After our meeting with Ostalos Elsahi, Rosédan and I did our best to gather together the pilgrims and explain to them what had happened. This was not as difficult as I had feared, as many of the pilgrims reported that they had slipped into sleep for a moment and experienced evocative dreams. Our halting efforts to convey what we knew could hardly have been much more informative than a dream of a crown of stars coming to rest on a man’s head, or row after row of master magicians donning veils and bowing their knees. Some of the pilgrims, much to my surprise, expressed their desire to stay, apparently regarding Ostalos Elsahi as a form of divinity. An odd choice for a god, I’d say, but there’s no accounting for taste in these matters, once one has turned away from the light of the Flame. But the others left by various roads for their own homelands, and Rosédan and I were alone among the sleepers, waiting for the promised awakening. As for Thipērek Thüzranahü, we found her asleep in the garden, curled up next to the rosebush, seeming to be utterly at peace.

It wasn’t difficult for us to scrounge some bread and dried fruit to eat as we walked hand-in-hand through the streets of A’ula Zölkhöh the next day. It was an unusually warm day for that time of year, and as the sun approached the zenith, we found shade in one of the many empty alleyways. There I felt a sudden weariness descend on me and found a pile of rags to rest against, while Rosédan mused aloud. “We could just take Halgh,” she said, Halgh being the name she had given the white dragon, “and fly off somewhere, escape Alka’ales once and for all.”

I could have replied that then she would never return home, but I was too tired to do anything but raise my hand in silent agreement. After that I drifted off to sleep, I believe. The next thing of which I was aware was that I was sitting in the darkness, something enormous underneath me. It occurred to me that this could be the return of my dream of the elephant. As soon as the thought came into my mind, I was aware of the shape of what was below me, and of the man who stood on the elephant’s back and who faced me with a smile.

“So here you are again,” he said.

“I suppose so,” I said. “And you’ve won.”

“For I love Alka’ales,” he said. “And I’ve done what I had to do to save it. It’s like a dream.”

“I’ve never trusted dreams. They turn too easily into nightmares.”

“You let your dreams master you, when you should be their master. For what else is a man meant to do, if not to master his dreams?”

“Well,” I said thoughtfully, “he could go fishing.”

“But behold my dream,” said the smiling man. “Don’t you admire it?”

The fires that dotted the darkness grew brighter and brighter, so that I could begin to see the landscape beneath the elephant’s feet. It seemed very familiar somehow, though I couldn’t put my finger on the exact reason why. The smiling man pointed wordlessly at one of the mountain peaks to the right, and then I recognized it as Rinthlep Roukos, and I understood.

“I have turned away from the love of a woman and taken the love of all this land upon myself,” he said. “It is a heavy burden, but I fear him who would cast such a burden aside. But right now I have no need to be afraid of anyone or anything. As you said, I’ve won. Now behold the spoils of my victory! Then come to me in the stupa. I will be expecting you.”

I saw one of the fires moving slowly underneath us, but as I leaned over the side to watch its progress, I felt myself begin to slide down. Panicking, I tried desperately to cling to the leathery skin of the elephant, but I couldn’t keep myself from tumbling into emptiness, and then with a jerk I was awake. My head was resting in Rosédan’s lap, which was admittedly a pleasant way to wake up. Yet the memories of the dream still haunted me. I’ve found that talking about such things helps to exorcise them, so I recounted the dream to Rosédan.

“I think you were right,” I concluded. “It wasn’t any ordinary dream. It came straight from Ostalos Elsahi himself.”

“Should we go to the stupa, then?” she asked. “Or should we take Halgh and just fly away?”

I pondered the alternatives for some time. I probably would have pondered them longer if Rosédan hadn’t stood up and forced me to do the same. Finally I made up my mind and said, “What do you think would be best?”

She laughed softly and said, “I spoke glibly before. Do you think Ostalos Elsahi will let us fly away like that?”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I think if he wanted he could grab us out of the sky with one hand. Let’s go back to the stupa.”

He was not there to greet us at the entrance, so we went farther in, past the three doors with the eyes over the lintels. This time I didn’t see any sign of movement through the gaps in the walls, and so I presume that whoever or whatever was behind them had been stricken by Ostalos Elsahi’s spell. When we came to the inmost chamber, I saw that the central pillar had been removed, replaced by a lone chair where Ostalos Elsahi himself was seated. He raised his face to us as we entered, but his eyes were dull and there was no hint of warmth in his face. “Now I am the Lord of Dreams,” he said.

“May you reign a thousand years,” I said politely. At least my suspicions were confirmed.

“I probably will. For I have opened up gateways within myself to powers and energies that cannot be easily blocked up. Now they are my life and I will not perish until they do.”

“We would ask permission to leave your country, Lord,” I said when he fell silent. There is never any harm in being especially courteous when dealing with immortal magician kings.

“So soon? But where will you go? For I’ve seen your dreams and I know your homes are too far away to be measured in miles. So won’t you stay until you have learned to bridge the gaps that cannot be bridged?”

“If I may be presumptuous enough to ask, from whom will I learn?” Rosédan asked with admirable courtesy.

“From me. For who else is there in my realm? Or do you think that the ties of friendship between me and you were broken when I became what I am now? No, I will teach you the art of those bridges. And maybe when you leave you’ll remember Alka’ales and the Lord of Dreams with gratitude and fondness.” Then, for the first time, his face altered and his gaze drifted over our shoulders, off into the distance of the corridor behind us. “No, it would be better if you remember Ostalos Elsahi with fondness. For otherwise he will be forgotten.”

I searched my memory and decided that he was right. As many stories were told of the Lord of Dreams, none of them explained where he had come from or how he had achieved his dominion. Certainly I had never heard the name of Ostalos Elsahi before I met him in person. “About your subjects,” I said hesitantly. “Will they keep sleeping forever?”

“But you surprise me. Have I not said that they will awaken in the new realm I create for them? And even you will see its beginnings and you will marvel. I am the Lord of Dreams, and I have made real the dream of every magician in Alka’ales. I have made real the dream of my mother, who was the kindest and gentlest of all women, and the dream of my father, who was the sharpest and boldest of all men.”

“May you meet them again,” said Rosédan.

Again Ostalos Elsahi’s face changed: his eyes closed and he bowed his head. “Though you are very kind, I doubt that they will ever return to Alka’ales. In this world all paths diverge. So there is no recovering what has been lost.”

I was not quite sure how these words of Ostalos Elsahi’s fit with his promise to teach Rosédan how she could return to her lost home, but I was in no mood to quibble. We both thanked him profusely.

“But watch and see what happens at sundown,” he said, and dismissed us.

I squinted at the sun when we came out of the stupa and judged that it was maybe three hours until the sun touched the horizon. We debated the best place for us to wait and finally settled on a sheltered spot a little way up the path to the gate of Rinthlep Roukos, from which we could see the spires of the dormitories and the walls of the town. There we sat, hand in hand, waiting for Ostalos Elsahi’s magic to appear.

It was Rosédan who noticed the changes first and jumped to her feet and cried out to me. The sun had disappeared in the west, but I didn’t recognize the stars that were appearing one by one. They were in strange places and formed strange patterns that no doubt an astrologer would be better able to interpret than I. The earth shook, I remember, and light of a curious pale color flashed out of every crevice in the rocks. The thing that startled me the most was when it seemed to me that the stars were not only appearing in the sky but descending to dance in the air before my eyes, little points of light gleaming against the darkness. But one star landed on the back of my hand and I saw that it was a firefly, or an insect of that sort.

When the rumblings and flashings had faded, we began to see human forms moving around below. I took Rosédan’s hand in mine and was surprised to find it trembling. “Are you frightened of what we might discover down there?” I asked her.

“I am frightened of who we might discover,” she said. “Heaven only knows what he did to them. We have stories in my home of evil magicians who used their power to create kingdoms for themselves and of the dark fate of their subjects.”

“Ostalos Elsahi wouldn’t do anything like that,” I said with confidence, though I admittedly wasn’t sure what the dark fate she referred to was. I thought of the mania of the priests of the Crocodile and of the horrible rituals of Dumun, which seemed far from anything Ostalos Elsahi was likely to conjure. “But we should go see what he has done.”

“Thipērek Thüzranahü. Let’s see her before anyone else.” I led Rosédan down the path away from Rinthlep Roukos, though I needed her help actually finding the garden again. On the way we encountered several men who walked past us with slow awkward steps and what I can only describe as unseeing eyes. “Sleepwalkers,” said Rosédan. “They’re like sleepwalkers.”

There was no sign of Thipērek Thüzranahü at first, and Rosédan’s fingers tightened against my wrist, but then I spotted the outline of her head over one of the flower bushes. We rounded the corner and discovered her kneeling on the ground, scooping dirt into a freshly dug hole. When Rosédan called her name, she looked up and smiled at us. “Cascading good eyes rest on you again. He bequeathing hand lent me all round for my soul.”

“What bequeathing hand?” I asked.

“Who else but the name in every child’s mouth? The Lord of Dreams. He bequeathing hand lent me all round for my soul, to fill up flowing delights all from my wits.”

“Do,” Rosédan started to say, but hesitated before she finished her question. “Do you remember Sawanin Lusahu?”

I thought that maybe for a moment Thipērek Thüzranahü’s face was troubled, or maybe it was just the fireflies casting a different pattern of light and shadow. “Backwards think troubled dreams came by slumber, but now all round is ocean serene.”

As I was thinking of more questions to ask Thipērek Thüzranahü, though from what I’d heard I doubted I’d understand her answers, Rosédan stepped forward quickly and embraced her, whispering in her ear. Thipērek Thüzranahü had a look of confusion that no doubt mirrored my own, but it faded quickly and she returned to whatever it was that she had been doing before our arrival.

We walked through the streets of A’ula Zölkhöh, which somehow seemed more crowded now than they had in previous months. Everyone we met was either one of the sleepwalkers or had the same intense fixation as Thipērek Thüzranahü, though generally not on a garden but rather a collection of drawings or a mural or even making sure that a street was kept clean. This last fixation belonged to a diminutive woman who scowled at us when we left behind tracks of dirt from the garden, and set herself to brushing and sweeping furiously.

Rosédan’s steps grew slower and shorter as we approached the stupa. It occurred to me that she was probably frightened of what Ostalos Elsahi had become, so I put my arm around her waist in a comforting manner. I cannot speak for her, but certainly it comforted me.

I don’t recall ever having visited the stupa at night before, so I can’t be sure whether the different appearance of the building was a result of the Lord of Dreams’ magic or a simple change in the light. Either way, it was looming over us as it had never seemed to before, the interior hidden by shadows that suggested to my perhaps overactive imagination that the emptiness within had been filled by something I didn’t particularly want to see. Then we heard his voice calling from those shadows, saying to us, “And now what do you think? For you have seen my kingdom.”

“Not as much as we would like,” I said, borrowing a portion of Rosédan’s earlier politeness, though the thought came to me even as I spoke that my choice of words was not the wisest, given our true desire to leave Alka’ales as soon as possible.

“And have I done well?” This was a question that set my love of politeness and my love of honesty against one another, and I believe I may have dithered in response. Fortunately, the question proved to be rhetorical when Ostalos Elsahi continued, “And have I fulfilled all your hopes for me?”, a question which did not seem to be aimed at us. Still we couldn’t see him in the shadows.

Rosédan had a curious theory about all this: something about a return to the mother’s womb, which connected somehow with dreams and with Ostalos Elsahi’s total rule over his kingdom. I am not quite sure of the details of her theory. When she began talking about wombs I was too alarmed to pay close attention to the rest. After all, it wasn’t as if we were actually married.

“Rosédan!” he said suddenly, and she jumped. “Now I made a promise to you that I intend to keep. You are close to understanding the secret of the portals. But the keystone escaped you. For I’ve seen your attempts and how they fail. Still you see the past as what was set, the present as what is, and the future as what is in motion. But do you suppose such things matter to the Flame? And you try to cut your paths in line with what is, which would be difficult enough for a distance of a few miles, but when you jump over a thousand leagues and a thousand years, that is another matter entirely. But I will show you. And I promise again that no harm will ever come to you or your husband, as you call him, in my land.”

“I must go,” Rosédan said to me, her voice low and trembling. “I have to, if we want to return home.” Then she addressed Ostalos Elsahi, asking him how long it would take her to learn.

“But it depends more on the student than the teacher. No! Don’t come into the shadow. But take this instead.” Something flew out of the darkness and struck me in the head. While I crouched on the ground rubbing the sore place above my eyes, Rosédan examined the object. It was, at least to first appearances, a chunk of rock about the size of a thumb, pale in color and irregular in shape.

“What is it?” she asked. “Is it something like frankincense?”

“And it is something like that, if from a very different plant that grows in the west of Alka’ales, in a single valley along the river. But soon I shall begin cultivation on a larger scale. For it has the virtue of showing things not visible to the outward eye. Take it, eat it, and you will begin to understand how a portal must be made.”

“Don’t,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure why, and it’s probably true that if she had taken my advice, we would still be in Alka’ales. But she only gave me an apologetic look and put the object in her mouth. After a few seconds she began to tremble so badly that I had to help her lie down. She shut her eyes and whispered something to me, but her words were too incoherent to understand. “What did you do to her?” I demanded. This was not especially cautious of me, but I was too frightened by what had happened to Rosédan to choose more tactful words.

“But she wanted to learn, and so I teach her. She sees more clearly now than she could if I tried to teach her with words. Now I grant you the freedom of my kingdom, to go where you will. There will be a fire in your old room in the dormitory.”

“And Rosédan?”

“Take her with you, if you wish. One of my servants will help you carry her.”

I stared into that darkness and, still incautious, asked, “Did you ever really believe in the Flame and the teaching of the Amber Books? Isn’t it written somewhere that the Flame said to Zodu, ‘Stay awake and do not surrender to the night?’” The silence from inside the stupa gave me time to recall the rest of the quote. “‘It is the mother of the world, but a calf must leave its mother. Have you ever seen a bull nurse at the teat?’” That volume of the Amber Books was curiously preoccupied with cattle, a preoccupation that had much puzzled when I read it as a boy.

“But the night is strong. And what light there is must come from within my own self. Let the one who has accomplished a work like mine debate with me. You, Kësil, go and enjoy the light of day.”

That seemed to be that. One of the sleepwalkers joined me and together we lifted Rosédan and carried her back to the dormitory. I eyed the sleepwalker with a great deal of mistrust, wondering whether he would suddenly come to his senses and let her fall, but he seemed to be firmly under the Lord of Dreams’ spell. Once Rosédan was lying safely in a bed in the upper room, the sleepwalker touched his forehead in farewell to us both, though his eyes were fixed on something beyond us. When he was gone, I took Rosédan’s hand in mine and waited helplessly at her side. She spoke once in a while, but my Bird would not translate for me.

The sun rose at last, but when it did its light was more pallid than any morning light I could recall seeing before. Everything that was visible by it seemed less a physical object and more a drawing in a sketchbook, even Rosédan. I whispered silly, foolish things in her ear that I would blush to put down here, and when she took a deep breath and her eyes opened, it was without a doubt the most glorious moment of my life.

“Kësil,” she breathed, and she put her arms around me for the second most glorious moment of my life. Then she let her arms fall away and said, “I know how to go home. Finally, I know how to go home. Help me to the window.”

She leaned on the jamb with one arm and with the other reached out to the empty air. Her lips moved, but whatever words she spoke were lost to my hearing in a sudden roar of wind. There seemed to be a second sun where she was pointing, suspended beneath the first and somehow brighter than it; dark cracks appeared on the face of the second sun then, breaking it into several pieces that rearranged themselves into the border of a window hanging in the air. The sky that was visible through the window was not the same as the sky that surrounded it.

“Let’s go find Halgh,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and tired. “Then let’s go home.”