“Good job, Razz!” Archer yelled, taking the momentum the wave gave him into a bigger swell getting ready to curl toward the Drimmrwood. He was into the trees now, taking the wave as far as it would carry him. It took him deep into the wood, but not to the clearing. The Nightmare Lord had already redirected his team. The horses were bearing down on Archer’s position.
Archer dismissed the longboard and took off at a sprint. He bounded over root, stump, and fallen trees. He tripped, rolled, scrambled back to his feet, and ran on. He held up the crown and yelled, “You’ll never get this back, loser! It’s mine now!”
Archer taunted the Nightmare Lord and felt a strange thrill in so doing. It was going to be a dark day if his plan didn’t work, he knew. But then, it was already a very dark day. Nothing would change that, so he stuck to his plan and raced on.
He saw it: the clearing. With a yelp, he dove out of the trees and rolled toward his camouflaged anchor, the well his mother had loved so much. He was a mere yard away when he heard a crack. In that instant, he smelled sulfur. Something wrapped around his waist and began to burn.
Archer wrenched and pulled, but Vorcaust, the Nightmare Lord’s flaming whip, held him fast.
“You cannot escape!” the Nightmare Lord roared.
The flames cut through his leather armor and began to sear his skin. Archer screamed. He managed an agonizing step forward. It was all he needed. “Let’s take this fight to my turf!” he screamed. “See how you do!”
Archer lunged and touched the well.
THIRTY-ONE
THE WELL
WHEN ARCHER AWOKE, HE WAS SHOCKED TO FIND THAT he was no longer in bed. He was at his mother’s well in the backyard.
The Nightmare Lord’s whip was still tangled around his waist, but it no longer burned. Archer turned round to find his pale-eyed tormentor just gaining his feet. He was moving slowly, stiffly. It’s working, Archer thought. He’s weakening.
“How does it feel?” Archer shouted. He held up the crown for the Nightmare Lord to see. “Say good-bye to your kingdom.” He tossed the crown down the well.
The Nightmare Lord gave a wrenching jerk to the whip, and Archer fell forward. Flat on his face.
“I am not finished with you,” the Nightmare Lord said, his voice low and menacing.
Archer rolled up and took hold of the whipcord. It already felt brittle. The Dreamtreader gave the hardest tug he could and yanked the Nightmare Lord forward. Archer ran ahead too, but he dove to the side and dragged his leg in front of the Nightmare Lord, sweeping the bigger foe’s legs.
The Nightmare Lord’s momentum threw him hard. The whipcord snapped between the two combatants. Archer ate some turf, but the Nightmare Lord slammed into the side of the well.
Archer spun back to his feet and saw the Nightmare Lord half collapsed over the edge of the well. Archer turned and raced toward him. He plowed into the enemy’s back, pressing him into the old stone.
The Nightmare Lord howled, but Archer wasn’t finished. The Dreamtreader wrapped his arms around the Nightmare Lord’s legs and lifted with everything he had. Archer lifted and pushed, and finally, the Nightmare Lord toppled over the side. He cried out, “Dreamtreader!” Then there was silence.
Archer exhaled and spat blood.
He looked over the side of the well to see only darkness. But then, like some kind of mutated spider, the Nightmare Lord appeared in the pale moon’s light. He had found a hold, maybe where the mortar was worn away, and was trying to climb back up.
“No!” Archer yelled. He looked around for some kind of weapon. He wasn’t in the Dream anymore, so he couldn’t just summon a sword or a grenade. There was nothing near. Just the well. He went back to the well, slamming into the loosened stone at the edge and looking down. The Nightmare Lord was ten feet away from the edge.
“No!” he yelled again. He saw those pale eyes leering up at him. But Archer grabbed the edges of the stone. He worked it with his arms, wobbling it free from the mortar. He took up the stone with both hands, held it high above his head, and then heaved it down at the Nightmare Lord.
Even as Archer fell away, he heard the sickening crunch as the thirty-pound stone slammed into the Nightmare Lord’s face. Archer collapsed in a dirty, sweaty bloody heap and allowed himself the slightest of smiles.
Suddenly, a howling wind roared across the field. It blasted through the trees and flattened the tall grass. Archer crawled a few feet away from the well, got to a knee, and then stood. Just as he turned toward the well, there came a haunting groan from its depths. The well spewed up a massive blast of water and ash. Just one large spout, and it was over.
It felt to Archer like he had been holding his breath for hours and could finally exhale. He wiped the blood and sweat out of his eyes and started walking toward his house. When he saw his family again, he would hug them with all his might. But not until morning.
With whatever hours of darkness were left, Archer resolved to sleep . . . and not to Dreamtread. In fact, he was going to take a huge break from Dreamtreading . . . well, if it was okay with Master Gabriel, that is.
He wandered up the hill in his backyard and wondered at the brightness of the moon. It was a beautiful night. He glanced up at the stars. He looked at the moon’s reflection in a window on the back of the house.
He stopped walking. There were two moons in the reflection.
“Watch out, Archer!” It was the Windmaiden.
Archer stood very still. “No,” he whispered.
With a last bit of mental strength, Archer called up a UV light, something he should not have been able to do in the waking world. Already knowing what he’d find, Archer shone the UV light up one of his legs and down the other, and then onto his midsection. And there it was:
A tendril.
It hung loosely from his gut where it had apparently latched on as Archer had raced recklessly through the trees.
“I’m still in the Dream,” Archer muttered, feeling the strength drain out of him, his will breaking, and fear seizing him. He blinked, and the world turned upside down.
Archer was there again, in the Drimmrwood clearing once more. He was wrapped bodily in the Nightmare Lord’s burning whip. The fire licked at his vest and the duster. The pressure and the heat made Archer gasp.
“It was kind of you to lead me to your anchor,” the Nightmare Lord hissed, “. . . to all of your anchors!”
With his bare hand, Archer ripped the tendril free and tossed it away. He still had the crown in his other hand. There wasn’t much point to it, not now. After all, he’d treated the Nightmare Lord to a sneak preview of his plan. Archer had no mental energy, no physical strength. All he wanted to do was sleep. He closed his eyes and fell toward the well.
THIRTY-TWO
DANGEROUS MINDS
THIS TIME, WHEN ARCHER OPENED HIS EYES, HE WAS IN his bedroom, tangled in both the bedspread and the Nightmare Lord’s whip. “I’m home,” Archer whispered.
He expected to hear a gloating laugh and then to feel the deep bite of Scorghuul, the enemy’s fierce axe, carving a furrow in his back. But there was nothing. Archer spun off his bed and stumbled on the rug, the whipcord tangling his feet. He found some footing and started to turn round every which way, letting the slack whipcord fall to his feet. Where was the Nightmare Lord?
A high-pitched scream. And then, “Archer, help me!” Kaylie.
“No,” Archer screamed. “No, no, no!” He tore out of his room and turned the corner into the hall. He heard noise behind him now, a great pounding from his father’s room. He couldn’t stop. The hall was only twenty-some feet, but it seemed like a thousand yards. Archer slipped, lunged, and clawed forward. He tore around the doorjamb and into Kaylie’s room. The first thing he saw was Patches, her scarecrow dolly, sprawled and lying on the floor in the shredded remains of her pink blanket. Kaylie screamed again. Archer looked up. His worst nightmare had become reality. He’d brought the Nightmare Lord back with him. The Dream King was weakened, yes, but
he was crushing Kaylie in his hands.
“Take me to your anchor!” the Nightmare Lord commanded. “Or I will kill her.”
“Archer!” she cried, whipping her blanket around. “Archer, he’s hurting me!”
“Kaylie!” The shout was back up the hallway. It was Archer’s father.
“Don’t hurt her!” Archer yelled. “I will, I’ll take you to the anchor. Just . . . don’t . . . hurt . . . her!”
“Now!” the Nightmare Lord roared. He lifted one hand, and Kaylie’s bedroom door slammed. In moments the doorknob jostled and there came a fierce pounding on the door.
“Kaylie, honey! I’m here! Daddy’s here!”
In his rasping, hornet-stung voice, the Nightmare Lord declared, “This place . . . this house of misery . . . is my house.” He brought his face near Kaylie’s and said, “You never knew your mother, did you? So it must not have pained you when she gasped out her last. Perhaps, perhaps I will let your father in after all . . . so that you can watch him die!”
“Daddy!” Kaylie screamed. She kicked out, her right foot striking the Nightmare Lord in his ruined left eye.
He dropped her, and as he did, Archer lunged. The two crashed together, shattering the bedroom window behind the Nightmare Lord, Archer riding his enemy to the floor. He straddled the Nightmare Lord and started pounding his face with both fists.
Kaylie was still screaming and crying, but she had snatched up Patches and the remnants of her blanket. “Archer, get away from him!” Kaylie cried.
But Archer wasn’t going to stop. His father wouldn’t understand. This was not some thief or cat burglar. Archer continued to rain fists, striking with the hard bone ridge of his hand again and again. But it didn’t seem enough. The Nightmare Lord’s one eye was still open, still full of hate.
Archer looked for something, anything he could use for a weapon. Pillows, bedspread, desk, bookcase: there were no weapons to be found. A force struck Archer’s chest. It knocked the wind out of his lungs and sent him sprawling backward. He slammed hard into something. He heard a groan behind him, and the next thing he knew, Archer was entangled in the legs of Kaylie’s desk. The Nightmare Lord stood towering over Archer’s sister, Scorghuul in his hands. Archer tried to get up but felt a weight upon his chest. It was as if some invisible thing sat upon him and crushed him to the ground. He fought and yanked and tried to get free.
But it was all for nothing. In the end, all Archer could do was stare. The Nightmare Lord raised his fearsome weapon, but his movement was anything but fluid. His limbs stuttered as they moved as if the axe weighed ten times what it should. He’s weakening, Archer thought. Yet the axe was still moving.
The Nightmare Lord raised the axe higher, and then it came plunging down. Archer blinked or thought he had. There had been a blur. Something leaped out of Kaylie’s arms and seemed to unfold to a much larger size.
Archer blinked again, and there was Patches, Kaylie’s doll. Only this version of Patches was a foot taller than the Nightmare Lord, and it had grabbed the enemy’s axe hand. He held the weapon at bay.
Archer wriggled out from the desk at last and found his legs, but his mind still staggered. “How? How is this possible?” he asked.
The Nightmare Lord began to tremble. The speed and ferocity of the convulsions increased. A fine gray powder began to radiate from every inch of his body.
Kaylie looked at Archer and said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I eavesdropped on you and Rigby in his basement. Then I read your Dreamtreader book.”
“But you cannot have the will!” the Nightmare Lord howled. “You are just a child . . . a weak-minded child.”
Kaylie turned back to the enemy and said, “I might be a child, but I am anything but weak-minded!” She closed her hand into a fist. There came a swift crackling, like a dozen branches breaking at once. Patches collapsed, crushing the the Nightmare Lord in its embrace. Arms, legs, neck, and head cracked and crumbled. Then he exploded.
Ash rained down in Kaylie’s room. The Nightmare Lord was gone.
THIRTY-THREE
RECKONING
A WEEK LATER, ARCHER SAT WITH KAYLIE IN RIGBY’S basement. It had been Kaylie’s idea, of course. Archer and Rigby had become bitter enemies since that fateful night and had barely spoken to each other. At first, Archer planned to keep as far away from Rigby as he could, but Kaylie’s nonstop whining about the “zoo” pushed Archer to reconsider. That’s when he remembered something Master Gabriel had once said. “Keep your friends close, and keep your enemies closer.”
With Rigby’s reluctant permission, they’d taken on the animals’ care three days a week and loved every minute of it. Almost every minute.
Archer still didn’t like dealing with “poop duty.” But he was happy to have Doctor Who perched on his shoulder again. He was happy to be there with his little sister.
The Nightmare Lord had turned completely to ash, leaving Archer’s father at a loss for what he’d heard that night. But Archer knew that Kaylie knew what happened. She’d been wide-awake, and she’d understood.
“One thing I want to know, Archer,” she said.
“Okay,” he replied. “But it’ll have to be a trade. Something you want to know for something I want to know.”
“Sure,” she said. “But me first.”
“Okay.”
“I want to know if you can still go into dreams . . . and make things real?”
“Yes,” he said. “I can.”
“I thought so,” she said.
“Ah,” Archer said. “Now, my turn, but I think I already know the answer. I want to know if you can still make things real here?”
Kaylie closed the meerkat pen and blushed almost as red as her pigtails. “Well . . .” She held up a hand, and a double-scoop ice cream cone materialized. “Cotton candy flavored,” she said. “My favorite.”
“I think . . . ,” Archer said. “I’m going to need to tell Master Gabriel about you.”
It was the seventh of June, the first day of Archer’s summer break from school. It was no surprise when Master Gabriel appeared. He always came on the seventh of the month.
“The time has come for reckoning,” Master Gabriel said.
Archer stared at the floor. He pictured Duncan laughing, always laughing . . . and Mesmeera faithfully pruning her rose bushes. And it all consumed by hungry flames.
“I killed them,” Archer whispered. “I didn’t mean to, but . . . I killed them.”
Master Gabriel placed a hand on Archer’s shoulder. “Duncan and Mesmeera knew the risks involved in Dreamtreading,” he said. “Just as you do. They made choices, wrong choices, just as you did. But none of you acted in a vacuum. There was an enemy at every turn, an enemy who lived to cause nightmares. He is the root, and he is no more.”
“I’m sorry,” Archer said. “I should have listened from the beginning.”
“That wisdom was hard won,” Master Gabriel said gently. But then his tone snapped back to his usual abrupt command. “In any case, there are still consequences.”
Archer pulled away, went to his closet, and came back with The Dreamtreader’s Creed. “Here,” he said.
“What’s this, then?” Master Gabriel asked.
“I’m turning it in,” he said. “I failed. I revoked my Dreamtreading privileges. You’re going to make me go back to being . . . just a regular person.”
“My dear Archer,” the master Dreamtreader said, “you really have gone quite mad, haven’t you?”
“What?”
“I’m going to make you go back, all right,” he said. “But back to Dreamtreading. There is only you for the time being. Your consequence is to patrol, not just Forms, but Patterns and Verse as well. At least until we can find two more to bear those Dreamtreader stations.”
“I’m not fired?”
“No, you misguided boy, you are not ‘fired.’ You will recompense your actions by shepherding the Dream alone, for now. Begin with a close scrutiny of Shadowkeep.”
&nb
sp; “But the Nightmare Lord is dead,” Archer said. “You just said—”
“Yes, but his master is not,” Master Gabriel replied. “And as you know, I am afraid that Number 6, Rue de la Mort is occupied again. Not only that, but something is making the Dream more unstable. If nothing changes, it could reach rift-level in less than a month.”
“Breaches?”
“That is what I suspected,” Master Gabriel explained. “But I have had no reports from any of the kingdoms. I have inquired, but no one has seen a breach anywhere.”
“And yet, the Dream is unstable,” Archer said. “I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I,” Master Gabriel said. “You will have to look into it.”
“I will,” Archer said. “But, before you leave, we need to talk about my sister.”
EPILOGUE
“HE SHOULD BE HERE ANY MINUTE,” RIGBY SAID, LEADING Kara into the kitchen.
“Will he go for it, do you think?” Kara asked as they sat at the table.
“My father said he would,” Rigby said, scratching at his sideburns. “And my father usually knows if there’s money to be made.”
“What are we going to do about your uncle?” she asked.
Rigby stared at the tabletop. “I don’t know what to think,” he said. “When the Nightmare Lord died, Uncle Scovy was free from enslavement.”
“He didn’t try to fight us,” Kara said.
“I know that. But Scovy really was quite mad to begin with. I don’t know that he can be trusted.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, I’m not going to pull the plug, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“Of course not,” she said, biting her lower lip. “But what if he comes back to Shadowkeep? What if he gives us trouble?”
“We’ll burn that bridge later.”
That phrase gave Kara pause. She thought of Archer. I really have burned my bridges with him, haven’t I? He’d never trust her again, that was certain. And that meant he wouldn’t text her during storms anymore. He wouldn’t make her laugh on the bus. He wouldn’t walk to Main Street with her. She blinked out of reflection and asked, “What about the other Lucid Walkers? They really can’t go back?”