory.”
And he put something small and hard into my hand; something wrapped in silvery silks.
I raised my hand curiously, untwisting the wrappings. They were smooth and shining and colorless, with a bluish cast, like Gamine’s veils; no fabric I had ever seen. Evarin backed slowly away from me. For an instant all I could see was a blurred invisibility—like Gamine’s face behind the veils—then a sort of mirror became slowly visible, It did not
