After a long time, the immense corridor began to tilt upward, climbing toward a glimmer of light at the end. Without realizing it I had swung into an arrogant, loping stride; now I brushed away the slave-soldier who headed the column and took the lead myself. Behind me the others fell into place as if I had bidden them; the flame-clothed girl in the winged cloak, the cat-footed Evarin, the dwarf bent in his jester’s cap, Gamine in the blue shroud. Without warning, we came out into a vast court; an enclosed space, yet wide as the outdoors, a yard, a plaza, a place of imposing grandeur. A place of memory.
The red sun above us glowed like a lurid coal. There were tall pillars on three sides of the courtyard, and at the far end, a vaulted archway led into a treelined drive that stretched away for miles into the twilight. Between two pillars, Karamy waited; slim, shimmering golden from head to foot. A hungry impatience sparked in her cat’s eyes. “You’re late.” “I’m ready,” I said. What I was ready for, I was not sure. Karamy waved an impatient signal to the Narabedlans who were coming up. “Adric is with us again,” she said in her curious lazy voice, “Your allegiance to Adric—children of the Rainbow!”
I stood at her side, mute, waiting; a guard of silent men behind us. “Lord Idris;” Karamy summoned. The hunchback came to bow jerkily before us. “Welcome home—Lord!”
The girl in flame-color darted to where we stood and her dipping curtsy was like the waver of a moth toward a flame. “Adric—” she murmured. The wings of her cloak lifted and fluttered across her shoulders as if they would fly of themselves. She was a shy thing, and her dark hair waved softly as if it too were winged. I touched her fingers lightly, but under the smolder of Karamy’s gaze I let her go. She watched me, shyly, with averted face.
Evarin’s face was slyly malicious, but his voice was pure silk. “It is—pleasure to follow you again, my brother,” he almost purred, and I scowled at the mockery at his face and refused his offered hand. Only Gamine said nothing, coming forward on gliding feet to bow briefly and retire; but the silver-sweet, sexless voice of the spell-singer murmured in a singing, almost wordless, croon. “Save your spells, Gamine,” said Karamy savagely, and Evarin jerked round at the shrouded form, but Gamine heeded neither of them, and the sweet contralto chanting went on.
From somewhere the silent men brought horses. Horses—here, in this nightmare world? I had never been on a horse in my life. I found myself vaulting, with a nice coordination of movement, into the saddle. The courtyard, for all the bustle of department, seemed to hold the silence of a grave. Karamy kept me close to her. When we were all mounted, she threw the amber rod upward, and the last rays of the red sun caught its rays and sent a pure shaft of light down the darkened alley-way lined with trees. At the sight of that gleam, a curiously familiar emotion stole through me. I threw up one arm over my head, mimicking Karamy’s gesture. “Ride!” I shouted.
And the flying steeds kept pace with mine.
The driveway under the arch of trees led for miles under the thick boughs. Through the easy drumming of hooves, I could still hear the sweet distant sound of Gamine’s singing, which floated on the wind, keeping pace with the rise and fall of the rolling road, in a quick cadence. The wind whipped Karamy’s golden hair like a halo about her head. I glanced over my shoulder to where the rainbow towers stood, now black, silhouetted against the greater darkness of the mountains. Over-head in the pink sky, the crescent of the tiny moon was brightening, and lower in the sky I saw another, wider disc, nearly at full. Cold air was stinging my cheeks and nipping my bones with frost, and I felt the sparks struck from hooves beating on the frozen ground.
Cold! Yet in Karamy’s garden flowers had glowed in a tropical glory—
And for a moment, it was entirely Mike Kenscott—sick, bewildered and panicky—who glanced about him with horror, feeling the swirling cold and a colder chill from the golden sorceress at my side. It was Mike Kenscott’s will that jerked at the reins of the big gelding to end this farce now— “What is it?” Karamy cried, over the noise of the hooves.
And I heard my own voice, raised above the galloping rhythm, cry back “Nothing!” and call out a command to the horse.
Good God! I was Mike Kenscott—but prisoner in a body that would not obey me—a mind that persisted in thoughts and habits I could not share, a—soul?— that would carry me to destruction! I was Mike Kenscott—trapped on a nightmare ride through hell!
Where the Dreamer Walks
I had been scared before. Now I was panicked, wild with a nerve-destroying fright. I’m not a coward. I set up a radar transmitter in Okinawa within ninety feet of a nest of Japs. That was something real. I could face it. But under two suns and a pair of little moons, with weird people I knew were not human—all right; I was a coward. I steadied myself in the saddle, trying with every scrap of my will to calm myself. If this was a nightmare, well, I’d had some beauties—
But it wasn’t. I knew that. The frost hurting my face, the sound of shod steel on stones, the vivid colors around me, told me I was wide awake. Dreams are not technicolored. And through all this I was riding hell-for-leather, my knees gripped on the saddle, guiding the horse with the grip of my thighs—and I’d never been on a horse’s back in my life. Rode—and rode—
We had ridden about seven miles, and stopped twice to breathe the horses, but we were still beneath the great archway of trees. The sky’s pink sunset light had faded; the land was flooded with a blue, fluorescent starlight, a light I’d never seen before. I strained my eyes upward through the black foliage. I suppose I had some confused idea of guessing when I was by the stars. But the view to the North was hidden by mountains, and I don’t know one constellation from another, with that single exception. A glance at Karamy, in this fright, un-nerved me; I touched the reins, dropped back till I rode between Gamine and the girl in flame-color. “Adric,” the spell-singer saluted coolly, and the girl in the winged cloak threw back her hood; I saw dark eyes watching me from a pure, sweet young face. Before the luminous innocence of those eyes I wanted to cry out in protest. I was not Adric, warlock of Narabedla. I was just a poor guy named Mike, I was just—me. I rode beside Gamine for minutes, trying to think what I would say.
Gamine’s musical voice was not raised, yet it carried perfectly to my ears. “You seem wholly yourself again.”
I didn’t answer. What was there to say? Still, there seemed to be sympathy in the sharply-edged tones. “You will remember—perhaps too much—at the Dreamer’s Keep.”
“Gamine,” I asked, “Who is Narayan?”
I saw the blue robes quiver a little; across from Gamine, I saw a curious flickering look pass across the face of the girl in the orange winged cloak. But Gamine’s answer was perfectly even and disinterested. “The name is not familiar to me. Have you heard it, Cynara?”
The girl did not answer, only moved her dark head a little.
“I should know,” I mused. But the name Cynara had touched another of those live wires within my mind. Narayan. Cynara. Cynara and Narayan! If I could only remember! Suddenly I turned. “Gamine—who are you?” Gamine sat quiet, eerily motionless on the tall horse. The robed figure seemed to blend into the starlit shadows around us. I had the sudden feeling of having re-lived this moment before, then the veiled shoulders twitched impatiently.
“Is this an inquisition?”
Rebuked, and stung by the arrogant voice, I touched my heel to my horse’s flank and rode forward to rejoin Karamy. Gamine! The hell with Gamine!
For several minutes the road had been climbing, and now we topped the summit of a little rise and abruptly the trees came to an end. By tacit consent we all drew our