The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

night. Chang ran, tearing his way into the hedges, trying to reach the house. He had no illusion it would be any safer, but there would at least be less room for shooting. A third shot rang out, whistling near him and then a fourth, sent he didn’t know where…had he slipped them for a moment? He heard the man’s voice, barking to the soldiers. He reached the far edge of the garden and stopped, gasping. Between where he crouched and the nearest glass door was an open band of grass perhaps five yards across. He would be entirely visible for the time it took to gain the door and—somehow—force it open. It was a fool’s risk. He’d be shot where he stood. He glanced behind him—he could feel the Dragoons getting closer. There had to be another way.

    But Chang’s mind was blank. He was spent with pain, with fatigue, and with the sudden murder of Reeves. He looked at the glass doors, tensing himself—ridiculously—for a reckless, suicidal dash. They were waiting for him to show himself. Above the glass doors the wall rose two stories of sheer granite before there was an elegant bay window set out over the garden. There was no way to reach it. He imagined the view from that window was delightful. Perhaps it was Lydia Vandaariff’s own room. Perhaps it was covered with pillows and silk. She was a lovely young woman, he remembered from his visit to Harschmort. He wondered idly if she was a virgin, and felt a ripple of disgust at the subsequent image of Karl-Horst climbing aboard and crowing like a peacock. The thought brought him instantly, horribly, back to Angelique, the ever-piercing distance between them and his failure to preserve her. He shut his eyes as the final words of DuVine’s
Christina
rose to his scattered mind:

    What is the pull of a planet to the gravity of care?
    What the flow of time to her unfathomable heart?

    Chang shrugged off his despair—he was drifting again—and found himself staring at the window. Something was wrong with the reflection. Because of the odd angle of the glass he could see part of the garden behind him…and the scraps of fog billowing in the wind. He frowned. There was no wind in the garden that he could feel, or not to cause such billowing. He turned behind him, trying to place the reflected ground. Hope rose in his heart. The wind was coming from
below.
    Chang crept quietly along the edge of the garden, on the bordering band of grass, until he could see the wisps of fog shifting, and stepped in to find a row of four large stone urns, each as tall as himself. Three were topped by the withered stalks of seasonal flowers. The fourth was empty and quite obviously the source of a steady exhalation of warm air. He placed his hands on the rim and went on his toes to peer inside. The hot air was foul and set off the raw flesh in his mouth and lungs. He winced and stepped back—his hands now covered in a pale crust of crystalline powder left by the chemical exhaust. Chang kneeled and pulled out his handkerchief. He tied it tightly across his face, stood again, and took a last glance around the garden. He saw no one—they were still waiting for him to run for the house. Tucking the stick under his arm he hoisted himself up and threw a leg over the lip of the urn. He looked down into it. Just below his boot was a wooden lattice-work across the urn, also covered with chemical accretions, in place to prevent the leaves and twigs from the garden that were trapped against it—and now dusted an icy blue—from blowing into the pipe. Chang leaned down and kicked once, very hard, on the lattice. His foot went through with an audible crack. He kicked again, knocking in the entire thing. Behind him there were sounds from the Dragoons—he had been heard, they were converging on the sound. He dropped completely inside, disappearing from their view, pulling apart the last bits of the lattice with his arms. He slid to the base of the urn, pressing against each side of it with his legs to stop himself from sliding down into the dark hole. He had no idea how far it went, if it was a sheer drop, or if it led into a furnace, but he knew it was better than being shot in the back. He lowered himself into the pipe—the steel sides warm to the touch—until he hung by his hands from the bottom edge of the urn.
    Chang let go.

SIX
    Quarry
    A s he stepped from the coach outside the yawning entrance to Stropping Station, Doctor Svenson’s attention was elsewhere. During his ride from Plum