Adrin

Adrin built himself a workshop in his dreams.

He ran his hand along the smooth top of the workbench, opened the drawer beneath it and found a selection of styluses arrayed in a neat row. On one wall, ceram molds in various sizes and formats hung on hooks, with labeled bins of clay beneath them, and on another there was an angled drawing board and stool beneath a window. An octagonal kiln like the one he’d used in the university workshop filled a corner of the room. Everything was organized and spacious.

He’d struggled to create his own dreamspace, but it came easier tonight, now that he felt more at home in his own mind. Here, he was the master of reality, and it bent to his will. He could incise a channel pattern on a clay blank, put it in the kiln, then pull it out a moment later, fully annealed and cold, to admire the final result.

Adrin crossed the room to peer out the window. Through it he saw the broad, twisted stump of a dead tree, a gravel road running downhill, and below that, the sailboats on the lake. A lump rose in his throat. He was home.

Only one thing was missing.

Well, not missing, exactly. Usually, when he fell asleep, Naomi was just there. He was in his own dreamspace now, instead of at her gate, so he had to call to her, the way he sometimes did for Zafrys. He ought to call the former queen as well, to show her that he’d finally been able to manifest his own dreamspace. And he would. Soon. He just wanted to bring Naomi into it, first.

She came in through the front door. “I was waiting for y—” she paused, looking around the workshop, and a smile brightened her face. “Hey, this is new. Nice place you’ve got here.”

“Yeah, I . . .”

“What are those?” Naomi pointed at the wall with the ceram molds.

“Which ones?” Adrin asked.

“Um, all of them?”

Adrin took down one of the smaller molds to show her, a component used in various ambient devices. Naomi opened one of the bins and peered inside.

“It’s clay?”

“Not just clay. Well, the first one is just clay, but this one’s has additives to adjust the conductivity. That’s the standard ceram formula, the sort you’ll use in most appliances, but for more specialized applications you’d want to use a different mix of additives . . .”

Naomi’s eyes were starting to glaze over, so Adrin stopped himself before he started pulling out packets of powder and bored her to tears. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder—would they work in the dreamspace? Could he do an experiment here and get valid results, or would that be impossible because he could only create what he already knew?

“I had another vision today,” Naomi said, and Adrin abandoned his pondering to listen. “And it wasn’t just a vision. I went to look for the seal Zafrys told me about . . .”

As Naomi spoke, pacing around his workshop, the walls faded away and the setting shifted. She didn’t even seem to notice, she just kept telling her tale, but Adrin could see the area she described, the boulder, the precipice, even the bird watching from high above. And when the vision began, he saw that, too. The red-eyed boy frightened Adrin, who guessed that he was leading his pursuers into a trap before he opened the earth to swallow ranks of soldiers. That sort of cruel calculation, followed by the childlike bewilderment when his plan worked, left an impression on Adrin that lingered after the vision came to an end.

Even worse, Adrin thought he saw something of Naomi in the young Rispara. That shouldn’t have surprised him. It seemed that all the Rispara might have been closely related, maybe even deliberately inbreeding to prevent their power from being diluted? But it was the boy’s manner that made him think of Naomi, even more than his looks. Clumsy, careless, and deadly. He didn’t think that Naomi shared that cold streak; if anything, she was too warm lately. But the look on the boy’s face when his rift kept growing was all too similar to the look on Naomi’s when she realized her hand was stuck.

Back in the workshop, Naomi climbed onto a stool to sit next to him. “I think it was the knife that kept the construct sealed. It was like it became part of the seal.”

“I wish I could examine it myself. If we had a weapon that could keep a construct from reawakening . . .” Adrin sighed. “When things calm down and the linecar is running again, we’ll have to go and check it out.”

“I’d like to have a weapon like that. Esar said he’s going to actually teach me how to do things, real things with my power. If I have to fight constructs I want to be prepared. Did you find the papers I asked you about?”

“I asked my assistant to request them from the University,” Adrin said. Sephoni had seemed excited when Adrin asked her to get Yanset Bharsalli’s reports on the experiments with Esar Semfrey and the symbic device twenty years ago. “I asked Dacrine about it, too, but then she started asking why I wanted to know, so I didn’t push it.”

“Can’t let anyone know about your secret weapon.” Naomi grinned.

“Do you want to call yourself a weapon?” Adrin asked.

“So long as nobody’s forcing me, I’m all right with it. I don’t want to let my power go to waste. I want to help you however I can, Adrin.” She leaned forward with that eager look on her face, and he thought for a moment she was going to jump off the stool but she drew back instead. “I mean, I want to help you, and your people, and your world.”

Naomi was always a little stranger when Queen Zafrys wasn’t there in the dream with them. Usually her weirdness didn’t bother him, but after the vision he’d just witnessed, he found himself more curious about what was going on inside her head. Adrin trusted Naomi, but that didn’t mean he always trusted her judgment. She’d just demonstrated how willing she was to throw caution to the wind.

“Be careful, Naomi,” he said.

“It was just a rock.”

“And you’re lucky you figured out how to get out of it. You’re lucky you didn’t end up at the bottom of that crevice.”

“You’re worried about me?”

Adrin sighed. “You make it hard not to worry about you.”

“You don’t need to. You have enough things to worry about.”

“Well, I’m depending on you to tell me things. If something happens to you, I lose my connection to Esar and everything else.”

“Oh, is that all?” she asked, the hint of a smile on her lips. Adrin had to look away.

It doesn’t help when you try to flirt with me. He didn’t think she really meant anything by it, she was just trying to lighten the mood. He figured it was due to cultural differences; in her world, they probably didn’t understand that his betrothal was sacrosanct. He did what he always did when the conversation got uncomfortable and changed the subject.

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“I get to go for a linecar ride tomorrow.”

“The linecar’s running?”

“Only as far as Gradalla. We’re making a ceremonial trip down to show that things are getting back to normal, everything’s going to be fine.”

“We? Who’s going with you?”

“Princess Jocyanë.”

“Oh, you’re going on a date, then?”

Adrin sighed. “Sure, an official date. Just me, Jocyanë and three members of the Ethereal Guard. Reidas, Farn—and just in case there was any danger I might, for one moment, enjoy myself—Suzari.”

“Oh, it sounds delightful. I’m sorry I can’t make it.”

Adrin let out the slightest chuckle. “I’ll see if I can get you a souvenir.”

Naomi didn’t say anything for a while after that, leaving Adrin free to dig through his worries. Sometimes his dreaming mind could see solutions to problems that he couldn’t see when he was awake, but when the problem was sitting next to him in the dreamspace, it was hard to get that helpful change of perspective. So long as he only saw her here, he could keep her out of his mind in the waking world, for the most part. But every day she was getting close and closer to Thaliron. The capital was already a toxic stew, and adding Naomi to the pot would stir things up in ways he couldn’t begin to anticipate.

What would it even mean, to face her in real life? She’d been quiet for so long that Adrin wondered if she’d vanished, but when he looked up she was still sitting there, just looking at him.

“You’re doing a great job,” she said.

“What makes you think that?”

“Because I know you’re working so hard. You’re doing things I could never do. And you’re making a difference.”

“It’s not enough,” Adrin said.

“It will be. I’m not enough yet, either, but I will be. And I’m going to come to Thaliron and beat some sense into anybody who gives you a hard time.”

Adrin flinched. Just what he needed, a loose cannon sweeping in and opening a chasm beneath the palace.

“That was a joke,” Naomi said, fidgeting. “I didn’t actually mean to threaten anyone . . .”

“It’s all right. It’s not your fault. I’m just frustrated. I don’t know what I have to do to prove I can be trusted. It’s getting better, I guess, but it’s exhausting.”

“I really do wish I could be there for you,” Naomi said.

“But you are here for me,” Adrin replied. She wasn’t the only person who believed in him, and she wasn’t his only friend. But she’d been the one to listen to him vent his frustrations, to offer him encouragement, ever since that first night. Didn’t she see he’d been leaning on her, depending on her for that? He opened his mouth, but he couldn’t say all that, couldn’t tell her just how much she meant to him without stirring up other thoughts better left undisturbed.

“I’m trying, but it’s still just a dream,” Naomi said.

“Is it?” Adrin said. He’d been telling himself that, too, but the words seemed empty. “I don’t think that a dream is ever going to be ‘just a dream’ again, for either one of us.”

It was definitely time to call on Zafrys. The connection between Adrin and the old queen appeared when he thought of it like the thread of a spiderweb that caught a glint of sunlight. A moment later, Zafrys came through the door of Adrin’s workshop.

“What a lovely dreamspace you’ve made!” she exclaimed. “I should have expected it to be some sort of workshop. Are you feeling a bit more at home here?”

Adrin nodded.

Zafrys greeted Naomi, who responded rather more shyly than usual. Was she uncomfortable because she was out of her usual dreamspace, or because of their conversation earlier?

“Now that you’ve got your own dreamspace, I think it’s time that you ventured out into the unconscious sea,” Zafrys said. “If you think you’re ready, Adrin?”

“I’m ready,” Naomi said, when Adrin unconsciously turned to look at her.

“Yeah, I . . . think so,” Adrin said. Zafrys had been planning to take them both into the unconscious sea, that vast nothingness that Adrin had found himself in that first night in the palace, before he’d come to Naomi’s courtyard.

“It’s possible to lose yourself in the unconscious sea without a tether,” Zafrys reminded them. “Adrin, you’re tethered by the Ocean, but Naomi, you’ll need something to keep you connected. Hold my hand, and don’t let go, no matter what.”

Naomi took the queen’s hand.

“You may feel things while we’re out there, emotions that don’t actually belong to you. Emotional waves are constantly traversing the unconscious sea. Even if you’re overcome by joy, or despair, you must continue to hold on to my hand. I’ll do my best to keep a good grip on you too, of course. Beyond that, I think it’s best if I show you rather than tell you any more. Let’s go!”

She led the way to the door, Adrin following behind Naomi, and they stepped out into darkness.

Everything seemed even more muffled than it normally was in dreams. Adrin was barely aware of his own self, but he could still feel the doorway behind him, a passage back to a safe harbor.

“All minds touch the unconscious sea,” Zafrys said. Adrin could still see her, just a bit in front of him with Naomi, but her voice seemed disconnected from her form, as if it came from all around him. “That’s where the emotional waves come from—they overflow from human minds. There’s one up there,” Zafrys pointed, to where a wisp of yellow light like an aurora undulated far above them.

“It looks like shisao,” Adrin said. The way the colored light traversed the darkness looked just like the patterns of light that appeared on Isuld’s sword.

“You noticed that too, eh?” Zafrys said. “If there’s some connection there, I’m sure you’d be the one to figure it out.”

Adrin was already trying to do just that. Shisao was somehow connected to the unconscious sea.

“It’s beautiful,” Naomi said, watching the waves of light that crossed their path.

“It’s dangerous. You touch one of those, and you’ll feel it,” Zafrys warned her. “Here, I’ll show you the way to the Ocean.”

“The Ocean?” Naomi repeated.

Two glowing threads appeared in the darkness, one connected to Adrin, the other to Zafrys. They both stretched away in the same direction.

“Naomi, you have one too!” Adrin realized. It was far fainter even than Zafrys’s thread, barely visible at all, but a third strand connected Naomi’s heart to the same distant point as the others.

“Well, Naomi is Brizin’s granddaughter,” Zafrys said. “Kinship makes a connection.”

“So I’m connected to my father, then, too,” Naomi said, noting another thread close to the first.

“You’re connected to everyone you interact with. The closer the relationship, the stronger the connection. A strong enough bond may be used as a tether, to keep you from losing yourself in the unconscious sea.”

“Can I see the bond between me and Adrin?” Naomi asked, looking back at him. The connection between Adrin and Naomi looked more like a rope than a thread, and Zafrys smiled at the sight.

“Friendship is a beautiful thing,” she said. “You can see our bond, too, Adrin, if you look for it.”

Adrin looked and was able to see the ropelike bond that connected him to the former queen. He couldn’t help but notice, however, that it wasn’t as bright as the one that connected him to Naomi.

And what sort of bond, he wondered silently, connected him to Princess Jocyane?

They followed the threads that connected them to Brizin and her Ocean, but the going became more and more difficult. Soon it felt like they were walking through thick syrup, and barely made any progress with each step.

Naomi was able to get a bit ahead of Zafrys in the viscous muck, but Zafrys bid her to stop. “That’s enough. You see now the problem. Normally we would be able to visit Brizin in Vas, but the way is cut off from us.”

“Because that’s where they’re holding my father,” Naomi said quietly.

“And Gerimon is in there, too,” Adrin said. “How do we get them out?”

“We don’t want my father to get out!” Naomi said.

“But we have to save Gerimon,” Adrin said. “There has to be a way. Between the three of us . . .”

“Let’s go back to your workshop, Adrin,” Zafrys said. “It’s too stifling here.”

It was easier to get back to the workshop than it had been to reach the Ocean, almost as if his dreamspace had followed him and was waiting when he turned around.

“Maybe I can make something here that will help us to save Gerimon,” Adrin said. “I bet I can build ceram devices that will work in the dreamspace.”

“It’s an interesting idea,” Zafrys said, though she sounded a bit skeptical.

“I could still move,” Naomi said. “It was hard, but I wonder if I kept going, if I could have gotten through.”

“Perhaps your power as a Rispara is enough to break it,” Zafrys said. “But you might also break the prison entirely that Brizin and Gerimon have created for your father.”

“Oh! That . . . would be bad,” Naomi said.

“There was a maze that Brizin used to contain him,” Adrin said. “What if I could build another maze and hold him there after Naomi broke through?”

“That’s a lot of ifs,” Zafrys said. “But I don’t have any other ideas at the moment. It may be worth a try.”