A Warrior of Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

how are your dreams? Vivid? Insightful?"
    Feran still felt a little embarrassed at the answer he'd been forced to give. I haven't had any. My sleep seems to be fitful. But I have managed a wonderful sense of detachment. I feel serene .
    "You feel faint, Lad. A few more days and what dreams you have will be delusions conjured by an empty stomach bored with nothing else to do."
    But I wanted to deny my body, reach beyond the physical ...
    "Then hang yourself and be done. It's quicker."
    Feran, alone in the cave winced at the memory visiting him there. Master, I don't understand .
    "It's simple. The body is not to be denied — it's to be kept quiet. You give it want it wants and it leaves you alone so you can get on with your work. Get on with it, Feran." Then the old man had tossed him an apple and left.
    Feran held an apple now, and as then, he didn't hesitate. When his body was somewhat pacified with food and drink, he went back outside to soak his weary muscles in the basin. He leaned back, feeling his body begin — grudgingly — to leave him alone. He remained there until the hidden sun had truly set, and the first faint stars appeared in the gap between the stones.
    Time to get on with it.
    *
    As dungeons went, the one Joslyn found herself in wasn’t so bad. She looked around her room. That alone was a concept that made her a little giddy. Her room, with a real bed, with linen and quilting and pillow. A table and chair. A closet. A wonderfully long walk of fifteen strides from the door to a tall window that opened high in the wall over a courtyard near the center of the temple. And it was all for her. So were the manacles.
    Joslyn sat down on her bed and stared at them. Delicate but very strong, gold alloyed with something to make them rigid. They were fur lined to prevent chafing and engraved with the sign of the Closed Eye, and easily worth a month's thieving. Right now they just reminded Joslyn that she was caught. Joslyn stood, went back to the window. She looked up, then down, sighed. Even Merasys couldn't climb this .
    Joslyn heard voices in the corridor and her sense of being trapped intensified. She hopped up on the windowsill as someone knocked on the door. After a pause the door opened and Tagramon came in. He noted where Joslyn stood, and smiled at her.
    "Is it really as bad as that?"
    Joslyn suddenly felt very foolish. She wasn't going to jump, and the faint amusement on the Dream Master's face told her that he knew it, too. She stepped down from the window.
    "They tell me you tried to run away."
    It hadn’t been much of a try. Joslyn had barely made it one level below her room when two White Robes cornered her in a blind corridor. And despite her struggles, which included a bite and several well-placed kicks, there had been no anger or punishment. The acolytes had handled her with a care bordering on reverence as they clamped the gold manacles on her wrists and delivered her back to her room. "I didn't get very far," she said.
    "Why?"
    Joslyn shrugged. "I got lost."
    Tagramon chuckled. "Joslyn, don't try to make me think there's no more to you than that. I know you, girl. Perhaps better than you know yourself just now."
    "How do you know me? I never saw you before last night!"
    "But I've seen you, Joslyn. I've seen your dreams. That's how we found you, and we'd find you again as easily if you did manage to leave the Temple. Now tell me why you tried."
    Joslyn held up her hands, showed him the chains. "When one is imprisoned, shouldn't one try to escape?"
    The Dream Master considered this. "There's a catch on each manacle opposite the hinge. Throw it."
    Joslyn had noticed those, but hadn't paid much attention. After all, they couldn't be what they seemed. But they were. Joslyn opened each one and her manacles fell to the floor. "Damn..."
    "Your perceptions have played you falsely, Joslyn. The Temple of Somna is not your prison. Prison is where you were , trapped in a life certainly difficult and more than