Temple of the Traveler: Book 02 - Dreams of the Fallen (51 page)

Brent examined his sleeve. “Heated baths are that wing, guards are that one, library, and there! Second floor, above that arch. Will they be safe?”

Owl snorted. “She hunts on rooftops. Don’t you remember?”

“But . . .”

“They just eliminated two patrols of guards and we didn>

With the bars on all the portals leading into the Great Hall, they had to improvise a way up to the walkway above. Tatters borrowed a coil of rope from Brent. Jotham dragged over a heavy bench for Owl to stand on. The older workman planted his arms on the wall, and Tatters virtually ran up his back to grab the banister above. Clambering over, the young gravedigger tied the short rope off and lowered it to the others. While the others climbed, with Owl as the stepping stone, Jotham put on the chainmail. The armor didn’t reach his navel, but some protection was better than none.

“Did you hear something down the hall?” echoed a stranger’s voice.

The tall priest jumped for the banister himself while Owl huffed up the rope. The others helped them over before guards pattered by.

Moments later, they’d ducked into a private changing room. Sophia signed, “C-l-o-s-e.”

Brent smiled. “Actually, this is pretty good for one of our plans. No one’s caught fire yet, and there haven’t been any dragons.”

Jotham said to Sophia, “I saw sick people being cared for in the hospital wing. This seems uncharacteristic for this Marchion rogue.”

“F-e-d o-n,” she spelled with a disgusted look on her face. Brent translated for her.

“Ah, the Beyonders won’t die, but they need help healing and staying mobile.” Jotham did some math on the number of wards. “A room of victims for each? I don’t understand. Why would anyone come here for such treatment?”

“T-e-r-m-i-n-a-l.”

“They have no hope. Does the temple pay their families?”

Brent shook his head. “They pay the Marchion. Each month, one person in ten gets cured and sent home. That’s enough to keep an endless supply of victims coming.”

Twenty bits after dawn, Griswold the cook, one of the Kiaterans at the ambush, broke cover. “Do you hear that whistling?” He wandered out into the middle of the five-stride-wide path in order to get a fix on the source. A message arrow plummeted to strike him in the foot. A swordsman clapped a hand over Griswold’s mouth to silence the scream that was building.

The smith snapped the arrow off so that the surgeon could pull it through. He read the attached message and ran back to Pinetto at the base of the stairs. “The good news is that the enemy scouts have been and gone. It should take a couple hours for them to circle around to the low road. The bad news is that there are seven Imperial guards coming our way.”

“Aren’t we the bloodthirsty one all of a sudden? Technically, she only said she’d get them out of the tower so the boss could pass unmolested.”

“What should we do while you humans play?” the Dawn creature sighed. “We’re
bored
.”

Simon drove the wagon across open terrain, in full view of the wall. Using a powerful telescope, the temple soldier overlooking the final road to the falls spotted the Kiateran uniforms. “Load both weapons,” he ordered. “We’re about to have unwelcome visitors.”

Sarajah ran across the rooftops, giddy with freedom. She had to hold back for Tashi to keep up. When she saw the thick column of shadow over the inner sanctum, she plotted a course through the arches and greaves of the cathedral.
The Door was a circle two paces wide. When they reached the peak of the temple dome, she saw the valley laid out before them in all its grandeur. He saw the ballistae being loaded and the increased troops. “Trouble. We’re going to have to act fast.”

There was a flicker of mana as she tapped the energy of the open Door. The undead soldiers several stories below slowed for a moment as the energy animating them was redirected. However, no one on the parapet noticed the fluctuation.

When Tashi turned to face her, the woman was different. Her chest was a little smaller, her hair a little darker, and her face younger and more tanned. Only the eyes were the same, gazing at him with a pleading mixture of hope and affection. Stupidly, all he could say was, “You changed.”

He gave her a quick kiss. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Sarajah. No offense, but below the neck still looks . . .” he said, staring at her figure.

She blushed. “I was nine when Zariah took me. I don’t have a body of my own, not a woman’s. Since you seemed to have such fond memories of this one, I thought I’d save myself some pain.”

“We’ll start with reinforcing the bones and muscles. If you can stay conscious, we’ll make more divergent battle modifications.” She handed him her last glass brick, the coin of the spirit folk. “Try to channel the pain into this.”

“I’ve been injured before,” he boasted.

“Not like this. Look into my eyes. Hold my hand and open your mind. I’ll try to use the mental conditioning to spare you the worst, but when people ask you how much something hurts, this is what you’re going to compare it to.”

Having rebuilt her left hand, she no longer needed the splint. He tried to object when she put the wooden spoon handle in his mouth, but the white wave of bone-twisting pain washed all higher thought away.

When she drew on the full magic of the Door, strange things happened in the inner sanctum below her.

****

With his spy scope, Pinetto watched the river and northern road from Look Out Point. He secretly prayed for signal barrels that would end this fight before it started. Instead, eight men in four canoes paddled down the river at high speed. The man in the first canoe had unusually dark skin and waved to Pinetto. “Left flank hide from the river!” the wizard ordered.

Creeping over to the smith, Pinetto mumbled, “One of the Dawn creatures handled the Imperial garrison for us without shedding a drop of blood. Unfortunately, he doesn’t appear to be coming back. That leaves us with thirty extra Intaglians to account for. I have no idea where the other Dawn creatures are, but they’d better get here before the enemy.”

****

Jotham lit a beeswax candle from a smoldering coal in the room’s stove. Leading the way, he made certain that everyone moved with maximum stealth through the secret passage. They crept from the private dressing room through a stone passage to the inner sanctum of the Final Temple. Even in this hidden ace, there were detailed rosettes and laurel wreaths decorating the top and bottom three inches of the wall.

Abruptly, they reached a dead end. Sophia pushed her way by, running her fingers over the trim. Eventually, her fingers traced the circle at the center of one of the ornamental carvings. A panel on their right popped open with a click, and she stepped through into the room of tortures. The wall facing them, the one containing the altar of life, was blank. The wall on the left was lined with harmless devices like incense, candle snuffers, and extra altar cloths. However, metal-belted, leather straps dangled from the right wall. A collection of clamps, scalpels, awls, silk hoods, and bowls lay beneath. From the main temple’s point of view, the vile items would have been on the left—the Left Hand of Life.

Of all the horrific implements, Sophia picked up a small pillow and cradled it in her arms. Tears poured from her as she embraced what could have been her own murder weapon. But no one rushed to comfort the woman—they were too shocked by the floor.

The massive hole in the floor left little room for anything else. The corners were connected by an arc that narrowed to a two-foot isthmus of marble. But the black vortex in the center threatened to suck everything in the world through its greedy maw. Water vapor slowly turned to frost in the center. It was hypnotic. The swirling pattern seemed to react to the heat of their presence, and the curl of its arms danced in a more intricate rhythm. Worse, things moved inside the abyss. One could only make them out when they occluded the light.

This was the polar opposite to the shining Halls of Eternity that Jotham had visited several times. This was nightmare.

The only thing preventing the dark from consuming them all was an iron grillwork whose twists matched the scars on Sophia’s shoulder. The priest felt a ripple of Door energy as the abyss looked into him.

“There, on the altar,” whispered Brent.

Jotham could see the amber-handled, god-forged blade in plain sight. The end of the quest was at hand. The answer to a lifetime of questions lay mere steps away. The priest swallowed. “We need to open the floor grating, just a little, for me to slip through. Look for a lever.”

Jotham skirted the room to creep up on the One True Sword. It glistened in the shimmering Door light. He transferred the hardened staff to his left hand. Barehanded, he reached out his right palm to touch the hilt. Memories of the maker flooded into him, and he understood—enough for what he had to do. Putting on the blue, thermal-proof gloves, Jotham the Tenor raised the weapon before him. He might never see the light of his world again. Nonetheless, he stared into the center of the vortex and ordered, “Now.”

Tatters pulled down on the massive lever with all his weight. The grating didn’t move, but the blank wall behind the priest did. The inner sanctum rotated to face the enormous main chapel, with a church service in progress. Emperor’s Day was a very important holy day, and this one had special significance. Over a hundred devotees of the Left Hand filled the pews. The Marchion himself stood behind the pulpit in purple robes. For the span of ten heartbeats, he could have been a statue, frozen in time. Just when the lesser devotees began to buzz with whispered questions, the energy flow returned, and his head swiveled toward the group.

“Greetings, Jotham the Historian. We meet at last.” Turning to the builder’s wife, he added, “Sophia, girl, so glad you’ve come back home to our embrace. We Beyonders have to stick together.”

Tashi’s breath came in short pants as he knelt on the temple dome. The backs of his hands were thick and rocky like a troll’s. In shock, he dropped the jet-black brick he’d been holding, and spit out fragments of the wooden handle. S
arajah apologized. “I tried to be gentle, but it’s time. They’ve been firing the weapons at the prince’s wagon, trying to establish the range. With the math tables and practice they’ve had, it won’t take many tries before they score a hit.”

“Heavier,” he mumbled.

“I armored your back and the tops of your arms. Swords can still get through the front, though.” She pulled the tuning fork out of her sleeve. “You won’t be able to kill people outright; just knock them out, delay them, or sweep them off the walls like trash. I’ll blast groups of them that come at you. You need to sabotage the . . .”

Feeling his increased strength, Tashi didn’t wait for her to finish. He grinned and ran down the slope toward the first ballista, launching himself through the air. An eagle swooped out of the sun, caught Tashi in its claws, and strafed the men on the battlements with his rocky legs. When his forward movement slowed, the eagle released him into a crowd, bowling them over.