Temple of the Traveler: Book 02 - Dreams of the Fallen (16 page)

Tazed o dream filled the theater as Zariah set the scene. As she spoke, the High Priestess of Sleep changed shapes. Her eyes remained the same and her voice softened a little, but her body became young. Her skin was cream and her form strained against her clothing in several interesting places. “I am Alana, your secret lover, these many years. While my daughter celebrates her sixteenth birthday in the feasting hall below, I claim my due from your flesh.”

She sprayed plum perfume into the air and waited for the mist to drift over to him. His hand began to tremble. She continued. “You want me more than life itself.”

Brent looped a tail of the sash over Bjorn’s wounded arm but couldn’t spare concentration for anything else as he worked with foot and teeth to put it in place for a knot. Fortunately, Nigel had found the desired passage from his scroll and began singing. The ancient ritual was accompanied by meticulously annotated sheet music. He’d heard the Rite of Binding performed at least twenty times on criminals, himself included. The ceremonies had little in common other than announcing the caster’s authority, a precise naming of the accused, and the legal justification. Nigel had even heard it done successfully by a drunk. The notes, he’d been told, were more important than the exact words.

“I’m the last of the College of Bards, the lone practitioner of the Way of Memory, High Priest by elimination. I call you forth for your crimes, Zariah, pupil of the vile Abu Nirah. I call you forth to serve the Six-fold Path in proportion for your deeds of murder, theft, and heresy.”

At the first words, Zariah looked merely annoyed, but then her forehead wrinkled. “Warriors, find that voice and kill it!” Somnambulists scattered to the winds to obey.

But Nigel shook his bells and remained unnoticed as he raised his voice above the scuffle. “I bind you with this geas until the service is complete. In the names of Hadri Zin, the first of the Bards, and Nigel Wandroos, the Last, I bind thee!”

Zariah panicked. “Serog, kill that bard!”

The dragoness detached quickly from her perch, but Nigel was already standing behind Zariah. He’d picked up a certain magic coin that the sheriff had dropped. They couldn’t stop him from intoning the final words. “I call on the favor of the Traveler himself, twice promised, to seal your powers against you now!”

Wings blurred and jaws slashed, but too late. The coin struck Zariah in the chest. Iron chains grew. She howled as the weight of them pulled her to her knees. But try as she might, she couldn’t conjure herself free.

Unfortunately, Nigel had been decapitated by the dragon’s attack. His head rolled across the floor, a strangely peaceful smile on his face.

Tashi broke free of his paralysis. “Stop it, woman. I killed you once already!”

Zariah, stuck in the form of Alana, began to see the enormity of her mistakes. Her clothes were reduced to thin rags, barely covering her shame. “How can that be?” She spoke her question simultaneously h the dragoness.

Serog convulsed in agony. Between fits, she babbled, “Innocent blood in the sanctuary. How? Argh! He was a traitor and a thief.” She made a whistling sound as the next fit seized her.

Brent replied to the dragon, “Jotham absolved him less than an hour ago.”

Soldiers hacked at the headless body of the actor while the dragoness rolled on the floor in pain, squashing several of them in her throes.

Tashi replied to Alana. “You were brought before the Guild Council, accused of adultery by your daughter. I’d achieved a great victory, earning me a favor with the Guildmaster. I could’ve used it to send you to a nunnery and spared your life. But I didn’t. Everyone would’ve saved face. Instead, I left. I let them kill you instead.”

One of the Somnambulists, trapped by the vision, approached her from the side. “Why?” she begged. “We were lovers.”

“It wasn’t me that they caught you with!” Tashi shouted.

The Somnambulist drew back his sword like a headsman. Zariah in the Alana body shouted. “Wait! You’re wrong.” The sword wavered and froze in mid air. “Did you actually see me killed?”

Tashi blinked. “No. But there is no way the guild would have let you survive.”

Zariah’s mind raced. “There must be. There was, I mean.” She turned to the dragon. “Help me.”

In great pain, the Dawn being pondered the dilemma. Her answer astounded them all. “Her marriage was a covenant of brotherly substitution. If there are no male children for seven years, the woman may put aside that brother and choose another.” Her head jerked and she began to vomit dark blood.

“So that the line may continue,” finished Tashi.

“Yes,” agreed Zariah. “He was in violation, not me. I was just trying to get an heir for my real husband who’d died at the hands of his armies.”

“I didn’t kill you?” said Tashi, grappling with the implications.

“No. But this time, you can be the one to set me free. Free me from these chains, and I can choose you. We can be together forever. You and me.” Zariah licked her newly formed lips suggestively and shifted some of her sparse clothing aside to reveal more cleavage.

“No,” shouted Brent. “First, she must shut the Door. The Door is to the past, and all you’ve suffered. Have her close it and forgive you.”

“She’s
evil
,” stressed Bjorn.

“That doesn’t change the law or how we treat pople. You’re a criminal and the Master showed you mercy,” argued the boy. The dragon stared at him through squinted eyes.

“She doesn’t deserve it!” insisted the remaining member of the Stone Monkeys.

Tashi surprised everyone by speaking. “No one deserves it. That’s why it’s called mercy.” He blinked twice and faced the boy. “I didn’t kill her.”

Brent smiled reassuringly. “Not this time.”

“Thank you,” the sheriff mumbled, swaying from his injuries. “You’ve saved my life at least three ways today. I have much to repay, fellow walker.”

The dragoness nodded. The scene rippled and the play vanished. The energy for the illusion had been costing her too much. Zariah lurched forward, unbound, but still in the form of Alana.

Sandarac, self-proclaimed Emperor of the North, was exhilarated and terrified at the same time. His generals had sent word earlier that the great battle in the Vale was set to take place any hour between now and sundown. The battle would take hours, if not days, to decide. And then the messenger birds wouldn’t bear news to him until many hours after that. His fate would be decided by others while he fretted. Some low-level functionary fit only to scrub bird droppings from the floor would bring him a tiny letter with the deed to his empire, or a sentence of death.

He refined a few supply chain orders for the prolonged waiting period, moved the ships closer in case his armies needed a rapid retreat, and stared helplessly at the map.

Sandarac tried to hold court, but couldn’t concentrate. He had snapped at so many officials and sycophants that no one dared approach for the rest of the day. He paced on his sled along the floor of the map room. The light wasn’t good there at this time of day, but no one wanted him about the palace in his present state.

The handmaiden recently rescued from the Room with No Doors was still unconscious. The only thing they knew for certain was that the sheriff had escaped. Lady Kragen should not be arriving for several days, time enough to rectify this problem once and for all. With luck, she would never hear of this mistake.

The priests could tell him nothing about the Ho Mountain other than the fact that no one could have survived the storm of fire. It’d be after Nightfall before anyone could breathe up there again, which meant that they’d know nothing until the next morning.

The final blow came when he went to dear Jolia for comfort and found her gone. His irritable funk grew into a rage. Sandarac summoned his counsel. The fire mage was asleep. Zariah couldn’t be reached. His generals were in the Vale. Only Beryl and the Viper attended him in person; the rest sent lackeys.

The Keepers had food and Spring wine brought in to soothe the emperor. But he still paced like a caged lion. After a couple hours and a few dead guards, the Viper reported, “Your consort is most likely still alive, kidnapped. We’re doing everything we can to locate her. No stone will be left unturned.”

Sandarac stopped pacing to glare at the fussy priest decked out in green and jewelry. Everyone else in the room stopped breathing in order to escape notice. “You know this villain?”

Beryl blinked nervously. “Not personally. But he’s a powerful corrupter of the masses and stirs up no end of trouble. His lies are so convincing that he can twist the most loyal man into killing for him. We won’t be able to trust your consort even if she survives.”

“You’ve never liked Jolia, but she’s never harmed a soul!” Sandarac insisted.

Beryl cleared his throat, “She did stab those three men.”

“That’s different! She would never turn on
me
,” said Sandarac.

The Viper glanced at his papers. “Aye, Highness. It seems that this man talked a hand of Keepers into thinking he was sent from the gods, convinced one of your throne-room guards to kill a priest who shouted warnings about an assassin, and convinced your harem guards to admit him and lie about his presence. He then somehow passed unseen past a hundred men. Much as it pains me, sire, Lord Beryl may have the right of it.”

“Who is this bastard that steals my loved ones to use against me?”

The Viper continued. “He matches the description given to me of a master manipulator, a half-mad Imperial wizard called Jotham of Bablios. We believe him to be the Prefect’s spymaster for this half of the world. We know that the sheriff was one of his agents.”

“This fits his description as I have heard it, sire,” said Beryl. “He recently caused such a political stir in Semenea that the King had him deported immediately.”

“Deported to where?” asked the Viper casually.

“The first available boat to the border. Um . . . Turiv,” exclaimed Beryl the less-than-wise.

The ire in the emperor built to a thunderhead, focused on the green priest’s flinching face. “You had this spy and assassin in your hands? Yet you not only freed him, but delivered him to my doorstep on the eve of the strike that can win me all the kingdoms?”

Beryl opened his mouth, fishlike, a few times, unable to rep “Hentelligently.

Sandarac drew the thin honor from one of his Keeper guards and rolled toward Beryl until the tip of the blade was beneath the man’s breastbone. “Explain.”

The priest in green swallowed hard. “I’m not sure of all the details. We had to do something to contain the rebel action that the Heretic started in the East.”

Sandarac interrupted. “Rebel action? Farmers with pitchforks and torches?”

“Oh, no,” Beryl clarified. “Whole squads of soldiers followed that wench older sister of . . .” He was cut off by the thrust of Sandarac’s borrowed blade. The cut was through the stomach, not the heart.

The Keepers gasped as the emperor wiped his blade on the traitor’s cape.

“I’ll honor his last request and issue a death warrant for both the spy and my beloved,” Sandarac said. “But he won’t live to see the warrant served. I hope Lord Beryl’s end will be slow and painful, giving plenty of time for the Viper to extract an honest description of Semenean troop strengths. Have his offices and mansion searched as well. I want to know what else my trusted allies haven’t told me.”

“As you command,” said the Viper, carting a whimpering Beryl off with the help of a few guards.

To the men remaining, Sandarac bellowed, “Get me Zariah and the fire priest. I don’t care what it takes or who you inconvenience!”

Minutes later, a bird messenger arrived in his dimmed chamber. The words felt like the cold steel had to the traitor, sliding inexorably into his guts. “Sheriff and Kiateran commandos attacking temple. Help. Desperate.”

Sandarac knew that this blow would be the one that killed him. He’d continue to struggle more fiercely than ever. But even if he ascended the throne of the unified empire, his spirit had begun bleeding from a mortal wound in this darkened room today, and no one could help him.

All eyes turned to Tashi now that the parley had begun. “So how does it work?” asked Bjorn.