She watched it until the light of the Reinen was gone, lost upon the bosom of the sea, and all was dark. A fitting funeral for Heingistr, a Northern lord.
Then, exhausted though she was, Grislae rose and looked inland, into the fog. There were corpses out there in the dark, corpses she had made from the bodies of men. If she hurried, if she could beat the sun, they would still be there, and one of their dead hands, she knew, held a sword.
Her sword.
The Dreamers of Alamoi
Jeremiah Tolbert
The madman whistled an unfamiliar tune as he walked past the tangle-choked fields, along a road in little better shape; before the plague, it had been surfaced with polished brick. Bricks that the dreamers hadn’t pried up or that hadn’t been chewed into gravel by the weeds and weather.
The guide followed close behind, scheming again.
The madman paused to light his pipe and take a preposterously deep drag from the tight-packed bowl. He inclined the stem toward his guide, exhaled blue smoke.
The guide shook his head. “The last time left me stumbling for hours.”
The madman shrugged. “I had hoped for the amusement of a repeat performance. Ah well. How far now?”
The guide squinted. “Another dozen leagues before it’s too dangerous to continue.”
“Too dangerous for you, perhaps,” the madman said, unveiling his madness again.
When they first met in the traveler’s inn a hundred leagues distant, the madman had said to the guide, whose name was Tog: “They call me Garen the Undreaming — among other, less flattering things. Those men told me you know the way to Alamoi.”
Indeed, Tog had not seen Garen rest since they had set out from the inn for Alamoi, although Tog required sleep, so it was possible that Garen had only waited to bed down until after Tog. Suspicious of the claim, Tog had only pretended to sleep one evening. Through slitted eyes, he had watched the madman drink from a wineskin, wave his hands in some elaborate pantomime, and mutter to himself for hours.
The novelty of it wore thin and Tog had drifted off, but not before he decided that it made no difference whether the assertion was true or not. Garen was mad in either case. He was especially mad if the claim was true; immune to sleep he might be, but immune to the effects of deprivation he was not.
Mad as he was, what harm to lead the man toward the city, knock him on the head, and take from him the curious bag of belongings he carried on his back? No harm to Tog anyway, and that was all that really mattered to him.
“Do you often meet travelers on this road?” Garen asked.
Tog made out the shapes of figures in the dawn mist, slouching toward them. He touched the polished antler hilt of the bone knife at his belt, reassuring himself of its presence.
“Never.”
Garen shifted his pack from his shoulders, dropped it in the dirt, and began rummaging through it. Objects clattered and thudded inside. Tog leaned in to glimpse the contents.
“Really?” Garen said to the air. “Yes, very well. I’ll find it.”
Many of the objects Garen carried with him were unrecognizable to Tog, made of bone, mountain glass, flint, and even the rare bit of copper or bronze, colored deeply as Garen’s own foreign skin.
Garen took the wooden handle of a bronze blade in his palm, and Tog felt relieved that the madman had armed himself, but then Garen set it aside and continued to dig. The approaching figures had resolved into the shapes of two men and a woman wearing the heavy fur cloaks of hillfolk when Garen clucked like a pleased hen and withdrew a fist-sized cloth bundle fastened closed with jute.
The pack contained treasures, as Tog had suspected, perhaps worth countless nights in the brothel tents. He would have it, if the hillfolk didn’t ruin everything.
“Not the kind of folk interested in trade,” Tog hissed. The hillfolk had spotted them and their pace picked up to a brisk jog. The men carried stone-tipped spears.
“Keep your mouth shut while I work,” Garen hissed, and then called out, “Well met, travelers.”
The hillfolk slowed, exchanging glances. Tog had known some who were honorable, but far more who were brigands and thieves; clever, and deadly with their spears. They rejected farming and civility, living as the old people did, by the fruits of their arms. Many found it easier to survive as bandits than to hunt game on the flinty hillsides where they dwelled.
“We are not travelers,” the woman said. “I am Theam, and these are my brothers. Who are you, and what brings you to this plague-wracked place? Few travel this road now but the dreamers.”
Garen touched his right thumb to his forehead, a customary greeting. “I am Garen, and I travel to the Shining City. This is my guide.”
“Tog.” He half-bowed.
The woman laughed. “You can’t hope to escape the teeth of such a powerful dream. If we allowed you to travel another league, you too would be cutting stone blocks from the hill quarries and dragging them into place, again and again until you collapse, rest, and rise to cut and labor again.”
Tog began to speak out against their lie, but Garen silenced him with a glare. “You have seen the dreamers of Alamoi?” Garen sounded impressed.
“I have,” she said, nodding. “Their work teams wander into our hills to gather stone for those twin blasphemies.” She thrust a thumb over her shoulder.
Garen nodded. “Perhaps you can solve a mystery for me, then. With the fields untended and all commerce departed, what do the dreamers consume for sustenance after these seven years of labor?” The question had bothered Tog as well, and many travelers had their theories, mostly gruesome.
“The dream sustains them,” Theam said. “They do not require food or drink.”
The madman forlornly shook his head. “What a pitiful existence! A life of constant labor and no pleasure. Myself, I prefer an inversion of that imbalance. Thank you for the knowledge then.” He paused. “I see your brothers grow tired of talk and are ready to kill and rob us, but I must forestall that, I’m afraid.” Garen unfurled his closed fist and offered the bundle to the hill woman.
Theam’s eyes widened, and the men began to speak rapidly in their guttural tongue. After a moment of hesitation, she took it. One of the men said something angrily, and pointed his spear toward Garen. Theam slapped him open-palmed across the face, hard enough that the man’s nose dripped blood.
“I recognize the craftsmanship,” she told her brother in the dream tongue. Then, turning to the madman, “How did this token enter your possession, flatlander?”
Garen laughed. “I found it tucked in the belt of a dead man leagues and leagues away from here. I honestly had no idea what it was, but a voice on the wind told me to give it to you. A token, you say?”
The hillfolk shifted uneasily. Not even hillfolk wished to be in the presence of a madman for any longer than necessary. Tog nearly smirked.
“Of passage,” she said. “We will honor it as we must, or the Rutk of the Raven Eye will punish us. But if you continue down this road, you will dream or die.”
“Sadly, I must.”
“A shame your possessions will be lost with you. Go, then, but know whatever it is they construct within… it nears completion. Better to flee this place as we do.”
Garen took up his pack and began to walk down the ruined road, once again whistling the foreign tune. Tog stepped to follow, and found the hillfolk’s spear-tips at his belly.
“One token. One passage,” Theam’s taller brother snarled.
Garen shrugged. He avoided Tog’s desperate gaze.
“You cannot leave me to these beasts! I led you faithfully as promised!” Tog shouted. He made to draw his knife, but the hillmen’s icy stares chilled the anger in his blood.