The Mask of Mirrors by M. Carrick; (different e readers txt) 📕

Vargo didn’t pause in his march, but he glanced over his shoulder, into the impenetrable mass of fog that had swallowed the rest of the Island. “Not the Charterhouse—the amphitheatre.” He shook his head. “Serrado’s smarter than I thought.”

People were running past—real ones, Sedge thought, and one hawk that was too pretty for his own good yelled at him and Vargo to turn around, go back, it wasn’t safe. We know it en’t safe. That’s why we’re here. He pushed the pretty one aside and accidentally knocked him down, the ash fucking with his ability to judge his strength.

As they crested the Point, they broke clear of the mist, and the walls of the amphitheatre loomed above them. To the west, a bloody haze marked the setting sun.

The mouth of the main tunnel into the building was a maw that ate Vargo, and Sedge a moment later. In the real world there were lightstones here, but the dream made it pitchy black; when they came out of the tunnel into the stands, he felt disoriented by the dim light.

They were high enough to have a good view of the amphitheatre’s stage. And through it, too, the ash revealing not just the stage but the ground beneath, visible only in Ažerais’s Dream.

“It’s not active yet.” Vargo’s tone was relieved.

“What en’t?” Sedge asked—but then he saw. He’d been expecting the bright lines of chalk that he usually associated with numinatria, but these were so dull they almost blended with the bare stone of the dreamscape.

Plus he’d been looking too small. Fienola hadn’t exaggerated: the numinat covered the amphitheatre’s entire floor.

“Shit,” Sedge breathed. “You sure you can fix it? Or unfix it?”

Planting a hand on the rail that marked the boundary of the commoners’ benches, Vargo vaulted down to the nobles’ boxes and started weaving through the maze toward the low wall at the edge of the stage. “If it’s not active, yes. I just need to figure out how to get below the stage and remove the focus before—”

A faint ringing of city bells marked the shift from the sun hours to the earth hours. Sedge knew it was only his imagination that the fog seemed to dim like the sun was vanishing below the horizon; they were weeks past the spring equinox, and the sun wouldn’t set for a while yet.

In the waking world, that was true. But in the dream, the bells and that imagined dimming were answered by a flare of violet blue at the center of the amphitheatre: a deep pool of swirling foam and stars that Sedge had only ever heard described… because he’d never been here on the night of the Great Dream.

The lines arcing across the stage caught the light, flashing through the violet-blue-green shades of a dreamweaver’s feathers. No, not caught: flared with a light of their own, bright enough to imprint on the inside of Sedge’s eyelids. “You… you can still remove the focus, right? To stop it?” he asked.

Vargo’s grip on the railing was knuckle white, his face flickering blue light and shadow with every pulse of the numinat. “The wellspring is the focus. This just got… harder.”

A hiss from the shadows at the base of the wall seemed to laugh in agreement.

Sedge had only childhood tales and Ren’s descriptions to go on, but he knew them the moment he heard the sound. Zlyzen.

Vargo was as pale as he’d been in the plague street. “Much harder.”

Sedge curled his fingers into fists. His knuckles, beat to hell and gone in years of street fights, cracked like fireworks, and his wrist ached like fury. The pain might be off in the dream—but he’d come to rejoin it. “You do what you gotta do. I’ll guard your back.”

The Great Amphitheatre, Old Island: Cyprilun 35

Ren felt the moment the dream changed.

Time had been slipping—full sun, full moons, no moons at all—but she heard a distant ringing of bells, and suddenly everything flashed to twilight and stayed that way. The light above the Point surged violet and green and midnight blue, a beacon above a sea of fog.

The wellspring, she thought, and panic climbed into her mouth. Am I too late?

But the dream didn’t shatter, and the light continued to glow. And she refused to give up.

As she scaled the Point, though, things began to leak through. Not nightmares or dreams of a different Nadežra: the waking world, with shrieking crowds of people streaming down the slope, away from the amphitheatre. For a moment she wondered if they’d been dosed with ash—the Night of Hells all over again—but no. Somehow, the waking world was bleeding across the boundary between the realms.

Ren dodged and wove around the people, not sure if they would be physical to her or she to them. Then, up ahead, she saw an all-too-familiar figure.

Grey Serrado stood at the mouth of the tunnel into the amphitheatre, shouting orders and gesturing people away. To get inside, Ren would have to get past him.

She closed her eyes and tried to will the dream to let her step through. To jump, the way she’d done during the Night of Hells, moving to where she needed to be. But when she opened her eyes again, she was still outside.

She was disguised as Arenza. Would that be enough? He’d only seen her briefly, months ago, and had no reason to make the connection. But it was a risk—

The world shuddered around her, like every thread in the fabric had twanged at once. Ren swore. What will I do—put my masquerade ahead of this?

No. But she didn’t have to.

She’d changed in the dream once before, from Renata’s River Dežera costume to Vraszenian clothes and her own natural appearance. Could she use that to make herself a disguise now? Was she enough in the dream for that to work?

Ren hesitantly wove her fingers through the threads of the dream, tugging gently. A mask—that was what she needed.