“I believe, Doran of Shiphaven, Falea the Slender,” the mage declaimed as the pair entered, “that I have just the spell you need.”
Doran was suitably impressed. Having spent the intervening time buying and eating a more-than-adequate luncheon, Doran was in a much better mood than before. “Oh?” he said, politely.
Falea had spent the entire meal worrying about whether Dumery had found anything to eat in the past day or so, and was too upset to say anything.
“Yes,” Thetheran said. “It’s known as the Greater Spell of Invaded Dreams. It will permit me to speak to your son in his dreams, and to question him regarding his present circumstances. By performing the spell in a certain way, I believe that I can put one of you-not both, however-into the dream as well, so that you, too, will be able to speak to him. Thatis what you wanted, I believe?”
Both of Dumery’s parents nodded, Falea with rather more enthusiasm than her spouse.
“I cannot perform the spell with any chance of success until the boy is asleep, however,” Thetheran explained. “That means that I had best wait until well after dark tonight. I will also need to know the boy’s true name, if it is not Dumery of Shiphaven...”
“That’s the only name he’s got,” Doran interrupted. “Only one he ever had.”
“Then it is his true name,” Thetheran said, unperturbed. “Now, which of you will speak to him?”
Doran glanced at his wife, who immediately volunteered.
“I will need your true name, as well, then,” Thetheran said, “and it would be easiest if you were to remain here, with me, throughout, though in fact it should be possible to conduct the entire affair successfully if you are at home and asleep in your own bed.”
“I’ll stay here,” Falea unhesitatingly replied.
Doran eyed her briefly, then looked over the mage, and decided that the risk of being cuckolded was minimal. “All right,” he said. “Is there anything else you need, wizard?”
“Not for the spell itself,” Thetheran replied, “but there is the matter of my fee...”
Chapter Thirteen
There may, Dumery reflected, be worse ways of paying for one’s passage than by shoveling manure, but offhand he couldn’t think of any.
Seeing the five crewmen lolling about doing nothing much most of the time didn’t make the work any easier or more enjoyable, either. Oh, they fed the cattle four times a day, and directed the gaseous spirit that was pulling the barge along at an impressive speed, but that was about the extent of it.
Dumery wondered why all five of them were along, since it seemed that three would have been plenty, even if he hadn’t been there himself to help.
It wasn’t any of his business, though. He stuck to his shovel-sometimes literally, when the sweat from his hands mixed with the accumulated crud on the handle-and didn’t ask questions.
An hour or two after leaving what the crewmen called Azrad’s Bridge came the first really enjoyable part of the journey, when the bargemen hauled out provisions and ate lunch. Dumery was included, and stuffed himself with cold smoked ham, creamy cheese, hard brown bread, and a thin, watery ale.
It was simple food, but after the near starvation of the last day or two it was absolutely delicious and wonderfully filling.
The break didn’t last long, though.
Dumery was pleased to see, when he looked up from his shovel and considered the sun’s position an hour or so after that excellent repast, that the river had indeed turned north rather than continuing to the west. Sardiron of the Waters, everyone agreed, lay to the north, and the dragon-hunter was on board a boat bound for Sardiron of the Waters.
Not that Dumery had seen any branches where theSunlit Meadows could have turned aside, or that he thought the crew of the barge had lied to him about where they were going; it was just reassuring to know that the World around him was behaving in a consistent and rational manner, and that they hadn’t all gone mad or wandered into some demonic netherworld. Being outside the familiar walls of Ethshar was not good for Dumery’s peace of mind; he didn’t entirely trust the exterior World to stay solid and consistent. The whole experience of gliding along a river had a feeling of unreality to it.
The sun grew steadily less visible as the day wore on; clouds gathered and thickened, but no rain fell that afternoon.
As soon as the barge had pulled over to the side and tied up to a tree for the first night, Dumery and the five crewmen ate a simple, hearty dinner, very similar to their lunch. It wasn’t until after they had all finished eating and were settling in for the evening that Dumery got up the courage to ask how long the journey to Sardiron would take.
“Oh, a sixnight or so,” the first mate, Kelder the Unpleasant, told him.
“Depends on the weather and how well the sylph does. Those things are pretty unpredictable.”
“Short of hiring a seer, anyway,” Naral Rander’s son remarked.
Dumery guessed that the sylph was the almost-invisible thing that pulled the barge-all he could see of it by day was an occasional flicker, like the distortion in the air over a hot stove, and now that night had fallen it appeared as a faint filminess, like a wisp of steam. Emboldened, he asked, “Where’d you get the sylph, anyway?”
“Oh, it’s not ours,” Kelder explained. “The baron who bought this load of cattle has a wizard working for him who sent it along. It’s fast. We need to be quick so we can fit enough feed on board; wouldn’t want the cattle to starve. The baron likes his meat fat and tender, I guess. Anyway, getting pulled by the sylph is a lot faster than poling upstream, or hiring some sort of tug, or rigging a treadmill and paddlewheel.”
Naral snorted. “I’d like to see anyonepole a loaded cattle barge upstream!” he said.
Kelder whacked the back of Naral’s head, and the conversation degenerated into general insults.
Not long after that the crew bedded down for the night, four of the five crawling into the tiny, cramped space under the foredeck-too small to be called a cabin, really-where four narrow berths took up virtually the entire space.
The fifth, Kelder the Unpleasant, took the first watch, sitting quietly on the foredeck.
Dumery was tossed a decaying brown blanket and told he could sleep on the afterdeck, a space about two feet fore and aft and thirty feet across.
Dumery eyed his assigned bed nervously. There was no railing across the back, only a low coaming, and the prospect of rolling off the barge into the river was unappealing.
His only other option was to bed down under the hooves of the cattle, however, and getting stepped on seemed rather more likely than rolling into the river, and almost equally undesirable. There were other unpleasant aspects to sleeping in the bottom of the barge, too, since Dumery hadn’t done any shoveling since just before supper. The planks of the afterdeck were blackened by several years’ accumulation of grease and grime, but the bottom of the barge was far worse.
Reluctantly, Dumery climbed up, dismayed by the slimy feel of the planking, and lay down. He pulled the ragged blanket over himself, curled up, and tried to sleep.
Cramped and uncomfortable as he was, dismayed by the hard planking and the smell of cattle, it took time, time he would have spent counting stars had any been visible through the overcast. The outside world seemed all too real, now.
Eventually he dozed off.
His last waking thought was that that was the end of the day’s adventures, but he was wrong. He had been asleep no more than half an hour when he began dreaming.
The dream began in an ordinary enough way; he was on Wizard Street, wandering from door to door, looking for someone-but he didn’t know who.
At first none of the doors were open, and no one answered his knocking and calling, but then he saw that all the rest of the shop doorswere open, and he had somehow failed to notice before. He ran up to one, and found himself facing Thetheran the Mage.