"Hero Of Dreams"

by Brian Lumley

originally published, Tor Books, 1986

Somewhere in the uplands of Earth's Dreamlands, David Hero encounters some "spider-hounds" and an older Earth-Dreamlands adventurer named Eldin.

Back on Earth, David Hero is a slightly shiftless artist-wannabe who hangs out in Edinburgh.  He attends a lecture on the nature of dreams by one Prof. Leonard Dingle.  The lecture is poorly-attended and frankly incoherent, with rambling, babbling references to H.P. Lovecraft and someone named Gerhard Schrach.  He also makes reference to Ulthar, the River Skai, Celephais, and Ilek-Vad.  That gets Hero's attention.  After the lecture, he accosts Dingle, and before you can say "Kadath in the Cold Wastes" they recognize a connection and agree to head to Dingle's place to compare notes.  On the way, they're involved in a major car accident.

In the Dreamlands, Hero and Eldin have now been living the life of rogue adventurers for some time.  And Eldin apparently has TB(?).  In the city of Theelys, Ebraim Borak, a sneaky dude from the Ossaran Steppes, hires them for a mission - to steal a wand from the temple of Yibb-Tstll in the Great Bleak Mountains.  Of course, he's sent a bunch of agents to do this and none of them have come back, but what the hell?  He offers them lots of "tonds" (Dreamlands for cash), and Hero and Eldin immediately accept.

Hero and Eldin make their way to the temple.  Along the way they kill some snow leopards. They soon find themselves transported to the chamber of Thinistor Udd, the evil wizard-priest of Yibb-Tstll, who promptly captures them.  A fellow prisoner, a hottie slave girl named Aminza, fills them in and they realize Ebraim had set them up.  They break free, apparently kill Thinistor, steal the eye from an idol of Yibb-Tstill, and flee, but are attacked by Nightgaunts, who snatch Aminza.  Back at his chambers, Thinistor is still alive.  Aminza bashes his skull in as the idol of Yibb-Tstll comes alive and wanders off.

Eldin and Hero drive off the idol by putting it's eye back, then settle into the caverns where Aminza cures Eldin's TB while Hero looks for a way back in to the castle.  Eventually he finds a path, fraught with more traps than a D&D adventure module.  Oh, and Eldin and Aminza are now an item, something Hero isn't entirely happy about.

Inside the castle, Eldin and Hero find themselves in the middle of a Star Trek cockpit.  A powerful voice introduces itself as an employee of "The First Ones" - yet another ancient alien race cuz boy howdy, we sure don't have enough of those in Lovecraft-land, and effectively hires them to go find the rest of the wands and the surviving members of the "First One" race.  Eldin and Hero set off to either (a) carry off the quest or (b) fuck off back to Theelys, but they end up going for the quest.  

After a pointless encounter with a whirlpool in a mountain lake, they come across another of Lumley's talking trees, which complains cuz the "Ter-men" from Thalarion are coming to eat pieces of it.  Hero and Eldin decide to defend the tree against the "Ter-men" but are instantly captured instead and taken to Thalarion.  There they are brought to queen Lathi, who's a hottie above the waist and a gross termite-thing below.  With the help of the tree, they set fire to Thalarion (which is made of paper) and flee, taking the second wand with them which they found in her throne room.  The tree sends them flying off on a leaf.  They arrive at the castle of Nyrass, cousin of Thinistor Udd, who's friendly but won't give them the third wand, because, it seems, the possessor, Klarek-Yam, has been miniaturized and stuck in a glass sphere.  With the wand.  Nyrass can watch him with a magic mirror.  He shows this off to his new friends.  Who, before Nyrass can say "don't pull out the other wands" .... pulls out the other wands.  This allows Klarek Yam to pull out his wand and work some magic which shatters the sphere and restores him to normal size, all slug-like and tentacled.  For a split-second it looks like the jigthulhu is up for our heroes, but, of course, deus ex machina - Karlek-Yam succumbs to a spell that had been placed upon him when he was first miniatiurized - namely, time catches up with him and he disintegrates.  Poof!

Eldin/Hero/Aminza return to the castle of the first ones and turn in their wands.  They are granted three wishes.  Hero gets a Dreamlands names (which is the same as his own, only with "Hero of Dreams" appended to it - big whoop), and Eldin and Aminza are returned to Ilek-Vad so they can get hitched.  David rides off on his yak (yes, they ride yaks), alone and sad.  But he sees a distant rider approaching  - Eldin.

The last couple pages are a police report (standard Lumley trick), revealing that David and Prof. Dingle were killed in that car crash.  A bystander, one Zaza Inman (shuffle the letters, kiddies), who was also seriously injured in the same crash by flying debris, is recovering.

What we have here is an unmemorable, nothing-special fantasy adventure novel, set in Lovecraft's Dreamlands.  It's an entertaining enough read, but it's empty calories.  Eldin and Hero have little in the way of personality - they seem to be a lift from Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd/Gray Mouser stories, but this has none of the wit that made those characters memorable.   Aminza is a total cypher.  The menaces are never menacing, and nothing about the tale really evokes Lovecraft's Dunsanian Dreamlands (which are NOT sword and sorcery no matter how much Lin Carter and L. Sprague DeCamp tried to insist that they are).   

Might be good fodder for D&D players looking for ideas.  Other than that - at least it's short.