Dream Dancer Read Free Page A

Now my betrothed is dead.” Marada sighed deeply, then without taking his eyes from her reached behind him and slapped at something. There was a hissing and a light of soft quality flooded the room. “Shebat,” said the man gently, “I should not have teased you, even for a moment. The Stump is an old name for this place like a little Earth, and there is nothing here in the least malevolent, any more than magical. Those objects that caused you to scream when you viewed them were the very Earth, and its moon. Sometimes, long ago, talented children would be taken up to the little world you are about to see. Like you, they must have been frightened at first. But Shebat, none of those who went ever came back down to tell your people where they had gone, because they did not choose to. Because they had no reason to come back. . . .”
    “You mean, never?”
    “I mean, I doubt if you will want to. If you ever do, just call me, wherever I am, and I will come and take you home. That is my word, given formally. You are my ward, or will be, summarily. Will you accept it, formally?”
    “Yes,” she said, stifling the objections that in the case of the enchanters who held the people of Earth in mortal subservience, there was oft-demonstrated malevolence, and mighty spells of example and retribution. There had been the early frost, because a townsman had denied a whim to the Arbiter of Enchantments. . . .
    But Marada came and leaned over her, unbuckling her harness, lifting her effortlessly, and she caught her breath and lay her head on his shoulder, moving not a muscle until he put her down before the open port. She saw a dazzle of struts and lights, a cavernous expanse along which a little buglike carriage rolled smoothly without horses. Deceptively slow seemed its approach, but soon she could see the man inside it. Then Marada was urging her down dizzying lattices of stepwork that rang every time his boots struck them. Under her bare feet, they were cold, treacherous. She concentrated on negotiating them.
    “They accord us great honor,” he told her under his breath. “The secretary to the proconsul himself drives that lorry.” The partially assimilated lexicon in her mind equated proconsul with governor, but her heart told her this sour man in his sorcerous transport was one of the most vile enchanters who held her people in thrall. She reached out and insinuated her hand into Marada’s. He smiled at her encouragingly, and kissed the top of her head. “Do not worry.”
    She clambered up into the magical yellow carriage driven by an auburn, spectral man who managed to glower while not looking at her, settling into the yielding seat with a thrill that made her fingertips and the ends of her toes tingle. It was not a thrill of fear, for the powerful blackbearded enchanter was beside her, his arm thrown casually across the seat behind her head. Craning her neck, she seemed to study the vaulted ceiling with its bright lights and great crossbeams, but in truth she sought the infinite delight of laying her head on his arm. The cart jolted, as if one of its many wheels had struck a rock, and picked up speed. Above, superstructures painted with designs gave way to a tunnel of curved metal, where segmented lights blurred into a steady stream as their conveyance picked up speed.
    “As far as I am concerned, her people and ours are conspecific,” Marada was saying deliberately. The word was not among those the talking earmuffs had taught her at the enchanter’s bidding. The jolt of the carriage had caused him to shift closer; his thigh rested against her own. She thought her heart might burst from excitement, and from something else that made her turn her head to the right so that she could watch the way his lips moved in their fringe of hair.
    “I am aware of the Consortium’s official position, but you are a long way from civilization, Arbiter, and from the Kerrion platforms where your opinion is of some moment. However, here