Now Garen drew his blade from his pack and clenched it between his teeth. His mouth tasted as metallic as blood as he climbed down to the street once more. He kept a careful eye on the shadows for the urchins, but saw none; a strange energy in the air grew taut, and even the feral children must have been able to sense it. Perhaps they had fled the city ahead of what came next.
A dozen empty-eyed, slack-mouthed workers shuffled past the entrance to Garen’s alley. He flinched back, but they paid him no mind. He stepped out and followed, keeping a small distance from the rear of the pack. He did his best to match their gait and unseeing stares.
Once the pack merged with the larger crowd, they began to sway in place, as if leaning to and fro to a tune only they could hear. A dim memory of a song with a matching beat played itself in Garen’s mind, and he nearly shrieked to silence it. He didn’t wish to recall whatever that was now, a memory of a time when he too had been exposed to a dream, and returned from it lacking some deep, fundamental piece of himself, the only survivor in an entire village of dreaming dead.
He shook away the audial phantasm and pushed his way through the crowd, hundreds of half-naked bodies now, shoulder to shoulder, pressing ever inward to seek the shade of the supports. The heat from their bodies drew more sweat upon Garen’s brow. His heart raced, somehow certain that they were watching him with their mindless gazes, but had determined him harmless.
It was only when he took out the vials given to him by Meldri and Besthamun that they reacted at all. In one mighty voice they screamed long and shrill, nearly tearing the tissue of Garen’s ears. All of the dreamers, at once. Garen took up his blade and turned to put his back against stone, but the dreamers did not turn to face him. Instead, their sightless gaze was directed skyward, where the keystone had been fitted into place.
The tenseness in the air snapped. A chill gale blew inward to the arch, followed after a moment by a hot breeze, damp, fetid, like the exhalation of some great beast. Garen nearly retched at the indescribable stench.
Bodies rained onto the paving stones from the scaffolding, first one, then another, then dozens, falling and cracking onto the stone-lined streets. Flocks of magpies and crows swooped forward to dine on the fresh meats, fluttering, glossy-black wings blanketing the gore from Garen’s eyes like a feathered eclipse. Garen tore his gaze away and went to work. He hurriedly formed compounds and solutions by rote. Now his only thoughts were of Besthamun and Meldri.
“What harm does it do to let the dreamers build?” Garen asked. The three of them lay in a sweaty tangle of spent limbs in Besthamun’s bed.
“The dream plagues are the dreams of Them — those titans and gods from before language and song, the horrors banished outside by the first fires and spears. In their eternal slumber, their dreams twist the wakened and reshape those that they touch. Their dreams cause great horror and tragedy, but mostly they pass quickly,” Meldri said.
“Mmm.” Garen nodded, tap-tapping his chin against Besthamun’s shoulder.
“The dream in Alamoi has never passed,” Besthamun said. “Our mentor, the Great Blind Scholar Trikilin, studies ashamani — dreams of purpose. There are half-written records of other purposeful dreams in the Library. Each was an awesome calamity, greater still than any war or famine. There are stories of the banished demons building exits from their prisons. If they were to return, the world would drown in blood and fire.”
“I’m merely surprised you would be so eager to destroy your home,” Garen said.
Besthamun sat upright. “How do you know this?”
Garen shrugged. “Try as you might, you can’t hide the accented lilt in your speech.”
“We thought you knew nothing of the Shining City,” Meldri said, tone hurt.
Garen chuckled, hand on Besthamun to draw her back to the bed. “I study dream plagues in my own way; of course I know as much as I can about your city. But I had thought it useless in my quest.”
“We were pressed into Trikilin’s service as children by our father, a master architect,” Meldri said in a far-off tone. “We left before the plague took hold. Sometimes I dream that I am walking the streets near our home again. Of the way the stones felt warm beneath your feet, even after the sun had set.”
“I miss the smells of mountain grubs and rock sparrow eggs frying in the stalls along the marketplace,” Besthamun whispered.
“In my dream the people become monsters. They tear down Alamoi, brick by brick, devouring each stone with blackened maws.” Meldri began to sob.
“We will see it destroyed by our own hands and our people freed from the dream’s service,” Besthamun said, taking her brother’s hand. She stared at Garen, who shrugged.
“I will do my best.”
Later, after Meldri had drifted off, Garen said: “You don’t expect me to survive.”
Besthamun rolled to face away. “I suppose not. The detonating compound will only give you moments to find shelter, even if you live long enough to formulate it. But… you are clever.”
He laughed.
“Perhaps the most clever man I have ever met.”
“Maybe so. But if you really cared about me as anything other than a tool for your plans, you wouldn’t send me to my death.”
“I’m not forcing you to go.”
He sighed. “I would give anything, even my life, to dream again. Aside from the fits of madness, one does not feel… real?… after so long without dreams. This talk of saving the land from the calamitous dreaming of old gods; none of that matters to me.”
“You will still attempt the task?”
“Of course. Perhaps I will surprise you with my survival. And if not, I hope that in death even I can dream.”
“I hope so too.”
A thunderclap brought Garen back to the present. A swarm of pink-hued abominations spilled from the space below the arch, a swarm buzzing louder than the screaming birds, their shapes writhing, unnatural. Beyond them, through the arch, in a space that had never known light, something immense lurked, a presence with no recognizable shape. Garen knew it to be the Dreaming One, the thing banished. It approached, heralded by its servants. Its path was not yet fully paved, the invisible door still swinging open. Garen still had time.
He took the last triggering essence of the explosive compound in his fist, blade in the other, and screamed his defiance to the heavens.
The winged servants dived at him. The dreamers raised their fists and howled. Attackers struck from all directions.
Despite his madness, Garen had the luxury of time. He had studied many subjects, but first among them was the martial forms. In this he was a practiced scholar. Now his mastery was apparent, though no sane mind could witness it. In each movement he accomplished precisely what was needed for his knife to sunder limb from torso, head from neck. He spun into the writhing horde of dreamers and laid waste to any who dared come within his considerable reach.
Still an endless number pressed him, their blunt teeth and splintered nails rending his skin, his spilled blood a gory rain that speckled the air. Despite his mastery of the knife, he could not resist such great numbers for very long. Each swing took him farther from the nearly completed chemical mixture. He carved a path to escape — a gap in the crowd that could close at any moment — and then he flung the final element back at the mixture-filled vial that lay at the foot of the arch.
It shattered against the beaker, and the mixture inside flared white.