Dream Thing

Dream Thing

For the Glorious House of Sinanju

DestroyerBooks.com

With special thanks and acknowledgement to Tim Somheil for his contribution to this work.

Copyright

First published in the United States in 2005 by Worldwide

First published in Great Britain in ebook by Sphere in 2016

ISBN: 978-0-7515-6088-6

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2005 Warren Murphy

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

Sphere

Little, Brown Book Group

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London, EC4Y 0DZ

www.littlebrown.co.uk

www.hachette.co.uk

Contents

Dedication

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

About the Authors

Prologue

The man cradled the gangly girl in his arms as if she were a baby, but she wasn’t aware the way an infant was. Her mind was consumed by her need to fend off sleep.

“What else could be behind such dreams?” her father demanded.

The father had married into his second cousin’s bloodline, which was the most sensitive branch of all the Peoples. Now he alone was free of the dream torment, while his wife, daughters and son suffered terribly.

The daughter in his arms was catatonic, her body half-dead from need of sleep.

The Caretaker of the People pondered this pathetic young victim as she tensed and slackened rhythmically, fighting to stay awake. She succumbed to her need, and became limp in her father’s arms as sleep overcame her.

They held their breath, the father and the Caretaker. Maybe this time there would be no dreams …

The girl screamed, her eyes opening wide and her hands clawing at her father’s chest. Her mind told her that she was falling from a great height, burning in boiling rain, sinking into water so deep that all light was erased.

Her moment of terror faded, but her reality was just as bad. She didn’t see her father or the Caretaker, but focused again on fighting to stay awake.

“She is like this always now. For two days it has been thus,” her father said. “I’m afraid she is already mad.”

Okyek Meh Thih, the Caretaker of the People, felt sad and helpless. He stood up.

“What will you do?” the father asked.

“I will seek out wisdom,” Okyek Meh Thih announced.

The girl’s father showed a sign of faint hope, but Okyek Meh Thih felt no hope.

It was his duty. His grandfather’s instructions were quite clear. If a time came when the dreams disrupted the lives of the People, then Okyek Meh Thih must go into the mountain again and meditate on the message in the cave. Every fiber of his being told him to stay and offer comfort to the suffering People, and yet he did his duty and walked away from them.

What wisdom could there be in those old mountains and the faded inscription of a people long dead?

Chapter 1

Being insane makes it hard to keep track of the time.

How many days had it been? How far had he crawled? How close was he now to the surface of the world? How much water was left and how much air?

Only as an afterthought did he realize that the gnawing had stopped below his feet. The alien rock eaters were no longer chewing. This explained why the madness had left him; the insane chewing of the alien rock eaters had gone away at last.

His mind turned to his own rock eaters. Were they still eating? Well, of course they were. He could see, couldn’t he? The yellow glow of their light was the only light he had seen in weeks. He wriggled until his face was close to the viscous trickle of yellow matter, and inspected it. Were the machines still fully functional?

He couldn’t tell without a microscope. The fact that the carrier fluid still glowed was a good sign. The nanotech machines wouldn’t glow if they weren’t also digging. He had programmed them that way.