On the Wings of Dream: The Second Thread of the Dhitha Tapestry

CHAPTER 1

I’ve crossed the threshold to another world.

Dizzy from his passage through a Doorway from the earth to a world a thousand light-years beyond Canopus, Timothy Johnston knelt in dew on white flagstones of a Dancing Ground. From darkness beyond this, men and women in white robes marked with a golden sign for Dancer neared him.

Timothy made out among the Dancers the dour features of Chris, or Kresona Vagras, as the man was known here. Chris, testing Timothy as a Dancer on the earth, had promised to be his guide on Tena, the world to which he had come for training. Timothy, though, sensing plots in Chris’s mind, guessed that any guidance from him would benefit Chris first. Still, I’m in his hands now.

Timothy heard the other Dancers speaking soft words of Vara Dhithas, the common tongue of the Human-derived people of Tena. In the other Dancers’ minds he Heard curiosity about the Human Dancer from the world beyond the Doorway. Beyond the Dancers, night insects chirped and trilled. He Heard distant, chaotic thoughts of lust and rage. He sought to understand them, but they resisted coming clear to him.

Chris, kneeling by him in the dew, pressed into his hands a mug of something steaming. Drink this, Tim, Chris said in English.

Timothy sipped, then gulped, the mug’s contents. Salty and savory, these tasted absurdly of chicken. He decided that Tena could have chicken broth. After all, the Dhitha came here from the earth.

When he had drunk the broth, Chris leaned forwards and kissed him. Timothy was uneasy at being kissed by another man, but Heard in Chris sacred purpose. The kiss, Timothy grasped, was a holy gesture, an honored guest’s formal greeting.

Chris helped Timothy to his feet, then stepped back from him. Bowing slightly with hands pressed together under chin, Chris said in Vara Dhithas, In the name of Dhera Velas, the Community of Praise, I welcome you, Dancer Timothy Johnston, to Tena. Dour features easing into a faint smile, Chris murmured in English, I know how the passage must’ve tired you. I’ll leave introductions till the meal of greeting at noon tomorrow.

Timothy, despite his mistrust of Chris, felt grateful to him. I could hit the sack right now.

The other Dancers made soft laughter and mental talk of why the Human Dancer wanted to strike a bag when he needed sleep. Beyond the laughter and talk lurked the thoughts of lust and rage. These moved Timothy to look at Tena’s night sky. Its strange constellations held no sign of Tena’s blue moon.

No moon…

The new moon was the night when, on the far side of Tena, the Dhitha’s foes Danced. Is tonight, he said uneasily, the night of the new moon?

He needed not await an answer to his question. As if it were an opening doorway, it let chaotic thoughts into his mind. He quailed at images of furred, fanged men, drunk with blood. They swayed in a circle around one of their kind who licked the blood and feasted on the thoughts of a tortured figure at his feet. The furred, fanged man, a Door of the Vulg, was feasting on a Dancer of the Dhitha.

Timothy, sagging onto the flagstones, writhed there. He tasted blood on his lips, hungered for raw flesh, longed to take weapons in hand and smite a foe.

What’s wrong with him? a female Dancer called out.

He’s Hearing the Veligit, Chris called back to her.

He’s Hearing the foe even here? she said in a tone of dismay.

"Get hapmera!" Chris shouted.

Timothy, in pain and confusion, could not make out the word’s roots, but sensed hope in it from Chris. What hope do I have? Timothy thought. Now in the mind of the Vulguth Door’s victim, he felt the Door’s rough tongue rasp against wounds, felt the Door’s claws open fresh wounds, felt his own despair flow into the Door and strengthen him to open a Doorway to the earth. I’m just a slave, a sacrifice…

He’s speaking the Veligit’s trade language! the woman called out. Does anyone understand it? We must learn what he’s saying.

Drink this, Tim! Chris said. An arm lifted Timothy’s shoulders; the rim of a mug pressed against his lips. He coughed and sputtered at sweet syrup flowing from the mug into his mouth. A pungence and a subtle vapor rose from the syrup into his brain.

You’ll be safe now, Tim, Chris said.

Liar, timothy thought. Nonetheless, chris’s words comforted him as a black curtain, sweeping over his mind, parted him from the veligit.

CHAPTER 2

He awoke to luxuriance and strangeness. He was lying in something warm and yielding that soothed him as nothing else could have. A featherbed! A feather pillow propped his head. Running hands over crisp linen of sheet and pillowcase, he thought, I could get used to this.

He opened his eyes to stone walls and a slate-colored ceiling. At the bed’s foot, a window showed him clear daylight sky, violet in hue. Sunlight glancing from snow-capped mountains was orangish. Blue moon, orange sun. Angie told me of them. Till now they were unreal to me.

He sighed at the thought of Angie, parted from him by more miles than he cared to ponder. She would follow him to Tena two full moons of the earth thence. That date seemed to him as far off as the earth was. Still, do I really want her to come to a world of which the Veligit rule more than half?

Last night’s fears, he knew, were warping his reason. His teachers on the earth had told him that not in their lifetime had the Veligit reached the temple where he had slept, or the holy city to which he was bound. Still, the foe was bringing new weapons from the earth…

He looked away from the window. To the right of it, a set of open shelves held his gear, neatly sorted. In what he took as an alien monastery, the gear was odd, but comforting—his spare pair of tennis shoes, piles of socks and underwear, his shaving kit, his laptop, his Book of Common Prayer.

He frowned, missing his mother’s Bible. He found it in the hands of Chris, seated on a stool by an open doorway. Chris’s strange eyes of green with red flecks, set wide on his narrow face, moved over the Bible’s pages.

Chris was wearing his Dancer’s regalia. Chris’s brown hair, parted in its center, lay under a linen veil, its edge held back from his face with a golden fillet. A long-sleeved robe of quilted linen, sweeping to his feet, was caught at his wrists with golden bracelets and at his waist with a belt of golden coins. Thirty-six of them, Timothy thought, having got from his teachers on the earth such a belt of his own.

He felt its weight around his waist. They put me to bed in my Dancer’s robes, he thought.

The left side of the blouse of Chris’s robe held, elaborately embroidered in golden thread, a man seated cross-legged before an open door. Although Timothy had learned few of the Dhitha’s hieroglyphs, he made out on Chris’s robe the sign for teneta, Keeper, a Dancer who served a Door as chief counselor.

Chris’s hands under the Bible’s cover were in coarse, white gloves that went ill with the rest of his outfit. Why are you wearing those? Timothy said. Is it cold in here?

Good morning, Tim, Chris said. I’m wearing gloves because your Bible’s cover is made of leather. Didn’t Kiril and Lisa teach you that a Dancer may not touch a dead mammal’s flesh?

One of the countless religious laws of the Sacred Fire. The Door and Keeper of the circle of Dancers to which Timothy belonged on the earth had tried to drill these into his head, but few of them had stuck there. Are you telling me that I must wear gloves to read my mother’s Bible?

As a Christian to whom it’s a sacred object, you’re exempt from the law that I cited.

Thank Heaven for small favors.

I’ve been reading the Book of Leviticus. I always enjoy studying the rites that the Sacred Fire gave the Jews. I’d like to see those rites enacted by priests of Aaron’s line. Alas, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem keeps those priests from doing most of their duties.

Timothy, trying to focus on Chris’s words, felt weak and woozy. He also felt that he had overslept. What time is it?

In terms of the earth, around ten in the morning.

Ten! I never sleep so late. What did you give me?

"Hapmera. Its English name, I believe, is ‘laudanum.’"

You’re trying to make a drug addict of me. Timothy felt guilty for resenting something that had freed his mind of the Veligit.

He recalled that, in his weakened state, his thoughts were likely open to Chris. If they were, he showed no sign of Hearing them. Didn’t you mention a meal of greeting in two hours? Timothy said. Shouldn’t I be preparing for it?

Chris, closing the Bible, rang a tiny golden bell. This filled the room with sweet tones. A young boy appeared in the doorway. He had a long, narrow face, and brown hair parted in the center like Chris’s, but eyes of brown, not green and red. He wore a silver fillet, brown trousers, and a brown tunic belted at the waist with links of silver. The left side of his tunic bore in white a man kneeling outside a circle at the center of which stood a throne-like chair.

How may I serve you, Keeper Kresona Vagras? the boy said.

"You won’t be serving me." Chris, with a faint smile, turned to Timothy. Tim, I give you Klarona Pekshas, a Servant of the Dance. You may call him Klara.

Timothy felt it odd to call a boy by so feminine sounding a name, but smiled at Klara’s last name, which meant ‘of the fish.’

Klara, Chris said, I give you the Dancer Timothy Johnston of the altar of sunrise at High Bridge on the earth. You’ll be serving him during his stay on Tena.

Klara bowed, hands under chin, to Timothy. It’ll be an honor to serve you, Timothy.

Er, thank you.

Chris’s smile widened. "You’ll notice, Klara, that the Door Kiril Paris and my fiancée, the Keeper Lesrela Melas, failed to teach Tim the customs here.»

He had left out both a bow and a flowery phrase. «Lisa taught me all that she could teach me. It wasn’t her fault that none of it made sense to me till now.»

«You’ll notice, though, Klara, that Tim guards the honor of one who’ll be his adoptive sister.»

«Your dapshera, then, must’ve taught him something," Klara said brightly.

Even Humans, Timothy said through clenched teeth, have family feelings. Some of us have, anyway.

Chris grinned. You and Klara will get along well, Tim. I must go write a report on your arrival on Tena. You’ve given me something worth while to write. Chris strode to the doorway, then paused there, turning to Klara. You may start your service to Tim by getting him up.

With chagrin Timothy saw that he was still abed. I wonder whether Klara would bring me more laudanum.

Klara, kneeling by Timothy’s bed, pulled back from him a white woolen blanket and a linen topsheet. The boy’s eyes widened. They put you to bed in your Dancer’s robes! His eyes, traveling down Timothy’s body, widened further. And your shoes!

Timothy needed none of his Inner Hearing to know Klara’s thought. Dancers are helpless without Servants. They probably did so because of my visions, Timothy murmured. Maybe they feared how they’d affect Servants.

Klara looked contrite. You’re right. The Dancer Suril Felis told everyone at breakfast how you’d spoken like a Vulguth last night.

Timothy’s memories of the night before were hazy. He had no wish to clarify them just then. How must I prepare for this meal of greeting?

Klara looked at the shelves. You must bathe and dress. You’ll need fresh underwear, socks and shoes, robes, a veil, a ceremonial cloak—

A pair of pressures grew in Timothy’s abdomen. "Could we worry about clothes after you show me the bathroom?" Not having learned the last word in Vara Dhithas, Timothy said it in English.

Klara led him out of the bedroom into a corridor of slate-gray walls, doorways on the right. High windows opened onto violet sky and orange sunlight on the left. Between the windows hung gorgeous tapestries that Timothy hoped to view later. Just now he needed the bathroom.

When Klara led him through one of the doorways, he gaped at a row of tubs, tiled in lapis lazuli, malachite, and jasper, set in the floor. Looking around the room, he saw no sign of the fixtures that he needed. Gritting his teeth, he said, "Er, Klara, the ‘bath’in ‘bathroom’isn’t literal."

Klara’s eyes brightened. Oh. Follow me.

Inside the doorway that Klara next showed him, Timothy glimpsed a row of stalls. The nearest of these held a hole, flanked by wooden blocks, in the floor. His spirits rose at a roll of toilet paper. I see that you learned something from us Humans.

We of the Dhitha, Klara said stiffly, invented that on our own. I’ll get your clothes and return here to take you to the baths.

Even a Dancer must do some tasks for himself, Timothy thought darkly as he struggled with his robe. After a while he recalled reading that opiates slow peristalsis. Just now, I’d trade all of my new-found glory to be a computer technician in the Bluegrass again.

Standing at a sink, he was wondering at the absence of handles by faucet when Klara came in. Use the foot pedal, Klara said gently.

Timothy followed orders. Icy water, doubtless direct from the snow-capped mountains, jetted onto his hands. I’m awake now! He splashed some of the water onto his face.

Klara looked horrified. Timothy, that’s hand water, not face water!

Timothy had fallen afoul of another law of purity. Do the Dhitha perform human sacrifices? If so, I’m ready to be one.

Fortunately for his peace of mind, soap and towels were earthlike, involving no alien laws. As he followed Klara along the corridor to the bath, he stole glances at the tapestries on his right. One of them showed a little girl throwing a jeweled pendant over her left shoulder at men standing by a gate and a snowbank. Another tapestry showed an albino woman Dancer bleeding to death on a baby in her arms while soldiers clubbed with their muskets the man who had shot her.

A grim image for a temple of birth and healing. Timothy wondered why among the Dhitha the gene for albinism went with hair and eyes of brilliant red.

In the baths, Klara lay his bundle of clothes on a table at the head of one of the tubs and began to pump water into it. Timothy, feeling the water as it jetted from the faucet, shivered. Maybe, I’ll learn to like cold baths.

Klara frowned. You’re a Dancer. Why should your bath be cold?

Right. My training on Tena starts. He recalled a chant that Kiril and Lisa had taught him, the chant Vedra inige vedra fogras la bovedrim fogradh, The first eye is the eye of fire that looked upon the fire. Making the chant in his mind, he called out of himself luma dhunas, the Light of the Dance. This he sent into the water. Soon steam rose from it. He imagined his friend Aaron saying, Behold Timbo, the human microwave!

Bath ready, Timothy felt unease. In school he had hated disrobing before other boys in the showers. Out of modesty he had ducked athletics ever since. Still, when in Rome…

Klara pulled a linen curtain around the tub when Timothy began to disrobe. Klara, bidding him stand in a pit at the foot of the bath, poured over him water from the tub. When Timothy had soaped himself, Klara poured water over him again and bade him step into the bath. If you’ll put your head into this basin, Timothy, I’ll wash your hair.

Still tense, Timothy muttered, I wouldn’t have suspected the Dhitha of being decadent.

Klara chortled. "I read Time and Newsweek when they come through the Doorway. No American can condemn the Dhitha of decadence."

Touché. Klara’s remark had calmed Timothy. He relaxed further as Klara poured water over his hair and worked soap into it with skilled fingers. As warmth from the bath water seeped into Timothy, he found that he hardly cared when the lower legs of a pair of figures, one in white and one in brown, strolled by his curtain.

He scrunched into a ball in horror when, using the Inner Hearing, he perceived the figures as women, a priest and a Servant. He got an impression of the priest’s having eyes as tawny as a lion’s above a long nose. Her thin lips curled into a sardonic smile as she thought of Timothy’s Servant. «Klara, will you introduce me to your charge? I wish to speak with him before the meal.»

Timothy knew her voice as that of the Dancer who had shouted at Chris the night before. The voice held high, cracking tones that told him that Suril might be nearly two hundred years old.

«It’s properly,» Klara said stiffly, «the privilege of the Keeper Kresona Vagras to introduce him to you."

The woman chuckled. "You can introduce him to me in English; Krisa can introduce him to me in Vara Dhithas."

I’m glad, Timothy thought sourly, for etiquette to be kept.

The woman chuckled again. Belatedly, he learned that, in his embarrassment, he was not hiding his thoughts. Beside him, Klara said stiffly, Dancer Suril, I give you the Dancer Timothy Johnston, whom you may address as Tim. Timothy, I give you the Dancer Suril Felis. As the Dancer Suril is one of the True Iteri, of immemorial and exalted descent, she has no nickname.

Timothy blinked at the term that Klara had used for Suril. Dhitha, Timothy knew, meant the Human-derived natives of Tena; Iteri, those of the Dhitha who served the Sacred Fire. What, though, is a True Iteri?

I see why no one ever called Kiril by a nickname, Timothy murmured. Glancing at Klara, he said, Are you telling me that Suril’s family is up there with Kiril’s?

Klara stared straight ahead. A Servant of the Dance shouldn’t comment on ranks of families of the True Iteri.

Beyond the curtain, Suril chuckled. Her feet moved to the foot of an adjacent tub. Tell me of last night’s vision, Tim. The High Priest and the Door will ask you of it later. I can help you prepare your report on it.

Er, right, Timothy said. He wondered whether the Dhitha had a proverb on gift horses and mouths. As he began to describe the vision, he Heard soft chanting from her mind. With the Inner Hearing he saw that white light shone from her face and hands above a pool starting to steam. The image of her brought an absurd memory to his mind. Double, double, toil and trouble, he murmured, pot burn, and cauldron bubble.

Suril snickered. You’re breaking my concentration, Tim. Go on with your story.

While she bathed, he told her what he could recall of his contact with the Veligit the night before. He wondered again why he had left the earth for Tena. Back home, we need worry only of weapons of mass destruction, not of cannibal vampires.

At the end of Timothy’s tale Suril sighed. You understood nothing of what you said in the foe’s tongue?

I knew that I was speaking it only because I heard you mention it.

I feared as much. In this time of danger we must know the foe’s thoughts.

Does no one here know the trade language?

It’s properly the duty only of those of the altar of sunset to learn it. We could’ve used one of them here last night.

"The Vulguth Door whose thoughts I Heard was thinking of the earth, not ‘-p »

Tena."

Suril snorted. These are times of change for the Dhitha, Tim. The High Ruler is old and has no heir.

Timothy nodded. I heard of his problem back on the earth. The only member of his family eligible for the throne made a banned marriage. Kiril and Lisa were shocked by the news of it.

"Truly, Tim? Even someone as naïve and sheltered as Kiril is may know trouble when she reads of it. As for me, I read the reports that came here of your visions of the Veligit on the earth. If I understand the reports, the weapons that the foe is smuggling here would be drops in a bucket there, but might give the Veligit a decisive advantage over the Dhitha.»

«I fear so, too, Suril.»

«When you reach Tinnemâl, maybe Tima will help you understand your gift."

At the mention of Tima, Timothy felt renewed dread. It had been she, the Door Anthemrela Nebras, who had called him to Tena. From his circle on the earth he had heard much of her, the youngest Door of the holy city of Tinnemâl and the most powerful Door of her time. Kiril, Tima’s great-grandmother, who had not seen her since birth, was proud of her. Lisa and Angie, and even Chris, all of whom had met Tima as a Door, had spoken of her with envy, awe, and dread. Timothy himself, on the night before his passage to Tena, had seen her in a vision—

At least, I hope that it was just a vision.

I don’t understand Tima, Suril said plaintively. On her father’s side she’s a Paris. She may call herself one of the True Iteri, but chooses to keep her flute-player mother’s birthright. Maybe, though, Tima comes by her madness honestly. What but madness could explain why a son of the Paris, even a grandson of the naïve Kiril, would marry a flute-player? Still, since a Door came of the marriage, it must’ve been the Sacred Fire’s will.

Klara was rubbing Timothy’s head vigorously with a towel. We must get you dressed now, Timothy, Klara said loudly. Clearly he had heard enough of Suril’s gossip.

Rising from the bath, Timothy dried himself. He stared in dismay at a pile of clothing on a table at the head of the tub. The pile held pins and chains of gold, and sashes and other items strange to him. I don’t have a clue to how to put any of that on.

Suril cackled. Neither do I, Tim! Why do you think Dancers have Servants?

He felt relief at donning a pair of briefs. He felt puzzlement, though, at Klara’s drawing over these a pair of linen drawers reaching from knees to waist. As Klara went on dressing him, he grew encased in layers of linen and gold. At last, while Klara was wrapping golden chains around his upper arms, he stared in disbelief at sleeves hanging nearly to the floor.

How will I eat in these? I’ll knock everything off the table.

Your Servant will see that you won’t, Suril said in an insufferable tone.

Timothy felt ready to burst. How, with all of your rules and fancy dress, have you of the Dhitha withstood the Veligit?