Chapter 5: Where the Dreamer Walks

I had been scared before. Now I was panicked, wild with a nerve-destroying fright. I’m not a coward. I set up a radar transmitter in Okinawa within ninety feet of a nest of Japs. That was something real. I could face it. But under two suns and a pair of little moons, with weird people I knew were not human--all right; I was a coward. I steadied myself in the saddle, trying with every scrap of my will to calm myself. If this was a nightmare, well, I’d had some beauties--

But it wasn’t. I knew that. The frost hurting my face, the sound of shod steel on stones, the vivid colors around me, told me I was wide awake. Dreams are not techni-colored. And through all this I was riding hell-for-leather, my knees gripped on the saddle, guiding the horse with the grip of my thighs--and I’d never been on a horse’s back in my life. Rode--and rode--

We had ridden about seven miles, and stopped twice to breathe the horses, but we were still beneath the great archway of trees. The sky’s pink sunset light had faded; the land was flooded with a blue, fluorescent starlight, a light I’d never seen before. I strained my eyes upward through the black foliage. I suppose I had some confused idea of guessing when I was by the stars. But the view to the North was hidden by mountains, and I don’t know one constellation from another, with that single exception. A glance at Karamy, in this fright, un-nerved me; I touched the reins, dropped back till I rode between Gamine and the girl in flame-color. “Adric,” the spell-singer saluted coolly, and the girl in the winged cloak threw back her hood; I saw dark eyes watching me from a pure, sweet young face. Before the luminous innocence of those eyes I wanted to cry out in protest. I was not Adric, warlock of Narabedla. I was just a poor guy named Mike, I was just--me. I rode beside Gamine for minutes, trying to think what I would say.

Gamine’s musical voice was not raised, yet it carried perfectly to my ears. “You seem wholly yourself again.”

I didn’t answer. What was there to say? Still, there seemed to be sympathy in the sharply-edged tones. “You will remember--perhaps too much--at the Dreamer’s Keep.”

“Gamine,” I asked, “Who is Narayan?”

I saw the blue robes quiver a little; across from Gamine, I saw a curious flickering look pass across the face of the girl in the orange winged cloak. But Gamine’s answer was perfectly even and disinterested. “The name is not familiar to me. Have you heard it, Cynara?”

The girl did not answer, only moved her dark head a little.

“I should know,” I mused. But the name Cynara had touched another of those live wires within my mind. Narayan. Cynara. Cynara and Narayan! If I could only remember! Suddenly I turned. “Gamine--who are you?” Gamine sat quiet, eerily motionless on the tall horse. The robed figure seemed to blend into the starlit shadows around us. I had the sudden feeling of having re-lived this moment before, then the veiled shoulders twitched impatiently.

“Is this an inquisition?”

Rebuked, and stung by the arrogant voice, I touched my heel to my horse’s flank and rode forward to rejoin Karamy. Gamine! The hell with Gamine!

For several minutes the road had been climbing, and now we topped the summit of a little rise and abruptly the trees came to an end. By tacit consent we all drew our horses to a walk. We stood atop the lip of a broad bowl of land, perhaps thirty miles across, filled to the brim with thick dark forest. Far out in this valley lay a cleared space, and in the center of that space lay a great tower; but not a slender and fairylike spire like the Towers of Rainbow City. This was a massive donjon thrusting heavy shoulders upward into the moon-washed sky.

The Keep of the Dreamers.

Something in me murmured, “This is the forest where the Dreamer walks!”--or had the murmured voice come from Gamine, motionless behind me? Karamy rode eagerly, her face drawn tautly together, her slim tanned hands clenched on the reins. All this while I was Mike Kenscott--but a Mike who watched himself without knowing what he would do next, like those puzzling nightmares where a man is both actor and audience to some mummery being played. I watched myself say and do things as if I were two men at once. In effect, I suppose I was ... Karamy turned in her saddle, facing me.