All sound, all vision extinguished. For the briefest of moments, Garen thought he had fallen asleep at last, and his every weary muscle relaxed.
Then chaos, terrible heat, and so much screaming. Above it all, the roar of stone fracturing, toppling, collapsing, the archway coming down heavy block by block, repeatedly thudding into the earth and rippling the courtyard like an unending earthquake.
Garen felt his body thrown clear of the collapsing arch. His ankle fractured when he landed, his ribs badly bruised at the very least, but he still clung to his dagger. The bodies of the dreamers had sheltered him from the worst of the explosion. Now his ears sounded with ringing temple bells, his skin numb and unfeeling. He was certain that he was dying, but the ringing began to fade and the numbness gave way to agony.
The winged harbingers screamed in horror at the collapsing arch. Their movements shifted; another plan seemed to form quickly, as if they shared a common mind or purpose. Iridescent wings beat rhythms of despair as they swooped low, snatching up the scattered dreamers of Alamoi. Garen watched, dumb with fright, as the servants tore at the scalps of their victims, peeling back flesh and bone until a pink slithery mass of brain was exposed. These organs they plucked like imperfect rosebuds and stored in the featureless gray canisters each carried in slings upon their abdomens.
One servant drove for Garen as he scrabbled away, unable to stand and too terrified to turn his gaze from the slaughter. He swept out with the bronze blade, but the servant had suddenly never occupied the space he thought it had, and his weapon did not draw its ichor.
One of the servant’s claws pried the blade from Garen’s hand. The others snatched him up and lifted him spread-eagled into the air, and still other limbs poked and prodded his skin. Garen let out a long sigh and went limp. His fate was sealed; why should he fight it? The horror of what he was witnessing dulled, and all he experienced felt somehow familiar.
How long the examination continued, Garen wasn’t certain, but suddenly the servant cast Garen roughly aside. He landed on a pile of stones, the breath knocked from his battered lungs. Their writhing harvest complete, they flew away into the blue sky, disappearing into pinpoints, and leaving behind shimmering pools of blood and skull-rent corpses on the ruined courtyard floor. The archway was no more; nor was the tunnel of space it had heralded. The Dreamer remained locked away. To what purpose they turned now, Garen would never know.
After some time, Garen made it to his feet, despite his ruined ankle. He was no longer tempted to look back on the carnage. Not all of the dreamers had been harvested. Some were stirring here and there, and he did not look forward to the explanations they would demand from him when their senses fully returned. He made as much haste as possible, limping to the road he had followed into the city, and following it back into the valley. He crawled, scampered, and hopped for six days without rest, pausing only to scavenge a tree limb as a makeshift crutch. On his sixth day of flight, Garen collapsed at the doorstep of a traveler’s inn in a dreamless coma. It was the closest thing approaching sleep he had experienced in more years than he could remember.
When he recovered, he spent some months tracking the flying, brain-stealing horrors. He felt somewhat responsible for their escape into the world, but he found no trace of them. With such wings, they could have traveled the Thawed Lands and into the Ice Wastes beyond.
Garen did eventually collect his reward from the University, but that was not a journey without peril. The tale of it is another story for another time. Suffice it to say that the Library of Dreams did not contain the answers that he sought; only more questions, ones that led him further into madness and despair.
For many more years, the events in Alamoi troubled Garen; in particular, his encounter with the winged servants of the Dreamer. When their plans to free the Dreamer had failed, they had turned to harvest, but for what purpose? What did it mean for who he was, what he was, that the creatures had not collected the pinky innards from his skull?
He could only conclude that whatever the servants had required, it was merely represented in the flesh of the organ, and not the flesh itself, which certain practitioners of medical traditions had assured him he possessed — his head was not hollow. No, something beyond the pink meats had been their true goal. Whatever it was, Garen the Undreaming did not possess it.
Two Suns over Zululand
Ben Stewart
“You are certain that the item we seek is in the midst of that?” asked Lwazi. He and his companions — four fellow warriors and Mandlenkosi the Sangoma, resplendent in his headdress of feathers and bones — looked down at the swirling chaos that surrounded Rorke’s Drift from their vantage point atop a nearby hill. The British had erected makeshift barriers around the station’s few buildings using crates and mealie bags, and the fighting around those bulwarks was savage. Shot after shot spat from the defenders’ rifles, cutting down charging men by the dozen, and yet the Zulu attack did not falter. Each fallen warrior was replaced by two more rushing forward to add their spears to the assault.
“The Englishman is in there, of that I am certain,” replied Mandlenkosi. The little Sangoma shook his staff, causing the bird skulls tied along its length to rattle, and pawed at the ground with his bare feet as he hopped in a small circle. He tasted the air a few times with his tongue, and then nodded in satisfaction. “No doubt about it. The man called Rafferty is in there, and the idol of H’aaztre is in his possession.”
Lwazi crouched down on his haunches and thought carefully for a moment. In doing so, the towering Zulu — who was the best part of a head taller than the largest of the other four warriors — brought himself almost to eye level with the diminutive witch doctor.
“It would seem wisest to wait until the battle is done before trying to root him out,” he ventured, but Mandlenkosi shook his feathered head.
“No, Lwazi. The idol has already been away from the Cave of Spirits for too long. The birds of the sky tell me that three days have passed since Rafferty arrived at this place. The Sangoma of the nearest kraal, who knew Rafferty from when the white man prospected for gold nearby, says he passed their huts four days ago. Given the distance to the cave, I fear as many as six days have passed since he found the idol — H’aaztre will have noticed, and H’aaztre will have spoken to him, Lwazi. We cannot risk waiting any longer.”
Lwazi stood to his full, impressive height again. He was already dressed for war, clad only in a loincloth with no ornamentation adorning his muscular frame. His fellow warriors were likewise ready for action — their spear-blades were freshly sharpened, and their faces betrayed no fear at the thought of the task that faced them.
“So be it,” said Lwazi. “We shall return with the idol within the hour. We will not fail you, Mandlenkosi.”
“See that you don’t, Lwazi — of all the horrors you have faced for me in the past, this is truly the greatest. If you do not retrieve the statue, then the death and destruction of King Cetshwayo’s war with the British will be as insignificant as the bite of a horsefly. If the two suns rise over Zululand, then there is no hope for our people... or any other people of this world. Go now, and may the Amatongo guide your hand.”
“Usuthu!”
Bellowing the feared Zulu battle cry, Lwazi and his hand-picked warriors charged through the gun smoke and over the bodies of their fallen brothers toward the British defenses. Running barefoot so as to be unhindered by clumsy footwear, they covered the distance at a remarkable speed. They had chosen to disregard their traditional shields to further improve their pace — the bulky oval frames of wood and ox-hide would have been an unnecessary burden, and besides, they were little use against the bullets that buzzed about their ears. Each man carried only his iklwa, a short, stabbing spear named after the sucking noise the blade made when pulled from a foe’s flesh, and a stout knobkerrie club in his belt.