still. Eventually Antyr said awkwardly, ‘This was the dream you sought, sire?'
The Duke started a little at Antyr's voice, then swung his legs round and stood up shakily, only to sit down again almost immediately. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, his left hand rubbing his right wrist as if it had been injured in some way. ‘You have your father's deftness. With time and discipline I suspect you could be even better than he.'
The remark was offhand, as though the Duke were saying something while his mind was on other, more important matters. Antyr, however, bowed his head in acknowledgement; offhand or not, it was a rare compliment.
But the Duke's dream had unsettled him profoundly. Something had been dreadfully wrong about it and he wanted to be away from here. Duty held him for the moment however. ‘Did you find what you were seeking, sire?’ he asked.
The Duke turned and met the Dream Finder's still, night-eyed gaze unflinchingly. ‘I'm not sure,’ he said. ‘Whose was the hand that closed the door?'
'Your own, sire,’ Antyr answered simply.
Ibris nodded as if this answered some other question, then he lifted up his two hands and looked at them. ‘My left defied my right?’ he muttered.
An image of doubt, sire, Antyr was about to say, glibly. Nothing more. Merely a reflection of the difficult balancing of interests which must constantly beset you.
But though in many a lord it would have been so, here it was not, he knew. He had walked through countless nightmares, faced, and smiled at all the demons and ogres that the human mind could invent, but the Duke's dream had had a … strangeness … in it that he had never known before. It had been as if the will that had sought the opening of the door had truly been from beyond the Duke. Not simply some ‘mysterious presence’ which was no more than a creation of the dreamer's guilt, but a separate, distinct entity. And seeking some unknowable end.
Suddenly he felt very afraid.
He needed a drink.
Tarrian's dismay and anger flooded through him but the Duke cut across the impending silent argument.
'Who else was there, Antyr?’ he asked.
Antyr's throat dried. The Duke had ruled the city and its dominions for over forty years. Years full of battles, riots, plagues, factional quarrelling and plotting, civil and military upheavals of every form. Yet too they had been years full of achievement, with magnificent buildings rising above the city's walls, great works of scholarship, poetry, music, and paintings and sculptures, and …
Antyr looked down. Ibris had both survived and brought about these times. He was too complete and perceptive a man to have sought out a Dream Finder on some foolish whim.
At one with his Companion, a Dream Finder could not lie, but Antyr wished profoundly that the question had not been asked.
'I don't know, sire,’ he said eventually.
'But you're afraid?’ the Duke continued.
Antyr did not reply.
'You needn't answer,’ the Duke said. ‘I can smell your fear. Feel no shame about it. I…'
He stopped and lowered his eyes.
For a long moment he sat motionless, then he laid his hand briefly on Antyr's and stood up. ‘Thank you, Petran's son,’ he said. ‘And you, Tarrian. You've done me good service tonight.’ He gestured to Aaken and Feranc. ‘See that he's duly paid and safely escorted home before you both retire.’ Then he was striding towards a nearby door, leaving Antyr scrambling to his feet and bowing awkwardly while trying to prevent his chair from falling over.
As he reached the door, Ibris turned. ‘I may need you again,’ he said curtly. ‘Don't leave the city. And speak to no one of this visit.'
Antyr seemed to feel the walls and ceiling of the room closing about him like a prison. Unsteadily, he bowed again.
When the Duke had left, Antyr turned round. Feranc had moved from the door and was close behind him.
Antyr jumped. ‘I … I don't leave the city much anyway,’ he stammered hastily, but the bodyguard's face showed no expression other than a flick of the eyes towards the approaching chancellor.
'Go with Lord Aaken for your fee,’ he said flatly. ‘Then I'll have you escorted back home, unless you'd rather spend the rest of the night here.'
Antyr's every instinct was to flee-to get back to his own home, away from the lingering, persistent strangeness of the Duke's dream and the cold hardness of Feranc's presence.
'And to get back to that bottle,’ came a scornful blast from Tarrian, though it was edged by doubt and uncertainty.
Antyr gathered up an angry denial, but it faded almost before he could form it. The sense of menace from outside that had touched the Duke's dream had been like that which, only a little while earlier, Tarrian had brought to him from his memory of the death of Petran.
'Yes … No … I…’ Antyr faltered. ‘I don't want anything to do with this. It's…'
His reply petered out. He had no choice. Independent of his feelings, if the Duke wanted him again then that was the end of the matter; he was not a man who could safely be gainsaid by a mere Dream Finder. Antyr's stomach turned over and for a moment he thought he was going to be sick again.
'I think perhaps you'd better stay here,’ Aaken said, his voice concerned. ‘You've had an even more disturbed night than the rest of us and you don't look very well at all.’ Antyr hesitated. ‘We'll find somewhere for you, and some food and drink. It's a long way back to your empty house through this fog,’ Aaken concluded.
Antyr nodded. He had the feeling that he was being manipulated, but Aaken was right. He was tired, and being marched through the gloomy streets had little appeal.
'Thank you, sir, I will stay, if I may,’ he replied. ‘And if it's no imposition, a little food would be appreciated, and perhaps a little ale … or wine …?'
A hand fell on his shoulder. ‘Food, yes, but ale and wine, no, Dream Finder.’ The voice was Feranc's and it too offered Antyr no choices. ‘I know little about your strange … craft … Dream Finder, but I know enough to know that ale and wine will impair your skills severely and I have my duty to the Duke to ensure that he is served only by the most able.'
Briefly it occurred to Antyr to protest against this arbitrary prohibition; to stand on his rights as a free Guildsman. But even if Feranc's presence alone had not indicated the futility of such an attempt, he knew that the words ‘Needs of the State', with their subtle combination of an appeal to his loyalty and a threat of force if he did not respond appropriately, would end his rebellion with a single stroke.
He affected an indifference. ‘Water will be excellent,’ he said, with a weak smile, allowing Feranc to guide him to the door. Tarrian chuckled malevolently.
A little later, after a confusing trip through winding corridors and stairways and a promise from Aaken that he would pay him, ‘Tomorrow, without fail', Antyr found himself sitting alone on the edge of a bed, in a small, simply decorated room. On a small table in front of him was a bowl of hot, thick stew, a plate liberally covered with slices of meat and large chunks of bread, and a plain glass jug of water.
A dish of food had been brought for Tarrian also and, after a brief and noisy chase, he had successfully nosed it into a corner and was greedily devouring the contents.
Feranc had left them there with a cursory ‘Good night', and the meal had appeared shortly afterwards, carried on a wooden tray by a bleary-eyed servant whose surly face clearly said, ‘This is the Duke's palace, not an inn, you know!'
Any thought the man might have had about voicing such a comment however, vanished when Antyr and Tarrian, their eyes dark as night and cruel as a desert sun, turned towards him.
For a while Antyr sat motionless, staring darkly at the jug and toying uncertainly with a spoon, then the sound of Tarrian's furious eating stopped and a snout edged towards Antyr's bowl.
'I'll have that if you don't want it,’ Tarrian said.
Antyr wanted to ask him why he had never told him that his father had been Dream Finder to the Duke, but he knew it would be to no avail.
