Wakeworld by Kerry Schafer Page A

“Your alter ego, as the Chancellor is Jared’s. He could have been here—I don’t think we’re far from Surmise.”
    That made sense, and simply understanding the problem eased Zee’s discomfort. The Warlord was dead, so there should be no weird encounter of self with self, and his memories could be valuable.
    “Which way do we go?” he asked. Surmise was off to the left, if memory served, but there was no path leading in that direction.
    Vivian shook her head. “I don’t know. Paths shift all the time in the Between—every time somebody dreams a new dream, or an old dream dies.”
    “Make it stop,” Jared said. “Please.” He looked like he was about to faint, his eyes taking on the dazed look of shock. “Something’s messing with my brain.”
    “There is one Dreamworld we all know,” Vivian went on, not even looking at him. Her voice was very quiet, and Zee guessed where this was going with a jolt of apprehension.
    When she turned to Jared, he held up both hands as though to ward off an evil. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never been in any Dreamworld . . .”
    “You’re lying. But it doesn’t matter. Think of a garden, Jared, one where there is a fountain, and a stone bench.”
    He shook his head. “No—”
    “If it helps, you can think about a penguin skewered on a sword. Maybe that will make you feel big and powerful and you won’t be so scared. Zee?” She grasped Jared’s limp hand in one of hers and held out the other.
    “Got it,” Zee said. He’d expected her hand to be cold, but it burned with heat like fever. The pattern of scales had spread up her neck and touched her jaw. The golden eyes burned.
    A sense of loss came over him for the gray-eyed girl who had slipped into his store a few weeks ago, pursued only by the wind, but there was no time, not now.
    “Close your eyes,” she said, and it was a quiet command.
    Zee waited for Jared to comply. Dreamworld or Wakeworld, he was an unreliable bastard who required watching.
    An elbow in his ribs from Vivian reminded him to follow suit.
    “Think about that garden, the fountain, whatever brings the place to mind.”
    Zee closed his eyes, let himself slide into a memory of a place he had never been.
    Darkness, with a red and bloated moon overhead. The garden had a light of its own, though, enough to see the blood on the stone bench, the bruise blossoming on Vivian’s cheek, the penguin lying dead in the grass. And in his own heart a mixture of rage and grief and shame that nearly sent him to his knees with the weight of actions both done and undone.
    “Keep your eyes closed. Hold the focus.” A tug on his hand followed the words and he followed, walking blind, holding the image with both mind and soul. He felt the shift as they stepped through the door. Heard the splash of water on water from the fountain, smelled the roses.
    Vivian let out a little gasp and her hand tightened convulsively. Zee’s eyes sprang open, all senses on alert.
    For a moment everything was a muddled swirl of reality and dream that stole his breath. He knew he stood holding Vivian’s hand. Jared stood on the other side of her, and at their feet was a penguin, alive and well and making a hissing sound like a small steam engine.
    In the garden, equally solid and real, lay a dead penguin and a man that looked like Jared, except that he had long hair and was dressed like a prince in a fairy tale. All strange and surreal, but it was the warrior in chain mail who threatened to derail Zee’s sanity. The man’s face, scarred by so many knife cuts it barely looked human, was inhabited by a pair of agate eyes that had looked back at Zee out of the mirror for thirty-five years.
    Zee rubbed his eyes. The Warlord was dead. Had taken a knife meant for Vivian’s heart in his own. Even as he entertained this thought, the Warlord began to fade, growing wraithlike and insubstantial so that the fountain showed through him. Then he was gone. The dead