Read Empire of Unreason for Free Online Page A

suspected he knew what Flint Shouting was talking about, he wasn’t sure.
    “They have their own names for things,” he said, “and some pretty strange ideas about the world. Why don’t you educate him?”
    “Naw,” Tug said.“ ‘S okay.”
    Flint Shouting ignored the ex-pirate. “Dreams are all around us,” he said, waving his hands at the earth and sky. “There are the Itskasanakatadiwaha, the Dreams-That-Are-Above—like the Sun, the Thunderbird or the Owner-of-Black-and-White-Knives. Then there are the Howwitsnets-kasade, the Dreams-Down-Here, which can be divided into the Dreams-in-the-Water and the Dreams-Closest-to-Man.”
    “Huh. Angels is the first, maybe—the Dreams above? An‘ the second maybe divils an’—say! Dreams-in-the-Water? You mean like a mermaid?”
    Flint Shouting only looked puzzled at these comparisons, so Red Shoes replied. “There are many dreams in the water— the serpent with horns, the white panther, and the pale people. The pale people are what you call mermaids, Tug, but you would not want to meet them, no matter how much you want a woman. They are not really of flesh, and they are soul stealers.”
    “Like that thing you say you fought in Venice—the one as took Rev’rend Mather’s soul?”

    EMPIRE OF UNREASON
    “Exactly.”
    “So you are a shaman,” Flint Shouting said. “How did you come by your power?”
    “When I was very young, Kwanakasha, the little man, called my name at night.
    He spoke to me, sleeping and waking, though no one could see him but me.
    Being a child, I did not think it strange—I thought everyone had a voice like mine, a kwanakasha. I did not know my danger, did not know that I was slowly being made into an accursed being, a sorcerer, a danger to my people. A servant of the Dreams-in-the-Water, as you call them. But my elders noticed him. They helped me lay a trap for the little man. We caught him and made him my servant. Now I fight them.”
    “You have Dream enemies?” Flint Shouting asked.
    “Every Dream is my enemy. The powers of the other world have decided that we must die, and I will not allow it.”
    “ Who must die? You two?”
    “Human beings. All of the tribes and nations on Earth.”
    Flint Shouting swore something in his own language.
    “What?” Red Shoes asked.
    “You an enemy of the Dreams, and me guiding you to the very heart of Dreams-Closest-to-Man. Maybe my luck has run out.”
    “It surely has if you don’t find us those horses you promised, and soon,” Red Shoes said.
    “Tomorrow we’ll come to a village where they still like me. I think.”
    They camped that night by a clear, shallow stream racing out of the low mountains crouching on the southern horizon. Cottonwoods, elms, and willows whispered in a dry breeze. Tug and Flint Shouting built a fire, Tug EMPIRE OF UNREASON
    doing most of the work while Flint Shouting directed.
    Red Shoes climbed the nearby hill to stand first lookout. From there the earth spun away, turning the color of a strong bruise at the edges. Far, far east he saw tiny lights that might be fires. A village? A hunting party?
    More than a day’s ride, whatever it was, and not in the direction they were going.
    He smoked a little tobacco and tried to think, but his mind was tired. He found himself instead listening idly to Tug and Flint Shouting—by some trick of sound and the hollow below, he could hear them quite clearly.
    “… used’t‘ be a pirate,” Tug was saying. “Sailed with Edward Teach, Blackbeard, when he took Charles Town, an’ later when he sailed out’t‘ the Roman sea and Venice an’ all. Aye, that ‘uz an adventure.”
    “Then how is it you ended up here, with a Choctaw?”
    “Huh. Red Shoes was on that last trip. Ten years gone, that. See, some wondrous terrible thing had happened, but nobody knew what. God-rotted big waves wrecked our harbors and boats, and in all America we hadn’t a flotilla unless we combined English, French, and pirate. But we did it,