From as far north as the frozen Nom’d and south as the warm fields of Glendary, Tis Ri was the only pass to the Bome Desert in Jam Dor’s long, icy range.  For centuries, travelers had climbed the strenuous Tis Ri trail to enter the Bome, cross the giant dunes and rob the badlands of its rare salts and bloodstone, a gem possessed with medicinal qualities.  Likewise, the Bome reciprocated by stripping men of their lives, for no one could live long in the Bome.   Yet, one man sought to make his trek not for wealth, but to rid himself of his Insanity fed by his opiate obsession while the Black Trace cult chased from behind and burned all roads home.

***
 

“It is madness,” Randal broke his silence. Oksana’s report consumed his last measure of strength and unpinned his sanity.  “Between the dreams that are real and the reality that is a nightmare, where am I?” he whispered to her. Oksana tried to listen, but her own pent-up crying interfered as it overflowed her control. “The people and places from my sleep, I see while I am awake,” Randal continued. “I recall their conversations, but they do not exist.  My dreams have become part of my memories, strung together on a chain of infinite duration.  Often I’m not sure of the dream or the actual event.”

“Two realities?” Oksana choked back.

“My waking self and my dreaming self have merely a minute separation, a gap too thin for my sanity to continue.”

Oksana labored to understand Randal’s crisis and to distract her from her own. 

“Will I dream when I’m not asleep? Will they create schizophrenia amidst my daily habits?  I should go home to die with Mother and Father. I cannot live this way. My poor parents.  Yours, too. I thought the Two Nights might help me, but it is no use with no home.”

Insanity that sneaks in the back door of one’s house is one thing, but Insanity that boldly struts down the street while whistling, waving at the neighbors, and saunters up to the front door is another.  Randal’s Fiend conspicuously sat out front for all to see.  Its menacing approach, misery driven attitude, and noisy coming – openly mocked him.  MacLeash’s Best had made Randal an addict, and his goal, the Bome, was beyond his grasp.  Soon, with nothing to hold it back, Randal’s Madness would occupy any room it wished, and he would never know from then on what was and what was not.  A never-to-be-sure life cut into a thousand pieces.

“I am tired,” Randal rightly complained.  “Though my body rests tonight, I will meet people, prepare meals, sit under a tree beneath a hot sun or freezing moon.  I will work, play in a river; or cry.  In my other world, here is the illusion. Although my waking days have sequence, recently my dreams have learned to jump into this world and gain footholds.”

“Do you dream of you dreaming?” Oksana tried to abridge Randal’s bewildering accounts.

Randal nodded in agreement. 

Pan and Cleah had kept Randal’s fragility a secret from the family. Hence, his admissions briefly catapulted Oksana into shock.  However, her decision to find Randal had been her only choice.  All along, there had been no other path.  She reached over and pulled him into her arms.

***
An hour before dusk on the second day, Dolor, the Victor Chieftain, emerged from his seclusion with resplendent attire.  Changed from his dull disguise as a Black Trace, Dolor shed his wardrobe for a bare chest, with a vermillion and gold braided cape lassoed with a large black band around his thick neck.  His stripped flesh, the central attraction, shone of vigorous youth and copper.  Except for the heavy, noiseless felt which entombed his legs and boots, Dolor looked as if he were entirely made of glint and metal.

“My charges,” he announced, “in less than two days there will be cause for celebration.”
 

The others kept their silence.
 

“Doest not there seem to be more sun than ever?  A Calassi was born from the sun!”
 

Largely, the Black Traces abided their Chieftain with great trepidation, and because Dolor forbade them to talk among themselves, none knew what the other thought. In truth, the formidable sight of each other was its own deterrence to speaking. By such repeated prohibitions, Dolor had expunged their freewill. Without self-determination, they were impotent to explore their own consciousness. Thus, Dolor’s monologues dominated. Without his own tongue, a Black Trace evolved no natural desire of his own to learn and experience. Only Dolor’s desires went forward.