Pritchard - The Dream Devours the World

The

Dream Devours

the World

Attila Press

Las Vegas

Published internationally by Attila Press
2017 Robert Pritchard

All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or certain other noncommercial uses permitted by law. The purchaser of this book is subject to the condition that he or she shall in no way resell it, nor any part of it, nor make copies for distribution.

Attila Press

4505 Paradise Road #5322

Las Vegas, NV 89169

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, companies, organizations, events, or locations is unintentional and entirely coincidental.

Other books by Robert Pritchard

Corrida

The Pyrrho Manuscript

The Sacred Lake

The Invisible Sarcophagus

The Sorcery

Logotheke: Short Stories

The Dream Devours the World

a novel by

Robert Pritchard

Chapter 1

"They whisper, there is a drug that shows the future. There is an order of mystics who move through the city seeing everything before it happens. They walk in lockstep with their visions. There is a royal house that cannot be brought down, for it knows the actions of its enemies before those actions have been planned or thought. Fortunately these rumors are untrue. The people are superstitious. They grasp for fantastical explanations where there is only mundane truth: the future is unknown."

I wrote that in my diary. I wrote nothing but lies there. At that time I was looking ahead to when I would be captured by the agents of that royal house. When Marius Zeyer spoke of the ways of tracking and pursuit, he said that to deceive one's hunters, it is not enough to simply minimize the signs of one's passage. One must also plant false signs pointing in another direction. He called these false signs verhaals , in his own language that I did not speak. Each night before I fell asleep I took a moment to fill a page in this small leather-bound book with more verhaals . I thought of myself less as recording the journey than as creating it. In this respect I was not unlike the Author who, daily, writes the world into being.

At daybreak, we erased the remains of yesterday's camp. The highveldt upon which we trekked, day after day, was an broken land that concealed its disorder behind a screen of low trees. Only from a vantage above the treesa pale boulder, the roof of some abandoned structurecould one see the sun-hazed horizon.

For the first seven days we walked in near silence with no more than functional communicationsnot to hide our presence, for we saw no onebut because we mistrusted one another greatly. As well we should have. Marius Zeyer was a mercenary. He made no secret of the fact he was in it for money alone. But he could be considered reliable next to Mkawa, who traveled with us against his will, but couldn't escape. We knew he was a spy, but our employer wanted him to go with us. Only I could be called committed to our mission, and even in my case it was from no love of the cause. The so-called Heresy of our employer was not mine. I didn't even know its tenets, in whose name we were expected to risk our lives. What effect the destruction of the Kariba Dam would have on that royal house called the Servants of the Golden Age was a matter of complete indifference to me. If we succeeded, I would be paid in a different coin.

Zeyer crouched, peered at the ground. "We're getting close." His finger limned a crescent in the sandy soil that I gradually recognized as a barefoot heel-print.

"Do they know we're here?"

"Ja." Zeyer straightened up. "Definitely. They left this Track on purpose. They want'd us to see it."

"If they've been disguising their tracks until now," Mkawa said, "why stop?"

"To let us know we're watch'd." Zeyer looked at me. "You've to take the Elixir afore they catch up with us, so we'll know how to play it. Whether they're hostile or friendly. We'll arrive at their Village in three Days, if they don't make the first Move."

"And if they do make the first move?" Mkawa asked.

"Then it could be a lot sooner," Zeyer said flatly. "And what about our other Friends, Robert, do they know where we are?"

He didn't mean real friends because I didn't have any in this country, and he didn't mean the ones who'd left that footprint. "I imagine not," I muttered.

"And our Boss," Zeyer went on, "he definitely don't know where we are. Can't say I've too clear a Picture myself, after seven Days of dead Reckoning." He sipped from a canteen, careful to bring a droplet that ran down his chin back to his mouth with a thumb. "If what the Boss say'd is true, the Village lays five Days southeast of the Dam. That makes eight Days from the Ground under our Feet. And I sure hope the Exiles are friendly, or we don't have Water enough to make it."

We resumed marching. The tramp of our feet and the drone of insects were the only sounds. The march took on the qualities of a dream. The heat, the unchanging landscape, the days unbroken by any variation in routine. Or was it Harare or Johannesburg that were dreams?

If I were honest with myself, I joined the Heretical plot of our employer Tharko as much for another chance to drink that elixir as for the reward he offered me. The future can be an intoxicating drug. Once you've known the pleasure of walking among the events that unfold just as you knew they would, down to the last word and gesture, it's hard to go back to uncertainty. And it can be even harder when what you see in the dream is what you know to be impossible.

Inside my pack, padded with foam, was one small glass vial of clear liquid. Tharko told me, "Hold off using it as long as possible, for the closer to the time of decision that you take it, the more precise and valuable the dreams will be." Now Zeyer said I had to drink it soon. We had to know, before we encountered them, what course to take with the exiles who inhabited the Alienation Zone. We had to know what would happen when we reached the dam. And taking the drug was the only way to confound those who hunted us, who even now searched through the future for us. Yet I was hesitant as well. Though I longed to feel again the ironclad certainty the drug imparted, and to see what I had seen before, when you look into the future and see, living, those whom you know are dead, it has a tendency to unsettle the mind.

The shadows lengthened. When the sun was a red disk somewhere beyond the dusty thicket, we set our packs down. Eating, we each reclined against a tree. A small fire crackled in the center of our triangle.

"So how much are they paying you?" Mkawa said after a long silence.

In the flickering light Zeyer looked carved from granite. "Enough."

"What will you do with it?"

"Live."

Mkawa blinked. "And you, what is your payment?"

I said, "I just want to go back home."

"Johannesburg?"

I nodded. "It's been over a year now."

Mkawa rubbed at the intricate tattoo on the back of his left hand. His face was unlined, very young. We had no need to ask him why he was here, but he answered anyway: "I just want to go back home too."

The next morning Zeyer discovered additional signs of those who stalked us before we left the camp. "At least three of them," he said, pointing out the marks. "Two heavy, one light."

"This is good," I said. Zeyer's eyebrow rose in an otherwise impassive face. "They didn't kill us in our sleep. So they might not want to kill us when we're awake either."

"Could be they're curious," he said. "Few from the Outside come here. Maybe they want to study us afore they ghost us."