in front of him, then its holder: a tall, hooded shadow, towering ominously over him.
Chapter 5
Antyr opened his mouth to cry out at the apparition, a mixture of nightmarish fantasies and wild fears of palace conspiracies flooding into his mind.
At the same time, his mind involuntarily cried out to his Companion. ‘Tarrian!'
There was no reply.
He tried to sit up, but some force restrained him. More thoughts of palace conspiracies swirled around him. The food had been drugged. He had been taken silently to some Lord's torture chamber to have the secrets of the Duke's dream torn from him …
No. This couldn't be true. There was the law. He was a Guildsman. He couldn't be arrested without warrant like some ruffian from the Moras, but …
… power and wealth were power and wealth.
He dragged his scattering thoughts back to the dark figure above him.
The lamp swung from side to side as if it were being shaken by an unsteady breeze, but it did not illuminate its holder. Indeed it seemed to obscure the figure, almost to make it darker in some way.
And were there other shadows at its back?
Antyr felt a hand reaching out towards him.
He tried to cry out again, to demand of this strange visitor, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ But no sound came.
Though his voice was bound, however, his mind remained free. ‘Tarrian, Tarrian,’ he cried out desperately. The figure hesitated and inclined its head to one side as if catching an unexpected sound. But still there was only silence.
Then Antyr became aware of a strange quality in the silence. It was absolute. That the figure made no sound was frightening in itself, but worse than that was the silence in his mind. There was nothing except his own increasingly frantic thoughts.
But how? he thought, before even shock could take hold. Despite his long life among humans, Tarrian retained fully all his natural faculties; he was wild, cautious and suspicious to his very heart. It couldn't be that he would be killed without at least a desperate cry. Was it perhaps some subtle poison in the food? A swift, unexpected sword stroke? Antyr recalled Ciarll Feranc reaching readily for his knife. And the city was not short of men and women skilled in killing.
The feeling of loneliness was fearful and appalling, and Antyr felt a terrible cry of fear and grief forming inside him. But the cry could find no release and he began to tremble as it grew and grew.
The swaying lamp began to shake as if in sympathy, and the watching figure seemed to merge hesitantly into the shadows behind.
Antyr felt the unseen hand withdraw and in some way he knew he was no longer the focus of attention. The shadows shifted uneasily. Then deep inside him, in answer to his silent cry, he heard a faint sound like the frantic scrabbling of a tiny insect. And for the briefest instant he saw, somewhere, a tiny distant light, motionless and calm like the evening star. It too was moving and flickering, like bright sunshine on distant armour.
The image was gone almost before he could register it, but like some alchemist's trickery, its brief appearance irresistibly transformed the whole in the instant, and Antyr's grief and fear was suddenly transmuted into a boiling anger while his trembling body began to tear him free from whatever power held him.
The figure seemed to make a final effort to reach him, lurching forward sharply like a striking snake, but the shadows were drawing it away and the strange scrabbling was growing louder and more frenzied.
Then it seemed to him that for a moment he was at the heart of a great battlefield, one hand clutching a torn and bloodstained standard, the other a hacked and battered sword.
'To me! To me!'
His voice filled all that was, echoing and echoing, and with a final exhalation of loathing and hatred, the shadows were gone.
'Where were you? Where were you?’ Tarrian's voice crashed over him, frantic and desperate. ‘Where did you go?'
Antyr found himself still on the bed but staring now into the wolf's eyes, bright yellow and feral as if he had been dream-searching.
'What …?’ he muttered, bewildered.
'Where did you go? What happened?’ Tarrian repeated the questions, seizing Antyr's shirt in his mouth and shaking him violently. ‘Are you all right …?
Antyr reached out and put his arms about the wolf's neck both to stop him and for needed solace. He could feel the powerful animal trembling, as he himself had trembled. And, he realized, he had never known his Companion so distraught, so out of control.
'I don't know,’ he managed to say as slowly he recognized the palace room and remembered the events of the evening.
'Don't know? Don't know! Ye gods, man…’ Tarrian's voice showed his relief, but was still full of a barely controlled hysteria.
'Please, Tarrian. I'm all right. I don't know what happened. Just give me a moment to gather my wits,’ Antyr said, tightening his hold on his friend. ‘Just a moment.'
Tarrian lay still briefly, then wriggled free and jumped down on to the floor.
Antyr struggled upright until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. A rectangle of dim grey light indicated a window he had not noticed when he first entered the room, and indicated also that it was dawn, or later. He sat motionless some time with his head resting in his hands, then he looked up and stared into the watching wolf's eyes.
'I need a drink,’ he said.
Tarrian's anger overwhelmed him. ‘It's probably the drink that did this, you jackass,’ he thundered. ‘Eroded such enfeebled discipline as you have and left you defenceless against…’ He stopped for a moment, unable to finish the sentence. ‘In all the time I was with your father I never met anything like this-never! And your father ventured into regions where many others wouldn't go, I can tell you.'
Despite himself, Antyr responded in kind. ‘I don't want to know,’ he shouted out loud. ‘All this is madness. What am I doing wandering about other people's dreams? Scrutinizing their fantasies like some quack priest peering into entrails. Hell knows what phantoms I've let into my own mind. I've had enough. I wash my hands of it all before I lose my mind. I'm…'
'Going into the country. Get myself a simple job on a farm somewhere, tending vines, cutting corn.’ Tarrian completed his plaint for him with blistering scorn. ‘Somewhere where there's peace and calm. Somewhere where I can get my throat cut by bandits…'
'Damn you, dog,’ Antyr said through clenched teeth. ‘Go back to your pack.'
A silence came between the two protagonists, such as can only exist between two old friends; sour and bitterly unpleasant.
Tarrian lay down and rested his head on his front paws. His eyes were still brilliant and fixed resolutely on the Dream Finder. Antyr swung his legs back up on to the bed and lay down again to avoid the gaze.
'Tell me what happened,’ Tarrian said simply, after a moment.
Antyr shook his head. He was about to swear at the wolf, but the brief explosion had been cathartic. ‘I don't know,’ he said resignedly. A spasm shook him and he wrapped his arms about himself. ‘I don't know. But it was terrifying. We were apart. Truly apart. As if you'd been … killed. And there was someone here. A figure … with a lamp … and shadows at his back. Watching, waiting … trying to reach me … I…'
His voice faded and the silence descended again. Gradually the sounds of the awakening palace began to seep softly into the room.
