Oberon's Dreams by Aaron Pogue

SEVEN
    Corin hung in a moment suspended above the hungry flames. Within that moment, he felt no pain—not the fire’s blistering heat, not the stab of broken bones, not even the old fatigue of too many days’ hard work under an unforgiving sun. Within that moment, even through the choking smoke and creeping darkness, he could see the cavern with extraordinary clarity.
    He saw the shops ablaze and saw the fire spreading. For a moment he could see the city all spread out, even larger than he had imagined. It sprawled for miles over rolling hills and gently curled around a little lake. There was a palace all of silver, marble, and gold. There were avenues and parks. There were grand cathedrals and twisting towers. And from this edge, the fires could take it all.
    Then time returned. Corin landed hard. His head hit paving stones and a light brighter even than the raging fire flashed behind his eyes. He gasped for breath and coughed at the thick, unpleasant air.
    He rolled three times and landed staring up. Light and heat and sound. He heard the growling crackle of the flames. But there were other sounds within the noise. Corin imagined he could hear the rattle of a cart on brick-paved streets, the clatter of a thousand striding boots, the greedy cries of merchants and shouts of little arguments and fights.
    Corin took another measured breath and winced at the bruises on his ribs and the agony around his broken ankle. He sucked in air, and it was sour in his mouth—not with the acrid sear of choking smoke, but with the smell of sweat and men and animals packed too close together.
    He blinked three times against the light, then stared up at a bright-blue sky. A summer sun sat low and hot, wreathed with tiny wisps of woolly clouds. A four-wheeled cart rolled by, scant inches from his right hand, then a boot stamped down by his left shoulder. He bent his neck and saw a street alive with busy shoppers who crowded along the storefronts and now gathered around Corin.
    He struggled up onto an elbow as questions rang inside his head. What in Ephitel’s wretched name is happening? Where am I?
    He looked up to find a stern-faced woman standing over him. She wore outlandish pants, the gray of ash and creased along a seam, and above them she wore a blouse of brilliant white. And above that, she wore an irritated scowl. “Find somewhere else to spill your sick, you worthless drunk, or I will bring the guards.”
    Those last words cut through all the strangeness, all the impossibility, and moved Corin to motion. He raised his shoulders, and even that much exertion hurt. He groaned and reached to press a painful rib, then scooted back and heaved himself upright. It jostled his ankle, and he almost screamed.
    That much of reality remained. The fire was gone. The cavern was gone. But broken bones were a familiar agony to a boy who’d learned to survive in Aepoli’s shady alleys, and Dave Taker’s vicious blow had left Corin crippled even in this…this dream? This waking madness? What was this place? Corin considered what he’d seen in the crowd around him. The busy street felt so familiar, but the clothes were strange—too bright, too clean, too neat of hem, even for the lords on Prince’s Way. What would a proud Vestossi pay for a single bolt of that strange cloth?
    And the men were strange. They moved about their ordinary business just like ordinary folk, but nearly every one of them stood a full head taller than the people of Ithale. They wore a thousand shades of skin, but every one among them had the same basic build. Tall and thin, high cheekbones and narrow faces, flowing hair left loose. And men and women, old and young, on busy errands or at an idle stroll, these lords and ladies all moved with the easy, rolling grace of seafarers and soldiers.
    Here and there among them, rare as the south wind, he spotted ordinary folks. They looked small and awkward in the crowd, and their tanned skin and dirty clothes named them all