Hero of Dreams - By Brian Lumley Page 0,2

that if you do that it makes it easier to stay here for longer periods. You don't wake up so easy. Those steps take you down to lower levels of dream, if you see what I mean."

"Not for me," Hero shook his head. "I've heard of people using those steps who never returned to the waking world at all. They're used by people who have to escape into dreams, and I don't have to. I suppose I'm not much of a dreamer, really-and I don't think I really care to be."

"Have it your own way," Eldin growled. "Anyway, we still seem to be two of a sort. The way I see it, we've got too much going for us in the waking world-or too little- and so we dream. You say you've no anchor here? I'll bet there's precious little to anchor you to the waking world, either. And then again I'm older than you. Perhaps dreams are kinder to me than the waking world. Anyhow, I like it here. Things seem easier, somehow." He coughed and held up a great hand to his mouth. "I'll take my chances in dreams. If they don't kill me, this damned old troublesome body of mine surely will!"

Hero shrugged. He looked at the other in the flickering firelight. Eldin was older than Hero's twenty-six years by at least a dozen, probably more, with a scarred, bearded, quite unhandsome face which yet sported surprisingly clear blue eyes. Stocky and heavy, yet somehow gangly, there was something almost apish about him; yet his every move and gesture hinted of exceptional intelligence and a rare strength. But Hero suspected that the man's strength was being sapped internally, that the flame of death brightened steadily in his lungs, threatening to blossom into a raging inferno. Perhaps that was why he was here* this misfit from the waking world.

"And what of you?" he finally asked, seeking to confirm his reckoning. "What are you doing here, Eldin? I mean specifically, well, here, in the uplands?"

Eldin grinned and sipped his tea, peering at his new friend and admiring his strong arms, clean features and straight, slim figure. "Me? Why, I was looking for you!"

"For me?" Hero was taken aback.

"Let me explain," said Eldin. "In Bahama on the Isle of Oriab, there's a wharfside tavern where sailors gather from all the seas of dreamland. It's a funny little place, that tavern, and until recently none too healthy for outsiders-if you know what I mean. There's been a big clean-up, however, and many of dreamland's peoples have taken to traveling about a lot more. Even Dylath-Leen gets its quota of visitors these days, and I'm told that people are settling there again."

But Eldin's words had set Hero's mind wandering. He remembered stories he'd heard of the Bad Days, when the demon-god Cthulhu's minions in dreamland had attempted a coup over all the lands of dream, and only the intervention of two men from the waking world had stopped them. He remembered the names of those men: Titus Crow and Henri-Laurent de Marigny, and felt a certain awe when he thought of the battles they had fought against all the forces of nightmare.

"Anyway," Eldin's words brought him back to the present. "I was in Bahama across the Southern Sea, and it was there-in this tavern I've mentioned-that my future was told by a certain seer of no mean skill. Mind you, these old bellows of mine-" (he tapped upon his great chest) "-were playing me up and I was a little drunk at the time, and so I can't swear to the surety of my memory, but still I'll tell you what I think the prophet told me: JO

"He cast his stones, gazed at my palm with his strange, invisible eyes, and said-"

"Invisible eyes?" Hero felt obliged to cut him short. "What sort of eyes are those, for goodness' sake?"

The firelight flashed on Eldin's grin and sent shadows slithering over the cave's walls. "What kind? Why, invisible, of course! The kind when you look into them and see .. . nothing! The spaces between the stars-an empty void-you know?"

"No," Hero shook his head.

"You can see their edges," Eldin patiently explained, "Their rims, like craters on both sides of the nose-but inside them ... nothing! I've met several such in dreamland."

Hero slowly nodded and said: "You were saying?"

"Eh? Oh, yes. Well, I'd had a few drinks, I admit it-yes, and I fancy the old seer had, too-and so he read my future in the