stuck out its tongue at me, just before the bridge receded out of sight. I didn't have time to be offended by its audacity, since I was too busy falling.
'Gleeeeeeeep!' my dragon wailed, as he thudded onto the steep slope beside me. 'Gle-ee-ee-eep!'
'Gr-ra-ab so-ome-thi-ing,' I stuttered, as we rolled helplessly down the hill. Where had all those force lines gone? I should have been able to anchor myself to the earth with a bolt of magik. We tumbled a good long way until my pet, showing the resourcefulness I knew was in him, snaked his long neck around a passing tree stump, and his tail around my leg. We jerked to an abrupt halt I hung upside down with my head resting on a shallow ledge that overlooked a deep ravine. We'd only just missed falling into it As soon as I caught my breath, I crawled up the slope to praise Gleep. He shot out his long tongue and affectionately planted a line of slime across my face. I didn't flinch as I usually did. I figured he deserved to lick me if he wanted to. He'd saved both of us.
I studied my surroundings. If there was a middle to nowhere, I had unerringly managed to locate it.
The remote scraps of blue visible through the forest roof were all that was left of the sky. Once my heart had slowed from its frantic 'That's it, we're all going to die now' pounding to its normal, 'Well, maybe not yet' pace I realized that the ledge we almost fell off was wide enough to walk on. I had no idea where it led, but sitting there wasn't going to help me find Aahz or the jokers who had carried him off.
'You lost, friend?' a male voice asked.
I jumped up, looking around for its source. I could see nothing but underbrush around me. Out of reflex I threw a disguise spell on me and Gleep, covering my strawberry-blond hair with slicked-back black and throwing my normally round and innocent-looking blue eyes into slanted, sinister pits. Gleep became a gigantic red dragon, flames licking out from underneath every scale.
'No! I'm just... getting my bearings.'
A clump of trees stood up and turned around. I couldn't help but stare. On the other side of the mobile copse was the form of a man.
'Well, you sure look lost to me,' said the man, squinting at me in a friendly fashion. He was dressed in a fringed jacket and trousers, with a striped fur cap perched on his head and matching boots on his feet. His skin was as rough as bark, and his small, dark eyes peered at me out of crevices. Hair and eyebrows alike were twiglike thickets. The eyebrows climbed high on his craggy forehead. 'Say, that's pretty good illusion-making, friend! You an artist?'
'Huh?' I goggled, taken aback. How could he have spotted it so readily? 'No. I'm a master magician. I am ... the Great Skeeve.'
The man stuck out a huge hand and clenched my fingers. I withdrew them and counted them carefully to make sure none had broken off in his solid grip. 'Pleased to meet you. Name's Alder. I'm a backwoodsman. I live around these parts. I only ask because illusion's a major art form around here. You're pretty good.'
'Thanks,' I said dejectedly. An illusion was no good if it was obvious. I let it drop. 'I only use it because I don't look very impressive in person.'
Alder tutted and waved a hand. 'It don't matter what you look like. It's only your personality anybody pays attention to. Things change around here so often.' He lifted his old face, sniffed, and squinted one eye. He raised a crooked finger. 'Like now, for example.'
Alder was right. While I watched, his leathery skin smoothed out a little and grew paler. Instead of resembling a gnarled old oak he looked like a silver-haired birch instead. I was alarmed to discover the transformation was happening to me, too. Some force curled around my legs, winding its way up my body. The sensation wasn't unpleasant, but I couldn't escape from it. I didn't struggle, but something was happening to my body, my face.
'Gleep!' exclaimed my dragon. I glanced over at him. Instead of a blue dragon with vestigal wings, a large, brown fluffy dog sat looking at me with huge blue eyes. Once I got past the shock I realized the transformation really rather suited him. I pulled a knife out of my pocket and looked at my reflection in the shiny blade. The face looking back at me was tawny skinned with topaz-yellow eyes like a snake and a crest of bright red hair. I shuddered.
'What if I don't like the changes?' I asked Alder.
Meditatively he peeled a strip of bark off the back of one arm and began to shred it between his fingers. 'Well, there are those who can't do anything about it, but I'm betting you can, friend. Seeing as how you have a lot of influence.'
'Who with?' I demanded. 'What's the name of this dimension? I've never been here before.'
'It ain't a dimension. This is the Dreamland. It's common to all people in all dimensions. Every mind in the Waking World comes here, every time they go to sleep. You don't recognize it consciously, but you already know how to behave here. It's instinctive for you. You're bending dreamstuff, exerting influence, just as if you lived here all the time. You must have pretty vivid dreams.'
'This is a dream? But it all seems so real.'
'It don't mean it ain't real, sonny,' Alder whistled through his teeth 'Look, there's rules. The smarter you are, the more focused, the better you get on in this world. Lots of people are subject to the whims of others, particularly of the Sleepers themselves, but the better you know your own mind, the more control over your own destiny you've got. Me, I know what I like and what I don't. I like it out in the wilderness. Whenever the space I'm in turns into a city, I just move on until I find me a space where there ain't no people. Pretty soon it quiets down and I have things my own way again. Now, if I didn't know what I wanted, I'd be stuck in a big Frustration dream all the time.'
'I just had a Frustration Dream,' I said, staring off in the general direction in which Aahz had disappeared. 'How is it that if I have so much power here I couldn't catch up with my friend?'
'He's gone off on a toot,' Alder said, knowingly. 'It happens a lot to you Waking Worlders. You get here and you go a little crazy. He got a taste of what he wants, and he's gone after more of it.'
'He doesn't need anything,' I insisted. 'He's got everything back at home.' But I paused.
'There's got to be something,' Alder smiled. 'Everyone wants one thing they can't get at home. So what does your friend want?'
That was easy, Aahz had told me himself. 'Respect.'
Alder shook his head. 'Respect, eh? Well, I don't have a lot of respect for someone who abandons his partner like he did.'
I leaped immediately to Aahz's defense. 'He didn't abandon me on purpose.'
'You call a fifty-mile bridge an accident?'
I tried to explain. 'He was excited. I mean, who wouldn't be? He had his powers back. It was like... magik.'
'Been without influence a long time, has he?' Alder asked, with squint-eyed sympathy.
'Well, not exactly. He's very powerful where we come from,' I insisted, wondering why I was unburdening myself to a strange old coot in the wilderness, but it was either that or talk to myself. 'But he hasn't been able to do magik in years. Not since my old mentor, er, put a curse on him. But I guess that doesn't apply here.'
'It wouldn't,' Alder assured me, grinning. 'Your friend seems to have a strong personality, and that's what matters. So we're likely to find your friend in a place he'd get what he wanted. Come on. We'll find him.'
'Thanks,' I said dubiously. 'I'm sure I'll be able to find him. I know him pretty well. Thanks.'
'Don't you want me to come along?'
I didn't want him to know how helpless I felt. Aahz and I had been in worse situations than this. Besides, I had Gleep, my trusty ... dog ... with me. 'No, thanks,'
I said, brightly. 'I'm such a powerful wizard I don't really need your help.'
'Okay, friend, whatever you want,' Alder said. He stood up and turned around. Suddenly, I was alone, completely surrounded by trees. I couldn't even see the sky.
'Hey!' I yelled. I sought about vainly. Not only couldn't I see the backwoodsman, but I'd lost sight of the cliffside path, the hillside, and even what remained of the sky. I gave in. 'Well, maybe I need a little help,' I admitted sheepishly. A clearing appeared around me, and Alder stood beside me with a big grin on his face. 'Come on, then, youngster. We've got a trail to pick up.'
Alder talked all the way through the woods. Normally the hum of sound would have helped me to focus my mind on the problem at hand, but I just could not concentrate. I'm happiest in the middle of a town, not out in the wilderness. Back when I was an apprentice magician and an opportunistic but largely unsuccessful thief, the bigger
