'Does nothing stop you eating?’ he asked instead.
'Nature of the beast,’ Tarrian replied. ‘We don't survive out there by dallying delicately over our prey. Every meal's our last. Have you finished?'
'No, damn it, I haven't started yet,’ Antyr said crossly, picking up a piece of meat and throwing it over the wolf's head. Tarrian twisted round and caught the piece before it reached the floor. He swallowed it with a single gulp as he turned back in anticipation of more. His unbridled pleasure at this unexpected meal was infectious and, though not without some effort, Antyr made a start on the stew.
Despite the sour face of the servant who had brought it, the stew was excellent, and after the first few hesitant mouthfuls, Antyr began to eat with some relish.
Gradually his dark mood gave way to a quiet litany of self-reproach, and a train of well-worn thoughts started to parade through his mind. He really should do something with himself; get some order into his life; stop his drinking, get more clients, start studying his craft again-his father had been highly regarded by his colleagues, and the skill was sometimes hereditary.
But now he seemed to be viewing the thoughts from a different vantage. Something had changed. It was as if the Duke's disturbing dream had shifted a great weight inside him which he had thought to be unmovable and now it was beginning to move like some slow avalanche.
His own words came back to him-it was a Dream Finder's duty-privilege, his father would say-to help and comfort people-the bewildered, the tormented. But the craft, in Serenstad at least, had been severely assailed by an unwitting alliance of medical practitioners, scientists and philosophers, all of whom had prospered and progressed under Ibris's tutelage. Antyr's father had been the mainstay of the Guild of Dream Finders, and his dignity and experience had done much to sustain the craft. But when he died, his successors proved to be timid and futile, and they had stood by, wringing their hands as their ancient craft had fallen in public esteem and degenerated towards charlatanism.
Young, grief-stricken and only partly trained, Antyr could not begin to fill the vacuum left by his father in the Guild and he found himself standing by, a bewildered and increasingly bitter spectator.
For a while after his father's death he had tended to the needs of his father's old clients. But these had gradually diminished in number; some had thoughtlessly died, but the majority had turned away from him, alienated by his increasingly unpleasant and disparaging manner. This same trait had also made it difficult for him to acquire new clients.
Now, sitting in this simple room in the Duke's palace, Antyr's view of his life changed. He saw that he had
His father would not have done that. He would have spoken out as need arose and pitted his integrity against all mockery and scorn.
True, he was not his father, but the word, chosen, disturbed him. He realized, chillingly, that he was what he was through his own endeavours. He had not had the wit-the cynicism-to become rich by pandering to the whims and fancies of the wives of merchants and aristocrats, yet he had not had the courage to offer them his skills honestly and without fear.
Idly he picked up a piece of meat and held it out to Tarrian, but the wolf ignored it. Instead he sat down beside him and leaned heavily against his leg. Antyr felt the ancient, silent companionship of the pack close about him. He put his arm around the wolf in reply.
'Don't be too severe on yourself, few could have followed in your father's footsteps, and wiser than you have done worse with their lives,’ Tarrian said, unexpectedly sympathetic.
Antyr nodded and patted the wolf. ‘Is this just a late night and good food talking, dog?’ he said.
'No,’ Tarrian replied after a long pause. ‘It's the Duke's dream. I think the masonry's starting to fall about you at last.'
His tone was both grim and regretful, and Antyr shivered. A final item entered his revelation: fear.
Even now he was reluctant to face it. But it was coming, he knew, with the inexorability of a flood tide. It would make itself felt regardless of his wishes or his actions. That distant alarm that he had always felt, even as an apprentice. That elusive sense of the deep mystery of the dreams that he so casually wandered through.
'We don't know what we are doing, how we do it, or what true end it serves,’ he said softly to himself. ‘We have too little humility, too little awe.’ He looked down at Tarrian. ‘We're children playing in the armoury, hedged about by points and edges we know nothing of. We don't even know how we came to be, do we, dog?’ he continued stroking the wolf's head. ‘You're not truly of your kind, nor am I of mine. We call the finding a skill, a craft, but…'
Tarrian made no reply.
Then slowly, Antyr concluded, ‘Such ignorance can be nothing other than dangerous.'
'Our lives are but dreams in the Great Dream,’ the ancients of legend had said. But they had not been called Dream Finders, they had been called the Dream Warriors, Adepts of the White Way, men of great power and wisdom, who guarded the spirits of men from …
From what? And from where?
Superstition, Antyr thought, out of habit. Tales for children, like tales of wizards and elves and dragons …
But …?
Fear burst inside him suddenly, and for a moment he lost control completely. His entire body trembled and shook violently. He had never known such fear, not even when he'd stood shield to shield with his fellows, facing the Bethlarii's cavalry charge at Herion. And there he had truly expected to die!
The sudden recollection was like cold water dashed in his face. Those pounding horses and screaming men turning only at the last moment in front of the hedge of spears. Then he had seen friends and strangers alike die all around him in the hail of arrows and spears from the Bethlarii infantry.
People alive, talking, shouting but seconds before, suddenly, starkly, no more; their bodies like empty mansions; like things that had never been. Yet he had not been so frightened as he was now.
Why? he asked himself. What is more fearful than death? No answer came, but in the silence, he realized that he was no longer trembling; that his fear was waning. Somehow, just as Tarrian would shake off the rain from his coat in a great flurrying cloud of spray, so his own convulsion seemed to have scattered his terror.
Just a bad night, he rationalized briefly. Too many things happening, too quickly.
Almost immediately, however, he denied this explanation with a rueful smile. Tarrian turned to look at him.
Masonry, Antyr thought. Inevitability.
'What's happened, Tarrian?’ he asked, gently pushing the table to one side and laying back on the bed. ‘What's frightening you that you won't tell me? What do you know?'
There was a long pause.
'I know that you're a finer Dream Finder than even your father,’ came the reply eventually. ‘I'm sorry I frightened you earlier, but it seemed to be the right thing to do.'
Antyr frowned, he had never heard Tarrian so uncertain, and the wolf's self-reproach was quite uncharacteristic.
'I probably asked for it,’ he said. ‘But don't avoid my question. The Duke's dream was bland and ordinary yet it was full of threat and doom beyond any nightmare we've ever found. What …?'
'Go to sleep,’ Tarrian said before Antyr could finish his question.
'What?’ Antyr exclaimed in some irritation.
'Go to sleep,’ Tarrian repeated. ‘I'll keep watch. This day's been too long. We'll see what we think about all this tomorrow.'
Antyr opened his mouth to argue, but Tarrian shut him out. For a moment he considered opposing his Companion, but he knew it would be futile. Besides, Tarrian was right. Whatever was stirring within him it could not be dealt with while he was so tired.
He reached up and extinguished the single lamp that was illuminating the room, then lay back and closed his eyes. As he drifted into sleep, however, he was aware of Tarrian's presence, unusually alert and vigilant, prowling the fringes of his mind.
It seemed that he had scarcely drifted off when he was awakened suddenly. A moving lamp came into focus
