that could talk didn’t seem to bother it overmuch.
KellReech appeared next to him with a soft pop, and Padric felt the ripples in his Dream space. KellReech was a Villor, bipedal and short, perhaps a meter tall. Her skin was covered in a rainbow shimmer of greasy scales, and her face was flat, with a wide mouth and two small brown eyes. Her fingers were long and graceful as grass stems.
“Have you looked closely yet?” she asked without preamble.
“No.” Padric raised an orange-brown paw. “Shall we?”
KellReech wordlessly wrapped his paw in her graceful multi-jointed fingers. The Dream twisted, and they were standing at the edge of darkness.
The wail hit Padric first. His ears flattened on his skull and he gave an automatic hiss. The wail was harsh and discordant, raking Padric’s nerves. KellReech released his paw and he forced himself to look at the scene more closely.
It wasn’t just the sky that was dark. It was every scrap of earth and air. Everything ahead of them was three-dimensional blackness cracked by scarlet. It stretched from horizon to horizon. Inside the darkness, Padric could dimly make out movement but no exact shapes, not even the canyon that had opened below it. This place had no form, and Padric wasn’t strong enough to force one on it. He didn’t dare walk through it or even stab a claw into it.
The wailing continued. Other Silent in a range of races and species were scattered up and down the long boundary between the darkness and the Dream. Some conversed in pairs or groups. Others simply stared. No one crossed into the wailing black. Whispers murmured in the background, somehow still audible over the noise. The Dream was always full of whispers. Padric noted several humans among the Silent and carefully turned his head so he couldn’t see them.
“It grows,” KellReech murmured. “I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Has anyone tried to cross it?” Padric asked.
“I have heard nothing of such an attempt,” KellReech replied. She reached down to touch his head, unusual for her. “On the other side are nineteen planets with Silent. They are either surrounded by this or they are inside it. I can’t sense them, this much I know.”
Padric concentrated for a moment, but it quickly became obvious that he wouldn’t be able to sense anything beyond the boundary either. For a moment he thought he heard a faint cry under the wailing. He peered ahead, trying to see better. There was a brief flicker, like something flitting at the corner of his eye. Padric craned his neck. For a second he was sure he had seen a human woman amid the chaos. He caught a glimpse of long black hair and an impression of youth. She was…dancing? Then she was gone.
“Did you see that?” he asked KellReech urgently. “The human girl?”
“I saw her,” KellReech replied, her hand still on his head. “What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“I will go consult with others.” KellReech took her hand from Padric’s head and vanished without another word. Padric backed further away from the red-streaked darkness, then gathered his concentration. Obediently his mind conjured up a picture of a spartan stone hall with pillars and a satin reclining couch. He was here but he wished to be there.
A small wrench, and he was standing in the pillared hall, exactly as he had imagined it. The blackness was far away, a smudge on the horizon visible through one glassless window, and from this distance he couldn’t hear the painful wail. Padric forced himself to set thoughts of the ongoing disaster for the moment, knowing KellReech would tell him of anything she found. There were other things he had to consider. He jumped onto the satin couch and worked at the soft cloth with his paws.
So his information had been right-Mother Adept Araceil was a person to watch and it had been worth every moment spent spying on her. Another wave of excitement washed over Padric and he actually began to purr. He had heard the rumors of a powerful Silent, of course, and his information had told him the boy was on a planet within the Empire of Human Unity. However, the idea of a Silent who could control the unwilling and non-Silent was…well, it was a dream come true.
A thought struck him. Was the boy responsible for the black place? He considered the idea for a moment. Doubtful. The disturbance had the feel of many minds, not just one. Was it his project, then? Padric would have to get hold of Dr. Jillias Say on Rust and find out quickly. Meanwhile, it would be best to get his hands on the boy. It would it spell disaster if the Unity got hold of Padric was sinking into the couch. Startled, he tried to stand up, but the cushions pulled him down as if they were made of quicksand. He panicked for a moment, then struggled free of the couch with a sucking sound and flopped ignominiously to the cool marble floor. Beside him, the couch melted into black mush. Padric scrambled to his feet and leaped away from it, claws scrabbling on the smooth floor. The remains of the couch hissed and bubbled like a pitch cauldron, spreading dark ooze across the floor. The ooze ate into the floor, chuckling to itself as if it were alive. It threw up a dank, moldy smell redolent of rotten vegetables.
Then came the screams. A dozen, perhaps a hundred voices, all in pain, all wailing like a cold wind. It came from every direction, tearing at skin and nerves. Padric had to leave the Dream, and quickly, but the screams made it hard to concentrate. A column pressed cold against Padric’s side. He leaned against it, trying to take in its solidity and ignore the chuckling that oozed steadily toward him. The horrible wail keened louder. Suddenly Padric was back in the camps, hearing the screams of the other inmates, their cries for help and mercy. He flattened his ears again and yowled in sympathy.
The column shifted against Padric’s fur. He jumped away with a hiss and spun to face it. The white stone bulged with odd shapes. Distorted human forms moved within the rock, stretching and twisting in impossible directions. Eyes bulged and contracted, skin and muscle contorted. An arm broke free with a wet sound and reached for him. Padric scrambled backward. Cold slime washed over his hind feet, oozed between his toes. Padric tried to leap free, but the blackness held him fast. Still chuckling, it crawled up his haunches. A tendril snapped upward and wrapped around his shoulders like an icy snake.
Padric shut his eyes. He was not in danger. He was not going to die. He was Padric Sufur, and he was a master in the Dream. The ooze climbed, engulfing his front legs. Padric forced himself to shut out the horrible keening, the cold slime crawling up his body. It reached his chest and shoulders. Padric inhaled deeply, ignoring the rotten smell and the fact that he couldn’t feel his feet. He was calm. He was in control.
The icy ooze rushed over his head. Padric automatically tried to inhale and choked. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t Padric Sufur’s eyes snapped open and he sat up with a gasp. He flailed wildly about his bed for a moment before realizing that the slime was gone, the wailing silent. He had successfully left the Dream.
Padric wrapped long, thin arms around his chest, acclimating himself to his real shape. It was bony and inefficient. KellReech had a lower center of gravity and more dextrous fingers. Chipk had many legs and eyes and soft brown fur. Padric’s body was mostly hairless and his hands were awkward. His face was lean, unlined, and hawk-like, with a long nose and thin lips. His body was equally lean, with long limbs and hands. Out of the Dream, Padric had allowed a few wrinkles to creep across his face to remind him that, despite appearances, eighty-eight wasn’t young even for a human.
The bedroom had already raised the temperature to the toasty warmth he preferred upon awakening from the Dream, but a chill suffused his bones. Padric’s room was large and spare, furnished with only a bed, endtable, and wardrobe. Like each room in the rest of his home, this one was a clear dome with, in Padric’s considered opinion, the most beautiful view in the universe.
The estate occupied most of an asteroid, and it consisted of a series of above-ground half-bubbles blown from the rock and sand of the asteroid itself and reinforced with clear polymers. Thick carpets went right up to the edge of the dome, where the floor became the pocked surface of the asteroid. If Padric dimmed the lights, making the dome effectively invisible, it looked as if the room were standing in the middle of a vast desert beneath a soft black sky and steady, shining stars. And the gas giant, of course.
The ringed gas giant, which Padric had named Gem, dominated the heavens, and her rainbow surface was often chased by raging storms large enough to engulf entire planets. Padric’s asteroid currently skated the giant’s icy ring, making it look as if a glittering, blue-white road stretched past the horizon. An entire team of what Padric called his “gardeners” did nothing but scan the asteroid’s projected orbit for ring debris and remove anything that might punch a hole in, or even scratch, the domes. It was terribly expensive, especially when the asteroid’s orbit carried it through the ring itself, but the view was well worth it.
