Titans of Chaos

The room did not change shape, nor did the moonlight falling in through the grille of the windowdarken, but something like that should have happened, because a strange dreamlike sensationcrept over me, a sense that I could not move, or that the objects around me were alive, silentlychuckling, merely holding into the familiar shapes of floor and bed out of a watchful malice.

Colin said, "Hey. I can see his dreams. He is dreaming right now."

Vanity said, "Colin, Amelia is freaking out. I think your dreamworld is bad for her. Can you dosomething?"

He pulled his eyes away from the figure on the bed. "Um. Like what, Red Leader?"

The man on the bed opened his eyes. It was horrible, like looking at a zombie. His mouth wasopen, and his voice came out, but I did not see any tongue or teeth. The lips did not move. It waslike the real Mortimer was crouched below the bed, speaking up through a tube shoved throughthe back of a corpse. Nothing looked wrong, but it was horrible for the same reason dreams arehorrible, when you dream about an empty white room with an empty wooden chair in it, andcannot remember why that terrifies you.

Colin was holding me by the shoulders, and Victor was standing behind me with his arm aroundmy waist. Funny. I didn't remember them reaching for me.

"Amelia," said Colin. "Calm down. You have nothing to be afraid of. By the authority vested inme as a Prince of Chaos, son of Morpheus, I invite you into my realm, um, this whole room, theland on which it stands and the sky above, and all the rights, rents, and privileges appertainingthereto. There. Did anything happen?"

I said in a calm, slow voice: "His eyes are open. He's talking. Can't you hear him?"

"Amelia, stop screaming. Um." Colin shrugged. "Leader, what's going on?"

Vanity spoke up, "Ask her what the voice said."

I said, "I can hear you, Vanity. Mortimer is talking. He says he saw her bathing. The girl wasnaked. It was freezing winter, and the snow was on the sedge and swamp-grass, but she laughedand sported in the pool like it was a bath. Her dogs were blind, no eyes in the sockets, and whiteand pale as death. She set her dogs on him."

Colin said, "She's right. That is what I am seeing inside his head. There is a girl, maybe fourteen,fifteen. Athletic build, sort of Jewish-looking, olive-skinned, with her hair all pinned up. Huh.

That's funny. She just turned and looked at me."

Vanity said, "Someone is watching us."