Temple of the Traveler: Empress of Dreams (16 page)

“Karl,” said the seeress, “you can buy the canoes and extra food while we visit the shrine at the battle site. We’ll meet you at the bridge.”

“Since when are you in charge?” demanded Karl.

She smiled sweetly. “I only meant that we’d be useless in that capacity. You’re such a skilled tradesman . . .”

Pinetto had to cover his mouth to hold in the snickers.

****

When they reached the site of the battle, Pinetto knelt at the bronze plaque on the ground, running his fingers over the eulogy to his friend. Tashi eyed the sesterina-plated sword embedded in the center where Archanos had buried it. “That’s the Defender of the Realm. I could use a good weapon.”

“I wouldn’t touch that blade; that thing will use you. It has opinions of its own,” warned the wizard. “The refugees mentioned that Intagliosians who tried to pull it out died.”

Sarajah said, “Hold off, dearest, while I have a talk with the bad kitty. Bagierog!”

“You don’t have to shout,” said a voice from the woods as a tall, panther-headed man loped out to meet them.

“We had a deal, Fallen,” stressed the witch.

“I honored it,” claimed the Dawn creature.

“You were already getting paid by Archanos and possibly Kiateros.”

“Irrelevant.”

“You still owe me five favors.”

“You miscount. Besides, we agreed that making me bleed costs double.”

“It was a scratch that healed before the sun went down. You can’t even find evidence of it anymore.”

“I saved your man from Eutheron the Devourer.”

“Granted, but Archanos, your employer, already promised me that favor. Your coat looks marvelous in the sunlight, so many shades of dark brown and black. You have gorgeous stripes.”

Bagierog laughed, his tongue lolling. “That won’t work on me, witch.”

“Let’s count the deeds together,” she said. They haggled over each action he had performed on her behest like two old women quibbling over the blankets. Eventually, they agreed that the demon still owed her three services, one of which should be smaller than normal. “You must accompany us downriver until your debt is paid.”

“I don’t care for water. I think I’ll just run alongside.”

“Your choice. Now, what can you tell me about my man being one of the Fallen?”

The demon raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t know? I thought you preferred our kind. An hour of what I know will cost you the small service.”

“Can he wield that sword over there safely?”

The panther rumbled. “He can pull it out, but I wouldn’t use it.”

“Because it’s spelled to work for Kiateros?” She recalled hearing tales that the smith roared at the god’s enemies and charged them with abandon.

“Because it’s
dangerous
. Whatever he cuts off won’t grow back. I won’t stand within seven paces of it.”

“But he could use it in a pinch?”

“Aye, I suspect he was the one Archanos originally planned to kill the abomination.”

Pinetto’s head snapped up, glaring at the demon. The ground smoldered beneath him. “The gods planned for one of us to die?”

Bagierog returned his stare. “We saved you both from the slaughter time and again. Eutheron was our common enemy, the thing that the gods kept in reserve to scare us into obedience. Archanos paid Baran Togg the highest honor he could. What about that do you object to?”

The wizard looked down. “Nothing, I guess.”

Tashi was barely able to squeeze his thick fingers through the basket hilt. Taking a deep breath, he pulled. Nothing moved. Planting his legs in a stance called the Boulder in the Field, he summoned the strength to fight giants. The blade began to shriek as he dragged it slowly out of the bronze. Fighting it with both hands, he wrestled the weapon free. Holding it, blade shining in the sunlight, he said, “I could just carry it on my hip.”

“No,” the three others said at once.

Pinetto handed him a folded pieced of fabric. “Here, I brought another yard of cloth woven with sesterina wire in case my cape needed repair again. Wrap the sword in the cape and then the oil cloth to waterproof it.”

Tashi bundled it onto his pack before the three mountain men joined them.

Karl gave each of them an oar. After they each climbed into a canoe with one of the experts, he reminded them of the basics of paddling as a team through white water.

When they pushed off into the swift river, she asked her paddling partner, “Erik, what’s this white water he’s talking about?”

“Class-three rapids and a few small falls.”

She didn’t have time to object, she was so busy paddling. Within an hour, she had blisters and had tipped the canoe twice. The demon, invisible to everyone else, laughed at her from the shore. Tashi had to bite his lip as they caught the canoe again and steadied it while she climbed in.

“Well she sure curses like a sailor,” said Urik, who was now her guide. Erik swore he’d walk home before riding with her again.

“Maybe three-person canoes would be better,” suggested Pinetto. “That way, we could keep going after dark, with one night-sighted person per vessel.”

“We’ll trade at the next town,” Karl said.

After the rapids, Sarajah had no more canoe problems. However, the magic cloak, which had kept her warm in the north and protected her in many ways, did not keep her dry. She longed for an end to cold and wet. Fortunately, the river trip passed much more rapidly for Sarajah than her previous walk north had. They avoided enemy sentries twice by passing at night. The day they reached the warship docks of Reneau, water patrols were too tight. They were forced to leave the water and proceed on foot.

By nightfall, they’d delivered the letter to Simon’s home. The caretaker recognized them and insisted they stay the night and dine with him. Seeing the blazing fire, Sarajah agreed. He read the letter immediately and sighed. “We will come in spring. I can get a good price for the house, but it’ll be lower since the balancing rock fell.”

“When?” she asked.

“Emperor’s Day.”

“The day Sophia died . . . at the Battle of the Falls.”

The caretaker clasped a hand over his heart. “Master Simon must be heartbroken.”

“Yes. We all were. She was kind and irreplaceable, my first real friend. Rebuilding a country and raising a son are providing a distraction for Simon, but I’m sure seeing his friends and coworkers will help even more.”

The old man provided an excellent meal of partridge and an array of vegetables they hadn’t seen in weeks. The wine was a rare vintage. When she objected, he said, “It won’t survive the journey north. It would only end up in the cellar of a noble who never met Mistress Sophia. I think we should use it to toast her memory.”

Urik and Erik drank as much as he poured and had to be carried to the guest-student bunks. The caretaker led Tashi and Sarajah to the master suite and lit the lamp there.

“I couldn’t,” she said, touched by his kindness. The bedroom was huge, with down comforters, framed architectural sketches on the walls, and a hundred reminders of the previous owner. The smallest thing set her crying: the apron Sophia had worn during their last visit, folded on the ladies’ dresser.

“She liked you, and this is her home. Her final note said that if you ever visited again, you could take anything you liked from her room.”

“She knew she wasn’t coming back, even then. But she still went with us.” Sarajah grabbed Tashi and buried her face in his chest, tears flowing freely.

“Stay as long as you need to, madam,” the caretaker insisted. “Good night.”

Tashi patted her as gently as he could, trying not to catch her hair or rip anything. He carried her to the bed and let her cry herself out.

Sarajah awoke four hours later. In the dark, by the light of the Compass Star entering through a skylight, she ran her hand over the simple apron. Tashi sat up, alerted by the movement and ready for battle. “It’s just me, dear. Get some rest. I’m going to stay up and write a little.”

“Just don’t draw on the wood paneling. Expensive,” he mumbled, rolling over. The bed creaked as his weight shifted. Feathers leaked from a pillow as he flopped his arm over onto her side.
That would’ve bruised
, she thought. She wanted to seek physical comfort from him but didn’t want to destroy the gorgeous room. It would’ve felt too much like desecrating Sophia’s grave. She also didn’t want to reach either emperor with a black eye or missing teeth.

She stoked the fire and opened her book to the blank pages. Across the top, she wrote: The Song of Serog. Then she stopped for a long while. How did you tell the tragedy of your adopted mother? She started with the dispassionate facts.

****

Dreams came before all peoples. They will exist long after.

Sera was a painter by trade. Even before ascending, she saw events in her sleep, some far away and others yet to be. She was named for a delicate, brown bird that sang at night, what you would call a nightingale. That’s what I remembered most about her as a mortal—her song. Her husband died in the attack that cut the holy mountain in half. Childless, she adopted seven orphan girls. Her daughters excelled in song, dance, acting, and other soothing arts.

After ascension, she became a master of dream manipulation. In the Halls of Eternity, she could transform herself almost at will. Sera was so strong in the dream realm that she could heal the injuries of other gods there. Those she could not heal, she could soothe by consuming their pain. She would take the pain into herself and make it a physical injury. Then, she would use her powers to make the injury fade.

She never carried a weapon, always easing suffering instead of inflicting it. Then peace was ruled a crime.

Not content with being the most powerful, Osos wanted to be all-powerful. Still, she managed to remain neutral in the many Dawn wars until her daughter Ashterah married the rebel Archanon. To prove her loyalty, Sera had to fight for Osos. When she refused, he threw her into the deepest pits of Nightmare, changing her name to Serog. Because her daughters could still speak to her in dreams, even hell had a light.

Then the murders began. Serog watched in horror as her daughters, on both sides of the conflict, were killed. She could do nothing to save them. The impotence drove her mad with rage. Each died of a wound that she could have healed. She remembered each face, each villain. By the time she had only three daughters left, her form changed to reflect her constant wrath—the silver dragoness.

When Osos opened the prison gates to renew his offer, she escaped Nightmare and rampaged across the human world. Her hunger for the guilty knew no limits. She laid waste to entire towns avenging her gentle daughters. In the City of the Gods, Osos gathered two of the surviving girls, Deliah and Zariah, which was a form of ‘little Sera.’ He afflicted them with a wasting disease so they needed the intercession of a great healer to live. The disease was as painful as it was crippling, but he denied them any ease, tormenting them for his sport. Serog was compelled to come to the aid of her daughters.

While she was curing her children, Osos trapped them all with the One True Blade. Then he commanded her to choose: back to the pits or into his army. Her daughters were too weak to flee.

“I curse you,” she snarled. “One day, I will eat your heart and dance on your grave.”

“Before that, you will submit,” he countered.

Words in the undergirding cause ripples in our world.

Serog tried to slay the monster Osos before he could harm any others. He drove her back to Nightmare, but the dragoness wounded him deeply. To heal, he needed more power than his slave gods could provide. Thus he captured the Traveler and made him share the secret power of boundaries.

That was when his greed turned him into the Compass Star. The two daughters in the palace were fused into wizard glass, just like every other living thing in what became the Inner Sea.

The stunned gods needed help to rebuild the fabric of reality and mend their own bodies. They located the life stones of the two girls, shards of glass that held the multidimensional echoes of their once-beautiful spirits. In exchange for these shards of life, Serog swore to guard the Door to Nightmare in the School of Bards. For to have a usable prison, there must be a Door in.

Serog, with all her skills, could not restore the spirit echoes of her daughters in physical form. However, she could teach them about resonance, iron will, and perseverance. She strengthened their spirits and showed them how to take over a human body so they could live again. Such a body was too weak for them and was consumed like wax before the flame. Then they needed to find another body to possess. Committing murder after murder drove gentle Deliah to end her own life. She shattered her stone in a final act of contrition and entrusted the pieces to the fish of the ocean. In the process, she damaged Zariah’s stone. The necklace with her shard washed ashore in the plague-lands.

Fate found the perfect host for Serog’s surviving daughter, one immune to the drain of the possessing spirit—me. I was half-Imperial and half-plague-lander, a child with the local variant of the same name: Sarajah. I had to consent to the possession for it to be binding. I did so to gain freedom from my own nightmare.

Zariah killed my owner and traveled to the ruined temple her mother guarded. Together we became the most powerful witch in the world. Together, we consumed the life force of over two thousand humans. Most traded willingly. Some were criminals. I watched every one of them die without being able to stop her.

When the Sheriff Tashi wrestled Serog to the ground, Zariah left voluntarily to spare her mother suffering. The daughter repaid the debt at last and the nightmare was over. I, Sarajah, was freed. The Doors to Eternity were closed. Serog was released from her service to the gods.

****

Sarajah didn’t want to add that Serog adopted a new daughter, Humi Kragen, to get revenge on the sheriff. Her story demanded a better ending. Staring at the blank page on the right side, she closed her eyes for a moment only.

Tashi woke her by asking, “What did you draw this time?”