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

causeway was narrow, walled, and perhaps thirty yards in length. Since there was room for only two abreast, the three men had to cross single file in order to allow sightseers leaving the Museum the right of passage. Looking down over the low wall as they went, Eldin and Hero were able to gaze almost straight down into uncounted fathoms of air—the aerial “deeps” of the Cerenerian Sea—beneath which the cites, towns, lakes, rivers, mountains and less extraordinary seas of Earth’s dreamland were spread like some fantastic miniature world which reached to the horizon. Far off they could even see Celephais, clearly recognizable where snow-capped Aran’s white head was raised before the nearby Tanarians.
    “Hardly the place for a walk on a windy day,” Hero dryly commented as fleecy clouds scudded by beneath his feet.
    They entered the Museum through a great archway and found themselves in a three-storied building of stone whose sealed windows were of unbreakable crystal. Ventilation was through the archway, which had no door, and also through a square aperture in the ocean-facing curve of the wall which was big as a large window but placed much higher. Its sill was all of five feet from the floor, so that when the adventurers stood on tiptoe, they were just able to stick their heads out to look down over the sky-island’s very rim.
    Though the Museum had three stories, the first and second floors contained only those items with which ordinary museums commonly concern themselves: Hero’s “mummies and bones and books,” and suchlike. The visitors opted to remain on the ground floor, however,
for this was where the museum’s valuables were housed—of which. the quantity and quality were utterly beyond belief.
    “Strangely,” said Eldin, pausing before an open cabinet of cut rubies as big as pigeon’s eggs, “I feel a sort of affinity with this place. Curious, eh?”
    “What’s strange or curious about it?” asked Hero. “You’re a damned thief, right? And this place is crammed with goodies!”
    “No, it’s not that,” Eldin answered with a frown, “though granted I do find these baubles attractive. No, it’s something else, but I don’t quite know what. I rather fancy I must have been an erudite, scholarly sort of chap in the waking world. A haunter of museums or some such.”
    “Is that right?” said Hero, frowning a pseudo-serious frown. “Well, perhaps you’d tell me, learned haunted one, if you’ve noticed anything else strange about this place?”
    “Hmm?” Eldin cocked his head on one side.
    “There’s no security,” said Hero. “These treasures—why, we could just walk right out of here with them! It completely contradicts what our good friend here, Captain Limnar Dass, told us.”
    “I told you the Museum was safe,” said Dass. “And so it is. You’d know what I meant if you could see the Curator. But you probably won’t. He’s here somewhere, but very rarely seen. Usually he only puts in an appearance if someone tries to steal something.”
    “But how could the Curator know?” asked Hero.
    Dass shrugged. “He always does,” he answered.
    “Something else!” cried Eldin, snapping his fingers. “I knew something was puzzling me. There are no labels, notes, histories of the exhibits. There are exhibits—” he licked his lips “—indeed there are—but nothing to tell us anything about them.”
    “Only the fact,” said Dass, “that everything is very rare, very beautiful, or very precious. I’ll tell you what I know of the Curator, if you wish; not that it amounts to a lot, but—”
    But at that moment, coming toward them through a crowd of visitors from a dozen different regions of the dreamlands, Dass spied a small whiskered man dressed in the livery of the waking world. “Ah!” the captain said. “One of the King’s retainers. It looks like Kuranes has finally sent for you.”
    The captain was right. The whiskered man introduced himself as Lord Kuranes’