Dream thief

18

… HAD THE VERY devil of a time following you," Adjani said.

"Bloodhounds couldn't have tracked you better."

"Adjani! It's you-what are you doing here?" Spence fell back and raised his hands to his head which had begun to throb like a tambourine in the hands of a firedancer. "Why did you slug me so hard?"

"I didn't slug you, but I should have. Running out of the governor's party like that… What were you thinking of?" Spence glanced up at his friend with a sickly, scared expression. Adjani saw it and knew what it meant. "Another blackout?"

"Not a blackout. It was different. It was like someone telling me what to do. I remember everything, but it's all sort of hazy,.."

The details of his flight through the city came swimming back to his pulsing head. Lastly, he remembered his discovery.

"Adjani, look!" He made to turn around but had to grip the sides of the altar; flaming arrows of pain stabbed through his brain. "Do you see?" Spence pointed to the idol watching them smugly from its niche.

"I see. What is it? Old Naag Brasputi, I gather."

Spence grabbed Adjani's sleeve and shook it. "No! Look again!"

Adjani looked at the tall, thin image in gray stone more closely. He turned and said, "It is unusual, and very old, but-"

"It's Kyr! Or someone very much like him. It's a Martian, I swear it!"

"Are you sure? This isn't the toddy talking, or…"

"I'm positive. It's the very image of a Martian. Don't you see? It's all true. Here's the proof. One of their ships came here. They settled in these mountains."

Adjani, eyes narrowed and hand cupping his chin, stepped close to the idol and examined it carefully. "So, this is what 8 Martian looks like. I will admit that it looks remarkably like you' description of Kyr."

"Complete down to the three-fingered hands. And look how tall he is. It certainly doesn't look like any of the other gods at all."

"And I know why. This one is very old. Carved long before the idols took on their classical, stylized fore. After a while, the priests started making the gods appear more human."

"Man made god in his own image, is that it?"

"More or less. But this one is an example of what they must have looked like before that happened."

"Do you think this is the Dream Thief?"

"It's hard to say. Dream Thief is more a demon spirit. He takes many shapes." Adjani looked at the carving on the altar and ran his hands over it. "I can't read the writing here. It's a dialect I don't know."

"Gita might know it."

"Yes, he might. We'll bring him here tomorrow. Right now we had better get back to the celebration before we're missed." …

THEY LEFT THE SHRINE and darted back across the teeple yard. In the moonlight their shapes became those of spirits springing up out of the stones of the shrine and escaping into the night. They hurried back across the footbridge and through the old town. Upon reaching the ancient bazaar Spence stopped.

"Wait!" His voice was a stiff tense whisper. Adjani froze in his tracks. "Listen!"

Both men trained their senses into the darkness around them. Far away they could hear the sounds of the celebration still reverberating into the stillness; the salutes of fireworks rang like distant gunshots of goondas in the hills.

"I don't hear any-" Adjani began.

"Shh!" Spence cut him off.

Then he heard what had stopped him, though for a moment he did not know why. It was a mere rustling of leaves upon the paving stones, a whisper of a sound, like the echo of the day's traffic seeping back up out of the cracks that had absorbed it.

Adjani heard it too. "What is it?"

At first Spence did not know what to say. Then it came to him. It was a sound he had heard in a dream-the sound of death on rushing feet.

"Dogs! Come on!"

They ran down the narrow street between crumbling facades of the aged buildings. The moon shone between the buildings from above and he could see far down the street as if he were looking at a canyon whose ridges of stone rose in towering banks on either hand. Adjani ran at his side and they heard the muffled rush of the feet behind them.

Spence's lungs burned in his chest; he was not used to such exertion at high altitude yet. He ignored the pain and ran on through one street and then another. He threw a quick look over his shoulder and saw the glint of eyes in a churning black mass, formless in the shadows, sweeping ever nearer to them.

Then they were in a courtyard bounded on three sides by a high wall and open to the street. It was a marketplace; he smelled the sweet stench of rotting fruit and meat. The paving stones beneath his feet were slippery with filth; refuse piles formed dark mounds across the market square. A rat scuttling across the square stopped, raised up on his hind legs and sniffed the air, then jumped away and disappeared down a drain hole.

Adjani leaped to an empty stall and came back with two long objects. He thrust one of them into Spence's hand. "Here-just in case."

Spence looked at his hand and saw he had been given a heavy length of wood. He glanced from it to the street behind and saw the moonlight ripple on the backs of the dogs as on a swiftly running stream, glinting on the curved white slivers of their teeth.

"It's too late," said Spence. Even as he spoke he heard an enormous slavering growl as the dogs sprang into the deserted marketplace, pouring in through the narrow gate of the street and spreading over the stones in a flood toward them, jaws snapping, hackles raised, ears flattened to their angular heads. Just like in his dream.

Throw down your club, a voice said inside him. Throw it down. It's over.

"God help us," cried Spence shaking himself out of the numbing lethargy he felt stealing over him. It was as if a dream were trying to swallow him whole.

The dogs, more than two dozen of them, scattered across the marketplace, ringing them in. The pack leader, a huge black animal with a broad snout and long fangs, leapt forward with a throaty growl.

Spence raised his club and swung it down. The dog dodged aside and another jumped up from nearby. He swung at it, too. Adjani was already busy on his side.

The dogs ran around them barking and snarling and dashing in to slash at them with their teeth, as yet not daring to close in for the kill. They would try to wear down their prey first.

Spence and Adjani stood shoulder to shoulder fending off these feinting attacks with their clubs. How long they could hold out like this Spence could not say-already he felt the strength in his arms fading. The run through the streets had tired him.

The dogs edged closer and the black leader ran yapping around the pack, whipping his mongrel soldiers into a foaming frenzy, jumping on his hind legs and clacking his jaws in the air as he shook his head.

The dogs were all around them now, within striking distance. At any moment they would rush in. The first would fall with battered skulls, but the humans would not be able to get all of them. Spence could almost feel their teeth in his flesh, tearing and tearing.

"Stand back to back," said Adjani. "We can protect each other."

They moved to take up this position, and as if on signal the dogs charged them.

At the same instant Spence heard a flurry above them, a rustle in the air as of leather wings. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a strange shape descending. The dogs saw it too and a few of them turned to snap at it. He saw a flash of silver in the moonlight, and all at once the air vibrated with a sound that seemed to bore through him.

The foremost of the dogs fell to the ground as if they had been slain with a single unseen blow. They rolled, whining and biting themselves. He felt the air vibrate again, though he could not hear the sound; it was above the human threshold. This sent the rest of the animals yelping. Those felled by the sound lay as if beaten, breathing heavily, heads resting on the ground. The strange creature touched lightly down in the square a short distance away.

In the moonlight it was hard to make out a distinct shape, but Spence thought he saw a creature of about a meter or more in height with two locustlike wings on its back. Its lower legs were furred like a goat's, but it had the tail of a scorpion that curved up in a backward arch. Its arms were long and emaciated, its hands and fingers little more than sticks.

The thing held in its hands a shining silver ball; it was this object that had emitted the high-pitched tone that drove the dogs away.

Spence stood spellbound as the creature turned to regard him with a cold, alien stare. Its face, and this was by far the most frightening thing about it, bore an intelligent, distinctly human look. It gazed unblinking at him with pale green eyes that glowed in the moonlight and Spence, staring into those eerie, otherworldly eyes, suddenly understood that it was trying to communicate with him.

The idea filled him with such repulsion that he cringed. The urge to run out and smash the creature flooded through him. As if sensing his mood, the thing hopped back in uneasy, jerky movements and its wings rustled in the air like dry leaves on a dead tree and it flew away.

Spence followed it with his eyes until it disappeared over the rooftops. "Did you see that?" he asked, disbelief making his voice small and uncertain.

"I saw it, but I don't believe it."

"Whatever it was, it tried to communicate with me." Spence turned wide eyes to his friend, and a shudder passed through him. "Adjani, it was a demon."

"A naga-a snake spirit. Here and now. We saw it."

Without another word the two ran from the square, lightly stepping over the panting bodies of stricken dogs. Once out of the marketplace they raced through empty streets back to the governor's palace. Overhead, red and gold glittering starburts lit their passage as fireworks blossomed in the sky.

They reached the palace walls out of breath and sweating, despite the cool evening breeze coming down from the mountains. They moved along the straggling knots of merrymakers still milling in the streets around the palace, the greater number of celebrants having departed for the lake to witness the burning barges. But several of the effigies had been set on fire and were being paraded through the streets on long poles to the chants of ecstatic worshipers.

They ducked in the still-open gate and proceeded across the close-cropped lawn toward the terrace, threading among the throngs watching the fireworks.

A worried, hand-wringing Gita met them as they mounted the steps of the terrace.

"You disappeared. I could not find you. There was trouble, yes? Oh, I knew there would be."

"We're exhausted, Gita," said Adjani. "We'll go to our rooms." Spence only nodded.

But as they turned to leave they were met by Fazlul, who seemed to appear from nowhere. "You have had enough, my guests? So soon?" He smiled warmly, but his eyes were dead in his face. "In any event, I hope this evening's entertainment offered you a taste of the exotic and perhaps an unusual diversion."

"We enjoyed it immensely, Governor." Gita turned on his most unctious, ingratiating manner. "It was a night to remember always. I, of course, could go on all night, but alas!-my poor Western friends are not accustomed to such strenuous celebrations. We beg your indulgence, for a night's sleep weighs heavy after our travels." Spence and Adjani muttered suitable excuses for retiring, smiled, and nodded.

"Of course," replied Fazlul. "I am sure the exertions of your day are telling on you now. Very well, you'll find your beds waiting. Good night, gentlemen; and pleasant dreams."

"Namastey, Governor," the three said in chorus. "Good night."

The governor moved away, the smile still on his lips. They watched him go and as soon as he was out of earshot, Spence turned to the others and whispered, "The sly devil knows what happened tonight, so help me! He knows!"