The shout was answered almost immediately.
More black-robed figures came skating in over the -Ice. More star-eyed Crones, arriving in twos and threes until forty of them clustered close. They did not speak, but gathered around Milla's dream-body, waiting for someone.
Eventually, that someone came. A Crone Mother, milky-eyed, seated in a high-backed chair of palest bone. The chair moved across the Ice of its own accord. It stopped next to Milla, and the Crone Mother bent down and touched the girl's head.
Milla came back from wherever she had been to find herself still in a dream. She knew it was a dream because of all the Crones around her and the Crone Mother in her chair of bone. They were the familiar figures of her childhood, the Crones who came to send the nightmares away. All Icecarl children learned how to cope with nightmares, how to move within their dreams, and when to call the Crones.
As always, the Crones did not speak. But they didn't throw Milla up into the air, either, which was how they normally woke her up. The Crone Mother smiled at her and did not remove her hand. All the other Crones stood in a circle around her, looking out, still waiting.
They did not have to wait long.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
Fashnek reentered Milla's dream. As he usually did in his prisoners' dreams, he made himself look like he had once been, before the accident that left him only half-alive. It was only in others' dreams that Fashnek could bear to look at himself.
The Chosen was surprised to see all the weird women in black circled around Milla. The ancient globe and its associated devices - which he fondly called his Nightmare machines - were set to prevent the dreamer from changing the dream. Fashnek was the only one who could do that. But the machines were as old as the Castle, and soaked up Light magic like a sponge drank water. Sometimes a Sunstone would fail during an interrogation, and the dreamer would have a little bit of freedom to invent things.
Not that it mattered. Fashnek was sure that he could make this one respond now. He had replaced all the Sunstones. The crystal globe and the mind boosters were all functioning at full power.
First, he would change the place back to something she hadn't dreamed herself. A place where he had more control. Like the Hunting Arena, where Chosen chased and killed rock lizards. He would change this girl into a lizard as well.
Fashnek thought of the changes he wanted. Transmitted by his Spiritshadow to the Nightmare machines, the changes should have been immediate. But they weren't. The Ice flickered for a moment, and Fashnek briefly saw the bright green of the ferns and the red flash of a lizard's back. Then it was gone and the Ice returned.
Fashnek frowned. A whole lot of Sunstones must have failed. He concentrated on the change again, but nothing happened.
Then he noticed that the creepy old women were sliding toward him, sliding across the ice in a way that was not possible. They were dream elements. They shouldn't be able to do anything without his permission.
They were all staring at him, too. Staring with luminous eyes, eyes that were not merely reflecting the light from Fashnek's Sunstones, or the one in the wreckage of the ship.
"Back!" Fashnek ordered, speaking aloud to reinforce his mental command. But they still came on, closer and closer.
Fashnek started to retreat, fear building inside him. This was all wrong. Prisoners came to the Hall of Nightmares to be made afraid by Fashnek. He controlled their dreams, not the other way around.
The gliding women drew knives of bone. Fashnek shivered when he saw them. He tried desperately to order Spiritshadows to come to his aid. None came. He conjured up monsters he had used before, things from Beastmaker games. None came.
Soon he was surrounded. There was only one thing left to do. Fashnek ordered the Nightmare machine to switch off and made himself wake up.
He disappeared. The Crones tucked their knives away, and skated back to Milla. She had watched them chase the Chosen away. She knew who he was, even though he appeared whole, here in her dream. He was her jailer. In the waking world, she was trapped inside a crystal globe. But at least he could not interfere with her dreams.
The Crone Mother took her hand off Milla's head as the others returned. They circled around Milla, towering over her. She was puzzled for a moment, until she realized that their size had been set when she first learned to call them to her nightmares. She had seen only five circlings then, and stood only waist-high. The Crones had always been double her size. Now that she was grown, in her dream they had grown, too.
The Crones picked her up. They held her over their heads, supported on a forest of old arms. Then they bounced her up and down a few times, making her laugh.
On the third bounce, they threw her up into the dark sky with all the strength they could muster. Milla flew, tumbling over and over, laughing at the rush and giddiness. It was like falling up forever.
Then there was a flash of light.
Milla woke up. She was still trapped in the crystal globe. Multicolored beams of light were still focused on her, but now they were just light. They had lost their effect upon her. Fresh air breezed through the globe, unaccompanied by the sickly sweet scent.
There was no sign of Fashnek. He had hurried off to report in person. He had to report that the boy Tal had not been lying. This girl truly was from outside the Castle, and she had powers and allies that made Fashnek sweat and tremble as he lay at the feet of his master.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It took Tal four hours to read the section of the book he had been given, and then another few hours to read parts of it with greater attention, as he tried to figure out exactly what the author meant. To make it harder, there were pages missing and the section ended with a sentence that began, "The final act to complete the stairway is "
Tal flipped that final page at least twenty times before he accepted that there were no more. He would have to work out how to finish the stairway on his own.
If he got that far. The stairway used all seven colors of the Spectrum, and Tal had only been taught Red, Orange, Yellow, and Green. But he had always had a natural flair for Light magic, and both his fa-ther and Ebbitt had taught him things he'd never have learned in the Lectorium.
His first small attempts were total failures. The Sunstone was much more powerful than his old one had been, and he kept losing control of it. Colors blurred and intensity wavered all over the place. The three stairways he managed to produce all fell over when they were only three or four steps high.
"I can't do it," Tal muttered finally, throwing down the pages. His eyes hurt and he had a headache. He lay down on the mattress and closed his eyes. Just for a few minutes he told himself. Then he would try again.
Before he knew it, Tal was asleep and dreaming. He was out on the Ice again, this time without Milla. But he had a Sunstone, a very bright Sunstone that lit up everything. His shadowguard was there, too, but for some reason in the dream he didn't want it. It kept following at his heels, and he kept running away from it, slipping and sliding on the Ice. The shadow-guard grew bigger, and then became Sushin's Spirit-shadow. It got larger still, until it filled all the sky behind him, its mouth yawning to swallow him up in a single gulp
Tal woke with a start, sweating. His shadowguard sat up, too, in the shape of a comforting, inoffensive
Dattu. Tal looked at his Sunstone. Only twenty minutes had passed.
He splashed his face with water, and started working on the Stairway of Light again. This time his focus was more intense.
At first he made a very small stair, just a few steps, carefully weaving different-colored strands of light together into two short rainbows, which he then joined end to end to make three distinct steps.
Even when they hung there in the air, opaque and solid, Tal didn't really believe it would work till he put his foot on the first rainbow step and it supported him.
Elated, he ran up and down the three steps over and over, forgetting that the stairs would only last a few minutes after he stopped concen
trating on his Sunstone. They failed just as his right foot came down on the highest step, sending him sprawling. His shadowguard, still repairing itself after Sushin's attack, was too slow to catch him. It hissed in warning or exasperation - as he picked himself up and limped to the mattress.
A Stairway of Light big enough to get him out of the Pit would take between two and three hours to build, Tal estimated. If he could manage it.
He consulted his Sunstone. It probably hadn't been calibrated by the Timestone in the Assembly for years, but might still be accurate. According to the color band in its depths, it was close to two o'clock in the morning. It was unlikely that Sushin or anyone else would visit him before the Waking Hour, at seven.
So he had time to escape. But he still hadn't decided if Sushin was being sincere when he offered him a new Sunstone and a safe return to his normal life as a Chosen.
Rubbing his forehead, Tal thought about all this. Eventually he decided that he had to build the stair now and take his chances on escaping. Sushin might be his superior in the Orange Order, but Tal didn't trust him. He'd put Tal in this Pit, after all, so he didn't care about doing things the right way. He might have put Tal's father in this Pit, too.
No, Sushin's offer was almost certainly false. He would just get rid of Tal once he found out that he had no allies.
Having made his decision, Tal ignored his headache and started to build the Stairway of Light. There were two methods explained in the book. One was quick and a bit easier, but would use up most of the Sunstone's energy. The other was slower and more difficult, but would not drain the stone too much.