Read Online Ship of Dreams by Brian Lumley - Free Book Online Page B

and they were able to return to their lodgings. Finally, as they prepared for bed in the attic bedroom of an old tavern on Serannian’s outskirts, Eldin was able to ask the one question which had been burning him up since their audience with Kuranes.
    “Right,” he began, “now what’s all this about me not being the only thief in dreamland, eh? Was that your way of saying that—”
    Hero, placing his finger on his lips, silenced him. “Even walls can have ears,” he cautioned. He dug into the pocket of his jacket where he had folded it onto a chair beside his bed, produced a ruby which was the twin of the one Eldin had stolen, tossed it across the room. His burly companion caught it in cupped hands.
    “How in hell—?” said Eldin.
    “Easy,” Hero whispered. “One minute after I took it
I had a premonition. A sense of impending nasty. I popped it into Limnar’s pocket in the Museum and took it back from him when we were safely away from the place. If the Curator had stopped me, I was clean. If he had stopped Limnar—well, I didn’t think that likely. As it happened, he stopped you.” He grinned. “If he’s since carried out an inventory … I guess he’ll be going rusty with a rage right now!”
    “He’s not the only one,” Eldin’s chin began to jut. “If I remember right you gave me a pretty hard time after I was caught. And you blacker than the ace of spades!”
    “That was to allay Limnar’s suspicions, dolt!” Hero’s grin broadened. “We couldn’t have him mistrusting both of us, now could we?”
    But Eldin was no longer listening. Instead he held the gem up to the glow of a lantern. “Oh, look at it, look at it!” he breathed in ecstasy. “It must be the most beautiful stone I’ve ever seen—next to the one I gave back.”
    “And as you said,” Hero reminded him, “we’ll live like kings for five long years on this one stone alone.”
    “One stone alone,” repeated Eldin. Then his frown reappeared and he was suddenly gloomy. “Huh!” he snorted. “ If we survive this damned quest, that is! And believe me, survival is no easy thing in Zura.”
    Hero shook his head sadly. “You really are getting old, my friend,” he said. “Be certain we’re not going questing for Kuranes or anyone else. Not to Zura. Not while we’re rich as a couple of lords. Oh, we’ll go along with him for now, by all means—but only for now. Then, as soon as we’re off Serannian, at our very first opportunity—”
    “We weigh anchor and shove off, right?” said Eldin, gleefully.
    “Right,” Hero emphatically agreed. “Now let’s get some shuteye, yes? Tomorrow is another day.”
     
     
    Hero dreamed dreams within dreams of all that had passed since his arrival with Eldin in Serannian. Over and over his sleeping mind repeated—with certain of those inexplicable variations which dreams invariably insert into the order of things—Kuranes’ explanation of the threat against Serannian, against the entire dreamlands. It had started three years ago with a visit, when two alleged Priests of Zura had arrived in Serannian as passengers on a galley out of Celephais. Gray-robed the two had been, their cowled faces gray, unsmiling shadows.
    Because they said they hailed from Zura (and said it in voices which were flat and gray as their robes and shadowy faces), people tended to give them a wide berth. Also, there had been an odor about them, a certain smell which not even the most powerful perfumes could mask. It was that fetor which old sailors remembered from days when their ships had plied all the seas of dream, when they had inadvertently sailed too close to the shores of Zura.
    For in those days Zura had been known as the Land of Pleasures Unattained, because the beauties and wonders its shores displayed had never been able to disguise the reek of plague-stricken towns and the soul-wrenching stench of gaping cemeteries—which was that same charnel odor surrounding the so-called Priests of