Where did Alraune go in dreams now?

At the edge of night's ocean, the question hung before Adam like a dark curve, the cursive shape of doubt. Beyond it lay the tides, the currents, the depths, endless and eternal.

Adam knew the land of dreams, though he did not choose to walk there. He had passed through that realm to come to this place, and he knew that Dreaming became Darkness somewhere on that trackless sea, even as a valley had become an abyss in another dream, another age.

Once Alraune had been the spirit of midnight desire, mischief and fire on the morning wind, touching the dreams of whoever she chose, forbidden and irresistible, queen of the succubus night. He remembered the times she had come to him in dreams, the variety of form and face, the fullness of the passion that woke them already spent within the Tower.

But that was not her way now. Alraune had changed.

Her cards were windows, Adam knew, into the mysteries of dream and perhaps it was a sign of Alraune's growth, from sensuality to meaning, as the mandrake grew beneath the gibbet, pale green flower in the light of a new morning.

He understood that her dreams now touched the Tarot, that she played in the realm where the world's unspoken words and half-forgotten acts became the shapes and players of dream, the signposts of fate's design.

The cards were her confidants, her advisors.

Yet she called them her masters.

Could he go there? Adam wondered. To the place where Alraune said she spoke with The Star and the Hierophant?

Did Adam remember enough of his mother's gift to walk the dreaming ways again? The last time he had trod them, he had brought Alraune out of Darkness, and that had almost been the end of them.

And then they had come here, to this land that had become their home.

They had found a path through the worst of realms.

He spread his arms and let the sea have him.

Within his dream, Adam felt the sudden ice of winter, as the twin moons rose above the dreaming waves like the eyes of a demon.

The tide against the shore washed a rhythm of speech and Adam saw that the ocean of dreams was only a mouth, enormous and dark, with breath like nightshade's kiss.

He fell, sank, and soared through the cards, pieces of memory, shining mirrors and doors, until he felt a stone floor materialize beneath him, sudden and resolute as death itself.

The twin moons shone down through barred windows, impossibly high overhead.
Like a wet trickle of moonlight, red fire seeped down the walls, running in fingers across the stone floor, and Adam understood that he had passed into a place that was neither Dream nor Darkness, as the fire flowed into a spiraling column, the cracking of lurid flames like the secret tongue of every race.

"Your lady is reckless," the fire pillar said.

Adam chilled in the terrible heat.

"Tell her she must beware some among the pack, for they are never what they seem."

The fire column blazed and then twirled upward, spreading at the top like the branches of a mighty tree.

"Who are you?" Adam asked.

Leaves of fire blew from the tree. Swirling around Adam, the promise of destruction, wild flame in the high grass of a prairie, certain death, and Adam braced himself against the heat, even as he heard the flames answer him.

And then the fire was on him, turning the land bloody under the twin moons' merciless eyes, his skin blistering, clawing toward light, the words on his lips even as he woke beside her.

"Tell Alraune," Fire said. "We are the Elder Arcana . . .."