Page 23 of A Theory of Dreaming (A Study in Drowning #2)

The warrior-king called upon his liege-man,

Who retained his consciousness, and [... ]

Brandished his war knife, battle-sharp,

With the luster of [... ] and love [ sic ] in his eyes.

—from the Neiriad , by Aneurin the Bard, est. 202 BD

Without letting go of his father’s hand, Preston turned about slowly, taking in the now-familiar details of the chamber.

The statues stood proudly in their niches, the puddles on the floor gleamed crystalline, and the window—again he saw Master Gosse drifting outside it, his body suspended in the green-blue water, eyes closed and face in peaceful repose. Sleeping.

And he heard, of course, the bells.

“Father,” he said, his voice low and breathless. “What is this place?”

“Don’t you remember?” His father cocked his head. There was that canny gleam in his gaze, which Preston had not seen in so long. Which had been stolen from him, in those wretched weeks preceding his death. “You’ve known all along. You’ve known since you were small.”

He used the Argantian word for small , which intimated more than just physical size. When you were a child, a baby, a little boy. Preston felt warmth pulse from his chest.

“I think I’m starting to remember,” he said. “I think I’m starting to—to know.”

To believe , he didn’t say.

His father smiled at him—warmly, sagely. Nothing empty in his eyes. “Would you like to see the rest?”

“Yes,” Preston said, his voice eager. “Please.”

With another warm smile, his father began to lead him through the first chamber, and beneath the archway to the second. Preston’s heart was racing, stuttering unevenly. He was so close now. Soon he would see them, and he would understand, and then—

They came to the pedestal of Effy’s statue.

It was carved so cleverly, so intricately, that every detail of her face was captured: the pertness of her nose, the slightly defiant slant to her chin.

Her hair streamed down her shoulders in arrested motion, like falling water frozen by the sudden advent of winter.

The curve of her cheek, the slant of her collarbones, which were exposed by the rather flimsy dress she wore, sleeveless, much like a nightgown. Her feet were bare.

Preston paused there, and examined the statue for cracks. For anything that might threaten its soundness. Not even moisture or dust had gathered on the marble, no barnacles or moss smothering her, no seaweed entangling her... he let out a long, low breath of relief.

“You love her.”

He turned. His father had his face tilted up, admiring the statue.

“Yes.” Preston swallowed. “More than anything.”

“I can see that,” his father said gently.

“But I’m so afraid,” he whispered. “Every time I leave her—even sometimes when I’m staring right at her—I’m so afraid that I’ll lose her.”

He had never confessed this to anyone, of course, and he could never, ever say it to Effy.

She would think herself a burden to him.

It all felt so fragile. Even this statue, made of impermeable marble, seemed as though it could crack and shatter at any moment.

This place, which supposedly bent to his whims, still could not keep her safe.

His very imagination was strangled by fear.

“That may be what it means,” his father said, “to love.”

Preston’s throat grew too tight to speak. He only stared at his father, intact, whole, but only in the palace of his mind. When he woke and returned to the surface, he would be gone again.

“And how are we meant to bear it?” Preston asked at last.

His father did not answer his question directly. Instead, he said, “Tell me about her.”

“She’s brilliant.” His voice cracked a bit.

“She can read a passage once and know its meaning. She can get at things I would never even think to consider.” He couldn’t help but smile a bit, remembering how she’d quoted Myrddin at him, word for word, the challenge in her green gaze.

“She’s brave. She doesn’t believe that she is, but.

..” He trailed off, suddenly suffused by the agony that was his affection.

Then, thickly, he went on, “It takes strength, to feel so much. To feel so deeply.”

His father looked at him fondly. Waited.

“There’s just so much of her,” Preston said, the words pouring out of him, as if they came not from his head but had risen straight from his heart.

“She makes me feel things I never thought I could feel, want things I never thought I would want—believe things I never thought I...” His gaze caught on the emerald-colored flames, flickering in the torches that smoked on the walls.

“‘I am seized by such love, I vow / that I must come to ruin now.’”

He spoke in Argantian, these lines from an old Argantian poem—a lai , as it was called in his tongue. He had learned the lai in secondary school, his father bending over the table as he paged through the book, pointing out subtleties he had missed.

This small memory cut him like a shard of glass. His father would never do such a mundane thing as help him with his homework again.

Or—perhaps he could. Here, in this palace beneath the sea. In his dream.

“She sounds like a girl you ought to marry,” his father said teasingly.

“Maybe.” Preston looked back at his father, or rather, at the space between them. The salt-suffused air. “I wish you could have known her.”

“I do know her a bit now,” his father said. He reached out his hand. “Shall we go on?”

Measuredly, his father led him toward the threshold of the second room, beneath its stone archway. Preston had never ventured this far on his own. The sound of the bells grew louder, until it was a thrumming beneath his feet, a reverberation through the gray floor.

So close now.

This third chamber was the largest so far, stretching vast in all directions.

There were more niches, and more statues set within them, more torches of green flame, yet Preston could not stop to examine them.

His gaze was drawn upward, to the ceiling.

It was made entirely of glass, so transparent that it seemed nothing at all was holding the water back, as if it might pour down and drown him at any moment.

The sea shifted and rippled. A school of pale-bellied fish quivered past, momentarily obscuring his view. And then, when they departed, Preston saw straight through the glass, and through the shuddery green water, into the inner chamber of the Sleeper Museum.

In shock he stumbled backward, furiously blinking his eyes. “How—”

Like so many things it seemed impossible, and yet it was .

He saw through the floor of the museum and to his own resting body.

He saw Master Gosse splayed beside him, the papers of Angharad’s diary strewn about.

For so many slow, dragging moments, he watched himself sleep there, beside the greatest authors of Llyr, and felt a thudding in his chest that was louder than the sound of the bells.

The bells.

Preston turned, and looked upon them at last. They rose up, through the glass roof of the chamber, in a crumbling gray tower.

Though they were unprotected, their ringing was not slowed at all by the torpid water, and their sound was not at all diminished.

They rang and rang, and the sea pulsed out from around them.

Their noise could be perceived not only by his ears but by his eyes as well.

Until now, their tolling had seemed staggered and inconsonant. Now he heard the rhythm and the music. It sang in his bones.

“You can hear them, too, can’t you?” Preston asked his father desperately.

“To hear them in their own palace is one thing,” his father replied. “To hear them from above the water is another.”

He did not elaborate, and Preston could think of no way to reply. Instead, he took a hesitant step forward, farther into the chamber. The bells were not the only thing of note within. In the distance, past every niche, every green-smoking torch, was the largest statue he had yet seen.

As if in a trance, Preston approached it. Its plinth alone was taller than Preston. His gaze followed the statue up, from its slippered feet, along the line of its robes, to its coiled beard, to the crown it wore upon its head. A king.

What was curious about the king was his stance.

He did not have his sword drawn out; he did not look over the room with an unperturbed expression, wise and preeminent.

Instead, his face was turned to the side, his lips pulled back in revulsion and horror.

His legs were set apart and his robes billowed out, as if he were fleeing from something. As if he were being chased.

A fearful king. It made Preston’s skin prickle with cold.

The statue had one arm drawn to his chest, clutching something there that Preston could not make out.

An amulet? A coin? His other arm trailed behind him, the sleeve of his robe rucked up to reveal the length of his forearm.

Only unlike the rest of the statue, it was not made of marble.

His hand and arm were made of pure silver, which gathered the light and gleamed.

“What is this?” Preston whispered, turning to look at his father. “Who is this?”

His father gave him a gentle smile. “You already know.”

He didn’t. There was indeed something familiar about the king, but he couldn’t place it.

His mind seemed to clench emptily. Preston’s gaze drew back to the statue.

He had not noticed before that there was a wooden chair set beneath it.

It was carved intricately with waves and its back was inlaid in pearl. Not an ordinary chair, no—a throne.

The sight of the empty throne was somehow terrifying to him. And perhaps it was that terror that made Preston begin to feel unsteady on his feet, his knees quivering, his skin growing slick, as if overtaken with the chill sweat of a fever. He was fading.

“No,” he said, his voice cracking, “I don’t want to go.”

His father gave his shoulder a squeeze, his hand warm and heavy. “You’ll be back.”