The Dream Lords [Book One]: Rebellion Read online

  Dream Lords: Rebellion

  Adrian Cole

  Pulp Hero Press

  www.PulpHeroPress.com

  © 2021 Adrian Cole

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

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  The views expressed in this book are those of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of Pulp Hero Press.

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  First published by Zebra Books, New York, as The Dream Lords, Volume 1, A Plague of Nightmares

  Editor: Bob McLain

  Layout: Artisanal Text

  Pulp Hero Press | www.PulpHeroPress.com

  Address queries to [email protected]

  Contents

  Cover

  Front Matter

  Introduction to the New Edition

  Dream Lords: Rebellion

  Chapter 1: What Dark Dreams may Come

  Chapter 2: The Cold Light of Day

  Chapter 3: Through the Veil of Illusion

  Chapter 4: Secret Meetings

  Chapter 5: On to the Red Planet

  Chapter 6: A Prisoner without Chains

  Chapter 7: A Clash of Steel

  Chapter 8: The Shadow of the Goat

  Chapter 9: Death beneath the City

  Chapter 10: Conspiracy

  Chapter 11: The Voice in the Shadows

  Chapter 12: Flight in the Underworld

  Chapter 13: The Ancient Forest

  Chapter 14: Warden of Hell

  Chapter 15: The Fall of Melkor

  About the Author

  Introduction to the New Edition

  The Young Devil Rides Out

  I first began writing the books that were eventually to be published under the general title of The Dream Lords in the summer of 1968, at the tender age of nineteen. I was working in a branch library in Birmingham (England, not Alabama) and had avowed since I could first wield a pencil that I would one day write story books. (As I grew older and, arguably, wiser, I changed that to novels.) Each day, as I shuffled and re-shuffled the stock of that branch library, it struck me that there was actually no rule that said I had to wait until I had either retired or reached some advanced age before I should convert this promise into deed. That realisation, coupled with a series of high-octane surges of inspiration in the form of certain authors (to whom I will refer to in more detail shortly), led me get down to the nitty-gritty, to use the appropriate jargon of the time.

  I started with a ruled notepad and a variety of coloured Biros. I scribbled down ideas, plots, characters, histories and anything that would have a bearing on the epic adventure that I had in mind. I drew up maps and sketches of citadels, even drawings of some of the mutated creatures who would roam the pages of my odyssey. In those days, computers were something you read about, mainly in science fiction stories, and the expression “word processing” was, to me at least, unheard of. In fact, in my naivety as an enthusiastic young novelist, I was not even in possession of a typewriter. Regardless of such a minor detail, I gathered together a pile of loose papers and began work on the actual novel itself. The book had a working title of The Barbarians.

  I dug out from my hitherto forgotten pile-of-things-not-to-throw-away-in-case-they-came-in-handy eight or so school exercise books that I had not used at school. Into these I copied up my scruffy first draft, in my best joined up handwriting. It was pretty large, but it was legible. It took me about a year, but eventually I did finish the book and it ran to all eight of those exercise books. During its writing I had tremendous encouragement from my colleagues in the library where I worked, and their help in getting me to beat the thing into better shape was absolutely invaluable.

  By the time it was completed, it had become apparent to me that if I were to submit the work for publication, I would need to get it typed. Undaunted, I bought a second-hand typewriter—a dinky little portable beast. The result was a blotchy, mega-scruffy manuscript and an even blobbier carbon copy.

  But one better-quality typewriter and another re-write later, I was ready to send out The Barbarians. In order to ensure that this introduction is not longer than the actual novel that follows it, I’ll move forward a bit—the book was accepted for publication by Zebra Books in New York. I was a happy bunny. It was now 1974 and at twenty five years old, I was going to rock the world of fantasy. Now, I should have added a bit earlier that I had good advice from several people who knew a whole lot more about getting published than I did (which at the time was zilch). In summary they said things like, “start with short stories, not a novel” and “keep your first novel fairly short, say, 60,000 words” and “never write your first novel in the first person.” So what did I do? Yes, you are absolutely right—my first work was this novel, it was over 120,000 words long, and it was in the first person.

  However, here we were in 1974 with an offer to publish. It was suggested that I revise the book into two or even three volumes. What did I think? Hell, this was a chance to do it in 3—fair enough, I would split the existing manuscript into the first two volumes and write new material for the third. Done deal. So my third book was commissioned and contracted before I had even written it. Hey, this was really cooking with gas!

  In February 1975, the first volume was published by Zebra. I had, in my youthful zest for garish titles, called it A Plague of Nightmares, which seemed to me to be suitably emotive, evocative and—well, appropriate. (Volume 2 was to be Lord of Nightmares and the final volume would be Bane of Nightmares.) Someone at Zebra, who may (wisely, I suspect) have thought my garish titles a bit too—well, garish—hit upon the idea of giving the series the overall title The Dream Lords. Each volume came out under that heading, but with my own titles as the individual volume titles. I thought at the time that it was a Good Idea and I still do.

  So, patient, probably dozing-off-to-sleep reader, the current reprints are all coming out under the heading The Dream Lords. We have not added the garish sub-titles to each volume, but please feel free to think of each volume under those original headings. Or, if you like, think of the entire epic as The Barbarians.

  Okay, so what else have I changed?

  It did occur to me that as I needed to transcribe my original manuscripts into word processing documents (yes, I am up to speed now, but I daresay the version of Word that I am using is a score or more versions older than the latest one) that I would have an ideal opportunity to do a real re-write of each volume. After all, I was now writing with the experience of having had twenty-five books published (oh yes, and some short stories, too). Thirty seven years after I finished the manuscript for Zebra—I could do wonders with that manuscript. Michael Moorcock does it annually to all his 900 books, doesn’t he? He must be a very patient guy. I still enjoy reading his books, so it must work.

  However, as I started work preparing this first volume for its new printing, I decided that I would limit my revisions. I wanted to keep the spirit of the originals, warts and all. Well, not all the warts, to be honest. I have removed some of the real howlers (including the spelling errors I found—come on, the original proofs we
re set before IT spell-checking conveniently arrived) and here and there I have changed a word or clumsy sentence to convey more precisely what I was trying to say. Otherwise, what you are about to read is pretty much the original yarn, as it was, bludgeoning its way on through to the last page. The enthusiasm, inspiration and exuberance that literally flooded me when I wrote the book(s) may not have created the finest fantasy work since Homer, but it is the drive that all writers must have if they are to create. I well remember writing the books and all those emotions, as if I were still sitting in my attic room in Birmingham (England not Alabama).

  Not all my subsequent works infused me with such a rush of blood! But today, as I am in the process of writing what will be my thirty sixth published novel, I am, mercifully, excited by it—that must-have ingredient, that drive, is there. I am no longer sitting in my attic room in Birmingham, having long since exchanged it for my current abode in remote, rural Devonshire, a couple of miles from the sea.

  What were the books that inspired me in that heady summer of 1968? The ones that gave me the last push I needed to get those notebooks and papers out and start work on The Barbarians? Most of them will become obvious to anyone reading my epic. The John Carter novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs were still clutched in my hands as I wrote. The later ones had only just come out in the UK in paperback and I had been a devout fan for several years. A year or so before I started to write I had been completely knocked out by Frank Herbert’s Dune, a book which I must have read half a dozen times since. And, on a slightly different tack—the Black Magic books of Dennis Wheatley, such as The Devil Rides Out, The Satanist, To the Devil a Daughter and…well all of them.

  Plus, naturally, the grand-daddy of them all, The Lord of the Rings. If, like me, you read it when you were nineteen and at a time when you hadn’t read a million other fantasy epics, it will have been something that has stayed with you for life (unless you hated it, of course). You think you’ll never find another book that will come close. (In my case, not many have, but that’s my problem.) Preparing The Dream Lords for reprinting, I can see exactly how and where those wonderful books influenced me. I never intended to pastiche them or pinch their ideas or emulate their styles, but they are all in here somewhere! Oh and yes, I had read quite a lot of H.P. Lovecraft and I’m sure some of that is here, too.

  You may be interested to know that authors who I had not read at the time I wrote The Barbarians, were Robert E Howard, Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber, Leigh Brackett…pretty well all the sword-and-sorcery and top fantasy authors. So when the first volume of The Dream Lords originally appeared, with the legend “in the tradition of HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard” at the top of the front cover, I was a bit bemused. And the cover! Given the wonderful covers usually available on the sword-and-planet or sword-and-sorcery paperbacks, this one was, well, a disappointment. It must have dawned on Zebra that it had done them no favors either, because not too long afterwards, they reprinted the book, with a brand-new cover, the first by a new artist (his first, in fact), Tom Barber. It’s a stunning picture of the Four Horsemen, and you’d be forgiven for seeing a likeness to LOTR’s Nazgul. Beautiful piece of work, Tom.

  The second volume of the trilogy came out with a Jack Gaughan cover, which would normally have been a real plus, as he was a regular for many of the top US paperback publishers, notably Ace Books. But I was even more disappointed with it than the first volume’s cover. Zebra again reprinted the book, with another Tom Barber cover, a big improvement. With one glaring error. They put “volume 3” on it. I don’t know how that affected sales, but it sure as hell didn’t help! When the third volume came out, Tom Barber had again produced his excellent work for it, and at least it also had “volume 3” on it.

  The three books were now in splendid company, with the Robert E Howard revival in full swing: The Dream Lords sat alongside new pastiches of Bran Mak Morn (Karl Edward Wagner) Black Vulmea and Red Sonja (David C Smith and Richard Tierney), although it always seemed odd to me that my books were advertised as “in the tradition of Conan” when they’d been written prior to my discovering the Hyborian barbarian.

  Pulp fiction was enjoying a grand revival in those days, and I suppose it was inevitable that it spilled out into the movies. In 1977, two years after the first Dream Lords book was published, the colossal blockbuster Star Wars hit the big screen. I watched the movie for the first time and it came as a bit of a shock—after all, here we had Imperial troops, light sabres, Darth Vader, the Force, etc., etc...uh, not that different to the contents of the Dream Lords books. Coincidence? Synchronicity? Probably. Wouldn’t have been the first time. And I’m not bitter about the fact that Star Wars has conquered the known universe and grossed half the riches in it.

  I’m content to tell myself that if Zebra had published the books with those Tom Barber covers at the outset, with the correct numbering sequence, well...who knows? This might be the 50th edition you’re holding and I might be word processing this intro on a very large yacht somewhere off the Bahamas, or the Seychelles, or…

  Nevertheless, here, some 45 years after it began a life in print, is The Dream Lords, my first foray into the world of writing, still dear to my heart, and ready, I hope, to quicken the pulses of a whole new generation. Star Lances at the ready…

  Adrian Cole

  Devon, England

  2020

  P.S. And you’ll have noticed that we’ve had Tom Barber do the cover again. Nothing but the best.

  Much has been written by historians about the Dream Lord Empire, from its beginnings in the remotest deeps of time to the even darker days of its fall. It is a history steeped in obfuscation, mystery and deceit, for there are many who might profit or suffer from the numerous truths, or indeed mendacity, twisted into the threads of the telling.

  Galad Sarian, son and heir of a Dream Lord, provides us with a record of his own experiences at a crucial time in the great changes that shook the Empire to its roots. Impetuous, impulsive and at times dangerously arrogant, the young Sarian undoubtedly endured tribulations that would have unseated the reason of many less determined men.

  In translating Galad Sarian’s personal records, the historian Nandorkanthas has declared that he has used very little licence and has remained faithful to the youth’s narrative and style, colorful though it may seem. Other sources may be consulted on the events of Galad Sarian’s life, and it is agreed that in the main they do correlate with his personal records, while it should be acknowledged that such historical material remains sensitive to this very day. The revelations in the Nandorkanthas version are unquestionably dark and disturbing, but may be closer to the truth than the more literate, sanitized versions.

  —from The Annals of Enlightenment,

  official archives of the Empire

  chapter one

  What Dark Dreams May Come

  Since my earliest days, I have feared darkness, for it is the stuff of evil, the fabric from which nightmare is woven. Although it brings rest to the body, it does not always soothe the mind in the way that the Dream Lords would deem it. Even as a child, during the long hours of darkness that cover my native planet, my mind was seldom at peace when I slept the true sleep, seeing strange and unbidden visions nor sent by the makers of illusions who rule. Even the cloak of dreams that the Dream Lords draped over me could not stave off the searching tendrils of the nightmare realm, so that a hint of other powers fretted at the edge of my awareness. Sometimes I awoke with a soundless scream and sometimes my fear was such that I sought comfort with my father—he was never too exhausted by his trying position of Dream Lord to put me at ease. Yet as I grew older, my dreams became wilder, until I began to dread some terrible climax to them, as though a renegade Dream Lord was abroad in search of a tool to oust his masters. My fears became realities as the darkness took substance, sucking me into its living depths.

  How well I remember that night! Sleep did not come easily to me then, as it had not of late. I had dreamt strangely of Zurjah, my homewor
ld, seeing it not through the vivid eyes of the image makers, but as from an alien viewpoint, cold and inhospitable. It was colder than usual and winds drove thick mists about the stark mountains and cities, sending people hurrying indoors to shelter and warmth, ripping aside the garments of the world to expose raw bones of rock and crag. Thick swathes of fog and gaseous mist billowed around the huge planet, only faintly penetrated by the sun, itself so dim and distant as to be almost invisible.

  Tonight the soothing power of the Dream Lords could not touch my mind and now it seemed to drift free of their ministrations. Dreams and realities blended, bearing me onwards to some unseen destination. The night and the cold darkness seemed to bear heavily down on me as I wrestled in my bed. The sumptuous luxury of the room had dissolved and I felt thick skins and robes around me like the pelts of some shepherd from the world’s rim. A dim shaft of grey light cut the gloom of my chamber, filtering through the narrow slit in the solid stone of the wall. Solid stone? Another dream then—the fabulous castle of the Dream Lords was never so primitive. As I stared from eyes that seemed drugged, I looked at the window and a slight illumination passed quickly across it—one of the moons hurtling madly around on her interminable voyage.

  Shortly after that the thought blanket of the Dream Lords must have lulled me—together with the sleep serum I had taken—and I appeared to succumb. But my sleep held all its worst terrors.

  The dream always began the same of late, which in itself was wrong. If the Dream Lords had sent it as a diversion or a morsel on which to think and learn, they would not have done so more than once. But it had become repetitive, like some nocturnal obsession.

  In it, I could make out a vast plain, stretching away for eternal distances, covered with cities and forests, sleeping peacefully under a bright moon. Then there would come a series of violent flashes in the sky, whereupon showers of fire descended on the tranquil plain. Beneath the now black skies I would see tall cities—as large, and some larger, than Zurjah itself—engulfed in black clouds and in flames of colossal height. There would be people streaming from one place to another, helplessly, but none seemed to escape the destruction.