'Yes. Thank you,’ Tarrian replied lazily. ‘I caught the thought as I came in, but I sneaked through out of habit.'
There was an element of amusement in the answer, but Antyr did not ask.
'I came in with a flock of sheep,’ Tarrian volunteered, chuckling and rolling over to have his stomach brushed. ‘What a dozy shepherd. And as for those dogs. They've no idea. I'm surprised you're not up to your ears in my kin, the living must be so easy out there.'
'Dozy or not, the poor beggar's probably had to pay Gate Tax on you, you know,’ Antyr said, trying to sound reproachful, but laughing in spite of himself.
Tarrian pondered. ‘Yes,’ he concluded. ‘Now I think about it, the shepherd was arguing quite heatedly with the Exactor when I left.'
He rolled over again and, clambering to his feet, shook himself massively. ‘Very pleasant,’ he said. ‘I enjoyed that.'
'But …?’ Antyr said, catching the doubt in the thought as he hoisted himself on to his chair.
'But we must talk,’ Tarrian said soberly.
Antyr found himself looking into the wolf's grey eyes. ‘Do you want to go out for a drink?’ Tarrian asked.
The question was unexpected, indeed unique in their relationship.
'I don't know,’ Antyr said after a long hesitation. ‘The day's been … so long … so full of change. Being marched through the fog by the Duke's guards, Ciarll Feranc, Aaken Uhr Candessa, searching the
'Then walking mile after weary mile through the rain and the cold greyness, something changed,’ Antyr went on. ‘Something in me is different. A part of me is crying out to run away, to run while I can. Run anywhere, into a bottle, down to Farlan and on to some foreign boat, anywhere, just get away. But it's a distant wailing infant. I can't pay it any real heed. The rest of me is saying, remember your drills, keep your pike held firm, hold your ground for everyone's sake. Ever seen a horse run on to a pike? Ever seen what cavalry does to fleeing infantry?’ He fell silent.
'Fleeing infantry,’ he muttered softly after a long silence. ‘Easier than a rabbit to a wolf. And they keep on coming … no matter how fast you run … hacking people down … spear and sword. Don't break whatever you do.'
'Do you want to go out for a drink?’ Tarrian repeated his question softly, penetratingly, as a lull came into this almost whispered catalogue of memories.
Antyr's eyes widened and he shook his head slowly. ‘I don't know,’ he said. ‘I'm frightened. I don't know what I want. Except for the fear to go away.'
He looked at Tarrian. The wolf was lying very low on the floor, his ears flattened back along his head. ‘You too?’ he asked.
'Me too,’ Tarrian admitted. ‘But by your battle memories not by what's happened today. At least that might be understandable if we think about it. Humans never will be.'
'I'm sorry,’ Antyr said.
'Don't be, it's my fault,’ Tarrian replied, his manner easing. ‘I should be used to people by now.'
There was a brief silence and Antyr felt Tarrian trying to clear his mind of the alien horror of the battlefield in order to return to the fears of the moment.
'Come away, Tarrian,’ Antyr said, offering his Companion the words like a small signpost to a sanity. ‘It's not your world. And in answer to your question, no, I don't want a drink, I think. And anyway I'm too weary to go to the inn.'
Antyr made the remark as if it were an intellectual decision, but to his surprise, he felt a wave of disgust pass through him as the memory of the sounds and smells of the inn came to him. Yet even as he noted this unexpected response, the urge to be away … anywhere … returned to him. He frowned uneasily, then somehow turned and faced the darkness.
'What's happening, Tarrian?’ he said. ‘Is it me? Has my neglect of my craft, myself, unleashed something?'
'No,’ Tarrian replied simply. ‘That I'm sure of now. Neglect makes it harder to reach the nexus and dims the perception of the dream being searched. It just makes you less of a Dream Finder. You certainly deserve to be totally incompetent by now, but your natural ability has protected you from your best efforts.'
There was a familiar element of reproach in Tarrian's voice, but he himself set it aside quickly and apologetically before the two of them locked into the futility of one of their old quarrels.
Antyr noted the gesture with thanks, but he frowned. ‘I don't understand,’ he said. ‘What's all this about my natural ability you're suddenly talking about. My father used to say I'd be far better than he was if I worked, but … I thought that was just father's talk … something to encourage me. Then he died … and my training ended…'
His voice tailed off as the emptiness that his father's death had left came back to him.
Tarrian's voice intruded gently. ‘Antyr, in so far as it ever really began, your training was ended before your father died.'
Antyr looked at him, his frown becoming pained.
'You had skills from the outset that your father didn't understand,’ Tarrian went on. ‘That I didn't understand-still don't. He couldn't teach you, Antyr. He could only learn from you. And his pain, like mine for a long time, was that he didn't truly see that. He felt constantly that he was failing you.’ The eerie certainty that Tarrian had shown as they stood at the edge of the Aphron Dennai returned. ‘You're no ordinary Dream Finder, Antyr. You move to the nexus as if you were walking from one room to another and you release me utterly. I've known none who moved with such ease, nor gave me such freedom. You let me soar through all places as though I were some great bird. And yet you're flawed.’ He paused. ‘I don't know what you are, Antyr, but you're different. And whatever, whoever, we felt in the Duke's dream, knew … or sensed … it too. That's why it came looking for you afterwards.'
Antyr's eyes widened in horror at the implications that reverberated in Tarrian's word. He glimpsed again the image of the hapless, fleeing rabbit.
'This is nonsense,’ he protested, but hearing the futility in his own voice. ‘How can anyone from the outside enter a dream?'
'We do.'
Tarrian's simple statement of the obvious struck Antyr like a hammer blow and he fell silent. The reply formed in his mind, ‘That's different, we're there with the dreamer, we have the contact, we have the consent, the trust.’ But it had a hollow ring and he could not speak it.
'Even the Duke sensed the presence of another will in his dream, that's why he opposed it,’ Tarrian said. ‘Then we felt it with him. And it felt us.'
Antyr sought solace in an irrelevance. ‘He must be a sensitive, then,’ he said.
'Dream Finding's an ancient skill,’ Tarrian said brusquely. ‘And its practitioners hardly constitute a celibate order, do they? He's probably got a damn sight more than one Dream Finder back in his ancestry somewhere.'
Tarrian's curt dismissal of this diversion left Antyr nowhere to go but forward again.
'What shall we do then?’ he said reluctantly and with a feeling of unreality. ‘If someone can invade the Duke's dream, then find me when I'm asleep, for whatever purpose…’ The memory of the shadow's parting hiss of hatred passed over him and he shivered. ‘What can I do? Am I to stay awake forever? And if they can reach out and snatch me from your protection in some way, what can
Tarrian was silent. Both stared into the black pit of ignorance, helpless.
'What about the Guild?’ Antyr offered, after a moment. ‘There must be someone there who can help us.'
'Name one,’ Tarrian said tersely.
Antyr looked at him pleadingly. ‘Come on, think, Tarrian. You pay more heed to Guild affairs than I do. They're not all concerned with wringing tax concessions from the Exactors and arguing about fees, surely. There's got to be someone left who's still interested in the craft.'
Antyr sensed Tarrian about to make the same reply and he held up a warning finger. Even when Petran had been alive, Tarrian had been ill-disposed towards what he called the futility of this particular manifestation of the human pack instinct. Since his death, however, the wolf's feelings had grown to cynical and growling disdain.
