Dream Space Chapter 1

The Tatnall Dome stretched impossibly high above the manicured parcel of lawn at the heart of the University. Dressed ioncrete moldings converged at the wide ornamental stairs. The smooth sheen of the dome reflected the fall light as Suzrah dismounted and tied her marblehorse off at the railing.

She passed through the tall mullion-arched entrance hall before the dome chamber just as attendants parted the massive carved Koawood doors, hard wood protesting against the smooth stained floors.

University peers filed through into the dim chamber and parted into the galleries on either side. Suzrah let them wash past her and waited.

“Trying again, Master Kan?” A chill ran down her spine. She turned to face Renner Slovan towering over her. He was dour in master robes but he carried himself on his toes, tense, ready.  He moved with the grace of a pugilist.

“What did you expect? What is it you call me?” She squared off to Riffost’s goon but had to crane her neck up to look at him.  “More stubborn than a marblehorse and half as useful?”

“Riffost will never permit it.” Renner glared, unhappy to have his quiet thoughts picked out so easily. “When are you going to give up?”

“When the Thiraleans are marching through the pass and it’s too late.” She turned to the chamber doors just in time to stop the attendants from closing her out.

She walked out across the floor the of the dome. Dark swirls in the gleaming stained ioncrete attracted her attention even though she had seen them a hundred times. The thin flinty light that reached through the occulus at the apex of the dome stretched toward an ancient symbol on the floor. Another year drawing to a close. She didn’t need the dome calendar to tell her.

Her dreamers had been interviewing the caravaniers coming home for the season over the last several weeks, now. After this she wouldn’t have another chance at a hearing until spring.

Suzrah stood before the Master Council waiting anxiously for their decision.  Grand Master Emeritus Eustan Riffost paged through her documentation with a half smirk.

Prismatic sunlight sparkled through the windows in the high dome and her eyes hypnotically tracked the flickering spots as she stood stone still before them. The Masters delayed hearing her petition until the last possible moment, it had become a tradition of a sort, the last several years.

Suzrah knew their answer but still she fought to remain standing calmly, buffeted by the susurrus of the gallery behind her. She shifted her weight on the gleaming polished floor and tried to control her wildly beating heart.

The observers in the audience chamber emitted feelings of curiosity or indifference, but no one supported her request. She felt their eyes boring into her back but refused to turn around. Instead she straightened her shoulders and focused on one of the spots of light dancing across the floor boards.

“Junior Master, Suzrah Kan. We have heard your request, however, at this time” Grand Master Riffost began with a sad note in his voice but his feelings of smugness wafted through the dream field like a stench.

Suzrah blinked savagely once, twice and then spun on her heels, and marched at the closed heavy doors.

“Master Kan!” Master Riffost bellowed after her, commanding her to turn , he added mental emphasis for weight.

Suzrah stopped, took a deep breath, and turned slowly back to the chamber. Master Riffost was on his feet, though his aged, bowed back and rheumy eyes made him less formidable than he was trying hard to appear.

“Master Kan, you will not leave the Vorta so long as you are a Master of this institution. Do you understand? The treaty must not be broken.”

She scanned the faces of the other members of the Master Council and the audience in the gallery; their dispassionate faces stared back at her.

A man in the gallery stood up, his face was not dispassionate. The very opposite, his eager curiosity, the imperative declaration in his eyes, was a bright spot in the drab emotional landscape in the Council Chamber. His eyes locked onto hers and in that instant she felt his mind questing out for hers. I must speak with you Master Kan. The words bloomed in her mind more clearly than any emotional transfer she had managed with the Dream researchers.

She was startled and instinctively slammed her mental shields down on the startling intrusion. Without responding to the Grand Master Emeritus she turned again, this time forcing herself to walk a measured pace to the oversized entry doors and leaned her shoulder into it.

She wanted to cry, to scream and rage at the stupidity and short sightedness of the council. Not just her dreams dashed, again, but progress thwarted.

It was the man from the gallery, however, his bald desire, the violation she had felt when he touched her mind that frightened her past all outrage.

The heavy door opened grudgingly, grinding against the floor, slowing her escape.  She gave up the pretense of calm the moment she could squeeze through the jamb and took off at a run through the stately, vaulted entry way. She drew the stares of those peers of the university standing outside the chamber as she barreled past them. She launched herself down the front stair case of Tatnall Dome, leaping awkward hops down the wide shallow steps.

She got one foot into her mount’s stirrup, snapped the reins free at the same time and vaulted into the saddle as her marblehorse broke into a canter.

###

The summer palace was a soaring ioncrete edifice of graceful curves and sprawling grandeur on the Isle of Natua in the Bay of Bymere. Rence Thiral, Fourth of his name, Thiral Magnate, crowned ruler of Rœomos, preferred the quiet isolation the island retreat offered to the bustle of QSeher, his formal capital.

Rence rose with the sun in a bed of deepest down and finest silkgrass. His height was average but his appetites were enormous and he was the only person he indulged. His frame was heavy, his neck disappeared into his shoulders and he was wrapped in a regal red silkgrass robe.

He crossed to the bath, a temple of warm waters and fragrant oils, adjacent to his bed chamber and Burnus materialized.

His manservant was a T’Mai so it was beneath Rence to acknowledge the man, let alone know his name but he had been with Rence most of his life. Burnus is what other’s called him, Burni in his own head. Rence wasn’t sure if the man had ever had a thought of his own without Rence being a party to it.

Burnus began morning ministrations as Rence reclined on a padded bench. The vast open seas and silence were all that could be seen in the early light from the open porticoes surrounding the Thiral’s private escape, but on clear days the shimmer of QSeher could just be distinguished in the distance.

Once he was dressed in the fresh silkgrass trousers and open regal robe Burnus slid soft silken slippers on his feet and the Magnate stood. Burnus was dismissed to prepare breakfast with a thought and Rence stepped through a secret passage in the wall that led from his private quarters into the depths of his most inner sanctum.

###

By the time Suzrah rode into the center of Chepachet Clossal, the warren of old ioncrete buildings and park like enclosures that housed the Dream School at Loba University, she had no idea what she was running from or why the man’s mental touch had set her on such a panic. It seemed a silly reaction.

She remembered the look on Grand Master Riffost’s face, though, when he told her they must uphold the treaty. Her blood still boiled as she tethered Chulo, her mount, to the tree outside Meklesen hall.

“Yolo, take Chulo up to the stables for me, please. Give him a genipap and a rub down? I’ll excuse you from other duties.” A pimply awkward boy made up of knees and elbows and angles dropped the broom he was whisking across the stairs to tend to the huge black marblehorse. Suzrah patted Chulo’s nose affectionately, the keen eyes of the massive beast tracked her, head cocked.

“I know, boy, I owe you a better ride than that.” She could almost feel the intelligent beast’s rebuke. “We’ll take a few days off and get away from the station, I promise.” She rubbed Chulo’s soft moist nose and he snuffled into her hair, nudging her. “Okay, big boy, go with Yolo. We’ll ride tomorrow.” She gave him one last pat and went into the Meklesen.

She went straight upstairs to find Master Arban Bothi in his library on the second floor. Suzrah burst through the door and surprised one of the Master’s young assistants into dropping a sheaf of pages on her head. Her angry tirade against the Master Council withered on her tongue and laughter leapt from her throat instead.

“The Council said yes?” Arban’s surprise and hope glowed through the emotional field.

“No, old man, no chance.” Se looked up at the awkward teenager teetering on the rungs of the high shelf. “They rejected the petition again, you knew they would,” She fed her exasperation into the emotional currents eddying around them. “It’s just the-” Suzrah laughed again and gestured at the bewildered boy and the flurry of papers that had landed around her feet. “Patri, come on down. The old man has had you climbing the shelves like a fliese. That’s enough for one morning. I don’t suppose you two have eaten middays yet?”

She stooped to rake the papers together and handed them into the arms of the boy as he stepped off the ladder.

“Ah, no ma’am.”

“Well, go fetch lunch for three and come back and join us. I’ll talk with the Master for a bit.”  Suzrah dismissed the youngster and took a chair from under a pile of folios,  which were now balanced twice as high on the edge of a shelf. She settled the chair across from Master Arban’s monumental desk and leaned back comfortably, one ankle hooked casually over the other knee.

“No, old man, they did not approve it and Renner was there to make sure the message was clear. Riffost issued a warning: if I do go out there I will be disavowed.” She shook her head and looked around the familiar crowded room. “Oh, and there was a dreamer in the gallery.”

“Don’t try to change the topic, what else did Grand Master Riffost say?” Arban’s voice was as sharp as he ever used when he emphasized Riffost’s title and she groaned inwardly.

Suzrah shrugged and looked up at the board ceiling while she probed at the fresh wound in her memory. She let her breath out slowly, “I didn’t stay to hear the rest.” She squeezed her eyes shut tight to steel herself for Arban’s inevitable response.

“You didn’t hear what they had to say?”

“I know, I know. I have to play their game. They will only punish me next time because I was rude, I know!”

Arban harrumphed and heafted himself out of the plush tatty chair behind the heavy carved desk. Her mentor had never been young in Suzrah’s memory but in recent seasons he had never appeared so old. He straightened himself slowly and leaned into the desk.

“Where are you going, old man?” She stood and came around to offer him her arm.

“Pah,” he pushed her arm away and hobbled the few steps to a precariously balanced stack leaning against a table leg. Lifting the papers on top he shook them at her. “I’m not that frail, I have to move or I get stiff.” He thrust the sheets at her and shuffled back to drop into his chair with a whump.

“Another caravan returned?” She scanned the folio.

“Yes, and the reports are the same. The Thiraleans, again.”

“Oh blasted Earth, when is Riffost going to realize his precious treaty has already been broken?”  She slapped the papers against her thigh. “We need to be out there.”

“You need to be out there, my time has long since past. But you are right, it’s time for the University teachers to return to the world.”

“Tell Grand Master Rifforst that.” Suzrah looked at her old mentor, she felt fierce; so different from how she felt standing in the Dome.

“I spent a life time telling the Grand Masters, Suzrah.” Arban smiled but he chided her across the emotional field for her impatience.

Suzrah looked at the sheaf of papers in her hand and sat down again. She spread the sheets across the table top made of her lap to read the latest interviews conducted with the traveling caravans returning to the Vorta Valley. “This group had a run-in along the Ga-nor river basin, too, same as the last.”

Patri pushed open the door at the far end of the grandly shabby old library. He was pushing feelings of discomfort and confusion into the emotional fabric ahead of him and fumbled into the door way, arms loaded with three trenchers of stew, goaded by the figure behind him.

Suzrah leapt to her feet at the recognition of the man from the Dome gallery. The papers rained forgotten to the floor and the sunlight streaming in the windows felt suddenly chilled to a harsh light.

Arban, eyes full of questions, and sensing the room’s tension, tottered to his feet as well.

“I’m sorry Masters, he stopped me in the hall, I wasn’t sure-” Patri murmured, eyes unfocused. Suzrah could feel the influence that the man had used on him.

“Master Kan, Master Bothi, I apologize for the intrusion,” he was not a tall man but he projected himself taller. His self-importance took up physical space. He moved with the oily grace of a boaspint sliding into the library and deftly closing the door behind him.

Suzrah felt like the air had been squeezed out of the room. She slid into a defensive posture, turned slightly to profile, questions dying on her tongue. She couldn’t understand the powerful feelings in her gut when she faced this man and which seemed so unimportant that she hadn’t even mentioned him a moment before.

“Ah, and who would you be, young man with my name?” Arban offered his outstretched palm to the newcomer and the man covered it with his own for just a pause. The stranger turned his tousled mane on Suzrah then and, once caught in his sights, Suzrah felt impelled to hold his gaze.

He had a strong brow and slightly pointed chin. His face was lightly complected, even sallow, but his shoulder length hair and features were heavy and dark. He was lithe and well proportioned enough, though far from remarkable.

“My name is Markev Brussoun, Masters.” He made a mockery of  bow. “I am here from the Dream Society of Galun Station”

###

Manzal B’Utran marched hurriedly past the guards and up the carved stone dock. He positively hated sea travel and then the guards had kept him waiting for hours in the tiny harbor at the foot of the Summer palace.

He forced himself to keep his pace even and not give in to the absurd notion to run. His heart hammered in his narrow chest and his aging knees ached with every step. 

Manzal followed a young man, well scrubbed and pressed into starched livery, but unmistakably T’Mai.

By conceit Manzal B’Utran of the Third Tier feigned the page invisible while the young man groveled his way down the many halls of the Summer Palace. He tried to keep his haughty detachment around him like a cloak through the halls filled with servants bustling through the corridors.

The large doors of the solarium were closed when they arrived and inwardly Manzal steeled his back bone. If one was about to arrive to the Magnate’s invitation late, best to do it flagrantly and under no circumstances waiver.

The page pulled aside one of the doors for him and he strode through expecting the room to turn in stunned silence to see him finally arrive to the Thiral’s breakfast.

He stopped mid-stride, shaken to see that there was no one else there.

The Magnate’s table was set for two and the he was already seated.

“Magnate,” B’Utran’s voice betrayed his confusion.

“Manzal, old friend, come in.” The broad shouldered man with clear gray eyes delivered around a mouthful of soft boiled marosetta eggs and flaky pastry.

“I hope I’m not late, I was detained at the dock.” Manzal looked around, his dread not easing in the least.

“No, not at all, I wasn’t ready for you yet. Do come in and eat with me. My cook is excellent.”

The bellicose Magnate’s apparent joviality was perhaps the most troubling for Manzal, at least when he was screaming you knew where you stood.

Rence Thiral, Fourth of his Name, Magnate of Roeomos had taken the title from his father six years before, under whispered about circumstances. He had since kept the Four Tiers in their place with a ruthlessness beyond anything his father, or his short lived brother, had ever imposed. It paled, however, in comparison to what he planned for the Yao.

“I have something special you will do for me.”