Night Mare by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online Page A

dreams relating to that.
    “Oh, they’ll all be in costume, of course. So Dor won’t know, poor thing. Maybe Irene won’t know either. It’s all very secret. Nobody knows except everybody else.”
    Imbri realized that she had again been distracted by an irrelevancy and was getting ever more deeply enmeshed in the confusions of Chameleon’s outlook. “Two days is too long for my message to wait. The Horseman is within range of Castle Roogna now, spying on the Xanth defenses. Anyway, it seems that Prince Dor will be too busy to pay attention to it. You must go to the King first thing tomorrow morning.”
    “Oh, I couldn’t bother the King. He’s—”
    “Seventy years old. He still needs to know. The Horseman is dangerous!”
    The dream Chameleon looked at the dream Imbri with childlike seriousness. “Why don’t
you
tell him, then?”
    “I can’t. My mission here must be confidential.”
    Then Imbri paused, startled. Confidential? From whom was the secret of her nature to be kept? The Horseman already knew! He had ridden her and intercepted her message and forced her to tell him everything!
    “I’ll go tell him right now!” Imbri said, cursing her own foolishness.
    “But it’s night! The King’s asleep!”
    “All the better. I’m a night mare.”
    “Oh. That’s all right then. But don’t give him any bad dreams. He’s a good man.”
    “I won’t.” Imbri trotted through the rindwall of the cottage, letting Chameleon lapse into more peaceful slumber. She hurried to Castle Roogna, hurdled the moat with one prodigious leap, and phased through the massive outer wall. This would be no easy castle to take by storm! She passed through the somber, darkened halls and passages, until she came to the royal bedchamber.
    The King and Queen had separate apartments. Both were safely asleep. Imbri entered the King’s chamber and stood over him, exactly as if she were on dream duty.
    Even at seventy, which was old for a mortal man, he was a noble figure of his kind. The lines of his face provided the appearance of wisdom as much as of age. Yet it was clear he was mortal; she detected infirmities of system that would in due course bring him to a natural demise. He had reigned for twenty-five years; perhaps that was enough. Except that if he lacked a competent replacement in Prince Dor . . .
    She entered his mind in dream form, this time assuming the likeness of a nymph, bare of breast and innocent of countenance, symbolic of her intention to conceal nothing from him. “King Trent!” she called.
    He had been dreaming he was sleeping; now he dreamed he woke. “What are you doing in my bedroom, nymph?” he demanded. “Are you one of my daughter’s playmates? Speak, or I will transform you into a flower.”
    Startled, Imbri did not speak—and suddenly, in the dream, she was a tiger lily. She growled, baring her petals in a grimace.
    “All right—I’ll give you another chance.” King Trent did not make any gesture, but Imbri was back in nymph form. Even in dreams, the King’s magic was formidable!
    “I bring you a message,” she said quickly through the mouth of the nymph. “Beware the Horseman.”
    “And who is the Horseman—a kind of centaur?”
    “No, sir. He is a man who rides horses. He rode me—” She paused, realizing this statement did not make much sense while she was in nymph image. “I am a night mare—”
    “Ah, then this is, after all, a dream! I mistook it for reality. My apology.”
    Imbri was embarrassed that a King should apologize to a dream image. “But it is real! The dream is only to communicate—.”
    “Really? Then I had better wake.”
    The King made an effort and woke. Imbri was amazed; in all her one hundred and fifty years’ experience in dream duty, after her youth and apprenticeship, she had not seen anyone do this so readily.
    “So you really
are
a mare,” King Trent said, studying her in reality. “Not a nymph sent to tempt me into foolish