Chapter 786: The First Dreaming Experience
Tawny hair, long and loose, swept bangs pinned to one side to show half her forehead. The face was soft in its proportions — not weak, but the kind of careful symmetry that suggested a gentle disposition, the kind that under normal circumstances Roland might have appreciated. Under these circumstances, standing in the middle of his empty living room with no visible means of arrival, it served mainly to make her seem more unsettling.
The robe, though. He noticed that next. Old beyond simple wear, the seams pulling away, the cuffs fraying to threads, the hem ragged as something rescued from refuse.
“I heard you go out,” Zero said from behind him, her voice barely above a whisper, “so I went to check the front door was locked. When I turned around, she was just — standing there.”
The woman had noticed the commotion. She raised her head and met Roland’s eyes.
Her expression collapsed into something it took him a moment to read as disoriented surprise.
He closed his hand at his side and readied himself.
“Your — ” she said. “Your Majesty?”
Your Majesty.
“I’m Phyllis, Your Majesty. What’s — what is this place?”
The name hit him like a key turning in a lock. Phyllis. God’s Punishment Witch. The castle hall. He ran the implications in rapid succession — why would she be here, what does it mean that she’s here, where is Anna, why hasn’t Anna come, is this world opening —
“Hey.” Zero’s voice, sharper now, some of the fear already converting to suspicion. “You know each other? What does ‘Your Majesty’ mean? Are you roleplay—”
“She’s a distant relative.” The lie came without hesitation. Roland stepped fully into the room and made his voice easy. “We grew up together. The way she addresses me — that’s just a nickname we’ve had since childhood. Old habit.”
“A relative.” Zero studied the woman with the flat appraisal of someone who has decided to believe nothing yet. “But you just asked who she was.”
“Did I?” Roland looked at her with bland certainty. “I saw someone crying who’d scared herself halfway to fainting. That’s what I saw.”
The color that came up in Zero’s face was extraordinary. “I didn’t faint—”
“You screamed. This lady was in the other room when I left — she was about to say something when you ran out. I imagine your screaming confused her as much as the other way around.”
Zero turned to Phyllis. Phyllis — bless her, whatever her confusion — had already taken the cue. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’d been in the back room, and by the time I came out you’d already screamed and run to the door.”
“You see?” Roland let it lie there. “You startled her.”
“I…” Zero opened her mouth. Closed it. She couldn’t deny the scream, and she wasn’t a liar; the two facts trapped her. For a moment her eyes went bright, and Roland felt a small, genuine twinge — that was too much.
He bent and ruffled her hair. “It was a miscommunication. Go back to your homework.”
She looked at him for a moment. Then she kicked him squarely in the shin.
“Uncle, you are such a jerk.” She spun and went back to her room, slamming the door behind her.
Roland stood up, rubbing his shin, and recognized that the lesson had been administered adequately. Perhaps not in the direction he’d intended, but effectively enough.
From behind him: “Haha.” Phyllis, trying to contain it and failing. “You’re rather different here than in Neverwinter.”
“I am the creator and ruler of this world,” Roland said with as much dignity as he could recover. “It’s a different jurisdiction.” He gestured her in. “Come inside. I have questions.”
Half an hour later, Roland was convinced.
She knew Taquila — the actual Taquila, details no memory fragment could have assembled into a coherent whole. She knew the castle, knew what had happened in it, knew her own history with the Black Money operation as guide “No. 76.” She volunteered specifics he hadn’t been certain of himself, cross-references that held up under examination. The woman standing in his living room in a ruined robe was, without meaningful doubt, Phyllis.
Which left the question of why.
“I don’t fully understand it either,” she said. “The First Army had just changed shift. I went to restore my strength — what we call disconnecting, detaching the consciousness and letting the body rest. When I came back to awareness, I was here.” She paused. “You call it a dream world?”
“Yes. A world that exists only in my dream. Though whether that description still holds —” He gestured vaguely at the walls. “I’m not sure anymore.”
This world had been built from his memories; he was certain of that. An intrusion meant someone had entered his memory without permission. The word sat poorly with him, not because he suspected Phyllis of malice, but because something had happened that he didn’t understand, and not understanding things in a world that he was supposed to control was uncomfortable in a specific way.
He went to the back of the bedroom door, unfolded the ladder stored there, and set it against the wall. “A small test. Fall from the top and the dream ends — that’s how it works for me. Try it; if you return to the real world, wait for me in the hall and I’ll be there shortly.”
“Wait.” Phyllis reached out and caught his arm.
In Neverwinter, it would have been a significant breach. Here she had apparently set some of her habits aside. He found he didn’t object.
“Could you pinch me?” she asked. “As hard as you can.”
“I’ve confirmed that pain doesn’t end the dream,” Roland said.
“That’s not why I’m asking.” She rolled up her sleeve. Her arm was pale, the skin smooth. “Please.”
He looked at her face. He thought of what Agatha had told him about God’s Punishment Witches — about what they gave up, about the bodies they carried now, bodies that couldn’t bleed, couldn’t ache, couldn’t register what the world was doing to them. He understood what Phyllis was asking for.
He took her wrist and pinched, using real force.
The sound she made was small and involuntary. She went rigid from her feet upward, clenching her teeth around it — not pain, exactly, but the response of someone who had gone without sensation for so long that even pain had become precious. Her whole frame was shaking slightly. Her eyes, when she finally opened them, were lit from somewhere inside.
“God almighty.” She breathed it out slowly. “I can feel it.”
“You can do it yourself too, you know.”
She shook her head. “That’s different.” She went to her knees, one hand over her heart in the formal salute of a senior Union member. “Majesty. This world may be a dream to you. To me it is —” She stopped. Started again. “I would do anything to stay here. Even briefly. Even this once. If I leave now and the door closes behind me, I don’t know what I would have lost.” She looked up at him. “Could you let me stay until evening? Just the one day?”
Two dream-world days ran roughly even with one real-world night. A few extra hours. Nothing he couldn’t recover from.
Roland looked at the woman kneeling on his living room floor, shaking slightly from the residual echo of a small pinch, and thought about what kind of transaction this actually was.
“Get up,” he said. “We’ll do the test this evening.”
Phyllis rose. Her hand came back to her heart in that formal salute, but her eyes were different now — unguarded in a way that struck him as rare and important. “I understand now why the Witch Union follows you.”
He was about to answer when someone knocked on the bedroom door.
Zero’s voice. “I made tea. Do you guys want some?”
Absolutely not, Roland thought. Zero in a fury did not make tea for people. Zero in a fury disappeared for hours and emerged having apparently forgotten the incident entirely. This was something else — a pretext, a survey.
He opened the door. Her hands were empty. She poked her head sideways and fixed Phyllis with a critical, assessing stare.
“Where’s the tea?”
“Living room. Help yourself.” A pause. “Don’t make weird noises, by the way. You’re distracting me from homework.” She gave Phyllis one more sharp look, then retreated to her room.
Roland pulled the door shut. “Don’t concern yourself with her. She’s a child of the 2000s — they come sophisticated.”
Phyllis looked confused. “The 2000s?”
“I’ll explain outside.” He waved it away. “We’re spending the day properly, not sitting in here. There’s an entire world to see.”
The ancient witch’s eyes went to the window. Through it, the city — full of its noise and motion and inexplicable machinery.
“I can go out? Like this?” she said. “Won’t people — here too, are witches —”
“Here you’d be a celebrity.” He said it simply, because it was simply true. “Being different causes you no harm in this world. You’ll have admirers. As long as you don’t break any laws.” He caught her expression shifting, and added: “And yes. There are taverns.”
Something unlocked in her face — genuine, immediate, the delight of a person who had been given back something they had stopped believing in.
“Can we —” she started. “Could we try food here? What kinds of food —”
He had nearly offered her the afternoon with the ladder and instead. He understood now, precisely, how close that had been to a catastrophe.
“More food than you can imagine,” Roland said. “Go find Zero. Tell her we’re going out.”