Dream Finder

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3Menedrion, eldest son to Duke Ibris, started upright, suddenly wide awake. His heart was pounding with terror, and he was bathed in sweat.

For a moment he flailed his arms about wildly as if fending off a multitude of closing enemies. Then quite suddenly he stopped as awareness joined his wakefulness and familiar surroundings began to take shape around him in the faint glow of the small night-lamp.

Pulling up his knees he wrapped his arms around them and dropped his head forward. He stayed thus for some time until both his breathing and his heartbeat had quietened. Wilfully he kept his mind from returning to contemplate the nightmare which had just wakened him. He would think about it in a moment — when time had interposed a little more safety.

Eventually, still resting his head on his knees, he turned and looked at the night-lamp. It stood on a nearby table and a soft yellow halo surrounded its flame to tell him that not even the guarded depths of the palace were proof against the assault of such an intangible enemy as the fog. But he was oblivious to such a conclusion. For a moment he was a child again, seeking the comfort of the light in the darkness.

Yet that very comfort angered him. Menedrion frightened in the dark! Frightened by a dream! Almost guiltily he glanced quickly from side to side as if fearful that this lapse might have been observed. Then his mouth curled viciously. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t have happened. He would not be unmanned by the unbridled ramblings of his own imaginings.

But it was not in Menedrion’s nature to accept blame or any form of self-reproach and, clenching his fist, he lashed out angrily at the body next to him.

It landed with a satisfying thud and was followed almost immediately by a desperate cry of pain and terror. The sound rose like a spectre to mock him with the fear he was trying to excise and in a fury he struck again.

‘No, please, Irfan,’ came a fearful, trembling voice out of the darkness. In the gloom a figure was struggling to evade this unprovoked onslaught. ‘Please, I...’

Menedrion lashed out again, ending the plaint by inadvertently catching the speaker in the mouth. Teeth grazed his hand painfully, and with a snarl he brought his other hand round, open-palmed, to deliver a merciless slap to the face of his victim.

The body crashed down on to the pillow and, swinging round, Menedrion straddled it and seized it by the throat.

‘Enough!’ he roared, tightening his grip. ‘You sicken me!’ Hands — pleading hands — reached up and covered his face.

Then, as suddenly as before, he was awake again. But though he knew he was awake, there were hands still clawing at his face.

‘No!’ he cried out, before realizing incongruously that the hands were his own.

In a mixture of anger, humiliation and relief, he brought his hands down savagely on the embroidered sheets that covered him.

There was a grunt from beside him. ‘What’s the matter, Arwain?’ it articulated eventually.

‘Nothing,’ Arwain replied hastily, laying a now gentle hand on his wife’s arm. ‘Just a dream. I thought I was...’ He stopped. ‘I’m sorry I disturbed you. Go back to sleep.’

The instruction, however, was superfluous, as the Lady Yanys was already breathing steadily and peacefully. Arwain patted her arm again affectionately.

Just a dream, he thought. But not a dream. A nightmare. And a nightmare within a nightmare at that. He shuddered at the horror of his first awakening. To awaken as someone else! And Menedrion of all people!

He could not have imagined such a thing, yet, beyond doubt, he had been utterly and completely his half-brother, full of his hates and fears — his darkness. He shuddered at the memory.

Tentatively he ran his hand over his chest... he was dry and warm. As Menedrion he had been soaking wet with terror.

And that fearful assault on his bedmate...?

He looked at the sleeping form of his wife. What if he had been truly awake? What if, in the demented mind of Menedrion, he had...

The thought was unbearable and with a grimace he turned his face sharply away as if just seeing his wife there might in some way bring back his half-brother to possess him.

Carefully he climbed out of bed and pulled his night-robe about him. Part of his mind told him he was too wide awake to return to sleep, but another part told him he was too afraid. Too afraid to sleep lest he waken as Menedrion again.

‘No,’ he muttered angrily into the soft darkness. That way lay madness. It was a bad dream, nothing more. Probably something he’d eaten, or this damned, smoke-laden fog; certainly that would bring Menedrion to mind. It was his forges and mills that turned the grey winter mists into yellow, choking fogs.

Arwain shook his head. Just a dream, he thought again. Insubstantial, and powerless to do anything other than frighten. No person, no thing, least of all an image of that lout Menedrion could make him harm his wife.

Yet it had been extraordinarily vivid.

Arwain stared at the low flame of the night-lamp. Somewhere in the palace a muffled bell struck the hour and brought him back to the present. Four o’clock. A long way from the daylight in both directions, but not too long before the palace would begin to stir. Arwain knew that, whatever the reason, he would not sleep again that night and, turning up the night-lamp a little, he began to dress himself quietly.

He would go into his room and read a little; think a little. He smiled to himself. Perhaps his dream had been no more than his wiser self shaking him from his natural lethargy and giving him this opportunity to consider quietly some of the many problems that, as usual, were besetting him.

His face became grimmer. Problems was an inadequate word to describe the confusion of plotting and counter-plotting that always seemed to be swirling through the palace, as members of the court and the Sened and the Gythrin-Dy struggled endlessly for power and advantage. Plotting that at times he would willingly walk away from were it not for the fact that to do so would turn him into a ready victim. Almost certainly it would see Menedrion falsely accusing him again of some treachery against his father, or perhaps even making some attempt against his life. He scowled. Walking away — that was a dream. All his life he had known intrigue, and he was as good a player as most of the others... yet now, since his marriage to Yanys, it seemed to be both so much worse and so much more important. Now, it was no longer a game. Should he fall, she would fall with him. And perhaps her family...

He set the thoughts aside. He knew from past experience that he could do only so much planning, not least in dealing with Menedrion. More important to his survival were his continuing vigilance, his good standing in the city and its institutions, and the protection his father’s affection gave him. He struggled with a stiff belt buckle. No, instead, he would pause and reflect on the dream — the dreams — that had woken him to give him this strange unsought interlude at the stillest time of the night when amid the soft-breathing silence the dreams of a myriad sleepers roamed unfettered and unchallenged through the dark by-ways of the world.

For a moment he paused and looked up, as if he might suddenly be able to hear this silent pandemonium.

Then he realized that the dream — the first dream, from which he, as Menedrion, had awakened, terrified and drenched with sweat — was gone.

No, it can’t be, he thought. Not such a nightmare. And, briefly, there was a sliver of a sensation — a swirling distant darkness? — then like a snowflake that had drifted into the warmth through an open door, it was gone. Not a vestige remained. He was no longer Menedrion and the dream was no longer his.

He puffed out his cheeks in self-mockery, and shook his head. It would seem that dreams had the power to irritate and torment as well as frighten, he decided.

And he let it go. If the dream had meant anything then it would reveal itself in due course. If not, then why waste time fretting about it?

He finished fastening his tunic and walked over to the heavy curtains that covered almost half the length of one wall. They were decorated with scenes from the mythology of the founding of Serenstad and were not really to either his or his wife’s taste. But they were thick and he was grateful for the warmth they kept in the room during the city’s cold winters.

Indeed, as he stepped through the curtains into the wide windowed alcove beyond, the difference in temperature was immediately noticeable and he closed them behind himself quickly to prevent the room becoming chilled.

The alcove overlooked a courtyard lit by a great many bright torches. Despite their smoking efforts, however, they seemed only to emphasize the yellow opacity of the fog and the far side of the courtyard was barely visible.

Arwain leaned forward against a stout timber mullion and took in the sight. Then he looked up above the choked brightness for some indication that this was only some shallow emanation of nature, but neither stars nor moon were to be seen; the fog would be as deep as it was wide. It was as if it wanted to smother the city forever.

Strange thoughts, he mused. Born out of strange dreams, doubtless.

His breath clouded the glass and he reached up idly to wipe it clear. As he did so, a movement caught his eye in the courtyard below; it was a figure.

All Arwain’s musings and concerns evaporated immediately and he stepped behind the mullion so that he could observe without himself being seen. It was an unnecessary action in such light but it was an inevitable one for anyone who lived in the palace and it was done before he even thought about it.

Peering intently through the yellow gloom he made out not one, but three figures. They were walking rapidly across the courtyard, but they were not guards, and there was a stealthiness in their behaviour. And at least one of them appeared to be armed.

Arwain’s brow furrowed. Something was wrong. There was no curfew, but no one wandered the palace grounds so late without ensuring that one of the guards was with him. He did not wait to see anything further, but stepped back through the curtains and, snatching up his sword and dagger, slipped quietly from the bedroom.

Leaving his personal quarters, he ran silently along a short, dimly lit corridor, then down a wide, curving stairway that brought him to the spacious entrance hall which opened on to the courtyard.

‘Be quiet,’ he hissed as he saw the two door guards moving forward to intercept and challenge him.

As ordered, the men remained silent, but their pikes came down ready to destroy the unexpected arrival well before he came within a sword’s length if need arose. Only when Arwain moved into the light did they raise them again.

He acknowledged them with a nod but, without pausing, pushed open a nearby door. Of the four men inside the room, two were half dozing in their chairs, and two were sitting at a table playing a board game.

Standing in the doorway, Arwain made no preamble as they began rising hastily to their feet. ‘There are three men in the courtyard, at least one of them armed,’ he said with an unflustered urgency. ‘Two of you stay at this door. Sterne...’ He met the gaze of one of the men at the table, and raised a significant finger. ‘Guard my rooms.’ Then, with a glance at the others, ‘The rest of you follow me.’

He added no injunctions to haste but simply turned and strode across the entrance hall towards the outer door. One of the duty guards opened it for him and, without even breaking step, Arwain stepped out into the torchlit fog.

Sterne, the officer in charge of the guard, allocated the duties with a few silent gestures as he left the room and then ran softly towards the staircase. The others were less ordered in their departure, but Arwain had barely gone ten paces through the gloom before they were running alongside him, pulling on helmets and fastening straps and buckles.