I did not answer. “Karamy wants me?” Evarin’s laugh was only a soundless shaking of his thin shoulders. “Karamy can wait. Better for you if she waited forever. Come along with me, or Gamine will be back. You don’t want to see Gamine, do you?” He sounded anxious; I shook my head. Emphatically, I did not want to see that insidious spook again. “No. Why? Should I?”
Evarin looked relieved. “Come along, then. If I know Gamine, you’re pretty well muddled. Amnesiac. I’ll explain. After all—” his voice mocked, “you are my brother!”
He thrust open the door and motioned me through. Instinctively I drew back, gesturing him to lead the way; he laughed soundlessly and went, and I followed, letting it slide shut behind me.
We went down stairs and more stairs. I walked at Evarin’s side, one part of me wondering why I was not more panicky. I was a stranger in a world gone insane, yet I had that outrageous calmness with which men do fantastic things in a dream. I was simply taking one step after another; knowing what to do with that part of me that was Adric. Gamine had spoken of habit patterns, the convolutions of the brain. I had Adric’s body. Only a superficial me, an outer ego, was still a strange, muddled Mike Kenscott. The subconscious Adric was guiding me. I let him ride. I felt it would be wise to be very much Adric around Evarin. We stepped into an elevator shaft which went down, curved around corners with a speed that threw me against the wall, then began, slowly, to rise. I had long since lost all sense of direction. Abruptly the door of the shaft opened and we began to walk along a long, brilliantly illuminated passage. From somewhere we heard singing; a voice somewhere in the range of a trained boy’s voice or a woman’s mature contralto. Gamine’s voice. I could make no sense of the words; but Evarin halted to listen, swearing in a whisper. I thought the faraway voice sang my name and Evarin’s, but I could not tell. “What is it, Evarin?”
He gave a short exclamation, the sense of which was lost on me.
“Come along,” he said irritably, “It is only the spell-singer, singing old Rhys back to sleep. You waked him this time, did you not? I wonder Gamine permitted it. He is very near his last sleep—old Rhys. I think you will send him there soon.” Without giving me a chance to answer—and for that matter, I had no answer ready—he pulled me aside between recessed walls and again the shaft in which we stood began to ride. Eventually we stepped into a room at the top of another tower, a room lavishly, even garishly furnished. Evarin flung himself carelessly on a divan embroidered in silken purple and gestured me to follow his example. “Well, now tell me. Where in Time has Karamy sent you now?”
“Karamy?” I asked tentatively. Evarin’s raucous laugh rang out again. He said with seeming irrelevance, but with an odd air of confiding “My one demand of the Dreamer is—freedom from that witch’s spells. Some day I shall fashion a Toy for her. I am not the Toymaker of Narabedla for nothing. I demand little enough of the Dreamers, Zandru knows! I do not like to pay their price, but Karamy does not care what she pays. So—” he made a spreading movement of his hands, “she has power over everyone, except me. Yes; assuredly I must make her a Toy. She sent you out on the Time Ellipse. I wonder who brought you back?” I shook my head. “I’ve been out of my body too long. I can’t remember much.”
“You remember me,” Evarin said. “I wonder why she left you that? Karamy’s amnesia-rays took the rest of your memory. She never trusted me that far before.”
But I caught the crafty look in his face. I knew only this about Evarin; Karamy was right not to trust him. I said “I only remember your name. Nothing more.”
Because Evarin—I knew—was never ten minutes the same. He would profess friendship and mean friendship; ten minutes later, still in friendship, he would flay the skin from my body and count it only an exquisite joke. I did not like those perverted and subtle eyes. He seemed to read my thought. “Good, we will be strangers. Brothers are too—” he let the word trail off, unfinished. “What have you forgotten?”
Could I trust him with my terrible puzzlement? How much could I, as Adric— and I must be Adric to him—get along without knowing? What was even more to the point, how many questions could I dare ask without betraying my own helplessness? I compromised. “What are the Dreamers?”
That had been the wrong question.
“Zandru. Adric, you have been far indeed! You must have been back before the Cataclysm! Well—our forefathers, after the Cataclysm, ruled this planet and built the Rainbow Cities. That was before the Compact that killed machines. Some people say the Dreamers were born from the dead machines.”
He began to pace the floor restlessly. “They were men—once,” he said, “They are born from men and women. Mendel knows what caused them. But one in every ten million men is such a freak—a Dreamer. Some say they came out of the Cataclysm; some say they are the souls of the dead Machines. They are human—and not human. They were telepaths. They could control everything—things, minds, people. They could throw illusions around things and men—they contested our rules.”
He sat down; his voice became brooding, quiet. “One of us, here in Rainbow City, a dozen generations ago, found a way to bind the Dreamers,” he said. “We could not kill them; they were deathless, normally. But we could bind them in sleep. As they slept, under a forced stasis, we could make them give up their powers—to us. So that we controlled the things they controlled. For a price.” There was a glimpse of horror behind his eyes. “You know the price. It is high.”
I kept silent. I wanted Evarin to go on.
He shivered a little, shook his head and the horror vanished. “So each of us has a Dreamer of his own who can grant him power to do as he wills. And after years and years, as the Dreamers grow old, they grow mortal. They can be killed. And fewer are born, now; fewer to each generation. As they grow older and weaker, it is safe to let them wake; but never too strongly, or too long.” He laughed, bitterly. A fury came from nowhere into his face.
“And you loosed a Dreamer!” he cried. “A Dreamer with all his power hardly come upon him! He is harmless as yet—but he wakes, and he walks! And one day the power will come upon him—and he will destroy us all!” Evarin’s thin features were drawn with despair; not arrogant, now, but full of suffering. “A Dreamer—” he sighed, “A Dreamer, and you had been made one with him already! Can you see now why we do not trust you—brother?”
Without answering I rose and went to the window. This window did not look on the neat little park, but on a vast tract of wild country. Far away, curious trails of smoke spiralled up into the sunlight and a wispy fog lay in the bottomlands. “Down there,” said Evarin in a low voice, “Down there the Dreamer walks and waits! Down there—”
But I did not hear the rest, for my mind completed it. Down there—
Down there is my lost memory. Down there was my life.
Somewhere down there I had left my soul.
Flowers of Danger
I turned my back on the window. “Rhys is a Dreamer,” I said with slow certainty. “What is Gamine?”
Evarin nodded slowly, ignoring the question. “Rhys is a Dreamer, yes. He is old—so old he is almost mortal now; so he wakes, and he too walks. But he was one of us once—the only Dreamer ever born within the Rainbow City. His loyalty is double; but he will never harm Narabedla, because he is of our blood.” Evarin cleared his throat. “So Gamine takes what knowledge can be had from his old, old mind. And does not pay.”
“Who is Gamine?” I asked again. Evarin still hesitated.
“Karamy hates Gamine,” he said, after minutes. “So no man sees Gamine’s face. I would not ask too many questions—unless you ask them of Karamy.”