Temple of the Traveler: Book 02 - Dreams of the Fallen (8 page)

“What aren’t you telling me?” asked Tashi.

“Quite a lot,” remarked Archanon. “Most of it would melt your brain.”

“By my calculations there should be at least two more kingdoms. What happened to them?” said Tashi.

“Is that your second question?”

“It’s not all from animals,” Olaf pointed out.

“Thanks,” replied Sven trying not to step in the thicker mud.

“The smell will get better once we get closer to town,” promised Bjorn.

It didn’t.

“But we see them just fine,” countered Bjorn, the thin-bearded spokesman for the Stone Monkeys.

“You’ve never been guided through sleep by one of the handmaidens,” explained Jotham. “It’d be a simple suggestion to plant. They’re not invisible, merely ignored. Think of how nobles fail to notice servants in their bathhouse or beggars in the street.”

The Monkeys grudgingly admitted that this was the sort of trickery that the crone Zariah often practiced. “It’d make spying on her own followers easier. But sometimes the people do see the handmaidens at the entrance to the Temple.”

As the High Priest of the Traveler, Jotham was the accepted expert on mysteries. He had one brown eye from his Mandibosian side and one blue from his Imperial. His hair had also been turned prematurely white from passing through one of the Doorways, making him look twice his age. “Sometimes the trigger for a suggestion can be very simple, like a blue spot on the forehead.”

“That wouldn’t work if she were turned away from them,” said Brent, his twelve-year-old apprentice. The boy had dark eyes and curly, black hair.

“It could be anything: a visual cue in the veils covering their faces, an audible cue, or even the smell of incense preceding them. We’ll never guess it from this distance. Do handmaidens ever travel alone that you’ve noticed?”

The thin-bearded Northman answered, “Aye. Just before dawn, one of the handmaidens comes out and carries away the sleepers who have died in the night. With too much indulgence, and too little food or exercise, it happens a lot to the older addicts. When the others awake, they assume that the departed went home to get more money or moved on to a closer circle.”

Brent winced. “That doesn’t sound like a very pleasant job.”

The Stone Monkey shrugged. “It’s probably a punishment duty. I’ve no doubt that this culling makes the sheep easier to handle. I’d bet it’s also the time when traitors are eliminated.”

Jotham turned to the Stone Monkey with the broken jaw. “Ekvar, I need you to do me a favor. Pick one of your compatriots and bring me back the priestess who carries away the dead. This must be done in silence, and she must be alive and intact when she reaches me.”

Ekvar rubbed his hands in anticipation.

****

After dark, Zariah received messengers in her private office. Most of the Amphitheater of Dreams was of wooden construction. However, the region directly behind the Door to Eternity was not conducive to the vivid dreams worshipers desired. It corresponded perfectly to that region known to the scouts as the dead quarter. In a normal theater, the area behind the stage would be used to hold props, spare scenery, and actors waiting for their cues. Since no followers wanted to sleep in this mundane region, it’d long ago been chosen to house the priesthood. This section of the temple was a solid fortress of stone. Zariah’s offie was immediately behind the Great Eye in the center of the Holy of Holies.

The Shadow of Kragen was first to demand her attention that night. His outline a mere silhouette, Tumberlin appeared and bowed respectfully to the crone. When she gave him permission, he manifested a complete self-image, now haggard and lean, with no eyes. “The pilot of the Kragen ship claims that the high northerly winds enabled us to sail at twice the expected rate through the most dangerous waters. We should arrive in Reneau in a few more days, weather permitting.” Eager to gain her favor, Tumberlin added, “This next item is confidential, but it may benefit you to know, great sorceress. We’ve news that a certain Sword of Miracles known as the Defender of the Realm may be heading your way.”

Zariah’s eyes snapped upward from her desk to bore through the spirit messenger. “Impossible.” The god-forged Defender was one of the few weapons that could actually harm the Dawn race, and it’d vanished cycles ago. The return of this sword to the hands of men would’ve reached her ears before now.

“Unlikely, but I wished to warn you in case you needed to make preparations. The Defender was used in the slaying of several wizards, including the mighty Lord Kragen. I’m sure you’re familiar with the power of my teacher and remaker. His sadistic concubine has searched for this blade with all of her considerable influence. The assassin fled to the protection of Bablios after we took control of the Executioner’s Guild. Your emperor’s Glass Daggers are already after the sword-bearer, and he shouldn’t survive long. We intercepted a letter written to the bearer’s lady love saying that he was off to war but would wed her upon his safe return.”

Zariah could see no lies in the life fires of the messenger. “Are you quite certain?”

Tumberlin seemed amused by the challenge. “Sorceress, I’ve seen this stocky woman he writes to. Her nose is so large and her finances so limited that his motive could be none other than blind love.”

Zariah masked her emotions and asked, “What’s his name, this bearer?”

“He is a smith by the name of Baran Togg.” When the crone gasped, Tumberlin narrowed his eyes and asked, “Why should that matter?”

“This must be someone’s idea of a jest; I don’t like it.” While Zariah mused, Tumberlin flickered, his version of nervous pacing. After a moment, she looked up. “You’re still here.”

The shade looked down at her feet. “Many pardons, sorceress. I thought only that in exchange for this information, you might share information of equal worth.”

“Patience,” she commanded. “That’s the lesson you need the most. Besides, the data you provide is shaky, the barest hint, really.”

The shade drew dangerously close to her, restrained only by residual fear. “Then give me a hint as to what I’ll learn from you once we arrive.”

“Bold,” she said. “But sometimes boldness should be rewarded. Very well. We’ll begin with the basics of elegant feeding. You’ll learn to leave no traces. I’ll teach you to take sustenance from the unconscious and sleeping. On that rare occasion that your victim awakens, I’ll instruct you how to give the donor pleasures to ease the transfer of energy, or to selectively edit memories to make them more pliable. Insanity can be induced for short periods, causing them to be locked up and left entirely to your mercies. At higher levels, when yourobedience is proven, we’ll discuss your interactions with the physical world. But I’ve wasted too much time on you already. You’re dismissed.” At her wave, the rapt Tumberlin vanished. She scribbled a note on her parchment to have the intelligence about the magic sword investigated.

The rest of those reporting to Zariah that night painted a grim picture of the state of the sleeper community in the Dreaming City. Because of the disruptions atop the Holy Mountain, her servants had their hands full with a discontented population. Productivity was down 20 percent. Chaotic power fluctuations in the aether had resulted in large numbers of guests becoming vegetative or experiencing sensory burnout. Insomnia and unplanned nightmares were also on the rise. Zariah doubled the guards on the innermost circles to maintain peace in the Temple until this storm blew over. But even the loyal Somnambulist guards were becoming restless. One of their ranks had seen something in his dreams or in the cards that shook him so deeply that he resigned to become a street-corner prophet.

“I’ll handle that one myself,” the high priestess promised. He needed to disappear, and she needed to feed.

****

The next morning the rain slackened to a light misting. The weather was severe enough to keep sentries inside, but gentle enough not to interfere with the Stone Monkeys and their mission of skullduggery. While the priestess was tossing the first body of the day into a lime pit, she was seized, gagged, and dragged away with no witnesses.

The Monkeys brought the bound handmaiden back to the shepherd’s shelter. Within moments of examining her, Jotham had determined that the secret of the handmaiden’s invisibility lay in the numerous bells sewn into the hem and sleeves of her garments. Soon, every man and boy in the crude shepherd shelter wore a crude necklace strung with the bells. “Remember,” Jotham stressed. “Our goal is to observe them unnoticed, not to cause mayhem.”

“Why can’t we kill the guards?” demanded Sven, eager to use his new powers to their maximum potential.

Calmly, Jotham said, “If we harm nothing, they may assume the handmaiden who disappeared was disgruntled and left of her own will. Our trick can be used whenever we wish. Violence accumulates negative potential and blood calls out for justice. I don’t expect you to honor me for this reason, but you will for two selfish reasons. First, if we leave evidence or sound the alarms, they’ll change the sensory cue, and we may never gain access again.”

Even Ekvar nodded his agreement to this logic. The bearded man asked, “Why would we want to take more than one trip into that hole? Can’t we shut it down in one visit?”

Jotham resisted a lecture on military history. “Attacking without intelligence is like cooking in the dark. You might be able throw something together, but I wouldn’t want to eat it. I like to plan my operations such that no one is harmed, myself included.”

“And the second reason?”

Jotham replied, “The temple here has amassed a great deal of wealth; they store it on the premises. I wish to do more than close this temple: I want to make it impossible for the leeches here to have any kind of power over these people again. I’d consider it a personal favor if you emptied their coffers of every last copper. It may take several trips, but I have every confidence in your abilities to right this horrible wrong and place their wealth in the hands of those more deservg. I’d gladly assist such worthy aims, but I won’t murder with the aid of dark magic. Such an act, as I have indicated, stains the soul forever.”

The Stone Monkeys saluted him in unison, agreeing to his terms.

****

The two Kiateran men who captured the handmaiden were allowed to remain at the sheep pen for a few hours, alternately resting and keeping watch on the prisoner. Jotham, Brent, and the others entered the fringes of the Dreaming City. When the Tenor set foot on the packed-clay path the city called a road, his first impression was of a drunkard laying in squalor. The cleansing forces of nature did battle with the excesses of humanity. The rain washed the reek of drug-laced wine, vomit, and urine from the wooden sidewalks into the gutters. However, low-lying areas flooded, and overfilled latrines flowed back out into the streets. Jotham felt certain the waste products would leak into the city drinking-water supply. Already the air was rank with the stench of disease.

Unconscious people lay in every archway and under every dry overhang, all in gray rags, most in the final, skeletal stages of self-induced starvation. Many of the women had sold their long hair for coin before it began to fall out in patches. When Jotham moved one man to help him breathe better, a roach crawled out of the wastrel’s mouth. At this sight, Brent added his own breakfast to the smells in the gutter. The other men, all recently freed from dungeons, had stronger stomachs.

Jotham was able to close his eyes and find his own center. When he opened them again, he spied a small, bell-shaped flower that looked merely white to the other men. In the spectrum of the Compass Star, however, it was splashed with varied shades. The single point of beauty helped to anchor the half-Imperial priest and enabled him to bear the indecency around him. In gratitude, he bent down and rescued the blooming plant, wrapping it in a muddy cloth to keep it healthy until a better home could be located.

The first objective of the jingling, invisible scout team was to get an accurate map of the interior of the Temple of Sleep. They spread out for half an hour of reconnaissance and met back at the lime pits to confer.

When the Stone Monkeys met again, it was determined that frontal assault on the wooden amphitheater would be almost impossible. There was only one door in the front, guarded by six somnambulists outside. Only the stone quarter at the rear of the building offered any hope of entry. There were two doors in the stone section, one for servants and the other for clergy. These entrances were also guarded moderately well, but the rooftops above them were not. The bearded Monkey confided, “If you can get up that drain pipe, there’re several open windows to choose from. You can even see into the main temple. Aside from the forest of support columns, it’s wide open in there. People are laying in cots stacked two or three levels high. We estimate about 500 sleepers, twenty-five acolytes, six roving guards, and three handmaidens inside at any given time.”

“No walls inside?” asked another.

The bearded man shook his head. “They use six-cubit squares of framed rice paper between the columns to give an illusion of privacy between the rings, but you can see everything from above.”

“What about the stone section?”

“That’s where the priestesses live, plus the off-duty acolytes. It’s a maze in there. The rooms and halls are narrow and twisty. There doesn’t seem to be a real for plan to the place. They just subdivide existing rooms when they need space for something.”

“That works for us,” commented Jotham. “Once inside the stone section, you fellows can disguise yourselves as masons. No one will give you a second glance, even if they’re immune to the invisibility trick.”

“But they still have to get past the priestesses,” said Brent.

Bjorn warmed to the planning. “We know from watching yesterday that to get the maximum out of the available floor space, there are sleep shifts. At each shift change, the giant bell at the top of the dome tolls. Whenever the bell rings, all sleepers are awakened and escorted out. A brief period follows where we assume that the floors scoured, more incense lit, and the rooms are swept clear of stragglers. Once the theater has been cleaned, the next shift of sleepers gets ushered in. That transition period is when our enemies will be the most distracted. Since their blades were forged by our brethren in Kiateros, their swords cannot harm us.”