Juele tiptoed up the long staircase, clutching the banister for support. She was very tired and feeling unsteady. To her amazement, the clock on the tower in the Quad showed the time to be well after midnight. She ought to have been in bed ages ago.
Bella and the others had scarcely noticed her thanks and farewells as she left the Salon. They were deep into an esoteric conversation that sounded more interesting the farther away she got. It drew her back, but her conscience convinced her to go by reminding her that she had classes the next day, and besides, wonder of wonders, she'd been asked on a shopping trip. Still, it had been hard to make her feet cross the threshold into the fresh air. Some day, Juele vowed, she would be in the midst of everything going on and not get a bit tired.
A wave of alteration had come through just as she started across the moonlit campus. Her head and her feet had gone very small at either end of an unusually attenuated body. Her neck was a long, thin pipestem, her waist not much thicker. Her legs were spindly and fragile, at least twice as long as usual. Juele teetered along, praying she would not fall over and break herself. Every time she looked at the ground, it had dropped farther away. The altitude made her giddy.
The innocent-tasting drink Bella had given her must have had some kind of intoxicant in it, after she had carefully refused an obvious liquor. She'd never really consumed intoxicants before. What with the lateness of the hour, a lungful of atmosphere from the Salon, and the drink in her head she was finding navigating on her pins very difficult. She teetered this way and that on the steep stairs.
How silly she must look. A giggle made its way up from her middle and tried to escape out of her mouth. Juele refused to let it, fearing that she would wake up everyone in the Garrets. The giggle tried to get out of her any way it could. Juele held her ears and her nose and crossed her legs to head it off each time. It finally retired back to her middle to sulk. Juele crawled up the last flight of stairs and prepared to creep into her room, until she saw a sliver of light under the door.
"Mayrona?" she asked, in a very low voice.
"I'm awake," Mayrona said. Juele stood up. She had to duck her head to miss the lintel as she tottered into the small chamber. The older girl was sitting up in bed with a book on her knees. A faint, orange-yellow glow hung over her head. She closed the book and reached down to slide it under the bed. There was no space for bedside tables in the room.
"It's very late."
"I'm sorry," Juele said, folding her long legs onto her cot. "Bella and Daline took me to the Salon. Everyone was having the deepest conversations. Do you ever go there?"
"Why, yes, now and again, when I need my consciousness stretched," Mayrona said, with a little smile. "It's not always a pleasant or a comfortable place."
"But it's intense," Juele said, passionately. She kicked her shoes off and felt in her footlocker for her nightclothes. "I've never been anywhere like it. There was one man doing something really interesting with time and space. I didn't understand exactly what he was doing, but it was different from anything I've ever seen. I mean," Juele said, self-deprecatingly, "I haven't seen that much, but I feel like I was in another world. May?"
"Yes?"
"Is it bad to create representational illusions?"
"No, not at all. Most illusion is representational. Why?"
Juele ducked her head to undo her shoes, avoiding Mayrona's curious eyes. "Well, I made an image that looked like something I saw earlier, and the others sneered at it."
"Who did?"
Juele looked up, and Mayrona smiled at her.
"Well, Bella and Daline and a boy they called Cal."
"Bella Luna isn't bad, really. And Daline Catnap is just jealous of other people's talent. Cal's Cal. Pay no attention."
"Oh, no! They're really good. I saw their work in class."
"Take my word for it," Mayrona said, settling her pillow down flat. "They don't like it when other people shine brighter than they do. If yours was good, they'd rather fill their mouths with cement than say so."
"And they called them Them," Juele said, thoughtfully, pulling on her nightdress and climbing into bed. She wondered if Rutaro's interest in her was genuine, or if he would be like the clique, and wondered how to put her question into words to ask Mayrona. "What's so special about Them? I can see that everyone respects Them, but why? You know, he was really nice to me, but he ignored everyone else." She reached for the reading light over her bed. It was a candle, so she had to snuff out the wick with two fingers. She snuggled down under the comforter and pulled it up to her chin. "I think he made the fountain wrong on purpose."
"Well, that's very interesting," Mayrona said quickly. Juele looked at her, wondering if she was being sarcastic. "I've got an early class. Good night." She extinguished her own nightlight, grasped the edge of her coverlet, and turned over. The quilt encased her like a cocoon. Juele looked at the featureless expanse of cloth in dismay. Even the teddy bear had turned its back on her. So much for her hopes of late night chats and sharing of confidences. The School was proving to be nothing at all the way she had thought it would be. Everything pointed to one long Frustration Dream. Feeling suddenly cold, she pulled her own blanket closer.
"Good night, then," she said to the moonlit lump.
Roan Faireven shifted from foot to foot as Micah, Historian Prime, droned toward a conclusion. His declamation had begun approximately two shifts of influence ago, while the sun was still above the horizon, and the small, old man was now well wound up in the endless and knotted threads of his narrative. Roan's father, Thomasen, a senior Historian, deliberately grew a long beard and mustache to hide the monumental yawn he could no longer suppress. Roan's friend Bergold, another Historian of importance, carefully slid his mouth around to the back of his head so it could gape without offending the king. The shorter man glanced up at Roan with a playful gleam in his eyes. They looked odd in a face without a mouth. Roan wished he was capable of changing himself. He simply had to stifle his boredom and try to force his own yawn out his ears instead of letting it escape between his lips. Not that Micah would have noticed if the ground itself had opened up a chasm at his feet.
"You would find it fascinating, Your Majesty," Micah said, his voice rising and falling at last in the inflection of someone who was about to stop speaking at last. "Dare I say—" he stretched a finger and thumb to the sky to pluck down inspiration "—you might find it enjoyable."
Silence fell in the audience room. A few sighs of relief stirred the air. Surreptitiously, several of the ministers present brushed away the remains of scattered thoughts that had fallen onto their chests or around their feet while they'd been listening. Roan swallowed his yawn, and his eyes watered. Beyond Micah, in the smallest of the three thrones on the low dais at the head of the chamber, the Princess Leonora undid the swag of opaque blue silk hanging across the lower half of her face and sent him a sweet smile. Her eyes, currently the same blue as the silk, twinkled at him. Roan returned the smile warmly, loving her with all his heart. Leonora did not usually go veiled, but in such intimate quarters, it would have been too obvious if she'd gaped right in the face of one of her father's most trusted ministers. The volume of her costume disguised furtive movement, if Roan dared to suggest even in his own mind that such an august lady might twitch or fidget when trapped in place by the demands of courtesy. Her small feet in their blue silk slippers remained motionless on their pedestal as though made of china.
This was the smallest and most intimate of the king's audience chambers, used for what His Majesty called "informal chats." Here King Byron spent a good deal of his private time. Though everything was made of the finest materials, the decor was modest compared with the opulence of the public rooms of the castle. At present, the walls were painted a soft bluish white and hung with watercolors and the occasional framed memento. Tables, candlesticks, vases, desks, and cabinets were of classic lines without a hint of gold leaf or gem incrustation. Even the thrones were simple carved wood with embroidered cushions. Every piece of furniture or ornament was a personal favorite of the king. Anyone who was summoned here to this innermost sphere was either a close and trusted friend or in very deep trouble. In this case, Roan suspected that His Majesty was kindly saving the rest of the court from what he and those others present had just endured. The king sat with his legs crossed, elbow on armrest, and chin on palm, listening. He was an excellent listener.
"Enjoyment is not the point," snapped Synton, Minister of Continuity. The stout man moderated his tone as he bowed to the king. Three senior Continuitors standing behind him bowed low, too. "Observation of a rare phenomenon is a matter for history, Your Majesty. It's quite serious. Such an event as a Cult Movie Evocation gives us a special insight into the Waking World. We so seldom have a mass coordination of so many sleeping minds all focused upon the same event."
"Though in this case," said Carodil, the Minister of Science, a narrow-faced woman with teak-colored skin, "the event surrounds a fiction! A story! It should not be incorporated into the Akashic Records as if it was fact!"
"But the concurrence of millions of minds on a single subject is the event of importance," Micah said, urgently. "Creative thinkers, many of them. Not of the level or the power of the Sleepers, but, nevertheless, vivid!"
At the mention of the Sleepers, eyes all over the room slewed toward Roan. He was known to resemble one of the Seven Sleepers who dreamed the Dreamland in their Hall underneath the Mystery Mountains beyond the source of the Lullay River. Ever since they had returned, Roan had been unable to shake his traveling companions' belief that he was in some way a manifestation of the First Sleeper, the one who dreamed the province of Celestia. All right, that grand being had looked a lot like Roan, but that didn't mean a direct connection. All the attention was embarrassing.
He was still having difficulty reconciling his new status. A few of the companions who had been with him in pursuit of the scientist Brom and his nefarious Alarm Clock were making the matter worse, ascribing a kind of divinity to him by identifying him as a Sleeper made flesh. Some critics said he'd suborned or brainwashed them. He hadn't. What he and his companions had seen, they'd seen. There was a Sleeper who looked like Roan. His companions had meant well, but it hurt his credibility. Roan had heard rumors that he was a god now. Once the stories had gotten out, some hysterical people in Mnemosyne had asked him to perform miracles for them, which of course he could not do. He could never be certain if they believed it seriously, or if they were trying to make a fool of him.
Of those present, only Bergold and the princess had been with him on the perilous journey that had taken him to the Hall where he had seen his avatar. The others believed or disbelieved the tale, depending on their faith in the credibility of their colleagues, and on how much they approved or disapproved of Roan. To many of the Historians and as many of the Continuitors, the unchanging Roan was a freak, an aberration against normality. Ordinary Dreamlanders changed several times a day. Those who controlled a good deal of influence could alter themselves whenever they chose. Roan commanded a considerable amount of influence, but nothing he did made the slightest difference to his appearance. He didn't mind his immutability. It was rather an advantage in his job as the King's Investigator, since no form of influence could change him. His identity was never in question, making him the perfect messenger for vital communications from the king.
The critics in the royal court who disliked Roan and thought he was a freak were now convinced more than before that he was unnatural. His father Thomasen was tarred with the same brush, or limned with the same holy light as the father of an avatar—or did he have anything to do with Roan's conception at all? (Roan's mother insisted that he had, of course. She had clucked at the idea that Roan was anything but a normal baby, whatever they'd seen in that silly cave.) Most of the Historians and the Continuitors, particularly Synton, treated him more than ever as a peculiar untouchable.
"Your Majesty, I have mentioned it before," said Synton, with the air of one tearing open an old wound. "If . . . this being is the perfect image created by a Sleeper, he should change, and that is that. It is the way of the Dreamland, of which his avatar is one of the Seven Pillars. Why does he not follow his own rules?" Roan opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again. How could he defend himself? Bergold, bless his kindly soul, stepped in at once.
"Stability is a trait we prize in the Sleepers. Roan represents a kind of stability, one we have not previously known. Every Sleeper is different, is that not correct?"
"Well, yes," said Synton reluctantly. "But things that stagnate are symbolically dying."
"He looks healthy," Bergold said cheerfully. "I tell you, I was there. The world did not fall in. Roan defended us, prevented an evil plot from disrupting the Sleepers' dreams of us all and destroying the Dreamland." There were shudders all around. "Drop the subject, eh, friends?" Bergold suggested kindly. "Roan is not inimical to anything. He is beneficial."
Roan felt uncomfortable being discussed like a laboratory specimen. The hugely magnified eyes of the Continuitors and Historians focused upon him looked like bloodshot basketballs, and there was no escape from them. He fidgeted.
"So much slips through to us from the Waking World, enlarging our understanding," Bergold added quickly, drawing attention away from his friend. "We can discount the events and items that are clearly part of the work of fiction, but who doesn't enjoy a good story, eh? For myself, I'm looking forward to seeing snippets of the movie itself. I hope it's an Action Blockbuster."
"I am fond of those myself," Thomasen said. "In preference to Horror Spectaculars or Epic Romances."
"Well, I shall be going," said Romney, the Royal Geographer. "Chances are that the event will change the landscape around it, and I mean to see how. It's a valuable exercise in minds over matter, if you will forgive the epigram."
"I understand the points made by all of you," King Byron said, sitting back in his easy chair. "It is a matter of importance, and indeed, I might enjoy it, but I shall contemplate it from here in Mnemosyne. I have seen at least one in the past, as I am certain you recall." The ministers nodded. Roan knew they were as familiar with the king's past activities as they were with the celestial phenomena. "I do not need to see it myself. I delegate both of you," he nodded in turn to Micah and Synton, "to make arrangements for others to enjoy it in my name. How about you, my dear?" he asked the queen. "Will you go and observe this phenomenon that has so exercised our experts?"
"Of course not, my love." Queen Harmonia smiled at her husband and bestowed a gracious, if long-suffering, look at the courtiers. She was a beautiful woman. Her daughter did not much resemble her physically since she began to change at her own pace and style, but Leonora had inherited her grace. "Out in the wilderness?"
"Bolster is hardly a wilderness, mother," Princess Leonora said, very patiently. "It's a big town. What if it is an Epic Romance? You do enjoy those. Think how nice it would be to see it firsthand."
Queen Harmonia fluttered her hands delicately, and the rose-colored silk fell back from her slender, pale wrists. "But with all those strange germs? I don't think so, darling. Besides, I am to open the new gallery at the School of Light."
"Hasn't that happened yet?" King Byron asked. "Your artists are everywhere in this castle. One can't set foot out of a door without tripping over one of them, my dear."
"Those artists are the ones working on the commission for the castle environs, my love," the queen said, with a gentle smile. "They're very excited about being asked. They are so eager to please."
"They're a trifle precious, if Your Majesty will forgive me," said Synton. "Don't know they're being dreamed, some of them."
"And, if Your Majesty will permit me to say, they are a little intrusive," Carodil said, leaning forward on her tall walking stick. She usually appeared to be in her forties, but today she was somewhat older, with graying hair and deep lines around her mouth and eyes. "One would almost accuse them of listening at keyholes, eavesdropping on policy and so on."
"If they offer you any good advice," Micah said to her with a snort, "take it!"
"I have great expectations of them," the queen said, imperturbably, ignoring the disagreements between her ministers. "It will take all my time to prepare for the gallery opening. I should hate to be tired out from traveling, when they are expecting so much of me. With regrets, honored friends, I shall not go."
Roan and the others bowed to her decision, though privately Roan thought that a pair of talking, animate scissors that could cut the ribbon and make a few remarks would fulfill all the function the queen would serve at the gala. From his experience, the people at the school were impervious to any celebrity except their own. Royalty was almost redundant. And yet, the staff and students of the school showed Her Majesty infinite courtesy at all times. They were proud of their royal patron, as indeed he himself was, but they felt that they merited the acclaim, whereas Roan never felt entirely worthy of the kind attention lavished upon him by not only the queen, but the king, and especially Princess Leonora, who had agreed to marry him. The last thought made him glow inwardly with happiness. Fortunately for the princess's modesty, he never manifested his emotions bodily. There was some benefit to being a freak among Dreamlanders, who were ever-changing, according to mood, influence, and the will of the seven Sleepers. Roan never changed. His tall, dark, good looks had always been with him. Well, at least he possessed a superior control over influence, no matter what the others whispered behind his back. He had his sanity, and in the Dreamland, that meant something.
"Will you go, then, Your Highness?" Micah asked, turning to the princess.
"I would love to, Historian Prime," Leonora said. "Providing Master Roan will escort me."
She gave Roan a tender smile, and everyone looked at him. He felt his cheeks burn, but he was pleased. A warm, comfortable thrill glowed in the vicinity of his heart. The flowers in the vase on the table near his elbow turned from prosaic chrysanthemums to jasmine and orange blossoms. The air filled with their sweet perfume. No one laughed. Roan was grateful. He might not ever change, but his influence was more than sufficient to alter his surroundings, if unconsciously at times. The truth was that he couldn't wait to marry Leonora.
His connection to the Sleepers didn't impress the king as much as his heroic action in stopping the threat to the Dreamland. Roan was proud to be a patriot, but he couldn't have done anything else. Luckily, the king was not angry with Roan for having taken the princess Leonora on his escapade with him. He hadn't, for one thing: Leonora had followed him at considerable risk to her own safety on behalf of their homeland. True, Roan could have tried to send her home, but she had helped to stop the renegade scientists. Roan did not think he could have accomplished that end without her. She had proved brave and resourceful, and it made him love her more than ever.
They had returned to a heroes' welcome in Mnemosyne. The king deigned at last to grant Roan's dearest wish, to marry the princess. However, His Majesty, a most protective father, didn't specify a date. Leonora continued to ask every day when her father would allow her to set one. Roan did not mind. He would marry her one day, and that was all that mattered.
"Your Majesty," Roan said, "I would be honored to escort Her Highness, but if virtually the whole of the court is going to Bolster, who will be here to assist if there is a crisis? Perhaps I should not go."
"If it is known the entire court is in Bolster," the king said, "then people will undoubtedly bring their crises to the ministers there."
"With the utmost regret," Roan said, with a rueful look at the princess, "I should stay and assist you by keeping an eye on things."
Byron gave him a fatherly smile. "Go, young man. It will be all right."
The aged Historian Prime manifested a pair of scissors and clipped himself free of the mass of threads of his original narrative, then kicked them aside. He brushed down his plum-colored robes. "Well, Your Majesties, I wish I could persuade you to change your mind. Everyone else is going. Crowds will be there from all over the Dreamland."
"Good!" King Byron said cheerfully, clapping his big hands together. "If everyone is going, then I shall have a vacation from the endless streams of courtiers and supplicants. I shall enjoy myself here."
The chief continuitor pursed his lips. "I probably should not go, either," Synton said, importantly. "My function is not to be influenced by new events, but rather to prevent aberrations from normal trends. Although many of my ministry will go—the opportunity is rare, but as His Majesty said, not unprecedented."
"Suit yourself," Micah said, with a look at his colleague that showed what he thought of non-independent thinkers and favor seekers, although Roan thought he was probably relieved. Now the Historian Prime would be the sole ranking minister in charge of the observation, and he would not have to worry about the security of the royal family in the midst of unstructured dreams. They would all remain safely behind here in Mnemosyne, the responsibility of the royal guards, under the command of the worthy Captain Spar. Nor would Micah have to concern himself with his nearest rival looking over his shoulder. Anticipation of such freedom made him expansive. He leaned back and rested his palms on his thin chest. He grew feathers and wattles like a pleased rooster ready to crow with inward delight. "We will bring you back an accurate and most detailed account."
"Hmmph!" Synton grunted, looking like a disgruntled crow. "That will be new." Micah's comb stood up, and the pinfeathers on his neck bushed out.
"Thought you didn't approve of anything new," Thomasen said, playfully, slapping his senior on the back. Micah, now a true bantam cockerel, started to circle his rival. Synton stretched out his ebony-plumed neck, looking for an opening to peck.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," the king said, with a warm and fatherly smile. "We all serve the Sleepers best in our own way."
The king's blithe statement was meant to soothe the ruffled feathers of his ministers. Instead, it caused every eye, human and avian, to turn Roan's way, making him feel very uncomfortable.