A low whimper reached him, then, ‘This way. This way,’ said Tarrian.
Antyr felt himself moved forward by the wolf's will.
The shifting sights and sounds passed around and through him until, again without any seeming change, Companion and Dream Finder were the Duke.
'We are here, sire,’ Antyr said. ‘All will be as it was. As you see and feel, so shall we.'
But there was no reply. In this dream, the Duke had been struck dumb. Struggle as he might, he would make no sound, he knew. Yet the warrior leader in him accepted this and set aside the fear that would have had a lesser man waken, gasping for breath.
He was in his receiving chamber.
Matters of the day, Antyr thought. On this frame would be built the dream.
Figures came and went, with noiseless queries: a floating mixture of the known and the elusively familiar. Their roles and liveries were confused and mixed irrelevantly, and some were long dead, though this caused the Duke no surprise.
Despite his silence, he somehow held a series of brief, disjointed conversations which set easily to rights the many problems of business and state that had been brought to him for his special attention. Something, however, was troubling him and, finding that he was now in a strange banqueting hall, he brought his hand down loudly on the table. The hall, which dwindled into a far distant darkness, fell silent, and all eyes turned to him.
Slightly embarrassed, he looked down at the table. In front of him was an elaborately decorated silver goblet. The engraving seemed to be finer than anything he had ever seen and it glittered temptingly in the light of the innumerable and huge candelabras that strove unsuccessfully to light the vast hall. He reached out to pick it up but, as he tried to lift it, he found it would not move.
Puzzled, he bent forward to examine it closely. Great round-headed rivets secured it to the table. Their heads were carved with sneering faces. From somewhere he heard a snigger. He was the butt of some joke.
Angry at this affront, Ibris placed his large hand over the top of the goblet and twisted it violently. Those who would mock him so lightly must learn why it was he was the Duke of Serenstad.
The goblet did not yield.
There was a strange timeless moment in which the goblet and his powerful hand filled Ibris's vision to the exclusion of all else, though he knew that he was being watched and that the resistance of the goblet was a threat to his entire power.
Contempt for his weakness rose around him.
'I need no help.’ The words formed in Ibris's mind, and though he could not speak them, their import reached his unseen watchers, who wavered before his will. Then the contempt changed to an inarticulate but vivid menace.
In the Duke's chamber, Tarrian's yellow eyes opened suddenly and a low growl began in his throat. Both Aaken and Feranc knew that there would be no danger to them unless the Dream Finder was threatened in some way, but the wolf's actions were frightening and, involuntarily, the chancellor stepped back a pace, while the commander of the Duke's bodyguard focused narrow and alert eyes on the animal.
With a black anger, Ibris heaved on the goblet, his entire body tense with effort.
'Something's amiss.'
Tarrian's voice, hesitant and uncertain, came into Antyr's head and echoed his own thoughts.
Then the goblet yielded and with a silent roar of victory the Duke pulled it towards him. But it was not the goblet that had yielded. The whole table was being pulled over. Indeed, as he continued to pull, it seemed that the Duke's endeavours were moving the very floor he was standing on, for the air was suddenly filled with a terrible rumbling and, though he stood firm and solid, all else moved around him. Triumphantly he held on to the goblet, though it was no longer a goblet and the table was no longer a table. Instead it was a great door decorated with a strange mobile design, and he was clasping a carved metal handle shaped like the head of some mythological horned animal of consummate ugliness.
Silence.
Ibris waited.
Antyr and Tarrian waited, their uneasiness growing. Something was amiss. For the first time since he had been an apprentice, Antyr wanted to flee the dream.
Aaken swallowed nervously as the hairs on Tarrian's back rose ominously, and his top lip wrinkled upwards to reveal flesh-rending teeth.
From behind the door came a … command? … a plea? Ibris felt a powerful will setting his own aside and moving him to pull open the door. He hesitated. ‘Only your great strength can do this,’ came some courtier's allurement that both attracted and repelled him, but, as he scowled at this remark, the will had become his own and, tightening his grip on the glittering handle, he began to pull.
He felt rather than saw the door begin to open, and a sighing like a great rush of wind swirled around him: it was a mixture of relief and triumph. The shifting design became frenetic. A dark line appeared at the edge of the door as it moved but Ibris found himself struggling against some unseen resistance. Briefly he felt himself to be the pawn between two great forces, but it was of no import; he was committed.
With unbearable slowness the door opened and the dark line at its edge deepened and spread, as if a great blackness were beginning to seep around it.
A spasm of panic-no, terror-suddenly seized him, tearing the breath from him.
Then a hand seized his wrist and pushed the door forward irresistibly.
The door slammed shut with an echoing boom, and the blackness vanished.
Ibris sat up sharply, wide awake. Antyr wrenched his hand away from the Duke's tightening grip and Tarrian let out a soft, eerie howl.
As his cry died away into a distant whimper, a deep silence filled the room and the three figures became very 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.