The Keep

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 35It was the vividness of the dream that unsettled her more than its content. She did not normally remember dreams and on the rare occasions she did, they invariably slipped away very quickly after waking even if she did not want them to.

But as she stared down at the pictures, this one was still with her — all of it — no part missing or quivering as though it were about to slip into whatever inner recesses of the mind shelter forgotten dreams.

She had been in the courtyard. No preamble, no sense of journey, not even a sense of dislocation — just there, as she should be. It was not the present courtyard, with its snow-covered lawns, but the one in the drawings on the scroll. The ground was hard under her feet — paved, she noticed — and the dry tang of summer dust in the air caught her throat. All around her was uproar and, directly ahead, in front of the drawbridge, was a ruinous tangle of ropes and chains, all swinging wildly, wrapping and unwrapping themselves about a mass of broken and splintered timbers. Some of the timbers were also moving — creaking into final resting places — high-pitched and protesting, like some grotesque creature searching for a comfortable position in which to die.

Her gaze was drawn to a man nearby. He had his back to her but seemed to be oddly out of place, almost motionless in the confusion, save that he was sketching on a scroll.

It was Josyff, she realized!

This must be a dream, she thought. She had heard of people being aware of their dreams when they were in them, even being able to manipulate them, but it had never happened to her. It had always sounded like fun but although she felt a small frisson of excitement, it was fear that seemed to be rising to the fore.

“This is a very vivid dream,” she said out loud, as if for reassurance that it was a dream and in the vague hope that perhaps the sound of her own voice might awaken her. Nothing happened however, except that Josyff turned and looked at her, his expression startled and bewildered. He seemed to recognize her, but then someone bumped into her and she was carried away by the press of the crowd. She made a brief futile attempt to get back to him but soon had to concentrate on keeping her feet in the crush. Then, like so much flotsam, she was thrust out of the melee and in the lee of an abutment. Her thoughts were whirling. This was a dream, wasn’t it — her sleeping mind weaving its own tale from the happenings of the day and the drawings on the scroll? She clung to the thought.

Yet everything was so real...

“The lord! The lord!”

The cry made her look out at the crowd again. Its chaotic movement was becoming almost dance-like as it surged towards the shattered structure.

There must be someone important under that lot, she thought. Then to force herself to remember that this was a dream she tried to recall which of the figures in the drawings might have been this “lord’. She frowned. None of the four figures that she and Josyff had identified as being under the collapse had been dressed in the manner that had made Josyff identify them as dignitaries and had prompted her own sarcastic rejoinder. And the ‘lord’ must surely be a dignitary.

Even as she reached this conclusion, some impulse made her look away from the crowd and across the courtyard. There, quite still amidst the confusion, stood a solitary figure. He, if it was a man, was dressed in a simple black robe, like a monk’s habit, with the hood pulled well forward. There was a strange presence about him that held Esyal’s gaze.

Then, as if hearing something, the figure turned its head slightly and looked directly at her. Her hand tightened about the edge of the abutment and she fought an urge to move back behind the shelter of it. Standing now in the book room, looking down at the scroll, Esyal became aware that her fist was clenching as she recalled the moment, but the memory of the dream moved on relentlessly. The blackness within the hood was darker than the robe itself, as though it were a deep void — an opening into another place. But she could feel a searching gaze peering through it...

“Look!”

The word echoed through her mind, carrying with it a haze of nuances of meaning — listen? touch? or was it, feel? know this? sense this? be aware? And it brought with it a peculiar disorientation — as in a picture she had once seen of a stairway with flights that descended and turned repeatedly until, quite seamlessly, the lowest step had become the highest. Esyal put her hand to her ear, partly to steady herself and partly to determine where the voice was coming from. But even as she did so she knew there was no sound save that of the crowd — no voice had issued that injunction. Yet she knew that it had come from the watching figure. Abruptly, though she could have offered no reason for her certainty, she realized that the figure was not part of the dream, but the cause of it! She was here because it had brought her here.

“They are here. They can see (hear? sense? know?) us.”

The words, if they could be called words, cut across this unsettling revelation. In sharp contrast to her own, albeit unfounded, certainty, these seemed to be riddled with doubt. They carried with them a feeling of intense argument. Someone — something? — somewhere, was persuading, was struggling against the scepticism — indeed the outright disbelief — and scorn! — of others.

And she was the object of the doubt!

Confused questions, unvoiced, but quite real, unfolded in the cloud of meanings that hung about the words, like waves rippling outwards from a stone thrown into a lake.

“Was she (it?) or was she not real, this... disturbing... creation? And the others here, what are they?”

A twinge of annoyance began to form within Esyal at the idea that she was being viewed like an oddity found by the wayside. But it had no time to manifest itself. More words, this time seething with urgency and a long, angry frustration, swept through her.

“It is here — the...( demon ?)... that caused this — that bound us thus — we must be freed — and the way is here.”

Esyal felt more than words now — she felt a will — a will, alien and dark, turning its attention to her. She also felt her lip curling in a snarl of defiance that came unbidden from something feral deep within her. Then a voice, vaguely familiar, rose above the din of the crowd, shouting denial, and she was awake — wide awake, lying on her bed in the Keep, holding her breath, she realized, and slightly giddy from the unsettling images that pervaded the words.

And even now, hours later, she felt a hint of her visceral response to the searching will within the dream tugging at her lips. It was quite unlike anything she had ever known before — even during the most violent of events. It was the response of an animal.

Like the rabbit? she wondered.

No, she decided. That was no rabbit’s response. More like fox vying with fox.

And yet it was more even than that — it had a quality that seemed to arc back through time to some ancient darkness.

It was an unsettling image, but it was dispelled almost immediately as, for no apparent reason, she realized that the shouting voice that had awoken her had been Josyff’s.

Drawing in a deep, hissing breath she crouched down and, balancing on tiptoe, looked intently at the drawing. She did not remember dreams, she kept telling herself, in the hope that her insistence might offer her some revelation. But this must have been a dream — what else could it have been?

But so real...

Reaching no conclusion, her thoughts ground to a halt and she gave a snort of disdain. “I’m turning into Henk,” she said, looking round and speaking to the silent books. “It must be something about this place. Pull yourself together girl — get on with your work.”

Esyal was nothing if not pragmatic.

And for some time, bustling about the Archive, seeking to bring some kind of order to the chaos there, she was able to forget the dream.

Until Adroyan arrived.

He arrived as unexpectedly and as silently as Henk. She had clasped an ill-formed and too-large stack of books at the top and bottom and it had promptly opted to avoid her grip by bellying out in the middle.

Her rising “Oooo,” ended in a sharp squeak of surprise as Adroyan stepped into the Archive and with an extended hand forestalled the collapse.

“Thank you,” Esyal said automatically, after a silent negotiation took the books safely to the desk. Adroyan merely nodded and looked around the room.

“You are making progress?” he asked

Esyal gave a disclaiming shrug. “I’m not sure what progress means here,” she replied. “I’m just trying to find out what there is, then I might be able to put it in some form of order.” She smiled and counter-attacked. “Were you looking for something?”

Adroyan’s black eyes flickered briefly in surprise and he looked at her as though he were trying to recall something. Esyal felt again the faint stirring of the ancient response she had experienced in her dream. Then Adroyan’s inspection was gone.

“I’m just... learning... about this place,” he said, though he avoided her gaze and his expression gave a hint of both surprise and regret that he had answered thus — or at all.

Esyal noted it. “I didn’t mean to pry,” she lied by way of apology.

Then she probed further, with heavily feigned naivety.

“What do the Ordrans want with this place? It’s so odd and out of the way.”

Seeing that the question disconcerted Adroyan, she prevented him recovering his balance by changing the subject before he could reply.

“I found some more scrolls,” she said, pointing through the door. “Those are they — laid out next door.”

“Yes, I noticed,” Adroyan replied.

“Have you any idea what they mean?” Esyal pressed, walking past him and into the book room. Dance around him for a while — see what turns up.

Adroyan was drawn after her. “They’re just a record. Presumably they mean what they say. Have you read them?”

Esyal gave a winning smile and made an airy gesture to show her dusty hands. “No, I’m still at the floundering stage in here.”

Adroyan looked at the scrolls. “Continue with your work,” he said curtly. “I will look at these. They may be helpful.”

Esyal drifted towards the Archive. “We think there were four people buried under that collapse. Maybe it’ll tell you what happened to them.”

“Why they were doing what they were doing is more important,” Adroyan replied, his manner a peculiar mixture of condescension to an underling and surprise that he had taken the effort. And again Esyal noted it.

Keep dancing, she thought.

“Yes, I can see your superiors wouldn’t be pleased to find the place locking people in and out at its own fancy.”

Adroyan paused in his study of the scrolls and turned his head slowly towards her. His black eyes held her. She felt the insincerity of her smile showing through but she did not seem to be able to move. He asked the same question as Henk.

“Have you remembered who you are yet?”

She gave the same reply, though with a stammer.

“I... I know who I am — my name, anyway. I know all sorts of things. I just don’t know where I’m from or why I’m here.”

Adroyan’s gaze did not leave her.

“Do you remember the Rhanen?”

Esyal felt her insides shaking and hoped that none of it showed. She wanted to tear herself away from his inspection, but a wiser part of her told her to stand her ground. Rabbit and fox — whimpering attracts the predators. That same part also reminded her of her knife and made her keep her hand away from it.

“Weren’t they people who preferred freedom to the New Order?” she said, her voice much steadier than she had anticipated.

“The New Order is freedom,” Adroyan responded. “There can be no freedom in a society without order and stability. And obedience to the greater good.”

It took Esyal no small effort to resist the temptation to argue the point.

Adroyan continued, as if uneasy about her silence. “The Rhanen were a handful of malcontents, opposed to the authority of the majority — harbingers of anarchy. They did much harm.”

There was barely-hidden passion in his voice. It was as disturbing as it was unexpected. Full of hate and anger, Esyal judged, but, ironically, it reassured her — at least it was a human quality, unlike his cold distance and authoritativeness.

Did much harm, did we, she thought. That was interesting — and a revelation. However it had come to be, the New Order had gained such a peculiarly strong grip on the many institutions of government that it had always been difficult to know what effect the Rhanen were having — a sense of futility had always threatened to overwhelm them.

Her renewed resolve asserted itself. If I get the chance here, I’ll do more, she thought. Then she managed a moue of indifference.

“I’m not really interested in politics — it’s boring,” she said, turning away from his gaze by easing closer to the Archive door as though anxious to get back to work. “Besides, weren’t the Rhanen all killed or arrested?”

“Most of them, yes,” Adroyan answered, flatly. “A force is pursuing the remnants of them through these very mountains even now.”

“Ah. Is that why you’re here? To see if this place can be used as a barracks or something? I imagine your soldiers would be glad of it given the way the weather’s changed. Are you expecting them?”

“No, I’m here on another matter.”

“Something more important?”

Adroyan’s attention returned briefly to the scrolls, then he straightened up and looked around the room as if examining the entire Keep.

“Yes,” he replied. “Far more important.” Passion was again seeping into his tone, though it was triumphant this time. It seemed to Esyal that it was forcing words from him where a colder part of his mind would have urged silence. The reluctance, torment almost, at this conflict, flitted briefly across his face. Esyal could not avert her gaze without conceding she had seen it, so she willed her eyes to blank unresponsiveness.

“This is an ancient place — a Place of Great Power,” Adroyan pressed on. “With each hour I become more certain. When it is fully measured and understood, there will be such knowledge here that not only will the Rhanen be eradicated once and for all, but the very flaw in people’s nature which turns them to the Rhanen will dwindle into insignificance. And not only in this country, but far beyond — far beyond. We will bring order to all things, all places.”

Even as he was speaking, the ancient, feral snarl that had come to Esyal in her dream returned again, tugging urgently at her. With it, as though it had come from some place far beyond herself, came a realization that this man — this creature — would bring about terrible harm if he were not stopped.

“He (it?) must be made no more.”

The words formed in her mind as they had in her dream.

Made no more?

The images that hung about the phrase were confused and unsteady, as if those who spoke (?) them were struggling with a concept they did not understand. Yet to Esyal, the heart of their intent was brutally clear. Adroyan would have to be killed.

And the urgency in the words told her that it must be soon.

Very soon.