Temple of the Traveler: Book 02 - Dreams of the Fallen (52 page)

Tashi rose from the tangle, seized a sword, and smiled. The look on his face made one of the guards run for reinforcements.

****

Jotham told the undead high priest, “Akashua, this hole leads to nightmare. It should be closed.” The two were barely ten feet from one another.

“Yes, I slept with one of the Imperial wives. Who hasn’t? I’m beyond that now. I’m glad your predecessor killed Myron. He’d grown quite mad. I’ve been preparing ever since I learned the truth. I’ll make a better ruler than he ever did.” He opened his robes to reveal two curved blades at his waist.

Face to face, the two circled the altar. Jotham kept the altar stone between them. “The truth is that any man holding the One True Sword who passes through this Door on Emperor’s Day in the Year of Freedom is transformed into the next emperor?”

“You’re here for the same thing,” the Marchion accused.

“But the Door makes you sterile. You won’t have adynasty like Emperor Myron did.”

Akashua cocked his head. “I’ve read all your papers. You’re a brilliant analyst, but you’re missing one key fact. I resigned as soon as I discovered it.
There was only ever one Myron, no heirs
. He used the Doors to renew his body every forty-nine years. And I’ll do the same.”

“I suppose you’re going to try to talk me into joining your regime?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. You’re the sword-bearer. I can only use it again if I defeat the rightful owner in a duel. I challenge!”

Akashua drew a sword so fast that Jotham heard rather than saw the attack. The priest blocked by instinct with the wooden staff. If it hadn’t been for his long practices with the sheriff, the first blow would’ve decapitated him. He avoided the second blow only because the Marchion slowed as a thrumming sound echoed through the dome. Jotham was able to lean back as the steel sliced his cloak.
Flow
.

When the historian tumbled backward out of the blades’ range, the Marchion breathed in sharply the same way that the ki mage had before delivering a bolt.
I am the water.
He dove to the left. The energy blast barely grazed him, graying the chainmail a little. However, the brunt of the assault struck Tatters full in the chest. The gravedigger imploded, shrinking to a husk.

“He’s not completely dead,” said the Marchion. “He’s just very low energy. If we add enough life, we can make him into a loyal servant. By adding just a pinch, he can watch what we do to you and the others. After everything he loves is destroyed, I’ll detach the head and mount it so he can watch me ascend to my throne in glory.”

“Monster!” Jotham bellowed, attempting to disarm the villain, but the swordsman knew all the tricks and had an iron grip. Before he knew it, Jotham’s staff was rolling across the grating. Without it, survival was a matter of dodging, blocking, and the odd energy shortage after every humming sound from the dome.

Sophia sent Brent and Owl to escape back down the secret tunnel and shut the door behind them. She then set about sneaking around the dance of death to the altar.

After minutes of the ebb and flow, Jotham learned to feel the build of energy that happened just prior to a slowdown. For the first time, he attacked, and the Marchion raised both swords to block. When his opponent froze, Jotham shifted his aim slightly, cutting through the man’s forearm. When he snapped back into the time flow, the Marchion had literally been disarmed. One of the curved swords clattered to the ground.

Instead of reacting to the pain, the evil high priest attacked. Made for a man with six fingers, the guard of the One True sword had a small gap. The Marchion lunged and scored a hit on the last two fingers of Jotham’s right hand, severing the pinky entirely. He tossed the glowing sword to his uninjured hand as he struggled to form a plan. When he saw Sophia twisting a control on the floor, the priest spoke again to cause a distraction. “You’ve been controlling a network of ki mages for years.”

“Just figure that one out?” the Marchion chuckled with satisfaction.

“They all train here. It couldn’t have been coincidence that so many things went wrong with your competitors.”

The one-armed man laughed as he put the severed limb back in its place. “I had to keep them weak and pliable.” Once it was reattached, hewas able to wiggle the fingers again.

During the next lull, Sophia turned a crank, lowering a rectangle of the grating downward like a ramp into the abyss. Jotham used the moment to pick up his own pinky and step to the side. He placed himself so that the Marchion’s back would be to the woman and the gaping hole in the floor.

****

As promised, deafening bolts of Door energy rained down on anyone who got close to Tashi. Grabbing a sword from a fallen guard, he fought his way to the ballista. Normal arrows bounced off his shoulders. He felt invulnerable as he unlatched the giant wheel at the base of the weapon and turned it slowly toward the second ballista.

One man attempted to shout a warning to the crew, but a blast from the dome knocked him from the parapet. Archers tried to answer Sarajah’s assault with their own shafts, but the wooden missiles couldn’t pass through the column of shadow. Every time someone shifted positions to get a better angle, the seeress would inch around to interpose the magic barrier.

The eagle picked off dangerous archers by dropping stonework and bodies from above.

The second ballista fired on the wagon, missing by three paces to the rear, four paces long. The crew was making the necessary corrections when the enormous bolt from the other war engine slammed into them. With trance-induced strength, Tashi jammed a borrowed blade deep into the gears of his own war engine so that it couldn’t be re-aimed that morning.

Sophia spoke for the first time since her fateful proclamation. Removing her rope belt, she said, “It is finished. I recant my prophecy, unspeak my words, rescind the blessing of Calligrose on this place, and end this curse!”

“No!” Akashua spun. Jotham slammed into his back, knocking him across the hole in the floor. The evil ki mage hung on by his finger and toes so he wouldn’t be sucked into the void. The temperature in the room had dropped far below freezing.

The priest leapt across the room to stop Sophia, but it was too late. She tossed Jotham the rope as a final gift and turned to dust. The rope snaked around his wrist like a living thing.

Akashua rolled toward the shallow end of the ramp, recovering.

With heartbeats to decide, Jotham swung the One True Sword down on the altar with both hands. It sparked and bit deep but didn’t cleave through as expected. Flames licked out and consumed the cloth atop the stone. The fire spread, crawling down the lace to the empty woman’s robe lying on the floor. Sophia had become the archetype, and then the Lover had sacrificed herself.

Akashua rolled to his knees, protesting, “You’ll kill us all.”

“You’re already dead. You just refuse to admit it.” Then, Jotham summoned the weightf the boulder, as he had taught Tashi. The sword inched downward. Sweat from the heat of molten stone rolled into Jotham’s eyes. “As high priest, I decree: this is a temple no more!”

Snow began to fall in the room.

The last of the stone cracked under the thermal stresses. An earthquake rippled through the dome. One acolyte started bleeding from a trio of old holes in his chest. Another screamed as an old criss-cross of sword wounds on his stomach reopened. The foot detached from the man next next to him like a scarecrow with bad stitching. Anyone who’d incurred injuries on temple grounds re-experienced their cumulative effects in the next heartbeat. The mountain resounded with howling. The Beyonders collapsed into piles of bone. Over half the followers of the Left Hand lay helpless in the aisles of the cathedral. The rest fled in panic as cracks appeared in the walls.

****

The shocks were felt in Reneau. Simon’s gardener watched in horror as the balancing rock committed itself at long last, sliding to the south.

In the middle of their preparations, Bagierog grabbed the knifemen on both sides and dove for open ground. The armadillo curled up in his niche. The dog howled.

Pinetto snapped awake and ran into
the center of the kill zone. “What’s about to . . .” Someone shook the road. Synapses fired slowly in his tired brain as he realized what would happen during an earthquake. “To me!” he shouted too late.

Rocks at the top of the cliffs calved and toppled.

He dove into the trench and prayed.

Twenty-five Kiateran allies perished or were too injured to fight, most of them on the back stairs. The sword-bearer was the first to emerge from the dust, eager to rescue survivors. “On the bright side, the tree fall will look more believable now.”

“We lost almost half.”

“We’d have lost more without your warning,” the smith assured him.

“The stair is closed,” Pinetto said, gazing into the sky. “There’s no more planning and no more waiting; we must fall back to the bridge.”

“After we free the dead.”

The first eagle returned and spoke to the wizard. “If you tarry, you will join them in death. Flee. I found the second dark-skinned one. He’ll delay the enemy half an hour.”

“He’s attacking them while they’re confused?” said the smith, brightening.

“This is not his way,” insisted the soft-toned bird man. “He poses as a charcoal maker. He helps them gather their dead. There were about seventy by my count.” The smith whistled. “He’s petitioned the lead fire mage for permission to inter them before sundown.”

“That’ll take a lot of men to bury them,” muttered Baran.

“To cremate them,” the wizard corrected. “Intaglian priests teach that the deceased must be consumed by fire to enter the afterlife of their god. That’ll take almost thirty men more from the attack force. I guess there’s more than one way to whittle down an army.”

“They’re bargaining over the exact number of helpers and the price as we speak. My friend quotes from their scriptures to increase the cost.”

The smith scratched his head. “What does that make the odds now?”

Pinetto stared at the ambush they’d spent hours setting up. “One hundred ten soldiers and two wizards for them: thirty-five soldiers, four Dawn creatures, and one wizard for us.”

The smith nodded and shouted, “The wizard signaled for us to fall back now!” Baran Togg poked his friend in the chest with a finger. “Buddy, you be damn careful what you ask for the rest of today.”

****

Surrounded by a dozen men, Tashi didn’t waste time gawking when two thirds fell over in the earthquake, unconscious or incapacitated. He cleaned up the rest of the defenders before they knew what was happening.

Sarajah whistled to him. “Good job, boyfriend. Let’s head for the border.”

He shook his head. “You need to take that artifact to Jotham. Why does it keep evading us? Doesn’t it want to travel through the Door?”

“It’s a tool; it has no desires,” she insisted. “And just where are you planning on going?”

“We promised to handle our thirty on the ground,” he said, waving for the eagle’s attention. With dazzling faith, Tashi leapt from the parapet, hanging at least a hundred feet off the valley floor. The eagle he couldn’t see swooped down to slow his fall again.

“You could’ve flown me down first,” she complained. Then she searched for a window into the inner sanctum.

Chunks of stone were plummeting from the ceiling when Sarajah anchored the grapnel hook and lowered herself to the center of the chaos. Jotham was visible below her, arranging magical items on the snow-covered floor. The seeress whistled for his attention as she dropped the last few feet. “No one’s ever going to invite you to their church again. But I kept your boneheaded apprentice alive.”

“You kill off my only friend, send my almost-lover to his doom, take my only weapon, and destroy every temple in the world. What more could you ask for?”

“I need you to find some way to seal this Door behind me.”

“To lock you in a permanent Hell? Sorry, I don’t do that.”

“But you
can
?”