The Youngest Dreamwalker

She had never known a night without dreaming.

When she was a child, she had to learn that the hard colors and the consistent edges, the persistent smells and the meaningless murmurs, all these things belonged to the real world, the world that mattered. So they said. But she always knew the lure the dreamworld could hold for those of her kind. Her mother had one day decided not to wake up, after all.

Ki had grown up with the story, and had the faintest memories of seeing her mother's frail body, kept alive by the midwives for as long as possible. Stronger were her memories of her mother from the dreamworld, strong and pale, with hair as straight as silk and the drifting scent of sandalwood. Her father had tried to keep the two of them apart, but his dreams were regimented, predictable, and Ki's mother could slip through them like a wren to find her daughter and take her whirling through fields of cloud and flowers.

They told Ki when her mother died in the real world. Her body just wasted away, they said. She went to her father and asked him if he would still try to keep her mother away from her, but he only turned away from her, told her to leave him alone.

He was the Dreamwalker, the only one now other than her. Despite his apathy when she spoke to him in the real world, she found him in her dreams often during the first year. Her mother still appeared there, and he no longer tried to separate them, but when Ki and her mother invited him to play, he only watched from the side. And every morning, when Ki woke up and went to have breakfast with her family, her father and cousins hugged her and welcomed her back to the real world.

She learned, eventually, that what her mother had done was common among her kind, among the ethari. If she went away like her mother, when her father died, they would be without a Dreamwalker, and the Royal Family would be incomplete. Such horror! Such shock! It was not to be borne; she could not be risked, even in her dreams.

She knew something nobody else knew, though. She knew her father was going blind.

In the real world, he was in excellent shape, of course. The midwives saw to that. But there were no midwives for the dreaming eye, and she knew that her father no longer visited her dreams, hadn't since she was ten years old. She thought he didn't dream at all these days, but the thought disturbed her deeply and she could tell nobody except her mother.

"I certainly have not seen him," commented her mother, as they lay in a nest hollowed from a bank of clover. "but I'm not interested in finding him, either."

Ki curled on her side and poked a finger through the clover to make a hole. Below the bank, the wind rushed past; she could feel it chilling her finger and shivered. In the real world, she pulled her blankets closer.

"I miss him," she explained to her mother. "I feel like he should be here. Like I remember him here." She shook her head and withdrew her finger from the hole. A swirl of cloud came back and then clouds were slowly pouring into the nest around her. She watched curiously. "There's only you that I remember, but..."

Her mother stroked Ki's hair and the scent of sandalwood swirled around them as the clouds did too and then her mother faded away and Ki was alone, swept away by the clouds to elsewhere. There was only whiteness at first and then Ki was in the palace, drifting silently from room to room, looking in on her cousins one after another. Askayra had a falcon on her bed frame, and a feather in her hand, which meant she was dreaming of the kite captain she fancied. If Ki wished, she could look more closely and see his face. It was Askayra's to share, though, and she hadn't yet.

Minanantha sat in her throne, her eyes blank and empty, as around her workmen constructed the Higher Hall even yet higher. She dreamt of work, of her day, and the rising of the sun. It was well.

Kanthah, Tayin, Damara, all there, unaware, peaceful. She came to Minaraja, and the princess was fighting hawks that swooped on her to tear at her flesh. She was panicked, tangled, and Ki paused and then stretched out a finger to touch Minaraja's forehead. She could sense the pain that lurked in Minaraja's heart, and retreated before it. She could soothe the princess's dreams, but she could not sort out her knot of shame and fear at being impure, no true heir of the blood Royal.

She fled, leaving music and her mother's sandalwood behind her in Minaraja's dreams, and came to Antarik's room. She saw the shimmering around him, as of a mirror, and looked more closely before she could stop herself.

He lay there, sprawled on his bed, naked to the wind that blew in from his window, and illuminated by the fire that burned in the brazier. Curled in the crook of his arm was a young woman with pale skin, and curly black hair that was tied in a simple knot and fell to the back of her knees. Small breasts pressed against Antarik's side and a frail hand rested on his chest. She made a noise, murmuring in her sleep, and Antarik turned on his side to face her, sliding his hand down her back to pull her closer to him, pushing his leg between her own legs and kissing her on the mouth.

Ki retreated from the dream rapidly, panicked, until it was only Antarik and the shimmer, and a glow. It had been her in his dream; that had been the body she saw when she looked in the mirror. In her own dreams she was still childlike, without unfamiliar curves and awkward height, but in Antarik's dreams she was just as she was in the mirror.

She stared down at him. She could reach out, touch him as she touched Minaraja, and he would wake and in waking, remember his dream. Her handsome cousin, so strong and aggressive, so demanding and combative.

She fled his room in a rush. Then she drifted for a few moments until she came to Ruka's room, determined to complete her rounds since her dreams had called her there. Ruka was there, sitting in a chair, looking out his window. He turned his head when she entered the room, though, and looked directly at her and smiled faintly.

"Good morning, Ekikarana ethari," he greeted her formally.

Awkwardly, surprised, she returned the greeting. "Good morning, Ruka tandya." She hesitated and then added, "You are perceptive today."

"I am watching," he said. "Come and see."

She wondered if he was awake or asleep and because she was dreaming, he answered her thoughts. "It does not matter so much for me, little one. Come and see?" And she heard now how grim his tone was. Ruka was the Shadowmaster of the Royal Family, wise in all the secrets, but she had never seen him awake to her in a dream before.

The window looked out across the mainland, the city sparkling below and the lights of villages and towns further off glittering like the stars above. A faint haze made it impossible to see the edge of the floating skyland that was the Empire and her home, and once again, Ki had the unsettling impression that Ruka was awake, and she was watching from his eyes.

"Look," he said, and lifted his head to look over the haze.

Uncertainly, she said, "Some of the stars are gone? Is there a mountain that way?" Apologetically, she added, "I have not looked over the edge for some time."

"No," he said quietly. "Something is coming."

And she woke up, her heart pounding.

She could not stand the thought of breakfast with her family that morning, so she sent her maids to bring her a tray, and sat at her table doodling while she ate. Each time she set her chalk free, it began to sketch the sweeping brows and deep-set eyes of Antarik, or his hands, golden-skinned with the dusting of black hair and the calloused fingers. Then she would crumple the paper and start again.

When Askayra came to visit her, she had broken nine pieces of chalk, and her floor was covered in crumpled paper. She was curled in her chair, her knees pulled up to her chin and pressing against her chest, her fist pressed against her mouth, staring at the picture in front of her. This one was different.

Her cousin stepped over the threshold and looked around, then bent down to pick up one of the crumpled pieces of paper. Without asking, she opened it and began to smooth it out. After staring at it for a moment, she crumpled it again.

"He's fun, but not what you need. And he won't produce more Dreamwalkers with you." She frowned at the crumpled paper for a moment and then stepped forward to rest her hand on Ki's head. "What's wrong?"

Askayra caught her breath as she saw what Ki was staring at. The drawing on the table was the edge of the mainland and beyond it something terrible loomed. She'd rubbed charcoal into the paper until it was like pitch and then scratched her nails across it, tearing the paper in places. With her thumb, she'd carved out the many hands pressing out of the mass of darkness, and with white chalk, picked out the eyes. Two slashes shaped the mouth and inside it the hundreds of screaming faces were implied by curves and whirls against the darkness. It rose ahead of the flying mainland, and two great arms curved out of it to pull the mainland into its embrace, into that mouth.

Askayra stepped back sharply. "What the hell did you dream, Ki?"

Ki was trembling. "Ask Ruka. He showed it to me. He knows it's coming." She looked up at Askayra. "He'll make everything all right, won't he? He and Kanthah kelika can fix it. Kill it. Stop the mainland. Something."

Askayra frowned. "Ruka hasn't said anything about this. Not that I've heard." Askayra was Stormprincess, in charge of the legions and the kites along with her sister Kishori. They would know if danger threatened the Empire.

Ki picked up the drawing and shoved it at Askayra. "Show it to him."

Askayra stared at her for a long moment and then closed her fingers around the paper. "All right." And she left, leaving a trail among the crumpled papers.

Ki picked up the one Askayra had looked at and unfolded it again. Antarik looked back at her solemnly. He had been a man already when she was taken from the nursery at age ten, although only barely into the prime of his power. He had teased her, called her 'little sister', although he was only her cousin, and a foundling at that. The true blood of the Firelords was always the most unpredictable of Royal bloodlines, showing up just as often among throwbacks in the peasantry as in the Royal Family. Antarik was an exemplar of the Firelords, rash, strong, brave and fierce.

She let the paper slip through her fingers and pulled her knees close to her chest again, shifting awkwardly. Then she pressed her forehead against her knees and closed her eyes. After only a few moments, she felt herself drifting, whirling throughout blackness, and the sky overhead brightened to red even as a rainbow of a thousand shades of ebony flashed in front of her eyes. Then the black rainbow became the fall of her mother's hair and she felt the brush of her mother's fingers against her cheek.

"Where did you go?" her mother inquired softly.

"To look at—to look at the family."

"Ah," her mother said placidly. Very little ever seemed to upset her mother, and she'd left Ki the same way before in the past, pulled away by an interesting tide of the dreamworld and returning four sleeps later with only the barest explanation.

"Mother," began Ki, and then hid her face in her hands, embarrassed. Her mother brushed her hand and Ki lifted her head and started again. "Mother. Last night I saw..." and in response to her memory, nearby, Antarik appeared, naked, moving over Ki's own arched image. Crimson, Ki hid her face again, but in the darkness of dreams, there was no denying of vision.

But her mother said, "Hmmm," in such a calm and practical voice that the vision vanished immediately. "I don't remember him." She placed two long slim fingers against Ki's chest and said thoughtfully, "Antarik. Antariksha rekha. Antariksha rekha Gayatri." Each time she said his name, Ki's heart thumped. Then her mother smiled and the darkness around them blossomed into the sunny field of clover they'd been in before.

Ki lay with her head in her mother's lap as her mother braided a chain of white flowers for a necklace and told her a story of when she had been fourteen and in love with a tandya, a Shadowmaster in training. It reminded Ki of Ruka, and when her mother had finished the story and they had drifted quietly for a while, enjoying each other's company, she asked, "Mother, Ruka showed me something last night... do Shadowmasters ever see ethari...?"

Storm clouds raced across the blue sky, impossibly fast, but her mother didn't seem to notice. "I knew a Shadowmaster once..." she mused. The wind lifted Ki's hair as she sat up, and the white flower necklace whirled out of her mother's hand.

"This is a real Shadowmaster, Mother. Ruka. You remember him?" But her mother's eyes were distant again and Ki could tell she was going to fade away soon, darting away after some current Ki could barely sense. Sighing and shifting, Ki pulled herself away first and lay there, watching stars chase birds, until a knock at her door woke her up.

Her face was imprinted with the folds of her slacks and the curve of her fingers, and she rubbed her hand blearily through tangled curls as her maid answered the door. They'd picked up the masses of crumpled paper and put them carefully in a basket on the table beside her.

Her father stepped into her suite. "You are ill?" he inquired, giving her a brief glance before looking around the room.

She shrugged, and then bit her lip. "Father, may I ask a question?"

He sat down in an armchair and tilted his head. "Of course."

"I dreamt last night... of Ruka. But he spoke to me as if we were awake, and I was there. He told me something was coming."

Her father frowned. "Ekikarana, you must eventually learn that just because you are ethari doesn't mean all your dreams are real." Ki looked at him in surprise, but he continued and she would not interrupt. "However... many things not real are still symbols. Tell me what you saw."

Ki looked around. "I drew a picture." She frowned. "Oh yes, but I gave it to Askayra so she could ask Ruka about it." She rose from her chair and sat back down again as her sleeping feet sent needles up her legs. Her father was looking at her impatiently.

She hugged herself. "It was against the sky, all shadowy and dark. And Ruka showed it to me," she repeated. "But you don't think it was him?"

"I think many dreams are symbols of other things." He sounded troubled, though.

"Do you... did you dream of this as well?" She wasn't sure why she asked that; she'd never brought up his own dreams, or lack of such, with him before.

He looked away, for a moment looking young and worried, more like her cousin Tayin than her father. "We have been at peace the last two years, but now the city Sahalle lies ahead of us. Kanthah kelika is eager for the encounter, and Ruka's intelligence suggests that Sahalle does not rest easy under our rule. It will be a violent clash, certainly." He fell silent and then said, "That is what I dream of."

He rose. "We will talk as ethari later, and you will show me what you saw." Then he left her.

Several other cousins came to visit her through the day, Tayin, only a little older than herself, teasing her that she'd fallen ill, Minanantha, Sunwarden and Empress, cool and gracious and concerned. Askayra did not return, and Antarik did not visit, and when Minanantha asked if she would be joining them for dinner, she could not find the courage to say no to that calm stare.

In the Kestrel Hall, though, Antarik was not there. Neither was Kanthah, the Emperor, or Kishori.

"Working," smiled Minanantha. "Ruka wished to discuss some intelligence on what is ahead of us."

Ki slumped against her high-backed chair in relief immediately. He did know about it; they would face it. Perhaps it was the war her father described after all. And so she spent dinner almost lively, for once reveling in the solid scents of the food and the hard cushions of the dining room chair and other such things, as well as the company of her family.

But after dinner, Askayra sat down beside her, in the chair Tayin had just vacated, and shook her head. "I showed him the picture, Ki. He had no idea what it was. He took it, though."

Ki stilled. "That's what they're meeting about, though, certainly?"

Askayra shrugged stiffly. "Perhaps. I wasn't invited, as you can tell. I hope they won't expect my legions to follow them."

Dismayed, Ki began, "Askayra—" but the Stormprincess wasn't in any mood to listen.

"Anyhow, I showed him your drawing. You'll have to run your own errands from now. You're not a child anymore, Ekikarana."

Ki stared after her, fighting down hurt, and then hurried back to her room to prepare for bed. Antarik didn't think she was a child, either, and that was just as unsettling, but at least that was also exciting. Antarik was so handsome. He would ride his dragon in battle against the dark shape, and make it all better.

In the hallway outside her room, she passed Ruka. He looked at her with cool dark eyes, and the greeting she'd begun died on her lips. His mouth was a thin line of displeasure and his expression upon meeting her gaze became colder than she'd ever seen her uncle before. Nervousness curdling in her stomach, she dropped her own gaze, murmured a respectful, "Ruka tandya," and hurried past him before he could stop her. Even then, she imagined his displeasure reaching into the shadows around them, moving them after her.

Slamming her door into her room, she ordered her maids to turn up all the lamps until the room blazed with light. As her maids helped her undress, she tried to imagine what she had done to make Ruka so unhappy. Did it offend him that she dreamed of him, even if he was only a symbol as her father said? She had no answers for her own questions, though.

Then she curled up in her bed and let the darkness behind her eyes overtake her, although she demanded her maids leave the lamps burning all night. She couldn't imagine her uncle hurting her, but the sense of his dislike had been so strong in the hallway that the light made her feel safer all the same. But the darkness behind her eyes was all hers.

She sat at her table, just as she had during the day, but the picture was on the table in front of her again, and the whirls of dark chalk were moving slowly. She stared at them in horrified fascination until a slight clearing of his throat alerted her attention to her father.

He looked just like her cousin Tayin now, save the cut of his hair and the seriousness of his eyes, and she was suddenly possessed by a wild joy. Without thinking, she sprang to her feet and hugged him.

But he was tense in her embrace, even though he did not pull away, and so she dropped her arms. "Father, I am so pleased to see you here. It has been so long."

He looked away again. "Yes." Then he looked back at Ki and frowned. "Ki, you aren't a child. Why do you look like one?"

Ki felt the heat of a blush suffuse her cheeks. "You're not a young man. Why do you look like one?" she snapped, and then covered her face in embarrassment. As before, this did nothing to obscure vision, and she could tell her father was taken aback.

Then he said quietly, "I'm just remembering happier times."

"Father," she said. "I'm sorry—"

He shook his head. "I should listen to myself, I suppose. We should talk, perhaps. Perhaps it's been too long. But first, please show me what you saw last night?"

Ki looked down at the drawing on her desk, but it had vanished. From her window, she could only see the near edge of the mainland, and the twinkle of lights far below. "I suppose we should go to Ruka's room again," she said, and bit her lip at the dread that thought invoked.

Her father nodded. "Please lead me. This is your landscape." He held out his hand to her.

Puzzled by his description, she took his hand and together they flew through the hallways of the palace until she arrived at Ruka's door. There, she hesitated, and then drifted forward slowly.

The room was empty tonight, but Ruka's window stood open. Ki had never been in a palace bedroom before without an occupant. Even if the dreamer were cavorting through vineyards, on some level they were still in their beds, and so she could sense them. This was just a darkened bedchamber, though, with a canopied bed against one wall and the shutters of the windows thrown open opposite it. And tonight, it was much more visible than the night before.

It rose against the horizon, blotting out half the sky, the creature from Ki's drawing. Looking out at it, she could hear the faint wailing that came from the hundreds of faces captured within that ever-roaring mouth and tendrils flickered like black fire as the Empire drifted blithely toward it. It might take days, or months, but it would swallow the Empire whole.

Ki realized she had her hand stuffed in her mouth to keep from screaming. She glanced at her father, and saw his own face was pale, his hands clenched in fists at his side. "That's... not a war. That's... not real. That's..." he shook his head slowly. "I don't know what that is."

Then he straightened his shoulders. "But we see it here, and not in the waking world, so it is ours to deal with. Take my hand again, daughter. I will see if it dreams. It is never too late to start teaching you."

She took his hand. It was cold, clammy, but his fingers curled tightly around hers. He took a step forward, closer to the window, and she felt her consciousness split as part of her followed him out the window and part of her stayed in the room, watching.

They flew closer, and the shape fragmented around them into a thousand black crystals that flowed together to form a spinning ring of darkness and then a river of cloud-eaten night. It bewildered Ki, but her father said, "Hmmm." A few moments later, he said, "Look, Ki. It is a creature of the flows, I believe. But it is something that sleeps. That means it dreams. If it dreams, we can trap it in sleep, in a dream prison, until we have time to understand it further." Her father sounded pleased, and they began to rush backwards towards the window. "Tomorrow, I think."

And on the canopied bed, in the room behind the window, in Ruka's room, the darkness began to move. The Ki still standing at the window began to scream, silently as shadows condensed around the still form of her father, and the Ki holding her father's hand gasped in terror as a single tendril of black flame reached out from the mass of nothingness on the horizon to curve towards them. Letting go hastily of her hand, her father pulled a sword out of a star instead and waved it at the tendril. But it went through the tendril without leaving a trail, making a mark, and the tendril closed around her father. Then it began to burrow its way into his chest, with other branches encircling and squeezing his limbs, and her father began to scream. As it peeled back his chest and his blood darkened to the color of night from the tendril seeping into him, she realized he was screaming her name.

"Ki! Ki! Wake up! WAKE UP!" His voice spiraled up into a screech of agony and he slumped forward in the tendril's embrace, murmuring. She was frozen in horror, even as shadows sank under his skin. He was murmuring, "Sarika... Sarika..." It was her mother's name.

Then, as the tendril embracing her father drifted closer, her father's head raised and he looked at her with eyes as cold and dark as Ruka's and said, "You're next, little girl."

"NO!" shrieked Ki, and then, "MOTHER!" From the corner of her eye, she saw another tendril behind her, and then her father shuddered all over.

"She... is... MY DAUGHTER," her father panted, and white light began to leak from all the wounds in his body. "She is MY DAUGHTER."

And then everywhere, there was white light as her father died.

She woke up, screaming. Her maids were huddled at the door to her bedchamber, staring at her, hugging each other. As the echoes of her screams faded and she stared back at them, the sobs began to claw their way out of her throat. She shoved herself out of bed, stumbling and falling to her knees. Her fingers dug into the carpet and she lurched to her feet, scrubbing at her face even as the sobs poured out uncontrolled.

Shoving past her maids, clad only in a thin and flowing nightdress, she ran out of her room and down the hall. Her vision was a blurred mass of night colors, but overlaying it was the vision that could not be obscured, the sense of the dreams of those around her, and it guided her as she raced towards her father's rooms.

She threw herself at the door, scrabbling at the handle until it burst open. His manservant was just waking up from his dozing on a cot by the fire. She scarcely saw him, save for the gentle whirls of his lavender-scented sleep, as she clawed the inner door open and stumbled to her father's bed.

His eyes were open, unblinking, and she shook him and howled. Then, mewling, she pressed her hands against his face and pushed her forehead against his. "Father. Father. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I didn't leave. I'm sorry, I'm sorry... Father, come back... Father..."

There was murmuring behind her, high and low, the maids and the manservant, and the quick patter of feet moving away. She whispered to her father, "I'm here, Father. I'm awake. You can come back. I won't leave you like Mother did. Please come back. Father..."

Some time later, somebody tried to pull her away from her father and her voice, hoarse from murmuring, cracked on her scream. "No! No! NO!"

The vision that could not be obscured showed her the trail of feathers falling around Askayra. Ki pawed at them, pulled the face of Askayra's dream lover from them, and savagely thrust him at her cousin. Askayra's grip on her loosened and then vanished entirely, and Ki scrambled back on the bed with her father again. Blinking tears from her eyes in the real world, she could see Askayra, her eyes half-closed, crumpled in a heap on the floor.

Beyond her stood Antarik, Minanantha, Kanthah. Antarik hesitated, and then stepped around Askayra, his voice soothing as he said, "Ekikarana. Ki. Let us see him. Tell us what happened?"

She moved protectively in front of her father. "No! You can't help him! You couldn't help my mother, you can't help him." On the floor, Askayra began to stir as her dream faded away.

But Antarik kept moving towards her, saying softly, "Just let us see him, Ki."

"NO!" she shrieked, her vision flickering as she tracked back through Antarik's nightmares.

But then Antarik fell back a few steps, and she heard him say more softly, "I don't think he's breathing. I don't think he's been breathing for some time."

Ki's vision turned inside out.

Almost immediately, she saw her father's death again, the tendrils from the black mountain against the stars leaking their foulness into him and she snapped out of the dreamworld in terror.

Askayra was standing unsteadily. "It was the picture, Ki?"

Antarik said, "What picture?"

Askayra frowned as she steadied herself. "Didn't Ruka show it to you last night?"

As Antarik slowly shook his head Ki remembered the darkness moving on Ruka's canopied bed in the dream. She curled around her knees and tried to think through panicked short breaths. A light touch on the back of her neck told her Minanantha had settled beside her, beside her father's body.

"Breathe," the Empress whispered. "Breathe slowly."

Ki whimpered in the back of her throat and took a ragged, long breath; it hurt her throat. She knew what she had to do.

Flashing the Empress a brave smile, she stood up unsteadily and tugged on Antarik's sleeve. "Please come with me," she whispered to him as both he and Askayra looked at her. "Please. We have to find Ruka. Before it's too late. And you have to wake everybody else up. The whole castle. Please."

Askayra opened her mouth as if to respond and then just sighed. "All right." She stepped away from Ki and Antarik, and then turned and headed out the door. Kanthah had left at some point before; he was in the outer room conferring with some kites.

Antarik raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her, and at another time, her heart might have skipped a beat, but now she only took his hand and towed him after her as she passed through the outer room. In the hallway, he asked no questions as he followed her, and she was glad, because his silence let her not think.

Then they were outside of Ruka's room, and they paused. She took a deep breath. "We can't let his man stop us," she whispered.

Now Antarik hesitated. "Ki, what are we doing?"

Ki felt sick to her stomach. "All I'm going to do is talk to him..." She opened the door.

They needn't have worried about the manservant. He was sprawled out in front of the fire with an empty goblet of wine near him. The door to the inner chamber was very slightly open, and it creaked as Ki led Antarik towards it.

Her heart in her throat, she pushed it open.

Starlight spilled across the room from the open window. She forced her head to turn and gaze out Ruka's window, but the stars went clear to the horizon and there was nothing there. Then, more terrifyingly, she turned her head to look at the bed.

Ruka was sitting up, his bare chest illuminated by the starlight. His face betrayed no hint of sleep, but it was the face of her uncle, who played chess with her. Oh, Ki, are you sure?

It was the face of her uncle, but his expression was so cold. "Ruka tandya," she said carefully.

"What is going on, Ekikarana ethari?" he inquired, his voice chilly. "Antariksha rekha, this is no place for a tryst."

Ki stumbled, and then said, "I want my drawing back, Ruka tandya."

"And what drawing might this be?" He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up.

She made her voice as cold as she could. "Askayra gave it to you. But you destroyed it, didn't you. And you waited for Father and me to find you." She paused, and then said, "You're next," and flung the image of her father's mouth saying the same words at Ruka as she clutched Antarik's hand.

She could feel the dreamlet sinking into a vast blackness with barely a ripple, and then the blackness rose up around her and she shrieked at the thing wearing her uncle's face. "You tried to take my father like you took Ruka! You are evil. Do you want me, too? Come and get me!"

And she fled like a silver fish from the blackness that rose silently, into Antarik's dreams, into the place where he held her close and she whispered from within his arms, "Save me." She poured her fear into him and felt his lust shape her, and she wrapped her arms around him and said again, "Save me!"

And Antarik, bewildered, saw only the angry threat that Ki fled from. The vision that could not be obscured saw the darkness pouring towards herself and Antarik, and then she saw the room around them burst into flame the darkness could never touch. Antariksha rekha, Firelord, held Ki more tightly, his face pressed into her hair, as around them fire burned back the darkness, and in the real world, Ruka's body screamed and screamed and finally died.

When the flames died around them, their family was waiting. The room was undamaged, save for the blackened wreck of the canopied bed, and the little pile of ash scattered where Ruka had once stood beside it. Slowly, Antarik's hold on her loosened and he stumbled backwards. "He..." Antarik shook his head. "Like a spill of black blood..." He looked at Minanantha. "He attacked us. Something... was in him." He turned his gaze to Ki and his voice rose accusingly. "You tricked me."

Exhausted, defensive, she said, "He attacked us... Ruka... was killed by the same thing that killed Father. It's real."

Beside Minanantha, Askayra said, subdued, "He wasn't the only one. Three servants and a kite... didn't wake up. Two more tried to attack me in the hall while you were...here, I suppose." Askayra's hair was a halo around her head, and she kept rubbing her fingers together. "I dealt with them..." she shook her head slowly.

Antarik sank down into a crouch, staring at Ki in shock.

Ki rubbed her face. She was so tired, but she couldn't sleep until she was ready. "It's still out there."

Minanantha made a sharp gesture and abruptly the horizon outside the window jerked and suddenly morning sunlight flooded into the room and the grey pre-dawn sky was bright blue. Ki licked lips made suddenly dry and clamped firmly down on the nausea that came every time a Sunwarden used her magic, and saw others doing the same. Minanantha said firmly, "I'm tired of this night. One thinks better when one can see clearly."

Ki felt her heartbeat pulse as she waited for her stomach to settle, and then said cautiously, "I have to go to the dreams again, Minanantha kelika. And if I don't come back... or if I do, but I am not me... you'll have to find some other way of dealing with it. Maybe the sunlight will help, will protect... I don't know."

"Of course it will," Minanantha said crisply. "And I won't have you risking yourself. You are our only Dreamwalker now."

Ki stood up, trembling. "Forgive me, Minanantha kelika, but... it dreams. And so it is mine to deal with. This is exactly why you need a Dreamwalker."

The Empress stared at her, and then her lips pressed thin. Then, whirling away, she said, "Do as you please, then. Antarik, you will deal with her as you dealt with Ruka if she returns... wrong. And somebody please clean up this mess. Ruka deserves better."

Antarik said faintly, "I'm not sure I'll be able to tell who comes back..."

Askayra swallowed. "I'll help watch."

They moved back to Ki's own rooms, and Antarik and Askayra set up chairs around her bed. Ki changed into a new nightgown, and paced restlessly around the room for a moment, frightened and worried. Then, when Askayra surreptitiously covered a yawn, Ki panicked and dived into her bed. She couldn't stand the though of Askayra, as irritable and nosy as she was, ending up like her father or Ruka.

Even so, sleep did not come easy, until Antarik reached out to take her hand. Her eyes flickered open and she said softly, "I did trick you. I'm sorry."

He squeezed her hand and said, "We can talk about when you wake up."

She smiled faintly, and then she could let the night rainbow drift across her vision and take her away.

Almost immediately, she stood in Ruka's room at night again. At first, it was just as it was in the last dream, but she glared at it and the bed collapsed into a pile of burnt timbers and melted metal. Then she turned her attention to the window, took a deep breath, and stepped out. Far away, out off the edge of the mainland, the shadow against the sky lurked.

She danced among the clouds for a few minutes, diving in and out of them, watching the shadow as it flowed softly against the sky, and thinking. She remembered what her father said about trapping the creature in a maze of its own dreams, remembered what she'd done instinctively to Askayra. Her father had been unwary, and so he'd been surprised by it. If she were careful, perhaps she could do what he had planned to do.

She darted towards the shadow, feinting off in one direction to see if a tendril would dart out for her. It did, and she spiraled up and away, pleased. She made a few more experimental darts and then took another deep breath and dived close to it, just as she'd done while holding her father's head.

So close to it, she could see the many shapes inside it again, the spinning ring, the hundred screaming mouths, the rim of darkness that stretched to infinity. It closed in around her as she searched for something she could use against it, something she could lock it into.

It was all around her. Its dreams were of hunger, of theft, of absorption and apathy. Its dreams were of lies. It was immense, and growing, and moving, just as slowly as the skyland. It was everywhere.

She began to panic, and she almost woke herself up. Instead, she forced herself forward, pushing against the darkness around her, trying to find her way out. Shuddering fear overwhelmed her, and began to drain into some reservoir of terror she'd never known she had before. And then she smelled sandalwood.

The vision that could not be obscured saw only darkness, but the sandalwood was like a chain drifting by, and she wrapped herself around the scent and followed it out, gasping to hold on to it as the scent of rotting meat tried to overwhelm it.

And then she was free, in the clear air, gasping as the scent of sandalwood surrounded her and her mother's black hair and pale arms enclosed her. She pressed her head against her mother's shoulder to weep, but then she heard a shout.

"Not this time, evil!" It was her father, and she squirmed against her mother's arms to turn and see as her father, his white sword in his hands, beat away several grasping tendrils.

Ki whined in the back of her throat, and twisted her head to look up at her mother. "But he's dead... I saw him dead... he died here, too..." Her mother only looked down at her, a faint smile on her face.

Her father, however, darted closer as the last tendril withdrew for the moment. He looked his daughter over, saw something that pleased him, and smiled. Then he said, "I told you, daughter. Dreams aren't always real. Sometimes they're symbols."

Confused, she said, "Then you didn't die?"

Slowly, he shook his head. "That was real, I'm afraid." He looked at her impatiently.

Her mother said, "But she is here to do something now, my love."

Ki turned again in her mother's arms, and her mother let her go, drifting back an arm span so Ki could look at them together. "Yes... I have to trap it, Father. Like you said." Anxiety was gnawing at her insides as what he'd said tried to draw her attention... but in dreams, that was dangerous. "But it's a maze. I don't know how to put it in a maze, because it's already a maze."

"Mmmm," her mother said, drifting closer to her father to take his hand. She offered Ki an encouraging smile, and her father frowned at her and then a mirror appeared in his hand.

He handed it to Ki and she looked at it. In it, she saw herself, sleeping on her bed, Antarik holding her hand. She looked up. "What would I do with this? That's the real world..." Her mother nodded at her encouragingly. "I could put mirrors around it, I suppose... but in the real world, it doesn't seem to exist."

And comprehension dawned.

She laughed, darted forward to hug both her parents with one free arm, and then turned to hurl the mirror at the shadow. As it flew through the sky, turning end over end and glittering like a shooting star, it grew until it was enormous, as big as the sun, the moon, the skyland, the shadow. Then it dropped on the mountainous silhouette, curving around it as it did so. Several tendrils were cut off by the sharp edges of the mirror and drifted forlornly in the air as the dull silver back of the mirrored orb sealed around the shadow.

As her father darted forward with his sword to destroy the drifting tendrils. Ki could feel the mirrored orb surrounding the shadow. It moved against it, already searching for a way out, but it was lost against its own lack of visible identity. Perhaps the orb would crack, one day, but she would be able to tell, and she would be able to repair it.

She had done it, and she hugged herself happily, and smoothly woke up, smiling against her pillow at the pride on her mother's face.

She rolled over and grinned up at Antarik and Askayra. "I did it. I trapped it."

Askayra poked at her. "Are you sure? How can we tell? Are you you?"

Giddy, Ki said, "I don't know. I'm me, I'm me, but am I who went to sleep?"

Antarik gave Askayra a puzzled look over her head. "You're just as strange as always."

Ki cackled and flopped back on her pillow, raising her hand to brush her fingers across Antarik's lips. "Call me strange if you want. I know what you dream."

The blush that spread across Antarik's face was deeply satisfying, and she laughed with Askayra.

Then Askayra said, "I guess you're all right. I'll go tell Minanantha and send up a tray for you."

Ki rolled out of bed, grinning at Antarik, who frowned at her briefly, and then slowly smiled back in a way that made her heart skip pleasantly. "No. I'll tell her. I'm not a child anymore, after all."