Temple of the Traveler: Book 01 - Doors to Eternity (51 page)

The plump, older woman almost dropped her teapot in shock. Sensing no malice in the pair, and emboldened by their far-off accents, she bent close and whispered, “Did you notice how poor and sickly things look hereabouts? We should be bursting with people and gold from all the roads and rivers we’re built on.” Jotham nodded, but was too polite to say more. “It’s the Temple of Sleep that sucks the blood from our veins. Nothing comes down the Old South Road no more,” she said, pointing to a nearby intersecton. “Our men and young girls too often find their ways into the dens of Zariah. What little we have left is taxed by the capital to build armies and palaces.”

Jotham blinked. “But that temple was leveled. There should be nothing left but ruins.” He hadn’t counted on addressing that Door too, assuming that it’d been closed long ago as the books all implied. Again, he chided himself for assuming. The book was not the thing itself.

The plump woman snorted at this. “I think I’d have remembered the celebration if that’d happened.” Then she looked to each side to make sure no one had overheard the comment and fled back to her kitchen to avoid the prying eyes of the gray men.

Jotham stared at the horizon. The sheriff, with dogged disregard for his own safety, would not hesitate to march in and attempt to purge this new perversion of the Way. It had taken Jotham years of careful research to close the other temples. Tashi wouldn’t see the dangers, or wouldn’t care. The entire plan was at risk now. Jotham had to reach the ruins first to intervene.

Distracted, Jotham turned to the boy and said, “We head north toward the hills by what she called the Old South Road, as fast as our feet can carry us. After all these cycles of effort, I think it’ll come down to a matter of hours one way or the other.”

Brent, chewing on his licorice, seemed unimpressed by the prediction. “Why should this meeting be any different than any other event in my life or this History you tell me so much about?”

Jotham was struck by the flippancy, but then absorbed the words underneath. He nodded at their wisdom. Most events, good and bad, could be traced back to trivial causes after the fact. One could not control the world, only the self. Briskly, but not at a pace that attracted attention from residents, the pair left town by the indicated road. Jotham felt grateful for the feel of the light, new staff and the protection it offered. Not only did it enable them to pass for priests of Semenea in this hostile land, but it could also provide surprising resistance to any brigands they might encounter.

Jotham and Brent approached the Temple of Sleep with discretion. They left the roads and crept through fields to avoid patrols. Most of the fields were overgrown with weeds and thistles. Even those fields that had been plowed tended to be stunted and provided no cover. As they rustled through the tall grass, the older priest said, “We will wait for our friend on the nearest hill to the northeast of the old ruins. I don’t want to get any closer, because the very paving stones near that site must reek of unpleasant history.”

“How do you know he’ll be here?” asked the boy.

Jotham looked a little sheepish. “My friend the sheriff isn’t terribly original about these things. His memory isn’t the best. Since this is the position where we arranged to meet for the final temple, I’m guessing he will arrive in the same relative location here.”

Brent didn’t ask why the man’s memory was so bad, or why they were trusting such an important mission to someone so damaged. Instead, he asked, “What if he goes to the other temple instead?”

The priest considered this for a moment. “That’s possible. But there are only two temples left. If he doesn’t show up in a few days, we shall proceed without him and meet up at the final temple on the northern frontier.”

The boy nodded as if this explained everything.

Focused on their objective, the pair remained silent until Jotham noticed the black clouds gathering over the Lone Mountain. Near the base of the hill in question, the priest said, “It’s almost sundown. We’d better find some shelter from that storm. There’s an old, stone building. It looks like an abandoned sheep pen.”

Grass covered the sides and front of the crude structure built into the side of the hill. The stones appeared blackened by fire in several places. The roof was no longer complete, but should keep them dry and out of sight while they waited.

When they were within three paces of the pen, they could hear faint movements unrelated to the wind. He was wrong about the abandoned part. Jotham blocked the boy and took a defensive stance with his new staff out in front of his body. “There’s shelter enough here for all.” As he took his next step, two men attacked. One swung out of the doorway, hanging from the lintel like an ape. The kick missed Jotham as he leaned gracefully to the side. The second man roared and leapt down upon him from the roof. Jotham leaned his staff a little to catch the plummeting man in the stomach. Everyone present winced in sympathy with the bandit who lay rolling on the ground with the wind knocked out of him.

Jotham knocked the dagger from the jumper’s limp hand and said, “I invoke the protection of the Traveler. For your own sake, I beg you stop.” When the priest changed his stance, preparing to throw the next attacker, the man hanging from the lintels shrieked and scampered away.

“Heading for the City of the Gods. We’re his allies and arranged to meet him here afterward,” explained the spokesman for the Stone Monkeys.

Jotham nodded. “Then we came for the same reason. More than truce, I grant you my assistance. Let me put some ointment on those bruises and those scratches from the thorns.”

When they were all safe from the wind and impending rain, warming around a small fire, everyone introduced themselves. In truth, even Brent had trouble telling Sven, Olaf, and Ekvar apart. Bjorn, the spokesman, related the adventure surrounding their last week. “I wonder why he isn’t here yet?”

The top of the Lone Mountain stretched out in a vast plateau. The City of the Gods was composed of four tiers of the ruins, with an elaborate temple complex in the center. Assorted walls still remained, with piles of rubble and unexpected pits
lurking beneath streets and courtyards. The jagged landscape was aggravated by centuries of archaeological digs and artifact mining. Scrub trees sprang up to obscure these dangers in any region not actively cleared. This made rapid passage all but impossible. Only frequent use of the magic coin enabled Tashi to make any progress at all.

The fact that he was the only human around, combined with the dry lightning, made the trip an eerie one. The bright temple buildings on the final hill shone against the dim rubble and foliage, making them seem to float in midair. The air here seemed thinner, and Tashi could not seem to fill his lungs as easily. His pace slowed even further as the approach of Nightfall seemed more urgent and imminent than ever.

What struck him the most, however, was the sheer gravity of the mountain—the awesome weight of the majestic, natural phenomenon and the insignificance of any mere man. No one could approach this spot without experiencing reverence.

In the center, nothing was simple. Each tower was really a cluster of several smaller, concentric towers around a central core. Each building seemed to be a multi-layered cake, extravagantly decorated. Each floor had at least three layers of trim and then the pattern would change for the layer above. Each layer had its own perfect symmetry, but there was no predicting what the next pattern would be. The only constant seemed to be a gradual shrinking, with a dome capping the top. Each dome was also decorated in different, geometric patterns. None of the buildings appeared to have any doorways into them. Worse, some of the footpaths led nowhere at all.

Tashi threaded the maze to reach the highest plateau of the temple courtyards, the place of the suspended stairs. At the edge of this glassy-smooth, open area, there was yet another architectural puzzle. An entire row of twenty-one support columns had been sheared off at the same, sharp angle. Beyond this fence, the city ended suddenly in a cliff. As he stood over the dizzying precipice, it occurred to him that the angle of the pillars matched the angle of the cliff. Could there have once been more to this city or to this mountain?

He was snapped from his reverie by the ringing of a far-away bell. The Keepers had sounded the warning below. According to their ceremonial candles and water clocks, Nightfall was moments away. Tashi rushed to the foot of the suspended staircase. It may have been his imagination, but he thought he detected a faint ripple in the air at the top.

Giving the coin one last toss, Tashi asked for direction. He missed the catch and the coin rolled. The sheriff refused to stop the magic device’s natural progress but fretted about the time. He began counting heartbeats as the metal disc spiraled lazily in a giant circle. The final gong sounded, and all gates to and from the city were locked from below.

The circle tightened as the coin sped up until it was spinning rapidly into a small drain he hadn’t noticed at the foot of the stairs. Too late, Tashi dove for the coin. But it fell down the hole, lodging so firmly in the drain that it might have been made for the spot. The magic coin was stuck face-up in the center of the drain, a knuckle’s length below the surface. An inaudible rumble began from somewhere, and the hairs on his neck rose. The building hum in the air reminded him of the destructive resonance generated by the bell in the Spirit Temple.

If this hole was indeed made for the coin, what had the square hole in the center been made for? Tashi took the large, magical tuning fork from around his neck and snapped it into the socket.

The loud hum around him continued to build, but the fork echoed the sound frequency back precisely and with the same volume. Both forces mounted until Tashi thought he would be shaken apart. By leaning backward, he managed to find a place between the forces where he could hear nothing at all. Tashi wasn’t sure if his gambit had worked, he was now deaf, or he had died yet again.

****

Things began to go awry for Sandarac. Neither the guard nor the interrogator from the Room without Doors had returned. Lift operators late for checkout had been discovered locked in a storage shed. There had been no time for a search before Nightfall closed the mountain. The head of the security post had no clues and would know nothing until morning; however, Sandarac was certain the unthinkable had happened. Now he just had to sow enough confusion that the Keepers never found out the truth. A few, unfortunate souls like Ginza would need to be sent to join combat units at the front to bury what they knew. He’d also need a favor or two from the Viper. This could be expensive, but the situation was still salvageable. The coin was still spinning; it could still turn out either way.

****

Pinetto looked over the western horizon at the repeated flashing in the sky. “This is going to be a storm like the gods have never seen before.”

****

Zariah was in her private office reading over the notes from the sheriff’s interrogation. When the shade of Tumberlin appeared before her, she calmly put down her quill and said, “You have a message?” She wasn’t frightened by his new form like every other person Tumberlin had met. This made him cautious.

“You know who I am?” asked the Shadow.

The crone said, “I know
what
you are. Someone holds your life-stone like a leash. Skip protocol and get to the point.”

Tumberlin took her measure and decided that she was a woman of the world who could be taken at her word. “The Lady of the Deep travels here by warship to accept the emperor’s offer of betrothal. As long as you give her the sheriff, she’ll be your obedient lapdog. Cross her and generations to come will still be paying.”

Zariah nodded. “She seems to want this man very much. What do you want, wraith? Freedom? To see this Kragen woman suffer?” Her favorite technique when creating spies was to befriend potential puppets, learn what they desire, and use it to control them. This wraith’s hungers were so blatant that she would have no problems.

Zariah ignored his surprise and lectured. “There are ways of feeding that leave no marks and don’t kill the victim outright. You can feed for weeks off the same stock if you’re careful, and no one will suspect anything unnatural. Certain populations, the old and the infirm, are easiest to hide. Sometimes animals can provide when humans aren’t available.”

Her pale-green eyes laughed at him. “Suddenly a virgin again, are we? Nothing that would make you think twice, dearie. You’ll even enjoy it. But you’e too busy tonight. I should let you go. This fixation of Kragen’s has me intrigued, though. Is she a jilted, former lover of this sheriff?”

Tumberlin answered with disdain for his master. He talked about the sheriff’s part in the murder and her subsequent rage. “But he seems to have this effect on all women. His sister from Tamarind wants him dead, too.”

The crone’s heart beat faster. “Does this sister have long nails?”

Tumberlin looked puzzled. “Never. She’s a warrior woman, that one. Nails would only get in the way. Even her hair pins are weapons.”