Dust of Dreams

wore, shieldingthem from the bright, hard sunlight? The walking sticks? Taxilian’s rope-handled scribe box? Rautos’s map-case that folded out into a desktop? Breath’s cloak of sewn pockets, each pocket carrying a Tile? Nappet and his knotted skull-breaker tucked into his belt? Sheb’s brace of daggers? Asane’s spindle and the bag of raw wool from which she spun out her lacy webs? Last’s iron pot and fire kit; his hand-sickle and collection of cooking knives—where, the ghost wondered—in faint horror—had all these things come from?
    ‘No food, no water,’ Nappet was saying, ‘Sheb’s right. But, most importantly, if we find a door, we can defend it.’
    The words hung in the silence that followed, momentarily suspended and then slowly rising like grit—the ghost could see them, the way they lost shape but not meaning, definition but not dread import. Yes, Nappet had spoken aloud the secret knowledge. The words that terror had carved bloody on their souls.
    Someone was hunting them.
    Asane began weeping, softly, sodden hitches catching in her throat.
    Sheb’s hands closed into fists as he stared at her.
    But Nappet had turned to face Last, and was eyeing the huge man speculatively. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘you’re a thick-skulled farmer, Last, but you look strong. Can you handle a sword? If we need someone to hold the portal, can you do that?’
    The man frowned, and then nodded. ‘Maybe I ain’t never used a sword, but nobody will get past. I swear it. Nobody gets past me.’
    And Nappet was holding a sheathed sword, which he now offered to Last.
    The ghost recoiled upon seeing that weapon. He knew it, yet knew it not. A strange, frightening weapon. He watched as Last drew the sword from its sheath. Single-edged, dark, mottled iron, its tip weighted and slightly flaring. The deep ferule running the length of the blade was a black, nightmarish streak, like an etching of the Abyss itself. It stank of death—the whole weapon, this terrible instrument of destruction.
    Last hefted the sword in his hand. ‘I would rather a spear,’ he said.
    ‘We don’t like spears,’ Nappet hissed. ‘Do we?’
    ‘No,’ the others chorused.
    Last’s frown deepened. ‘No, me neither. I don’t know why I . . . why I . . . wanted one. An imp’s whisper in my head, I guess.’ And he made a warding gesture.
    Sheb spat to seal the fend.
    ‘We don’t like spears,’ Rautos whispered. ‘They’re . . . dangerous.’
    The ghost agreed. Fleshless and yet chilled, shivering. There had been a spear in his past—yes? Perhaps? A dreadful thing, lunging at his face, his chest, slicing the muscles of his arms. Reverberations, shivering up through his bones, rocking him back, one step, then another—
    Gods, he did not like spears!
    ‘Come on,’ Taxilian said. ‘It is time to find a way in.’
    There
was
a way in. The ghost knew that. There was always a way in. The challenge was in finding it, in seeing it and knowing it for what it was. The important doors stayed hidden, disguised, shaped in ways to deceive. The importantdoors opened from one side only, and once you were through they closed in a gust of cold air against the back of the neck. And could never be opened again.
    Such was the door he sought, the ghost realized.
    Did it wait in this dead city?
    He would have to find it soon. Before the hunter found him—found them all.
Spear Wielder, slayer, the One who does not retreat, who mocks in silence, who would not flinch—no, he’s not done with me, with us, with me, with us.
    We need to find the door.
    The way in.
    They reached the dragon’s stone forelimb with its claws that stood arrayed like massive, tapering pillars of marble, tips sunk deep into the hard earth. Everywhere surrounding the foundations the ground was fissured, fraught with cracks that tracked outward. Rautos grunted as he crouched down to peer into one such rent. ‘Deep,’ he muttered. ‘The city is settling, suggesting that it has indeed sucked out the water beneath it.’
    Taxilian was scanning the massive tower that comprised the limb in front of them, tilting his head back, and back. After a moment he staggered, cursing. ‘Too much,’ he gasped. ‘This one leg could encompass a half-dozen Ehrlii spires—if it is indeed hollow, it could hold a thousand inhabitants all by itself.’
    ‘And yet,’ Rautos said, coming up alongside him, ‘look at the artistry—the genius of the sculptors—have you ever seen such