The Darkness of Dreamland Read online

  * * *

  The dungeon felt a little like an old, musty basement. The floor was damp, and it smelled like mold. Adrian reached his hands out in front of him, groping around in the dark as he waited for his eyes to adjust. He could hear someone breathing, and he held his own breath to get an idea of where the sound was coming from.

  “Hello?” a timid voice spoke from a far corner of the room.

  The voice was familiar. “…Sonia?” he asked, disbelievingly. “Is that you?”

  “Adrian!”

  Something stirred. Adrian heard the flutter of wings and light footfalls, then felt the wind rush out of him as a body collided with his. Arms flung around him, and he was pulled into an embrace. He couldn’t see her, but he could smell her. She smelled like lilacs.

  “You’re alive,” Sonia said, into the hollow of his chest.

  “You, too.” Adrian’s arms hung at his side.

  The hug lingered, and overstayed its welcome. He remembered the feeling of the queen’s fingertips against his flesh, of her probing touch in his thoughts.

  Sonia pulled away. Her wings fluttered, buzzing quietly at her back, and Adrian felt the wind from them blow against his face. “How…”

  “You first,” he said. He felt behind him and felt a smooth stone wall. He lowered himself to the floor, leaning back against the wall. His eyes were beginning to adjust to the dark; he could just make out Sonia’s silhouette. “What are you doing here?”

  “I…” She hesitated, extending a hand to brush his shoulder. “Adrian, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” He shrugged away from her touch.

  “…Okay.” The buzzing of her wings grew in intensity. “I…well, I was out looking for you. And I saw — well, I felt — a dream. I followed it here. It felt familiar. I thought it might be yours.”

  “Was it?”

  “I don’t know. I never caught up with it. It disappeared before I could get a good look at it, and the next thing I know a bunch of guards were bearing down on me and calling me a thief.” She paused, settling down beside him, careful now not to touch him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. For wandering away, getting lost. Getting us both into this mess.”

  “It’s not…it doesn’t matter,” she said. Her hand approached his, but she drew it back before their fingertips touched. “What’s happened to you? Was it Lorelai?”

  He nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see him. “Yes.” He took a deep breath, and explained — once more — everything that had happened. He came up to the point where the queen had taken him into her chamber, and hesitated. He couldn’t find words to explain what happened. He wanted to explain about Samantha, and The Nightmare Man, and the way the queen’s touch had torn apart the secret room in his thoughts. What he said was, “But the queen decided she couldn’t use me, so she put me down here instead.”

  Sonia was silent, for awhile. It was a heavy, thoughtful silence. “We’ll get you out,” she said, finally, quietly. “We’ll find a way to the Gatekeeper, still, and get you home.”

  Home. Right. It was so far away now, he had almost forgotten about it.

  He said nothing, and leaned back against the wall, trying to make sense of his thoughts.

  * * *

  In the small white room, Nathaniel and his new friends played go-fish with a deck of tarot cards. Nathaniel didn’t know what they were, but he had found them in the corner, hidden beneath the pile of leaves by the battered roller skates. They weren’t very good for go-fish. But it was better than nothing.

  “Got any…um…swords?” Nathaniel glanced back at his cards to make sure of what they were called.

  “Go fish.” The Nightmare Man’s long, bony fingers held his cards too tightly, and they curled at the edges.

  The little girl had little interest in the game. She kept laying her cards out on the floor, lining them up like tiles. She would flip them over, occasionally, then stack them all back into a pile. Nathaniel glanced over frequently, trying to get a glimpse of the cards in her hand. He suspected she probably had most of the cards he needed. She flipped over some cards from her jumbled stack: The Tower, The King of Cups, The Magician. Then she turned over the Knight of Swords.

  “Ah!” Nathaniel said, pointing. “You have a sword.”

  She looked up at him, startled, then back down at her cards. She ignored him.

  Nathaniel sighed. He wanted to ask to go home, but he knew there was no chance of it. He had asked already, dozens of times, and the answer was never “yes.” He didn’t really expect it to be.

  “You’re unhappy.” The Nightmare Man laid down his own cards, face-up.

  Nathaniel noticed that he did, in fact, have swords: the nine of swords, the seven of swords, the Queen of Swords. He started to say something about The Nightmare Man cheating, but decided there wasn’t much point. He shrugged.

  “Are you lonely?”

  “I want to go home.”

  The Nightmare Man ignored him. “I can bring you more friends. Both of you. Do you want more friends?”

  “I want my mom.”

  “I can get more friends, for both of you. So you can stay and play.”

  Before Nathaniel could protest further, The Nightmare Man had risen to his feet and swept across the room. The shaggy green-furred dog looked up as he passed, tail thumping. The Nightmare Man laid his hand on the wall, opening the door with his touch. Then he slipped outside, sealing the door behind him before Nathaniel could even think to try and follow.

  VALOR’S END

  Rosalie glanced uneasily over her shoulder, making sure that no one was following her. She needn’t have bothered. With Lorelai and the queen making a fuss in the great chamber and the guards prowling the garden searching for thieves, the castle was deserted. She hoped it would stay that way.

  Her heart thudded heavily in her chest, pounding so hard against her ribs that she thought they might break. She had spent most of the time here in the city out in the stables, making conversation with the queen’s servants. A dream would wander by, occasionally, and she enjoyed the jolt of energy from its presence, but the joy faded quickly when she remembered why she was here.

  Adrian.

  It was a ridiculous thing to think, but the thought welled up in her mind all the same: If I can get to him before Lorelai, maybe we can escape together.

  She glanced over her shoulder, once more, before stopping at the door to the dungeon. It was a heavy iron door, without any windows, and too thick to hear through. She pressed her ear to it, trying to make out any sounds of life from the inside, but could hear only the blood rushing in her own ears. She withdrew, wondering how she could get hold of the key. The knight had the keys to the dungeon; she had seen them glittering at his waist in the great hall.

  She extended her hand and touched the knob. It was warm, crackling with residual dream energy from the knight’s touch, and she smiled faintly as her fingertips brushed the brass. Compulsively, she squeezed the knob and turned it.

  The latch gave way with a click, and the heavy iron door cracked open.

  “…Really?” She paused, hand on the open door, expecting a trap. “…He didn’t even lock the door?” Not quite believing her fortune, Rosalie hesitated, the door open just a crack. Rather than allowing the light from the hall in, the opening seemed to let some of the darkness out. A long shadow spilled out onto the floor by Rosalie’s feet.

  Before she could push the door open any further, a sudden terrible sound broke out through the castle. A claxon wailed; people shouted; footsteps pounded from overhead. Rosalie jumped back from the door as though she had been burned.

  What was happening? Had she set off an alarm by mistake?

  Down the hall, near the lower entrance of the outer courtyard, she could barely make out a garbled mixture of shouts and cries. Most of it was lost in the general din of sound, but a few words managed to stick out: “Thief,” “courtyard,” and
“alarm.”

  Not entirely sure what any of that meant, but completely certain that she didn’t want to be found lingering here, she pulled away from the dungeon and ran back down the hall, hoping desperately that she would find Lorelai before her absence was missed.

  * * *

  Valor shook so violently that he rattled when he walked. He felt like he was coming undone beneath his armor. As a dream, he had never been hungry — but the pain in his body was like a hunger pang, like a terrible gnawing emptiness where his body tore itself apart and chewed through its own tissue. And yet, his shaking was not weakness from age and over-use.

  Why had he left the dungeon unlocked?

  It hadn’t been a conscious decision at the time. He had merely done it, as if on impulse, and he was back in his queen’s shadow before the full weight of the action had come crashing down upon him. The guilt tore through him, literally pulling him apart. He had not acted with valor. He had defied orders — committed treason against his queen. His actions were his undoing, and now he was drawn toward the balefire and its relief like a moth pulled into a candle. Like all tired, worn-out dreams, he was ready to find peace in the flames.

  He rattled his way through the doorway into the courtyard, crossing the garden toward the balefire. The children didn’t look up. No one paid him any notice, and he pressed forward, walking as quickly as his trembling legs would allow.

  Was it worth it, in the end?

  He hoped so. He hoped the human found the way out, and quickly. He had felt it, the moment he had touched the human — the electric tingle of energy, the powerful realization that this human carried dreams more powerful than either the queen or the witch could handle, and more powerful than they deserved. Valor had seen right away what the queen had not learned until later: This human had created the dream thief. Perhaps he could be the one to destroy it.

  In his exhaustion, the knight didn’t see the thief’s approach.

  On the far side of the courtyard, the portal shimmered, twisting upon itself like a whirlpool. Its surface stretched, like a balloon expanding; for a moment, it struggled against its own surface tension, and then a figure broke through: tall and robed, with a gaping maw and wide blank eyes. The doorway closed behind him, sealing once more into a glassy smooth portal, and the dream-thief stepped soundlessly onto the grass.

  It paid no heed to the children. Although the courtyard stretched on for miles, the cloaked figure crossed it in a few steps; it moved the way shadows move, darting and sliding without sound. It came behind the knight, and without a word it wrapped its long, thin arms around the armored dream.

  * * *

  In the total darkness of the dungeon, Adrian laid his head back against the rough stone wall and tried to sort out his thoughts. He could hear Sonia’s wings rustling and the soft echo of her footsteps on the bare floor as she paced. Neither spoke. Adrian found that he had run out of words.

  Something made a noise outside, muffled by the thick iron door, but he hardly registered it. It wasn’t until Sonia’s pacing had stopped and the dungeon had fallen into sudden, uneasy silence that he realized something was happening.

  The latch clicked.

  Adrian forced himself to his feet, fighting against the weakness in his legs brought on by exhaustion and confinement. Sonia’s hand brushed his, and he didn’t pull away.

  “Who’s there?” Sonia called.

  No one responded.

  No light spilled in from the cracked-open door, yet somehow the dungeon seemed to be growing lighter by the moment. Adrian could make out Sonia’s outline, then a greyed-out and shadowy image of her features. Her eyes glistened in the semi-dark, shiny and reflective like a cat’s.

  “…We’ve been sitting in an unlocked dungeon.” Adrian said flatly. “Why would…who doesn’t lock their dungeon?”

  Before either Sonia could respond, a great noise sounded out in the empty corridor — the brazen wail of an alarm, the sound of feet pounding the stone floor, armor rattling, angry and surprised shouts. All at once, the castle went from eerily silent to deafening, as though an explosion had gone off overhead.

  Adrian strained to make out words among the cacophony, but only caught snatches of words. Many of the voices yelled in foreign languages. He made out “thief” and “here,” but the rest was lost in the sea of yells.

  Sonia stepped forward, hesitantly climbing the steps. She peered out through the open crack of the door. Adrian followed her onto the stairwell, crowding into the doorway. Their own hall was abandoned, but he could hear sounds above them and from either side, all converging to a single point somewhere to his left.

  From somewhere far away, Adrian could just make out another voice — different from the others, yelling something else and coming closer. A woman’s voice, and something about it made his skin tingle with familiarity and fear. He could make out no words, but it didn’t matter; it was the queen’s voice, and she sounded angry

  Sonia slowly pushed the door open, poking her head outside. She looked up and down the corridor. “I…it’s clear,” she said, confusedly. “If we’re going to go…we should go now.” She pushed open the door the rest of the way and stepped out into the torch-lit hallway. The flickering light illuminated her pale skin, bounced off of her vibrant hair, cast long wavering shadows along the floor. The sound intensified and concentrated in a single location, coming clearly and deafeningly from the courtyard’s lower door.

  For a single moment, everything stopped. Sound, motion, sight, smell — everything came to a complete halt and Adrian froze in place. He was dimly aware of his surroundings; he knew that the castle was around him, he knew that Sonia was standing beside him. But his ears were filled with a rushing sound, and he could see — in his mind or in front of him, he couldn’t really tell — a long corridor opening, a cloaked figure approaching, long fingers beckoning….

  Sonia twined her fingers in Adrian’s and tugged. “Come on! If the guards are distracted, we can slip out the servant’s exit into the stables, and then…” she trailed off, realizing that Adrian wasn’t following her or listening. He was firmly planted in place, staring down the hallway with the look of someone who had just realized something both nauseating and profound.

  The dream-thief. The Nightmare Man.

  “He’s here,” he said. He felt numb when he said it. The vision faded, but an overwhelming certainty settled in his heart, a knowledge beyond familiarity.

  “Who?”

  Adrian ignored her and started down the hall, brushing past her and moving toward the concentration of sound — and the door to the rear gardens.

  “Adrian, what —” Sonia chased after him, grabbing his arm in both hands, stopping him in his tracks. He strained against her, trying to break free from her grasp, but it was like being caught in a web of iron. “What are you doing? We have to go!”

  “The Nightmare Man!” Adrian yelled, finally breaking his silence as he struggled to break away from her grasp. Why wasn’t she understanding this? He wheeled around to face her. “The person I’ve been looking for! The one who took Nathaniel! He’s here.” He made a choked, frustrated sound. “The dream-thief! He’s a dream. He’s been sneaking into the courtyard and stealing dreams — that’s what everybody’s going crazy about. It’s the same guy.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense! Nobody can break into that courtyard without going through the castle. Not unless they….” She stopped, eyes widening with sudden realization. “The portal. He comes and goes through the portal.”

  “I don’t care if he sprouts wings and flies in, but he’s here right now. We have to follow him!”

  “You can’t!” Her fingertips curled into his skin and she pulled, trying to tug him away. “There’s too many guards. They’ll see you. Even if you could…you can’t go through that portal. It will kill you.”

  “You said that about the last one, too.”

  “Yeah, I know, but…” She gave him another mighty tug, forcing him to stumble forward a
nd follow her a few steps down the corridor, away from the concentration of sound overhead. She heaved him forward another step, tugging on him like he was a very large and stubborn dog on a leash.

  “I don’t want to go home, I want —” Something clicked in his mind. “Wait a second. The Gatekeeper.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. We have to get you out of Dreamland so that —“

  “No. I mean — he has gates everywhere, right?”

  “Yes…” She paused in her tugging, looking at him suspiciously.

  He smiled. “So he could take me to…wherever The Nightmare Man is from?”

  “I guess he could,” she said, reluctantly, and then sighed. “Yes. I think so. Now come on before someone sees us!” She gave his hand another tug, but it was unnecessary this time. He followed her without complaint into the labyrinth of corridors beneath the castle’s main floor.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” He asked, straining to hear, but the general din had died down and was just a single muted roar of distant sound.

  “Sort of,” she said, still gripping his hand as she ran as though afraid he might bolt if she let go.

  “Oh. Well.” The sound in the distance faded as they ran deep into the bowels of the castle’s underbelly. It was darker here, too, the torches not as close together as they had been. The long shadows shifted as they ran and Adrian knew that nearly anything could be hiding there, concealed by the darkness. He tried not to think about it. “If we get out, how far away are we? From the mountain?”

  “On foot? A couple of days. If we had some cats or something…” she trailed off, coming to a stop at a fork in the path. She lifted her head, sniffing, then tugged him to the right. The path had a slight downward slant to it and it smelled peculiar, like a combination of earth and spoiled fruit and over-cooked cabbage.