Dreameater

At dawn on the second day, I saw Demon's Rock. It was just as I had seen it in my dream: a bare cliff, its peak lost in thick white clouds, its base hidden by the mist of tiny splashes from the crashing giant waves. Strangely, there was no wind.

I looked for a place to land, but my boat was carried by the strong current, and I couldn't fight it with the oars. So I just sat and waited. Before the boat reached the shore, I was ready for anything.

The current swept the boat past the murderously sharp rocks, beyond which a quiet cove opened. The boat bumped its bow against a narrow strip of pebbles. Here I was!

I jumped out of the boat and headed forward along what looked like a path. Actually, there was no other path. I climbed higher and higher and soon found some signs of human beings: a piece of ribbon, a sandal strap. I kept going, wondering if I was supposed to reach the top of the mountain.

Suddenly I heard music. I couldn't believe it and stopped to listen. Yes, that was the music! It was melodious, sad, soul-stirring and vaguely familiar. There was something of Sting in it, of the rock ballads I had loved since my youth.

I listened to it for a while and then walked on. The source of the sounds was getting closer. Somehow it didn't occur to me that there could be no music in a place like this.

The path skirted the cliff and I stopped, amazed at the scene.

Between the bare rocks there was a green meadow. Rose bushes were blooming all around. A musician was playing the harp, sitting on a low stool in the middle of the meadow. His head was bowed, and his face was hidden by his black hair. Many people danced around him. The dancers moved easily and freely to the beat of the music, as if floating above the ground. All of them, including the musician, were dressed in white.

The next moment I felt an overwhelming need to join the dancers. It was like an obsession, and I didn't care that the harp couldn't sound like an electric guitar and a saxophone at the same time. I went out to the meadow and saw beautiful girls I had known in the past. The fact that I had known them at different times and in different worlds did not bother me. The fact that all of them could not gather in one place for objective reasons did not bother me either. I took it all for granted and was happy.

Gemma's arms wrapped around my neck, Sahara stroked my shoulders, Mara was belly dancing. Julia, the dark-eyed ash blonde I'd been in love with in high school and hadn't seen since graduation, offered a bouquet of white roses.

Other dancers paid no attention to me, but I saw some familiar faces. 

There was Alex waltzing with a tiny blonde, and I yelled, "Hey, Prince, is that your wife?" But he didn't hear me. 

There was also my school friend Max, old Doro, my colleague from Patrol Dick... 

Maybe this was paradise? Maybe, but I didn't care. I was happy at that moment, as happy as I had never been before. How could I come to a place like this with a blade? One of my girls unbuttoned my sheath, hurrying to free me from the worthless piece of iron.

"No!"

The scream in my head was alien and irrelevant, but my fingers squeezed the hilt of Helyswort on their own, and the next moment my sword leapt from its sheath.

The sound of the music changed - now all I heard was the harp, no electronic stuff. I looked into the face of the girl hugging me and realized she wasn't Sahara; her features seemed to have faded into a haze, and underneath was a haggard face with sunken cheeks and black circles under dull, indifferent eyes. The other girls were the same - poor, half-mad creatures, dressed in gray, dirty rags. Yet they continued to dance, tempting me, stretching out their thin, dirty hands.

I pressed my back against the rock, Helyswort in front of me. The rainbow light from my magic blade dispelled the illusion, and now I could see clearly that there was no paradise. There were only bare rocks and a group of ragged, mad dancers, the last victims of the Dream Eater.

Where was he, by the way?

I took another look around the local theater of the absurd. Only one character hadn't changed at all, still playing the harp and pleasing the eye with the whiteness of his outfit. Well...

I threw a knife at the musician. The harp sobbed sadly and, having lost half of its strings, fell silent. The next moment, all the dancers fell like broken dolls. 

The harpist raised his head and looked into my eyes. He looked like me. He was so much like me, even the scar was in the same place. But his eyes were inhuman, burning like coils. For the second time in the last month, I felt horror.

"I knew you wouldn't believe it," he said, getting to his feet and stretching. "Where have you been for so long?"

"Oh, have you been waiting for me?" I hummed and stepped towards him. 

"Oh, no! As you can see, I don't have time to be bored here."

"What are you?" I asked him. 

"Your twin brother."

"No way! I am the only child of my parents."

He shrugged - just like me. "Sometimes you don't know the most important things about yourself."

"This is not about me."

"Oh, you'll remember my words! If there's anything left to remember, of course."

"Don't worry about me. But you still haven't answered my question."

"I forgot the question."

"What are you?"

"Guess yourself. The natives call me a Dream Eater or a demon. They are afraid of me, and I don't understand why."

"Maybe they have a reason? Twelve to twelve young boys and girls every year. That's too much, isn't it?"

"I'm bored," he explained. "When I am bored, I go crazy, and then all kinds of problems happen on their island. These young people entertain me. They are enough for a year."

"And what happens to them after that? Where do they go?"

"There," the demon waved his hand toward the sea. "When they get tired of my music, they jump into the sea and swim. But they always come back to replenish my collection of lost souls."

"Wow! What a life!"

"Don't be jealous. Maybe your soul will join my collection today."

"We'll see," I hummed darkly, raising the Blade of Honor.

"We'll see," the demon echoed, and a blade appeared in his hand. 

I expected to see a copy of Helyswort, but I was wrong. His sword was decorated with black pearls in the hilt. A bright and painful realization made me jump.

"It's the Key of the Master!"

The demon chuckled, "You guessed right. It's the Heart of the Night, in which the Great Master encased the immortal soul of his beloved wife."

"Thank you for telling me."

"You’re welcome," the demon bowed. "Now you have a reason to fight. Your soul against the Heart of the Night. The stakes are equal, it’s a fair game."

"Deal."

"Then - en garde!" 

I took position and saluted with my Helyswort. The demon was in no hurry to attack, but he parried my first lunge without much effort.

"I haven't practiced fencing for a long time," he admitted, smiling suddenly, "but that doesn't make you feel any better."

I didn't answer, waiting for his next move. He made a lunge, almost copying my previous attack; I just stepped aside.

"Is that the best you can do?" I asked, irritated.

He laughed and attacked again, but as if not serious. "It doesn't matter what I can do. The universe is interested in what you can do. We are all under the will of the Great Master, hero. If you want this sword, just take it!"

I only understood that I understood nothing. However, I doubted that his words had any hidden meaning. Mostly, it looked like a trivial attempt to muddle things up.

The clash of blades, the song of steel, the dance ... something like that. I didn't forget for one moment that I was fighting a demon, and I was waiting for some kind of trick. But my opponent fenced technically and dryly, as if in a competition. 

When I aimed my blade at his chest again, the demon, instead of blocking, lowered his blade and stepped forward. Helyswort pierced his flesh halfway through, and a red stain appeared on my opponent's snow-white shirt. Didn't demons have black blood?

"Now I am free," the demon said, when I pulled the sword from his chest and fell to the ground.

I didn't know what to say.

The island was shaking, crumbling, sinking into the abyss. 

The demon handed me the Heart of the Night. "The sword is yours," he said. "Bend down to me. You have something to know."

I leaned forward, and his fingers, twisted in a death spasm, caught me by the collar and pulled me down.

"You'll never get back," the demon predicted. "No one can. Climb to the top and you'll find a way. All you see is an illusion, but the dream is the only reality."

With this, he disappeared, melting into the air. Only the bloody spot on the rock told me he had been here before.

I tucked the Heart of the Night under my belt and started climbing. I moved on and the island was crumbling. The blood pounded in my temples and I had only one thought in my mind - to get to the top in time. Was there a passage to another reality, or was it the Eater's final trap? I had no time to guess.

I climbed to the top of the cliff, and for a few minutes I watched in horror as the world collapsed. Heavy, dark clouds hung just above the crests of enormous waves, the wind howled like the trumpets of Jericho, and huge boulders fell into the bowling water. If I ever thought of the end of the world, this was it.

The passage appeared unexpectedly, and it looked exactly like the one that had brought me back in time. It was as if I had entered a wind tunnel and was flying, hoping for a successful arrival.

In a way, I was lucky. I didn't faint and I didn't fall. That's all. There were no other advantages. 

First, it was terribly cold and windy. Second, I knew that place too well and I never wanted to get there again. It was the Twilight Zone, the land near the Dark Edge. I had lost Gemma there once. 

Was it in the past or in the future? That was a big problem. I knew where I was, but I didn't know when. 

I had to go to inhabited worlds to get the answer to this question. By the way, I had learned almost every chronological system on the Lace, but I preferred to use the Earth calendar. Just for the record.

I had yet another reason to leave: I was tired, but it would be too careless to stay here for a rest. Unfortunately, there was only one way out of the Twilight Zone. But this time it didn't seem to be a problem, Alex had once taught me how to find my way out.

I held out my hand, placed the knife on my palm, and said the spell. The knife rotated on my palm like a compass and froze, indicating the direction. At the same time, the knowledge of the distance appeared in my mind. My destination wasn't close, so I kept walking. 

First I walked, then I ran. I concentrated on my breathing and didn't look around. After about five kilometers, I switched to walking and then to running again. The physical exertion cleared my mind of unnecessary thoughts, and that was good. 

After some time, I noticed that someone was watching me, but I did nothing about it. I felt no danger in it, just curiosity. So let them watch if they wanted to. I kept running; there was about a quarter of a mile to the gates. 

Soon I got a companion. It was a raven, as black as the Great Shadow and no less menacing. The bird emerged from the mist and flew in a parallel path. I tried to ignore it, but it wasn't easy. The raven stayed in my field of vision all the time. Finally, it made a big circle and sat down on a rock a few steps in front of me.

"Well, it looks like you're not supposed to be here, stranger," the raven said when I reached the rock.

"So what?" I replied, walking on.

"Nothing. But your two blades are familiar to me, and I wonder where you have gotten them."

"Where did you come from to bother me with your curiosity?"

"Actually, I am local," the raven waved his wings and flew to the next stone. "I left my library because of you, stranger. I haven't done that for ages!"

"You should stretch your wings sometime," I chuckled. "I’m surprised you are still able to fly, Merlin."

The bird chuckled in return, "How do you know me?"

I stopped, put my hands on my knees, and was silent for a while to recover my breath.

"Talking crows are rare even in these parts of the universe," I explained then, "and a librarian crow is probably the only one on the Lace."

"You're right," Merlin tilted his head to the side and stared at me with his black, gleaming eye. "There is something strange about you, stranger."

"Let me know when you understand what it is. By the way, what day is it today?"

"It depends on the place. You know, the Lace is big."

"Then tell me the date from the origin of the Great Shadow," I asked. This was the system used by the Coordination Service.

Merlin did, I checked it against my personal calendar and understood that I was in the same time period - six years before I'd met the Prince of Irrat.

"Thanks for telling me," I said and moved on.

"Beware, try to avoid the Horned ones," the raven said. "They're the guardians of the treasure and are too suspicious of strangers."

"I don't care about any treasure," I hummed, although my heart stopped for a moment. It could be another Key! "I just want to leave."

"Then do it," the raven flew to the next stone. "By the way, what is your name, stranger?"

"Arthur Corney, earthling," I replied.

"Good luck, earthling," Merlin said, taking off and flying away.

I continued on my way, gradually returning to my former pace.

After a few minutes, the raven returned.

"I forgot to give you some advice," he said, circling above my head. "You'd better hide the Keys of the Great Master in a safe place."

"They don't bother me."

"They contain a powerful magical substance. It attracts those with the gift of magic and can provoke them into rash actions. Hide the Keys for your own safety," Merlin said and flew away again.

After considering his advice, I decided to keep the Keys with me. I tied the sheathed Helyswort and the Heart of Night together, wrapped the Veil of Wind around them, and fastened them to my backpack. Sahara said that the Veil not only hid from prying eyes, but also blocked magical energy. I decided that would be enough and strapped the entire construction onto my back. Not very comfortable, actually, with metal pressed between my shoulder blades. Well, I had to be patient.

The last part of my way I thought about the problem of cause and effect, but there was no right answer, like in the well-known chicken and egg riddle. I also thought about Alex. Where was he at this moment? Had he found any Key? How far back in time had he come?

An hour later I saw the Black Gates of the Dark Edge.