‘Oh, I’m fine,’ Brexan said. ‘Maybe a couple of flagons of decent wine, but otherwise, I’ll be all right.’
‘Good. That’s a lot to track down in two avens, so we’d better cut all this pointless chatter and get rowing.’ With that he redoubled his efforts and they made speedily for the wharf.
Steven, Alen and Gilmour watched from inside Captain Ford’s cabin. Lessek’s spell book lay closed on the table. Milla, squatting on a small rug, played a game with a bundle of sticks she’d found. One – she had turned it a lustrous shade of pink – scurried here and there around the floor while the others pursued it, their twig arms grasping blindly for the oddly coloured fugitive. Milla squealed with delight every time her bright pink heroine escaped almost certain death at the hands of the woodland posse.
‘Mooring here buys us five hours,’ Steven said. ‘It’s almost two o’clock now, so we can sit tight until seven o’clock.’
‘And then we need to find some way to linger inconspicuously on the river for another ten hours,’ Alen said. They had been awake for most of the night, an uncommon feat for Alen Jasper, who was looking longingly at the captain’s comfortable berth.
‘Where does that put Hannah?’ Gilmour asked, watching the twigs chasing one of their own around the cabin.
‘Assuming her mother didn’t offer too much resistance, Hannah should be well on her way to Long Island by now. She has plenty of spare time, in case she runs into anything unforeseen: a flat tyre, a car accident-’
‘A tan-bak,’ Alen added.
‘I hope not,’ Steven said. ‘I hope that by now Mark is so focused on getting the table ashore, sorting out his officers and getting that army ready to move that he won’t be paying any attention to us opening the portals.’
‘Or reading Lessek’s spell book all night,’ Gilmour said.
‘But we had to do that,’ Steven said nervously.
‘Do you think he’s there yet?’ Gilmour asked.
Alen shrugged. ‘Even if he is, Steven’s right, he has at least a few avens’ preparation before he opens the table. That place is a terrific mess and no matter how brutal he is, it will still take some time before they’re ready to move.’
‘Do you think he can do it?’ Steven asked.
‘The ash dream spell?’ Gilmour said. ‘I’m sure he can, else why would Nerak have been putting all these wheels into motion?’
‘Because he believed Lessek’s key had come back to Eldarn,’ Alen said. He crossed to the captain’s berth and sat on the down-filled mattress.
‘True,’ Gilmour conceded the point, ‘but coming to Falkan himself, in that great horrible ship of his, to retrieve the spell table on his own-’
‘You’re right,’ Steven said, ‘he was ready; the key was just the final variable in the equation. He had the portal; he could have gone and retrieved the key any time. He either waited for someone to bring it to him – complete with a brain-sized filing cabinet filled with knowledge of Earth – or he would have gone to get it himself, probably right after excavating the table from the river.’
‘Prince Nerak could go inside the dreams,’ Milla interrupted them as she watched her twigs race about. ‘He’s the one who showed me how to do it. He said it was a hard spell, but I didn’t have to try too hard. There were other things that were a lot harder. Making ice, that was really hard for me.’
‘Ice?’ Alen gave up the fight and lay down on the bed. ‘Ice was one of the first spells we learned as kids. You should have been able to do that one easily, Pepperweed.’
‘I don’t know why,’ Milla said, ‘but every time I tried to make ice, the water just bubbled and turned funny colours.’ She turned away from her sticks and they all fell dead in mid-stride.
Gilmour said, ‘So you know that Nerak was able to go inside the dreams, Pepperweed, because he showed you how to do it with Branag’s dog?’
‘I could have gone in other ways,’ the little girl explained carefully, ‘but I liked that puppy and he was so nice when I asked him to follow Hannah.’ She waved at the pile of sticks and cried, ‘Get up! Let’s go again!’ The sticks complied, leaping up straight and dashing wildly about again.
Steven watched out of the window as Captain Ford and Brexan tied up at one of the piers. He asked, ‘Milla, when I was dreaming, it wasn’t the ash dream. I was sick because the tan-bak’s bug had bitten me, but you still managed to get inside my nightmares. How did you do that?’
‘Oh, I can get inside lots of dreams,’ Milla said. ‘Once you can do it, the dreams are all about the same. The ash dream is a little easier, because no one can make you leave.’
The three men shared a worried look. ‘What do you mean, Pepperweed?’ Steven pressed.
‘In the ash dream, the person is living the dream, instead of just watching it happen.’
‘But I was living those dreams too,’ Steven asked, ‘wasn’t I?’
‘It’s not the same,’ Milla explained. ‘If you wanted to, you could have made me leave, or changed the puppy into something else, something that you picked from your own mind, but in the ash dream, you can’t do that.’
‘Jesus,’ Steven whispered, then asked, ‘Could you hear me when we were running? I remember talking to you – well, to the puppy – while I was running that race with all those people.’
Milla giggled. ‘Of course I could hear you, silly. I was there with you.’
‘But if I wanted to, I could have made you into something else? An iced doughnut, or a flying pig?’
Milla burst out laughing; her animated sticks did a collective leap and some of the driest ones shattered when they crashed down. ‘A flying pig?’ she giggled. ‘That’s funny. I’ve never seen one of them.’
‘But I could have, right? And that would have pushed you out of my dream?’
‘Yes,’ she said, bored with her stick races now. She looked at Steven.
‘How did you find me, Milla?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’ She stood up and walked across to the little desk they were grouped around.
‘I wasn’t in the ash dream,’ Steven said. ‘I was sick and dreaming, but it wasn’t the ash dream. What made you come looking for me?’
‘I found you by mistake,’ Milla said, then asked, ‘is there anything to drink? I’m thirsty.’
‘Just a moment, Pepperweed,’ Alen said, ‘and we’ll get you a drink. But tell us how you found Steven when he was sick.’
She pouted endearingly and said impatiently, ‘I was looking for Gilmour. Hannah and Hoyt and you wanted to know when he was going to get to the inn, so I was searching for him. I talked to him that time and I knew what he felt like, even from pretty far away. I’m good at that-’
‘Not like the ice,’ Steven teased.
‘No,’ Milla smiled back, her momentary irritation forgotten, ‘I can’t do ice. But I was looking for Gilmour that day but I found the other magic.’
‘My magic?’ Steven said.
‘No, I can’t find you, ever,’ Milla said. ‘It was the magic from those bugs. I hadn’t felt them before, but that morning, they were really loud.’
‘Loud?’
‘Easy to hear,’ Milla tried to explain. ‘There were two of them, right?’
‘Right,’ Gilmour said.
‘And one that had died,’ Milla went on. ‘They were looking for that one right before they bit Steven and hurt that other man…’
‘Marrin,’ Gilmour added, then asked the question all three of them were thinking. ‘Pepperweed, could you get inside Mark Jenkins’ dreams? Or maybe show one of us how to do it?’
‘Yup,’ she said, ‘but only if he goes to sleep.’
‘Shit,’ Steven said. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘That’s a bad word!’ Milla was indignant. ‘Hannah told me that even though she’s not at home, she shouldn’t say that word.’
Steven raised his hands in surrender. ‘She’s right. Sorry.’
‘Could you show us? Me?’ Alen asked.
‘You want to learn how?’ Milla asked.
‘I read that book last night,’ Alen said, ‘and I think I know how to do it, but Mark would be one of the hardest people to follow. So I want to learn how to do it like you do, as a puppy, or maybe a kitten or even a little mouse on the floor.’