A Warrior of Dreams by Richard Parks

banged against the wall.
    "Good evening, Quin. Sorry I was detained. Shall we begin?"
    What an unpleasant little man .
    Joslyn looked at the newcomer and was instantly seized with dislike. He wore the garb of a torturer and an affected air of professional detachment that only held so long as you didn't look at his eyes. The Supplicant — Quin? At least now Joslyn had a name to use — rose from the table and stood towering over the newcomer.
    "What have you decided for tonight?" he asked, resigned.
    "The lash, I think. Yes, I think so. The lash," he grinned. "Please be so good as to chain yourself to that wall."
    He's going to do it !
    Joslyn watched, amazed, as Quin stripped to the waist and proceeded to clamp a pair of manacles to his wrists. He stood against the wall, watching dully as his tormenter went to a rack of whips conjured out of nothing on the opposite wall. The little torturer stood a few moments, inspecting his options, and Joslyn's mind worked furiously, trying to make some sense of what she was seeing. There was nothing here of signs and portents, symbols and cryptic messages from the Dreamer of All. Just a young man about to be whipped by an image he conjured himself for the purpose...
    No.
    Joslyn didn't so much realize the error as feel it. Then after a moment she remembered the weary sadness that the other Joslyn had seen in the young man's eyes. Whatever was happening now, he wasn't enjoying it. It was driving him to madness or death with an equal wager for either, but Joslyn was sure he wasn't doing it himself. If she'd learned any one thing in the brief months she'd spent in the Temple, it was that a dream was a poor place to keep secrets. They rose to the top like bubbles in a rain barrel, and there was no keeping them down. That left only one possibility.
    Young Man, your dream - candle has attracted a Moth .
    Joslyn's studies had told of such though this was the first time she'd actually seen one. A Moth was not an adept; in most cases they were not even consciously aware of what they did or how they did it. They were like sleepwalkers, stumbling about blind.
    Moths roamed the nightstage because they had little choice in the matter; their own dreams were so narrow and miserly that there was nothing to anchor the Nightsoul within and they fled them like prisoners quitting their cells. The problem was that the frustrated Nightsoul tended to take control of any dream it found like a cuckoo stealing another bird's nest. It might even be drawn to one particular dreamer time and again because of the cruel fun it found there. In short, blind instinct matched with a powerful, mean-spirited will — Moths were dangerous.
    The intruder selected his whip, turned back to his work. He flicked the whip once to lay it out on the stone at full extension, the lash touching Quin's right foot, and then without pause he struck the first blow. Quin cried out, a red welt appearing on his shoulder, and the dream shuddered, almost as if it was wincing with his pain.
    Joslyn knew there wasn't much time. A few more of those and the pain would break Quin's dream, and he would awake as he had all those other nights, not to sleep again until time and weariness gave him no choice. And the other Joslyn would have to make up some story about Somna's anger and an appropriate penance that would enrich the Temple but not do very much for the poor idiot chained to the wall in his own dreams. That thought made Joslyn angry, even more than the thought of failing her first augury.
    If I'm right there should be able to find some sign... there !
    With a little effort Joslyn spotted what she was looking for, easily missed in the slightly hazy images in Quin's dreams — there was a very faint glow around the little torturer, one that did not match the misty outlines of the other props there. The man was not a part of Quin's dream at all, but another Nightsoul; now Joslyn was certain.
    Moth to a flame. The Dream Master named them well